Help for people with D.I.D. - Part 2

Help for People with

Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)

Also Known as Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.)

Healing and Wholeness for Alters

(Alters are Also Known as Insiders)

Part 2

Start at Part 1

Alters eventually need to realize that they are alters, and with some alters, the sooner they are told, the happier they will be but, as will become clearer later, one must be very prayerful about how and when to tell them.

The following is what I tell older alters, to help them understand who they are (simpler language is needed for young alters). I place it here because it might further clarify your understanding of alters. It is important to read the rest of this series of webpages, however, to understand the risks involved in revealing this information to alters too soon.

Through no fault of your own you suffered something very traumatic. It is probably your first memory. This was so upsetting that it caused a temporary form of amnesia. With this type of memory loss you don’t forget all of the past, only part of it. In fact, you recall some of the past so vividly that it seems to be much more recent than it actually is. It’s rather like being Rip Van Winkle, who slept for years and when he woke up what seemed like yesterday was actually many years ago and the world had moved on without him being aware of it. It might be, for instance, that today’s date is much later than you suppose. What year do you think this is? I can show you a calendar or newspaper to prove to you the correct date if you wish. You probably also lost memory of your life before the trauma. Even if you have a good memory up until the present, there are probably many years of childhood memories that you are currently cut off from.

You are presently conscious of an important, irreplaceable part of you, but there is more to you than you are presently aware of. You have memories that you cannot currently access because the trauma you suffered caused you to become disconnected from the rest of yourself. You disconnected in a courageous attempt to protect the rest of you from dealing with the upsetting experience you suffered, but since that event the rest of you has gained information and skills that will comfort you and allow you to heal. Though you have fractured, this brokenness can be restored. Other parts of you can tell you things about you that you currently don’t know. Better still, those memories and skills you have temporarily lost will become your very own when you reconnect with the rest of you. Other parts of you might seem like other people but they share your body.

This disconnectedness has previously caused isolated parts of you to have little awareness of you, or little understanding of who you are. This lack of understanding could have caused them to treat you with less love and respect than you deserve. If so, this is most unfortunate, and they probably already regret their mistake and as they get to know you they will certainly regret any hurt they have caused.

It is harder to put this in terms that a little child would understand but if you wish to read an attempt, see Explaining to a child alter who he/she is.

The Horror of Being a Child Alter

It is hard to conceive of a more tortured existence than that of an alter living in an adult body and yet trapped in the years of childhood. When treated kindly and wisely, alters can find total relief, but unless they receive the attention and comfort they deserve, their pain will never end this side of the grave. Moreover, unless people with alters learn how to avoid making things worse, they will almost inevitably create still more sources of suffering for their already severely traumatized alters.

No matter how much people might despise the fact that they have alters, they must face the obvious reality that no one can have peace while a part of him/her is reeling in pain. To live in denial, and ignore the needs of one’s alters will only perpetuate, and quite possibly intensify, one’s anguish. We’ll look at how to give alters the help and comfort they need.

For insight into how much child alters typically suffer, try vividly imagining being in the following endless nightmare.

You are three years old and have not only suffered deeply damaging trauma, you are endlessly reliving it. As if this were not enough torment, you are trapped in an adult body, which results in the perpetual horror of you being as real as anyone else and yet treated as nothing. You are despised by all of the few people in the world who are vaguely aware of you, and you are sure their reaction proves you are a hideous freak.

You cannot let a single person see you play or giggle or cry. Anyone – you know of no exceptions – catching a glimpse of you acting your age will ignorantly but sincerely conclude that you are literally insane, or at the very least, abnormal. Even children think it weird to see an adult acting like a child, and children are usually quick to speak their mind. So you dare not talk to anyone or even let them chance upon seeing you act in any way that for you is natural.

You feel forced to all sorts of extremes to hide from everyone, and yet you have the desperate human need to end psychologically damaging isolation. Moreover, how can you avoid making your embarrassing presence felt? You might not even be potty trained. Imagine, if you dare, the implications of someone in an adult body having that problem.

You might not have grasped that when people see you, they see the body of an adult. (The common blindness of alters to the true nature of the body they live in is only slightly more extreme than that of a dangerously thin anorexic seeing herself as fat.) If you believe you have a child’s body when you don’t, you won’t understand people’s disgust at you acting as a child and so you will take their reaction even more personally. And if you live in the body of a menstruating woman, you will be disturbed that someone very close to you bleeds. No one has ever explained to you that this is not a life-threatening illness. If you have grasped that it is your body that is bleeding, you could be even more distressed. And having the body of a sexually mature woman might subject you to more sexual advances that terrify you.

It might be that the one person hardest to be utterly invisible to – the host person in whose adult body you live, the one who best understands you and should be your greatest ally – finds you such an embarrassment that he or she hates you and, it seems, would literally kill you, given half the chance.

You have not only a normal child’s craving for hugs and touch but your trauma accentuates this need. Nevertheless, you either find yourself in the body of a person who doesn’t get nearly the degree of touch that you as a distressed child need, or you are sentenced to live in the body of a married person who receives touch that is traumatically inappropriate for a child. More alarming still, sexual abuse is quite likely the very trauma that made you an alter in the first place.

You could find yourself repeatedly exposed to movies, conversations and behavior that might be acceptable for adults but are deeply upsetting or even terrifying for a three year old.

