Imperfection Deserves Forbearance

Today I’ve been considering this contradiction:

On the one hand, people tend to have this idea that their therapist’s life is “perfect” — perfect kids perfectly raised, happy marriage, everything organized, no crises, no trouble, no trauma. Some people believe this to such an extent that they can’t cope with any evidence proving that the therapist is actually human. They feel betrayed and angry if their therapist’s imperfect life interferes in any way with their idealized vision of who the therapist is and how they live.

On the other hand, many DID people are drawn to enter the “helping professions.” (I’m putting that in quotes because, although there are a few exceptions, the vast majority of DID people I know who are or want to be mental health professionals have absolutely no business being anything of the sort.)

Sometimes the people who can’t tolerate disorganization or personal crises or anything more than the most minor imperfection in their own therapists are the same ones who believe they are (or would be) fantastic therapists themselves.

hmmmm…

Am I the only one who thinks that doesn’t make sense?

How can any person whose own life is complicated by the ups and downs of DID (in addition to the random vicissitudes of life) imagine themselves as a therapist — and yet be unable or unwilling to tolerate it when their own therapist is not constantly available, constantly supportive, constantly attuned to them, constantly able to meet their needs and wants regardless of what might be going on in the therapist’s own life?

If someone is already feeling overwhelmed dealing with their own marriage, job, children, or life in general — if sometimes the chores and errands don’t get done, the bills don’t get paid, the kids aren’t attended to as well as we might wish, or the crises and emergencies and troubles are just piling up faster than we can handle them (and anyone who says they don’t have those periods of time would be lying, it has nothing to do with being DID, it’s just how life goes sometimes) — then where would a roster of needy clients fit in to all that?

Would we make a good therapist if we allowed any other demand to take priority over our own families or our own health?

Would we want a therapist who didn’t make their self-care or the care of their families a priority?

My answer is a definite no…

But then… is it fair to be unforgiving or intolerant when our own therapists need to put their priorities somewhere other than on us for a time? Or is it fair to expect that their personal troubles can always be left at home and never interfere with our schedule or our time or our wants?

I don’t think that’s reasonable.

Therapists are human. They are imperfect. They have lives, families, marriages, children, which are no more perfect than anyone else’s, and they are as likely to have a personal crisis as anyone else on the planet. They are subject to the same universal laws of humanity as the rest of us.

So when it happens — I think it behooves each of us to extend to our therapists the same grace, understanding, and forgiveness that we want them to extend to us when we make our inevitable mistakes or have our own inevitable family crises.

This is still true when our therapist’s crisis inconveniences us, or when it means we don’t get what we want, or even when it means we have to weather our own crisis of the moment all by ourselves. Most of us who are in therapy somehow survived the last two or three decades or more without our Magic Helper of choice, so we can probably make it through a few days or even weeks without said Magic Helper now.

It is basic courtesy and respect, and I think it is part of what we owe to our therapists — because being a paying client does not entitle us to have unreasonable expectations of perfection met by our therapists, any more than we would be entitled to expect perfection from anyone else. Including ourselves.

Internal Teamwork is Key to Everything

John Says:
December 19, 2008 at 7:48 am

I enjoyed reading the article on RA Memories Can Hide a Lot. I work with many differernt types of abuse. You are on the money that the traumatic memories are typically the point of focus. Do you have any specific methods of getting around this?

I’ve given this question a lot of thought.

Before I begin, there are two things I think I need to say.

First, just to clarify — I am speaking in this case only about traumatic memories involving RA or SRA. Traumatic memories in general will of course be the focus of therapy. In many cases, they are the entire reason for being in therapy, and they deserve to be the focus. Those memories are what they appear to be, they don’t hide anything more, and there is no reason to bypass them or get around them. In the case of RA or SRA memories only, however, I am proposing that the excessive horror of the rituals and the compelling and consuming memories they create are intended to hide and protect deeper levels of programming and mind control, and therefore that RA/SRA memories cannot be fully addressed or resolved through a purely frontal approach.

Second, I/we are not a practicing mental health professional at this time. We know a lot of dissociative survivors, but we do not now, nor have we ever worked with them in the context of trying to help them heal.

That being the case, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to suggest methods of working with other individuals.

I can, however, elaborate on some of the things which I believe were key components of our own successful work in this area. And the fact is, there is no particular method for doing this particular thing. The same principals that guide all good DID system work will work here too. This is just a different direction than the one in which most people go.

The most fundamental aspect of our work in this regard — and in everything else we have done in terms of our healing as well — is internal communication and cooperation.

Although some of this group’s traumatic memories naturally presented themselves prior to our achievement of strong communication skills and had to be handled in therapy, the vast majority of the early work was focused on getting to know each other and developing a working cooperative.

This was begun in the front group, among alters who knew of each other. Then, as the work progressed and new alters were met or discovered, we paused each time to get to know the new alters and find a way to mesh them into the group.

There are numerous reasons why this has been so important — but they can all be summed up by saying, there is both safety and strength in numbers. Strength for healing, strength for learning the truths we have hidden from ourselves, strength to safely ride out the emotional crises that memories can precipitate, and strength to find what lies beyond the ugliness with which we are all most familiar.

For survivors who have been subjected to purposeful mind control techniques, the multiplicity has been used against us to divide us within ourselves and against ourselves. Developing a working internal cooperative makes the multiplicity work for us. And it can be achieved, regardless of the amount of splitting or the expertise of the programming. It won’t happen quickly, but it can happen — and in my opinion, it should, overall, be the focus of therapy.

In the case of approaching and bypassing RA/SRA memories specifically, it is absolutely crucial to have the understanding and agreement of as many alters as possible. This should never be undertaken as a unilateral action by the therapist, or forced on the system members if they are not willing. Apart from the disrespect this would entail for the genuine horror of these memories, it would also be a complete failure. Dissociative systems are hard enough to work with without incurring the resentment and enmity of the group — so this approach and its intentions should be thoroughly discussed with the alter cooperative before it is attempted, until it is fully understood and they indicate their willingness to proceed, or it should not be attempted at all.

