DID – Ritual Abuse

Shell Alters

July 20, 2020July 20, 2020 by Jean, posted in diagnosing dissociation, multiplicity, programming, ritual abuse

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I remember when I first learned about shell alters. It was so long ago that I had read all the books on ritual abuse that had ever been published. Imagine! I had just gotten a computer and had joined a couple of Usenet groups. My inbox received maybe two emails a week.

I met a survivor, way back then, once upon a time. We found each other in ASAR (Alt Sexual Abuse Recovery), one of the groups I belonged to, and then managed to meet in person. We clicked immediately and started talking about how our minds worked and whether we were multiple or not. Neither one of us seemed to switch the whole time we were together.

She had figured out how her system worked. There was a front person, and other inner people used that person to talk through. It was sort of like borrowing somebody’s clothes; the front person’s personality and mannerisms were borrowed and passed around. This meant that switching wasn’t obvious – alters flowed into each other seamlessly.

I don’t know where she heard the term, or whether she thought it up independently, but she talked about her “shell alter.” By that, she meant that the front person was transparent and served as a shell to hold and display what other alters were thinking or feeling.

I visualized a sea shell, but that doesn’t work. It is more like a shell that a lobster, one day, can shed. There is a real live lobster inside it, and the shell serves only to contained and protect it.

No, that doesn’t work, either, because it’s one lobster, many shells, whereas, with this form of multiplicity, there is one shell, many lobsters. Maybe a snail shell used by many different hermit crabs in succession? I can’t find a good metaphor, but I think I know what I mean, and I hope you can figure it out.

In Googling “shell alters” I came across this definition: (http://traumadissociation.com/alters)

“A shell alter is an Apparently Normal Part (host alter/front person) which handles daily life and is designed to hide the existence of other alters from the outside world. Shell alters do not exist in DID, they only exist in one form of DDNOS (now renamed to Other Specified Dissociative Disorder). The apparently normal part (ANP) is a shell through whom the inside parts/alters act. The inside parts can come near the surface, temporarily blending with the ANP. The inner parts are not regarded as separate, distinct states although amnesia may exist between them. If DDNOS is caused by ritual abuse and mind control, the shell alter is not supposed to know about the others.”

From this definition, it seems that if a person’s mind is organized with a shell alter, they will not know this and will think that they are a singleton. It is only when the programming begins to break down that they learn about the shell alter and those who come forward to interact with the world.

Many questions come to mind. Why doesn’t this system qualify as DID? Why can’t the alters be separate, distinct states, with their own names, ages, histories, etc.? And can there be more than one shell in the same system? Google was of no help.

I see no reason why there can’t be more than one shell alter. First, programmers like to make backups in case something happens to the original. Why shouldn’t they create more than one shell? Second, being “out” or “fronting” for twenty-four hours, day after day, is tiring. Handling all the challenges that the world constantly throws at people, being available to dozens and dozens of inner people, some in conflict with each other, sounds exhausting to me. To survive, you’d think even the strongest shell alter would need a break.

I know that some complex systems have layers of alters arranged in different ways. It is quite possible that one or more of these layers have a shell alter, while other layers are designed in such a way that they do not need a shell.

I’ll offer myself as an example. I was used to test how easy it was to implant a system and how easy it was for the handler to use it once it was formed. I was sort of a lab to test prototypes.

The main way I interact with the world is through fragments that group together for a purpose and then go their separate ways. Other systems, which do not depend on fragments, were also placed in my mind.

One was a whole village with men, women, and children. There were groups of soldiers, priests, farmers, cooks, teachers, etc. As far as I can tell, the people in the village interacted with each other, but an interface with the outside world was never created. It was as if the programmer said, “Yup, works fine, but it’s sort of boring. Let’s shut it down and go on to something more interesting.”

Another was based on mathematical figures and was, basically, just a method of storing information. No part of this system had consciousness; all it could do was accept information for storage and display that information on command.

Three very different systems. Things can get complicated.

I don’t know, once a person has figured out that they have a system that uses a shell, whether the shell starts to reveal a personality and an ability to act independently of other alters. I don’t know whether the shell, from the beginning, thought of itself as “me.” If not, was “me” ever-changing, depending on who was interacting with the world through the shell?