To magnify every source of agony: you find yourself, through no fault of your own, in the devastating predicament of being unable to grow up. This means that unless someone at last recognizes your needs and helps you mature mentally, you must suffer all this loneliness, rejection and devastatingly low self-esteem, not merely for the length of a normal childhood but for twenty, thirty, forty or more years.

It can be deeply disturbing when you finally learn that you are actually part of a much older person. Suddenly you no longer feel you know who you are. How should you act now that you know you are not really a child but you still feel like one and you still like doing what others regard as childish things? Realizing that you are decades older than you thought could mean the shattering of many cherished dreams. So much you had hoped for as a child has either already passed or you now know can never happen.

It’s not just young alters that can suffer greatly from the way their hosts and/or other people treat them. Consider, for example, an average man who has an alter who believes he is female. Imagine how that alter would be treated, both by the man and by everyone else.

Deepening our Understanding of Alters

Suppose a man suffered trauma at age two, then had a separate trauma at age five, another at six and another at age twenty. The person could have an alter formed at age two, with acute memories of traumas suffered at that age, and an additional alter at age five, another at six and another at age twenty, while yet another part of the person (usually referred to as the host) is at the man’s real age. Although an alter forms at a specific age, the alter usually has a range of memories from that time until a different trauma occurs, in which case, an additional alter could be formed and the other alter might go into hiding for decades. Alternatively, the alter could continue to come out to perform certain tasks but in go into hiding at other times.

Consider a middle aged man with an alter whose memory is limited to when he was five years old. When this alter speaks out loud, he would have to use the man’s vocal cords. Except for the sound of his voice, however, (and even that might betray subtle differences within the limitations of man’s vocal range) you would swear you were communicating with a five year old (until the alter begins to mature).

It has been said that child alters have the short attention span of a child, but there is more to it than that. Regardless of how old they were when they formed, alters may on occasion be able to tolerate only a few second’s conversation due to overwhelming feelings of confusion, anxiety or emotional (either positive or negative) overload.

Alters formed at certain times are likely to develop specific skills. So some people, though not all, have alters assigned to specific tasks. For example, one alter might almost always take over when public speaking is required, another might predominate when parenting skills are needed, and so on. Some alters might also take on specific roles in supporting fellow alters. For example, one might act as a protector, and another might bear the overflow of pain whenever other alters can tolerate no more.

Alters that have kept themselves in deep isolation usually have Rip-Van-Winkle-like memory gaps. Once they surface, however, they are capable of picking up new information and skills. Ceasing to be deeply buried is usually dependent upon them feeling safe. Once this happens it is as though they are activated. They can then be specifically addressed and taught new things. They might also happen to overhear relevant conversations that help them learn, but unless they are conversed with directly, there is no guarantee that they are listening. As an openness to the host and other alters develops, an alter broadens his or her skills and knowledge (often quite rapidly) and becomes increasingly like the full person. For example, a child alter that is accepted and understood by the host will usually mature at a much faster rate than a child would. The remarkable speed is not merely because the alter is growing up or learning new things; the alter is learning how to access the host’s mental abilities. The rigid wall between the alter and the rest of the person is coming down.

Hosts typically have a degree of control over which alters are active but their control has limits. For example, an alter might at any specific time be asleep (even though the host is awake), or might be away with God, or temporarily too traumatized to speak, or simply feel a need for time-out. Or an alter might choose to remain silent because he/she considers there is insufficient privacy or does not trust someone who might overhear him/her. On the other hand, alters sometimes manifest themselves without their host’s permission and sometimes without even the host’s knowledge. For example, to conceal their actions from their host or avoid being restrained by the host, alters sometimes deliberately put their hosts to sleep before manifesting themselves. One alter said she would achieve this by whispering repeatedly to her host, “You’re getting s-l-e-e-p-y.” Another seemed able to achieve this more rapidly and called it “pulling the plug” on the host’s consciousness.

It is desirable for hosts to emphasize to all alters that there are dangers associated with them taking over in public without checking with the host as to how safe doing so would be. Alters who have only limited experience in relating to the outside world in an adult body could drive without appropriate skills, become physically lost, get needlessly freaked out by misinterpreting someone’s actions, say inappropriate things to adults, and so on. If alters understand the need for their host’s guidance and know that the host will give them as much “body time” time (when they control the body) as practical, they will usually keep safe and not embarrass their host.

Besides differing in apparent age, alters within the same person can differ in personal tastes, abilities, character strengths, weaknesses, fears and so on. Some alters are likely to intensely dislike other alters and/or the host. That’s not surprising when we consider how many of us seem to hate ourselves, at least sometimes during our lives. Nevertheless, perceived rejection or ill-feeling between a person’s alters can be very damaging and significantly delay healing. If an alter is angry at other alters and upsetting them, it would probably be worthwhile giving that alter much attention, listening to him/her, comforting him/her, and so on. Seek to calm the alter and gradually coax the alter to be more positively disposed towards the others. Alters formed by the trauma of sexual abuse might be sexually disturbed and it is not impossible for one alter to “sexually molest” another. Alters are also able to “hit” each other and inflict what feels like physical pain. The assaults might not actually be physical but they can seem as real as nightmares seem while you are still sleeping.

