Traumatized Insiders Resenting Trauma-Free Insiders?

In another thread, Johnny-Jack so eloquently stated:

Many alters exist so that trauma memories are dissociated, separated from other alters. It is grotesquely unfair of relatively trauma-free alters to blame more traumatized alters for their pain and the resulting damage in them. Some parts suffer so that others don't have to. Respect them, thank them for what they sacrificed for you.

Does anyone have the reverse scenario in their system? Where those who were traumatized resent those who are trauma-free, because of the "unfairness" of only some people holding it?

For quite some time, this has been a big sticking point in our healing. We keep repeating the sentence, "Life is not fair." Yet, in a way, the emotions behind this statement of "unfairness" are real and valid--and an aspect of the trauma itself.

Each of us has a right to our feelings. But it's the digging in of heels, the use of these feelings as an excuse for not wanting to move forward until the "unfairness" is corrected....this is the problem for us.

Hoping people can share their thoughts and experiences.

Mary and Allegra

we don't know all our traumatized parts yet.
some of us take great pride that they were able to take on pain nobody else was capable to endure.
starting with radical acceptance. it is what it is. and it cannot be changed. maybe it is unfair, most surely it is unfair, but that cannot be changed. we can only change our present for the future, never the past.
D owns the trauma like a queen. she suffers like an animal at times because of it, but she prides herself in being able to do so.
I wonder if it has something to do with the shiploads of honor we pile on the traumatized ones, for all they took for us.
so with those of us we know at this moment, no, there is no clear resenting going on. sometimes there is an inpatient reminder to slow down. that is all.

Hi Mary and Allegra,

We've encountered more issues with this dynamic than the first you mentioned, our therapist encouraged us to listen to what happened when anyone responded with "Well, life's not fair" as well as thinking about our own feelings when that has been said to us. While it's true it usually feels invalidating, and the original resentments are often more about being listened to than having the situation somehow fixed anyway.

After a lot of work with our therapist we try to share inside to help each other look at it like this: No matter how many are inside and what their inner experiences have been, there is only one body and it's the original source of all of our experiences, perceptions, and the basis for everything else inside. Often really taking in that point alone is a bit of an eye opener for some of us in this particular body. Ok, maybe more than some....

In a more concrete way, if the left elbow is injured the effects are not limited to that precise spot, and the body's systems react and respond, even if it's a mild scratch or bruise the systems do things to manage, healing goes through the system, cells to be replaced are filtered out and eliminated and the body may even need to adapt movement to protect the site from being bumped and receiving more pain or injury or to favour the arm while it heals or if the injury is bad enough, to maintain balance to prevent further injuries occurring to the body. If there's infection, the whole body takes it on, or suffers if things are bad enough.

No part is in isolation. The other limbs and parts may be fine but the whole body attends to the situation. So in a way if the skin is broken the whole body bleeds -it's not just the elbow's blood, the whole body feels it, and the whole body makes adjustments and the whole body heals it. The whole body is involved in recovery, it rehabilitates, and the whole body wears any scar or thickening of re-knitted bone or adapts to changes if that's what's required.

The right big toe might have nothing to do with the injury to that site on the arm, but if the body needs to move a certain way to accommodate and protect that injury, that toe might then be doing things differently. Both areas are vulnerable to pain and injury, both parts are useful for the body. Both areas are helped by nourishment and rest, both are harmed by the lack of these.

The resentments are totally understandable and valid, they're not the only feelings possible in these situations and seeing and acknowledging them as part of a process of grief for each situation (whether trauma or the effects of acting out) instead of something -say- just to not have or to get over in a certain time is something we're gradually getting better at doing, with better results.

Like in life, a person's experience is their experience, being told your own is nothing compared to somebody else's is inaccurate and worse than unhelpful. Many suffer massive guilt for having "had it easy". The traumas somebody has faced are not their fault; the lack of harm shouldn't be used against somebody either.

We try to keep the message going about the reasons for dissociation in the first place; to keep the traumas contained and get the whole person through, through the moment, the incident, the situation, the time until they MIGHT one day be in the clear and somewhere safe. Some dealt with what others couldn't, they got everybody through. They took the otherwise unbearable.

AND the ones who took anything less or were unharmed helped when the "normality" was needed, as cover or coping, or for later to teach others how things can be outside of "the worst of it" when the time comes. They're important for healing, for helping others with what some better place than "the worst of it" might be like, what relative safety is and what good things there can be in the place that mind and body have been suffering through hell hoping to find.

The unharmed ones hold the beginnings of the peace that the hurt ones did all the fighting for. Everybody is important. Everybody.

Not saying it's easy to get that message across, but it’s helped us. And this: If somebody digs their heels in maybe someone else is doing a lot of pulling or pushing the other way. Dropping the rope and doing some horse whispering could save you a lot of backache, tears, and blisters.

