Ready for more of my integration process? I have been through all my journals and have decided rather than continuing to post in the order in which things happened I am going to post according to problems or issues. This is because I have found when reading my therapy journals that there are some things we returned to during my therapy journey.

You know how therapists will ask you questions and you will think “what the hey, is this about?” That was me and integrating my voices.
To me hearing voices was just normal. It didn’t cause me any stress or anxiety or as treatment providers call it “clinical distress”.

“clinical distress” what a word right, what does that mean? It means a person is having symptoms and problems, troubles that are out of their normal way of being, that usually subsides on its own.

Even though I didn’t know what my diagnosis was or whether I had alters, or even that I was mentally ill, before the age of 5 I had alters due to extreme trauma. That means I had these voices from before age 5, I grew up hearing these voices every waking moment of my life for well over 20 years. To me that was normal and nothing to get worried about, stressed out about, and they certainly didn’t subside on their own. In the psychological sense and definition I was not in clinical distress nor was I experiencing clinical distress.
As a result of lacking “clinical distress” and hearing voices was my normal way of being, on this issue, whenever my treatment providers would ask “do you hear voices?” or on any psych testing if that question was on the test my answer was always “no I do not hear voices, I don’t hear the toaster talking to me, I don’t hear voices saying weird things.”

I honestly thought this was such a strange and confusing question to ask me. I would always think “what do they think I am some nitwit or nut case. My journals have many ranting and raving entries about how screwed up my therapists are if they think I’m hearing voices.

After I was diagnosed it was explained to me that DID type voices are a special kind of voices. Not like psychosis voices, with the DID ones Reality remains intact. I didn’t lose touch with reality and the voices could be matched with my present day situations, in other words they remained with in reality of the present moment that they were happening. My psychosis voices contained being paranoid and delusional ideas and happened out of the blue, but DID voices only happen when someone is triggered by something. They don’t just happen, but when they do happen theres no patterns of when. Yes I know all the stuff you find on various forums and internet sites that the voices happen only at this time of day or when they feel safe and comfortable with therapists, some claim this only happens during therapy other sites say it only happens outside of therapy…

Bottom line on voices is everyones internal system is set up in their own way that ensured survival. Everything about having DID including he voices of DID are related to how we are handling the present moments triggers and can be traced to a specific trigger.

Remember at the beginning of this thread I explained how the brain has a flight or fight response any time a person encounters something that they cannot handle. Anything related to dissociation and DID is related to triggers and the flight or fight response that causes a person to feel dissociated.

Now lets turn back time for a moment to when my alters and I were not one. Back when what is now called each of my alters and I were less than one.

Rainy was my alter who’s sense of agency was storms and depression. That means all throughout my whole life time any time there was a storm or I was feeling sad, Rainy was talking and taking control. Whether I was in kindergarten, recess, at school events, dating, eating, bathing, just going on with my life Rainys voice was there and sometimes I heard her and sometimes I didn’t. The things she said was not things that would be like my psychosis where I would feel the voices were out to get me or telling me to do bad things or saying bad things.

My DID voices were different than my psychosis voices..The things Rainy talked about were things in my life that related to her. Think of it like carrying on a nice conversation with a friend.

Rainy….its raining
Me…yes I know
Rainy.... Im cold time to go home
Me ....ok what do I want to do when I get home.
Rainy ....watch tv and eat pbj,
Me....I don’t think I want pbj how about chicken sandwich,
Rainy no how about just some hot chocolate
Me ....ok you get hot chocolate and I will eat the chicken sandwich.

These voices (or as its called since 2013 “dialogues” Some places still use the term voices) continued all my life time since the very first alter creation before I was 5 years old.

Each of my alters had their own interests, ways of being and dislikes and what they could and could not do, how much control they had and so on all through what is now called Sense of agency. As a result of their sense of agency their voices were distinguishable from each other, there was consistency in how they talked and what they talked about.

As a result of this, figuring out what they were saying to me was relatively easy. My therapist and I would document what my alters were saying and match their words to what was going on in my life at the moment that I heard their voices.

Example.....

Rainy’s distinctive voice pattern of speech vocabulary and tone…. Its raining

Me ok I just head a voice say its raining. (writing it down)

I look out the window then surprised because it was in fact raining
(next to where I wrote its raining, I wrote that I checked outside it is raining out)

Rainy’s distinctive voice pattern of speech vocabulary and tone …Time to go home

Me writing down that I just heard a voice that said its time to go home. I looked at the time and it is time to go home. I wrote down that I checked the time and it was in fact time to go home.

At first when my treatment provider wanted me to write down what I was hearing in my head and match it to my present life I told her she was nuts. What does this have to do with therapy.

She explained to me integration is the process of putting things together.

We are going to put together what is going on inside my head with what is going on in my daily life so that I could take care of my daily life better.

Since DID type voices are a special kind we can do that with the voices of the others.

then she pointed out since I have DID, the fact of the matter was that I have already been doing this all my life just not on paper and while knowing I was doing it. And that this will be very easy for me to do.

Whether I hear one word or many all my life they were there and all my life I was acting accordingly and appropriately doing things in my life to take care of me, by what the voices were saying.

now we were just going to bring this to a conscious level of behavior instead of just unconsciously / out of habit doing it.

By bringing my awareness of my behaviors and how the voices and my daily behaviors are connected it shows how my alters have helped me all these years.

By doing this therapy assignment, I will be able to handle everyday life without getting triggered and dissociating. in other words doing consciously what I have already and am doing unconsciously through dissociation with out needing to dissociate.

She was right, the therapy assignment was very easy to do all I had to do was carry around a note book that fit in my purse or sticky notes that fit in my pocket and write down what I was hearing and what those voices were saying.

eventually the voices stopped on their own when I was capable of remaining aware of what my self care needs and wants were, and able to handle problems with out getting so triggered that I dissociated.

Before this past few weeks my wife has been after me to please go through your journals and find what you really want to keep and what you can get rid of. The children needed more closet space now that they are getting bigger and older. They are not babies any more.

On the children's closet top shelf I located a total of 38 therapy journals that were just documentations of these voices. Needless to say now that I’m integrated I got rid of all those journals. I don’t need a journal to tell me that Rainy was saying it was raining and I wrote it down and that it matched with the fact that it was raining outside.

this process of integrating my voices also worked for integrating the feelings from my alters. if I was feeling something I would write it down and match it to what was going on in reality. if I could do that then I knew what I was feeling was dissociative not psychosis and would know what I needed to do to handle what ever trigger was going on that got my flight or fight dissociative response going.

my suggestion to anyone who is DID or dissociative and hearing voices and want to know what kind of voices they have. Take time to write out what you are hearing and feeling. Then match that to your life at the moment that you heard that voice or felt that feeling. if it matches then you know that your brains flight or fight dissociation process is at work and what you need to do to take care of your self and your triggers so that the voice or feeling calms down.