I just wanted to say that I miss reading your updates. I hope you are well.

I would like to reiterate what Meg said – your blog was one of the first I found when I first started seeing a therapist over two years ago, and it has been an incredible help to me. I started reading even before I started recovering memories of sexual abuse. I knew that my mother had been physically abusive, and I knew that I had some worsening anxiety/control freak issues. I would open your blog and pray about where to read – so many times I would get frustrated because I’d end up reading about sexual abuse (one memorable day, I found the link to a questionaire “you may have been sexually abused if …”, answered 98% of the questions in the affirmative, and told myself the same was likely true if you’d been physically abused!) or DID. I resisted the very idea of DID until I read your phrase “Imagine a life in which you no longer berate yourself in your head” and a wave of longing swept over me.
Today I came looking for what you might have said about anger, and found some helpful things again. (I also refused to believe there was anger. Good Christian girls do not get angry. They move straight to forgiveness …)
All a long winded way to say thank you so much. You will never know how instrumental you have been in my healing.
Susan

In reply to Cera.

Hi, I’m just wondering why you think it’s best that she NOT know that she has it? I personally think that if I had it, there would come a time when I would want to know the reality of my life. She may be going absolutely ‘crazy’ trying to ‘search for the missing pieces’ as you said. When actually knowing that she has DID would give her much more insight to her life. How can she convey to you or her support team that she is READY to know, if she isn’t being given some subtle hints?

In reply to Judy.

Judy, I have been diagnosed with DID and on disability for it about 13 yrs now. Unable to hold jobs for years, yet very good at my jobs I became confused, and did not understand. Seems that what was happening is that I was disassociating during my jobs and I imagine the people I worked with saw me as possibly very mentally sick, therefore, no matter how good I was at my job (911 dispatching mostly) I was let go from many of them. I was put on disability quickly without an appeal, after taking a 911 call for a cardiac trauma team that was being flown in from Kentucky with a heart on ice in preparation for the transplant into an infant baby girl who was gravely ill and in need of a heart. I took that call. I have no memory of the call. The hospital was waiting for the team, had the baby ready and the team did not arrive on time, due to my dissociated state during the taking of the call. The supervisor demanded to know who had taken the call, and myself having no recollection of taking this call denied it of course and believed whole heartingly that I truly did not take this call. Due to the seriousness of the type of job, of course all calls are recorded. Since nobody wanted to own up to taking the call, supervisors pulled the tapes. I was called into the office, to be fired, but before doing so, they played the call for me. Every hair in my body stood up and chills went through my spine as I listened to myself take a call I had no memory of doing so. I sounded like I was maybe 5 or 6 years old. I had no understanding of what I was doing. I sounded like a child and acted like one on the call. This tape was soon sent to doctors to listen too, and my diagnosis came soon following. To this day, any time I come upon anything that I fear, IE, police pulling me over, husband emotionally abusing me, these sort of things bring on memory loss, as I suppose I am in a disassociated state. I cannot tell you how many times I find things in my house that I have bought at stores and have no recollection of doing so. I have been arrested numerous times and have no recollection of what I had done wrong. Last month I was pulled by an officer. I was completely sober and felt very confident I would have no problem. According to the officer I was not maintaining my lane, I knew that I was texting and driving, which was wrong, but the true reason I was not maintaining my lane. After blowing a 0 into the breathalyzer, he gave me the road side tests. It was then that the panic started to set in, as I have had numerous DUI’s that I was guilty of, due to excessive drinking in my 20s and 30s. I was sober last month when he gave me these roadside tests, and I knew that I would be going home soon, as I felt he knew I was sober, of which I promise you I was. When he shined the penlight into my eyes and told me to follow it with my eyes, I did so. I am on many psychiatric drugs, nothing that alters my state of mind to drive. As the tests were completed and I felt confident that he would give me a ticket for failure to maintain lane and I would be on my way. He told me to turn around and put my hands behind my back, and he cuffed me. I have no memory at all from that point until the point of waking up in a hospital. Apparently he had taken me to the hospital for a blood test. I do remember waking up in the hospital handcuff to the bed and saw the officer sitting there. I felt despair, and sick to my stomach and did not understand how this could be happening to me when I was in fact sober and had every right to be behind the wheel, but not to be texting. I never told him I was texting, perhaps that would have helped, I do not know. I panic when I see the police as my first encounter with one in my 20s I was drunk and in a store apparently attempting to steal a DVD the clerk called 911 on me. After I was put into the car the officer said I touched his radio. I do remember I think doing that, for some reason I felt that if I could get the radio and tell the person I needed help, they would help me whoever answered. This to me would be something a child would do, not a 25 yr old women. I was put in the car and the officer that was driving took off with me as the one in the passengers side turned around and punched me right in the face breaking my nose, then saying “that will teach you not to touch my radio again”. Therefore, beside the fact that I was severely traumatized by my grandmother from a very early age, I disassociate very much when I am in fear of abuse. I am extremely depressed now in my 50s I do not have the strength to deal with another DUI. I left the hospital with my cuffs off, and that officer laid a ticket and my license on my stomach, the ticket for “failure to maintain lane”. I felt relieved. A week later, I went online to pay that ticket. As I opened up the pay ticket area in the clerk of courts in red, there it was . DUI. This officer had actually issued me a DUI without my knowledge of it. Had I not gone online to pay this other ticket when I did, I would not have known of the DUI offense nor would I have shown up in court. To me this is abuse of the officer, and I am beside myself on how to handle this. I do take klonapin for anxiety, as when childhood memories surface I go into panic, and dissociate, smells come back, voices of my grandmother, it is not tolerable for me and so I disassociate into what doctors believe to be about 5 or 6 yrs old. Police do not understand what is happening to me, they take it for being under the influence when in fact I am not. Yes there was klonapin in my blood that was drawn, but I had not had any that day, as I did not need it. I was prescribed klonapin the month earlier and over 100 of them to last me probably about six months. I am not dependent on this drug, as I actually do not like the way it makes me feel, but when taken with true anxiety and the feeling of separation it works miracles as I feel normal when I take the medicine. There is nothing scarier then feeling that I am separated from my body. I speak and hear myself maybe seconds later, as if I am listening to another person and not myself. This is truly a scary feeling and sometimes I think I just might be dying because none of it makes sense or feels normal. I drank excessively since the age of 11 was my first drink and I tell you it continued into my 30s in constant blackouts, but able to function on jobs until I lost them for what I did not understand was happening at the time. I had a serious car accident as I fell asleep at the wheel after working 24hrs straight in a dispatch room to cover someone that called out for the following shift from my own. When I was struck by the oncoming car, I was hit in the head so hard by my air bag it knocked me out. It was since that car accident that I stopped drinking and the memories of what was done to me since I was so young started to surface. Doctors tell me I am a miracle as this doesn’t happen often. They tell me the head trauma knocked the memories to the surface and these memories were what I kept in by my excessive drinking. When they surfaced for some reason alcohol was not needed anymore, and I tell you to this day, probably for about 25 yrs now, I can have one beer and stop, and that doesn’t happen often, as I hate the taste of it ……….strange isn’t it. Apparently I was drinking all those years to keep those horrible memories stored in a place that I did not know existed. The hard part is that every time a memory surfaced I went into a state of panic, thought I was having a heart attack and would sometimes (I was an EMT also at the time) would end up on my own stretcher, as my partner truly thought I might be having a stroke also. I know now it was anxiety, as the memories surfaced. And so my diagnosis is DID, which is my main one, but some doctors also put me in a class of bi-polar also. I am on disability for PTSD, DID< Bi-polar and something else, that I do not remember, but those three are the main ones. I am dissociating more now since the episode with the officer. I go shopping like I said and have no memory of buying those things. I am in college trying to understand my disease taking psychology with a 3.62 GPA and graduating in December. I write papers and read them later as if I am reading a paper someone else wrote, as most of the time, I have no memory of writing what I am reading. The good part is that my grades seem to be great, but how is that if I am in a dissociated state and the probable age of a child? I don't know, I just wanted to write you a short letter after reading your pages, but I guess I have babbled on enough. I am wondering now if I will have memory of even writing you this later? It feels good talking to someone that understands the mental illness of what I truly have. What scares me is just how did I act when the officer cuffed me, and I immediately dissociated? Was I a child? What did I say? How did I sound? I am so tired of fighting these arrests and truly want to be a normal person and function in society like so many others do, but I feel like a complete failure in my 50s and am not sure just how much more I can take, when nobody really understands what Is happening to me, nor will a judge, when I go to court. So I am now scared again, and it is effecting my schooling, managing my house, everything has felled apart since the cuffs when on again, and I went into my amnesia state, as I feel it is. Thank you for listening, if you can do anything for me, please pray for me when I go in front of a judge, A judge that will see a history of arrests, that most of them I did deserve I suppose due to drinking. But this time, I was sober, but how or why should a judge believe me with my history? There is nobody , no public defender, no lawyer, I do not believe I cannot afford one at all, even though I do not either think they truly understand what is happening to me, or what happened to me that night. I feel like the police are attracted to me, and I need to have a bumper sticker that says "pull me over and arrest me, I'm used to it"