We wish you all well and hope you find something that helps.

By the way, we've been lurking a long time too nervous to post or comment but really wanting to be a part of the community here; it was this post of yours that had us break cover and that means a lot to us. So thank you.

May as well be "Maverick", SOMEBODY had to go first.

A bit (chunk) about us and where we're coming from- Don't know what of our details to put and want to stay pretty vague and approximate in some areas, but if it helps: Host/physically- Male 40-something, currently a few years into treatment for DID and a box of its comorbid treats. Health and mental health issues have always been present, but nothing much got past the family's barriers of self-preservation. There's a central group of us who take turns to front and try and help others to communicate or to share activities. Things can get pretty random but there's some layers of reasonable stability that we can rely on. Lots of kids, mix of ages, genders, orientations, skills, intellects, accents and other things, counter-adaptation, smudging, blending -there was a lot of traveling and different "job" types and.... there was a lot going on, and a scaffolding of "credibility traps" to keep things cosy.

The DID box is deep and dark and ugly and stayed almost completely out of sight to the host for over 40 years with help of a distractingly miserable but presentable facade propped up by the family, often to each other. The first traumas are the same age as the body and profound, but from things that were common at the time and not only acceptable and considered inconsequential but also something a child was meant to be eternally grateful for.

The body was already genetically primed by the geographical histories of the family of origin, along with a short (possibly manditory) stint in the dysfunctional environment that led to the separation (there's a memory of being in a dog pen in the rain curled up against drenched dogs, each one cold and trembling and silent), and eventual selection by a new family. Then things just got worse, the dissocations and other tendencies were utilized, and there was no escape for forty years.

There's a lot of us in here, approaching 200 and counting, and things are ever-adapting, deceptive and frustratingly complicated. Our life is incredibly limited, but improving. We have some community support, deeply caring neighbors, a close trusted friend as our live-in carer, and the unconditional love and support of our wife. Our neighbors, our friend and our wife have on a few occasions literally -physically- saved our life. We've learned it's worth fighting for, so we keep trying. Hopefully we've got something of use to somebody else and can find somewhere to feel a little more involved in the world and maybe find some people to talk to.

Hi Mary and Allegra

M***'s System shows several aspects of this.

1.) The abused Alters despise - stronger than resent - the Host for letting these things happen. Besides that being unfair, the Host wasn't the Host when the abuse happened. So, there's this rage and resentment being misdirected towards the closest innocent bystander.
2.) The abused Alters feel that because they suffered they have more right to indulge themselves now. "It happened to me. Nobody will ever understand what I went through for them so no one can tell me what I should be feeling or doing about it now."
3.) I've earned the right to be resentful and abusive in turn.

These themes come up in conversation regularly.

Interestingly enough - and not to your original point - these Alters are very quick to throw another Alter under the bus. Getting sick? Let Kiska Front, she does sick well. In fact, Kiska is a trooper when she's ill and I will gladly look after her, but it's obvious that the resentful ones are scared of feeling that fear again, so they're willing to sacrifice another Alter in the hierarchy not to have to be afraid again.

And perhaps they're ashamed that they ran away in the first place?

They can't really redress the "fairness" of their abuse can they? And that must be so frustrating. Is there a particular age-group or personality type that does this? I know with M*** that it's her Teens that feel this particularly strongly.

Thank you kindly... Brett

Yes yes and yes.

This is where a marriage and family therapist is an especially good resource. Exactly the same interpersonal dynamics play out among members of dysfunctional families. All the same judging and blameshifting, grudging, sabotaging, projecting, negative feelings, ad nauseum.

For us, it's the obligation of the untraumatized alters to set things right, not those who suffered the abuse. If an alter was treated and responds by holding on to pain and rage, remains triggerable and stuck, isolates, resents everyone else or treats others badly, it is not up to them to change. Those of us who were the most damaged have the least capacity, generally, to see things clearly. The untraumatized among us were able to develop perspective and attach to any degree possible with normalness in others. Besides, the traumatized have already given more their fair share.

There is another inescapable fact, the avoidance of which might keep a system stuck forever. We are a system, a group of alters and parts, but we are ultimately a single human being, one person. To remain committed, at all costs, to alter individuality, our own purity or cleanliness or superiority or even just our separation compared to other parts of our own self, condemns us to a lifetime of brokenness and lets the abusers win. The abusers were incredibly cruel to parts of us and as long as we parts remain at odds with one another, what the abusers created remains.

I'm not talking about integration. It's more an acknowledgement that whatever happened to anyone in my system happened to me. That's not only the right perspective, it's the absolute truth. The illusion that awful things didn't happen to those non-abused parts saved our young mind. But it began to look like insanity as some of us refused to acknowledge the reality of what happened as part of our own life events.