My Blunders With Alters

Revealing the full truth to alters is, to say the least, a delicate matter. Even the positive aspects are mind-boggling, such as suddenly learning that dreaded events are already in the past. There are also distressing aspects, such as learning that joyfully anticipated events like graduations and parenthood have already gone. It is helpful to explain to alters that they have actually enjoyed some anticipated events and that they will gradually gain full memory of these positive events. Often, however, the truth brings the crushing news that some cherished dreams will never materialize. This news can be so traumatic that an alter could even split yet again because of it.

As God told a young alter, if anything is really lost – no matter what – God is able to make up for it seven fold. In the short term, however, this solace might seem so inadequate that alters could turn suicidal over shattered dreams, just because someone made them realize the nature of reality without adequately preparing them for it.

Since alters are already deeply hurting, conversing with alters is like massaging people who have invisible wounds randomly scattered over their body. Your massage can bring them great relief but with the slightest slip their pain will skyrocket.

I was casually talking with a friend, when suddenly an alter of hers began speaking to me for the first time ever. Eager to understand who this alter is, I asked her age. She didn’t seem to know. I asked what her earliest memories were and I couldn’t seem to get an answer. Trying to get a rough idea of her “age,” I asked if she recalled a certain key event in my friend’s life and suddenly I loathed myself, desperately wishing I could have taken back my words. I had foolishly mentioned a key but distressing event in her host’s life that this alter had been unaware of until my blunder. Yes, alters need to know everything eventually, but my timing – mentioning it as soon as she first revealed herself – was most inappropriate, and highly disturbing for the alter.

On another occasion, I tried to comfort an alter who thought she was only four but felt compelled to help her host in adult tasks that were taxing for a little child. My intentions could not have been more admirable in gently explaining that she really isn’t four, but for days this dear alter was so crushed by what she perceived as the implications, that she wished she were dead and refused to speak to me or to God, her best friend. The alter eventually came to terms with what had slipped from my mouth but my timing was particularly atrocious because right then all of the woman’s other alters were reeling with pain and confusion over another issue.

Alters’ deep fear of rejection (the consequence of very real and bitter experiences), keeps them terrified of what might happen if anyone they do not fully trust learns anything about them. In addition, they usually feel a great responsibility to do their utmost to protect the rest of the person from pain. Rightly or wrongly, this typically includes feeling obligated to keep distressing information secret from their hosts or fellow alters. So alters usually take deep offense at anyone betraying their confidence by letting slip any details about them – even their mere existence – to anyone else. Despite me knowing this, I suggested to a friend that he begin to inform his wife about alters by handing her some general information about Dissociative Identity Disorder. I thought this safe because there was nothing in the information about his own alters, nor even the suggestion that he himself had alters, but to my dismay, this simple act done without consulting his alters caused one of them to feel deeply betrayed and to be furious with his host for days.

I’ve also had two unfortunate instances stemming from not realizing who I was speaking with. In the first instance, an alter who at the time was completely unknown to me was tentatively reaching out to me while pretending to be another alter. The other time, I assumed I was communicating with the host when it was actually a recently-surfaced alter.

It is common for alters not to identify themselves, sometimes because they are shy and sometimes simply because they don’t consider how difficult it is for people to distinguish between alters who share the same body and vocal cords. The problem is that a person’s alters usually differ markedly from each other. An alter who believes she is three will think and act very differently to an alter formed as a teenager who, in turn, will differ greatly from a middle-aged host. Likewise, an alter who has only recently surfaced will be very different to one who has traveled much further on the healing journey. These differences mean that the same behavior that would represent a praiseworthy advance for one alter might indicate a disappointing regression if displayed by another alter.

We instinctively adjust our expectations according to who we believe we are talking to. If someone is acting more childlike or less intelligent or less Christian than we have come to expect for that person, we are likely to register our surprise with a mild rebuke or remark that the alter we think we are talking to would take in his or her stride but could deeply wound an alter who is at a very different stage of the healing journey.

Alters need to know that failing to identify themselves, rather than being the extra-safe way of testing the waters that they suppose, is the very thing that exposes them to the greatest danger of getting hurt. They will inevitably do it from time to time, however, even if merely because they forget that it is not obvious to others which alter is speaking.

In the worst of my blunders, alters recovered within a few days. The alters later said that the fact that they knew I genuinely cared for them helped them forgive me. Writes one of them:

Yes, people make mistakes, but once we alters understand that this is very hard, not just on us but on you, we can help you deal with the challenges as you help us deal with our pain.

But though I used to pride myself in being tactful and considerate, I quickly discovered that alters are so hyper-sensitive that my best attempts to help are like trying to trim toenails with a chainsaw.

Alters desperately need help. Doing nothing could be more cruel and dangerous than the most serious blunder. So caving into the difficulties and giving up trying to help alters is not a compassionate option. The need for courage in befriending alters is as immense as the need for superhuman wisdom.

Even the famous counselor, teacher and author, Dr. Neil T Anderson, writes in his book Set Free (page 219) about the most basic aspect of ministering to alters – distinguishing alters from demons:

Sometimes it is difficult even if you have a lot of experience and spiritual discernment. Even the most experienced and mature people can be deceived. I certainly have been.

Since I have yet to find an infallible therapist to whom I could relinquish the task, I can only pray more, and trust myself less, and lean heavily upon God. Here’s a Scripture everyone relating to alters needs to pray often:

Psalms 141:3 Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Jesus: the Perfect Alter

An alter told one of Jake’s alters:

You exist as a separate part of Jake because Jake was pushed beyond human endurance. Then you come along like a lifeboat. You were loaded up with pain and set to sail. So was I. It wasn’t our fault.

