We all long to push a distressing experience out of our mind and just get on with life without mentally coming to terms with it, but this is not nearly as heroic nor as helpful as we would like to think. Denying the reality of an inner wound does not prevent a suppressed part of us from acutely suffering, nor does it stop the pain from spilling over to the rest of our lives in ways that can make the cause frustratingly hard to identify. Unlike the power of resolving inner pain, the burden of trying to suppress pain is a dead weight keeping too many of us from the joyous freedom that would otherwise be ours.
I challenge you to embrace reality, embarking on a terrifyingly exciting adventure of self-discovery that could lead to more peace and fulfillment than you have ever dared believe possible. You can end inner pain.
Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures. If, for example, an emergency were sufficiently serious, you might be brave enough to sacrifice a limb, cutting it off to save the rest of you.
Pain avoidance is not nearly as simple, however, as trying to cut unpleasant memories out of our lives. Consider someone with a seriously wounded leg. Pain in the injured leg might push him to opt for amputation but after surgery he could be devastated to find himself hounded by phantom limb pain in which he suffers pain as if the amputated limb were still there and as wounded as ever. Likewise, cutting ourselves off from painful memories is more drastic than we realize and rarely as effective in ending our distress as we suppose.
Such are the mysteries of inner (emotional) pain that to deepen our insight it will help to continue to look briefly at something slightly easier to understand: physical pain. If a gang of thugs kept beating you, it would hurt, of course, but by releasing such chemicals as adrenalin, your brain would temporarily shut down some of your consciousness of pain, thus helping you to flee from your attackers. Running when seriously injured brings great risk of inflaming the injuries – perhaps raising the risk to life-threatening levels – but the temporary necessity of escape overrides other vital concerns. So during the emergency, your mind’s partial suppression of your awareness of pain is a precious gift of God. Despite your understandable longing never to feel pain, however, once you are safe, continuing to have little consciousness of pain could be counter-productive. Without pain signaling the extent of your injuries – and hence alerting you to the urgency of seeking medical treatment – your well-being could be seriously impaired.
This natural response to physical trauma parallels our natural response to severe inner pain. In the short term, the suppression of your inner pain can be a blessing by helping you cope with the necessities of life. For as long as this suppression continues, however, it will keep you from healing.
Being human means we have an inbuilt need not merely to store facts but to process events both mentally and emotionally. That does not necessarily mean crying, but accessing the full range of human emotions and analyzing the experience until we fully come to terms with it, before finally offloading the pain in an emotionally healthy way. When we suffer something highly unpleasant we long to disconnect from the entire event and live as if it had never happened. But the memory and the need to respond to it in a fully human manner remains a part of us.
So to emotionally disconnect from the event is to disconnect from an essential part of who we are – a part of us that continues to exist and feel and attempts to grapple with the experience in an authentically human way – no matter how much we wish that part of us would die. We either help that part of our humanity find peace or we keep our lives in needless turmoil.
Traumatized children – especially those who are artistically and/or intellectually gifted – have a remarkable ability. They can suppress inner pain by splitting into a functioning part of them that is fully aware of their suffering, and a part of them that is less aware. It has been theorized that the split might come about through them trying to cope by intensely imagining that the horrific experience is happening to someone else, but even babies can split. If a split does not occur at a young age (before the age of seven?) a split is unlikely to occur later. Once the ability to split is learnt as a child, however, it can be repeated throughout one’s life, with further splits occurring when new crises are encountered. Because each part grapples alone with a different set of events, each part has a unique awareness of certain emotional pain, and hence a distinct consciousness.
Many people call these disconnected parts of a person alters. Sometimes they are referred to as insiders. Some people simply use the term parts. I very much like this last term, even though I don’t use it much in my pages because the word is so common that it would not help search engine users find the webpage. “Alter” sounds too alien and even “insider” sounds a little spooky. “Part” helps reinforce that each alter is a part of the one person. Each time a new alter is discovered, it is finding a vital part of oneself that you were not even aware was missing.
Alters act like persons within a person. They are part of the full person (although they might not realize it) and they make their own decisions and have feelings, intelligence, and an individual personality.
Writes one of Alice’s alters to one of Jake’s alters (two of my friends who have let me share this with you – names changed to protect anonymity):
I want you to know that I respect and admire you for your courage to split off and keep this secret from Jake so that he could survive. What a sacrifice you have made. It is like agreeing to live with a knife in your heart for the sake of the others.
The benefit of splitting is that the part of the person not conscious of the worst aspects of the trauma is better able to soldier on with life’s daily demands. As we have seen also applies to a wounded person fleeing an attacker, a lowered consciousness of the severity of the trauma can, in the short term, prove a clever coping mechanism, but there is a serious downside.
A part of you could have been so desperate to protect the rest of you by keeping unpleasant feelings and information from you that it severs lines of communication with you. The unintended consequence, however, is that the restricted flow of information operates in both directions. The price of making painful information inaccessible to you is that vital information you discover later in life cannot get back to the hurting part of you.
