I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation…*

The Fox network is rerunning the first season of Glee this summer.

I don’t know if anyone else watches this. I never saw it on tv, but I’ve seen most of the first season on Hulu – it makes me laugh, and I like the music, and occasionally it presents things in a way that makes me think.

The Glee episode titled “Bad Reputation” was one that really got me thinking. The episode develops four or five separate vignettes that present various angles on reputation – being the “bad boy”, losing good reputations and rehabilitating bad ones, and the strength that comes with accepting and finding value in the reputation you have, even if it’s not necessarily “good”.

All these different angles on the subject really got me thinking about various real-life situations, both specific and general – and while most of those reflections have no place here, there were two that I thought might be relevant enough to share in this blog.

1. A history of abuse can make us more vulnerable to being influenced, even to our detriment, by what others think of us.

Considering the toll that our respective individual life experiences have taken on our self-confidence levels, reputation might at first glance seem like something that is largely irrelevant to the survivor population. So many of us are struggling just to get through the day – do we really have the time or the energy to care about what other people think of us?

But a closer look indicates that reputation can be a strongly influential factor in our lives, whether we are calling it that or not.

Lack of self-confidence means, for many survivors, that they are looking entirely outside of themselves for everything – guidance, approval, support, encouragement. Some survivors can’t take a single step in their own lives without ten other people agreeing it’s a good idea. Some survivors can’t hold to their own opinion or course of action in the face of even one person’s disapproval.

A survivor can be so worried about what another person thinks of them, about not losing that person’s perceived support or approval, that they will do anything to keep that person in their life. And in many cases this really does mean anything, including things that they personally would not agree with, things that bear a personal cost to them, things that are degrading or amoral or even illegal. (Of course, all of this can also be true of people who are not survivors – but I’m not talking about them.)

So in that sense, “what other people think of us” becomes a profoundly important aspect of our lives. And it can dictate more of our actions than we realize, because this kind of co-dependence can easily be masked within structures that appear benign, or even positive, like support groups, which can disguise a survivor’s need to be told what to do by others at the expense of listening to or respecting themselves.

This is just another angle by which to consider how easily and thoughtlessly suvivors can give away control of their lives, their thoughts and their actions, to someone else – who may or may not have the suvivor’s best interests in mind, and who can certainly never be relied on to put the survivor’s interests ahead of their own or even near the top of their list.

The only person who will put you first in their lives is you. So if we’re allowing our lives to be dictated by what other people think, then we’re giving the position of “first in importance” in our lives to a lot of people who are holding us second at best in the rank of importance to them (and more likely we are way down their list).

And if we haven’t built enough self-respect to put other people’s approval (or lack thereof) into proper perspective, and we allow ourselves to be blown about like a piece of paper on a windy day trying to keep everyone else happy so we don’t risk their disapproval, then among all the other dangers this kind of vulnerability creates, we can add the risk of severely damaging our own characters by the lengths to which we might blindly sink for someone else’s approval.

I don’t think we ever have so much self-respect that we really stop caring what anyone thinks of us. There will always be people whose opinions are important to us, or who can be influential over us, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But we need to have enough self-respect to be discriminating about whose opinions have that kind of power with us, and enough self-respect to put a limit on what we’re willing to do, even if someone else will disapprove of our refusal. Otherwise our need for approval from others might cost us the chance to ever be able to approve of ourselves.

2. Reputation can be used a programming tool.

The concept is used in different ways by various groups, but these are groups – and any group of people will have the dynamic of reputation in play – and if those groups engage in any form of mind control programming or behavioral programming, then reputation will be used as part of the programming.

This is an extremely simplistic discussion of a very complex subject but –

Many groups who use mind control have some form of hierarchy, real or created for programming purposes, to which their members are bound. Certain things will move you up the hierarchy, other things will cost you advancement or might even cause a demotion – and you create the reputation you have according to the rules of the group. However whinsical or insanely unpredictable those rules might be, they still provide whatever structure there is.

The hierarchical system is  used to create incentive, to create a sense of personal investment in the group, to create a sense of personal ownership of actions that is then used to imply choice and enforce loyalty – it is used to push victims to do more, to accept more, to withstand more – it is simultaneously the carrot and the whip.

The system members in the front world might not be aware of any such hierarchy, or they might know and simply be disgusted by it – but to those system members who were created for those worlds and those activities, the hierarchy will represent the be-all and end-all of their existence.