This almost exactly describes the role of a scapegoat. The term “scapegoat” has entered everyday speech via the Old Testament. It has surprisingly much to tell us. Once a year, to atone for sin, two goats were chosen. One of them was sacrificed, paying the ultimate price for the nation’s sins. Of course, most of the nation’s sins were essentially average and yet in the final analysis each sin took no less than the death penalty for the blame to be fully resolved and extinguished. The remaining goat – called the scapegoat – stayed alive. Like the other goat, it was utterly innocent of any human sin, but after the sacrificial death of the other one, the sins of the entire nation were symbolically placed on its head and it was driven into the desert, symbolically taking the sins away from the people, never to be seen again (Leviticus 16:5-22).

Animal sacrifices, though hopelessly inadequate to resolve our guilt problems, were divinely instituted to point prophetically to the one sacrifice that can meet our souls’ deepest needs. The sacrifice to end all sacrifices would have to be human, since it is humans who are blameworthy. But to end all blame, the perfect sacrificial victim would, like the goats, have to be utterly blameless. Unless he had absolute moral perfection – like no other human the world has ever seen – a human sacrifice would be worthless. Since anyone who sins deserves to die, if any of us were to volunteer as a sacrifice we would only be suffering what we ourselves deserve, not suffering for the sins of others. The only perfect sacrifice is the One of whom John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

The entire Old Testament sacrificial system was ordained by God to prepare his people for the Savior of the world so that they would understand what our Lord achieved by dying on the cross. He is the embodiment and fulfillment of the whole Jewish sacrificial system. So when God instituted the use of a scapegoat, he was helping his people understand Jesus, who is the ultimate scapegoat.

That two goats were needed to atone for the nation’s sins – one dying and then the other released alive – points not only to the removal of our sins but to the death and the subsequent resurrection of Jesus. Not just Jesus’ death but also his resurrection were needed to resolve utterly the guilt and eternal consequences of humanity’s offenses. Just as Jesus rose to a new life, so he has the power to give us a new life, after fully extinguishing all of our blame and shame.

Humanity’s only true Innocent took upon himself all the blame, letting himself be stripped naked and abused to death so that you could have his peace and purity, and rise with him to a breathtakingly new life that begins here and now.

I am frequently deeply moved by the selfless, sacrificial way in which alters voluntarily take hurts and rejection upon themselves in order to protect the rest of the person. Like the perfect alter, Jesus wants to take upon himself all the guilt, all the horror, and all the shame you have ever suffered. He wants every trace of filth and pain and rejection to be dumped on him until it kills him, because in killing him, its power to hurt you is also killed.

If you were living in ancient Israel, it would not just be your sin that was symbolically placed on the scapegoat, but the sins of the entire nation. Even more astounding, the sins of the entire world were actually placed on Jesus when he agonized on the cross. This is significant. Usually, alters hurt, not because of their own sin, nor even the sin of their host, but because of the sins of an abuser or some other cruel person. There is no need even to work out exactly who is at fault and to what degree, however, because all the sin and all the blame and shame were put on the ultimate Scapegoat. Alters do the best they can but no alter can totally remove all blame, shame and pain. The host still feels some of it. And even if an alter could perfectly achieve full peace for the host, what about the alter? What can be done to relieve the alter’s own suffering?

We have noted that the pain an alter bears is almost never the alter’s fault. The source of the hurt is the sins of others, and he/she bears the pain, sacrificing his/her own well-being for the sake of the host. This is Jesus’ role. Being God, he – and he alone – can do it to perfection. And he does it for all of humanity. For an alter to hold on to the pain is to suffer unnecessarily (which would break God’s heart) and to render Jesus’ torturous death a waste, as far as both the alter and host are concerned.

Dumping pain upon an innocent alter is an act of desperation that can keep a person alive until he/she finds God’s perfect remedy: Jesus. Asking an alter to bear pain is at best an emergency measure only. Like putting chewing gum on a leaking fuel tank, as a tiny aircraft is in flight, it could save someone temporarily, but something more effective needs to be done as soon as possible. It is vital that alters be relieved of their pain as quickly as possible, both for their sake and so that their hosts can receive full healing.

Jesus is the alter par excellence; literally the alter’s alter. For both the host and all alters, Jesus bore all the horrific consequences of sin, completely removing all the blame, pain and shame, destroying it all by his own death, so that none of it could ever come back to hurt the host or any of the alters.

Please don’t let familiarity with the following Scripture rob you of its full impact. Read slowly and prayerfully what it says of Jesus, the perfect alter:

Isaiah 53:3-6 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Jesus took upon himself full punishment for every sin that has ever been committed. He was betrayed, disowned, spat on, stripped naked, made a public spectacle of, shamed, laughed at, degraded, slapped, punched, flayed alive, spiritually cursed (Galatians 3:13), rejected by his people and by God (Mark 15:34), tortured to death for you. He bore your rejection, your heartache, your humiliation. For you, he took the pain, the shame and the blame.

God’s plan has always been that we offload our pain on to him, not upon an alter.

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Psalms 55:22 Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you . . .

