Counselors and others will benefit from this webpage, but the primary focus is the people my wife and I especially admire: everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder. These are people who, simply to survive, have already overcome astounding obstacles and afflictions. They will become great achievers, when they heal.

Thanks for the Memories?

I want to heal without recalling all of the memories.

I understand exactly where this dear woman is coming from. Bad memories can terrify us. The problem, however, is that it is our refusal to face those memories that causes Dissociative Identity Disorder. Remaining unaware of what part of us is doing (or has done) is at the very heart of D.I.D. So her prayer request makes as much sense as praying, “Lord, I don’t want to be separated from my husband but I want nothing more to do with him.” Some things are logical impossibilities – insane absurdities that not even God can do.

All guilt, fear and torment associated with memories need to end but this is not the same as losing those memories. What this woman has not yet grasped is that her continued inability to remember unpleasant events would be a tragedy, not a blessing. There are several aspects to this, so it will take a few paragraphs to explain.

To run from memories would be to cave into false feelings of shame, fear or inability to cope. It would be to languish in needless defeat. That’s not God’s plan for you. Christ took all your shame, blame and pain, bearing it all in his own naked, tortured body so that you can lift your head high. Through Christ, you are a winner; not one who runs away, but a hero clothed with divine majesty in God’s royal family.

Our walk with Christ is about love, adventure and glory. It’s not about escapism, wasting one’s life and trashing opportunities for greatness. It has no partnership with cowardice and the eternal regret it brings. We might be born failures but through Christ we are transformed; born anew for achievement, heroism and honor. God has astounding faith in what you can do empowered by him. You are called to jettison shame, defeatism and self-indulgence to enter into holy union with the all-powerful Conqueror and, thus endowed, to reign with him in regal splendor:

2 Timothy 2:12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him . . . (KJV).

Romans 8:17  . . . we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Revelation 3:2 To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.

Don’t dare dishonor the Lord of glory by thinking this is beyond you. For Christ, who has invested the last drop of his blood into ensuring your success, impossibilities are playthings. You are one with the Almighty Lord. You are in him and he is in you; melded together in the most thrilling of unions.

Furthermore, even if full healing without recovery of memories were neither irrational, nor a needless defeat, it would render much of your past agony a useless waste. You are passionately loved of God; the darling of his heart. He is far too devoted to you to want you to undergo such a tragic loss. Instead, his plan is to transform your past suffering into something that exalts you to eternal heights of glory like nothing else could ever achieve. His goal is not to destroy your memories but to heal your memories so that they no longer distress you and so that your past suffering becomes something uniquely valuable. Remembering your past will not only enable you to better comprehend the love of God but will equip you with the ability to minister with unique experience and conviction to other hurting people. This is the path to eternal glory.

Astoundingly, not even the Eternal Son of God, the Infinite Lord of Glory, could be granted the authority to fulfill the exalted role of Ultimate High Priest without his familiarity with, and memory of, his own suffering (for a short explanation, see The Unexpected Value of Bad Memories).

Someone who finds study highly taxing devotes year after arduous year to medical studies. Finally he qualifies as a doctor. Now all the hard work is behind him and at last he can truly help people, save lives and reap all the benefits of his study. Can you imagine him rendering all his efforts a useless waste by praying to forget everything he has learnt?

We don’t need more self-proclaimed experts who trample on other people’s feelings; arrogant theorizers exposing themselves to the wrath of God by ignorantly thinking they are helping when they are devastating people who are already writhing in inner agony. The world is filled with – in fact has had its fill of – such people. What are as rare as diamonds, however, are people who truly understand; people whose advice does not come from a book or vain imagination but from genuine experience; leaders who, like Jesus, can say, “I’ve been there – follow me.” You’ve endured what it takes to qualify as one of those rare and valued people who truly know. Now, with almost all the sweat and tears behind you, will you throw it all away by praying to forget it all?

