alters – Ritual Abuse

My Late-Life Identity Crisis

August 20, 2022 by Jean, posted in alters, and amnesia, fragmentation

There is an announcement after the article.

Mid-life identity crises are easy to spot. Men dream of sports cars, red pick-up trucks, beautiful young women, and tours to Mount Everest. Women dream of “just one more baby,” grad school, and Dancing with the Stars. It’s a rough time for marriages. It’s often a period of depression and ennui. “J’ai lu tous les livres, et j’en ai marre de la vie. (I’ve read all the books, and I am sick and tired of life.”

Identity crises in the elderly – well, you usually think of deepening wrinkles, deteriorating health, loss of independence, and hints of dementia. But do you think of finding out you aren’t the person you thought you were? What are the signs of that? I’d say, for me, staring into space, picking up a pencil and making it hover over a piece of paper, never touching it. Talking out loud to myself, having strange dreams. Also, saying, “really???” a lot to people.

I’ve written before about how I have a sense that there is no me, nothing that holds the hypothetical self together and gives it consistently over time. It’s easier to see continuity with my body. All my memories include the fact that I have a head, two feet, and two hands. My height and weight have changed since I was two, of course, and my hands and feet have become larger. But from the time I was fifteen, there have been no basic changes in the architecture of my body.

Looking back, the earliest clue that I remember is lamenting, “I have no personality.” This was in my early teens. I meant that there was nothing outstanding about me, nothing memorable. I felt that I didn’t catch people’s interest, so there was no reason for them to get to know me. Invisible.

That’s how it feels not to have any sense of self. My body is visible, but my self is invisible to myself, if that makes any sense. And if somebody outside me thinks that they see me, well, they are deluded or just pretending in order to be nice. That doesn’t sound like it makes a lot of sense, either!

Over the past year, things have been changing. I’m back in touch with many people who have known me over the years. When we reconnect, many spontaneously say something like, “You have always been….” When I ask people who I trust to be honest with me and tell me what, if anything, has been constant about me over the years, they can list many traits. I have to listen to them because I know they don’t lie.

If all these people experience me as being constant over the years, they must be reacting to something that has stayed consistent. And, interestingly, they all mention the same things! This suggests that there really is a me and that I am simply blocked from seeing it. What is more, if I met somebody who matched their perception of me, I would like that person. I would be happy to have her as a friend.

Being told that I am perceived in a positive light is in direct opposition to the deep-seated belief that I am toxic, that my love is poison. All these years, I have believed the lies I was told and have covered up “the truth” about me in shame and fear. That’s sad. It’s really nice, however, to start genuinely believing they are lies, not a description of the real me.

Several months after I began absorbing the implication of these discoveries, I started becoming aware of something I have known all along, something I have known without knowing I knew it.

A large percentage of me is unconscious, and I am still amnesic for most of my abuse memories. Why don’t I know more? What is down there? What’s holding me back? What am I afraid of? What terrible things would happen if I did know?

Hints abound; hints from childhood and hints from adulthood, both before and after I started remembering. In second or third grade, I thought the Russians had found out how to put people to sleep for a month, play recordings, and have them wake up knowing all that the tapes had contained. I was struggling to memorize the multiplication tables and thought it would be wonderful to go to sleep one night and wake up a month later knowing them perfectly. And why not, while I was at it, also learn multiplication and long division in my sleep? Now how did I know about this?

Perhaps there is a clue in this piece of information. Ewen Cameron was doing these experiments even before he went to McGill. He was in the United States from 1936 to 1943. I was in first grade in 1943.

In grade school, I was affronted that nobody had tested my ability to see things at a distance, not even guessing the suit and rank of playing cards held behind a screen. I assumed that these tests were the entrance exam, so to speak, to really interesting studies. I was disappointed, insulted, and angry. How did I know about remote viewing? Why did I care so much?

These aren’t memories that popped out in therapy. I have always remembered these thoughts and been puzzled by them.

After I remembered and found therapists who knew about ritual abuse, more hints surfaced. However, they slid out of consciousness after a while, only to resurface after months or years.

I hope they stay conscious now that I am collecting dots to connect later on.