When alters were formed, the host did not understand the implications of this truth, but now it can be explained to alters so that they can be relieved of all their torment by handing over to the Lord their pain, distress, and secrets, letting the Lord of glory, who lovingly volunteered to be humanity’s scapegoat, bear it all on the cross and annihilate it with his own death. Then alters can be free to enjoy life and can help hurting parts of their host, not by personally bearing hurts and secrets, but by encouraging fellow alters to lay all their pains and burdensome secrets upon the crucified Lord and rise in the triumphant new life of our resurrected Lord.

Healing your Alter

Every reader will benefit from the next few paragraphs, but in particular I would like to address every reader who has Dissociative Identity Disorder.

1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Ephesians 5:30 for we are members of his body.

John 15:4-5 . . . No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

Just as an alter and host are an inseparable part of each other, Jesus is an essential part of every true Christian. And just as an alter endeavors to remove pain from him/her host, Jesus longs to remove your pain. Infinitely more effective than any alter, however, Jesus has the power to fully absorb and kill in his own body every sinful act that has ever hurt you.

Sin is the issue because anyone hurting or violating you has violated God’s loving laws and sinned against someone God passionately loves – you. The Bible uses various word pictures to portray how utterly Jesus will remove from you the sins that have hurt you. In an era when ocean depths were as inaccessible as the furthest star, Scripture speaks of God burying sin in the deepest sea (Micah 7:19). In another part, it speaks of sin being removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12).

The ultimate Scapegoat longs to put an infinity between you and everything that has ever hurt you. However, because God is not a thief and is the exact opposite of an abuser, his lofty morality and deep respect for you compels him to hold back until you give him full permission to take your pain from you. And because God is a God of love and truth, he cannot operate in an atmosphere of denial and mistrust. He waits to be welcomed into your deepest secrets and pains so that he can do what he yearns to do – gently and lovingly remove everything that is hurting you.

Of course, the Almighty already knows everything that has happened to you, and every good and bad way you have responded. Not only will he not be offended or shocked, he will cherish you sharing with him painful, frightening or disgusting things that are so significant to you that you find them hard to speak about. Because he loves you unreservedly in utter purity, unselfishness and respect for you, God treasures you telling him all about these things. He esteems you sharing the intimate details as proof of your love and trust.

Not only does the Lord have every answer you desperately need, he is tender and gentle. He reels in pain when you suffer needlessly by you holding on to burdens and distress that Jesus has already suffered to make their removal possible. Christ exposes his heart when he cried, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34). He agonizes for you, yearning for you to stop living in denial or backing off from his tender compassion.

I know it takes great courage for you to hand your secrets over to him. You’ve been let down and ridiculed by people for as long as you can remember. You fear God might be like all those other humans, but wait a moment: God isn’t human. His warm, personal love and tender devotion and faithfulness to you is flawless. He has none of the sinful, selfish, fickle ways of the people who have hurt you. Make Jesus’ day: let him extinguish in his own tortured body your burning grief and pain.

If it were with any pride that I told Alice’s alter of my new revelation about Jesus being the alter’s alter, it was short-lived. It turned out that God had already told her that a couple of days earlier. In yet another e-mail to one of Jake’s alters, she wrote:

I was sitting on the sofa this morning reading in the Bible about Jesus’ death when Jesus appeared and knelt down in front of me. He pointed out that his torture lasted all night. He was naked, he was beaten, he was rejected and shamed. They mocked his body.

I asked him if any of his suffering was sexual. He said, “I was a naked target. What do you think?”

He was betrayed and hurt beyond words. His friends denied him. They were ashamed of him. He was sold for money to be tortured.

Jesus leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “I know.” He let those words sink in. “I know all the pain you have suffered and I have been through it.”

He is holy and glorified. He has won and he knows the way to victory. His scars are a badge of honor that he took that pain. Just as we took the pain so that our host could move on, Jesus took the pain so that we can move on. He is our alter. I don’t feel alone and scared anymore. I have an alter to bear my pain.

Being pain-free is really wonderful. When two of Alices’ other alters got upset recently, I wasn’t so full of pain that I couldn’t help them. I was able to bring them to Jesus. It was amazing.

This dear alter is finding increasing fulfillment in using her insights gained as an alter to minister in the power of Christ to other alters. Interestingly, her host has an intercessory calling upon her life. True intercessors sometimes feel intensely the pain of others but they don’t hold on to the pain. Their privileged task is to bring that pain to Christ and leave the pain with the One who suffered to set people free.

When we are in too much pain to think straight, we long for a quick fix in which all memory of painful events vanishes. Nevertheless, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder know that this simply does not work. They tried to kill memories and some almost seemed to achieve it for a while, but it brought them no real peace. We need to be free from pain but we need to retain our dignity and humanity by being able to mentally come to terms with the experience.

Moreover, for the memory to disappear would render all our past tragedies a useless waste. Our tears are too precious to God for him to let them be shed in vain. He longs not only to remove our pain but to transform our past suffering into something valuable, even as Jesus’ suffering is of inestimable value. People who have let God heal them of Dissociative Identity Disorder find themselves uniquely placed to understand the power and compassion of God and to bring this tender love and healing to other hurting people. They find themselves co-laborers with Almighty God, doing things of eternal significance for people who are of infinite value to the God of love. They know that their past tragedies have uniquely empowered them for this intensely fulfilling privilege and they will spend eternity in awe at how God turned something that hurt God horrifically – your own suffering – into something that brings them endless glory.