As I said in my last post on this subject (RA Memories Can Hide A Lot), RA memories in many cases are intended to hide and protect the actual programming work done by the programmers. By drawing and holding the focus of the survivor and their therapist, these compelling and horrifying memories prevent anyone from suspecting that there might be anything “more” to look for. This distraction of focus keeps the actual mind controls safe and intact, usually throughout therapy — and RA memories tend to be resistant to any length of therapy. They remain painfully vibrant and strong even decades after a survivor has managed to free themselves from the actual group. This is because, as long as the mind control programming remains, the RA memories will remain there to hide it.

Therefore, part of the discussion about attempting to bypass the RA memories (and thereby defeat the purpose of those memories)should include the fact that doing so is likely to incur substantial backlash within the system. This can include unknown alters attempting to sabotage the work in progress (such as attempting to “kidnap” and/or replace key alters from the front group or threatening the front group), memory flooding, and the triggering of programs designed to completely distract the survivor from this course of action. These programs could cause systemic effects such as sickness, sudden amnesia among alters, pervasive internal darkness, rearranging or restructuring the system to confuse members, or suicidal feelings, among many other things.

The alter cooperative should develop strategies ahead of time among themselves and with their therapist for how to address these crises if and when they occur. Part of being prepared will be to speak to as many alters as possible about what the various traps are, how they were made, how they are set off, who they are intended to effect, and how they can be dismantled. Information is valuable — but obviously there has to be a lot of trust within the system (among alters) and of the therapist before this information will be shared, so don’t expect to have this information handed over in the first couple years.

Spend the necessary time to build a cooperative between alters, and the information will appear when the system is ready to act on it.

It is never a waste of time to pause at any step where a new alter or group of alters is discovered. However much this seems to slow you down, it will be to the benefit of the system as a whole to take the time necessary to learn about new alters met along the way. Not only does this keep the cooperative group cohesive, but who knows what useful information new alters might possess?

Don’t rush. Care and caution, however slow they may seem, are worth the safety they offer.

Be committed to the process — and I mean fully committed to seeing it through. Deciding at the first deluge of memories or the first triggered program that it’s too hard is worse than not starting at all. It wounds the morale of the cooperative — but even worse, it strengthens the general system belief in the efficacy of the blocks in place to prevent any work from getting done.

This is it’s whole own subject, but briefly put — programming hangs very very heavily on the belief of the survivor to keep it running. However real or autonomous it seems, the programming is getting its power from you. It requires the imagination and the unqualified belief of the subject in order to work — BUT, if you can see the trick that makes the magic look real and you cease to believe that it is magic, then it stops having power over you.

And RA/SRA memories, although they are real memories, are also programming, because their purpose is to conceal and distract from the deeper programming, the real controls placed on the individual. They hide the locations from which the dissociative system is controlled, the locations through which a programmer can access that individual at any time throughout their life unless these controls are broken.

Anyone who truly hopes to be free of their abusers and not have to constantly live in fear of the day they are found and accessed again will need to free themselves at this most basic level in order to really be free.

But care must be taken — the programmers know what they’re doing, and your therapist better know what they’re doing too. This is one area in which an expert therapist must be found, at the very least as a consultant, or inpatient care sought.

It is not easy — but is freedom worth it? Is it worth overcoming the difficulties and obstacles in order to be sure that we will never be vulnerable to the perpetrators again? I say yes. No matter what it takes. We would rather be free than anything else. It’s already cost us just about everything. But it’s still worth it.

Dare to look behind the curtain — and these memories, while they will always be horrific in their own right, can shrink in perspective the way the Great and Powerful Oz shrinks to be nothing but a man using a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Dare to see what these memories hide, and they will suddenly become memories that can be processed like any other terrible abuse memory — never gone, but at least no longer perpetually alive to us.

I probably didn’t answer your question — but then, I don’t really believe there is a standard answer on “how to do it.” Good system work will do it. Looking in new directions will do it. Beyond that, the answer will be different for each system, because each system (even if created by the same programmer) is unique. Be creative, work with each system as it is, get to know each alter and get alters working together with each other — and then, if they really want to, they will be able to answer the question of how to do it themselves.

When My Words Are Empty

A quick thought in my free hour here. (It is very rushed, for which I apologize.)

Every year, on the 21^st or 22^nd of December, I have had to undergo a “commitment ceremony” for “my” abusive group. This is an annual event during which I affirm the commitment of my life and my service to the group.

Recently, we had the pumpkin pie conversation with the female parental unit. Sadly, this is also an annual event.

These two events are not entirely without connection.

“You aren’t eating any of the pumpkin pie,” the female parent says every year. “I don’t want any pumpkin pie,” the front girl says. “You don’t want any pie? Why not?” “I don’t like pumpkin pie.” “What do you mean, you don’t like pumpkin pie?” “I don’t like pumpkin pie.” “Since when?” “Since forever. I’ve never liked pumpkin pie.” “You liked it last year.” “No, I didn’t, I ate a piece after you guilt-tripped me into it, like you do every year.” “Everyone likes pumpkin pie. How can you not like pumpkin pie? That’s ridiculous.” “I don’t like it.” “Yes you do, here, eat your piece.”

And every year we eat a piece of pumpkin pie, despite the fact that we hate it.

Does the fact that we eat the pie under duress really mean we like the pie? Do we like the pie because the female parent says we do?

Or are we just trying to keep the peace and eat the damn pie because it’s not worth arguing over?

(That one, definitely.)

So what about my commitment ceremonies?

The point of these ceremonies is to emphasize that my attendance and my service are my own choice — but let’s look at how these really happen.

My first ceremony was when I was 13 — I didn’t drive myself there, and my attendance certainly wasn’t my own choice.