Two issues are especially important to me.

First, I have always been puzzled about how I make decisions. I feel fragmented, and I feel that tiny pieces of me come together to do things. But how do the fragments get chosen? And how can I decide to collect those fragments and then, when the task is over, let them go?

Is it possible that there is a part of me that exists out of my awareness and is aware of my surroundings and everything in my conscious mind? Could that part be guiding the little pieces?

To date, the only theory that seemed to make sense was that actions were guided by stimulus/response. Stimulus: see a dirty dish; Response: put it in the dishwasher. Stimulus: open my calendar app and realize it’s the 10th, 20th, or 30th of the month; response: post a blog entry. I never felt very convinced, but it was the best I could come up with.

Now I have another possible explanation. Frankly, it seems more likely. And scarier.

Second, I have worried for at least two decades that I might have destructive sleeper alters that I am not aware of. Around 12/31/1999 – 1/1/2000, I was terrified, not only of being killed but also by the possibility that the start of a new century was a trigger to wake up my own sleeper alters. Even worse, this would happen to many people at the same time, and we would go about destroying everything in sight.

Nothing happened. It might have as well have been any other night.

I did not stop worrying on and off, however. I don’t say, “Oh, that proves I don’t have sleeper alters.” All I can say for sure is that if I do have sleeper alters, they weren’t triggered into action by the date change.

Now I am willing to explore this part of me, the large unknown world below the protective amnestic barrier. I don’t know if I will get there. But if I do, I know that what is there will contribute mightily to this amazing late-life identity crisis.

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RA/MC Panel at the International Human Trafficking and SocialJustice Conference

I will be part of a panel of RA/MC survivors of child sex trafficking. The title of the presentation is “The Interface between Sex Trafficking, Ritual Abuse, and Mind Control Programming.” It will be in two parts. Each part will consist of a recording of the panel discussion followed by live questions and answers. There will be a fifteen-minute break between the two sections.

We have the whole afternoon on Thursday, September 22, 2022. Read more about the presentation plus descriptions of all the other presentations at https://app.traffickingconference.com/schedule

Please come see us in (virtual) person! Survivors should choose the “Free Attendee Registration” option and remember to write for the registration code number. Register at https://www.traffickingconference.com/register

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Upcoming Holidays

August
8/1 Lammas/Lughnasadh
8/11 Full Moon
8/13 Friday the 13th
8/15 (?) Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8/24 (?) St. Bartholomew’s Day

September
9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage to the Beast
9/5 Labor Day (United States)
9/10 Full Moon
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 (?) Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and of all Angels

October
10/9 Full Moon
10/10 Columbus Day
10/13 Backward Halloween
10/25 Partial solar eclipse visible in Europe, the Urals, Western Siberia, the Middle East, India, Western Asia, and northeast Africa. https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/solar/2022-october-25
10/31 Halloween/start of Celtic New Year/start of the dark half of the year

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups

10/1 Lammas
Early August through October: Various preparations are done in readiness for October, the month with the largest number of celebrations.
9/2 Autumnal equinox, “Fall Festival.”
10/16 Death of Rosenburg, a Nazi leader in World War II. (Many Nazi leaders were captured and scheduled for trial in late September and early October. Most of them killed themselves prior to trial.)
10/17 Hitler’s alternate half birthday (6 months from Easter, 2022)
10/19 Death of Hermann Goering, a Nazi leader in World War II.
10/20 Hitler’s half-birthday
10/31 – 11/1 Halloween

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Oh, Now I Get It!

July 10, 2022 by Jean, posted in alters, polyfragmentation, ritual abuse

Announcements are at the end of this entry.

I was rummaging through old files and found an interesting article I wrote around 1995. Of course, now I can’t find it to get the exact date.

I am amazed that I saw myself as polyfragmented back then. At that time, I was trying to fit into a model that included alters. I was imagining that there was a whole bunch of alters inside, without names or ages or genders or voices .and if I talked to them, I could teach them things. However, I wouldn’t know if they learned anything until I saw a change in the external, real world.

Now I think it’s not a question of alters but a wave of fragments that comes together, like sand blown off a dune. And the next time, the sand comes from a different part of the dune.