That part of you left to cope alone with the full force of the trauma not only continues to reel in pain, it never gets to move on or grow up. The isolated, hurting part of you remains trapped at approximately the same mental age and limited knowledge, year after year. Usually it cannot benefit from new insights you gain later in life – insights that would otherwise have enabled the hurting part of you to heal. For example, the inner child in a sex abuse survivor remains unable to see through the abuser’s former lies that the adult part of the person can see through. So the damaging power of those haunting lies continues, and the person fails to heal.
Similarly, the suppressed, hurting part cannot access the spiritual understanding that the person gained later in life. Thankfully, the disconnected part can be taught these liberating, healing truths but usually this can happen only if that part of the person is acknowledged and dialog takes place in which these truths are taught as one would teach anyone else of similar “age” and experiences. Unless this happens, the deeply hurting, unhealed part will remain with the person for life, and make its presence felt in mysteriously vague, unpleasant ways.
No matter how much you suppress alters and live in denial, if you have alters, they are an inseparable part of you. Keeping them suppressed would sentence you to remaining only a shadow of the wonderful person you could be. Yes, when alters first surface they have pain and problems, but the key is not to try to rid yourself of these essential parts of you but to help them heal – and this is fairly easy. Anyone trying to suppress alters is like someone with injured fingers and toes who, instead of tending the wounds, wants to hack off all his arms and legs! Each alter has unique gifts or abilities, such as creativity or a special skill or valuable character trait or a key to healing that will empower you to soar beyond what you could otherwise achieve.
If You Don’t Have Alters
You don’t need multiple personalities to have a wounded inner child. A woman, who as far I know does not have alters, has given me permission to share the following:
You just might want to give some thought to purchasing a children’s Christian CD to see if it doesn’t help heal the inner child in you that was neglected (or at least not supported very well) in childhood. Sometimes we need to become that little child again before we can move on.
How Can You Know if You Have an Alter?
Should you have alters, becoming aware of this fact is unlikely to be easy. After all, they formed to keep things from you. Moreover, needless fears and misconceptions about the implications of having alters cause most people’s minds to recoil from the thought of having alters. The result is high psychological pressure for people with alters to remain unaware of their alters. So despite all the healing advantages of finding that you have alters, things are stacked against you discovering them.
Winning the trust of a terrified jackrabbit might be less of a challenge, but the only sure way to discover an alter is to so win its confidence that it decides to talk to you regularly. Until an alter feels safe to do this, you can only look for vague clues. Should you have alters, do not expect to have any awareness of, at best, more than a few of the symptoms mentioned below.
Although some people with alters have obvious gaps in their memory of the distant past, there are some who, even before healing begins, have a more detailed and complete memory of their childhood than average people who have never had alters. This is because alters do not necessarily retain sole memory of certain events. What they keep to themselves (until they begin to heal) is the deepest emotional reaction to certain traumatic events. Rather than mere facts, it is particularly emotional ownership of these events that they keep from the rest of the person.
So people with undetected alters might not necessarily have missing years. They might, however, have the occasional missing moment in everyday life that cannot be attributed to alcohol or drugs. They might, for instance, lose keys or other personal items and find them in places where they cannot recall putting them. Other possibilities include goods appearing that they cannot recall purchasing, inexplicable bank account withdrawals, finding themselves somewhere with no recollection of how they got there, or having no memory of doing things in the recent past that other people claim to have witnessed them doing.
Sometimes people with alters discover that they can protect themselves from self-harm or other unwanted behavior by hiding from themselves knives, credit cards or whatever. They know where they placed the objects, and yet putting them in an unusual place works when an alter does not observe the hiding.
If you have sole access to your computer, check History on your Internet Browser to see if you have visited websites cannot recall having seen. If you retain electronic copies of sent emails, check them to see if you recognzie them all. An itemized phone bill, credit card account, or anything else tracking your actions might also be revealing.
Of course, we all have memory lapses but with alters, laspes are usually more pronounced than for most people. Some people have even feared Alzheimer’s, when their lapses were simply due to a suppressed part of the person taking over for a while and doing and thinking things that it keeps hidden from the rest of the person. It is tragically common for people with alters to be called liars when their denials are simply because they genuinely don't remember certain things.
Until healing progresses, alters are particularly active when the host is asleep. You could wake up to find things moved. It might just be sleepwalking but it could be more.
I provide e-mail support for abuse survivors. With several different survivors I have suddenly received an e-mail that seems out of character for that person. Besides the subject matter seeming unusual, the grammar and spelling is often more childlike than their usual standard. Sometimes I initially thought that maybe the person wrote the e-mail while under the influence of drugs or alcohol but often it turns out that it is the child part of them temporarily taking over. When I send a copy of the e-mail to the person, he or she is often shocked, having no recollection of having ever written it.
Had the correspondence been handwritten, most likely there would be a noticeable change in handwriting. So another clue to the presence of alters is changes in handwriting in, for example, one’s journal. In fact, keeping a journal is a good idea, especially doing so at different times of the day (different times and situations are more likely to reveal different alters). You might be surprised what you find later when re-reading your journal.
Some adult survivors sometimes find themselves acting in a childlike way. They might, for example, have a collection of children’s toys. Again, to some extent, we all have times when we act a little childlike, but when it is more pronounced, it could be the inner child temporarily making its presence felt.