That year, and every year since, I have been a small female body, naked and on my knees in half-slave position, surrounded by fully-clothed men.

The body has not yet been drugged, raped, sodomized, shocked, subjected to any mind games, or forced to hurt anyone else — but those things loom ahead, and I know it. And there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. My only choice is, how bad do I want it to be?

So… yes, I say what I’m expected to say. I do not tell them that I wish they would all suffer from simultaneous heart attacks and die in screaming agony, even though I think that. They pretend they don’t know I’m thinking that, even though they do know it. We go through the motions together.

I’ve been forced under duress to say that I want to be there, that I live to serve them, that I’m willing to die at their command — but do I mean that? Does just saying the words actually bind me to them?

Legally, the answer is no.

Psychologically, it’s been a little trickier to figure out. If I said it, and they said I meant it, then I must have meant it. And what about those hopeless years when I believed (with all the reason in the world) that I would be trapped there forever, and my only hope of survival was to appease these men and resign myself to my fate? Even if I don’t mean it now, didn’t I mean it back then?

Yes, I did… but it still wasn’t a choice. Nobody said to me that I could commit to them — or, if I’d rather, I could commit to apprenticeship at any of these other fabulous (and normal) careers. This was all I had. I was choosing between this and non-existence.

Some choice.

What we say under duress is not binding. What we are forced to accept when we are powerless to refuse does not reflect what we really want. What we “choose” when there is no real choice available does not make us solely responsible for the so-called choice we’ve made.

Only when we have real choices, and when we understand that those choices are finally truly ours to make, can we then be held responsible for our choices — and make choices that reflect what we actually want.

RA Memories Can Hide A Lot

Just as a note – we are getting ready for our annual holiday trip and will most likely be offline until after New Year’s, but there will be more to come after the holidays are over, if anyone wants to check back then.

So – what I’ve been thinking about today is ritual abuse and what it often hides.

I’ve gotten to know a fairly large number of ritual abuse survivors through my years on various forums and online support groups, and I’ve met a smaller number in person.

One thing they all share in common is, that they get stuck on the memories of the rituals, and they never look beyond them.

Now don’t get me wrong – I am absolutely not diminishing or minimizing the true horror of these memories. They really defy words in how awful they are.

What I am saying is, they usually aren’t the bottom of the barrel in terms of memories. Sometimes they are, but more often, ritual memories are like a camouflage of leaves strewn over a trapdoor to conceal it. They are real, but at the same time, they are not what they appear to be.

Before I go any further, let me take a moment to talk about me – in case that might help people understand where I’m coming from when I say this kind of thing.

I am one member of a fairly large dissociative system. I was previously a leader of one of the dark worlds. There are, as it turns out, worlds even darker than mine, but mine was dark enough.

Our worlds and their inhabitants were created on purpose and with purpose by programmers. I was one of their primary liaisons. I worked with the programmers directly and frequently. I was programmed by them, but I also simply learned from them.

I have been like them. I have done what they do, and I have done things they will not do themselves.

I have been a slave with delusions of elitism. I have been a predator with delusions of power. I am not writing about subjects with which I have no personal experience. I have very personal knowledge of all these things.

This blog is, in the first place, my opportunity to express feelings and thoughts that cannot be expressed in any other venue. But the other reason I created it is as a form of atonement. My knowledge has been gained at the expense of many. That is something I can never really undo or make up for, but perhaps sharing what I know might have some beneficial use to others in the current day.

Whether this is actually true or not, I don’t know. My views have never met with a warm reception in any place I have expressed them, so perhaps I don’t have the knack for being helpful. But either way, the information is here.

In any event – back to ritual abuse memories.

Ritual abuse memories are often a screen to keep anyone from suspecting there is more to find.

Programmers leave nothing to chance. Despite the amount of time spent teaching their victims not to trust, not to tell, not to remember, not to enter therapy – they are aware that programming degrades over time if it is not regularly maintained. They are further aware that a certain percentage of victims, in later years, will recover memories, will be in therapy, and will find the courage to speak.

So how do they ensure that their real work remains intact and untouched by any therapist or, preferrably, by the victim either?

They hide it behind something so ugly that nobody will think of looking any further for the “real problem.”

And thus are the rituals used. Programmers cover the true purpose and extent of their work with these bizarre satanic overlays that simultaneously repel many listeners (due to either the disgusting details, or the incapacity of most people to comprehend and believe anything so extreme, or both) and compel attention from those who wish to help the survivor.

The survivor tends to fixate on the ritual memories. The entire calendar is full of dates that have been given meaning by the rituals to which they were once subjected, so there is always another anniversary looming on the horizon. As a result, many survivors remain trapped in dreading and dealing with the anniversary cycle for decades, even if they have long since been free of the actual horror of attendance.

Survivors rarely get past the satanic cover-up to discover what truly lies at the hearts of their own internal systems. Survivors, and their therapists, are so riveted by those horrifying memories that they get stuck on them. Therapy becomes a process of attempting to defuse the memories and give the survivor some peace from them – but this is often a futile battle.

The reason ritual memories are so difficult to dislodge is that they have been precisely calculated on two crucial levels to remain firmly in place. The first level is that something so traumatic will naturally be consumingly upsetting to the person who went through it; the second is that they are being held in place by the deeper programming they hide. In many cases, the entire purpose of ritual memories is to keep anyone from moving past them.

Survivors are focused on them, therapists would look unforgivably uncaring in bypassing them – and so the ritual memories effectively stall the therapy while both the therapist and the survivor search for a means of relief from them.

Unfortunately, if these memories are in fact a screen of traumatic events designed to obscure and protect the real programming and mind control – then real relief will only be found through bypassing the surface memories and dealing with them at the deeper level.

If there is nothing left for them to protect, then the ritual abuse memories can be processed and laid to rest in a more natural way, as much as they possibly can be.

But if they are approached only from the surface level, then they will in most cases continue to be a therapeutic block and a dominant source of distress for the survivor who is plagued by them.

