Question:
My name is Valerie and I wonder if someone could answer some questions for me about communication and cooperation of alters. This should only be read by someone who is in the later stages of therapy or who no longer needs therapy or who understands communication/co-operation of alters or who feels they can help me to understand it.
Oh, I guess that excludes me then. Oh no – just saw the last bit, ‘or who feels they can help me to understand it’ (Primrose cautiously reads on) – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am writing to ask anyone for any information they may have regarding techniques to increase communication and co-operation of my alters. During an evaluation with a different therapist I was introduced to the idea that the general direction of therapy is presently moving towards increasing communication between alters, rather than resolving memories. That memories of trauma can be dealt with later in therapy, and that their affects be treated as post traumatic stress, and not treated as though "flashbacks" are the result of a "post traumatic stress DISORDER." It is difficult for me to find out what that means because my therapy sessions are limited to one or two hours in a three to four week period with someone who doesn’t seem to be able to understand what I’m looking for. It was suggested that the root of one of my problems, which I have been trying to understand for quite some time concerning a separate group of alters, (we have two separate groups in the same system) could be that I don’t have the necessary communication and co-operation of the alters in my own group. When this suggestion was made, however, it wasn’t explained what that means, nor were the tools to help me increase that necessary communication and cooperation. Another suggestion made was that I could get the information from a newly formed organization in Nova Scotia (Canada) where you meet with people who have integrated and ask them any questions you need to understand where you are in your journey. It was set up to provide a service to current MPD patients to help provide answers. Because of my remote location, that service is all but unavailable to me except possibly through e-mail, but it will be awhile before anything can be done in that area. I need something now. I have three questions which I hope someone in this newsgroup who has gone through integration or at least understands the difference between functioning in a dissociative way and being able to function through cooperation and communication with each other can answer for me. 1. What is meant by communication/cooperation of alters? (If someone has some examples to add to a definition it would be helpful.) 2. How do I find out at what level of comm/coop I am at right now and what level do I need? 3. What can I do to increase the comm/coop that I have? Does it mean that whoever is "out" should stay "out" and that the others should only provide me with information from inside? Does it mean that somehow two or more of us can be out at the same time and if so what can I do to encourage that to happen. What techniques were you given to help in that area and how do I recognize it if and when it does happen? Getting information from my therapist in that area seems to be impossible as she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be multiple. I need to have answers from someone who has "been there and done that." Any information you can provide would be most helpful. Thank you. Valerie
Hmmmm. Personally, I’m all for ‘going with the flow’ rather than thinking about what I or my alters *should* be doing. I always try to increase communication by talking to inside people, consulting them and involving them, although I am not very good at this yet. I have no goals of integration. I don’t have a therapist. I learn a lot from my inside people – in fact it feels like more a matter of them teaching me and listening to them properly, than of me organising or controlling them. I also learn a lot from reading and posting regularly on this newsgroup. Hope this may help although I feel somewhay underqualified to offer advice! Welcome to the group, by the way, if you’re thinking of joining. Primrose — For more information about this service, send e-mail to:
Response:
My name is Valerie and I wonder if someone could answer some questions for me about communication and cooperation of alters. This should only be read by someone who is in the later stages of therapy or who no longer needs therapy or who understands communication/co-operation of alters or who feels they can help me to understand it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am writing to ask anyone for any information they may have regarding techniques to increase communication and co-operation of my alters. During an evaluation with a different therapist I was introduced to the idea that the general direction of therapy is presently moving towards increasing communication between alters, rather than resolving memories. That memories of trauma can be dealt with later in therapy, and that their affects be treated as post traumatic stress, and not treated as though "flashbacks" are the result of a "post traumatic stress DISORDER." It is difficult for me to find out what that means because my therapy sessions are limited to one or two hours in a three to four week period with someone who doesn’t seem to be able to understand what I’m looking for. It was suggested that the root of one of my problems, which I have been trying to understand for quite some time concerning a separate group of alters, (we have two separate groups in the same system) could be that I don’t have the necessary communication and co-operation of the alters in my own group. When this suggestion was made, however, it wasn’t explained what that means, nor were the tools to help me increase that necessary communication and cooperation. Another suggestion made was that I could get the information from a newly formed organization in Nova Scotia (Canada) where you meet with people who have integrated and ask them any questions you need to understand where you are in your journey. It was set up to provide a service to current MPD patients to help provide answers. Because of my remote location, that service is all but unavailable to me except possibly through e-mail, but it will be awhile before anything can be done in that area. I need something now. I have three questions which I hope someone in this newsgroup who has gone through integration or at least understands the difference between functioning in a dissociative way and being able to function through cooperation and communication with each other can answer for me. 1. What is meant by communication/cooperation of alters? (If someone has some examples to add to a definition it would be helpful.) 