Never mind. I still talk to them or it, or whatever it’s called, and I talk to my feet and to myself, and I talk out loud. Why brood about “who” is doing something?. The important thing is to put the vacuum cleaner back where it belongs.

Here’s the article I found.

Oh, Now I Get It!

My friend Sonya calls and learns I am having trouble getting out of the house and to the copy center. She says she will come with me to make things easier. Sonya and I are both polyfragmented, and we both have a series of alters who slide to the front to do different tasks. We talk about this in the car.

S: “I always think of you as high-functioning and am surprised when you get stuck and can’t do something. Happens to me all the time, but I don’t expect it to happen to you.”

J: “Ha! I see you the same way. I try to work around it. I assume some alters are frightened so I try to explain to them that it isn’t dangerous to do these things today.”

S: “Yes, and the more you get in touch with those alters, you the more you feel the resistance. But it isn’t always resistance.”

J: “What do you mean?”

S: “Some alters just don’t come out very often, so I have to teach those that are out to do jobs for the ones who don’t come out. For example, the one who opens doors is out a lot, but the one who closes them hardly ever is. So I come home and find every cabinet door, every dresser drawer, wide open. Makes the apartment look terrible.”

I have a very enthusiastic vacuuming alter. I vacuum when the cat hairs show. I vacuum when I am upset and need to calm down or think. Unlike other housework jobs, I enjoy vacuuming. Most days, the vacuum cleaner can be found in the middle of the floor, ready to be tripped over.

J: “Oh now I get it! I need to teach more inner folks how to put away the vacuum cleaner.”

S: “Right. It isn’t that you are lazy or messy, it’s just that they don’t know how to do it. I felt so much better about myself when I figured this out.”

J: “I always thought that it was inability to finish a job. A strange form of perfectionism – I can pretend that if I had finished it, it would have turned out wonderfully. But if I actually do finish it, I’ll surely be disappointed.

Or else procrastination. If things are half done, I can fret about that instead of the things that are really bothering me.”

S: “Well, those things are true, too. It’s always multi-layered.”

Initially, I’m excited. I have a new way to work around my hang-ups! Then I think of what a pain it is to teach children to tie their shoes or put away their toys. It’s far simpler to do it myself. I start spiraling into confusion. If there is a “me” who can teach, why can’t that “me” just put away the vacuum cleaner? These thoughts could drive me bats. I’ll save them for therapy – if I remember.

Bingo! An insight! This explains why I have such a long learning curve. Say I want to use a new piece of software. It’s a bright but frightened, anxious, and insecure child learning, not a poised, self-confident woman. And the poor thing has to go it alone, without a teacher or mentor.

Sonya explains that what worked best for her was to write out the steps involved in a task in excruciating detail. She pretends she is writing an instruction manual for a Martian on how to make a cup of tea. That way, if she switches, she only has to remember how to read, not how to make tea or close cabinet doors.

She then invites alters to listen as she reads the instructions. “Would some of you like to learn how to make a cup of tea?” Sometimes somebody wants to, sometimes nobody does.

In time, lots of alters learn all about making tea. The process speeds up as it goes along because there are more and more internal teachers. One fine day, the instructions are no longer necessary.

I’ve found it’s more effective to say things to myself out loud than to think them. “First you pull gently on the vacuum cleaner cord to unplug it. That’s right. Then hold the plug in your left hand. Bend your elbow. Wind the cord around your arm between your hand and elbow. Very good.” I’m so glad I live alone and don’t have to explain anything to anybody.

My guess is that this approach might also be helpful to people who aren’t polyfragmented. I can’t imagine any harm that could come of trying it a couple of times. It certainly is a gentler way of approaching yourself than scolding or putting yourself down for what you can’t do at the moment. You might feel silly at first (I know I will), but you might also get results

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Cat Update

It’s been a long ten days. Baker stopped eating and pooping, so I took him to the vet. They did an X-ray to make sure he didn’t have an obstruction and were alarmed to see a thickening of the intestine wall. They also saw advanced kidney disease and kidney stones. They recommended an ultrasound to get more detailed information and a “cell aspiration.” This entails taking cells with a needle – sort of like a biopsy, but with far fewer cells. I will know the results next week. It’s hard waiting.