The great apostle Paul seems to have suffered no loss of memory when reeling off the precise number and ways in which he was tortured:

2 Corinthians 11:24-25 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea . . .

In fact, he seems to have seen his suffering as something to boast about:

2 Corinthians 11:23, 12:1 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. . . . I must go on boasting. . . .

You might long to keep suppressed within you horrific memories and/or awareness of your current emotional reaction (such as fear, pain or shame) associated with those memories. Disturbingly, however, for as long as a part of you has memories and/or emotional reactions that you have no access to, you are unable to access that part of your brain in which those memories and emotions are stored. Of particular concern is that for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (often called alters or insiders) have not just memories and emotions but other intellectual abilities. So if you have an alter you have little interaction with, those parts of your brain that you have lost access to almost certainly hold not only memories and emotions but valuable skills and intellectual abilities.

Of course, not everyone has every ability, but a person could feel certain he does not have certain abilities and yet have those very abilities locked away in that part of the brain he is currently too scared to access. These abilities could already be in a quite developed form or are able to be developed surprisingly quickly. The possibilities are almost limitless and will vary from person to person but here are a few examples of abilities that someone who, in an attempt to protect himself from unwanted memories or feelings, could be cutting himself off from:

* Superior short-term or long-term memory

* Musical ability

* Speed reading skills

* Creative cooking

* Mathematical ability

* Direction finding and navigational skills

* Better grammar and spelling

* Creative writing

* A flair for public speaking

* Artistic ability

* Linguistic ability

* Parenting skills

* Spiritual abilities such as spiritual warfare

* Intimate experiences with God

The above tiny overview should suffice to give a little insight into the tragic implications of an intellectual loss, so let’s move on and gain a little insight into the seriousness of an emotional loss. We will start with an analogy: if you were desperate enough to avoid seeing anything evil, you could blind yourself. The problem, of course, is that no matter how much this way of rendering yourself unable to see evil things might feel like protecting yourself, it would mean that you could never see beauty and things you desperately need to see. You would be severely handicapped, thus reducing the amount of good you could achieve. Likewise, totally cutting yourself off from unpleasant feelings cannot be done without cutting yourself off from certain good feelings. You would lose your zest for life and various enjoyments that God longs to bless you with. Moreover, it would emotionally handicap you, thus lowering the amount of good you could do.

To suppress an alter will do more than diminish your intellectual and emotional capacity, however. It will directly diminish you spiritually. Christians sometimes talk of head knowledge versus heart knowledge. Head knowledge lets you know a spiritual truth intellectually but it does little or nothing for you. This is because, even though you might be unconscious of what is happening within you, the life-changing power of that truth is being sabotaged by inner doubts or fears or lack of conviction or tightly held presumptions that are contrary to that spiritual truth. If you remain cut off from awareness of what is going on within you, or have little or no interaction with an alter, that part of you is cut off from your spiritual experience and insight, thus condemning yourself to having a part of you that will continually undermine the strength of your spiritual convictions and relationship with God.

There are also moral implications. You might, for example, be desperate to break a sinful habit but a part of you has no idea that the habit should be broken and/or that part has no conception of how to draw upon the power of Christ to exercise self-control. So, unknown to you, part of you could be sabotaging your good intentions, not because any part is incurably evil – with God nothing is incurable – but simply because you have not sufficiently interacted with a part of you for that part to know and benefit from your understanding of Christ.

So to suppress an alter, or to avoid befriending that part of you, is to diminish your intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacity. The only way to honor the God who gave you all this amazing potential is to get to know that alter, courageously embrace the unpleasant memories and feelings the alter has, and to increase your abilities by allowing the alter to develop spiritually, intellectually and emotionally.

Ironically, facilitating this can only occur by empowering that alter, even if that alter is currently anti-God. This can seem a terrifying thing to do. It might seem that the alter is evil, and you could wrongly imagine that to empower him or her is to increase evil in your life. The reality, however, is that if you have found Christ and been empowered by the good Lord, then so can this part of you. And the only way this alter can be transformed into someone kind, loving, gentle and devoted to God is to be allowed to surface and to interact with you, or with others, who can help that part discover that Jesus is safe, kind, gentle, patient, wise and the best friend that anyone could ever have.

