Day One

Hello and thank you for taking your time to look at my new blog!
This blog has been over a year in the making but my fears prevented me from starting it… until today. Now I finally feel that it is time to share. Time to be open and honest. Time to give my Helpers and I a voice.
You might be wondering who the Helpers are?
That’s a tough question for me to answer because there is a huge stigma out there and so many people either just don’t believe people like me exist. There are so many open-minded people who quickly become close-minded people as soon as I try to share the truth with them. That attitude has paid for my silence for over 40 years.
It’s time to stop that.
Long before I have any real memories at all my mind was trying to form an identity. As it has been explained to me that all humans are born with an unintegrated personality and the process of integration takes a few years. It is not instant. When there is enough trauma and a lack of nurturing during this time, the process of integration is interrupted.
Everyone has different states to their personalities. You can be a parent, a friend, a lover, a sibling, a neighbour, a professional and so forth. You are really not the “same” person in each state but you can flow from one to another with relative ease.
People with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have barriers around these states. The ability to flow from one situation to another can be nearly impossible. Even more damaging is the fact that one state rarely knows what the other has done. For me, this causes extreme anxiety and a feeling of being shattered in to pieces. It is very hard for me to feel whole.
So to answer the question I posed earlier about who the Helpers are? Well, they are my others states.
I only found out that I had DID just over a year ago.
Until a 4 month in-patient hospitalization, I had NO CLUE of what was going on. I was missing time (LOTS of it), had people saying they met me yet I was positive we’d never met, I would suddenly find myself standing in a mall or driving in my car and have absolutely no clue how i had gotten there. Keeping track of what day it was or the time was nearly impossible. Even the year posed trouble for me a few times. The idea of dissociative identity never crossed my mind. I just thought I was crazy. When I decided to go and get help, I really felt that if I was ever truly honest about what went on in my mind, I’d be locked up and the key thrown away forever. In the end, I only had 2 choices. Try to get help or commit suicide. Life was just not worth living any longer at that point in my life. I felt that I was a burden to my family, my friends and anyone around me. My own self-worth was at rock bottom. So I got help. Finally!
Learning about the presence of “alters” in my life was incredibly hard to hear. As I said earlier, I thought I was crazy but upon receiving that diagnoses, I was shocked. I didn’t think I was THAT crazy. To me, DID was the stuff of movies and Oprah specials. Sadly I had watched some of those shows and sat there thinking “Yeah right”, “What a load of crap.” “GREAT acting job!”. I look back now and I am so very sorry that I judged those people. Not only because I am now one of them but because I really had no right to judge anyone at all. I am paying for that attitude now is spades because now that is the attitude that I get shown to me. It’s incredibly discouraging and hurtful. It has kept me quiet and unwilling to share the truth of my life.
I made an early decision that I did not want to view my altered states as villains. I did not want to look upon them with fear or judgement. I wanted to see them as parts of me that helped me get through what my mind could not accept or deal with at the time of the traumas.
“The Helpers” are who they are to me. They helped me when I could not have otherwise survived. They helped me lead a relatively normal life by protecting my mind from memories that would have been unbearable. My appreciation and gratitude to them is unending. Without them, schooling, a marriage, having my children and so much more would have likely been impossible.
As appreciative as I am, I am trying to learn how to stay present and function in my life as Heather. No switching or checking out. Not an easy skill to learn. My mind has been doing this for decades and change takes time.
I am not a fan of the word integration and neither are the Helpers. Just the mention of it causes panic. That said, I wish to learn to live alongside them. To allow them to share what they need to share as they feel the need to share it yet respect them enough to accept that there are some things they may never share with me. What I already know is horrific enough. I don’t feel an overwhelming need for every little detail. Maybe that will change but I will deal with that when the time arrives.
This blog will go back and detail more of the journey that led me to where I am today and it will also chronicle where I go from here.
A healing journey has begun.