Dissociation

I don't talk about this much because I already get way too much crap from people online. I mentioned it once on Metafilter and they deleted my comment, as usual.

One of the things that happened while in therapy in Germany is that I began dreaming about "six sisters" and I realized these girls all correlated to some age I had been when something bad happened and they were my splintered personality. Over time while in Germany, they turned into "four sisters" and two of the sisters were an indistinct age, each a blend of two of the previous sisters.

I spent some time reading up on multiple personality disorder and my understanding is that in the US, this diagnosis typically occurs in women who were both physically and sexually abused over a long period of time from an early age. I believe I was borderline for multiple personality disorder for a lot of years.

Rape victims can dissociate during the assault. This is likely the start of the process of a splintered personality.

There's no such thing also talks about dissociation.

People who get horrifically abused can wind up psychologically traumatized in ways that are the mental and emotional equivalent of a broken bone. I've read a lot of books and articles and had some wonderfully talented people in my life and I have recovered when the general view is that doesn't happen.

But a lot of therapists don't really know what they are doing and there's a lot of bad information out there. 

If you were assaulted and your memory is fuzzy or you know you dissociated, please don't let anyone make you feel like you somehow did VICTIM wrong. Like if you got hit by a car, would they tell you bleed less?

I began remembering more once I felt safe to do so. I got married, I moved away from my hometown, I found myself on another continent and knew my relatives wouldn't visit and I was fortunate to work for a long time with a military chaplain who was talented and not making more money the longer my treatment dragged out.

When he got assigned elsewhere, he offered to refer me to someone else and I turned it down because I didn't want to start over and I wanted to focus on living well and stop spending so much time letting past trauma continue to consume my time and my life.

So figure out what needs to happen to feel safe and be safe and that seems to me like the best way to start accessing stuff you aren't ready to remember currently.