I don’t hear a lot of survivors talking about shell alters. I can’t remember ever reading an article about shell systems, nor did I come across any when I did my Google search. Perhaps not has been written about it, and so therapists aren’t looking for it. They may assume that there are many teen or adult alters who come to the front in succession and have learned to act in pretty much the same way.

It’s also possible that there just aren’t many shell systems. It may be more difficult to create or work with. Or it may be less apt to break down than other systems and therefore doesn’t come to the attention of the survivor, therapists, or people close to the survivor.

It will be interesting to see if anybody who reads this writes in the comment sections saying, “Yes, that’s me. That’s how my mind works.” Hopefully, they will share some of the many issues I haven’t touched on in this short article.

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Upcoming Holidays

July
7/25 St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God
August
8/1 Lammas/Lughnasadh
8/3 Full moon
8/15 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8/24 St. Bartholomew’s Day
September
9/1 Full moon
9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage of the Beast
9/7 Labor Day (United States)
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and of all Angels

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
7/30 Tisha B’Av (Day of Mourning)
7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party
(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes.)

Ritual Abuse and Polyfragmentation

June 30, 2016 by Jean, posted in alters, dissociation, fragmentation, multiplicity, ritual abuse

Back in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s, when I first started down this long, difficult, amazingly rewarding path, the word polyfragmentation wasn’t used in connection with multiplicity. Or if it was, it didn’t pop up in any of the myriad books about ritual abuse that I read at the time and so I didn’t know about it. Well, I knew about it intuitively, and so did many others, but we had no words to describe it.

Now most all survivors know what polyfragmentation is and feel a lot less lonely and crazy. Which is great!

But do they really know? Poking around, I found that the term seems to be used in several different ways. Just knowing that the word comes from poly = many and fragmented = the state of being broken off, detached, or incomplete doesn’t help a whole lot. (from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fragment)

Here are some of the ways the term is used:

1. More than 100 alters. I assume that means alters with names, ages, personal histories, etc. Some may be more fully formed than others, but basically they are all like people. That’s a lot, but it seems to me that it’s more a crowd than a group of fragments. Though I suppose if you consider that all alters either come from the original personality or from alters that have already split off, you can consider all the alters fragments. But wouldn’t that be true of people with 79 alters, or 5, or 3?

2. Parts with only one function, or formed during one specific instance of abuse. These parts might not have personalities and probably would not appear too often. They were split off from an existing alter and, because they are so limited, could be considered a fragment.

3. Parts arranged in layers throughout the system, generally isolated and not in communication with other parts of the system. Here I start getting confused: I can see that the system could be considered fragmented, but I can’t see the parts as fragments. They seem to me more like “sleeper alters.” I think my confusion has something to do with the type of system organization: it generally indicates government/military programming, which I always have trouble understanding. This pattern may co-exist with either or both of the other two described.

4. And then there is my kind of fragmentation, which I don’t consider confusing at all, of course, because it is normal for me. There are little bits of things floating around with no consciousness or purpose, sort of like dust particles in the air. When I want to do something, a number of these things coalesce into what might be considered an alter, or a group of alters (for more complicated tasks.) It’s not necessarily the same particles each time. All this is very logical and simple to me…except…who/what decides what to do? who/what picks the group of fragments? who/what decides when the action is complete and the particles can disperse?

The mind is never simple, is it?

In a sense, we don’t have to know how our mind works. We have been doing what we do for years and years and by now it is automatic. It takes no effort for me to assemble an internal crew to do the dishes (once I stop procrastinating) and being able to describe it as clearly as I can makes no difference. I still can’t decide if I am a proper multiple or not; I’ve just stopped worrying about it. I have better things to do with my spare time.

I have to end this post by telling you about a man I knew years ago whose mind was totally different yet remarkably similar to mine. I think it is so fascinating.

He said his mind was a slide rule. He lined up all the components of an action, and if he got it right, it went smoothly. If one part was missing, he froze until he could find it and put it in place. And if he picked a wrong part, he risked acting inappropriately.

Here’s an example. Phone rings. Select ‘phone.” Select “answer phone.’ Woman says, “Hello, may I talk to Bill.” Select ‘woman.’ Select ‘identify self as Bill.’ Woman says, “Would you like to join us for dinner Thursday?” Select ‘mother.’ Select ‘find excuse.’ You get the idea.

