Discovery of my first split and the trauma surrounding it, was a strange and amazingly experience. It felt real and honest. With this first, as with other splits, I asked my parents, siblings, and others for their memories and information. I sought answers from within. Gradually over time, the puzzle pieces came together in harmony. Unexplained fears and reactions made sense. Let me continue with my story:
Pain and Confusion
At first in therapy I began working on issues of depression, codependency, and relationship concerns with my mother. However the pain and confusion began to grow worse and loomed bigger than anything I had ever tried to cope with before. It was getting harder and harder to manage everyday life. I began having panic attacks and self-abusive behaviors. True to my nature, I played these things down or tried to cover them up. But, I knew that I was dealing with something much bigger than childhood misconceptions and relationship issues.
I turned to prayer and asked God, “What is going on here? I believe that You want me to take this path of therapy. I trust You and my therapist to guide me toward truth.” Then I clearly sensed the words in my mind, “There’s more than one of you.” I felt a confirmation that this was true. I did not want to accept that! It was the first time that I had considered that I might be multiple or DID. This was just TOO Weird , TOO abnormal!
I told my therapist about this experience and he was glad for the direction. He said that he had had success with DID patients before and knew some principles to follow. Still, it was really hard for me to believe that I could have experiences sufficient childhood trauma and/or abuse to create psychic splitting! I knew that something wasn’t quite right in my life, but I didn’t think it was THAT bad. I searched for some stories on the internet of others with DID. They went through some really horrible things! How could this be true for me?
Memories from an Abyss
I began by going to the earliest events in my life that I had heard about. My mother had frequently related to me about how when I was two years old she had a terrible experience. She had a tubal pregnancy and then a miscarriage a couple of months later of another pregnancy that was in the uterus. She talked of trying to have faith and did not go to the doctor until she could hardly breathe. She told me of almost bleeding to death from the tubal pregnancy and how devastated she was with the later miscarriage. I remembered nothing of this personally until…..
One day in therapy my therapist was working on accessing subconscious feelings and body memories. I was telling him about the facts that I knew about what happened when I was two. I then had a singular experience that I will never forget. Suddenly my mind was flooded with vivid pictures of blood and death. Overwhelming guilt filled my heart. It came to my mind in pictures and it was hard to find words to describe it. I felt huge emotional and physical pain. My heart and body was experiencing something that was very real and agonizing. My therapist said nothing to suggest any ideas. This came from within me and I struggled to describe it.
Over time and with getting some more information, I was able to undertand things in my life that had made no sense before. From my manuscript I describe these events, speaking as the two-year old but with more grown up words:
Fearing Death
“Suddenly there was a loud rumbling noise outside. A loud piercing whistle sounded. I could feel the ground shake beneath me as my older brother’s eye got big and he ran to hide under his bed. A train regularly passed by our apartment where we lived. (For the rest of my life, my stomach always knotted at the sound of a train.) My brother said that you have to not go near the train or it will kill you.
Even at two, I had seen death before. We had a neighbor who was a javelin thrower for the university where my dad was going to school. This neighbor would practice spearing gophers that put holes in his lawn. I saw the little animal running, playing, and being alive and then all of a sudden—Twang!! Its eyes glazed over and it was still as blood oozed from the spear wound. Death scared me because it meant not being there anymore.
Is Mom Going to Die?
I could hear mommy and daddy talking. Mommy was in pain and that scared me. She tried to have faith that she would have her baby. It was so important to her. The next morning she was having a hard time breathing and daddy took her to the hospital. He left me with a neighbor and I was so scared! It seemed like forever. Finally daddy came and I heard him say to the neighbor that mommy had emergency surgery and had lost so much blood she almost died. Blood, death…..just like the gopher. Would mommy come back? Would I ever see her again?
I was terrified, but no one paid much attention to me. When I was grown up I asked Dad how I responded to this emergency. He said, “You were too young to have feelings and in a few months everything was back to normal anyway.” He couldn’t see the huge fear and pain in his little girl.
Mommy was in the hospital for several days. When Daddy came home from school, he would pick up my brother and me from the neighbor, get dinner, and then had to study. I was too scared to go to bed at night. Daddy would get his loud-train voice when I protested going to my bed. I was scared of him and I was scared of the lonely dark bedroom. So he would spank me to make me go to sleep. I would finally cry myself to sleep. My brother told me many years later that this was a common occurrence. He said that learned to pretend to be asleep so as to avoid the same fate.”
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These events were but a beginning. The attachment/separation trauma at the sensitive age of two was significant. The lack of a supportive relationship augmented the trauma. During the next couple of months, things became more complicated. At some point a personality split occurred. More in next month’s blog…..