No matter how strange they might initially seem, no alter is a non-human invader; a demon squatting in your brain to be fought, rebuked or resisted. On the contrary, even the most obnoxious alter is a long-lost but indispensable part of a person for whom Jesus gave his life to redeem. Each alter is a lost sheep that the Good Shepherd never forgets or neglects. Rather, our Lord focuses all his attention on it. He cares so deeply that he lovingly leaves the ninety-nine to devote all his effort to search for the lost one so that he can rejoice over lovingly restoring it to the fold.

We are called to be like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the lost. Even if you mistakenly see an alter as an enemy, remember that the One you are called to emulate loves his enemies more than his own life and is continually working on wooing them so that they will eventually discover that he is their best friend. We are called to turn the other cheek, rejoice when we are persecuted and win to Christ those who do not know him. Learning to do this begins with doing it with one’s alters.

Each of your alters is a vital, irreplaceable part of you. So for any alter to develop in any way means that you are developing. Empowering your alters to develop transforms you into the faithful servant in Jesus’ parable, rather than the one who buried his talent. Loving your alters and giving them the freedom to develop is Christlike behavior that glorifies God.

The Story So Far & Beyond

Like a troubled marriage resulting in separation, an alter going into hiding is a defeat, even if it might seem more peaceful than the alter regularly interacting with you. For as long as the alter is in hiding, that alter’s unique help, insights, abilities and emotional support is lost, as is the opportunity for that alter to heal and for the alter’s abilities to continue to develop. The result might in the short term seem deceptively easier but it intellectually cripples and emotionally handicaps the person and it chokes healing, even though the person is typically unaware of the extent of the tragedy.

It is like a child imagining it would be a gain if a baby brother died. Yes, both rivalry and the baby’s annoying crying would cease. The older child, however, has little conception of how the baby would have changed if allowed to grow and how he would have become a much-needed companion, playmate and support.

It often turns out that the alter who seems the most annoying and useless ends up developing into one of the most needed, in regard to the invaluable abilities and the emotional support and the deepening of your relationship with God that the alter ends up providing.

Contrary to what might seem intuitively right, your spiritual, intellectual and emotional development hinges on you continually empowering your alters. Both you and they should see integration as merely a further step in this long process. Integration is not getting rid of alters; it is joining forces with them. And the more alters that a particular alter merges with, the more empowered this alter will be. Any merging, however, is usually a long way down the healing/empowering process and any attempt to force the pace is likely to prove counterproductive.

It is tempting to romanticize the strategies the minds of highly distraught children develop just to survive. In order to increase motivation to heal, however, let us be brutally honest.

Sometimes called Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.), Dissociative Identity Disorder occurs when a person’s mind, instead of remaining one harmonious whole, gets broken up into fragments. In this reaction to emotional trauma, a part of the person’s awareness is cut off from other parts of the person. The result is like a committee in which no one knows what anyone else is planning. The attractive side to this chaos is that it allows a form of escapism, giving part of the person a vacation from dealing with consequences of the trauma. Like cutting off a limb to temporarily reduce pain, however, the cost of this escapism is enormous. It both significantly reduces mental function and prevents the person from healing from the devastating effects of past hurts.

For as long as there is inadequate communication between parts of a person’s mind, the person will not only fail to reach his or her full intellectual potential but will remain in emotional torment. This has spiritual and relationship ramifications and keeps its victims far from peace, happiness and fulfillment that would otherwise be theirs. If someone in this situation never makes sufficient effort to understand and cooperate closely with other parts of his or her mind, this needless tragedy will grind on for an entire lifetime. Such people will have an awareness of how hard their life is but will have little comprehension of how wonderful their life would have been if only they had courageously persisted in reconnecting with their other parts. On the other hand, those who persist on the healing journey are repeatedly amazed to discover talents and abilities they never knew they had and keep finding deeper peace, fulfillment and achievement.