Various Types of Alters

I will not attempt to categorize every possible type, but awareness of certain types of alters can significantly speed healing. Not everyone with D.I.D. has every type mentioned below, but being aware of the possibility could enable you to discover and help such an alter much quicker.

Protector Alters

Protector alters shield other alters by putting on a tough front and trying to force to back down anyone they see as a threat. Tragically, they suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which causes them to often see danger where there is none. The easiest understood instance of PTSD is a soldier who upon returning from the front line to the safety of home is still on hyper-alert, unable to sleep property, diving for cover whenever a car backfires, and so on.

So protector alters are hyper-vigilant and much more suspicious than current circumstances require. The alters the protector seek to shield usually accept the protector’s assessment of danger, and even if they do not, the protector still usually tries to get them into hiding at the first perception of danger.

Unfortunately, protectors often hinder healing by assessing counselors as threats. They can also perceive their host as a threat and so keep alters and/or information hidden from their host. A host can be perceived as a threat if he/she might blab things the protector believe should be kept secret or if the host is not cautious enough, and so on.

Even though these dear alters might initially hinder – or even sabotage – the healing process, they are not enemies. Even if their help is sometimes misguided, they are highly traumatized, self-sacrificing alters courageously trying their utmost to keep the person safe.

Do all you can to work with, rather than against, a protector. Continually strive to get the protector on-side and to allay all the protector’s concerns. Even empower the protector, giving him/her right of veto.

As the protector gradually learns to trust you, much progress can be made in discovering other alters. Once on board, protectors are very valuable allies in the healing process.

Sleeper Alters

You have probably heard of sleeper spies or terrorist cells that remain inactive for years until they are needed. Some people have certain alters like this. They remain inactive – sometimes for many years – until a crisis alerts them that they are needed and then they come to the fore. They can use various means to alert them of a crisis. It might, for example, be whenever a person engages in more self-harm than usual. Another way is to be particularly close to a certain alter and be activated when that alter is particularly distressed.

Some of these alters are helper alters that support alters when things become unbearable for one of them. (By coming to the rescue they might sometimes prevent the formation of a new alter.) Other sleeper alters are protectors who are quite strong and can take the person over almost completely during a supposed crisis.

Being sleeper alters means that they are likely to have been somewhat out of the loop while the rest of the person has been healing and so they might be less in possession of all the relevant facts than some other alters. Even more confusing is that in order to exercise the authority they feel the emergency demands, they might pretend to be another well-liked or powerful alter. The result can be very confusing for the rest of the person.

So if a person suddenly starts acting out of character, a sleeper alter might be the reason.

The difficulties in helping sleeper alters are obvious when you consider that since the very nature of a sleeper alter is to remain hidden until an emergency, they appear only rarely. Moreover they see their key function as supporting/protecting the person by remaining hidden and unconnected most of the time, so even if discovered, they feel the need to return to hiding.

Obviously, it is very important to try to convince a sleeper alter that it is now safe to remain out of hiding indefinitely. Such alters usually find not returning to hiding very scary, however, and can feel that by remaining out they are being unfaithful to their role and letting the whole person down. The easiest way I have found to break this is for the alter to fall in love with his/her marriage partner. They crave love and understanding so much that when they find it, they will be very reluctant to lose it again by going back to “sleep.” Another possibility is for other alters to give the new alter lots of love, understanding and comfort. Of course, the ultimate counselor remains Jesus. Encourage alters to let Jesus share his heart with them. He will reassure them.

Abusive Alters

Often when one takes the time to get to know an alter who is being harsh to fellow alters or hurting them or even sexually abusing them, it turns out that they actually believe they are helping. They might think, for example, that they are toughening up the alters, thus making them less vulnerable to abuse. Or, in the hope of saving the person from even worse abuse, they might enforce an abuser’s oppressive rules about never crying, or punishing them for doing anything the abuser might object to. Often the abusive alter is unaware that the abuser no longer has access to them and so the alter continues the oppression when there is no longer the slightest need.

As always, it is important to try to understand what motivates an alter and to gently help the alter see through any misconceptions the alter has.

Introjects

An introject is a rather amazing type of abuser alter. Until the misconception is exposed, an introject not only acts like an external person the survivor knew, but every alter within the survivor – including the introject alter – actually believes that this alter is not an alter but is the real external person. At first, this seems astounding but it is consistent with the wide range of different things that alters can think themselves, including animals, aliens and so on.

Often that external person is someone who abused the person who has this alter. Even though not all external abusers realize it, this type of introject alter enforces the external abuser’s wishes upon the alters when the abuser is absent. In fact, it can continue even after the abuser had died. Some introjects actually report back to the abuser as informers.

Not surprisingly, introjects have themselves suffered immensely.

It is important to bring introject alters to the point where they finally realize they are part of the abuse survivor and not part of the external abuser. Helping them discover the current date and that they are in the body of someone other than the abuser can help. Once introjects become loyal to the survivor, the person’s safety is significantly enhanced. I suggest you do not get sidetracked now but elsewhere on this website I have a detailed record of counseling an introject.

Unique Challenges in Helping Alters

* Just because an alter was formed at a certain age does not mean that the alter has all the skills normally associated with that age. For example, it is quite possible for an alter of an excellent reader to be formed in her twenties and yet be unable to read.