2. How do I find out at what level of comm/coop I am at right now and what level do I need? 3. What can I do to increase the comm/coop that I have? Does it mean that whoever is "out" should stay "out" and that the others should only provide me with information from inside? Does it mean that somehow two or more of us can be out at the same time and if so what can I do to encourage that to happen. What techniques were you given to help in that area and how do I recognize it if and when it does happen? Getting information from my therapist in that area seems to be impossible as she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be multiple. I need to have answers from someone who has "been there and done that." Any information you can provide would be most helpful. Thank you. Valerie
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -<big, big, big snip I don’t have a therapist. I learn a lot from my inside people – in fact it feels like more a matter of them teaching me and listening to them properly, than of me organising or controlling them. Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s us too! We gotta therp. But we still learn most from inside people. Our therp rely on our inside people to know what we needa work on. And how to do the work. Frequently he consult our inner people. Sounds like you smart, Primrose. I glad you listen to them properly. (That’s hard to do.) (Lotsa times I don’t.) (Then things don’t go as well.) And I hope this post don’t bother you, Primrose. consider
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Response:
Montag, 25 November 1996, Valerie writes to All: V My name is Valerie and I wonder if someone could answer some questions V for me about communication and cooperation of alters. Welcome & hello Valerie, this is Mischa & co. writing. V I have three questions which I hope someone in this newsgroup who has V gone through integration or at least understands the difference V between functioning in a dissociative way and being able to function V through cooperation and communication with each other can answer for V me. First of all, let me state, we (four alters plus two fragments, it seems) haven’t gone through integr*tion and this is surely not our aim for therapy. Nevertheless, I think we got a fair amount of co-operation in here, so I think, maybe me/us sharing could be okay for you, too? Oh, and of course, all these anwers are highly personal. But I think anyways, to most of your questions there can be no general & definite answers. (Which is, btw, another personal opinion, too 
) V 1. What is meant by communication/cooperation of alters? Communication means the obvious – that alters can communicate with each other. Some folks do it by writing (like sometimes the others leave mails they wrote to other people for me to read), others do it in their minds (that’s more like what we do in here), some maybe even by talking aloud to each other. Communication to me means that I can find out what’s going on inside, whether somebody inside needs something from me, and vice versa. It means that we can ask each other instead of everybody simply trying to do whatever’s on their minds: e.g. like me wanting to work while lil wants candy and Fletcher wants loud music – without communication, everybody would just act, e.g. I would get up from the desk to tirn down Fletcher’s music, maybe next lil would go to the kitchen to get some candy, etc. With communication we can talk it out and find some compromise like now we work for an hour, than we have a break with loud music and candy, and then I continue working. Ooops. This example also works for co-operation! 
Which shows how closely cooperation and communication are for us. Of course, cooperation can involve bigger or long term goals and agreements, too. Like for us it was always pretty clear we have to protect lil from further harm, but sometimes, especially before we learned to listen to each other much closer, we couldn’t agree what would be the best thing to reach that goal. V (If someone has some examples to add to a definition it would be V helpful.) And if my scribbling doesn’t make sense, please feel free to ask again. V 2. How do I find out at what level of comm/coop I am at right now and V what level do I need? I got no idea. If you don’t know what _you_ yourself need, maybe somebody else inside knows (or knows at least what they want for themselves)? Also I think there are no objective or general levels of comm/coop – it’s different for everybody, as far as I see. Sorry, don’t know what more to add here. V 3. What can I do to increase the comm/coop that I have? First thing I found helpful was learning to listen myself first (not that I’m already perfect here, but I think I improved a lot:)). I mean, dealing with those I share this body with is for me not completely different from dealing with outside-others. Like, you can’t change another person, you can only change yourself. So first thing I (mischa, the one who for so long thought she was alone in this body) had to learn waas to see and hear the others properly. Even if some things they said seemed, ehm, odd, and others maybe unbelievable/irrational/whatever. Then came trying to figure out what I could do to help e.g. lil to feel safer – how to care for an inside child (another thing I haven’t mastered completely, but I’m working on it! ). To acceppt that not all in here e.g. love SO same way like me or think about life in general the same way. Stuff like that. When i felt very lost, I sometimes told myself over and over again, I have always lived with them inside, only I hadn’t known. So the big change after finding them was nothing dramatic, nothing bad but a chance – finally to start to deal with our lives instead of struggling with these odd impulses which before seemed to come from inside but not from me … Don’t know if this makes sense for me, as multiples are as different from each others as singletons differ from each other – only we mps are more complex V Does it mean that whoever is "out" should stay "out" and that the V others should only provide me with information from inside? Why should this be a general rule? To me, this depends entirely on the situation. Like when we are in therapy or with friends who know, well, who cares whether we switch or not? Which might be a little odd though, if I