It all happened at lightning speed. The only way he could analyze what was going on was to further dissociate and have a part look at the process as it was happening. After observing it many times, he found a simile for how his mind worked and was able to describe it to others. But, like me, he had no idea who or what was observing the process or who or what made the decisions – who selected ‘mother’ rather than ‘bill collector.’

I wonder if there are others like him out there. And I wonder if others truly understand polyfragmentation.

Ritual Abuse Issues and Eating Disorders

May 10, 2016 by Jean, posted in eating disorders, food

New Book! Jade Miller’s “Attachment and Dissociation: A Survivor’s Analysis” in e-book form. About intergenerational dysfunctional attachment and Jade’s healing process. (Jade is the author of “Dear Little Ones.”) http://www.amazon.com/Attachment-Dissociation-Survivors-Jade-Miller-ebook/dp/B01DPX76YQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460054531&sr=1-3&keywords=jade+miller

The eating disorders series started on 4/10, 2016 (Eating disorders and genetics,) and continued on 4/20, 2-16 (Over-eating.) The issues discussed in this section apply to anorexia and bulimia as well as over-eating.

Hard as these conditions are for people who were not abused as children, they are far harder for those of us who had to live through ritual abuse. Genetic factors and social pressure, of course, apply to all in our society.

Parents can set their kids up for eating disorders in lots of different ways. Many parents equate food with love, and since they love their kids, they over-feed them or give them candy and other goodies to make their children feel appreciated. Some cult parents act this way because they love as well as abuse their kids; others because they were raised this way and they continue the tradition without thinking. In any event, these children often grow up turning to childhood comfort foods whenever they are hurting. Which, if you are a ritual abuse survivor, is pretty much all the time.

Abusers also use food as a punishment or torture. Children can be deprived of food for a long time and then made to eat (even force-fed) rich foods, which will make them very sick. Most Satanic cults drink the blood or eat the bodies of sacrifices and often make children eat things which were never meant to be eaten, like excrement. They can also be starved for days because it is easier to program a child who is food-deprived and sleep-deprived.

Many adult survivors buy large amount of food or hoard food in reaction to having been deprived as children. Others are afraid of many foods, especially those that are unfamiliar or that remind them, consciously or unconsciously, of “bad” foods used in rituals, in training, or as torture.

It makes total sense that ritual abuse survivors often cannot eat meat, for example, and may even have trouble seeing others eat meat. Remember, though, that the opposite can occur, and some survivors will eat raw meat. This is a form of “acting out” – re-enacting a part of the repressed ritual, probably in an effort to trigger the memory and gain more information about the past. It’s not uncommon to swing between the two extremes, acting out and total avoidance. Being drawn to food can be the basis for over-eating and being repelled by food can be the basis for anorexia.

Then there is the issue of alters. Different alters may have very different attitudes, beliefs, and needs around food. If one alter wants to stop eating in an effort to disappear entirely and another alter wants to gain more and more weight in an effort to become sexually unattractive there is going to be chaos inside and out. And if one of those alters is out most of the time, the other will be seething in the background trying to figure out how to sabotage the alter in control.

Some therapists do not know a great deal about dissociation. They may believe that the eating disorder must be under control before dealing with the DID. That means that no communication between alters is established and no agreements are made inside before working on the eating disorder. This can easily lead to a battle for control between the survivor and the therapist and between the survivor’s inside people.

Even if therapists are familiar with working with alters, they may be frightened by the severity of the eating disorder, get flustered, and make mistakes. Or they may be working in a setting where they cannot make all their own decisions or where others higher up do not believe in RA, MC, or DID. There are all sorts of problems that can arise in therapy that have nothing to do with the client but which have great impact.

(There is another issue which I almost forgot because it is my issue. Survivors are often prescribed meds which cause weight gain which is very difficult to take off. I had eighty extra pounds thanks to various antidepressants. (With much effort, I have lost sixty of those pounds – hooray!) I can assure you that the meds did not increase my appetite because of the speed with which I gained weight. They wrecked havoc on my metabolism. This doesn’t belong in this post because it isn’t really an eating disorder but I thought I would mention it anyway.)

Next will be a discussion of anorexia and bulimia and then on ways of dealing with the external – the actual eating disorder – and the internal – the relationships between alters who experienced the parts of the abuse that led to the eating disorder. As always, I could use all the help I can get, so if you have ideas, please be generous and leave a comment.

Upcoming Holidays

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