What does Integration mean to you?

From my understanding - What is meant today by integration is not killing off or combining any parts that do not feel weak enough to go it on their own. Those parts choose to combine. Something like marriage. A couple that works well together is stronger than being alone.

The goal is to get all parts to cooperate and work together like a NORMAL brain. A normal brain is not one. It makes no sense to try and combine all alters into one.

It's simply impossible.

Does this make sense?

I keep reading how adamant many of you are about integrating or not integrating.

I'm pro-integration for much of my own system, and I think many others are leaning that way to some extent, but we're all worried about the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, me. Okay, that was not to suggest I'm that big, just if we add up the world experience in this life, I have over 90% of the time out. So if everyone were to integrate with me, I might end up dominating things by virtue of my experience and breadth. I mean, who knows what would happen? A lot of me is quite broken and none of us, especially me, wants to chance perpetuating that without guarantees my altership won't overwhelm the others. If I end up being 1/12th, okay. If it's more like 90%, no way. There just isn't enough mass data on how people integrate, what they end up being like. And even if we did, who could predict what would happen with any particular system? We have no idea what the final person would be like.

So our current goal is to process the traumas that led to each of us and damaged us by using EMDR. We're probably starting with the sexual stuff so we can perhaps get our sexuality in synch with the body's. Twins Hansel and Johann want to be in line for EMDR, but they have no idea what it is or really means, they just want some attention and they know that would bring it.

Jack and I have blended for several minutes a couple times and Jonathan and I woke up blended one morning for quite a while and couldn't figure out how the heck to proceed. But blending isn't integration. We were both totally together, but we still expressed thoughts that were characteristic of one or the other, we just heard and felt them completely. It was frankly a little disturbing and rather creepy, like suddenly finding yourself taking a bath with someone you weren't expecting to or being bound together face-to-face and being unable to extract yourself. Okay, that's just my experience.

Integration definitely means all of us being represented and present in whatever group of alters integrate, including if everyone were to integrate. Most of us seem to understand why the others are the way they are even if they don't like them. So there's a respectful awareness of the traumas that made us who we are and a deliberate attempt to avoid judgmental attitudes, like someone straight referring to another as a #######1. All animosity is lacking as far as I can tell. But that doesn't mean everyone is ready to join together or even wants to participate with the others. Certainly not yet.

My girlfriend has DID, and she has gone through moments of being "integrated" with her two personalities. It's most likely different for everyone, but for her it was not being restricted. One of her alters was very stuck in development, whereas the other was extremely open and developed freely. As a combination, it was a slightly-wary, still trusting, developmental alter. They both have memories of this, and some of the feelings and trust I have garnered during these periods have manifested themselves in the developmentally stuck alter, and remain there today. (More intense infatuation and trust, as well as she's broken through words she wasn't able to previously use, e.g. "love").

So integration to me, and to her, means that. Loving and trusting, moving forward at all times, and being able to see the world as a singleton such as myself at her age can.

In the context of DID there are at least two important concepts of the word integration: a narrow meaning equivalent to fusion and a broad meaning equivalent to cooperation. I generally use the broad meaning.

John (Johnny-Jack) wrote:we're all worried about the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, me. Okay, that was not to suggest I'm that big, just if we add up the world experience in this life, I have over 90% of the time out. So if everyone were to integrate with me, I might end up dominating things by virtue of my experience and breadth. I mean, who knows what would happen?

John, I am out 99% of the time yet my worry was the opposite: I worried that I would be engulfed by my Alter 1 if (when) we integrated. Teen Girl was a small fragment yet being integrated with her has in some ways been a life changing experience. Alter 1 was so much larger; far larger than Teen Girl, even larger than me. Well, Alter 1 and I integrated (meaning fused) about a month ago and I am the same yet somehow so very different. And it is wonderful. All of me is still here but I feel so much larger. I feel so much more.