(I realize that this post ignores a lot of elements that ultimately get tangled in to the ritual abuse, but one post can only do so much. I have a lot more I could and eventually will say about this subject. In the meantime, if you want to say anything about what I’ve got so far, feel free.)

Internet Predators: Why Do They Do It

The big question is, why. Why would these predators go after the online survivor population? What’s the point? What’s in it for them?

Well – since I’m not one of them, I don’t really know. All I really have are some guesses, based on the knowledge I unwillingly gained through 33 years being victimized by a particular organized group. So for what that’s worth, here’s what I think.

There seems to be an idea among the DID community that organized perpetrator groups are acting with some greater goal in mind. There has to be something BIG to explain why they do what they do, something big enough to fit the monstrousness of their actions.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is.

I believe their only real gains are money, profit, and a limited sort of power – the most plebeian and prosaic goals imaginable, but extremely powerful incentives all the same.

I believe the “conspiracy theories” have grown from the stories of victims who have escaped from their various abusive groups. These victims emerge from the years of torture believing it was for some greater purpose – becoming a moon goddess or a high priestess, being a satanic bride or some other form of chosen one, playing a vital part in their group’s plans to take over the world or gain secret control over world leaders – no matter what group was behind the abuse or what specific beliefs the victims were taught, they universally received the clear message that their group was special, and that they themselves were destined for a higher purpose.

What nobody seems to realize is that the abusers have been saying  exactly the same thing to every child victim for decades. Every single child is told they are The One, that they are going to grow up to rule the moon, become the high priestess, or play an instrumental part in the group’s plan for world domination.

It’s like telling every eight-year-old gymnast that she’ll be on the Olympic team someday – although there are millions of eight-year-old girls in gymnastics, and only six girls on the Olympic team. Obviously there are a few million girls who are never going to make it. And yet, each of those millions of eight-year-old girls has a better chance of being an Olympic gymnast than any victim of organized abuse has of being a high priestess or a moon goddess. Those things will never happen. They are complete and utter lies.

Abusers teach the myth of specialness for the same reason that gymnastics coaches sell the myth of the Olympian – because it gives the recipient an incentive to tolerate whatever harshness and sacrifice is necessary to achieve that final goal. It drives people to reach as high as they can. It is a motivation.

It is also a control. With the promise of a reward glittering ahead, people will psychologically commit themselves more deeply. Every drop of blood and sweat, every moment of pain, becomes a sacrifice that increases the worth of the envisioned reward. When they are the high priestess or the triumphant world conqueror (or the Olympic champion), then it will all have been worth it. To quit before achieving the reward becomes a failure, a waste of all the effort already put in. With a reward in sight like a carrot on a stick, abusers can drive their victims until they drop, and without having to give them anything more concrete than a promise to spur them on.

And the cold truth is, many predators don’t need any better reason than that. Controlling others, manipulating them, twisting their minds, dancing them around like a puppet – these things are enough of a reason for predators to do what they do.

In fact, if we remove the blatantly cruel and abusive element from these examples, probably everyone can think of someone who delights in controlling others just because they can. There may be no real reason they need to, but they like to do it. Anyone can be a controlling person. Predators are just willing to go to greater lengths to gain and keep their control.

And there is another, perhaps more compelling reason for some of them – they don’t want anyone messing with their monopoly. Because let’s face it, the predators have had things pretty much their own way up to now. They operate in the shadows outside the boundaries of society, where the laws can’t touch them because it can’t even see them. They abuse their victims so severely that most are too terrified to ever risk attempting to expose them. They hide their identities and their locations from their victims so that, even if the victims do dare to tell what happened to them, they can’t turn the perpetrators in to the authorities.

Predators have lived undisturbed in the secret shadows behind our every-day world, and they have been protected by secrecy and fear.

Until, that is, the age of the internet…

When has there ever been so much information available to learn the truth of what these abusive groups do, or so much support and knowledge available to their victims? When before have we ever been able to group together, share stories, receive validation of our memories, and learn from each other like we can now? And when before has there been so much good therapeutic information available, even to those of us who are not able to find qualified therapists where we live?

Of course, the predators don’t want this to happen. They don’t want therapists who understand mind control or organized abuse to share their expertise with the community at large. They don’t want survivors congregating and sharing knowledge and support with each other. These things threaten the ignorance and isolation and secrecy they need in order to thrive.

So… predators go to great lengths to sow distrust of therapists and other supportive people among the survivor community, and to spread seeds of discord and dissension in the support groups.

This is an extension of what they have always done. They have specifically taught their victims to fear and distrust the authority figures that a child would be most likely to turn to for help – such as teachers, police, judges, therapists.

In this case, the predators are simply activating the distrust they have already created toward real-life people and linking it to the online world. They are seeking to discredit the available knowledge and turn survivors against their helpers, each other, and themselves – because they know that survivors, once isolated by their own distrust, will neither give nor receive any help.

And in doing so, they continue to seek the power and control that has always been their turn-on.

With knowledge and caution, however, we can be armed to protect ourselves, our systems, and our opportunities to heal and create the our own safe lives as we deserve to do.

Internet Predators and Child Alters: 10 Ideas to Keep Them Safe

Another way that internet predators can infiltrate a dissociative survivor’s system is by befriending child alters.

These younger alters can be (although they are not always) more trusting than the adults, or they can be conditioned to unquestioning obedience, either of which makes them vulnerable if a predator wants to take advantage of them. Child alters also tend to have more difficulty discerning when someone is trying to trick them or manipulate them. With their child’s perspective, they can be influenced to believe things that would not get past an adult’s critical thinking skills.

Generally speaking (which is to say, true in many cases, but not necessarily true for every survivor or every child alter) – the child alters know vast amounts of information about the survivor’s dissociative system, information that can be very dangerous if it is given into unscrupulous hands. Some child alters also can wield immense power within the system. They might be able to affect other alters or even to change the system landscape.