I realize this may be hard for many alters, especially hosts who must function in the world, to accept, absorb, deal with. And it takes time. I can understand that really well because I lived it for decades. But I want to live in the world fully and if the cost of doing that is owning the ugliness and illusions of our past, I will now pay it gladly. Is there really any other choice in the long run?

This thread has been on my mind

I don't think I understand what untraumatized alters are. Well I guess when I write that out I think of Corey who is more or less depersonalized and is the doer. But the rest. seems everyone has a trauma. Is it because we have had several traumas as an adult?

Or maybe because we aren't real DID - more or less DIDNOS, or DIDMA which I think it should be called (DID minus/minimal amnesia). Recently we feel our construct is this: An empty host that commits to being no one, or nothing and thus if you don't exits you can't be abandoned, abused, invalidated etc. Alters step in and take up the void, most often, and lately less often. When something happens the "event and associated feelings" are put into the bucket of the appropriate alter. and thus the host space remains a void. Alters can be retraumatized while being in host space with something bad happens.

So I guess who are your untraumatized alters and where/when/why did they arise? Is that a dumb question?

@Johnny-Jack: there is no other choice. Those Alters that can, must help those Alters that can't heal. It is an inescapable fact that a System as a whole must heal. I understand how painful and difficult it is. I see daily how traumatized Alters are stuck in their own suffering, how they thrash around in it, but how it doesn't help to remain in that state.

@SamsLand: it's not a dumb question at all. Doesn't the very fact that an Alter personality manifested to protect against emotional trauma mean that it is a traumatized Alter? One has to look at each Alter very carefully. M*** has Trixie who appears completely oblivious to any trauma memories or maladaptive behavior. But she doesn't play a big role in the System and couldn't consciously assist anyone. However, letting her joyously play seems healthy. As far as we can tell Angel Eyes is an Alter specifically manifested to contain happy memories. Erin was created through trauma, but a Protector Introject. She understands trauma but she was built to deal with it. Miss Dragon was also created through trauma but she has been Present regularly for a number of years and has processed her trauma well enough - and received a lot of the therapy - that we can be friends and we do what we can for the System.

Perhaps to answer your question is how you define traumatized. I think an element to that definition is how the Alter personality behaves in the present. A traumatic event may have manifested an Alter, and they may carry the memory of that event, but they have processed the effects thereof, and they no longer exhibit any maladaptive behavior. They have effectively healed. They may carry scars but they are not injured in the moment. The Alter is not currently traumatized.

Unfortunately, as you rightly say: the possibility exists that Alters can be re-traumatized as adults when they Front. However, this is less likely to occur if the System co-operates to keep itself safe, or if healthier Alters are there to assist in times of need. A modified, more effective response can be introduced which is not traumatic to the Alter.

I see multiple states of healing: conscious healing when the Alter Presents in a therapeutic environment and gets specific instruction on how to deal with their trauma; and unconscious healing which occurs in the emotional background of the System when the Alter is not Fronting; individuated healing which occurs for a specific Alter personality; and System healing which occurs as a result of healthier behavior from multiple Alters.

Thank you kindly... Brett

this thread has stirred me deeply. particularly what johnny-jack had to share. reading his posts are a double edged sword for me. i usually get pretty stirred up but sometimes it leads to really important breakthroughs.

yes. we have conflict about this. i don't know that any of us can be defined as trauma free but there are definitely degrees within. we experience a lot of animosity and threats from the most damaged part of ourselves. there is a sense of smugness, antagonism, even.....hate. the sharing of memory isn't seen as a cooperative healing thing but this all powerful threat. the nuclear option. and its held over our heads. we will be threatened with shared memory, and then told we couldn't handle it.

I know that we are stuck here. thanks for this thread. i am sure I will read it several times until the message of healing from johnny-jack and Brett sink in.

a while ago our system agreed on core values. those core values are the reason for most of our relational successes.
they include a deep understanding that "I am important, so are you".
they also motivate us to share honestly and in a vulnerable way how we are doing and what we need, and to listen to each other.
they also erase "blame" as a tool in relationship or communication.
I think it was this step that solved a lot of problems for us.
as long as blame is an option there is no need to be responsible for your own needs and feelings. it means that you can hand over the resposnibility to the one you blame. now it is their job to fix things.
erasing blame means that one has to deal with themselves. it means looking at the feelings instead of pushing them somewhere else. it means looking at the needs. and the brave act of sharing them in a vulnerable way, so that others get a chance to meet that need.
as long as all this is a war about who gets to control whom, threatening to release memory and pain, blaming others for the past, the real needs in the present will not be met. this is a very successful way to avoid the own experience. start a war and keep it going, it distracts from other pain. and because you have decided that the other one is the enemy and the bad guy you can even feel good about yourself now, cause you must be the good guy, right?
war is not the solution.
blame is a weapon of war.
if someone was brave enough to lay down the weapons and be vulnerable with their feelings and needs instead, it might start an era of peace
my humble opinion