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Wonders of Integration
Living Well With Dissociative Identity Disorder
Shirley J. Davis
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ISBN-13: 9781544162829
ISBN-10: 1544162820
SHIRLEY J. DAVIS
Introduction
COPYRIGHT 2017 First, I should like to thank you for purchasing my
SHIRLEY J. DAVIS work. I am very excited by the success my writing
ISBN: 13:978-1544162829 has known these past several months. I am very
humbled and honored.
Thank you.
Shirley J. Davis
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Why Dissociation?
I Am Becoming
I think everyone will agree that children at any
age, but especially very young ones, are helpless
I am becoming
and vulnerable. They are completely dependent
Not what others want me to be on their caregivers, usually parents or other family
Not what the professionals say I should be
members, to keep them safe and to fulfill their day
Someone I want to be
to day needs. As a result of this dependency,
young children must at all costs believe that those
I am becoming
upon whom they rely will help them not only to
Through the turmoil and tears
survive but to thrive. We are hardwired to believe
Through the anguish of my years
this way. For a child to understand that their
Someone unafraid of life
mother or other caregiver wants to harm them
and cannot be relied upon is akin to emotional
I am becoming
suicide. Therefore, children who are subjected to
A force to be reckoned with
severe abuse sometimes form alternate
A powerful witness to healing
personalities to carry the memories of the abusive
Someone who enjoys life
episodes so that they can continue to exist. The
core personality is thus protected from the ugly
Yes, I am becoming
reality that is the abused child’s life.
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I should like to address a common
misunderstanding. Everyone has different
aspects of themselves. A Psychiatrist, for
instance, will act differently with his
professional clients than with his parents or
his best buddies. However, people who live
with DID have taken this behavior to the
extreme. People who have formed
Dissociative Identity Disorder do not have
many “personalities”. What we experience
as the “others” is in really just different
aspects of ourselves which have become The Maze
compartmentalized. There are not other
people living in my head, they are all I’m trapped again!
aspects of me. I’ve Nowhere to hide!
Chaos within!
It has been found that adults who live with
Dissociative Identity Disorder, where there I turn my aching head
are many aspects of the same personality Here and there
disconnected from each other, have structural Only to be met by fear and dread
changes to the brain. These changes have
occurred in the hippocampal and amygdalae How do I get out?
structures which control the interpretation and Of this deep affair
storing of memories. When a child lives in a Is there a way out?
constant state of fear, their small bodies are
flooded with stress hormones. These Or is that just wishful thinking?
hormones are the bodies way of inciting the
fight or flight response in case of danger. Please, help me find
However, in the abused child’s situation, The richness of a world
these hormones aren’t allowed to subside to Outside the maze
normal levels and as a consequence the
brains of such children become altered. You
can find evidence of this research on the
Internet.
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disheartening and a major blow to a person’s
self-esteem to have such a major relapse occur.
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that such horrendous abuse can simply
never happen. Most Psychiatrists and others
trained in the Mental Health Field are only
given a few weeks of lectures about DID,
this leaves many in the dark as the validity of
the disorder and how to treat it.
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important to understand that the natural
response when one discovers they are a
multiple is to deny these other parts and the
memories they harbor, but to do so is to deny
who we are. All people are a culmination of
their memories and experiences. To deny our
pasts is to deny what made us who we are.
The Realities of Integration However, we ARE NOT our pasts, they are
just part of who we are in totality.
Let me begin this chapter with my definition of
a person who has reached integration. In my case my first task in healing was to
learn to live and respect my “other’s” wants
He/she is a person who lives in peaceful and needs. I learned, through a lot of soul-
cooperation with all of their parts. The alters searching and conversations with my alters
listen, love and respect each other’s needs that they weren’t my enemies and that I need
and wants, always striving to achieve what is not fear them. I learned that they were just
good for all. They are self-aware and co- hurting parts of me who were desperately in
conscious of one another. They know of each need of a mother-figure. At first I fought this
other’s existence, and accept one another as need. I did not want to be anyone’s mother, I
being parts of the same person. There has wanted to be mothered myself. It took time to
been a mutual-agreement as to one leader, understand that this attitude was self-
one personality, who is the “front man” who defeating. Once I began to “mother” my parts
has the final say in all decisions. I was, of course, mothering myself.