As one might imagine, a predator could do a lot of damage to a survivor’s system by gaining influential control over the child alters.

Someone once mentioned to me, when I suggested that I thought it was risky to let their child alters go without supervision, that she didn’t have to worry because her background did not involve organized abuse or mind control – this is not true.

ANY AND EVERY CHILD ALTER IS VULNERABLE TO PREDATORS.

Your background does not have to include programming, mind control, ritual abuse, or cult activities to make your child alters vulnerable to a predator’s approach. All a predator requires is a malleable mind and an uncritical perspective, and any child alter will give them that.

Since this predatory tactic is designed to take advantage of divisions or dissociative walls within a system, it is most effectively combatted by developing and maintaing strong communication skills among alters. Dissociative survivors who are wrestling with denial, or those who leave their system to manage itself because they are too depleted to fight about it – those survivors are at particular risk for being victimized in this way.

It is absolutely critical that the adult members of our systems protect our younger alters from doing anything which might be dangerous to them or to the entire system-and there are a number of common-sense things we can do which will dramatically reduce the likelihood that our child alters will be easy pickings for an online predator.

1.       Build communication skills! Among all the other reasons why internal communication is such an important part of DID work, here is another. Predatory influences on your system can be detected and defused more quickly if the system is able to work together and communicate effectively.

2.       Child alters should never do anything online without an adult’s close supervision. It doesn’t matter if you think you know what they’re doing, or you trust them to follow the rules you’ve set for them, or you’re sure they can’t get into trouble at the sites they’re allowed to visit. Better safe than sorry. A child alter’s online activities should always be closely monitored.

3.       Child alters should not have instant messaging conversations or receive private e-mail. This is especially true if your system communication skills are still in progress. The most certain way to make sure that child alters do not become a predator’s target is to prevent them from conversing online at all. If you are not able to monitor what is said to your child alters or by whom, then in the interest of your own safety and that of your alters, keep the littles offline. Do not rely on conversation histories, as these can be erased. Do not rely on the belief that your online “friend” is a safe person and would never hurt you or your child alters. Online appearances can be deceiving.

4.       Be suspicious if someone wants to talk your child alters alone. There should be no reason for any outside person to speak to your child alters without your supervision-and a trustworthy person will have no problem with your supervision. If a person is persistent about having private conversations with your alters, there is likely a reason they don’t want you to know what they’re saying. Don’t be guilt-tripped into allowing private interaction because someone acts hurt that you don’t trust them. This is a blatant manipulation and a big red flag.

5.       Be suspicious if someone requests to speak to your child alters on a regular basis. Regularly asking for child alters, or turning the conversation in a way that they know will bring your child alters out, is a danger sign. Anybody who is attempting to manipulate your system in this way probably has other manipulative intentions in mind as well.

6.       Keep in touch. Talk to your child alters about the outside people with whom they interact. Even if you saw every word of the conversation, this is still important. As with any child, keeping yourself interested and involved in their activities will maintain a strong bond between you, and consistent attention can enable you to pick up on developing problems much more quickly. Some signs of possible trouble include the child alter appearing reluctant to repeat the conversation, any claims that they can’t or are not allowed to repeat what was said, or appearing more secretive than usual. Even if the conversation looked innocuous to you, these can be signs that a covert message has been passed to the child alter, and it should be thoroughly explored as soon as possible. The earlier you detect this and address it, the better for you and your entire system.

7.       Watch for patterns in your system. If your system begins to act or react in ways that are unusual, if things internally appear or feel very different from your norm, or if you experience any feelings or thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere and not relate directly to anything, pay attention to when they occur. See if they routinely occur within a predictable space of time after a child alter has talked to a particular person. If so, then your child alters should no longer be permitted to speak to that person-even if this means you have to stop talking to them too!

8.       Be suspicious if system communication inexplicably breaks down. Once they get a hold on your child alters, predators will instruct the alters to hide their activities from you. In some cases, the alters themselves will be hidden. Be sensitive to any shifts or changes in your ability to see or speak to other alters in your system. Early detection can make all the difference in your ability to help an alter who has been entrapped by a predator.

9.       Stay away from known predators. This should be self-evident, but experience has proven that it needs to be said. If you become aware that a certain person is suspected of harming others through any kind of predatory behavior, DO NOT GO STRIKE UP A FRIENDSHIP WITH THEM.

10.   Have an open mind. Child alters will pick up on your attitudes as easily as outside children do. If they fear they will be rejected or disbelieved, or if they do not have a good relationship with you, then they are less likely to tell you if anything is happening. No doubt we all remember, on some level, what it was like to be a child living in fear of punishments and reprisals for “telling.” Predators can and will use those same threats on your child alters in the current day.

Safety is something we all deserve-but it is also something we owe to our younger selves who have already been hurt enough. It is up to us to prove to them that the current day is a safer time than our childhood was. Part of this is protecting them from any predatory influence.

We need to make our systems strong enough and cohesive enough to repel any attempt by a predator to breach our inner walls and run rampant through our worlds, and until we develop the necessary skills to do that, we need to take the necessary precautions to prevent our defenses from being breached.

Surf safely.

Internet Predators: One Way They Work

Survivors generally have a lot of trouble with trust. For many of them, trusting other people can seem like a near impossibility – with one major exception: survivors tend to have an inordinate amount of trust for other survivors. And this is something predators know.

It is therefore very easy and very common for a predator to create an online persona and say that he or she is a survivor. Such a persona earns them an instant claim on the good faith of other survivors. It is a predator’s entreé into the groups and forums where their targets congregate, and a password to unqualified acceptance within those groups.

Beyond that commonality, there are a variety of tactics that predators may use.

One effective approach is to exploit the distrust of Self to increase the fear of Other. This tactic, successfully employed, will encourage the target survivor to separate themselves from other reliable sources of support and make them emotionally dependent on the predator, who can then manipulate the survivor as they wish.

