My upcoming memoir, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor’s Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder, emphasizes the healing process and the nature of resilience. These installments from Chapter One contain some descriptions of violence only for the purposes of illustrating why and how dissociative identity disorder is formed. Please take care in reading these [...]
We all know and many of us are close to people who have survived child sexual abuse or rape. Chances are, many of you reading this are survivors yourself. We often encourage survivors to speak about their experiences, to get it out. It’s cathartic, it helps us to move through the pain, it helps [...]
The more I think about it, the more I marvel at the skill of the psychiatrist who helped me heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder. As I look back on our work together, I can spot a number of creative strategies that he used. Let’s call him Dr. Summer. I don’t know whether Dr. Summer [...]
In order for me to learn how to stop dissociating, I first had to figure out when I was doing it. I had to recognize how it felt and learn to see the difference in how I felt when I wasn’t dissociating. My psychiatrist gently guided me through this process. He often stopped me [...]
When I first found out I had Dissociative Identity Disorder I was devastated. I was afraid of people finding out, thought perhaps I would lose my job. I was afraid my husband would leave me. I thought the diagnosis meant I was truly 'crazy'. I suddenly wanted my old life back—the one I had [...]
After years of healing the abuse I suffered as a child and adolescent, I still found that I was emotionally unavailable at times. I've worked very hard at letting myself go and letting people in. I've worked on this in my relationship with my partner and in my friendships. I notice when I'm distant [...]
One of the things that made my healing so successful was working with a psychiatrist that understood that reaching in could be harmful. He knew that reaching into my mind to pull out the details of a particular attack from my memory could feel like a re-victimization. He knew that reaching in would erode [...]
The Sum of My Parts is a memoir I have been writing since last February. It's about how I developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, discovered I had it and then details the healing process. In the book I go into more detail than I have in any of the trainings or presentations I have [...]
In responding to survivors of sexual and domestic violence in communities of color and immigrant communities a different approach from our traditional models is needed. Survivors for the most part don't call the police, don't want protection orders and don't want to go to shelters. If they do decide to go to shelter they [...]
