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Johnny-Jack's Musings and Some Alter Stories
Hi, all! I finally figured out a few years ago that I am multiple, having suffered yet to some degree succeeded in life with dissociative identity disorder. Like many with DID, there had been areas of and moments in my life that were confusing and dysfunctional but I could never figure out why.

I had periodic depressions and my memory was often poor. But I didn't experience the hallmarks of DID like losing chunks of time. In my search for answers I spent a fortune on books, seminars, and therapists. I considered the possibility of having DID many times, but the clues I had gave me no certainty and no therapist helped me focus on the potential root cause of my problems. Blocked awareness and inaccessible memories are how DID works. A blessing in childhood, problematic later.

Several years ago, trauma memories started coming to me in images and flashbacks, and alters "woke up" and communicated with me. It was easy to admit then that I had DID. I had always felt a bit like a counterfeit. But it was impossible to fathom how the "good" parents I remembered were randomly monstrous abusers of me as a child, psychologically, physically and sexually.

I will never, ever, ever understand how a person, let alone a parent, can hurt a small, innocent, utterly defenseless child, not once but hundreds of time. It is contrary to the most basic human instinct to nurture and protect one's offspring. But it happened. Though it wasn't necessary, I sought and discovered external proof it happened. Now I work in therapy and in life to reverse the damage these warped people caused.

In 2011 I began communicating with a teen with DID and, when it looked like he would become homeless, I hired him from across the country -- knowing it would be a challenge -- as a live-in personal assistant to cook, drive and run errands. We soon began to rely on and support each other the way healthy families do, so I adopted him. Really, I adopted them, dozens of sons and daughters.

Over the years we've learned how to attach to another person, safely and in a family context. I sometimes feel rage when I think about his parents or mine. Still, both of us are prospering. Living well is the best revenge.
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Johnny-Jack
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the collapse of "inside": a move toward integration

Permanent Linkby Johnny-Jack on Tue May 01, 2012 4:45 am

"Inside" was a place in the mind we could identify where alters went when they weren't out in control of the body. Inside was also the place where the host would go when he wanted to "go away," leaving a shell of himself in the body. That is, when John would dissociate while he was somewhere he didn't really want to be, like a dentist's office. Something happened in our system in early October 2011 that in hindsight seems to be a step towards integration.

Early one evening, reversing months of shutting him out, I expressed a very spontaneous appreciation and love for Jonathan, for all that he had done for me over the years, for sacrificing his own desires in service to mine. I knew his self-denial was his design but it had been extremely difficult for him as he is a unique person with his own needs that frequently ran counter to mine. Shortly after my communication, we discovered that our inside, our safe place of retreat, had collapsed. The dissociative walls had crumbled, though not entirely. But they were now more like borders between us than high, impenetrable walls.

Jonathan somehow led the pack away from our own individual spaces. He himself stepped out of his box into the more common space, so to speak, and because he is powerful internally, the natural leader of the alters, everyone followed. All except one.

Ashar is mute and has no command of language, so he didn't understand what was going on and remained in hiding. The only way we realized he wasn't with us was that Adam came into the body panicking and crying. We couldn't understand at all at first but began to sense that he was worried about the wolfdog, his young protector. We recognized he hadn't come out near the front with the rest but remained inside, perhaps trapped. Without waiting for a decision, Jack went deep into the mind to find the remains of inside. Once he found it, he felt as if the portal to it was closing. So he reached inside grabbed Ashar by his legs, and "flung" him out into the body. With Ashar suddenly in the body, in a sort of flashback, we didn't realize immediately that the final existence of inside had now disappeared, we soon understood, forever.

We realize this sounds quite bizarre but the experience felt extremely real to us at the time. We were in terror that we might lose not just one but two alters to the collapsing inside.

I've never read of anything similar but something radical definitely happened. After the collapse was complete, there was no longer a place deep inside to escape to, for any alter. By analogy, if we used to live in a vast twenty-floor apartment building, so large we didn't know at any moment where anyone was, we were suddenly all evacuated down into the lobby, the elevator was permanently shut down, then the upper levels simply vanished.

Dx = DID. My blog. My personal Periodic Table of 78 alters.
Ab Ad Al Am An Ar As Ba Be Br Ca Cb Ch Cl Cm Cn Co Cp Ct Cu Cv D Eb Ed Er Es F Fl Ga Gd Go Gr Gw He Hk Hs Ht I J Jh Jk Jn Jy Ke Ki Kn Ky Li Lu Md Mi Mt Mx Mz Ne Ni O Pe Pi Q Ra Rd Ry Sc Se Sh Sk Sx Tk Ty U V Wa Wi X Y Ze Zn


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