Another possible indicator of an alter is sometimes having certain abilities and sometimes not. You might, for example, have created artwork or poems of a standard far beyond what you think yourself capable of. Or you might be mystified as to why you are occasionally unable to do something – perhaps to spell or read music or some other skill – that at other times you can easily do.
Since she was seven, a friend of mine was hopeless at mathematics and yet she kept getting high marks in the subject. She could ace a test, go home and find herself quite unable to solve simple math problems. At college she elected to complete the same algebra course with the same teacher not once, not twice but three times because, despite continually getting high grades, she didn’t have a clue about the subject. Determined not to let it beat her, she even tried to do the course a fourth time, but her teacher forbade her on the grounds that she was too good at the subject to keep repeating it. It was not until she was in her late thirties that she discovered an alter of hers, formed at age seven, who not only specialized in mathematics but who, out of fear of being pushed aside by her host, deliberately kept her host and other alters mathematically ignorant.
Another possible clue is having extended times in which one feels unreal, as if in a dream or not really there. Some describe it as like observing everything from behind a glass wall.
Another possibility, is sometimes thinking of oneself as “we” or “us,” or feeling as if there is another person inside of you.
Hearing voices that seem to come from inside you is yet another possibility. What these voices say could seem a little strange – as might be expected from someone who has suffered bizarre and terrifying abuse – but, in contrast to people with certain other conditions, the voices are relatively rational and sane.
Another clue is occasionally having two conflicting emotions; perhaps, for example, feeling happy and yet deep inside feeling sad and trapped.
All of the above are common symptoms of what therapists call Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). Not everyone has every symptom and any supposed symptoms should only be regarded as clues, not diagnostic proof. For example, an embarrassed woman confided to a friend of mine that she kept losing her keys. “What is emotionally upsetting you?” asked my discerning friend. The problem turned out not to be D.I.D., nor Alzheimer’s, but simply a reaction to stress.
Not as Weird as You Think
An older term for Dissociative Identity Disorder is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Regardless of name, its existence has been recognized by researchers at least as early as the 1800s.
In a sense, we all have multiple personalities and switch between them according to our circumstances. We would act differently, for instance, in each of the following circumstances:
* In the presence of a head of state
* When alone with our spouse
* On a night out with the girls/guys
* When playing with children
* When depressed
So having multiple personalities is not as weird as it first seems. Moreover, dissociation is normal. In order to focus on the task at hand, all of us sometimes temporarily put unpleasant memories out of our minds, or tune out to such distractions as background noises. It is just that for some people this natural tendency is done to a greater extent. For them, shutting off awareness of certain distressing things is done so effectively that a separate consciousness forms within the person, with part of the person knowing, feeling and thinking some things that the other part does not.
Therapists call each distinct identity an alternate personality or, to use a term already introduced, alter for short. As mentioned, the term insider is also sometimes used. The personality that controls the person most often is usually referred to as the host. Whether host or alter, however, every part of a person is important. They are all part of the one person and, to be whole, a person needs every part.
As mentioned, if you suspect you have an alter, conversing directly with the alter is the only sure way to confirm its existence, but it is like trying to entice an undercover agent to admit he has been spying on you and freely tell you everything. Moreover, getting to this point with an alter is a life-changing step not to be taken lightly. Once one alter begins manifesting itself, others are likely to become emboldened to likewise reveal themselves, and your life will probably never be the same again. Even if – as I expect will happen – by the journey’s end it proves highly beneficial, there will almost certainly be times when you regret ever starting this journey to peace and wholeness. I warn you not to start this process without being sure you are led of God in every step of the way, including your choice of counselor. On the other hand, doing nothing (and so keeping alters feeling rejected and in more or less enforced solitary confinement) is also strewn with dangers. In fact, doing nothing could be the worst mistake of your life.
Alters typically carry so much pain that ignoring them might be all it takes to make them suicidal. I wish I didn’t have to give this chilling warning, but to end up with a suicidal alter could be more than just unpleasant for you, it is at least theoretically possible for that alter to succeed in killing you despite you wanting to live.
The most knowledgeable people say you should never act solely on the basis of written information about Dissociative Identity Disorder but should seek an appropriately qualified and experienced professional, and that even such experts, like other health professions, need liability insurance. Certainly, this webpage is no do-it-yourself manual and I’m no expert. On the other hand, I know of only one infallible expert – the Lord Jesus Christ – and I plead with you to earnestly seek his guidance before doing anything, and likewise before deciding for the exceedingly risky option of doing nothing.
It is not uncommon for abuse survivors to go through life unaware that there are suppressed parts of them (alters) until one of the alters finally makes his/her presence felt when the person is beginning to heal. Alters have two pressing, but conflicting, needs. One is to burst out of the agony of solitary confinement by communicating with someone. The other need is to avoid further rejection and ridicule by remaining in isolated silence. When their host begins to seem more accepting of them or they find someone such as a trustworthy, understanding counselor or friend who they think might accept them, the balance between these conflicting needs could tip in favor of the alters believing it seems safe enough to risk revealing themselves. So they might suddenly start communicating for the first time. If they think they can trust someone more than their host, they might briefly switch off their host’s awareness so that the host knows nothing of the conversation.
