IN THE FOLLOWING chapters you’ll meet three of the patients I’ve been treating in my private practice. You’ll come to know them in all the richness of their interior worlds and the complexities of their personal lives. They’ve magnanimously given me permission to share their stories with you, and their names and other characteristics have been changed to protect their identities.
Even if your injuries seem small in comparison and your dissociative symptoms are mild, their case histories have much to tell you about your own sometimes mystifying feelings, thoughts, and actions. The skills they’ve learned in therapy apply not only to recovery from a dissociative disorder, but to psychological health in general, and are universally useful tools.
Nancy L. represents the neighbor next door, in the sense that she looks like, talks like, and acts like someone you know or would like to meet—she could be anyone’s sister, friend, coworker, wife, or other familiar person. Like many others with DID, she has the surprising ability to function at a very high level, yet is suffering enormously internally. She also typifies how hard it is for someone with a dissociative disorder to find appropriate treatment: she was diagnosed and treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for many years before her underlying illness was uncovered.
Linda A. is like the many other people who experience a life event that unleashes a flood of emotions they don’t understand. She is an example of how an occurrence in one’s adult life can trigger memories of an earlier childhood trauma, and how that earlier trauma can interfere with one’s current life—in Linda’s case, her relationship with her boyfriend.
Jean W. exemplifies a person’s ability to survive the most extreme trauma imaginable, as well as a variety of other highly traumatic experiences, by using the creative defense of dissociation. She couldn’t escape physically from the traumas in her life, but she was able to escape mentally and eventually rose above tragic circumstances to become an accomplished professional.
All of these people, in one way or another, inspire because of their remarkable progress. How they discovered their hidden parts and learned to connect with them constructively can serve as a traveler’s guide for anyone on the journey toward an examined life. That even those whose sense of self has been most brutally shattered can learn to reunite the broken parts of themselves, and thereby heal, is a lesson that gives hope and wisdom to us all.