Whether they were moving up the hierarchy or forever trapped forever at the bottom of it (and the same system will generally have members whose placement and opportunities on the same hierarchy were vastly different), the hierarchy will be how those system members were defined and it will be all they had to define themselves. It will hold their personal successes and their personal defeats – it will be deeply and profoundly connected to who they are, both within themselves and within your group.

It is therefore important to be respectful of this factor in your internal work. The reputation episode of Glee brings up the point of how far people can go when their reputation has been lost or stolen and they feel like they have nothing left to lose – how viciously people can fight when they feel like everything they worked for is gone, and their back is against a wall, and they must fight or be obliterated – and this is a critical point to remember when approaching those members of your system who have “grown up” in an abusive hierarchy, especially those who felt invested in any promised opportunities for advancement or eventual leadership.

Those system members will likely have been forced to do things that will be incredibly difficult to learn about, and they will likely have attitudes that you find obnoxious at best – but then, you are questioning and prying into something that has been the core of their existence.

We might not like what they did then or how they act now – but this is their reputation, this is what they worked for and suffered for, this is what was held out to them as incentive to survive, and this was what they had to take pride in if they were going to take pride in anything – they earned what they have – and therapy and healing threaten to take their hard-earned reputation away from them. So we need to step carefully.

Those system members deserve respect for what they endured and how they managed to survive it. We can say that we don’t like certain things they’re doing and that we hope they will eventually be willing to stop or change those things, but before we ever make any demand that they change, we would be well served to take some time to learn about the world as they see it, where they’ve come from, and what’s been important to them – so that down the road, we can offer meaningful compromises or incentives to change. And they will need both time and space to take in the new possibilities offered by a different kind of life, and then to make their own choice regarding change.

We can give them the possibilities, and we can make the new alternatives look as inviting as possible by living and modeling and exemplifying what we want them to see. For example, if we want them to see that choice is possible, and that making different choices really can create a different life for them, then that is most effectively done by living the truth of it ourselves every day. If we want them to give us respect, that is best gained by respecting them. If we want them to see that life can offer better than what they’ve had so far, then live a life that is actually showing them something better.

However we go about it, we need to be very, very careful of backing those system members into a corner or putting them in the “nothing left to lose” spot – of making too many demands without enough understanding, of stripping them of the things that are important to them without respect or compassion – in the same way that we would be (or should be) careful of putting anyone into that kind of spot.

Even the nicest, kindest, gentlest person in the world, if they feel like the things that matter to them have been threatened or taken away, can suddenly sprout fangs and claws and rip someone’s throat out – and that can be true of your system members too.

(* The title of this post was taken from Joan Jett’s often-remade song “Bad Reputation”.)

Changing Internal System Dynamics

“If listening leads to understanding, which leads to acceptance – acceptance can lead to a shift in the unconscious pressures within a system that dictate what is permissable and what is not – and the end result is that the system members who were so recalcitrant, so resistant to change, so beyond reach and entrenched in their position… are suddenly free to change.

Internal system dynamics have a complexity which simply can’t be addressed entirely on the surface level.”

I said that at the end of my last post, and I wanted to expand on it. Even though it’s something that all dissociative survivors deal with every day, it is still a complicated and easily misconstrued issue in the overall system dynamic.

The various parts of our system are more or less separate – and yet, however separate the system parts are, and however separate the various parts of our internal worlds are, they are still part of the same system, and they still affect each other, even if they don’t or can’t directly interact with each other.

On the conscious level, individual system members appear to be operating on their own unilateral, and sometimes conflicting, agendas. Some want to get involved in therapy and work toward greater health, others remain loyal to abusers or programmers and try to sabotage healing efforts, others are trapped in past events and perspectives and are not able to interact with the current world on its own terms, and still others don’t care about any of that and just want to do their own thing. Each system member has their own history, their own experiences, their own personality, and their own perspective.

Since everything feels so separate on the conscious level, we might have parts who believe certain things and acts accordingly, and who dominate us even though we don’t agree with them – and we might feel helpless and powerless to change things because they are so separate and different from us.

But if we are feeling powerless in our own system, it is really not because any other part of our system is just so incredibly strong that we can’t stop them no matter what we do.

We are powerless against them because, in some way, they are acting on something that we (as a system) accept as right, or necessary, or inevitable – even if, at the same time, what they’re doing is also diametrically opposed to what we (as individual system members) want or what we need or what we’re trying to believe we deserve.

It sounds like a paradox – but within the complexity of dissociation, it is not paradoxical. The disparity is possible because a dissociative system, however large it is and however different the individual members are, is still one system existing in one mind, and there is a meta-conscious process that governs overall system dynamics.