So despite alters longing to end their isolation, it is rare for them to reveal themselves if they think they are likely to be rejected or thought lowly of. If you have alters, they will probably be able to hear your thoughts and words on some occasions but not on others. So an alter could perhaps be enticed to converse with you if you were, on several different occasions, to say to yourself something along these lines:
If anyone can hear me, I want to apologize for any way I have offended you. I didn’t want to believe you were real but I now understand that I was wrong. I want to love and accept you and would value you sharing with me. Please speak to me.
Don’t try this yet, however.
Understanding Alters
Even though having alters is a common, well-documented reaction to childhood trauma, it is usual for people, upon first discovering that they have alters, to find it deeply disturbing and seek repeated assurance that they are not going insane. In reality, for any of us who have alters, the discovery is a very healthy sign and a significant step towards far more peace, joy and fulfillment than we have ever known.
As explained in a link at the end of this series of pages, I believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder develops the brain beyond what it otherwise would have, such that when a person begins to heal from the disorder, having had multiple personalities actually turns out to be an intellectual advantage. Of course, until healing commences, having Dissociative Identity Disorder is primarily a disadvantage because and each alter (and the host) has access to only a portion of the person’s brain.
Feelings of confusion as well as strange symptoms are normal for people recovering from D.I.D. From time to time, a friend of mine would ask the Lord what was wrong with him. Each time God would simply but very tenderly reply:
You have alters. I’m healing you.
It is most unfortunate that in old, ill-informed circles, schizophrenia was mislabeled “split personality.” This grossly inappropriate name might cause someone unfamiliar with psychology to wrongly imagine there could be a link between schizophrenia and what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. There is not even a superficial similarity. Unlike schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder does not cause bouts of insanity, nor is it helped by medication (although someone with D.I.D. might have additional conditions like depression that might be helped by medication). The differences go on and on.
The term bi-polar is even less likely to be confused with Multiple Personality Disorder but just to be sure, let me assure you that this condition is also very different to what we are discussing.
A friend of mine was seeking a prayer partner that he could be transparent with. The man he had in mind was a psychologist who attended his home fellowship. My friend prayed fervently before approaching the man and wisely tested the waters by asking his view of Dissociative Identity Disorder. His response being favorable, my friend confided that he had alters. The psychologist’s response was, “Wow! That’s usually only reserved for the highly intelligent or artistically gifted!”
In telling me about the incident, my friend said he was obviously an exception to this trend. That’s the response I expected from him – and from you, if you have D.I.D.. People with D.I.D. tend to be so tragically hit by low self esteem that they do not presently realize how gifted they are. Though the significance of his abilities seems not to register with my friend, he is both artistic and of well above average intelligence. In fact, his childhood abuse and putdowns had squashed his artistic leanings, and befriending one of his young alters is releasing his beautiful artistic gift within him. In addition to the huge handicap of battling emotional pain and other unhealed effects of his past, his poor spelling contributed to him feeling intellectually inferior. He is actually so intelligent that in a college course he took there was a firm rule that no one with poor spelling could graduate. Those in charge were embarrassed into breaking their own rule. How could they “fail” their top student? He was so exceptional that he was tutoring his fellow students. Yet still he thought he was stupid. And if you have D.I.D., you’ll agree that he was smart but are likely to still be convinced that you are not.
Here’s an interesting sidenote: This man emailed me frequently for about a year before I discovered that he had alters. I had come to recognize his intelligence and assumed the atrocious spelling in his e-mails was due to dyslexia. A while after I encouraged him to recognize and be kind to his alters (he had previously mistaken them for demons) he began to send near-perfect e-mails. Alters that were good at spelling had surfaced.
It is not without reason that D.I.D. has been called “sophisticated” and “one of the most functional responses a child can make to a very traumatic childhood.” That is not to suggest, however, that it is desirable for people facing new crises to yield to the temptation to split yet again. Just how counterproductive splitting can be was rammed home to me when a friend of mine was learning a very stressful new job. She needed every bit of previous experience and more. Despite us not wanting it to happen, in an unconscious attempt to cope with the stress, a new alter formed. This poor alter was formed with all of the host’s years of extensive work experience wiped from her memory. Trying to cope under these circumstances greatly magnified the stress. Thankfully, little damage was done because I was able to immediately support the new alter and my friend changed jobs. Very many years before, my friend’s trauma had caused an alter to form that did not even know how to read or write. Trying to cope proved exceedingly challenging. This alter eventually relearned and developed such courage and skills that she ended up a significant help to her host. It was a very tough journey, however.
An alter e-mailed a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder who in despair had called himself a freak:
We are not freaks; we are people forced to carry burdens beyond human endurance. We were smart enough not to go insane but to split. It was the best we could do. That isn’t a freak; it’s someone being denied the help they desperately needed and resorting to extreme measures to save themselves. Would you call a shipwreck survivor who got an infection and had to chop of his own arm to save the rest of him a freak? No, you’d say, “Wow, that was brave” Well, that is what you are: brave. You hid the pain to protect yourself and did what you had to stay alive. That is brave, not freaky.