What makes reconnecting so complex is that it is not reassembling a machine, but reconnecting parts of the human mind, each of which has gained full and independent access to human intelligence, emotions, will, memories, and so on. Each part has become so adept at functioning individually that each has become like an individual with distinct desires, agenda, and all the complexities of a full human being.

The Seldom-Understood Goal of Healing

Some hosts (or even counselors) might mistakenly regard it as dissociation to let other alters come out and relate to the real world, but it is actually the opposite. Whereas to dissociate is to be in denial of an aspect of reality, freeing one’s alters to relate to the real world is both acknowledging the reality of having alters and is helping alters discover current reality.

If for years you kept a baby locked in a room 24/7 with nothing but four walls to see, no one to communicate with and nothing such a book or television to learn from, the baby might grow physically but mentally he would never grow. Likewise, not letting alters interact with the real world is an act of cruelty that stops little alters from ever growing up and prevents older alters from learning new things and seeing through the lies that have kept them reeling in the inner pain of fear or guilt or with shattered self-esteem or unaware of God’s eagerness to befriend and help them.

The goal of healing is not to gain control of your alters nor to end switching from alter to alter. Rather, the goal is to gain control of your full intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacity, and switching is a vital stage in achieving that goal. Not every counselor realizes this. Some mistakenly presume that if switching has ended, the person has become “normal” and so must be “healed.” In reality, however, if parts of the person are still suppressed, that person is functioning far below his or her full capacity.

If all alters are sufficiently allowed access to the real world they will each gradually mature and grow more and more alike, thus making switching increasingly less dramatic for the person and less detectable by other people. Eventually, the alters will become so alike that they will see no point in remaining separated from each other and they will gradually merge until there is no switching, simply because they are all empowered and truly one. To stop switching while there are still separate alters, however, would be to short-circuit the entire process and prevent healing.

Alters who have been kept in isolation might initially be so angry about what they have suffered or have had no opportunity to mature or know so little about the adult world that they temporarily embarrass the host. Anyone who understands D.I.D., however, regards this as perfectly normal and knows that it is only temporary while the alter is at last being given the opportunity to normalize.

The brutal truth is that if you have alters who are just in the early stages of healing, you might find some of them not just an embarrassment but a huge source of emotional pain and confusion. They might even try to kill you – in which case you have an urgent need to win them over; turning them into friends who trust you. Nevertheless, as you continue your healing journey you will discover that not only are alters not your enemies, they are, next to God himself, your greatest asset. It is smarter to hack off your arm and leg than to keep your alters suppressed or deny them the sometimes inconvenient and embarrassing things they need. To disregard them is to perpetuate your inner pain and the fragmenting of your intellect and keep you from the heights of fulfillment and achievement that you would otherwise reach.

For Christians, the real goal of healing is not the ending of discomfort, but every part of you falling so in love with Christ as to eagerly yield to him, thus empowering you not only to reach your full intellectual, emotional, social and vocational potential, but your full spiritual potential; maximizing your ability to know and glorify the God whose love and devotion to you defies comprehension. That alone is the path to true fulfillment, and achievement that will last for all eternity.

The Challenge

If at present you act more like an abuser to certain parts of you that Christ loves more than his own life and let himself be tortured to death to redeem, you can end your shame. You can look to Christ and let him transform you into someone who loves as he does.

A common but serious mistake is for people with D.I.D. to make decisions against their alter’s will. Whether this happens simply because they are unaware of their alter’s wishes or because they assume they know better than their alters, the results can be equally damaging.

There are three reasons why disregarding an alter’s wishes can stop healing.

1. It is a law of nature that anything that grows must go through stages that cannot be skipped and there is a point beyond which these stages cannot be sped up. Alters must be allowed to develop at their own pace.

2. Forcing change upon alters triggers panic that paralyses them, preventing further growth.

3. Disregarding the wishes of one’s alters breaks down trust and cooperation with one’s alters, thus perpetuating fragmentation.