The meta-conscious process is absolutely not, and never can be, under the control of any one person or group in a dissociative system, even though there may be some who claim that control. The meta-conscious process is only and always a collective process which is dictated by the group as a whole, and it reflects the group as a whole – not any one part or one world or one faction, but everyone.

Every single member, whether you know them or whether you don’t, whether they agree with you or whether they don’t, whether you want them to or whether you don’t, is contributing to this meta-consciousness. (It is also true that we are always contributing to it, whether the other members of our system say we are or not.)

And it is the meta-conscious level we must reach to achieve the most profound changes for our system.

To give this concept a little concreteness, consider this example in the context of last week’s discussion.

Imagine that, as things stand, there is you (and whatever system members are on “your side”). You believe in working toward health, open internal communication and cooperation, safety for yourself, safety for your children, healthier relationships with the world, the kind of parenting you never got, and every other good thing.

But your system is stuck with “her” (and everyone on “her side”). She attacks every effort you make toward health, she gets in the way of communication to stifle or block it or to punish those who dare to speak, she might return you to abusers or refuse to stop those who do, she picks fights with your partner and yells at your kids… basically, her side is causing all the problems.

And there’s nothing you can do about it – she’s too strong, and she just does whatever she wants. You don’t know how to reach her and make her change – she has no interest in therapy, she likes things just the way they are, and she’s making every effort to keep them that way. You feel stuck, powerless, defeated by your own system, with no idea of how to move things forward from there.

This is an impasse that nearly all of us will run into at one point or another. “She” might jump on us as soon as we begin in therapy, or she might not bother interfering until we do enough effective therapy work to catch her attention. (In these cases, useless therapy won’t cause this kind of reaction, because why bother?) But if we are lucky enough to get into effective DID therapy, the impasse is likely to happen at some point.

What this internal stalemate reflects, however, is not that “her side” is actually stronger, strong enough to dominate the system as a whole, and completely unassailable by “your side.” Rather, it is just the system as a whole illustrating and reflecting the stalemate and conflict that happens when the very new comes up against the very established.

This is a stalemate that happens at a social level, when the old guard is faced with the up-and-comers. Think about New York at the turn of the last century, and the stubborn stalemate that happened when the nouveau riché  began to challenge the established blueblood society.

This kind of stalemate also happens on a personal level – for example, when we move from a city we’ve lived for a decade to a new city where we’ve never been before. We get homesick, we miss the familiar, we miss knowing where the best pizza is and where the nearest grocery store is and when the best time is to avoid a crowd when we go shopping.

On any level, it is difficult to leave the comfort of familiarity and shift to something new.

But on most levels, we at least have the advantage of being able to recognize that choice for what it is – and based on whatever reasons we hold dear, we can decide whether to support change or support the established way of doing things.

The internal dynamic is no different – but it’s harder to see for what it is when it is because the whole system, both sides, are so entrenched in how things are that it’s difficult for the group as a whole, or any individual within the group, to look past that.

We get stuck in our own dynamics – in who has power and who doesn’t, who someone has always been and how we’ve always seen them, who the heroes are and who the villains are – and we present these things as a static force, not only the way it always has been, but the way it always will be.

But these are the dynamics that govern the meta-consciousness of the system – and if we keep the surface-level dynamics static, then the meta-conscious will also remain static, and change will never really happen.

Going back to the example, imagine how different things would be if you stopped seeing “her” the same way you always have. Imagine that you got to know her well enough to really understand her – not in the same old “she’s just like that” way that you’ve always understood her, but understood her from her perspective. Imagine how that might change your every reaction to her and to everything she does – and how your different reaction might change the relationship between you and her – and how that new relationship might change the general dynamics between “your side” and “her side” – and how that change in surface dynamics might begin to affect the meta-conscious dynamics of the system.

That’s how it happens. Over time, in each small change we choose to make, there are the seeds of larger and deeper change being planted.

If we want to change the meta-conscious influences, then we have to let go of how things are, the stagnating stasis of how things have always been. We need to develop a different perspective on the same old people that we’ve lived with internally for decades – develop patience where we’ve always been dismissive, develop acceptance where we’ve always been rejecting and oppositional, listen to each other where we’ve so far only talked at each other.

The longer we stick on how things are, the longer things will stay exactly that way.
If we want to have a hope of change, we actually have to do something different.

