Healing: More than Connecting With Alters
(Summary) Healing with DID isn’t only about recognizing your parts — it’s also about building connections. In this video, you’ll learn how to link emotions with triggers, past experiences with present reactions, and body responses with what’s happening around you. We’ll also explore how to connect younger parts with your adult self, and how parts relate to each other. These connections reduce confusion, ease symptoms, and deepen real healing over time.
In the video “A Different Kind of System Integration,” I talked about the importance of first becoming aware of parts and of experiences that belong to those parts but you might experience as yours. This is differentiation. And once you are doing this, you can work on the other component, linkage or connection. Creating links or connections between members of your system is actual healing. But there is another aspect of making connections that will help in your healing journey. I’m talking about making connections between a variety of aspects of your experiences and memories. The following examples come from a training given by Dr. Janina Fisher.
One way to make connections is to start noticing emotions and their triggers. Before, you might have been unaware of the connection between the two. Now, as you realize the connection, you may be able to understand what is happening in the moment, or shortly after the moment, which can reduce it’s impact on you.
Another way to make connections is between the past and present. For example, becoming aware that you are approaching the anniversary of a particular traumatic event may help you to understand why you started feeling such heavy emotions that you couldn’t explain before.
Here are some other types of connections:
- between a body reaction and a trigger “When I hear footsteps in the hall, my heart starts pounding.”
- between perception and fact. “I can see that I’m in a safe place, but my sense is that I’m not. I still feel in danger.”
- between your young parts and yourself “I can see how small she is.”
- between parts of your system “When the angry part yells, the young part gets more scared.”
- between a part and the whole “I can feel her fear in my body.”
Lastly, an important connection to develop is that between you as the adult you are now and the child you were then. Of course, this means a connection between your adult self of today and each of your parts as they were back in the time of abuse. This can be challenging work because of the avoidance and working with a therapist can help facilitate these connections.
Becoming aware of these types of connections can be slow and difficult work. You can record the experiences you notice in a log and see if over time this can help you identify connections. And, of course, working with a therapist is another way. A therapist may be able to help you notice connections they are seeing.