Without question, my former self was a "depleted" Apparently Normal Personality and Alter 1 was an Emotional Personality. Formerly I often experienced made emotions in my head, coming from this part of me that was not-me but an other, an other I hardly knew. Now these same emotions are my own emotions and they can manifest in any part of my body, not just in my head. These new emotions are mixed with and in some cases in conflict with my own emotions from before the integration, and I am holding all of them and slowly sorting through them. The conflicts are exactly the same as before, but then they were conflicts between alters and I could address them only on a cognitive level. Now they are conflicts within myself, and I feel that I may begin to get at their emotional roots.

From all this, my advice would be to work on the stuff that bothers you. When enough work has been done, spontaneous integration may occur. And if that happens, it will feel, it will be, right and proper for you. So there is no need to worry.

John (Johnny-Jack) wrote:Jack and I have blended for several minutes a couple times and Jonathan and I woke up blended one morning for quite a while and couldn't figure out how the heck to proceed. But blending isn't integration. We were both totally together, but we still expressed thoughts that were characteristic of one or the other, we just heard and felt them completely. It was frankly a little disturbing and rather creepy, like suddenly finding yourself taking a bath with someone you weren't expecting to or being bound together face-to-face and being unable to extract yourself. Okay, that's just my experience.

Mine too. Generally I found blending to be creepy and mortifying, very mortifying. It feels as if another person is fully present and somehow merged with me, yet remains an other, and for me it happened most often during sex. If not during sex, then usually when I am talking about sex or about Alter 1's other man (the feeling there is highly erotic but not especially sexual). One time my therapist tried to bring out Alter 1 by asking "Who loves [his name]?" I was abruptly blended and I said in a strange voice "I do. I love him." But at that moment I couldn't say who "I" was and I was mortified because I did not feel that I loved him. I hardly know the man and I would only admit to being in love with him.

Now that I am integrated with Alter 1, I know and accept that in fact I do love this man, however little I may know him. It is totally irrational but it is what it is. It is also very painful, because the man does not know any of this about me and has made it clear that he does not want to know. It is so painful because his avoidance feels just like my parents' avoidance. They do not want to know the real me. They actively reject the real me, who has emotions. Emotions are too scary. I used to play along and reject so much of myself too but not anymore, never again.

Una+ wrote:In the context of DID there are at least two important concepts of the word integration: a narrow meaning equivalent to fusion and a broad meaning equivalent to cooperation. I generally use the broad meaning.

I am so glad. I was getting worried about you.

Haha, I guess I'll start by saying I'm very much so pro-choice, but anti-integration for my own system, though I think a lot of you already know that.

I recently actually integrated with my sisters, ICE and Katelynn. As both were fragments, I don't actually think I was affected much. Really, all it means is that they're gone. I can't access them at all. Saying their names or trying to talk to them doesn't even hint that they were once here. The only sign that they've merged with me is that I now have ICE's sense of directional memorization. Sadly, Katelyn's sense of staying quiet was overruled by my own need to talk. I still have no better judgement than before on when to shut up.

Maybe it's different with more powerful alters. Admitedly, there's no great sense of loss, either. But I feel no more full than before, just slightly sad that I'm no longer a twin.

Now blending... blending is creepy as crap. It's awful. Yeah lose your identity and sense of self near completely. It's awful.

Una+ wrote:In the context of DID there are at least two important concepts of the word integration: a narrow meaning equivalent to fusion and a broad meaning equivalent to cooperation. I generally use the broad meaning.

I don't understand this. There are many DID systems who are out there where all of the alters cooperate wonderfully. There might be small internal spats, but generally, it's like a family. Everyone gets along and loves each other. Yet they all remain seperate. You know who's thinking what thought, you still have a seperate sense of identity than the others, you still have your own opinions, you might still even have different accents and strengths and talents from them. So they're not integrated at all. But they cooperate.
~Rage

I think it would be good for me. My T said the goal is to integrate the brain that is stuck in the trauma into my brain, and I guess somehow that helps it make more sense to me. When she explained dissociation and integration to me and drawing stuff on the markerboard, I felt like I was in science class, and somehow it made me think of it more like a really cool science project, with my own brain!