Shut Up and Listen: The Importance of Active Listening in Internal Work

Staying in therapy and staying with therapy can be a difficult proposition for a dissociative group, even when there is no specific programmed response or therapeutic conflict getting in the way. Each person in the group has to work through their own individual issues with trust, connection, feeling dependent, being independent – and beyond that, there are the interpersonal dynamics that happen between members of a dissociative system, just like they would between different outside individuals.

Our group has had members interfere with therapy for a variety of reasons, including because…

- they actively wanted things to stay exactly as they were for very specific reasons, so they discouraged change because it was specifically and directly contradictory to what they wanted.

- they were afraid of what change would mean for them, so they discouraged change for others to keep from having to change themselves.

- they believed that change was unsafe, and they were attempting to protect others by discouraging change.

- they were just being a pain in the ass, discouraging others from change for no personal motivation other than not wanting someone else to have what they wanted.

Realizing that someone else in the group is interfering with therapy is incredibly frustrating. Therapy is hard enough work already – who wants to discover that their own system is making it even harder than it has to be? But it’s also pretty much par for the course for a dissociative system – we’re never going to enter therapy with everyone in agreement, and it’s more likely than not that, at some point, someone for some reason will try to interfere in the process.

For us, the most effective first step in dealing with this has been to identify who was causing a particular disruption, and then to understand why they felt the disruption was necessary, from their perspective.

This sounds pretty simple. Granted, it’s hard to find the patience to understand someone when all you really want is for them to stop arguing and just do what you want right now, but even that generally acknowledged difficulty doesn’t really make the process sound too difficult – which might be why it feels like such a monumental and inexplicable failure when the days and weeks and months drag on and nothing changes. Since it appears to be something we should be able to do, it can’t say anything good about us if we can’t do it.

Well, we can all cut ourselves a break on this one, because saying it’s harder than it sounds doesn’t even begin to encompass how difficult this process can actually be. Even when we think we’re doing what we need to do in order to understand the others in our systems and build bridges with them, we might not actually be anywhere close to doing what really needs to be done.

In order to make the complications clear, let’s put this in the context of external individual people for a moment. Imagine there are forty, or ninety, or two hundred people who are all forced to live together for the duration of their lives, whether they want to or not. Nobody asked them, it wasn’t an invitation, it wasn’t a choice. They can’t get out of the situation, they can’t get rid of anyone else, and there’s nothing they can change about the external reality.

The ideal result, the result that would bring the most harmony to the most people, would be for every member of that group to accept the situation and learn to work fully within the situation.

But how realistic would it be to expect that result? Everyone in the group has their own personality, their own strengths and weaknesses, their own thoughts and beliefs, their own way of doing things…

Isn’t it more realistic to expect that there will be people you like and people you don’t, people who like you and people who don’t, people who can be relied on or trusted for anything and people who can’t be relied on to do anything and people at every point in between, people who irritate you, people who are irritated by you, people who think they’re right about everything, people whose opinions change based on who’s standing next to them, people you wish you didn’t know, people you really don’t know or don’t know that well… etcetera… etcetera…

The larger the group of people, the more diverse the individuals are, the more complex the relationships between them all will be.

And this is just as true for our internal groups as it is for an external group. That’s a lot of complication right there.

And there’s the further complication that listening really is a lost art. Everyone thinks they’re great listeners, but very few people actually are. Often we’re so focused on the next thing we want to say – how to present our own opinion, or something nominally relevant that we want to share about ourselves – and we’re just waiting for the other person to stop talking so that we can talk instead – so we’re focused on ourselves, instead of really listening to the other person.

This is especially true when the other person is saying something we don’t want to listen to in the first place. And yet, it’s a guarantee that any explanation of why someone else in our group is interfering with our therapy (or anything else) is going to include something we don’t want to hear. It might not agree with what we believe ourselves, or it might sound incredible or unbelievable or just plain annoying, or it might be related to a terrible memory (or lots of terrible memories) – and of course we don’t really want to hear about any of that. All we really want is for that other group member to shut up and stop getting in the damn way.

So how closely are we really listening to them? How genuine is our attention to them or our desire to get to know them for who they are, as opposed to our desire to just change them into who we want them to be as fast as possible?

It is really really hard to put aside yourself, your own thoughts and reactions and what you want and what you think is right and what you think they should do and what you want to say to them to convince them to do what you want them to do… and just listen to them.

It’s so hard that most people can’t do it, even when they think they are doing it.

And I’m certainly not saying we’re an exception to that. We’re not. The only possible difference between us and anyone else is that this skill is something we are acutely aware of lacking – but the lack is still there.