It has been estimated that between one to three percent of the general population in western countries suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. I expect it would be far higher in, for example, war-ravished countries.
Although I am convinced that we should love alters as real people who are hurting and afflicted with specific memory gaps, I occasionally refer in my writings to an alter as “it” (as one sometimes does with very young children). This is merely my attempt to avoid gender bias or repeatedly using the clumsy expression “him/her.” So please do not suppose from my word usage that alters should be thought of as impersonal or less than human, nor that gender is not a key aspect of their identity.
The Amazing Healing Power of Dealing with Alters
A man would not only sometimes wet his bed, he found himself peculiarly reluctant to clean up afterwards. He preferred to lie in the mess. You might find this bizarre, but it was equally inexplicable to him until he discovered he had alters. After gaining the trust of one of his child alters, the alter confided that he had learnt that a wet bed was the only way to keep a family sex abuser out of his bed. Not only was the man relieved to know for the first time that there was a rational explanation for his disturbing behavior, he now had a strategy for finding a cure. He began prayerfully focusing on finding ways to convince his alter that he was now safe. He could experiment, for example, with assuring the alter than the abuser had left and that never again was he in danger of being molested in bed.
A woman decided to conquer her fear of driving by becoming a professional truck driver. After years of driving experience she had abundantly convinced herself that she was a safe and highly capable driver, and yet she still felt uncomfortable about driving. Finally, rather than remaining only vaguely aware that she had alters, she began befriending them. She discovered a child alter who, not surprisingly, had no consciousness of driving expertise gained later in life, and was scared of riding in vehicles. Empowered by this awareness of the alter’s fears, the woman was able to work towards curing the discomfort the alter felt when driving. She was able to try such things as informing the alter of her driving expertise (this proved a significant source of relief), and encouraging the alter to enter into faith-filled prayer, trusting in divine protection when traveling on the road.
A Christian woman knew the Scriptures affirming that her sins were forgiven but still she was plagued with strong guilt feelings. It turned out that her child alter had a lesser understanding of the gospel than the adult part of her. Once the child alter had the good news of God’s forgiveness more fully explained to her, the relief was remarkable.
An abuser said he would chop off a little boy’s penis. The threat was so convincing and terrifying that at that very instant an alter formed. Since, as previously explained, alters have access to only a fraction of the information that is known to the person as a whole, it is not surprising that this alter was left unaware that the threat was never carried out. The alter spent decades of needless torment until finally it was specifically explained to the alter that he had not been maimed. From then on the host enjoyed relief and no longer awoke fearing that he had been maimed.
A woman often used to walk in her sleep. She got little sleep as it was, without having a disturbed sleep. Sometimes her son would find her wandering the house. Sometimes she would wake in the morning to find things rearranged and – most frustrating of all – she would have to hunt everywhere for her keys that were not where she had left them.
One day as I was chatting with her child alter, the alter mentioned in passing that last night she had slept all night. That immediately got my attention. “What do you usually do?” I asked.
It turned out that the alter only felt safe to play without ridicule when everyone else was asleep. She particularly liked playing with keys and her host had moved her other toys away from the bed, so she had to get up to access them.
“I try not to wake Mommy (her host),” she said. “Please don’t tell her.”
I gently persuaded her that her host would not be angry and obtained her permission to let the host know. It turned out that the host had overheard part of the conversation anyhow.
The host and alter were able to work out some amicable and effective solutions. An obvious start was to keep the toys by the edge of the bed, so that the alter could play with them in bed. Better still, the host explained to the alter how they would both feel more refreshed if they slept at the same time, and the host began slotting into her waking hours a time when her alter could play in privacy. She also purchased a pocket doll for her alter to play with when she was at work. Both alter and host benefited from this new level of mutual understanding and cooperation – and enjoyed better quality sleep.
One woman was tormented by horrific flashbacks of the abuse she had suffered as a child. Then her child alter was taught that because she was a child of the King of kings, she was a princess, and since princesses must be obeyed, she had the God-given authority to command abusers, demons, and so on, to leave. Soon after, the woman was having one of her terrifying flashbacks. Suddenly the child alter rose up and told the abuser in the flashback that he must leave her because she was a princess. In her mind’s eye the abuser left and the flashback abruptly ended. Similar things happened during nightmares and demonic appearances. Not surprisingly, the woman found peace like she had never before known.
A woman used to find clothes shopping and even dressing so distressingly confusing and frustrating that she would often end up in tears over it. When she learnt about her alters, she discovered that the source of the confusion was that each alter had completely different tastes in clothes. Since they had a beautifully close relationship with God, they agreed to let God select their clothes each time they dressed or shopped. It worked.
