Reasons to Integrate

cont. from

I feel sad when I read accounts by individuals with DID who choose to stay dissociative. I fear they do not understand integration as a natural part of the healing process. I remember after I integrated all of the personalities, I was surprised that I still had all of the thoughts and feelings that had been labeled as personalities. I came to realize that the personalities were always and only a collection of thoughts, feelings, experiences and memories that had been separated from normal awareness and from other collections of thoughts, feelings, experiences and memories. Personalities are not real people. They are aspects of one person that have been separated from normal awareness. After my final integration, I realized that the personalities were a way to describe my internal experience. With therapy, I changed my internal experience and learned new ways to describe my inner thoughts and feelings.

I now understand that the personalities developed in my childhood before a clear sense of self-identity was established. Being able to develop personalities and compartmentalize the trauma was necessary for survival. Early trauma is an essential part of the development of DID. Trauma later in life -- even ongoing intense trauma such as war -- does not result in the development of DID.

After I became an adult and no longer lived in violent, abusive or unsafe circumstances, I had the freedom to choose new coping methods. I had the freedom to let go of my childhood defenses. I no longer needed survival as the guiding principle for my life. Remaining dissociative maintains survival based thinking. Integration is a choice to do more than just survive.

When I still had DID and wanting to be integrated more than anything else, I didn't fully understand what integration would mean to my functioning and my life. I just knew I wanted to have full access to my whole self without having to dissociate. I wanted a stable sense of identity. I didn't want who I was shifting, based on triggers or the environment. I wanted what had been taken from me by the abuse -- a stable sense of self, consistent functioning and normal awareness. I felt like a person might feel who was abused/assaulted resulting in being crippled in a wheelchair. If that happened I would want my full functioning back. Yes, I could adjust to life in a wheelchair, but why accept the limitations if I could have full recovery and run again? I felt the same way about my recovery from trauma. I didn't want it continuing to determine my sense of self and functioning. I wanted to run again.

Now that I have had twelve years of being integrated, I am better able to describe the positive impact of integration on my life. There are four dimensions of how integration has changed me.

1. Relationship to Myself. It is my experience that integration represents a statement of self-love. Claiming all aspects of myself as ME is incredibly freeing. It is a way of embracing my humanness and realizing the capacity for healing. I now have a full range of feelings available to me. In general I can choose how I want to act in the present moment and not have my actions determined by my trauma history. I am fully open to my whole self. Nothing is excluded. This full acceptance of myself allows me to have a new life. How I felt after my integration is expressed in the words from the country song, "Unbroken":

You held me up to the sunlight. Now it feels like -- No one ever left me out in the rain, Cold words remain unspoken and I never got lost, spent years in the dark... and I'm unbroken.

2. Relationship to Others. One of the most rewarding aspects of being integrated is the positive change in my relationship with others. Before my integration I had many faithful and long-term friends. They hung in with me through the years of struggle. They were there for me. And now after my integration I can be there for them. There is real adult mutuality in our relationships. Instead of saying to a friend in crisis, "I will call and check on you this weekend" -- I can say, "I know you're having a hard time, call me any time. Here is my cell phone number." The old way I kept control of the relationship so I could call when I was functional/adult. Now I am always adult and able to really be present for my friends and family.

3. Relationship to Life. Being integrated gives me the opportunity to be fully present to life and better able to handle life crisis. I am open to new experiences, including a fantastic vacation spent swimming with dolphins. I am better able to handle it when life throws me a curve as it did when I was diagnosed with cancer in 1995. As I face the inevitable changes and losses that come with aging, I do so as a whole person with a full range of coping skills.

4. Relationship to Death. This may seem strange to put in here, but it is a relevant factor for me. As a gerontological social worker in the first fifteen years of my professional career, I worked with and learned from older people. I always asked myself what made the difference between older people who faced the end of their lives/losses/death with dignity and peace and older people who were bitter and in despair. I could see it wasn't life circumstances alone that made the difference. Older people at peace with themselves were satisfied with their life choices and accepted the difficulties of their lives.

Often when I made significant choices about my life -- such as moving across the country to follow my DID therapist -- I would ask myself, "How will I view this when I am an old woman in a nursing home?" I am at peace with the choices I have made in my life, including the choice to integrate, accept, and claim my whole self, and I accept the reality of my traumatic and abusive past. I am ok with aging and facing the end of life. I don't believe this acceptance of my life history and of my inevitable death would be possible from a dissociated/DID/PTSD frame.

continue: Lessons Learned from the Recovery of Children with DID

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Written 2003. Reviewed: 04/2006