But it’s also something we are actively working to learn and improve – genuine listening, genuine understanding – not merely expanding our own view of the other system members, but learning to see them as they see themselves.

This is something that mind-control programmers understand very well, and they use it to their advantage. Programmers know their subjects inside and out and through and through – and they didn’t come by that knowledge through some magic window into our heads, or even because most of what’s in our heads was their creation. The best programmers are the ones who can make use of a person’s innate skills and tendencies in order to make what they’re creating more effective, and they learn what they have to work with in each individual by listening to them as much as by observing or testing or any more objective means of gathering information.

It is compelling and seductive to be the complete center of someone’s attention, to know that they are focusing only and entirely on you, that they are listening fully to you… and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find anyone else who will listen to us with the same attention and focus as the people who programmed our minds once did. At best, we usually have to pay someone to listen, and even a therapist is not guaranteed to be a very good listener. Even they can be focusing more on what they need to say next instead of focusing closely on what we’re saying at the moment.

The fact that the programmers gave us something we can’t easily replace contributes its part to explaining why any part of us would ever wish to remain with or return to the programmers, even when freedom beckons. It’s certainly not the whole explanation for why that connection is so difficult to break; there could be a hundred different elements contributing to that difficulty. However, this is one element. Genuine listening, if done right, can feel like love – and it is something that every person wants from someone else in their lives, but yet very few people can give it to someone else, so there is a perpetual deficit of feeling heard, or of feeling appreciate or loved in the way that being truly heard gives us.

So – genuinely listening to each other not only allows us to understand the other members of our systems, thus opening the door for real and lasting change, but it also addresses the need and the desire we all have to really be heard by offering it without the abusive price tag.

We need to listen to each other – not from a place of looking for the weak spot in the defense or the logical flaw that we can exploit to further our own agenda, but just for the sake of listening and learning and trying to see our world and our overall self and our activities through the eyes and perspective of someone else. If we listen genuinely and attentively, then we will learn everything we need to know about the other person without having to watch for it – but genuine listening might also change how we want to use that information once we have it.

And we must be open-minded about hearing what these other aspects of our self have to say, rather than listening from a perspective of judging, condemning, or immediately changing the other – because listening from those perspectives will likely cause more damage, and it certainly won’t resolve anything. If it were you and someone approached you that way, how would that go over with you?

Before we can ask someone else to change what they’re doing for the benefit of the group, we need to listen and understand them as and where they are and appreciate their perspective. Sometimes understanding can be a gateway to acceptance; if we truly understand why they feel and think and believe the way they do, we might be more accepting of their viewpoint, even though we don’t necessarily agree with how they see things. And although this is an incredibly complicated and difficult balance to achieve – on the few occasions that our group has achieved it, it has so far never failed to work something very like a miracle.

If listening leads to understanding, which leads to acceptance – acceptance can lead to a shift in the unconscious pressures within a system that dictate what is permissable and what is not – and the end result is that the system members who were so recalcitrant, so resistant to change, so beyond reach and entrenched in their position… are suddenly free to change.

Internal system dynamics have a complexity which simply can’t be addressed entirely on the surface level. But some surface actions can have very profound effects, if the actions are genuinely and honestly performed – and they can result in change at a level that we would never otherwise reach, if we went to therapy every day for a hundred years. These are the kinds of things that can only happen through the efforts we make on a daily basis, simply in the way we choose to interact with the world and with our selves and with our lives.

“But choose wisely, for while the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.” ~ Grail Knight, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Mind Control Programming Basics V: Object-Based Programming

As we all know, mind control programming is begun at a very young age – in some cases, even before birth. The obvious reason for this is, that the programmers wish to shape the mind before it has a chance to solidify any identity of its own. Although they are never able to entirely eradicate the original qualities of the self, the programmers will naturally do everything within their power to make sure that they have a permanent ascendency over those natural characteristics.

However, this then requires that the complexity of programming be formulated in a way that will be retained within a child’s mind. No matter how it is pushed to advance, a child can still understand things only in the ways that a child can. It is not possible to force an adult approach to information into a child’s mind.

Children do not begin to develop the ability to reason or think abstractly until they approach their teens. Younger children are much more concrete and literal in their understandings and interpretations, and programmers are required to make use of this concreteness in their work.