The reason this works is that, much as they distrust other people, for many survivors the person they distrust most is themselves. They are painfully uncertain of their own decisions, afraid to have their own opinions or feelings, often unsure what their opinions or feelings are, and terrified that the feelings or thoughts they can identify are “wrong.” Self-distrust is the legacy from a lifetime of having one’s thoughts and feelings stifled, ignored, or punished.

Unfortunately, self-distrust can be exploited in adult survivors. If someone is profoundly uncertain of their own thoughts and feelings, then they are vulnerable to anyone who is authoritative enough to overwhelm the survivor’s fragile personal beliefs with their own.

Predators can take a survivor’s doubts and fears and twist them unmercifully into an even bigger and much more serious issue.

For example, if a survivor expresses any doubt in a current relationship, “my spouse isn’t respecting my needs” or “my friend did something that hurt my feelings” or “my therapist isn’t available right now but I really need to talk to them”…

… then they have opened the door for the predator. “I hear you, that’s terrible, and it’s way worse than you think, let me tell you what I know about that person, here’s the rest of the story, now that you’re finally beginning to see it for yourself, I can tell you, this is the truth, listen to me, I know…your best friend is spreading rumors about you behind your back… your therapist is cold and withholding, your pain makes them happy… you can’t trust your spouse/lover/friend/therapist, they don’t care about you like they say they do, if they really cared about you then they wouldn’t do what they did, they don’t care about you like I do… I’m your only real friend…”

From the smallest moments of insecurity, a predator can begin to reshape the survivor’s entire perspective toward the safe people in their lives on whom they rely.

The survivor, beguiled by the insights and empathy the predator demonstrates in early interactions, begins to look to the predator to help them interpret everything that happens to them. And the predator is only too happy to make those interpretations for them.

Predators build a framework of half-truths and lies. They build in small steps, never straying so far from the truth that the lie becomes obvious, but giving everything a twist calculated to play on the survivor’s own insecurities. The survivor is effectively blinded to the predator’s manipulation with their own fears. The cumulative effect can be quite dramatic.

Under the predator’s influence, survivors turn on the people they have far more reason to believe in, people with whom they have had longer and more intimate relationships. They confront these people, both directly and indirectly, with the fears and suspicions bred by the predator. Human relationships are never without occasional disagreements or misunderstandings or mismatches between need and response; however, in the skillful hands of the malicious predator, each and every one of these occasions is transformed into a major grievance with which the survivor will accost friends, spouses, partners, and therapists.

Some indicators that this might be a manipulated action are: (i) the survivor is committed to making everything the fault of the other and is unable to retain or process any contradictory information; (ii) the survivor’s presentation is repetitive, with unnaturally excessive use of a precise phrase or description; (iii) these repetitive responses are used even when they are not actually a response to what is being said; (iv) the survivor persists in their accusations beyond all reason (i.e. in the face of clear and concrete evidence to the contrary); and/or (v) the same argument keeps breaking out again and again across months or years, with the same strength and virulence, as if it had never been addressed before.

The most common immediate reaction to confrontation and accusation is anger. People can generally be relied on to “snap back,” especially when they’re accused of things they think are ridiculous or when the accusations are based on a faulty interpretation of reality. Defensively trying to “set the record straight” is also a very common reaction. The survivor will then take these reactions back to the predator, who will continue to interpret for them. And so the cycle continues.

This is an easy and reliable way for a predator to shape a survivor’s perspective without the survivor recognizing what’s happening. At each step, the predator will appear to empathize with the survivor – but will also touch on the survivor’s deeper fears and insecurities, connecting to those feelings and relating them to current events. A predator will use and manipulate the feelings, magnifying the “wrongs” of the other person, subtly expanding the suggestion of hurts caused and damage done to the survivor by that person.

If this is done right, the survivor will believe at each step that the thoughts and feelings are their own, rather than things being suggested to them. For outside observers, it will become clear over time that some other influence has been at work, but by the time this recognition is possible, the predator will already have closed off their prey from outside intervention. The survivor will have been coached to believe that the predator is the only one who has their best interests at heart, that others are jealous of the relationship and want to destroy it, that others will say anything to pull the survivor away, and that they are trying to hurt the survivor by doing so. Intervention at this point only serves as proof that the predator is right.

This mirrors in many ways the dynamics and mind tricks used by perpetrators on children. All adult survivors, and dissociative survivors in particular, are well-conditioned to be victimized by this kind of manipulation. And too many of them are, in fact, falling into precisely this trap.

Ultimately, the survivor will break off relationships with friends, family, therapists, everyone who was once important in their lives, leaving them alone and isolated with the predator. At that point, the survivor is truly at the predator’s mercy – and mercy is something that no predator understands.

I have a few guesses as to the motivations behind the manipulations, but they are only guesses. And that is a subject for another day.

For today, suffice it to say – the visible results vary. Most times the predatory influence appears destructive. I know of several people who were induced to take medication overdoses. Two survived, one did not. A few, once isolated, were abandoned by the predator. They were left utterly alone and in despair. One such victim committed suicide. Another drifts through life, barely functioning, in a miasma of chaos and darkness and confusion. I do not know what became of the others. They simply vanished.

In a very few cases, the influence appears constructive – to the predator, at least. Some few targets have become willing tools for the manipulative predators who control them. Human tools provide predators with new potential targets, bring them important information about the targets, give them “home bases” from which to work, and generally cover their activities with a veneer of respectability so that other survivors will approach and lower their guards. I am not certain whether the tools realize the truth of what they are doing or not. I tend to think that they don’t – but then, I also don’t consider ignorance to be an excuse.

But what is to be done about it? Internet predators hide in the virtual shadows behind showy mouthpieces who give them an appearance of credibility. Nobody knows who they really are behind the anonymous screen name – and even if we did know, “internet predation” would be an incredibly difficult allegation to prosecute.

