Understanding Alters
Next Part The Amazing Healing Power of Dealing with Alters
Even though having alters is a common, well-documented reaction to childhood trauma, it is usual for people, upon first discovering that they have alters, to find it deeply disturbing and seek repeated assurance that they are not going insane. In reality, for any of us who have alters, the discovery is a very healthy sign and a significant step towards far more peace, joy and fulfilment than we have ever known.
As explained in a link at the end of this series of pages, I believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder develops the brain beyond what it otherwise would have, such that when a person begins to heal from the disorder, having had multiple personalities actually turns out to be an intellectual advantage. Of course, until healing commences, having Dissociative Identity Disorder is primarily a disadvantage because and each alter (and the host) has access to only a portion of the person’s brain.
Feelings of confusion as well as strange symptoms are normal for people recovering from D.I.D. From time to time, a friend of mine would ask the Lord what was wrong with him. Each time God would simply but very tenderly reply: You have alters. I’m healing you.
It is most unfortunate that in old, ill-informed circles, schizophrenia was mislabelled “split personality.” This grossly inappropriate name might cause someone unfamiliar with psychology to wrongly imagine there could be a link between schizophrenia and what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. There is not even a superficial similarity. Unlike schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder does not cause bouts of insanity, nor is it helped by medication (although someone with D.I.D. might have additional conditions like depression that might be helped by medication). The differences go on and on.
The term bi-polar is even less likely to be confused with Multiple Personality Disorder but just to be sure, let me assure you that this condition is also very different to what we are discussing.
A friend of mine was seeking a prayer partner that he could be transparent with. The man he had in mind was a psychologist who attended his home fellowship. My friend prayed fervently before approaching the man and wisely tested the waters by asking his view of Dissociative Identity Disorder. His response being favourable, my friend confided that he had alters. The psychologist’s response was, “Wow! That’s usually only reserved for the highly intelligent or artistically gifted!”
In telling me about the incident, my friend said he was obviously an exception to this trend. That’s the response I expected from him – and from you, if you have D.I.D.. People with D.I.D. tend to be so tragically hit by low self esteem that they do not presently realize how gifted they are. Though the significance of his abilities seems not to register with my friend, he is both artistic and of well above average intelligence. In fact, his childhood abuse and putdowns had squashed his artistic leanings, and befriending one of his young alters is releasing his beautiful artistic gift within him.
In addition to the huge handicap of battling emotional pain and other unhealed effects of his past, his poor spelling contributed to him feeling intellectually inferior. He is actually so intelligent that in a college course he took there was a firm rule that no one with poor spelling could graduate. Those in charge were embarrassed into breaking their own rule. How could they “fail” their top student? He was so exceptional that he was tutoring his fellow students. Yet still he thought he was stupid. And if you have D.I.D., you’ll agree that he was smart but are likely to still be convinced that you are not.
Here’s an interesting side note: This man emailed me frequently for about a year before I discovered that he had alters. I had come to recognize his intelligence and assumed the atrocious spelling in his e-mails was due to dyslexia. A while after I encouraged him to recognize and be kind to his alters (he had previously mistaken them for demons) he began to send near-perfect e-mails. Alters that were good at spelling had surfaced.
It is not without reason that D.I.D. has been called “sophisticated” and “one of the most functional responses a child can make to a very traumatic childhood.” That is not to suggest, however, that it is desirable for people facing new crises to yield to the temptation to split yet again. Just how counterproductive splitting can be was rammed home to me when a friend of mine was learning a very stressful new job. She needed every bit of previous experience and more. Despite us not wanting it to happen, in an unconscious attempt to cope with the stress, a new alter formed. This poor alter was formed with all of the host’s years of extensive work experience wiped from her memory.
Trying to cope under these circumstances greatly magnified the stress. Thankfully, little damage was done because I was able to immediately support the new alter and my friend changed jobs. Very many years before, my friend’s trauma had caused an alter to form that did not even know how to read or write. Trying to cope proved exceedingly challenging. This alter eventually relearned and developed such courage and skills that she ended up a significant help to her host. It was a very tough journey, however.
An alter e-mailed a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder who in despair had called himself a freak:
We are not freaks; we are people forced to carry burdens beyond human endurance. We were smart enough not to go insane but to split. It was the best we could do. That isn’t a freak; it’s someone being denied the help they desperately needed and resorting to extreme measures to save themselves. Would you call a shipwreck survivor who got an infection and had to chop of his own arm to save the rest of him a freak? No, you’d say, “Wow, that was brave” Well, that is what you are: brave. You hid the pain to protect yourself and did what you had to stay alive. That is brave, not freaky.
It has been estimated that between one to three percent of the general population in western countries suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. I expect it would be far higher in, for example, war-ravished countries.