It is not impossible for alters to believe they are the opposite sex to their host. Such alters form because of the need to feel safe, not because of homosexual tendencies. One can well understand abused children supposing that being the opposite sex would lower their chances of further abuse and so wish they were that gender. Both boys and girls have thought this and, in the case of their particular abuser, they are often right. Moreover, if children are sexually abused by a member of the same sex, it can be expected to affect their sexual identity and they might even be labeled by their abuser as being the opposite sex. It is not surprising that some alters suffering this fully take on this false identity and genuinely believe they are the oppose sex. They can have so little body awareness that they believe their actual body is fully the opposite sex to what it really is. Not surprisingly, sexual confusion results, but this can be resolved by helping them realize that there is no need for them to be of their imaginary gender in order to be safe or loved. Only after ensuring they realize that their safety and acceptance is not at stake should the actual gender of their bodies be pointed out to them. This delay is necessary because knowing their real gender is likely to be a significant shock to them, and one that would be most disturbing without the preparation just mentioned. Great care must be taken in dealing with this sensitive issue. Imagine your reaction if you were to discover that you are not the gender you had always thought you were.
With many of his alters thinking themselves to be little children – far too young for marital relations – and one or two of his alters thinking they were the opposite sex, it is no wonder that a man I know often had great difficulty making love to his wife. Identifying alters, helping them to discover their true gender and helping them to mature was the key to healing his sexuality.
The above are just eight of many examples I could cite from people I know that demonstrates what a powerful key to healing it is to listen to alters and tenderly address their needs and fears. Unknown to you, a traumatized part of you could be sabotaging your eating habits, your determination to resist temptation, your will to live, your Christian walk – all sorts of things. No matter how devout and determined you are, trying to do the right thing is an oppressively hard, discouraging slog when part of you is surreptitiously sabotaging your efforts, or is unaware of key spiritual truths. Life fills with joy, peace and victory when alters are helped and every part of you knows God and is drawing upon the power of Christ.
I have found that if you treat alters as real, the breakthroughs in a person’s long term problems is phenomenal, provided you minister to each alter in the power of Christ as you would to a normal person who had suffered that way. In fact, I have never seen anything so powerful in bringing about speedy transformations in hurting people.
Christians commonly suffer the frustration of what they might call being unable to turn head knowledge into heart knowledge. Some might think of it in terms of knowing intellectually what should be a life-changing spiritual truth and yet the knowledge does not set them free because their “subconscious” has not grasped it. Speaking to alters enables one to minister directly to that “subconscious,” normally unreachable part of the person; achieving in minutes what might otherwise take years. It’s nothing like hypnosis. It is simply enabling people to liberate a suppressed part of them that, through being kept ignorant of certain truths, had been surreptitiously undermining their well-being.
Humans can concoct a hundred theories as to the best way to treat anything, but any scientist will tell you that going by one’s personal experience with treating people is a very unreliable way of proving which treatment is the most effective.
Like any Christian, I try to be led of God in the way I minister to people. Unlike some, however, I seem unable to hear God speaking directly to me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I usually seem able to do little better than just pray and hope for the best. As I have continued ministering to alters, however, I have been staggered to note how exactly the way God ministers to alters coincides with the way I have felt led to do it. (For an example of how God relates to alters, see the first link at the end of this series of webpages under the heading, “Related Pages.”)
No matter how many human theories there are, I want to imitate God’s approach, since he knows infinitely more than any of us as to what is truly best. The apostle Paul displayed this attitude of seeking to imitate God:
1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
And Christ himself had this same attitude:
John 5:19 . . . I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
As is the case with belief in demons, or opinions about the most appropriate treatment for a specific disease, or almost anything else in the world, there is a wide range of theories about Dissociative Identity Disorder and whether it even exists. One reason for the confusion is that alters, having suffered devastating levels of rejection in the past, are highly sensitive and will go into hiding in the presence of anyone they fear could reject them (including a counselor, researcher or even the host person). If anyone were to convince a host that alters are not real and that the host should reject as an illusion any manifestation of an alter, alters would panic and quickly go into hiding, rather than risk rejection. At the apparent disappearance of alters, the host will temporarily feel relief, rather like the cruel relief felt by a cancer patient wrongly declared to be cancer-free. It will seem like a magical cure, but the person’s underlying problems will remain and his/her true relief will be greatly hampered.
Someone might possibly reach the point where he or she is enabling continued dissociation. For example, child alters can be so cute that it is tempting to hold on to them by hindering them from maturing. At least in early counseling or relating to alters, however, it seems to me best to ensure one has thoroughly ministered to each alter, rather than frantically rush into trying to get the alters fused into one person. Like being opened up by a surgeon, having alters makes wounded parts accessible for treatment. It would be foolish for a surgeon to sew up a person while there are still inner parts that need attention.
Moreover, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have been cruelly robbed of the childhood they deserve. Having childlike alters who are relieved of their pain provides these deserving people the privilege of re-living childhood for a while as it was meant to have been enjoyed. Yes, there is a time to move on, but there is also a time to enjoy. In fact, one host who was continually frustrated over what to him seemed the slow rate of healing, actually felt guilty about enjoying legitimate pleasures. This false guilt, quite typical of people suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, was the product of his abusive upbringing in which he was usually punished for acting like a normal fun-loving child. He found it wonderfully liberating to discover that God delighted in him catching up on missed childhood pleasures by enjoying them now, even though he was an adult. Ironically, his frustration at not integrating sooner was actually slowing his healing because he would keep suppressing (and so hurting) alters who wanted to play.