was giving a lecture or something like that. It seems essential for us that everybody has the same right to come out and do things. Of course, we got some rules – like if we have to meet a deadline, lil’s playing time might get less temporarily – but on the whole, it’s something we decide in the actual situation and not as a general principle. V Does it mean that somehow two or more of us can be out at the same V time and if so what can I do to encourage that to happen. We do that sometimes, sometimes by accident, sometimes consciously, with varying success. Like when the body is in a certain pain which I cannot conveniently dissociate myself, it can be helpful if somebody else takes over the body but I stay present to get some urgent work done. Or sometimes, quite often indeed, we do this to learn from each other. Like I stay present when Vampyre deals with setting boundaries (her job, I’m really not good here yet) so I can see and feel how that works and learn from it. V What techniques were you given to help in that area and how do I V recognize it if and when it does happen? Unfortunately, for me/us there are no techniques but somehow we seem to come up with such ideas like "let’s see if we can do X" or "let’s see what happens if we do Y". And when it comes to recognizing, well, that varies, too. Like two days ago, I was working on a traanslation and suddenly realized I could no longer feel my left hand (that’s the one I use chiefly for typing, so I caan smoke and have tea with the other! ) but still the words on the screen were the ones I wanted. Only later I realized my hand had started aching but Vampyre had taken over to make sure we could go on despite my pain. V Getting information from my therapist in that area seems to be V impossible as she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be multiple. That can really get annoying with singleton therapist, can’t it? V I need to have answers from someone who has "been there and done V that." Any information you can provide would be most helpful. Problem is, as indicated above, as far as I know, all we can do is try helping each other by sharing very personal experiences. There are no ultimate, final or just "right" answers, I’m afraid. V Thank you. You’re welcome. And if my notorius cant "there are no definite answers, only opinions & experiences" didn’T turn you off, well, feel invited to write back, ask more, share, whatever you need, whatever you feel could help you. And if you prefer, e-mail’s okay with me, too. Mischa & co.
Response:
Valerie, I have been in therapy a l o n g time and I still am working on improving internal communication & cooperation. Whenever something is going on with me that I don’t understand (feelings, behaviors…) I have been taught by my therp to take a few minutes to "go inside" and ask if someone knows what is going on. If I take the time to do this I might find out that some kids are very scared about something, or somebody’s really mad, or someone needs special attention, etc. I think the cooperation comes as the communication gets better and people inside start getting to know and trust each other better. Then the message can be passed along that "we’re all in this together so why don’t we work together?" Regarding the direction or priorities in therapy now, it has been found that healing is from the process you go through and how you do it much more than the previous goal of digging up as many memories as possible and upsetting the balance of the whole system as well as making it difficult or impossible for the person to continue to function while being bombarded with flashbacks. The initial focuses for therapy with DID is communication & cooperation as well as a growing awareness of who is in there and what their "jobs" are. As the system grows in stability and the ability for containment of what comes up is developed, only then is it time to do "memory work." There is an exception: it is OK at any time to do memory work around a memory that is already conscious. That is good practice for the later work, anyway. I hope this makes some sense, if you have any questions or want further elaboration on anything I have said, please let me know. Cari Grace DID Therapist and Survivor – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -My name is Valerie and I wonder if someone could answer some questions for me about communication and cooperation of alters. This should only be read by someone who is in the later stages of therapy or who no longer needs therapy or who understands communication/co-operation of alters or who feels they can help me to understand it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am writing to ask anyone for any information they may have regarding techniques to increase communication and co-operation of my alters. During an evaluation with a different therapist I was introduced to the idea that the general direction of therapy is presently moving towards increasing communication between alters, rather than resolving memories. That memories of trauma can be dealt with later in therapy, and that their affects be treated as post traumatic stress, and not treated as though "flashbacks" are the result of a "post traumatic stress DISORDER." It is difficult for me to find out what that means because my therapy sessions are limited to one or two hours in a three to four week period with someone who doesn’t seem to be able to understand what I’m looking for. It was suggested that the root of one of my problems, which I have been trying to understand for quite some time concerning a separate group of alters, (we have two separate groups in the same system) could be that I don’t have the necessary communication and co-operation of the alters in my own group. When this suggestion was made, however, it wasn’t explained what that means, nor were the tools to help me increase that necessary communication and cooperation. Another suggestion made was that I could get the information from a newly formed organization in Nova Scotia (Canada) where you meet with people who have integrated and ask them any questions you need to understand where you are in your journey. It was set up to provide a service to current MPD patients to help provide answers. Because of my remote location, that service is all but unavailable to me except possibly through e-mail, but it will be awhile before anything can be done in that area. I need something now. I have three questions which I hope someone in this newsgroup who has gone through integration or at least understands the difference between functioning in a dissociative way and being able to function through cooperation and communication with each other can answer for me. 1. What is meant by communication/cooperation of alters? (If someone has some examples to add to a definition it would be helpful.) 