* Even though you could be focusing exclusively on one alter or the host, you must always remain alert to the possibility that other alters could be overhearing or observing.

* Usually a significant factor in the formation of alters is that the host had no one who would sympathize with him/her. Any feeling of isolation and rejection at their very formation is often magnified still further by the way alters are subsequently treated even by their own host, who usually has had no training in understanding alters. All of this would be enough to make almost anyone feel suicidal and to feel he/she is “nothing.” But on top of this, alters can mistakenly suppose that being an alter means they are less than human and almost literally “nothing.”

Even if they don’t think they are toys, animals, aliens or demons, it is common for alters to doubt that they are fully human. Many factors contribute to this. For example, our emotions are a significant part of our humanity, and alters are commonly in so much pain that they are largely dissociated from their feelings and emotions. They can feel more like zombies than normal people. Moreover, alters are often formed as a result of being treated callously, as though they were less than human. In addition, to admit to oneself that one is human is to raise one’s hopes of being treated with dignity and respect and perhaps even love. Most alters’ experience affirms that this is unlikely and that it is less painful never to get one’s hopes up by letting oneself think one is human.

I discovered another significant factor in alters feeling less than human when I wrote on friendship greeting cards and posted them to some of Alice’s alters. When I had only been aware of a few of Alice’s alters I was better able to give them individual attention, but it grew harder when many more appeared in fairly rapid succession. One day, the alter I had known for the longest time suggested that I give a greeting card to one of two troubled alters. She said that giving them something tangible would be beneficial. I decided to buy many cards that were each different, address each one to a different alter, and write a unique, personal message on each card, affirming my appreciation of that alter. Their excitement over receiving their own greeting card far exceeded my expectations.

I had often spoken individually to each alter, so I was surprised that the cards would have such a powerful effect on them. Then I realized that most of these alters had not only never in their lives personally received the smallest of gifts, most had not even one item that they could call their own. I ask hosts to think hard about how they might correct this.

Until I came along, these alters had been in such isolation that they rarely interacted with people and often had not even had a name, much less had been addressed by name. Being continually and solely treated like this would be highly dehumanizing for anyone. Giving each of them a little gift was another significant step in affirming to them that they are truly real and not, as some people think, a figment of the imagination.

Time and again, I have found that a significant aspect of healing involves alters having their humanity affirmed. It is obviously psychologically unhealthy – depressing at the very least – for a person to feel less than human. Likewise, it is unhealthy for people to have any part of them that feels not human or less than human. For a person to be in his or her prime, each part of the full person needs to be psychologically and spiritually in top condition.

It is tempting to fear that affirming each alter’s existence and individuality would perpetuate a person’s fracturedness. Consider, however, how restoring each individual part of a machine to full strength and pristine condition would cause the entire machine to function so much better. In fact, fully restored parts fit together better than rusted parts. Likewise, if an alter is empowered to be strong, confident and enjoy life, the entire person will benefit. Moreover, confident, assertive alters feel more empowered to share their secrets, thus breaking down the walls that keep a person fractured.

Over and over, as I have affirmed alters, building up their self-confidence and relationship with God, I have seen them develop all sorts of unexpected abilities that have immensely benefited the entire person. D.I.D. exists because of burying things and avoiding issues. The last thing you want is to further bury things. You want to heal, not perpetuate the pain and disfunction.

So I firmly believe that it is important for alters to realize that they are very lovable, deeply loved by God and are fully human. Let’s briefly examine the issue of their humanity.

Even though there is more to your life than just a portion of your life experiences and memories, you were fully human throughout every experience and memory you had. Suppose a hit on your head caused you to forget most of your past and you could otherwise function fairly normally. Would that make you cease to be human? Likewise, although alters have a portion, and not all, of a person’s life experiences, memories, feelings, reactions and thoughts, they are fully human. Just as we are real humans despite the fact that none of us can consciously recall every experience and thought that we have ever had, so alters are really human, even though an alter is not aware of everything that happened to the person.

Someone with alters who was trying to live in denial told me, “It’s not like alters are real flesh and blood . . .”

I replied, “Alters do have flesh and blood. The body you call your own is as much theirs as yours.”

A man told me about an alter of his that had just recently surfaced. “He is kind of a goofball,” he said. “He does not know his name or age.” My heart sank. Hopefully, as reader of these webpages, you have been so alerted to the sensitivities of alters that you would never use such an insulting name when speaking about alters, especially when they might overhear. In actual fact, if alters first reveal themselves after some alters have already been helped, it is common for them to have overheard conversations and to have grasped from this that they are not the age that they had previously thought they were. Coming to terms with this is confusing for an alter but the dawning of an awareness of an age discrepancy is a sign of intelligence, not stupidity.

Let’s continue listing unique challenges in helping alters:

* We have seen that whenever an alter faces a new trauma, another split is likely to occur. If the previous alter then goes into deep hiding, it is akin to death for the alter, in that often the alter ceases to develop or have much in the way of new experiences and it is left behind in a time warp. But the rest of the person continues to progress. For at least one alter I’ve met, this perceived similarity between going into long term hiding and physical death made it hard for her to grasp emotionally (even though she knew it intellectually) that to kill herself by actually committing suicide is more serious than her “killing” herself simply by going into hiding. It only barely registered in her consciousness that killing her body would kill the host and all the alters. She at least realized that she shared the one body with her host and all the alters. When alters are just beginning to understand who they are, they usually have no conception at all that their bodies are also their hosts’ bodies. There are obvious dangers in regarding suicide as less serious than it really is. If you come across a suicidal alter, in addition to the usual support, ensure that the alter knows that his/her death would kill not just the alter but the host and other alters.

