Safety on the Inside

Here is a page with literally hundreds of articles on safety in all sort of places and situations. Well worth reading!  http://www.minneapolismn.gov/police/crimeprevention/

I’ve saved the most important part of keeping yourself safe for last. Why? It’s the hardest to write! And perhaps it will linger in your mind, which has been prepared by all sorts of practical advice in dealing with the outside world.

Your internal safety and internal communication are crucial to creating external safety. All the precautions in the world won’t help if part of you refuses to take them and sabotages every effort of yours to put them in place. The image that comes to my mind is having a pretty carriage, attaching six horses to differ parts of it, and then telling the horses to pull as hard as they can indifferent directions. Even if one horse is stronger than the others, it won’t go smoothly on one direction. Chances are it will quickly break into a million pieces.

Internal communication, therefore, is the key to successfully keeping yourself safe. Everybody has to be on the same page, or at least watching when the others agree on a plan and put it into action. You might try appealing to alters’ curiosity. “We did it the old way last time. Let’s try a new way as an experiment and see what happens.” Or you might try reassuring your insiders that you are older and stronger and wiser and you have found all these nifty new safety devices and therefore you can keep the whole system safe.

It’s the sad truth that it takes a long time and a lot of hard work to establish internal communication and cooperation. I’ve heard of some people who left the cult all at once and never looked back. Like they snapped their fingers or threw a light switch and immediately saw everything differently. But all the people I know (myself included) had a dimmer switch to work with. They left slowly, left and came back, left and came back, over and over. Many have made it all the way into freedom, others are still struggling and experimenting.

It’s not how long it takes, it’s how persistent you are and how strongly you persevere. You take small steps forward, rest, assess how it went, and plan your next small step. You stay curious and willing to experiment with new approaches. You stay determined. And then one day there is a break through.

I met a woman who was beaten up in her apartment on a regular basis. She tried different ways of keeping her assailants out, but none worked. Or they seemed to work for a few weeks, and then her apartment was broken into again, just as she started to relax a little. She was hurt, puzzled, frightened, and discouraged to the point of giving up. She was convinced that they  knew how to bypass each way she tried of securing the windows and doors.

She had also been talking to her insiders and thought they all agreed on the efforts to keep intruders out.  She kept talking to them even in the face of failure. One day a little stepped up and said that if she opened the door, they did get hurt, but that the men had promised that if they could come and hit her a little they would not kill her sister. The little was full of love and more than willing to get hurt to save her sister’s life.

Suddenly it all made sense. Her perpetrators had no high tech or magic way of bypassing the alarms, they just knew how to bully a child. What worked was helping the newly discovered alter to grieve, thanking her for her loving heart, explaining how the adults tried to control children by making threats, and finally explaining that they would not kill her sister because they wanted her alive.

There were no more “break ins.” But there were, of course, other challenges to be met with a whole new bunch of baby steps.

This short entry only skims the surface of things that you can do internally. You can find an article by Arauna Morgan, “Seeing and Breaking the Chains: Steps for Recognizing On-Going Abuse and How to Break FREE,”  at http://endritualabuse.org/healing/breaking-the-chains/. If you get overwhelmed reading it, remember that you don’t have to do everything at once. Pick what speaks to your condition and start with that.

Try and remember that every small step is an achievement: reading part of the article, talking to your insiders, speaking to them with love and respect, pondering what else you can do to protect yourselves. Most of all, cherishing your hope and determination.

 

I hope you all get through the holidays okay. May you stay safe, inside and out, may you cry if you need to, may you be calmly alone or with people you trust and care about. For those of you that have a faith that celebrates these days, may your soul be filled. For those of you that don’t, may you think of things you can be grateful for and feel happy about them, even for a moment.

Book Review: Dear Little Ones

Dear Little Ones: Dissociative Identity Disorder for Young Alters. Written by Jade Miller and illustrated by Germán Zaninetti. CreateSpace, 2015. Available from Createspace and Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

Jade is a blogger and an artist. She is a polyfragmented Satanic ritual abuse survivor who wrote this book to help all inner children who are lonely and scared.