On the bright side, he was given an appetite stimulant which I rub on his ear (easy-peasy!), and it works. He now is eating tuna in lots of water, not enough, but it’s a start. And for the first time, he spent most of the night in bed with me.

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We Need Some Help!

GrassRoots is starting to grow, and we can’t keep up with everything. What we really need help with is the website. We have material waiting to be added, but nobody has the time to do it.

So we need somebody to take text that has been edited and proofed and add it to the appropriate page. We would tell you where it belongs, and you would follow the same format as other entries on that page. It’s a WordPress template, so it should be pretty easy.

We have a graphic designer who chooses fonts and colors, places images, etc. If you are interested, write us at https://grassroots-ra-mc-collective.org/contact-us/.

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Two new RA/MC drop-in groups

A new drop-in group joins the CUPP of Hope Wednesday night group! It meets on Mondays 5:00–6:30 PM Pacific Time

Holiday Zoom Open Houses

It’s hard to get through holidays of all kinds – those you find on a ritual calendar or plain old “Hallmark” holidays. They aren’t quite so awful when you can share them with others who “get it.” Watch the GrassRoots web page for the date of the next one – I’m guessing it will be around the solstice.

For all questions, please contact joanies at cuppofhope@gmail.com.

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An Infinite Mind is accepting proposals for their 13th annual Healing Together Hybrid conference. Deadline is August 31. The conference will take place on February 17 – 19, 2023, in Orlando, Florida. Information: https://www.aninfinitemind.org/healing-together-conference

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RA/MC Panel at the International Human Trafficking Conference

I will be part of a four-person panel of RA/MC survivors of child sex trafficking. The title of the presentation is “The Interface between Sex Trafficking, Ritual Abuse, and Mind Control Programming.” It will be in two parts. Each part will consist of a recording of the panel discussion followed by live questions and answers. There will be a fifteen-minute break between the two sections.

Our time-slots are 1:45 and 3:15 on Thursday, September 22. 2022. Read more about the presentation plus descriptions of all the other presentations at https://app.traffickingconference.com/schedule