* The fact that alters were created because of the need to deal with severe inner pain can leave some alters scared to let go of pain (to experience full inner healing). They fear that without the pain they would either cease to exist or their reason for living would cease. Obviously, this misconception would need to be addressed in order for alters not to sabotage their own healing.

* A woman was in love and wanted to marry. Her little five-year-old alter also loved the man and wanted the marriage. I was concerned. It is obviously inappropriate for a child to be exposed to marital relations, and even more so for a little alter who had been formed precisely because of the horror of sexual abuse.

The little alter affirmed to me that she knew that married people liked doing things to each other that she didn’t want. I asked her how she would handle that situation.

“I’d just go off and play with God,” she said.“But how would you know when it is safe to return?”“I’d just ask God,” she replied, full of confidence.“But you deserve lots of hugs, too,” I said.“I get lots of hugs from God,” she replied.

It was quite a while before they married and by then things had radically changed. For his own personal reasons, not related to her at all, her fiancé announced that he wanted to take things very slowly after the wedding and delay consummating the marriage for weeks. By the time the wedding was approaching, however, their fiancé’s plan was too slow for them. The alters had so healed that even those aged three were begging God that as soon as it were morally acceptable they be allowed to go further sexually than their fiancé intended so quickly after marriage. A significant factor in this change was all the alters growing very close to each other, enabling the younger ones to learn from the much older ones about the positive aspects of sex. The other important factor is that they felt totally free from pressure. They knew they could withhold sex and still enjoy this man’s unconditional love. His selfless love filled them with a desire to pour out their love upon him.

Moreover, after a few months an alter surfaced for the first time while the couple were making love. This was not because the alter was triggered but because she found it so pleasurable. It affirmed to the alter that life was worth living. Not long afterwards another alter surfaced during lovemaking. This one had thought she was dead but the pleasure she had felt during lovemaking affirmed to her that she was alive. Later, still more new alters were, as it were, pleasantly awakened from sleep through lovemaking. These alters quickly discovered they were now much older and married. They healed rapidly because by now the host had many alters who knew the ropes and were able to quickly teach the new ones such things as how to access the memories of other alters. It was a joy to see how painless this whole process was for them, in huge contrast to the slow, agonizing progress that healing had been for the first alters to surface.

Another woman writes:

Once, before I knew about D.I.D. but after God had begun talking to me about inner child parts, I was moving towards an intimate encounter with my husband and started to panic inside. Realizing this might be a reaction from child parts, I felt led to say, “It’s okay. I’m an adult. I’m married, and it’s okay for this to happen. I don’t mind.” They seemed confused and shocked, questioning, “Really? Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yes, it really is,” I replied. “So you can just go play now or something.”

“Well, if your really sure . . .” came the response.

Then another part – a young girl – gently ushered them away.

Alters require time to develop the level of confidence in God and in her future husband that this alter displayed, but it certainly opened my eyes as to what is possible. The only problem I could foresee is that her host’s husband would need to avoid being overly spontaneous by giving the alter no warning before doing something that would be inappropriate in a presence of a little girl. I presume the same principle could apply if an adult wanted to see or read something that could disturb a tiny alter.

Wherever practical, however, the ideal is to wait until all alters who believe they are children mature. This should in no way be enforced upon them but it might take as little as just a few months if they get lots of support in their healing.

* If alters no longer feel it is safe to reveal themselves to you, they will go quiet. If they suspect you will reject, despise or criticize them, you will not hear from them. They will likewise clam up if they suspect you will expose them or betray them by telling their secrets to someone they do not, as yet, trust. If you do not realize this, and you have alters, you will wrongly conclude from their silence that you do not have alters or that they have now gone or integrated with you.

* To someone unsure as to how to talk to her own alters, Alice wrote:

I asked my alters (who are now very chatty) what helped them open up. They said they loved being read to. (Reading out loud has loads of benefits anyway and helps me greatly with public speaking). In a story, they would feel what the characters were feeling. I used books with non-threatening stories. If one of the story characters was sad and an alter could relate, I’d stop reading and let her/me cry. It was a safe way for alters to express feelings, without directly connecting with their own pain.

I suggest a children’s book or a book about children. Young alters can relate to children. Animal stories were also a big way for my alters to express themselves. I cried through the book, Holes. It really touched their fears of injustice. The movie Second Hand Lions was brilliant for them. They laughed, cried and didn’t feel alone.

At the end of this webseries is a link to a couple of short Christian stories written especially for young alters.

* Although it is common to suppose that all alters have been identified when there are still some in hiding, it is also possible to suppose there are more alters than there really are. “I’m hiding another alter,” lied a female alter. She did this because if she were rejected because of what she then revealed, only this non-existent alter would be rejected. She could continue to converse with me on other subjects.

* Yet another challenge unique to alters is that timid alters typically sleep during the day (when they find things the most stressful) and come out late at night when everyone else (host included) is asleep. It would therefore be productive for counselors to regularly phone late at night but this is obviously very draining for the counselor and largely impractical.