So, as survivors, we need to protect ourselves on the internet. And it is up to each of us to do it for ourselves. The so-called security measures of any web site will not do it for us. Nobody else will do it for us. Nobody else can do it for us. We have to accept and attend to that responsibility ourselves – we have to exercise care and caution in every interaction with the online community – or else we are leaving ourselves vulnerable.

And the predators are out there, looking for their new best friend.

Internet Predators: They Really Are Everywhere

The internet can be a great resource for survivors. So many of us have issues with trust, anxiety, panic, and other pitfalls of face-to-face socializing. The anonymity and digital distance of online interaction feels like a safer alternative to many.

Unfortunately, predators know how to surf the web too, and survivors are often just as vulnerable to their ruses and imprecations online as they would be to any real-life perpetrator. Sometimes, in fact, the online connection creates more vulnerability, since there is so much less information on which to rely. There is no body language to see, no chance to study a person’s eyes or facial expressions, no ability to observe the person in their real world or verify what they say of themselves. A person hiding behind an anonymous screen name can tell any lies they want with very little risk of exposure.

Predators take advantage of this anonymity. And survivors, in my experience, are overly trusting in online communications. They are gathering mainly in forums which are either wide open to the passing public or protected only through the need to respond to an administrative e-mail that “yes, I’m dissociative, may I please join” (because nobody could possibly lie about that). And yet, survivors seem to suspend all critical thinking, rational judgment, and common sense when they participate in these communities. Not that they don’t possess these skills – they do possess them, in the same proportions and across the same range as any other group of people – they simply stop using them.

They are in such a rush to accept and support every member that they never pause to question or evaluate the information they’re receiving, even when it’s blatantly false. Apparently, within these groups, it is a greater crime to call attention to an obvious lie than to tell the lie in the first place.

They are so desirous and willing to believe that every member is a genuine suffering soul seeking solace that they are lured into private conversations and individual face-to-face meetings where they are vulnerable, and they walk right into traps of all kinds.

(Just because someone says they’re a survivor does not automatically make them safe for private chats or real-life meetings! An axe murderer could say he was a survivor if he wanted a new and creative way to meet victims! And yet, most survivors will not even question someone else once they’ve claimed to be a fellow survivor… just saying that seems to be taken as some kind of infallible insurance of safety and credibility. *sigh*)

Survivors can be so trusting that they will share full names, personal email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers in public or semi-public online settings. I don’t care how “secure” a forum or web group might be – people should always always keep their personal contact information to themselves. That is always a stupid thing to share. We can’t control who sees what we put online, so we should never put anything there that is too personal for the world to know.

And by “personal,” I don’t mean our memories or our most embarrassing moments. I mean the addresses where our kids live, the numbers to the phones we carry with us everywhere we go, or the legal names by which we can be easily traced and located. Not everyone in the world is a nice person! They’re not going to give us a break because they feel pity for the trauma we’ve already suffered! They’re going to look at all the information we’ve provided for them, and they’re going to see a big sign saying “easy mark” – and they will use that information against us! For god’s sake, you would think survivors already understood that…

To top it off, there’s actually a blog out there in cyberspace where a person claiming to be a dissociative survivor has posted their entire system map on an open page for anyone and everyone to see, complete with the names, ages, and functions of each of the alters. Is this person insane??? Are they not aware how dangerous it is for any dissociative survivor to expose that much of themselves where any idiot with a computer can see it??? Even a dissociative survivor with a non-organized background can be manipulated and used by perpetrators who know how to take advantage of the dissociative condition. I can hardly conceive of the stupidity attendant upon making this level of disclosure online. Why would anyone make it so easy for the perps to get to them??

Unless it’s a ploy by a predator to draw out genuine survivors…

The tricks of the predators are many and varied, and they don’t feel obliged to play fair.

But say it is a genuine survivor. Then this just exemplifies how survivors all over the internet are making themselves vulnerable to internet predators, apparently without the slightest awareness of the danger they’re creating for themselves.

This is true in every web community for dissociative survivors of which I’ve been a participating member. (To date, I have participated in a total of twelve such communities over seven years.) There is not a single exception – every single one of those communities, regardless of what they claim, has been infected to some degree by predators taking advantage of the naivétè and blind good faith of the genuine survivors who have gone there seeking support and companionship.

And this should be no surprise to anyone. The communities are not hard to join, and there is no way to substantiate that a person is who they say they are.

I would never suggest that survivors should not gather in their forums and communities. I think the strength and support that can be gained from these groups is invaluable.

I am, however, saying that we absolutely cannot check our common sense at the door when we go in. We have to keep our eyes open and our antennae out. We have to use some judgment regarding what we say, and regarding who can be believed and who can’t, instead of blindly trusting everyone without discrimination.

I know many people who have been very seriously hurt by internet predators. There are some whose healing has been set back years. There are a few who have died.

And I know of some who are still blindly following where the predators lead, lost in denial and refusing to see the source of the devastation being wrought in their minds and in their lives.

I can tell someone the truth as I see it, but I can’t make them see it the same way. They have to be able to see the truth for themselves, and the best thing I can do is to stay away from them until that happens – because until then, they’d prefer to bring me down with them rather than believe I might be right.

Next post I’ll be writing some of my observations on how internet predators get their holds on people. Maybe a future post will also address some of my speculations on why, although I really can’t presume to know why. It doesn’t always seem to make much sense from what I can see. (Of course, there is doubtless plenty in those relationships that I DON’T see.)

In the meantime, be safe in your surfing.

Haters I

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** Weekly Disclaimer**

Whoever you are, I’m not writing about you personally. I probably don’t even know you. So if anything you read here makes you think I’m talking about you personally, you need to consider what you’ve done to make you think this applies to you. And whatever it is, it’s your problem, not mine.

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My blog got a comment! That’s exciting. 

And there was a good point there – what is it with the haters?? I totally agree that people seem to feel free to say and do anything behind the safe anonymity of an internet screen name – things they would never do if they could be identified and held accountable for it.

