Dissociative Quotes

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Quotes About Dissociative

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I understood these things intellectually, the way I understand that the world is round or that gravity is a universal force. But it took me a long time to truly grasp what Dr. Summer had told me many times before: "To survive a violent childhood, you created aspects of your consciousness that held information about the violence away from you. That's why you remember it as if it happened to someone else. You have many ways of being you. ~ Olga Trujillo
Dissociative quotes by Olga Trujillo
Each alter personality had a common goal and raison d'etre, namely my survival. They didn't all realize that though, and so were at odds with each other much of the time. So I continued to be fragmented and divided. ~ Carolyn Bramhall
Dissociative quotes by Carolyn Bramhall
Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Multiple personality [Dissociative Identity Disorder] should also not be confused with alternations of mood from happy to sad, characteristic of the cyclic temperament. These are merely emotional swings; personality splits are far more comprehensive. ~ Ralph Slovenko
Dissociative quotes by Ralph Slovenko
I always had a dissociative disorder. But I healed from it over the course of 14 years of big-time therapy. But, you know, I mean, everybody's kind of loony now. So I was kind of a pioneer in the mental illness thing, too. ~ Roseanne Barr
Dissociative quotes by Roseanne Barr
Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves.
Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else's anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely. ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5 ~ James A. Chu
Dissociative quotes by James A. Chu
Punishment symptoms Many of the other types of programming produce psychiatric symptoms, usually administered as punishments by insiders who are trained to administer them, if the survivor has breached security or disobeyed the abusers' instructions in other ways. These symptoms serve a variety of purposes, such as disrupting therapy, getting the survivor into hospital, or getting the survivor to return to the perpetrators to have the programming reinforced.
p126 ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Because alters often do not reveal themselves early in therapy, and it may take several years for a therapist to observe most of the alters... ~ Ruth A. Blizard
Dissociative quotes by Ruth A. Blizard
The most chronic and complex of the dissociative disorders, multiple personality disorder, was renamed multiple personality disorder, was renamed 'dissociative identity disorder' in 1994 in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association). The rationale for the name change, was among other things, to clarify that there are not literally separate personalities in a person with dissociative identity disorder; 'personalities' was a historical term for the fragmented identity states that characterize the condition. ~ Colin A. Ross
Dissociative quotes by Colin A. Ross
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also has dissociative symptoms as an essential feature. PTSD has been classically seen as a biphasic disorder, with persons alternately experiencing phases of intrusion and numbing... [T]he intrusive phase is associated with recurrent and distressing recollections in thoughts or dreams and reliving the events in flashbacks. The avoidant/numbing phase is associated with efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma, emotional constriction, and social withdrawal. This biphasic pattern is the result of dissociation; traumatic events are distanced and dissociated from usual conscious awareness in the numbing phase, only to return in the intrusive phase. ~ James A. Chu
Dissociative quotes by James A. Chu
Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate. ~ Judith Spencer
Dissociative quotes by Judith Spencer
Many people with Dissociative Disorders are very creative and used their creative capacities to help them cope with childhood trauma.p55 ~ Marlene Steinberg
Dissociative quotes by Marlene Steinberg
Sometimes, PTSD sufferers will shut out memories of painful periods in their lives and experience amnesia. Thus, a traumatized individual might not remember when his spouse died in a car accident. Another person who was abused might have gaps in her memory of childhood. ~ Glenn Schiraldi
Dissociative quotes by Glenn Schiraldi
Do You Have DID?