There are so many emotions that feel so wonderful...I wonder what it would be like to experience them more often. Genuine happy is so different from the fake happy I show sometimes...I didn't know I was faking it till I experienced the real one in the child like state. The brain is beautiful...I have a chance at experiencing it at it's full potential. I'm gonna take it.

dividedtruth89 wrote:I think it would be good for me. My T said the goal is to integrate the brain that is stuck in the trauma into my brain, and I guess somehow that helps it make more sense to me. When she explained dissociation and integration to me and drawing stuff on the markerboard, I felt like I was in science class, and somehow it made me think of it more like a really cool science project, with my own brain!

There are so many emotions that feel so wonderful...I wonder what it would be like to experience them more often. Genuine happy is so different from the fake happy I show sometimes...I didn't know I was faking it till I experienced the real one in the child like state. The brain is beautiful...I have a chance at experiencing it at it's full potential. I'm gonna take it.

Yes, your T sounds like a good one! You need to process the trauma memories and store them as memory so you can quit replaying them in your subconscious. That's how I think of my DID too... a very cool science project! I have read that once we get all parts of our brain working together we will know what it feels like to feel real joy, love, etc...

You my dear have the right idea!

don't understand this. There are many DID systems who are out there where all of the alters cooperate wonderfully. There might be small internal spats, but generally, it's like a family. Everyone gets along and loves each other. Yet they all remain separate. You know who's thinking what thought, you still have a separate sense of identity than the others, you still have your own opinions, you might still even have different accents and strengths and talents from them. So they're not integrated at all. But they cooperate.
~Rage

WOW GREAT post Rage! we are in 100% full agreement. Probably because most of the time, we are one of those systems where everyone co-operates. We are all completely separate and loving it. We know who we are, we know what our goals and dreams are, we know who does what for which situation etc, and all round, its only getting better with time.

We have almost integrated before, dunno if our definition of 'blending' is the same as everyone else's it appears not, but yeah, we've done that too. (both definitions). My closest alter and the copy of me got so close we became 'one'. There was absolutely NO distinction between her and i. I was her and she was me. It was calm but quiet. Then her protector stopped the process and we kinda re-split. If that makes sense. Looking back, we don't like it. Its not who we are. Its not natural for us and it scares us. For us, integration means joining everyone into the 'core' and them disappearing. People say its like joining tiny droplets of water into a small puddle, they're still there, but they just meld into 1. That's all great for those people who are pro-integration. And we don't knock them for their choices- quite the opposite, we are actually amazed and congratulate them on their hard work etc. But for us. That form of integration is just NEVER going to happen.

Team work, to us, isn't integration. Its just that- Team work!

would say more but we've gotta go to T now.

I am so confused to everyone's thinking on this.

Weeble... I understand you and Rage like things how they are and are very happy with that! I thinking that is great!!!!


So that is all great for both of you and if I were younger I might join you in that.

For me.... I sometimes think, why not go just drop all this and continue as I am. My kids are almost raised. I started all this because I finally realized now after my 5 kids are almost raised that how I am was affecting them... my issue .. my DID that I did not even know I had. Luckily they have a great Father and turned out fantastic, but it was NOT my doing!

weeble wrote:integration means joining everyone into the 'core' and them disappearing. People say its like joining tiny droplets of water into a small puddle, they're still there, but they just meld into 1. That's all great for those people who are pro-integration.

That is the way people use to think of healing before they knew how the brain worked. Now they know every normal brain has many parts. You do not turn into one puddle! I would be afraid if that is how I thought it worked too.

However I have no experience in this. Its just what I have read in books like E. Howells 2011 book. You sound like you experienced something.