Germán Zaninetti is an illustrator living in Argentina. He prefers to work on mythological themes (mostly Greek and Egyptian), but also feels comfortable with child themes.

It’s hard for me to review this book. I would rather just quote the whole thing so that you can see how gentle and loving it is. Frankly, it brings tears to my eyes.

What I like best about the book is that it empowers child alters. Often decisions are made for them by more powerful alters, by the part currently in charge, or by a therapist or other helper. Hopefully those decisions are made with love and caring, so that the child alters can experience some healthy reparenting. But their lack of power when other people are telling them what to do can’t help but be a repetition of a large part of the cult experience.

Jade takes a really different approach. She starts by telling the child alters that it wasn’t their fault. “No matter what happened, no matter what anyone told you, it was not your fault.” And she tells them how wonderful they are.

She then explains the creation of alters. “But because of those things that happened, other people needed to be born on the inside in order to help the body stay alive.”  Some stayed young, others grew older. She tells the child alters they get to choose whether they grow older or stay the same.

Jade suggests that they explore inside and see if they can find other children to be friends with, older people to help them and explain things to them. She tells them she might find scary people inside, too. They are trying to help in their own way. She suggests that the children be kind to them because they are hurting, too. “In time, as people are nice to them, they will feel better and learn other ways to help and how to be friends.”

That’s true. If inside people are nice to parts that frighten them, those parts change. But I have never heard (that I remember) anyone telling child alters that they can do this, even without a PhD. Talk about empowerment!

After explaining outside people who are helpers and giving the child alters suggestions on how to stay grounded when they feel overwhelmed, Jade comes back to the theme of choice. They get to choose things that make them feel better.

The ending is like a blessing: “I wish all and only good things for you as you continue to take steps that will bring you into a life of truth and joy and peace.

I am with you in my heart, and I am cheering for you.

Love, Jade”

Jade and friends

You can get to know Jade at her blog: www.thoughtsfromj8.com  and her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/thoughtsfromj8  If you want to write her, her address is talktoj8@gmail.com

You can email Germán at harryzon88@gmail.com

Explaining Flashbacks to Littles.

t’s always hard to explain sophisticated psychological concepts to children, whether they are inner or outer children. It’s hard enough to explain them to adults, but with kids you have to match your words to their age and keep things really simple.

Kids do much better, however, when they know what is happening. They may hate it, but they don’t feel wild and crazy and totally panicked.

Here’s something I wrote in, I believe, 2002.

“This is what grown-ups call a flashback. It feels yucky. It’s something we are remembering. Once long ago we forgot it, and now we are remembering. It isn’t happening now. It just feels like it is because the memory is so strong. But that’s okay. It’s like the mind is burping up a memory. Burp! It feels better after you burp.”

It’s not quite right for little kids. It needs elaboration, and needs breaks for questions. Here’s a rewrite:

“I’m going to explain something to the littles. Anybody can listen if they want to. Nobody has to listen.”

“You are having what grown-ups call a flashback. I can explain it to you. Do you want to hear about them?”

“Okay, fine. You are remembering something that happened to you. Once long ago you forgot it, and now you are remembering. It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it? Do you have any questions?”

“It isn’t happening now, it’s a memory. The memory is so strong that it feels like it is happening right now. That’s why it is called a flashback — the memory is coming back in a flash. After you have had some more flashbacks of this memory, you will understand that it is a memory like any other memory and you won’t be so scared.”

“Here’s a funny way of thinking about it — it’s like a burp. Your mind is burping up a memory. It feels better after you burp.”

If older inner kids are listening, they won’t feel talked down to because they know it’s in language the littles can easily understand. And, of course, both older kids and adults can understand it, too.

Since kids don’t get things right away, it’s a good idea to repeat it each time you recognize a flashback.