As a result, mind control programming will very often have concrete representations on the internal person to whom it is attached, or there will be a concrete internal structure representing a larger and more systemic program. Spin programs, for example, can be represented individually by a hand-held toy that spins, like a top with a spiral painted on it, while a more systemic spinning effect can be represented by a tornado or a centrifugal force machine. Chaos programs can be triggered by an internal child shaking a snow globe or blowing the seeds off a dandelion. The old recorded messages spoken by programmers can often be found playing on literal tape recorders or record players hidden in the internal landscape.

Individual parts may also indicate programming in their physical presentation. Someone who spent a great deal of time in sensory deprivation might appear internally as being deaf and blind (that is, without the use of their senses). People can appear as literal puppets or dolls or animals or have masks permanently attached to their faces. It is not at all unusual for someone’s internal appearance to reveal information about what was done to them.

The internal landscape may contain structures like merry-go-rounds or rainbows, “magic pools” or mirrors, which are also representative of a more systemic mind control program.

The importance of these objects is an interesting and often misunderstood aspect of programming. The mindless bond which forces the ascendency of an action (either external or internal), even against your will or your concerted efforts – is contained in the concrete manifestation. As long as there is the concrete object to shake, stare at, throw, move, enter, leave, turn on, turn off, or in any other way draw focus… the programming maintains its ascendency.

This is because, first, the training which created the program used that object or structure as a means to block out any and all information and input except what was relevant to the program itself, and this usually includes nothing more than the criteria for setting it off and the criteria for shutting it down. Second, it is because the concreteness of the object is a reinforcement to the mind. This is especially true with the structures – when parts of your system can still experience spinning, drowning, torture, drugging, or passing into another world as a literal event, it is very hard for any other parts of the system to resist it.

However, if you remove the concrete representation – turn off the tape recorders, unplug the machines, take away the toys, take down the walls, bar the doors – then the program has already been deactivated.

I think I can feel the waves of disbelief rippling back to me from that statement…
But it is nonetheless true.

On an individual level, the object is what makes the programmed system member impervious to new learning or any effort to change their thoughts or beliefs – not just resistant, but utterly impervious. Remove the object, and then they will merely be resistant – but reachable.

On a systemic level, the concrete structure is what gives the programming its ungovernable power. As long as any part of your system can literally re-experience internally any of the things done to them externally, or as long as any programming objects or structures remain to lend that concrete strength to the program, the programming will likely continue to influence you.

It might sound crazy, but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the strength of the subjective experience in the internal world. Those of you who live in the outside world might think the internal world is unreal and that it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have any power over you at all – but that world is very real to the parts of your system who live there – and what happens there can and does affect every part of your life.

The strength of your mind has been used against you all your life. It doesn’t have to remain that way, but it is up to you now whether to harness that power for yourself in aid of your healing, or whether you let it continue to run over you like a steamroller.

If you wish to make use of it, then you need to enter into your internal world and learn to speak the language of your own self. Learn how you have interpreted the things that happened to you, how they are represented in your world and in your system. And look for creative ways to counter the things you see. You don’t have to employ them immediately, but the most effective response will be a response that is emotionally congruent with what it is responding to, and in the internal world, emotional congruence can mean literal congruence.

Your group needs to talk to each other, get to know each other – understand why each of you is there, what experiences have led to your respective beliefs or appearances or jobs – understand the structures and objects in your world, what they represent, and what they do, before you make any profound changes.

Because removing the objects is important, but it is only the first, and perhaps the easiest step. After that, you will have to work with the parts whose beliefs and behaviors were wrapped up in those objects, insulated from any new learning or even from really knowing there was any other way than their own, whatever that was – work with them to help them recondition their minds and their selves. Removing the objects merely makes that possible – but if you are not able to talk to each other and work with each other in this way, then removing the object alone will not really make very much difference at all.

Mind Control Programming Basics IV: Resolving Fundamental Conflicts

The previous article in this series highlights one of the most glaring contradictions I personally have so far encountered in therapy: Our actions and beliefs and choices define who we are, for good or bad – so if I acted a certain way with my trainers, and I believed it was my choice to do so – whether or not programming is involved, doesn’t that define me as the person they made me?

Well – no, it doesn’t. I stuck on this point for a very long time, but ultimately I realized that there truly is a qualitative difference between choice and what I had been doing. If my choice is “do <this> or something worse will happen to you” or “do <that> and you will be rewarded” or “if you don’t do <this> then <so-and-so> will suffer” or “commit to us or we’ll kill you” or anything even remotely along those lines – then those really aren’t choices. They are presented as choices, and I was told they were choices, and I was made to feel as though I made choices – but I didn’t.

