The Amazing Healing Power of Dealing with Alters
Next Part Discerning Between Demons & Multiple Personalities
A man would not only sometimes wet his bed, he found himself peculiarly reluctant to clean up afterwards. He preferred to lie in the mess. You might find this bizarre, but it was equally inexplicable to him until he discovered he had alters. After gaining the trust of one of his child alters, the alter confided that he had learnt that a wet bed was the only way to keep a family sex abuser out of his bed. Not only was the man relieved to know for the first time that there was a rational explanation for his disturbing behaviour, he now had a strategy for finding a cure. He began prayerfully focusing on finding ways to convince his alter that he was now safe. He could experiment, for example, with assuring the alter than the abuser had left and that never again was he in danger of being molested in bed.
A woman decided to conquer her fear of driving by becoming a professional truck driver. After years of driving experience she had abundantly convinced herself that she was a safe and highly capable driver, and yet she still felt uncomfortable about driving. Finally, rather than remaining only vaguely aware that she had alters, she began befriending them. She discovered a child alter who, not surprisingly, had no consciousness of driving expertise gained later in life, and was scared of riding in vehicles. Empowered by this awareness of the alters' fears, the woman was able to work towards curing the discomfort the alter felt when driving. She was able to try such things as informing the alter of her driving expertise (this proved a significant source of relief), and encouraging the alter to enter into faith-filled prayer, trusting in divine protection when travelling on the road.
A Christian woman knew the Scriptures affirming that her sins were forgiven but still she was plagued with strong guilt feelings. It turned out that her child alter had a lesser understanding of the gospel than the adult part of her. Once the child alter had the good news of God’s forgiveness more fully explained to her, the relief was remarkable.
An abuser said he would chop off a little boy’s penis. The threat was so convincing and terrifying that at that very instant an alter formed. Since, as previously explained, alters have access to only a fraction of the information that is known to the person as a whole, it is not surprising that this alter was left unaware that the threat was never carried out. The alter spent decades of needless torment until finally it was specifically explained to the alter that he had not been maimed. From then on the host enjoyed relief and no longer awoke fearing that he had been maimed.
A woman often used to walk in her sleep. She got little sleep as it was, without having a disturbed sleep. Sometimes her son would find her wandering the house. Sometimes she would wake in the morning to find things rearranged and – most frustrating of all – she would have to hunt everywhere for her keys that were not where she had left them. One day as I was chatting with her child alter, the alter mentioned in passing that last night she had slept all night. That immediately got my attention. “What do you usually do?” I asked.
It turned out that the alter only felt safe to play without ridicule when everyone else was asleep. She particularly liked playing with keys and her host had moved her other toys away from the bed, so she had to get up to access them. “I try not to wake Mommy (her host),” she said. “Please don’t tell her.”
I gently persuaded her that her host would not be angry and obtained her permission to let the host know. It turned out that the host had overheard part of the conversation anyhow.
The host and alter were able to work out some amicable and effective solutions. An obvious start was to keep the toys by the edge of the bed, so that the alter could play with them in bed. Better still, the host explained to the alter how they would both feel more refreshed if they slept at the same time, and the host began slotting into her waking hours a time when her alter could play in privacy. She also purchased a pocket doll for her alter to play with when she was at work. Both alter and host benefited from this new level of mutual understanding and cooperation – and enjoyed better quality sleep.
One woman was tormented by horrific flashbacks of the abuse she had suffered as a child. Then her child alter was taught that because she was a child of the King of kings, she was a princess, and since princesses must be obeyed, she had the God-given authority to command abusers, demons, and so on, to leave. Soon after, the woman was having one of her terrifying flashbacks. Suddenly the child alter rose up and told the abuser in the flashback that he must leave her because she was a princess. In her mind’s eye the abuser left and the flashback abruptly ended. Similar things happened during nightmares and demonic appearances. Not surprisingly, the woman found peace like she had never before known.
A woman used to find clothes shopping and even dressing so distressingly confusing and frustrating that she would often end up in tears over it. When she learnt about her alters, she discovered that the source of the confusion was that each alter had completely different tastes in clothes. Since they had a beautifully close relationship with God, they agreed to let God select their clothes each time they dressed or shopped. It worked.
It is not impossible for alters to believe they are the opposite sex to their host. Such alters form because of the need to feel safe, not because of homosexual tendencies. One can well understand abused children supposing that being the opposite sex would lower their chances of further abuse and so wish they were that gender. Both boys and girls have thought this and, in the case of their particular abuser, they are often right. Moreover, if children are sexually abused by a member of the same sex, it can be expected to affect their sexual identity and they might even be labelled by their abuser as being the opposite sex.
It is not surprising that some alters suffering this fully take on this false identity and genuinely believe they are the oppose sex. They can have so little body awareness that they believe their actual body is fully the opposite sex to what it really is. Not surprisingly, sexual confusion results, but this can be resolved by helping them realize that there is no need for them to be of their imaginary gender in order to be safe or loved. Only after ensuring they realize that their safety and acceptance is not at stake should the actual gender of their bodies be pointed out to them. This delay is necessary because knowing their real gender is likely to be a significant shock to them, and one that would be most disturbing without the preparation just mentioned. Great care must be taken in dealing with this sensitive issue. Imagine your reaction if you were to discover that you are not the gender you had always thought you were.