Sexual abuse is terrible and nobody should do it. An orgasm does not make it okay. If you really want to have sex with kids that bad go order a hooker and dress her like a schoolgirl. Honestly, child molestation is horrific, embarassing, and traumatizing. Any child molesters out there want to argue their case in the comments? Because I really want to hear what you have to say about destroying the innocent purity of a child and throwing them to the hounds of sexuality.

I think it is possible to forgive without reconciliation. Thanks for this inspiring post. I put up a post on my old blog for the first time in ages today. Just swinging by to the blogs on my blogroll with links that still work. Glad to see your helpful blog is still up and running.

You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be actually something which I think I would never understand.
It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me.
I am looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!

I love your blog. But hate this post. I have no words to express my feelings about what I just read.

i was always made to wear the same yellow sweatshirt, lol for my protection! Stopped me getting badly scratched. If the sweat shirt was out , i knew i was expected to put it on. The dog also knew what the yellow sweatshirt menat and he would be super excited. Is it understandable that i have a great desire to see the video? i want to see my face, my body language to try and recall my feelings. Am i alone in this need? It always seems so hard to understand for me to know i did this and many other things for this man over many years. my feelings always seem to behind a veil when i try to recall them, its thin but i just cant pull it aside. He never threatened violence to me or my family, he just provided an emotional something i needed. i am always worried i will remember it was me who drove these things. That seeing me performing these acts for him ,not as a scared emotionless normal child, but as some sexual monster will be the reality.

Faith..so good to see your post. Your website was so much help to me when I started this healing journey. Beth Moore’s book helped me so much too. Rejecting the spirit of depression and fear, and CHOOSING to forgive my mother…not wanting to but making the choice do so so for me, really. I am still triggered but not as much. I was given that book while doing a study called Shelter from the Storm. Another class,,, the best I have been to is called Restoring Relationships, The man’s name is Dominic Herbst. Eye opening if you are ready for the forgiveness option. GB you, Meg