Integration in DID is often the “end goal” for those who are healing from DID. For the next few blogs I am going to combine my own personal experience of integration with some professional and research information from other sources.
Let the Journey Begin
Everyone’s journey toward healing with DID is unique. The self system is not the same for each DID person. No two people have the exact same experience nor psychological response. As DID therapy begins, each alter ego makes “himself or herself” known in their own time and in their own way. A knowledgeable therapist can help to facilitate this process.
For me, the first alter ego “came up” fairly quickly after realizing my multiplicity. A few therapy sessions and some art therapy and she “went quiet.” I thought she was “done.” A bit strange, I thought, for being the one who helped carry the part of the original trauma. However, much later she came up again and required more extensive work. From the beginning my “core” self” was elusive. This may have been unique to me. I don’t know of another with this same situation. Hiding behind the other alter egos was part of my survival strategy, I suppose.
Where AM I?
At first I thought that my adult self (the one who sought therapy) was the “core me,” but no. She was just created last and had the least dysfunctional history and the best ability to grow up from adolescence. When she felt her job was done, she slipped into the background. She switched occasionally and took over, but not everytime the rest of us wanted her to.
After other alter egos came up, I thought I had finally found found the “core self.” She seemed to be in charge and was most aware of the other selves, so that was a natural conclusion. However she was actually the one who came up at the very first and quickly retreated as mentioned above.
She was the original split and carried much trauma that took a lot of work. Strangely, not long after her appearance, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she died less than a year after this major alter ego made herself known and was working on her trauma. Part of this trauma was fear of losing her mother when “she” was two. It felt like trauma in a time-warp to me as trauma from past and present merged. Perhaps that helped with resolution. She was an anxious sort, but could emotionally dissociate such that intellectually she could function well quite well in present life–except for periodic panic attacks.
Getting It Together
As this last self “grew up” and resolved traumas, effort toward integration seemed to stall for much longer than expected. My therapist just said that things would work when the system was ready. This was very frustrating for me. For a time, weekly therapy sessions just dealt with relief of anxiety. Some years after my mom’s death, my Dad, who was getting quite old, passed away suddenly.
Not long after this I was in a therapy session when my therapist recognized another personality. I resisted at first being quite tired of dealing with new alter egos. However, this one had amnesia episodes and resisted coming out of hiding. And there she was…the core self who only existed when she felt safe and accepted. Did she require that both my parents were out of the picture before she felt safe to exist? My husband did not naturally engender emotional safety either.
This part couldn’t even remember 25 of our 30 years of marriage and only snippets of raising our two children. This made me feel very sad. But now progress toward integration moved forward. When I integrated a few years later, I did get my memories back as my therapist promised.
Working Toward Integration
For me, the experience of DID felt like my conscious presenting self was not in control of my life. It felt like I was being controlled by all these different personalities. When I looked back on my growing up years, I could identify what parts were likely present in certain environments. However I was not aware of “switching” between parts until therapy and learning who “they” were. For a time I felt like I was the main character in a science fiction movie, and the only one without the script. This went on for a couple of years. At first the alter egos were not so cooperative. A couple were sometimes frightening.
My therapist could “call” on a particular alter ego by name and they would come up and express their thoughts and feelings to him in therapy. Each was unique and seemed to require some time in therapy working on her “own stuff.” At my therapist’s advise, I would journal for each of them. Sometimes I held “group” meetings where I set up chairs and each would talk to the other. The goal was to get to know each alter ego, to break down the walls between them, and have them get to know each other and learn to cooperate.
Following is some information from an article found on http://did-research.org (On the home page click on treatment and then click on Integration). This article discusses different ways in which alter egos become a whole with the “core self,” or they may create an arrangement of cooperation (later). One section refers to integration of alters as fusion. These alter egos, with their own sense of autonomy and self, need to integrate/heal from PTSD.
Integration between alters allows for “easy communication, a lack of dissociative amnesia between parts, and a consistent sense of being grounded in the present and in the body.” As dissociative barriers dissolve between parts, the self system as a whole, can move toward unified goals. The self can “freely access skills, memories, and traits without needing for the alter ego to be present.”