I will break this definition down and try to Becoming aware and co-conscious (aware when
explain using my experiences. someone is “out” instead of experiencing
amnesia) was the next logical step. As I have
Living in peaceful cooperation with all of one’s stated, no one wants to acknowledge that they
parts sounds easy, but believe me is an art that are a multiple. Denial, indeed, is your worst
must be learned. In the beginning the alters in a enemy. I, as the waking-self, had to accept that I
person’s system want to have autonomy, that is did indeed have a severe dissociative disorder,
they crave having control over the body. They and learn to live with this fact. At first, I felt
have their own interests, hobbies, relationships, broken, like something was horribly wrong with
belief systems, etc. creating chaos. It is me. Only later did I understand that I was totally
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normal for what I had been through. After many
years of practice, I have become accepting of the I would like to also add that integration is not an
existence of all of me, and they have come to end but rather only the beginning. The next stage
accept that they are not the ones who own the is learning to deal with life and other people
body, that we are all one person. without dissociating. When you have used this
mechanism all your life this is a daunting task
The final statement in my definition is perhaps that is never completely done. Under the right
one of the most important. We, (my alters and amount of stress or fear anyone would
I) had to come to a mutual understanding. dissociate, let alone a person living with DID.
There needed to be one leader,
one front-man who dealt with the realities of now.
I, the person writing this book, was the most
logical choice. I know and understand how the
laws and rules of society work. That does not
mean I do not defer to the expertise and
knowledge of the others. Bianca, my precocious
eighteen-year old alter has a great deal of street-
smarts and a great love of life. She knows how to
get us out of tight situations fast. Unfortunately,
she hasn’t always used legal means to do so. I
have incorporated her knowledge into my
decisions, tempering it with my understanding of
the way the law and society behaves. Together
we make quite a formidable team.
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Integration Timeline? The Tears Will One Day Cease
Perhaps the most frustrating part of recovery from Upon entering therapy
the severe trauma and chaos of Dissociative I thought the grief would never go away
Identity Disorder is the amount of time it takes in I felt I would never know happiness
therapy to recover. I’m sorry to have to say it takes I can’t describe the agony of that day
a long time and a lot of hard work to achieve
integration. When I complained to my Therapist I couldn’t see a future
that I felt things were moving too slowly and asked Where I could rise to the top
her how much longer it would take, she replied “It I feared I would start crying
will take longer than you like, but not as long as And it would never stop
you fear.” This is such a very truthful statement.
There are no definitive lists of steps one should I found instead that to shed tears
follow or programs that will help a person heal Calmed my torn insides
faster, it simply will take as long as it takes. While I had a deepening sense of inner tranquility
everyone is different, it took me twenty-seven And true healing began besides
years to accomplish the integration of my parts
where we are cooperative and no longer living in My message to anyone
chaos. There is no way to go around, under, or Who is facing a lack of inner peace
over the issues that caused the condition in the Weeping is a wonderful gift
first place. And the tears will one day cease
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thought our way was the best. In therapy, I
learned that we needed one alter to lead the
others, that we needed a Maestro. So, I took
up the baton and began to teach the others
how to work together. It wasn’t easy, as one
might imagine. There were many trials and
errors before we were able to achieve
What Integration Looks Like to Me harmony and many more before our music
began to blend and make sense.
I’m going to use imagery to explain how my
system functions together. This image was I’m in no way implying that we now work
proposed by my Therapist Dr. Paula McNitt PhD. together 100% of the time. In fact, there are
many times a day when we lose our harmony
Image an orchestra. There are many people with and have to regroup. However, the chaos we
differing instruments, levels of talent and each once experienced has lessened greatly
wanting their ego to be stroked. As a result, they because there is one leader, one personality
play their own version of the music at hand which that has the power to say yes or no to any
of course sounds chaotic and unharmonious. It is decision or thought. That personality is me.
just a bunch of noise. Now, picture this same
group of musicians being led by a great Maestro.
The Maestro gets up before the group and
teaches them how to work together, how to
harmonize the notes and play the same tune. The
Maestro reassures the entire group that all of
them are very talented, but alone their music
cannot be heard. She tells them they need one
another and if they will but follow her lead a
miracle will result. There are many trials and
errors, but after much practice the orchestra
begins to play together and the beautiful music of
Mozart and Beethoven is performed.
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again, only that I prefer to face all of life
head-on, good and bad.
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Books I Would Recommend
The Courage to Heal
Ellen Bass, Laura Davis
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