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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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Ups and downs of working with a specific T

Permanent Linkby Johnny-Jack on Sat Mar 23, 2013 2:07 pm

My life can't go on without outside help. Work has been such an incredible challenge the past year as I've been given a different job that requires new organizational skills that I'm still developing. I've hung in there and somehow been able to avoid enough of the sporadic (triggered) procrastinations that otherwise might have gotten me fired. But we need help from three angles. The first angle is therapy.

I've gone back to a psychiatrist I worked with in order for him to help me find another T. This is our third go with this man and it was a compromise with Jonathan that we are back at all. Being a shrink, he can prescribe a couple meds we ran out of and really need. Plus I continue to have weird internal blocks that prevent me from researching a new T on my own. I just can't do it.

About 18 years ago, when I had been on social security disability for a couple years, I requested a gay T because I assumed I was gay. But since the gay sexuality never felt nor worked right, I knew there was something about it that I needed to work through. Plus the periodic debilitating depressions. Maybe I was just uncomfortable with being gay? It never seemed that simple. I was very out of shape when I started going to this shrink but then I went through maybe my 10th life period of working out constantly and I was quite buff. I went to a session one day with this T in something like a tank top and quickly got the impression that the shrink was, well, checking me out. We were still talking about stuff but I caught him looking me over several times.

The man is gay, so I can't say this was a surprise. But inside, alarms went off. What I didn't understand was that the body had been abused as a child, so this older man looking at us, as the father and others did before abuse, was not safe, it was terrifying. It was maybe the next session I just didn't show up. Then I wrote him I couldn't continue going any more, just like that. I now think he knew why. I had been talking with him about years back meeting parts of myself, Jonathan and a child (Little John), and so the therapy was making real progress. The "checking me out" turned out to be extremely damaging for my therapy, my discovering the DID, and so my life. I stopped trusting therapists and went it alone, for years. I've only hinted to him that he did things my alters didn't like or trust. Saying anything more feels too scary.

Jonathan, who is 100% straight, does not like this T and always refused to come out and speak with him. He is the leader of the alters so we can't make progress without him. Over a year ago he insisted we transition to someone new who the others could feel comfortable with, ideally an older woman, but I still drug my feet a bit. Even though I knew he wasn't the right match for all of us, I felt comfortable with him and I still like him as a person, despite the rest. He is a moral man and I trusted him enough to allow myself to begin dissociating in front of him and becoming other parts of myself. As anyone with DID who has been in therapy knows, this requires some deep trust. We know he would not try anything with us. Little John, who had been around though not out, had remembered him as a kindly older man from decades ago and is or was a bit emotionally attached to him. Jack, who had never met him until a couple years ago, got the distinct impression the T didn't like him. Jack is straight and his accent makes him sound like a redneck. The T didn't engage with alters as themselves as well as a female T eventually would. Still Jack would have spoken with him anyway were there not new triggers from the T looking at photos of us. He smiled at one of us about age 5-6, discussed the meaning of my father's Johnny-Jack painting which is our psychforums avatar, and looked and smiled "too long" at a photo of the body around age 25 where I was looking good. Thank god the T was just gay with no pedophile tendencies. So he'll help us find a new T.

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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