I find that I am repeating myself more and more, perhaps because of my encroaching senility or perhaps because misconceptions die hard. I think it is because once the general pubic has been brainwashed, one has to repeat the truth again and again in order to undo the misconceptions.
[1] Corrective emotional experience
A genuine experience of kindness and love may convert a victim of cruelty to a kind loving person. Whether it is portrayed in fiction, such as in Les Miserable, or as displayed by Pope John Paul, long before he became Pope, carrying a concentration camp survivor on his back because she could no longer walk, kindness is an incredibly corrective experience that changes people.
For individuals with DID, it takes time for many of the alters to be convinced of the genuineness of kindness, but it can happen. Corrective emotional experiences cannot always be created elegantly with a swift and fundamental impact. But, little by little, it is like a river cutting a new path through the ground.
[2] The Time Factor for Therapists
I hear all the time that mental health workers have no time. This forces them to look for quick answers. The result, coupled with the intense marketing of pharmaceuticals, is prescribing pills for “quick” solutions. Psychiatric labelling and prescribing a drug instead of listening to their client is often the order of the day, “You are depressed, take the antidepressant.” Time constraint is not a good reason for looking for a short cut. Most of those short cuts have the grave risk of other problems that will obscure the root issue of trauma. Remember, we don’t just take cough syrup if we have a chest infection.
As always, a reminder that looking for evidence of traumatic childhood abuse does not mean gathering of details like preparing a police report. The client will find their right moment to offer clues of such trauma. The therapist must remain open to recognizing those clues, rather than trying to force them out. Healing starts when the survivor feels safe enough to express their experience, is believed, and is emotionally supported. When that happens, the isolation they have felt since their early trauma starts to dissolve.
[3] Leaving the Past Behind
Time and again I hear mental health workers say that traumatic childhood experience is something we should leave in the past, that it isn’t happening now, so move on to the future.
In the absence of processing the trauma, this is nonsense. I do not advocate dwelling in the past, but without healing, the past is like an old festering wound that refuses to go away. If we have an infection in our foot, we can limp along for quite awhile. We can do our best to avoid banging it against the curb when we cross the street. But when we accidentally hit the curb, we might scream in agony. We can ignore the infection for only so long until it spreads further and our whole being is under attack.
Leaving the past behind without healing the trauma is like that. We need to heal the past that is encroaching in the present.
[4] Out of Sight, Out of Mind
There are many phenomena that remain out of sight and, as a result, out of mind. We ignore them thinking that they do not exist, or that they are so rare that we simply will never run into them. Kind of like a “no harm, no foul” mentality.
The problem with that view is that in normal social interactions, we are primed to avoid the sordid and the painful that is not right in our faces.
Do not dismiss the evils of refugee displacement, gender inequality, abuse of power, cruelty to children, PTSD sufferers unable to heal, marginalization of the disabled and the disenfranchised. We can only ignore them to the extent that we believe they either do not exist at all, they are not in our sphere of experience, or are very rare.
We all have difficulty handling bad news and need to keep a sense of balance in order not be overwhelmed by negativity. At the same time, we need to recognize that there is indeed pain and suffering constantly within, around and among us. These are not rare. Recognition of this needs to be accompanied by appreciating positive aspects of our lives. In other words, remain grounded with a balanced grasp of reality.
[5] Practice Kindness
We are surprised when we are informed that a respected person in position of power get caught for abusing over a hundred of victims under his care over a period of decades. We do not need to wonder why these cases usually take decades to get exposed. Victims are trapped so as to remain in their position by design of the abusers. Let us increase our awareness, not be surprised, and practice kindness with insight wherever we go towards ourselves and each other.
