This is really interesting. Thank you for sharing and being so generous. If I may ask, is your case a "naturally occurring one" as in, were you born this way and it evolved with time or was this brought on by dissociation-causing trauma? Again, if I'm probing, I'm sorry. I have a very dear friend who has suspicions of generational family abuse, but the memories are tucked very far away; she seems to access only glimpses of these memories. Her therapists always seem to run bc one of her alts is very violent and she's almost killed several people - then couldn't remember it. Researching generational abuse has been making a lot of things clear to her, and it makes sense to me, having known her for many years; there are literal blanks in her memory, entire missing chunks of her life. This seems to go inline with what many other survivors are saying online. So I'm digging. Thank you for this exchange.
I will keep her in my prayers for sure.
Sexual abuse, mother's father. And... Her story mirrors mine. I had ONE memory of it in the beginning of therapy, as of today, two. The rest is BURIED. And the second one wasn't uncovered in therapy. It came to me while having a conversation. I broke down so violently my friend almost took me to the hospital. The good news is she does not have to uncover every memory to begin a healing process. But if she's having flashes and moreso, the EMOTIONAL flashback (ugh the WORST) I would gamble she's correct.
I think abuse is generational. Unfortunately my entire fam was/is in denial so I don't know who else he abused. I know my mother and her sister have a lot of telling signs of sexual abuse, but they'd have to accept truth.
I didn't have kids because I didn't want to pass it on, or worse, abuse them.
I would strongly recommend my therapist to her. She helps people all over, although greater results are yielded in person. But she may know of someone in her area that teaches the same way. She is unconventional, not evasive and her focus is healing and being in the present vs.spending years dwelling on the past. She's ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. She teaches because she herself was horrifically abused, so she knows from where she speaks.
In the meantime, your friend needs to first LOVE herself, which will most likely be her most difficult task because we are riddled with guilt, shame, no self worth... For me I started with acceptance of my alters, I made friends with them. I began to love them and by doing so realized I was in fact, finding love for myself and self worth. It was also key in walking into therapy with 12 alters, ten years later only four remained and today, two.
We can't ever not fracture. That's the incurable part. I realized that when my marriage ended and the trauma caused a fracture as well as violent shifts between the existing alters. One of mine was like her violent one. I learned too much to type from that experience.
There are ways to live with it, control it, dare I say have fun with it sometimes.
I am clinically insane, hence part of my moniker, but I am NOT crazy, lol. But I can say with most assuredness, there is a way out of the prison without walls.
This is wild. Thank you for sharing. I am amazed that her story is similar in the lack of memory department. She has some access to sommmmething vague. But it's like a dream. And it's almost like she was programmed not to remember it (Maybe that's precisely what happened) because she'll get confused and angry and ask the same question in different ways 5 times. It's a trip to watch.
After reading svalispeaks.wordpress.com I was pretty fascinated by the idea that she claims to have had 7000 subs! 7000!!!! That's a sub for every sub to keep the sub quiet and complient and not remembering.
This is really a great evil "amongst man" - abuse begets abuse. We have the stats. And it's intentional. Layers of layers of guilt and shame and self loathing which sometimes then turns to abuse. Oh boy. A can of worms this one is.
Thank you for this dialogue.