As already touched on, two other essentials for ending fragmentation and becoming whole are the courage to let oneself remember and the courage to let oneself feel.

Healing from trauma and reconnecting with alters requires more love and wisdom and trust between alters than humans are likely to ever muster. With such vast reserves of love, wisdom and trust required, anyone would be a fool to rob himself or herself of full healing by remaining distant from the only Source of infinite love and wisdom and from the only Person who is fully trustworthy – God himself.

Now let’s move beyond this overview to the nitty gritty.

Why Forcing Change Upon an Alter Makes Things Worse For Yourself

Mark 4:26-28  . . . This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head

This applies to almost every living thing. If, for example, you want an acorn to grow into a mighty oak that everyone admires, you have no option but to let it slowly progress through every stage from tender shoot to spindly sapling, all the way through to full maturity. Refuse to let it go through the sapling stage and you will never get the oak you long for. Refuse to treat a shoot with greater tenderness than you would a tree and you will never get a tree. In the same way, if you want a little alter to grow up, you must let the alter go through childish stages. Should you not let an alter have its fill of childish things, that part of you will remain emotionally trapped as a stunted, hurting alter and, without you realizing it, this will in turn stunt your own intellect and your emotional maturity. Moreover, no matter how much you pretend it is not happening, the alter’s unhealed inner agony will flood over to you.

So if you feel embarrassed about little alters, let that embarrassment drive you to facilitate their growth by meeting their current needs for childish things. Only when those needs are fully met are they able to grow up and leave childish things behind.

To understand why forcing your will upon alters or making decisions without their consent can stop healing, we need to remember that alters were formed by trauma they had no control over. When new decisions are made without consulting one’s alters, it triggers panic by reminding them of the most horrific time in their existence – a time that corresponded with them having no control over what happened to them.

What complicates things still further is that panic freezes one’s mental processes. So even if the initial panic is an over-reaction, it hinders sane evaluation of the implications of the new event. In order to think clearly, the panic needs to subside. So alters need time to ponder the implications of a change, not so much because they need an unusually long time to think but because they need long enough to calm down in order to think clearly.

To disregard an alter’s needs and fears is to act like an abuser. This will almost certainly throw them into panic and perhaps even trigger flashbacks and other horrific reactions. How could this not destroy trust between the alter and the part of the person that acted like an abuser by disregarding the alter’s need? And how could fragmentation – and all its associated ills – end, without all the fragmented parts of a person trusting each other so much that they work together as one harmonious whole? So trust is critical.

The Surprising Importance of “Childish” Things

Safety is of paramount importance to anyone who feels seriously threatened, and most alters were not only once in grave danger but until they are healed they are petrified of a return to that danger. So if they find anything – no matter how pathetic – that helps them feel a little more secure, it will assume enormous importance to them, even though certain other alters (especially older ones) might not understand this.

Many alters are terrified that anyone else might end up judging them or turning on them, but they know a doll will not. This is why for many young alters, a doll could be the only thing in the universe that helps them feel safe.

Furthermore, trapped within alters can be such horrifically intense and painful feelings that it is not unusual for them to worry that their feelings could kill them or drive them insane or make them dangerously ill. They are petrified about getting in touch with their feelings or expressing them and yet those feelings are so horrendous that they scream for attention.

Whether it be through hugs or actually talking to the doll, a doll can be the one thing that they feel able to bond with, and express their feelings to, thus making their almost unbearable life a little more tolerable. With nothing else able to fill this desperately needed role, a strong dependence upon the doll is inevitable.

More than some concession to childishness, our experience with alters has convinced us that dolls are a therapeutic tool. Moreover, we are convinced that using them has divine approval. At the end of this page is a link describing how an alter received a doll in a manner that was so obviously of God that we are left certain that God considers the use of dolls important.