Please come see us in (virtual) person! Choose the “Free Attendee Registration” option and remember to write for the registration code number. Register at https://www.traffickingconference.com/register

~~~~~~~~

Upcoming Holidays

July
7/13 Full Moon
7/25 St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God
7/27 Grand Climax/Da Meur

August
8/1 Lammas/Lughnasadh
8/11 Full Moon
8/13 Friday the 13th
8/15 (?) Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8/24 St. Bartholomew’s Day

September
9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage to the Beast
9/5 Labor Day (United States)
9/10 Full Moon
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 (?) Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and of all Angels

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups

July 29: Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party.
August 1: Lammas
Early August through October: Various preparations are done in readiness for October, the month with the largest number of celebrated dates.
September 22: autumnal equinox, “Fall Festival.
9/25 – 9/27: Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year)

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You can find more information on the following holidays at:

Categorizing DID

October 31, 2021 by Jean, posted in alters, dissociation

Poetry Reading News

The Poetry Reading was pretty cool. This time, we invited people to bring one of their poems to read and about half the audience accepted. People loved it, just like the first time. I wasnt nearly as anxious as the first time, so there wasn’t that sense of relief when it was over. Can’t argue with that!

We are doing it again on February 19th. Same co-hosts, different poets.

Call for Editor of a RA/MC Online Poetry Anthology

We have had requests for a website where we could publish people’s poems – an online anthology. I think I have somebody to design it and do the layout. Would somebody like to be in charge? If so, contact us at: https://grassroots-ra-mc-collective.org/contact-or-express-your-interest-in-running-an-event/

Categorizing Dissociative People – People with Parts

I wrote last time about realizing that all multiples are different – all systems are unique. Now I want to talk about how dissociative disorders are categorized.

I’ll start by quoting the DSM-V, which is used to code diagnoses. It doesn’t really relate to what I want to say, but it is interesting to read about it.

I got the text from traumadissociation.com, which has a lot of good information and discussion on such things as differentiating dissociative disorder from bipolar or borderline personality disorder.

http://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeidentitydisorder.html#differential

“A. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption of marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.

B. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.

C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.

E. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures).” [3]:292

Quick Comments on C, D, and E.

C. Quite a few people with DID are very high functioning and show little or no impairment. They also are not significantly distressed. What deficits they have are well hidden from others (and themselves), and there would be no need for treatment at this time.

D. Why do you have to choose? Surely some people with DID are part of a culture or religion that values spirit possession. Surely there are children with DID who have imaginary playmates.

E. Again, why do you have to choose? Having two separate conditions is called “comorbidity.” The rate of alcoholism and drug abuse in RA/MC survivors appears to be similar to that of the general population (around 10% – 15%). Eating disorders, however, are far more frequent in RA/MC survivors (around 50% – 60%).

Looking at A and B: “Discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency” plus “recurrent gaps in recall” (e.g., amnesia). Does this describe people with DID? I’d say it does. However, it doesn’t give an idea of the variation found in any group of people with DID.

How many parts are there? How often do they switch? Do child parts come to the front? Do parts present as the same person at different ages? As separate from the person? As human, animals, inanimate objects? As something less defined, like a gust of wind, tiny pieces of sand or glass, or just a feeling of something different?

Do they know each other? Talk to each other? Talk to you? Are they organized? If so, in what way? Are they part of a rigid hierarchy? Of an organization with a name, history, and goal? Do they live in a place with houses, trees, ponds, etc.?

If children are subjected to repeated extreme trauma that seems random, with no justifying ideology, they will split into parts that will organize themselves organically. The abusers do not attempt to isolate and train any part. Organized groups, however, will either formally or informally train a child to behave in certain ways. Repeated actions teach the child that certain behaviors are expected at certain times.

The start of the ritual, for example, would serve as a trigger to bring out a part that knows what to do at each stage of the ritual. It is only one small step for group members to train an already-formed part, refine the behavior, and teach it to come out when cued. This happens in child prostitution and pornography rings as well as in cults.

In government/military mind control, training of the parts is more intense, more frequent, and extreme torture is more common. The programmers pay close attention to each part, assigning them roles and jobs within the system. They have groups of parts trained to be back-ups to other parts, just in case something happens to them. They do everything they can think of to make sure that their programming doesn’t break down. It seems to me that they delight in the complexity of the systems they create – perhaps competing against other programmers.

There is overlap between cult groups, prostitution and pornography rings, and government/military mind control. Programming customs and techniques travel between groups, especially at the higher levels. You can’t easily put your finger on differences between groups – you can’t say, “Oh, this person has a part called X who interacts with a group composed of A B and C. They must have been abused in Southern Idaho.” When abusive groups were first migrating from Europe, you might have been able to, but not these days.

Looking back over the years, I can see patterns in how survivors understood their systems. In the early years, the ’80s and early ’90s, people with DID were thought to have a few clearly defined parts with little communication between them. “Three Faces of Eve” influenced the development of this model. As survivors got together and started talking, they realized that most people were more complicated than that. They had far more parts than was originally thought.

The more people compared notes, the more they learned about themselves and other dissociated people. They learned that some people’s parts were extremely varied – there were babies and dragons and demons and mother cats and kittens and robots and soldiers and magicians and CEOs and many, many more. They also learned that these parts were in complicated relationships with each other and that “system maps” could be very useful in understanding how things worked together. Knowledge about government/military programming grew out of familiarity with these complicated systems.

Now I am seeing a growing interest in parts that are vaguer, less defined, less animate than clearly defined parts with emotions, histories, and jobs. “Polyfragmented,” for example, once meant more than 50 or 100 parts. Then it came to encompass people with thousands of parts. Now there is interest in fragments as small as shattered pieces of glass or grains of sand. How do these tiny fragments come together to do something and then dissipate? What programming caused this to happen?

At the same time, there is a growing awareness of “shell alters” – “front parts” who serve as a container for other internal parts who step into the shells and speak through them. And how are these two phenomena related, if they are?

I’m sure that DID is even more complicated than it seems today. Who knows what we will be puzzling over in five or ten years!

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