Integrating feelings and memories was so easy I didn’t know it was called that. I know strange right not knowing integrating was happening. In the words of my therapist… if you know them, know that they are there, or can feel something emotionally or physically its already integrated. Dealing with it is something completely different.
Example if I could hear a voice then that voice is already put together in my conscious awareness, (integrated) otherwise I would not know that the voice exists, would not hear the words being said and would not have any feelings either way about what I was hearing. The fact that I could hear the voice, experience it and have emotions around what the voice was saying shows the voice is integrated.
Any time I would talk to my therapist abot the voices, feelings or memories that I hadn’t had before because they were part of the alters, my treatment provider would say something like “good you have integrated this now comes the hard part … dealing with it.
What is dealing with it and how to do it.. first thing is many locations use different words for this and many treatment providers use different words for it.
“Dealing with it”
“Facing it”
“Processing it”
“Manage it”
“Handle it”
“understand it”
“dig deep”
Like I said there are many words for this. Integration naturally happens throughout a human beings whole life time, from beginning to end. But “dealing” with something is completely different.
Dealing, facing, processing, managing, handling, understanding, digging deep, regardless of what you call it its all the same.
The main thing is that it takes time. Just like anything else in life dealing with something anything takes time and effort. Sure you can deny it (say its not true, its not real ) but that doesn’t change the fact that its already integrated into your awareness.
I cant tell you how many times my journals said things like it cant be true, its not true, this isn’t happening. Denying it pushing it away. No matter what you call it, it doesn’t change the fact that I now knew that problem existed, I now know about that picture, that memoriy or that emotion. It was integrated and nothing was going to change it, make it go back to being unintegrated again. I was just fooling myself and causing myself needless stress and pain.
It’s a hard pill to swallow finding drawings / pictures, feeling emotions, knowing that a memory snippet or whole exists. No doubt about it post integration is horrible sometimes.
How do you know you have entered this stage… when you find those pictures, when you feel those emotions, when you have those memories, when these things are no longer dissociated out of your awareness to where you could go on with life as if nothing had happened, and everything is hunky dory.
As my therapist said to me one day when I asked her w hen I would be integrated and post integration…. “Honey you have always been in integration from the day you took your first breath, you will always be in integration until you take your last breath, post integration is just how you deal with whats been integrated.
How did I deal with the fact that my brain has integrated pictures, memories, emotions, traumatic events out of being dissociated, and into my conscious awareness. Not so good sometimes. Other times great, and other times fair.
Pictures were the easiest to deal with. I would look at the drawings that I would find and pull out family photos .. wow will you look at that, that house in the drawing is the same house from 19 such and such when I was this age. Now I know which of my alters drew this picture. This alters sense of gency is this and that so now I know the context in what was going on in this drawing.
now they have a word for this called “Reality remains intact”, DID is a dissociative disorder where reality remains intact, bitter pill to swallow sometimes depending upon what the picture is depicting but things in the drawings can be matched to reality. No that does not mean when I found pictures depicting monsters and graves and such things were literal reality. Human beings experience things through the senses. The pictures of monsters and such showed emotions in the drawings. I actually had a treatment provider who tried to tell me I was a SRA survivor when she saw one of my picture. I actually contacted her after the change over to DSM 5 diagnostics knocked out religious practices as the cause of the problems. We had a great laugh over the fact that the pictures were not about SRA but rather about how angry and scared my alters were. Back in those days that I had that therapist it was the going on and popular belief that DID was from SRA (religious abuses) now they know that its all about dissociation. Not saying some were not SRA just that cults and SRA now have their own OSDD category name that you don’t find out the name of until you are actually diagnosed with it. this kind of thing is no longer called DID. The reality in tact in these drawings was the emotions that were being represented by the monsters and such in the pictures. I say these were the easiest to figure out because I could literally match them to various parts of my life and because my alters had their own sense of agency. Example Rainy didn’t draw about intimacy she drew about sadness and storms. Thelma didn’t draw about sadness and storms she drew about intimacy issues.