Dolls can be so important, and yet adults can be so embarrassed about allowing their alters to benefit from them that if you require further persuading to let your young alters have the dolls they need, besides the above-mentioned link we have prepared additional information, including scientific evidence. See More About Dolls.

Way Beyond Dolls

Other than God himself, the greatest expert in knowing what a specific alter needs in order to heal is that very alter. Like all people, alters are individuals. They have unique past experiences that create unique needs. To highlight how critical it is to listen to each alter and not presume we know best, we will now seem to undo all our previous arguments about the benefits of dolls by stating that for a particular alter, a doll might not have the positive effect it has for other alters, and could actually hinder growth. If you would like to know what sort of experiences could cause an alter to react so differently to dolls, see Alters Differ.

So our point is not that you should always give young alters dolls but that you should always take very seriously whatever they indicate is important to them, no matter how much it clashes with your own priorities and presumptions.

If you have alters, there are many things critical to their emotional well-being that you are likely to find even more bizarre than needing a doll. Here’s one example: even something as seemingly insignificant as washing an old sweater can traumatize an alter. As was the case with dolls, we’ll give a brief explanation to help you understand the reason for it, but nothing an alter says should need to make sense to you before you take it seriously. If an alter tells you it is important to him/her, that should suffice. If it isn’t sinful or harmful you should very strongly consider doing whatever the alter wants.

That washing an old sweater could be upsetting will seem bizarre until you consider that quite average young children can become deeply attached to, for example, a blanket (fans of the Peanut’s cartoon strip will recall Linus’s “security blanket”). Moreover, some women can feel ugly and hence insecure about wearing almost everything except for one piece of clothing that they feel covers them better, or fits better. Furthermore, an alter could in the past have had a bad experience akin to having a sweater washed, such as something treasured being destroyed by washing. This does not mean you could never wash the article but that you need to proceed slowly and cautiously, patiently explaining and carefully listening to the alter’s concerns until all concerns are allayed.

Alters need age-appropriate means of comfort and to deny themselves that comfort is a double-whammy. Not only does denial mean they are missing out on comfort that – since they are deeply hurting – they desperately need, but to deny them is to act like an abuser and so trigger fears and painful memories associated with past abusive disregard for their needs. It could also drive them to try to seek destructive forms of “comfort,” such as self-harm or over-eating or chemical highs.

For alters formed as babies, age-appropriate means of comfort could include such things as lullabies, pacifiers or drinking formula milk from a bottle. Again, it is not for you to decide what they need. Your role is to get to know them and give them whatever they indicate they want. The only usual exceptions should be if what they request would expose yourself and the alter to ridicule, or is unhealthy:

* physically – such as candy if you are diabetic

* psychologically – such as illicit drugs or porn

* spiritually – such as occult practices or hurting people.

If there are serious obstacles to granting your alters what they want, lovingly explain the reasons and seek to find acceptable alternatives. Strive diligently to find workarounds, such as buying candy suitable for diabetics, finding times and places where it would not result in ridicule, reading them uplifting stories instead of porn, getting pocket dolls so you can take them with you inconspicuously, and so on.

For babies not yet potty trained, diapers can be comforting, rather than exposing them to the possibility of soiling clothes or bed. Moreover, you may find diapers necessary when baby alters make their presence felt. Yes, by suppressing baby alters you might reduce, or perhaps even eliminate, the need for diapers but suppressed alters never heal.

Building Trust

Simple things can help build the trust that is so critical to healing. For example, tell an alter worried about the washing of a sweater, “How about we consider washing it in two days’ time, so you have time to think about it.” Then, when the time arrives, ask if it is okay to proceed. When the clean sweater is returned, the alter can see that you kept your word and trust begins to grow.

It is frightfully easy to dismiss alters as embarrassing nuisances and treat them as rivals or even enemies when they are actually your greatest assets. And rather than want to hurt or embarrass you, they crave your love and approval. They respond powerfully to praise and compliments. Unconditional love will win their desire to please you, whereas criticism, disapproval, rejection or punishment will have the opposite effect.

