New here

I'm not certain if this is a place for me. I can say that hypnosis has changed my life beyond measure... so if that qaualifies me to be on this site, then I belong as much as anyone.

I have had my issues and it took me a long time to get around to dealing with them. I hid inside every possible thing, drugs and alcohol very early on, then a focus on other people - my husband and children - and through out all of it I also had the tool of dissociation to avoid my life.

Not everyone is familiar with DID, and not everyone who understands what it is believes in it. I'm not interested in proving it to anyone. It's my reality and it doesn't matter to me anymore how others see it,. Honestly, how others interpret my inner world has very little to do with how it is inside my head.

I've written about my journey through therapy at my blog.

My therapist tells me I'm nearer the end than the beginning of that journey towards mental health... but it's been nearly three years now, so I don't believe there is an immediate end in sight. I'm very excited about the most recent leg of the journey. This is the part where this site might be of real value. I believe there may be people here who really "get it".

My therapist uses DNMS (Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy) although we have also used EMDR a few times (when she felt "called" to use that method). DNMS is a re-parenting process, in which I established a connectionn with parts of self we called The Nurturer, The Protector and The Spiritual Core Self. These three aspects of self together we refer to as "The Resources."

As we've gone through this process, I've retrieved a lot of lost memories from my childhood. My anger at my father is much more understandable now that I have a more complete picture of the abuse. Having everything so compartmentalized in my mind made it hard for me to see just how much had really happened. It protected me from the impact of all of it, but it also kept me feeling that I was the "crazy one" or the "bad one" because the level of distrust, rage and grief I felt about my father (if I bothered to actually look at it) seemed out of proportion to reality. Mostly, I stuffed all my feelings and felt very little until quite recently.

As we have processed a very large portion of the issues I have with my father, we began to work on my mom. It's hard for me to see the ways she was not there for me, abandoned me emotionally and sometimes physically, and allowed the abuse to continue.

About the same time we started working on this, I began to notice I was having trouble connecting to the "Resources". I didn't tell my therapist (who I will call C) for some time because I had this fear she would abandon me if I could not do the work and I was terrified that I would no longer be able to do it.

When I finally did tell her, she suggested that maybe the difference was not that I couldn't connect to these three aspects of self, but that I had integrated them to the point of not being able to distinguish them as three separate entities.

As soon as she said this, I knew it to be true. Since that time, I've been able to connect in a new way, to one much more solid-feeling foundation inside me.

Because of this new level of connection, C suggested that I begin trying what she called "Board Meetings" (we have since changed the name to "Family Meetings"). In these meetings, I do self-hypnosis through meditation. I imagine the adult me (AKA the integrated resources) walking through a forest to a clearing/meadow. In the meadow, I see all the kid parts sitting on blankets. I call to those who have something to say to come forward and then I do left/right writing to speak to them (adult with my right hand, child with the left). I've done this half a dozen times now.

I can get pretty into it. I'm getting better at it with time. The thing is, when I work with C, she uses auditory bilateral stimulation and the sounds (I prefer the waves recording) moving from left to right are extremely soothing and also really help me focus.

So, that's what I was trying to ask about yesterday. In an email just before she left town yesterday morning, she asked if she had given me a copy of the CD. She has not. It never really occurred to me that she would do that until she said it, but now I really wish I had it. I imagine I can get one from her when she returns, but I was thinking that if I could find one online - maybe a wav or mp3 that I could download, I could use it in her absense and it might make it easier to deal with these mother issues that are so triggered right now.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I really would love to hear any comments you have regarding anything in this post. As I said before, I suspect you "get it".

~Shen