A true choice would be something like, “you can commit to us and spend every weekend here getting tortured and torturing others, or if you would prefer, you can join the school soccer team and spend your weekends at soccer games, or if there’s something else you would rather do with your time, then let’s discuss it.” That would be a choice – to be given the open-ended freedom to prefer them or to prefer any other thing out there.

On the other hand, if I am only given the choice between one version of X and another version of X – then where is the real choice? The options given in the perpetrators’ worlds are like presenting the letter X in two different fonts and trying to say that it’s a material difference, when you know that an X is an X no matter what font it’s printed in.

So any apparent contradiction inherent in this series is generally attributable to this point – the choices a person makes in response to torture or threats of torture – or even in response to an outdated fear that the torture could still happen again – are not true choices. Only when freedom to choose is truly understood and experienced can the choice be considered representative of who we are.

This is a useful idea to keep in mind when attempting to resolve the fundamental conflicts that divide our systems and turn us against each other internally – and resolution is not only possible, but necessary, because these conflicts benefit nobody but the programmers who encouraged them.

At the beginning, however, it can seem like an impossible task. System members who live in the “normal world” are appalled and disgusted and ashamed and horrified by what was done to them and what they were forced to do. Those who were originally victimized by the programmers feel rejected and despised by their own system, which is hurtful at best and doubtless confirms their own personal fears, but which might also be a realization of exactly what the programmers told them would happen in such a case. Either way, with their fears confirmed and the rest of the system rejecting them, they will be all that much more willing to remain in thrall to the programmers, who at least appear to accept and even occasionally approve of them for being who and what they are.

It can feel impossible – but resolution of these conflicts is ultimately no different from resolving a conflict between two individuals in the outside world – with the exception that we, as members of dissociative systems, do not have the option of simply agreeing that the conflict is too profound for resolution. There is no walking away from our selves. Consequently, if a system remains locked in rejection or refusal to accept the truths of all members of the system, then they will remain in conflict, and they will be making themselves miserable at best, and potentially more vulnerable to perpetuation of the abuse as well.

Imagine the scene between two outside people, where one rejects and decries the behaviors or lifestyle of the other – what are the likely results? Fracture of any existing relationship, or severe damage to the chances of creating and building a relationship… anger and resentment on both sides… and often enough, the person rejected can be pushed by that rejection into a firmer or more extreme embrace of the thing that is causing them to be rejected. This reaction can be incredibly damaging to individuals in the outside world, and it is no less potentially damaging or dangerous when it happens within a dissociative system.

If we wish to be free of the programmers’ influence and safe from any possibility of their continued control over us, then these conflicts must be resolved. Obviously acceptance doesn’t happen overnight – but at the very least, it is important that we do not reject outright any other member or group within our systems, no matter how devastating their information or how alien their viewpoint. Rejection will not make them go away, or make their memories not have happened. However terrible it is or was, they are still part of the system, and they still represent an important and valid part of your shared life together.

So in that effort, which is admittedly a herculean one, it can be helpful to remember that, however they come across now and whatever they have been doing in recent times – at one point, there was a child being forced to learn those things, a child being forced to do them. Their current-day attitudes and actions are representative of the heartbreak and tragedy and extreme suffering of your entire system – and they can’t help where they are right now. But somewhere underneath all that, each part of the system holds some vestige of the person you truly are – and change is possible for every member of the system if they are given the chance.

Neither side should be the only one to change or “give up” things – neither side is completely right, any more than either side is completely wrong. Neither should be asked to jump further or faster than they are ready to. But if each side can inch toward the middle point between them, that is the point where balance can be found.

The daily living side of the system can inch toward it by not rejecting – even if they can’t immediately accept. The side of the system that was involved with the programmers can inch toward it by not doing whatever particular thing they do.

The daily living side needs to work toward acceptance – of the system members themselves, not of their activities. The side of the system that had been involved in the programming needs to work toward doing something different – because simply not doing, although the necessary first step, can’t be the only step they take, or it will be a temporary reprieve at best.

The daily living side needs to widen their definition of the self to include and embrace all sides of the system – and the other side needs to widen their definition of themselves, so that they can become more than what the programmers made them to be.

The mind is a truly incredible and incomprehensibly powerful tool. We are living proof of the amazing lengths to which the mind can go, and the even further lengths to which it can be pushed. So don’t sell yourself short by thinking that there is nothing you can do to help yourself. The only thing that will make healing literally impossible is your belief that it is.