Until they heal, alters are in inner agony and, despite one’s best intentions, people who are hurting are very vulnerable to further hurt. As Grantley wrote in a webpage about how to comfort people who are:

If you were treating the open wounds of accident victims you would realize that the most gentle, well-meaning touch could send patients reeling. You would not be offended if someone you were seeking to help lashed out in pain with almost involuntary action. You would half expect it. But imagine the confusion if the wounds were invisible and the person looked uninjured. Consider the further complication if in that person’s experience everyone who had tried to help (and how does he know you will be any different?) had in their ignorance done little but inflict pain.

That’s the norm for someone who is hurting inside.

Emotionally wounded people cannot help but be highly sensitive. Words hit them like whips. It is vital that they be treated verbally with the careful tenderness you would use if you were dressing gaping physical wounds. Once we understand the seriousness of emotional wounds, it’s surprisingly easy to employ the Christlike graces of turning the other cheek and using the soft answer that turns away wrath. When we realize an outburst is just the pain talking, we no longer take it to heart. Only a fool takes personally the actions of someone drunk with pain.

It could be helpful to preface one’s remarks to a sensitive alter with, “I approve of you. I believe in you and think the world of you. So nothing I say should ever be interpreted as a put down or rejection.” Such wording helps keep alters from jumping to wrong conclusions, and frees them up to understand what you are really saying.

Simple things like tucking young alters into bed at night, reading them age-appropriate books that they like, giving them special time to be alone with their toys, putting their favorite sweater under the pillow, or letting them hold it while they sleep, can go a long way to provide the security from which healing flows. Another important thing is to defend your alters if they are ever threatened or criticized. If they publicly say or write something you approve, try to publicly honor their statement. If they receive criticism, be diplomatic but stand by your alters. Never betray their trust by revealing their secrets – or even their existence – until they are ready to do this themselves.

Be aware that alters might overhear you at a time when you have assumed they have not tuned in to what is occurring.

Next to encouraging each alter to interact with God, these things are powerful in bringing healing.

A friend of mine with Dissociative Identity Disorder went to considerable effort to obtain a bracelet displaying the words Stronger Together. Those two words form a truth that should be impressed upon the heart of everyone wanting to heal.

If you have alters, they have a deep need to be heard and you have a deep need to listen to them. Until they start communicating, alters have been kept in psychologically crippling solitary confinement, and you have been kept cut off from a significant part of your mental capacity, your emotions and your memories.

In addition to merely being heard, alters need to be believed. Most likely, they suffered horrifically and no one believed it. You need to begin to undo the damage by believing them. They could well have been formed precisely to “protect” you from the truth because at the time you were not psychologically strong enough to take it, but this situation must end. You must muster the courage to face the truth so that you can regain your full mind, and if what they reveal seems unbelievable it could well be because you are still preferring to live in denial; preferring perhaps to believe the lie that your abuser really was the respectable person he or she pretended to be.

Nevertheless, just as sincere children can sometimes get things mixed up, so can little alters. For example, we know a dear alter who was sexually abused in a carnival “haunted house.” She was too young to understand that the “haunted house” was make-believe. The fear was real, however, and so was the abuse. Additionally, any alter who is trying to piece together just fragments of surfaced memories could make a sincere mistake. For example, we know someone who mistakenly concluded that it must have been her father who abused her because she could not recall her father allowing her to go anywhere without his supervision and because she could only remember the face of only one of what seemed to be two abusers. After prayer her memory became clearer and it turned out that what had seemed like a second abuser was an image that had somehow formed in her mind representing the abuser’s demon.

The Courage to Let Oneself Remember

When they are kept in the dark, things seem scarier than when brought into the light. Likewise the truth ends up being much easier to cope with than the unknown. It is far easier on yourself to face things and get them resolved than be haunted by fears of the unknown for the rest of your life.

Encourage your alters to share their secrets with you. It will relieve them of isolation and horrific burdens that they have far less resources than you have to cope with. For example, they are probably riddled with guilt over something they will never know was not their fault unless they open up to you so that you can give them the benefit of your adult understanding.