2. How do I find out at what level of comm/coop I am at right now and what level do I need? 3. What can I do to increase the comm/coop that I have? Does it mean that whoever is "out" should stay "out" and that the others should only provide me with information from inside? Does it mean that somehow two or more of us can be out at the same time and if so what can I do to encourage that to happen. What techniques were you given to help in that area and how do I recognize it if and when it does happen? Getting information from my therapist in that area seems to be impossible as she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be multiple. I need to have answers from someone who has "been there and done that." Any information you can provide would be most helpful. Thank you. Valerie
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Response:
My name is Valerie and I wonder if someone could answer some questions for me about communication and cooperation of alters. This should only be read by someone who is in the later stages of therapy or who no longer needs therapy or who understands communication/co-operation of alters or who feels they can help me to understand it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am writing to ask anyone for any information they may have regarding techniques to increase communication and co-operation of my alters. During an evaluation with a different therapist I was introduced to the idea that the general direction of therapy is presently moving towards increasing communication between alters, rather than resolving memories. That memories of trauma can be dealt with later in therapy, and that their affects be treated as post traumatic stress, and not treated as though "flashbacks" are the result of a "post traumatic stress DISORDER." It is difficult for me to find out what that means because my therapy sessions are limited to one or two hours in a three to four week period with someone who doesn’t seem to be able to understand what I’m looking for. It was suggested that the root of one of my problems, which I have been trying to understand for quite some time concerning a separate group of alters, (we have two separate groups in the same system) could be that I don’t have the necessary communication and co-operation of the alters in my own group. When this suggestion was made, however, it wasn’t explained what that means, nor were the tools to help me increase that necessary communication and cooperation. Another suggestion made was that I could get the information from a newly formed organization in Nova Scotia (Canada) where you meet with people who have integrated and ask them any questions you need to understand where you are in your journey. It was set up to provide a service to current MPD patients to help provide answers. Because of my remote location, that service is all but unavailable to me except possibly through e-mail, but it will be awhile before anything can be done in that area. I need something now. I have three questions which I hope someone in this newsgroup who has gone through integration or at least understands the difference between functioning in a dissociative way and being able to function through cooperation and communication with each other can answer for me. 1. What is meant by communication/cooperation of alters? (If someone has some examples to add to a definition it would be helpful.) 2. How do I find out at what level of comm/coop I am at right now and what level do I need? 3. What can I do to increase the comm/coop that I have? Does it mean that whoever is "out" should stay "out" and that the others should only provide me with information from inside? Does it mean that somehow two or more of us can be out at the same time and if so what can I do to encourage that to happen. What techniques were you given to help in that area and how do I recognize it if and when it does happen? Getting information from my therapist in that area seems to be impossible as she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be multiple. I need to have answers from someone who has "been there and done that." Any information you can provide would be most helpful. Thank you. Valerie
Response:
I think Mischa had a lot of good things to say just thought I might add something on cooperation when I was just starting out and had no communication,etc. and I was on disability I needed to go back to work problem was that kids came out and played solitaire on the computer at work and stuff and bosses get p.o.’d and S. gets into trouble. or kids get mad that they cant get what they saw at the toy store durring lunch break and cry all afternoon about it This doesn’t bode too well for professional appearance much less getting any work done. Before returning to work, therp worked with each alter under hypnosis to get agreement that worked for all so S. could do work and not get fired. ( which wasn’t in the best interest of anyone) It took many weeks of sessions cause some of the littles did’nt want to agree and everyone had to have their say. Heres what everyone came up with: When S. is in the building where she works littles cant come out they can be out durring lunch, and on the way to and from but not at work In exchange for this cooperation, S. will buy littles books toys and art supplies so they can play and feel that there is some reward for cooperation It was hard at first littles still wanted to be out and therp helped reinforce agreement now it’s pretty easy I still switch alot at work but most people would never know ( just ones who are good enought friends that know how to tell, and what to look for ) the folks inside who come out at work all have some continuum of knowledge of whats going on so work gets done. you don’t have to have communication to have cooperation but it helps communication, cooperation, co-consciousness are all on a continuum just like dissociation! You cant push it or use techniques to get more exactly You just start at one end and gradually increase it as you work through the reasons and reasoning by all inside that got you there in the first place I hope this makes sense It’s not a linear thing It’s not in a neat outline form just start where you are now one bite at a time ( a good metaphore for thanksgiving) ACESTAR
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