cont. from

The examination of trauma-based beliefs

Part of the process of integrating was examining beliefs I had acquired growing up with the ongoing abuse. As a child I learned that having feelings was bad. I learned to hide my feelings in different personalities and fragments. Before I could integrate a wide variety of feelings I had to change my beliefs about having feelings. I came to understand that feelings are a natural aspect of being human. I came to recognize we are born with the innate capacity for feelings. I learned to modulate my feelings and choose how I wanted to handle them. Claiming my feelings was one more way of not letting the abuse control my life.

Acceptance of negative aspects of myself

One of the hardest aspects of integrating/accepting the whole was accepting the parts of me that wanted to hurt others. Because I found these thoughts unacceptable they had to stay dissociated. I made a conscious decision to accept negative, hostile, and hurtful thoughts as one aspect of being human. By this time in the therapy the dangerous and violent personalities had changed. They no longer acted on thoughts and feelings. They were able to separate the past from the present.

The therapeutic task was to integrate/accept my hurtful thoughts toward others. The integration was made possible by learning non-dissociative coping for handling the thoughts. For example, I learned to self-talk my way through the feelings. I could say to myself, "It is human to have hurtful thoughts. It is understandable after all the abuse I suffered that I occasionally think of hurting others." I discovered that the hateful thoughts often were a way to avoid feeling vulnerable. When I allowed myself to feel a wide range of feelings the angry/hurtful thoughts would recede and pass.

The realization that nothing is lost

When people ask if you lose parts of yourself when you integrate, I often want to chuckle. I would have been glad to lose the angry/hurtful/hateful parts of myself. I would have liked to not have negative feelings. But integration is accepting the whole me. Even as I integrated/accepted the positive parts of me, I also accepted the negative parts of me. It's all there. Nothing is lost.

There is a kind of paradox with integration. One of the fears expressed by individuals with DID who choose not to integrate is that parts of the self will be lost, disappear, or die. The reality is that after integration the parts of the self are actually closer and more real than ever. The dissociative barrier is gone and the aspects of the self are now experienced directly.

LIFE AFTER MY FINAL INTEGRATION

Since my integration twelve years ago I have faced many challenges, including cancer, the death of my mother, loss of employment, a cross-country move, and an ongoing struggle with recurrent clinical depression. I have also handled triggers that previously would have caused me to dissociate. I have uncovered new memories of abuse. I don't believe I could have handled these memories until I was whole and had non-dissociative coping.

None of these events have caused me to go back to dissociation. This stability did not happen magically. I actively worked on problem solving and handling my feelings. I understood that if I went back to denial and avoidance it would leave me vulnerable to returning to dissociation.

Integration of dissociated aspects of self did not mean the end of therapy. My final integration was in the spring of 1990 but my therapy did not end until the December of 1994. There were still many therapeutic tasks to attend to. I needed support for the new coping. It was painful to grieve my lost childhood and the years of adulthood devoted to recovery, but it was an important component of post-integration therapy. In addition, I reprocessed some of the trauma memories from an integrated frame. This reprocessing included sorting out the mixed validity of my memories. I took time to make decisions about my future as an integrated person. It was only after I was integrated that I was able to work through the transference issues.

The Joy of a New Life

I could not have taken the trip when I had DID. I would have been too terrified to fly on the eight-passenger plane that took me to the island where the dolphin center was located. I would have been too afraid to travel to a new place alone. I would have worried about the sleeping arrangements and food at the dorm where I stayed. I couldn't have trusted that I would stay an adult for the whole trip (one week).

Instead, I was able to joke that my biggest worry was which camera to use for the pictures and whether I had enough sunscreen on. I felt free and happy inside. I viewed my dolphin vacation as a celebration of the new life I had gained through integration and recovery from trauma. One of the best parts of the vacation was coming back and spending a whole therapy session recounting my trip and watching the vacation videotape with my therapist. It was quite a contrast to years of chaotic and difficult sessions.

Dealing with a Serious Illness

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Written 2003. Reviewed: 04/2006