If you are tempted to keep yourself ignorant (with all the intellectual handicaps and emotional agony that entails) because you worry there might possibly be some skeleton in your past that you could not forgive yourself for doing; your fears are groundless. Once the full, liberating truth of the Gospel is understood – and tragically vast numbers of Christians do not understand it – you can live peaceably with yourself no matter what atrocious sins filled your past.

The Bible strips away all human pride by revealing that the wages of sin – just one “little” sin – is death. You cannot get deader than dead. Since everyone has sinned, no one can be more lost or more depraved than anyone else. Just as an athlete and an invalid are equally unable to reach the moon by jumping, so the most saintly person on this planet and the most sadistic serial killer and rapist are equally unable to reach God’s minimum standards. Outside of Christ, the most “godly” person on this planet is just as much a moral failure and has just as much reason for abject shame as the most obviously wicked person. Each need Christ equally and if either of them can find cleansing and forgiveness and total acceptance in God, the other can receive it just as easily and as fully.

No matter what your past, you can be cleansed and granted virgin-innocence and honored by all of heaven for your crystal purity.

The same applies if you worry that a loved one might have committed some grievous offense.

The Courage to Let Oneself Feel

Healing requires you to get in touch with all your feelings. This seems scary at first because of the strong, unpleasant feelings buried within, but by connecting with those feelings they are able to be released so that they no longer haunt you, and then you are free to connect with wonderful feelings and come fully alive.

Play

The Most Effective Way to Heal Fast

Alters also usually need someone to mother and father them, but because they are now in an adult body this is rarely possible, nor is it usually safe to seek it from anyone other than Jesus for this role as it could expose both alter and host to ridicule or abuse, or to devastation if the mother/father figure needed to leave at some later stage. Only Jesus is utterly safe in giving hugs, tucking alters into bed and so on, and fully understands the best way to help at every stage of healing, and offers the total security of never getting sick or burnt out, changing, moving away, or dying. And no one understands any of us like Jesus does, nor has his wisdom. Moreover, Jesus fervently loves alters with total selflessness without any sexual overtones and longs to comfort and heal them.

There is a critical blockage to receiving Jesus’ help, however. Because Jesus is not an abuser, he will not force himself upon alters, no matter how much he yearns to help and knows they need him. A further hindrance is that alters often have such distorted ideas about Jesus (confusing him with abusers, for example, or believing lies people have said about him) that they can be terrified of him.

So the greatest of all things that anyone can do for alters is to reassure them of how gentle, kind, caring, patient, understanding and comforting Jesus is and how much he wants to take their pain upon himself – bearing their guilt, fear and inner pain as the alter’s Alter – and be their devoted friend and have lots of safe fun with them. (Yes, because play is important to every young alter he longs to play with them in a way that builds them up intellectually and in self-esteem and shows them great respect.)

Encourage alters to dialog with Jesus. Assure them that he will respect whatever boundaries they put up and that he will wait for as long as it takes for them to be sure that they are safe with him. Jesus is the perfect counselor and the ultimate healer. Once they commence talking with Jesus, the door to wondrous things has opened.

Conclusion

You’re a leader, not a loner. It might be frustrating to have to go slow for the sake of the others, but a general who charges off at his own pace is in for a rude shock when he encounters the enemy and looks behind to find himself alone because his army was unable to keep up with him. Together you are strong.

Healing requires almost superhuman reserves of courage, love, patience, insight, and so on, but that’s okay because through Jesus you have access to all that you need.

Related Pages

How to Turn Nasty Alters into Nice Alters And links

Resolving Conflict With Insiders

Coping with Baby Alters

Dolls or Stuffed Toys for Healing D. I. D. Includes a divine miracle

For much more insight and help, see Christian Resources: Index of Help for Dissociative Identity Disorder

Personalized support
Grantley Morris: healing@net-burst.net