Effective Alternatives – A Personal Example

One method to help with finding effective alternative activities for resisting behavioral urges or to help your group learn new concepts is to adapt current activities already enjoyed by your group into teaching tools.

Are there any activities that are enjoyed by more than one member of your group? Do several of the children particularly enjoy cars or blocks or drawing? Do any of you enjoy the same sport? Are there any shared interests? Are there any shared hobbies? Or, do any members of the group want to try something that someone else already enjoys doing?

Looking for existing commonalities, or creating commonalities of interest, can provide a good place to start as far as introducing options to those parts who don’t yet know what they like or what they want to do. They are also good choices as alternatives to help the group to resist behavioral urges, whether programmed or not – the more people who are interested in the alternative activity, the stronger the resistance will be. These activities can even provide a concrete means by which difficult abstract concepts can be taught.

Lacking any better way to explain this, I will provide a personal example.

Several members of this group share a consuming interest in computer and video games. This interest is not by any means universal – some are much more interested than others, some will try any game while others stick with their few favorites, and some are merely tolerant of others playing. However, given that a number of group members already share this interest, it tends to be one of the first activities we use with those we’ve just met or those who are ready to try safe or fun activities for the first time.

It hasn’t been universally effective, any more than the games are universally enjoyed, but it has proven to be useful in some surprising ways.

• For some group members, a new game is a powerful attraction, and their desire to stay present and playing can be of immense help to the group as a whole in resisting certain programming – especially if obeying the programming would put an end to the game play for any reason.
• A game that involved the concept of moral choice in an appealing setting helped one particular person learn some of the nuanced differences in these choices. The manner in which the game responded to his choices helped him to understand in a very visual and immediate way how each choice was viewed in a social context.
• One person has learned to accept imperfection through being rewarded for outstanding (but not perfect) skill in a game.
• Another found, for the first time, that he could release some anger in a way that fit him without being harmful to himself, the body, or anyone else.
• It has provided a corrective learning experience to several — that virtual media can be interactive without being painful or traumatic, that they can participate without being forced to learn anything or do anything, that virtual “death” can mean nothing worse than starting over, and that it can even be sort of fun.
• Two parts whose relationship had been strained for years were able to establish a more cooperative bond through their shared interest in two specific games, which they played together.
• The distraction and absorption of a game which requires detailed planning and micromanagement can, for us, compete with the obsession of self-injurious or suicidal urges and help us to combat them.
• A game that demands a lot of focused attention but not a lot of thought can help us to get through any stretch of time where we don’t have the energy to think about a game, but we don’t want to listen to our own thoughts either.

Who would have thought that video games could be so useful…

What does your group enjoy doing? What other group members could be invited to try those activities, and what new concepts could they learn through their participation?

A sport could help to release anger, or teach concepts like leadership or teamwork or persistence. Playing a musical instrument can teach physical control and coordination and the value of regular application and practice. Enjoyment of the same toy or game can teach the children how to accept each other, share with each other, respect each other, and work with each other. A shared interest in music or cars or photography or anything can help to build a connection between people who might not have realized they had anything in common. It can help the development of tolerance and reduce conflict and tension within the system.

Almost anything that your group enjoys doing can be adapted to the purpose of helping you build strength and learn new concepts – the things you’re doing already might have a lot of helpful potential if you look at them from this perspective. And in addition to everything else that can be gained, this particular approach fosters the development and growth of relationships within your system, which alone makes it worth doing.

Healing from our various histories is largely about reuniting our selves into a cohesive group (rather than simply a matter of spewing trauma memories until we run dry). Whether or not “group cohesion” leads to “integration”, our lives and our minds and our worlds can only heal if and when our systems can come together as a team.

I imagine that none of us would get very far in therapy if our therapist treated us the way we can sometimes treat the members of our own systems – but the fact is, if we are treating our system members in any way that we would not find acceptable from our therapist – then we are doing just as much damage to our own healing as a therapist would if they treated us the same way.

Focus on the person who experienced the trauma, instead of the trauma alone, and the memories will emerge at a natural and manageable pace – and in the meantime, you will have gained something a lot more valuable than another bad memory. You will gain relationships with the parts who experienced those memories – in the most fundamental sense, building a relationship with yourself.

So – what kinds of things do you and your group need to work on? How can you adapt your everyday activities, or the activities you enjoy, so that the things you do are also helping your healing? What interests do you share that could help your progress? You might already have some very effective tools for relationship- and skill-building just in the things you’re doing already.

If we work together...