A case in point – consider the web sites where patients can rate therapists for the interest and edification of the rest of the therapy-seeking population. It seems there are two kinds of patients who post on these sites. There are the ecstatic patients who write glowing encomiums about their therapist’s skills and compassion so everyone else knows what a wonderful human being the therapist is. And there are the disgruntled patients searching for a safe place to vent their spleen, somewhere they can be as vicious as they want without having to prove their accusations or take responsibility for having made them.

Isn’t that like the modern-day equivalent of writing insults on the bathroom wall?

Except this is a bathroom wall with a world-wide audience…

I don’t know how seriously anyone takes the haters. All I’ve ever seen in their writings is their own hurt feelings and vengeful spirits. They obviously didn’t get what they wanted out of therapy, and they obviously blame the therapist for that, and now they hope to “hurt back” – which is a very human response, however immaturely they handle it.

But what if someone does take it seriously? After all, the point of those sites is supposed to be for other consumers to find qualified therapists who can help them – so what is the potential effect of haters writing spiteful messages on these sites?

Because the great and terrible danger is that they can say whatever they want. It doesn’t have to be true, it doesn’t even have to be close to the truth. I could rate a therapist I had never even met and say they were terrible, unprofessional, unethical, inappropriate, and crossed every boundary in the book – and nothing could prevent me from doing it, and nobody could trace it back to hold me accountable for those lies – and what about the therapist I accused? What would be their possibility for defense? They don’t get the chance to respond. They might not even know that that kind of information is being posted about them – many of the sites I’ve seen allow the patient to add a therapist to the database and then write whatever they wish, with or without the therapist’s knowledge or consent, and with absolutely no verification or quality control at all.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

No wonder disgruntled patients and borderlines on a rampage take advantage of these venues to air their spite.

The problem with therapy, especially with certain patient populations, is that there’s always a risk to the therapist. Any confrontation of the patient on their idiotic behaviors, any refusal to accede to their wishes, always bears the potential threat of having the patient stalk off with a heart full of anger and resentment which, in the termination of the therapy relationship, has no possibility of resolution. The ex-patients are left nursing grudges and steeping in their own bitterness, looking for something to do with all their unresolved feelings.

And thus the haters are born.

In my experience, this hate never seems to die. Even months later, a hater’s anger can reignite at the slightest opportunity, often seeming stronger with the passage of time instead of diminished by it. I can only imagine how much time these people waste on brooding about the subject in order for that to be true. I’ve seen patients crawl out of the woodwork years after a therapy relationship that lasted mere weeks to renew their bitter, hateful tirades against a therapist. Something about that time inequity is disturbingly… disturbed.

Patients I know have written about therapists I know, hateful comments full of twisted truths and outright lies about therapists who treated them with nothing short of courtesy and professionalism. Those same therapists, a few months earlier, were often getting soppy messages of adoration from the same patients. It’s like the borderline black and white – I love you, but you weren’t my version of perfect, so now I will destroy you.

And all this begins over something that was usually the patient’s issue to begin with, although the true events which ultimately lead to the tantrum, termination, and foot-stomping exit of the patients I’ve seen are usually lost to those patients long before their grand exit.

I have seen therapeutic ruptures occur due to, among other things, a patient breaking in to her therapist’s office and being angry that the police were called about it, a patient who expressed immediate suicidal intentions and was angry at being hospitalized in response, a patient who blatantly lied and got angry when the lies were proven, a patient who pried into her therapist’s private life through mutual acquaintances and then got her feelings hurt when she found out her therapist was getting married and she wasn’t invited to the wedding, and a patient who resented having one of her two weekly appointments cancelled because her therapist was going to be out of town for the weekend.

These are a few of the more extreme examples, but they are representative nonetheless of the types of things over which I’ve seen patients get angry and terminate therapy.

In each of the examples, the patient had twisted the situation to be the therapist’s fault even before the termination occurred.

And in each case, the patient has since become a hater. They have found like-minded people among whom they can share and nurture their feelings, they grow fine stocks of bitterness and anger directed towards their ex-therapists, and periodically their anger reaches a point where they act on it.

But rarely do they ever take a personal stake in their hate campaigns. While the occasional hater will attempt to file a formal complaint (which goes nowhere, as all spurious complaints should), most haters cruise the internet in anonymity, looking for ways that they can strike at the offending therapist without personal accountability.

One such hater even admitted that she would file a complaint… if only she could find anything on which to base it.

Let us pause for a moment to consider the stunning implications of that admission.

She admits she has no reason to file a complaint — in other words, there was no actual ethical or professional violation committed by her therapist — but she got her feelings hurt over something or other, and now she thinks the appropriate response is to attempt to get her therapist’s license revoked.

My mind reels at the unmitigated selfishness and self-centeredness revealed by that response.

And does this not, in a nutshell, capture the problem with all haters?

They have absolutely no valid substantiation to their claims that they were mistreated.What they universally share in common, however, is a situation where they did not get what they wanted and a proclivity to point fingers. I’ve never heard a hater admit that they bore even a fraction of the responsibility for the problems they experienced (or the problems they caused) — certainly not to their therapists, and not even among each other where they gather to nurse their grievances. The fault is only and entirely the therapist’s.

If I had my way, I would see the haters trapped on a desert island together with nobody to turn on but each other.

Since I don’t rule the universe, however, and there’s no sense in hoping they’ll learn anything remotely resembling dignity or restraint – I can only say, that others need to be aware that they’re out there, and they are not to be trusted or taken seriously.

So, iIf you see a little cluster of people getting together and bashing a therapist online – if you see two or three people showing up over the course of a few days or a week to post hate mail on therapist review sites – if you arrive at a forum and find that the majority of the membership is involved in a hate campaign – try to use some judgment, and don’t buy their crap wholesale.

The haters are making their own problems, but we don’t have to accept their poison as truth.