Another reason for not trying to force the pace is that the very thought of being united can initially be traumatic for alters because it could be misinterpreted as an attempt to annihilate them. When the matter is treated gently, however, alters can be encouraged to see union as a maturing and as a marriage in which two (or more) truly are better than one and no one loses his or her identity but each contributes his or her own strengths and retains his or her own memories and benefits from the other’s strengths. Like marriage, it should be a union in which partners are so self-assured that they feel no need to keep asserting their independence. One alter described it as becoming more alive than ever. It is very fulfilling.
Demons?
In an attempt to keep secret their crime, abusers with occult knowledge sometimes deliberately transfer a demon to their victims to keep alters too terrorized reveal themselves and the abuse they suffered. Even when this occurs, it might not apply to all the alters a person has. For example, once a person learns how to split, further splits could occur in response to new traumas after the original abuser has left. Of course, if any alters are suppressed by demons, those alters are free to reveal themselves once the demons are ejected.
Even though the above was not the specific reason, I know several people who discovered they have alters only after being delivered from demons. Not only are alters not demons, however, confusing them with demons could prove disastrous. Nevertheless, we are about to see that, especially with some alters, many things make them disturbingly easy to mistake for demons. The three main reasons are that before alters begin to heal:
1. Some can seem evil
2. They can give themselves bizarre names
3. They themselves can be confused about their identity.
Let’s explore this.
Why Alters Can Seem Evil
Early contact with an alter is likely to be unpleasant because this is when an alter is most raw and hurting. Some alters even choose to test whether they will be rejected by deliberately acting offensive in their initial contact. Others can do nasty things in a frantic attempt simply to break out of their isolation and get their host to listen to them. An alter once seemed to try to seduce me. She later admitted that she had observed my moral standards with her host before she revealed herself and she was actually trying to offend me by her apparent seduction because she expected that I’d reject her and she thought she might as well get the rejection over with. On the other hand, great integrity is needed when relating to alters because they can be so desperate for love and approval as to be tempted to do almost anything to obtain it.
We have noted that when alters first make their presence felt they are likely to have been cut off from many years of developments in their hosts’ life. Alters that formed before a person became a Christian or when the person was backslidden are therefore likely to have been cut off from exposure to the Gospel and know nothing of a living relationship with Christ. So we can expect them to act like non-Christians. Moreover, alters have suffered almost beyond the realms of human endurance. So it should not surprise if, in their attempt to cope with severe suffering, they gained an undesirable addiction, or are filled with hate or rage because they misinterpreted their misfortune as abandonment by God, or they use strong language to forcefully express their pain or pent up anger and frustration.
Bizarre Names
Any of the factors so far mentioned are enough for alters to act in a manner that is out of character for the host person, as he/she is today, and for such alters to superficially seem demonic. Even more confusing is that alters can give themselves names that anyone not experienced with alters might assume would be the exclusive domain of demons. In the webpages you are reading, almost all the Spirit-inspired quotes from an alter are from one who originally called herself “Reject.” A sister alter called herself “Pain,” another, “Failure,” and another, who felt so rejected by God that she wanted to set herself up as her own god called herself “Divinity.” I have yet to come across an alter that says its name is “Evil” or “Devil,” but such a name seems quite likely, given the strong tendency of abusers to keep authoritatively telling their young, impressionable victims that they are evil.
Alters Confused About Their Own Identity
In the battle not to mistake an alter for a demon, it is confusing enough finding alters who hate God, act in nasty ways that for the host person is out of character, and give themselves bizarre names, but it is made even worse by many alters doubting or denying their humanity.
It is common for alters to yearn to be human but to have doubts about whether they really are. Part of this is because they were formed as a result of abuse in which they were treated as objects, rather than as humans who had feelings and a will of their own. Also, to dull their pain, many alters have blocked off almost all feeling and this can make them feel less than human.
On the other hand, some alters do not want to be human. One alter who kept telling me she was not human revealed that she did not want to be human because humans feel (and are thus exposed to feeling pain) and humans must cope with their sexuality (she feared she was gay and in any case, to her, sex meant abuse). She added that if she were human she would have to relate to other humans and so be exposed to the possibility of rejection. Ironically, this alter was highly offended by the thought of anyone mistaking her for a demon, and unlike demons, who like living in human bodies, she wanted to leave earth completely and live in her imaginary spaceship.
We must remember that fantasy can be a powerful way of escaping an intolerable reality and that children are both highly imaginative and impressionable.
It would be easy to mistake for a demon an alter who kept insisting he was a dog. I have spoken to such an alter. The man with this alter was traumatized as a child by being sexually molested by a dog. The alter hated what had happened and concluded that only a dog could be treated that way.
On a more positive side, when we consider children’s love of animals and the peaceful lives that animals often seem to have, it should not surprise us that in a desperate attempt to feel safe and escape the reality of their suffering, some alters might choose to convince themselves that they are animals. And given the alienation that abused children often feel, or their longing to escape human suffering, some might choose to convince themselves that they are aliens, fairies, monsters or some other mythical being.