With many of his alters thinking themselves to be little children – far too young for marital relations – and a few of his alters thinking they were the opposite sex, it is no wonder that a man I know often had great difficulty making love to his wife. Identifying alters, helping them to discover their true gender and helping them to mature was the key to healing his sexuality.
The above are just eight of many examples I could cite from people I know that demonstrates what a powerful key to healing it is to listen to alters and tenderly address their needs and fears. Unknown to you, a traumatized part of you could be sabotaging your eating habits, your determination to resist temptation, your will to live, your Christian walk – all sorts of things. No matter how devout and determined you are, trying to do the right thing is an oppressively hard, discouraging slog when part of you is surreptitiously sabotaging your efforts, or is unaware of key spiritual truths. Life fills with joy, peace and victory when alters are helped and every part of you knows God and is drawing upon the power of Christ.
I have found that if you treat alters as real, the breakthroughs in a person’s long term problems is phenomenal, provided you minister to each alter in the power of Christ as you would to a normal person who had suffered that way. In fact, I have never seen anything so powerful in bringing about speedy transformations in hurting people.
Christians commonly suffer the frustration of what they might call being unable to turn head knowledge into heart knowledge. Some might think of it in terms of knowing intellectually what should be a life-changing spiritual truth and yet the knowledge does not set them free because their “subconscious” has not grasped it. Speaking to alters enables one to minister directly to that “subconscious,” normally unreachable part of the person; achieving in minutes what might otherwise take years. It’s nothing like hypnosis. It is simply enabling people to liberate a suppressed part of them that, through being kept ignorant of certain truths, had been surreptitiously undermining their well-being.
Humans can concoct a hundred theories as to the best way to treat anything, but any scientist will tell you that going by one’s personal experience with treating people is a very unreliable way of proving which treatment is the most effective.
Like any Christian, I try to be led of God in the way I minister to people. Unlike some, however, I seem unable to hear God speaking directly to me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I usually seem able to do little better than just pray and hope for the best. As I have continued ministering to alters, however, I have been staggered to note how exactly the way God ministers to alters coincides with the way I have felt led to do it.
(For an example of how God relates to alters, see the first link at the end of this series of webpage's under the heading, “Related Pages.”)
No matter how many human theories there are, I want to imitate God’s approach, since he knows infinitely more than any of us as to what is truly best. The apostle Paul displayed this attitude of seeking to imitate God:
1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
And Christ himself had this same attitude:
John 5:19 . . . I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
As is the case with belief in demons, or opinions about the most appropriate treatment for a specific disease, or almost anything else in the world, there is a wide range of theories about Dissociative Identity Disorder and whether it even exists. One reason for the confusion is that alters, having suffered devastating levels of rejection in the past, are highly sensitive and will go into hiding in the presence of anyone they fear could reject them (including a counsellor, researcher or even the host person).
If anyone were to convince a host that alters are not real and that the host should reject as an illusion any manifestation of an alter, alters would panic and quickly go into hiding, rather than risk rejection. At the apparent disappearance of alters, the host will temporarily feel relief, rather like the cruel relief felt by a cancer patient wrongly declared to be cancer-free. It will seem like a magical cure, but the person’s underlying problems will remain and his/her true relief will be greatly hampered.
Someone might possibly reach the point where he or she is enabling continued dissociation. For example, child alters can be so cute that it is tempting to hold on to them by hindering them from maturing. At least in early counselling or relating to alters, however, it seems to me best to ensure one has thoroughly ministered to each alter, rather than frantically rush into trying to get the alters fused into one person. Like being opened up by a surgeon, treating alters as individuals makes wounded parts accessible for treatment. It would be foolish for a surgeon to sew up a person while there are still inner parts that need attention.
Moreover, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have been cruelly robbed of the childhood they deserve. Having childlike alters who are relieved of their pain provides these deserving people the privilege of re-living childhood for a while as it was meant to have been enjoyed. Yes, there is a time to move on, but there is also a time to enjoy. In fact, one host who was continually frustrated over what to him seemed the slow rate of healing, actually felt guilty about enjoying legitimate pleasures. This false guilt, quite typical of people suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, was the product of his abusive upbringing in which he was usually punished for acting like a normal fun-loving child. He found it wonderfully liberating to discover that God delighted in him catching up on missed childhood pleasures by enjoying them now, even though he was an adult. Ironically, his frustration at not integrating sooner was actually slowing his healing because he would keep suppressing (and so hurting) alters who wanted to play.
Another reason for not trying to force the pace is that the very thought of being united can initially be traumatic for alters because it could be misinterpreted as an attempt to annihilate them. When the matter is treated gently, however, alters can be encouraged to see union as a maturing and as a marriage in which two (or more) truly are better than one and no one loses his or her identity but each contributes his or her own strengths and retains his or her own memories and benefits from the other’s strengths. Like marriage, it should be a union in which partners are so self-assured that they feel no need to keep asserting their independence. One alter described it as becoming more alive than ever. It is very fulfilling. The decision is up to each individual alter, however. Moreover, what is often the first stage towards merging – alters learning to value each other and work together as a team – is far more important than merging.
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