Intergration

I had help from a professional who has always been first my friend. She gave me the gift of the silence in my head. For a long time I had no order to my memories. I remembered things in different ways with differing levels of attachment and my memories constantly changed.

She had me do a timeline for some kind of new therapy she learned of that worked with trauma victims to stop their panic attacks and helped them to function.

I moved around a lot and used where I was living and the age of my children as markers to measure by. What memories I could access would change constantly. It was strange trying to attach new ones to a time line full of things that wouldn't be part of my knowledge base at that time.

One day I would remember a time of my life as being wonderful and stable and the next what appeared to cover that same period would be one of fear and darkness. Like two separate decks of cards no amount of shuffling would make the two mesh.

The holes in my life line were glaring. I swear I was NEVER 6. There were several black curtains of time where with work I eventually remembered the things that shut me down, but I never remembered the time just after.

Bit by bit I took the rudimentary timeline that I made for her and began to reconstruct things. Day after day as I would read it over and over, new memories would come up and I would attach them as well.

Putting it together on the computer made everything so much easier. When I remembered anything I just attached it where it belonged without having to reconstruct the order of everything already there. In the act of doing so I would read it over and over till it became the story of my life.

This was my experience with integration. It took months of reconstruction before that timeline came close to representing my history but as it did something was happening to my brain. It was re-ordering itself. This not only brought the first experience I had of silence but vastly improved my brain function.

For a while every time stress was applied I seemed to go into a switching frenzy. What I realized was parts of myself that were in conflict and not acceptable would separate back out. I hadn't done the ground work necessary to make total healing possible.

I did brain work where I dressed and mothered the little's and told them I would always protect them. I also found ways to work out the extreme hatred I had for what I had considered my weakest parts. The suicidal me learned gratitude and became easier to integrate with the rest.

The sexual part admitted that she wasn't getting her needs met her way either and got a grip on some self control. The religious me found that over all I did have a love of God even if our belief system was different and she was able to integrate as well.

I did go through a period of brief grieving feeling like I had lost a family of sorts when I first experienced the silence. Then I began to recognize that all the parts of me that were there were still available.

The writer, the artist and crafts-person, the mother, and even the caregiver parts are working at a more optimal level of functioning. I have fewer bouts of depression lost the extremes of mood that left people labeling me manic depressive. We are all here, just in more co-operative ... Homogenized form. For perhaps the first time in my whole life, I am pretty happy being me.

@ oaktree...hi, this is Alysone. I'm glad you're excited about integration. I also feel It's the way to heal for me. I have integrated 25 of my 27 alters. I now have their talents. I have their memories, but they don't trigger me like they used to. I would just caution not to rush into it. If you integrate one at a time, both if you have to be ready for it and both of you have to want to integrate. Otherwise it could backfire. I still have two alters and we are working on getting to know each other, and work on memories and core issues. We know we are not ready to integrate yet, but that we will be someday. I wish you luck in your journey. Let me know if you want to know more about integration, and I'll try to help.

@windancerdesign Thank you for sharing! This actually made me start writing a biography of myself, which I've wanted to do for a long time (but never actually started doing it).
I don't even know whether I was 6... I have no memory of that time
Seriously, I have only fragments (memories) from that time. But it isn't continuous at all.

@alysone I'm not even thinking of starting it! I'm still figuring out who's there, trying to communicate, getting to know them etc. I hardly know them. I hardly know how much there are (except there seem to be a lot... 10+ wouldn't surprise me). Anyway, thank you for offering help, but I'm not there yet.

Maybe I now want to integrate because I hardly know them. Maybe I wouldn't want that if I got to know them better.