Card by our friend Shelley Mallin for our birthday
“April, 1991: Was admitted to the Psychiatric Short Stay Unit .... This admission has been on an ‘involuntary basis’, with medical certificates completed ... This admission was provoked by the patient having sent a letter to her SAFER therapist ... threatening suicide and homicide. The patient has had a history of several decompensations suggestive of dissociative states and/or psychosis over the last several months ... she may be displaying signs of multiple personality disorder. .... It appeared that the patient had developed a psychotic transference towards her therapist ... and arrangements were being made for her to be transferred to a different therapist.”
So there it was. One of the stereotypes of people with multiple personalities --- dangerous, serial killer, etc. We apologize to all those multiples who are not dangerous. Oh, we weren’t that dangerous either but how would they have known that. Writing those words down on paper seemed only an expression of our rage and pain and feelings of powerlessness. We are not and never were able to intentionally seriously harm someone much less try to kill them. We have too many Inside us that would not let that happen. We truly believed that writing it on paper was a safe way to express so much anger towards our abusers. It was a sad way to end with John and it caused us so much pain. We think it still does. And it must have been so very difficult for John who tried so hard with us.
On the good side, we began working with our psychiatrist Lyn. She even wrote to our GP saying “Thank you for this interesting and challenging consultation”. Challenging eh? We’re almost proud of that.
It was especially difficult for Shell (1, 2). So many times she did not see John but rather The Bat Queen (8). And she was so afraid that the three old “hags” (called The Bitches (8) then) wanted to kill him. But she didn’t think they were alters so didn’t think the danger came from her. She just became unhinged. How could she not? CF (1) was beginning to remember her abuse and telling John about it, Razor Man (3) was full of rage, Tir (1) was lost in her own world, Ariel (1) was trying to come to terms with her hatred of all men but came to understand that John was trying to help us, Julia (1) was tucked away in a corner catatonic, Empath (1) was unreachable, Patience (1) was trying to hold us all together and Shell was just plain lost and confused. She felt afraid, was full of anxiety, had strange thoughts and thought all the lights were blue, and was thoroughly convinced that these three women were out to get her and John and everyone else. It was all too much. Something had to give. And at such a cost. We had little closure with John before ending therapy with him and that hurt so much. CF especially was devastated. It took her at least a year to get over it.
It was not alright to threaten John or anyone else, on paper or whatever. We take responsibility for that. We knew we had to find a better way to express our rage and pain. Gradually we learned.
In the meantime, we continued to see ourself travelling through Kereth, working our way towards the center of the city. It was still a long way off. One of the highlights of our voyage was riding wild horses on the plains which led to the mountains in the distance. We listened to music a lot on our walkman during that time. One of our favourite songs was one by Phil Collins, called (we think) “Find a Way to My Heart”. The music for it was full of drums that sounded just like the pounding of horse hoofs. We saw each one of us sitting on horses and whooping and hollering with such an intense and wonderful sense of freedom. We felt as wild as those horses. Felt as if we were expressing the very essence of our being. It was absolutely wonderful and profound.
The lyrics were something like “find a way to my heart. And I will always follow you. From wherever you are. I’ll be waiting.” And we felt like each one of us was singing those words to the others. It was like when we did The Joining Ceremony. We felt we were connected so strongly to each other. We had each other. We were not alone anymore. It was truly amazing. It was as if we had nothing to fear anymore because we had each other.
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The next part of our journey was climbing those formidable mountains up ahead. We knew it would be very difficult but we knew we could help each other through it now. So what was the metaphor? What did climbing a mountain symbolize? It was the separation from John. We saw us all climbing the mountain, helping each other up. Then at the top there was John and it was time to say goodbye. CF cried inconsolably. Ariel turned away to hide her tears. Patience lay her hand upon his shoulder, looked at him and said “Thank you for all of this. You made a difference”. It hurt so much to say goodbye. And it was a pity that he did not know what was going on in our mind. We did say something to him and did thank him for all of his work. But we would have liked him to know how much he meant to us.
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We just want to back up here for a moment. This all happened in 1991 and a few more alters had emerged. While things were worsening with John and we were in and out of hospital, Othel (1), Patience and The Bitches had surfaced. Othel emerged in January and was, still is, the gas in our engine. He organizes all of our work. He’s the boss. Others of us do the detailed work. And he got down to work as soon as he emerged. He began looking at enneagrams, a way of typing personalities and listing their characteristics. He found that many of us fit into one or the other categories. He also began compiling other information about each of us and he started work on The Levels.
He had us up in the very early hours of the morning, with less sleep, fast paced thinking, and tons of ideas. Hypomania had set in and was it ever fun. Despite memories surfacing and causing a lot of pain we found that we could still enjoy some things in life. Thanks to Othel for that.
Patience surfaced in February but Shell had a hard time with her at first, didn’t trust her for some reason probably because Patience wanted to help John with our therapy. Patience is an Inner Self Helper for all of us. She has always been more objective, less judgmental, less emotional, very nurturing and helpful to all of us. She did not have any control over any of us but would step in when she could especially with Shell’s psychosis, with conflicts among us and with any suicide attempts.
It took Shell a very long time to believe that The Bitches (who we now call MEA by the way which represents their names Mercedes, Eevin and Arax) were alters Inside. They emerged in March so that the rest of us knew they were alters but Shell still believed them outside of us and dangerous.
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We started working with Lyn in late April. In August No Self (4), Arwen (1), Rebecca (1), The Terrible Twos (4) and Annie Charlie (1) emerged. In November Griffin-CHLD (1) emerged, and in December The 4 Keepers of Maura (2) and Black Widow (3) emerged. We’ll fill in what was happening next and tell you more about some of these alters.
In summary, for 1990 and 1991, sixteen alters of The Others (group 1) had emerged. There were still 4 more to come. But other groups had alters emerging as well. From Una’s Brood (group 4), The More Others (group 2), The Thirteen (group 3) and the Independents (group 8). And things would continue to intensify. Hell was still to come.
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