Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder

What is Dissociation?

We all dissociate in some ways! When we drive on the motorway with skill while thinking of something else; when we hold a conversation while cooking a meal; when we shut out the noise of the traffic while watching a DVD – we are dissociating. We are being selective about which information is being consciously recalled.

Most of us can hold some things in a different level of our consciousness, and bring them to mind later, at least to some degree. But when a small child is overwhelmed with unspeakable horror, that ability can save her sanity, or her life! The young victim will use that coping mechanism to split off the part of the self that is damaged into a remote corner of her mind.

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder? What is Dissociation?

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is an extreme form of dissociation where a young child learns to cope with on-going trauma by fragmenting her personality, siphoning off the painful memories in such a way that they build to create other parts or “alters”.

When small children are subjected to the most severe and cruel forms of abuse and trauma their mind may sometimes split into compartments so that memories of the events will be in effect temporarily “forgotten”. All the bad memories are stored in a part of the mind that just belongs to the section of consciousness that emerges when the abuse happens. This part may come out again and again every time the familiar abuse events occur, so in time building a memory bank and even a personality.

Creating another part or alternate personality (“alter”) becomes, for the child experiencing on-going and severe abuse and/or trauma, the preferred coping mechanism as they mature. Therefore they may end up with a number of alters, each created to cope with a different kind of abuse, or handle a different overwhelming emotion.

This is a pretty extreme defence mechanism – but it works – and it enables young victims to go about their life untroubled, on the surface at least, by the dreadful events they are unable to prevent or control. It is a safety mechanism, guarding the mind from overwhelming sadness horror and distress.

Dissociation may seem a bit extreme, but it works for a small children who is made to do things he or she doesn’t want to do, see things he/she isn’t equipped to understand and endure unspeakable atrocities he/she is not equipped to process. The apparently “odd” ways of dealing with life which people with DID seem to have becomes their primary coping mechanism for dealing with difficulties of all kinds throughout their lives.

How can Heart for Truth help you deal with DID?

We can help to support and train you while you walk that damaged and hurting saint you know and love into freedom and wholeness.

At Heart for Truth we come from a primarily Biblical background and Christian perspective, and base our treatment on a discipleship model more than a psychotherapeutic one. God has been in the business of healing the broken for a long time, long before anyone had ever heard of therapy or counselling. We passionately believe that Jesus can and does heal dissociative disorders, and He uses His Body, the local Church, to provide a safe place in which victims can learn new ways of thinking and living.

We understand dissociation to be a wonderful, God-given coping and survival mechanism, there to help a small child survive. When the child grows to be an adult with more power over their own lives, that coping mechanism is no longer needed in that way.

Those who dissociate, particularly those with full DID, are often only functioning with part of their full personality. Therefore they are not able to completely enjoy who they are as a unique and precious person, made in the image of God and valuable to Him. That is clearly not God’s best for them, and so He has created a way in which every one can find completeness and healing.

We believe that because Christ has already set us free by His death and resurrection, we are free from every bad effect of the past on us. In Him we can find complete freedom, however bad things may seem.

Heart for Truth will work with your Church or group to help you to understand the dynamics of DID, so that you can understand the person you are working with. We will then help you to create a Truth Team in which they are supported and held while they learn new ways of thinking and living based on who we are as redeemed and free children of God. It really is possible for a Christian who is DID to find new ways of handling stress and change, to face up to the past with courage, know that nothing can change who he/she is now in Christ and move on in maturity and faith to find her God-given calling.

We have seen a number of people who were once slaves of the fragmentation they had to develop become wonderfully free and fulfilled as they take hold of truth, guided and held by loving Christians in their church. This really is good news – it is true that I can do all things in Christ … He really has given us everything we need for us to live the life He intended for us (Philippians 4:19; 2 Peter 1:3). The Gospel really works!

If you would like to know more about this, please do contact us.