Recently, an alter told me of a brother alter who believed he was a bear. As is common for recently surfaced alters, Bear, as he called himself, was too shy to speak, but was listening. So I began gently speaking to him. I had assumed he had chosen to believe he was a bear to help himself feel safe, since few people would dare mess with a grizzly bear. After I spoke to him along those lines for a few moments he interrupted, saying that he was not an animal but was a tattered teddy bear, because, he said, “stuffed toys can’t feel.” (It is common for hurting alters to feel disconnected from their feelings.)
Although in seeking comfort, certain alters might assume a false identity, their suffering and memories are real.
In the light of what we have so far discovered, it is not hard to conceive of some alters mistakenly supposing they are demons. A common reason is the low self-esteem of alters coupled with the fact that abusers often do their utmost to brainwash their victims into thinking that these innocents are “evil,” or “of the devil.” I have also heard of one alter formed in exceptional circumstances who thought he was a demon. In this case, abusers were trying to plant a real demon in the person, and having an alter capable of giving a convincing impression of a demon having been successfully planted was a clever way of foiling the abusers’ evil intention.
These exceptions aside, however, alters usually appear as human, whereas demons only sometimes pretend to be human. Demons are external beings that might enter a person and mess with one’s mind but they are no more part of the person than a leech is.
Despite it being easy to mistake some alters for demons, alters could no more be cast out than anyone’s past experiences and memories could be cast out. And because every alter has deep feelings and sensitivities and is as much a person as the host is, how an alter is treated is critical. You cannot drive alters out, but you can drive alters in; forcing them deeper into a person, where they hide, reeling in the pain of being grossly misunderstood, and unwilling to risk further contact with people – even with people who have great potential to help.
Usually within just a few days of contact with a loving, accepting person, an alter will begin to heal and feel more peace and so become increasingly delightful to converse with. Even alters that initially seem obnoxious can quickly become devoted, Spirit-filled Christians, deeply in love with Jesus, and highly moral. Tragically, however, some counselors or hosts can be so hasty in misjudging alters as demons that alters withdraw in terror before these self-proclaimed experts or hosts have a chance to truly interact with them and discover how loving, spiritually enlightened and authentically Christian, alters can become.
It would be upsetting enough for someone to believe you have a demon, but consider how offended would you feel were someone to believe you are a demon! To further understand why alters panic and go into deep hiding if labeled supernaturally evil (demonic), it is critical to keep in mind – it will become even clearer as you keep reading – that alters are usually already hurting immensely and highly sensitive to perceived rejection, and fear that their former abusers’ slanderous insults that they are evil and worthless might be true. Even worse, counselors who fail to distinguish between demons and alters slip into the delusion that an alter falling into gut-wrenching silence means they have cast out a demon, thus inspiring these well-meaning but tragically mistaken “helpers” to continue their reign of terror on other innocent victims.
Counselors who don’t even believe in demons but refuse to accept the reality of alters can have a similar, dangerously negative effect.
Caution
If alters began to make their presence felt in you, fears, feelings and battles with temptation would probably resurface that you had thought you were over, but had actually been plaguing you for years in less obvious ways and for reasons you couldn’t identify. To the untrained person, this reactivation of unpleasant feelings and ungodly desires might seem undesirable but in reality it is the best thing that could ever happen. It is like a person finally discovering the cause of the poor health he has endured for years, and learning that through surgery he can enjoy health like he has never before known. Ignorance might seem like bliss because it delays the pain of surgery but it is actually a curse because it keeps the person below full health.
An inner voice was making all sorts of false accusations against Alice. By this time, Alice and I had had considerable experience with alters. Not only was this voice not one of her twenty-five alters that we had identified, it seemed quite different to any alter we had ever encountered. In fact, no new alters had surfaced in Alice for quite some time and we expected that there were no more. Along with some of Alice’s discerning alters, I was fairly sure that the source of this hate and false accusations was a demon. Nevertheless, I decided to be cautious. Rather than aggressively rebuke it as a demon, I compromised by gently affirming that Alice belonged to Jesus, and that because she had his righteousness, no accusations applied to her.
Although I affirmed the truth, I wondered if I were being a wimp for not getting more aggressive. The voice, however, soon turned out to be an alter who said she hated both God and Alice and sometimes wanted to kill people. (This was just because she was deeply hurting.) She called herself Accused because she had taken on board all the false accusations that had been hurled at her. In fact, she was so sensitive that she sometimes took even innocent remarks as accusations.
Even though I had been unaware of this alter, she had become aware of me and thought warmly towards me. Imagine the damage I would have caused had I added to this alter’s near-suicidal state by falsely accusing her of being demonic. Because I didn’t make that mistake, the alter quickly healed. She discovered that God loved her and all her hate and bitterness left.
It should be becoming progressively clearer to the reader why in the early stages of dealing with an alter – when it has had little chance to heal – it is tempting to despise the alter. Rather than joyfully embrace the healing opportunity, we can react like a sick person who thinks he would prefer the illness he is familiar with, over the unknown pain and dangers of surgery. Naturally, while a person is recovering from surgery he may temporarily feel worse than ever, but now, for the first time, full healing is on its way. People with alters have the same assurance that, despite initial discomfort, things will get better when they let Jesus minister to their alters.
If ever a little knowledge were dangerous, it is on this important subject. There is so much more you need to know, so please proceed to the NEXT PAGE
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