Determining if you have DID isn't as easy as it sounds. In fact, many clinicians and psychotherapists have such difficulty figuring out whether or not people have DID that it typically takes them several years to provide an accurate diagnosis. Because many of the symptoms of DID overlap with other psychological diagnoses, as well as normal occurrences such as forgetfulness or talking to yourself, there is a great deal of confusion in making the diagnosis of DID. Although this section will provide you with information which may help you determine if you have DID, it is a good idea to consult with a professional in the mental health field so that you can have further confirmation of your findings. ~ Karen Marshall
Dissociative quotes by Karen Marshall
The DID patient should be seen as a whole adult person with the identities sharing responsibility for daily life. Despite patients' subjective experience of separateness, clinicians must keep in mind that the patient is a single person and generally must hold the whole person (i.e., system of alternate identities) responsible for the behavior of any or all of the constituent identities, even in the presence of amnesia or the sense of lack of control or agency over behavior.
From p8
International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. (2011). Guidelines for treating dissociative identity disorder in adults, third revision: Summary version. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 12, 188–212. ~ James A. Chu
Dissociative quotes by James A. Chu
The differences in alter personality states' self-concepts can be striking, but authorities routinely stress that these are more apparent than real (e.g., Putnam, 1989a; Kluft, 1991). Various typologies have been offered, but few systematic data exist. Types of MPD alters, such as child-like personality states, angry alters, protectors, and persecutors, are found often enough to warrant further investigation. ~ Frank W. Putnam
Dissociative quotes by Frank W. Putnam
FMSF Advisory Board Members Dr Martin Orne and Dr Louis Jolyon West are CIA and military mind control contractors with TOP SECRET CIA clearance. Both received MKULTRA contracts to study dissociative disorders, implantation of false memories, and techniques for creation of Manchurian Candidates. The dissociative disorders, false memories, and the therapist-created multiple personality are the focus of the FMSF campaign. ~ Colin A. Ross
Dissociative quotes by Colin A. Ross
I suggested that the system put all the potential offending [sexually abusive] alters in an internal prison. Jennifer said that would take too long. An alter popped out and said, "Just a minute," and then, after a brief silence, announced that they had "killed" all the offender alters; they were lying in the inside world dead, covered in blood! I was not very happy with such drastic measures, but accepted it for the interim, knowing I could rely on Jennifer to tell me if the risk recurred. I made a list of the "dead" alters.
The next morning Jennifer called; she had dreamed about sexually abusing a child. I asked her to look for more related memories before we met in the evening. She had to "reincarnate" all the dead alters to find the memories. (We already had a method for doing this, as some alters had previously experienced internal "death" in "disasters" in the inner world; when they were made new internal bodies, they became alive again.) ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Sometimes I think I'm schizophrenic. Dissociative. Possibly a split personality. It wouldn't be unheard of. All sorts of disorders show up in ancient family trees - hemophiliacs, insomniacs, lunatics…gingers. Guess I should feel lucky not to be any of those. ~ Emma Chase
Dissociative quotes by Emma Chase
The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. ~ Colin A. Ross
Dissociative quotes by Colin A. Ross
Living with multiple personalities is not something you just wake up fully understanding. For months, maybe years after I first accepted the diagnosis, I was still discovering new nuances, fresh areas I hadn't considered. ~ Kim Noble
Dissociative quotes by Kim  Noble
The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002). ~ Paul H. Blaney
Dissociative quotes by Paul H. Blaney
Once I had found the courage to tell Rebecca about the children in my head, it wasn't so hard in the coming months to tell Roberta.
On the train from Huddersfield one day in May I made a roll call of the usual suspects: Baby Alice; Alice 2, who was two years old and liked to suck sticky lollipops; Billy; Samuel; Shirley; Kato; and the enigmatic Eliza. There was boy I would grow particularly fond of named limbo, who was ten, but like Eliza he was still forming. There were others without names or specific behaviour traits. I didn't want to confuse the issue with this crowd of 'others' and just counted off the major players with their names, ages and personalities, which Roberta scribbled down on a pad. Then she looked slightly embarrassed. 'You know, I've met Billy on a few occasions, and Samuel once too,' she said. 'You're joking.' I felt betrayed. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'I wanted it to come from you, Alice, when you were ready.' For some reason I pulled up my sleeves and showed he my arms. 'That's Kato,' I said, 'or Shirley.' She looked a bit pale as she studied the scars. I had feeling she didn't know what to say. The problem with counsellors is that they are trained to listen, not to give advice or diagnosis. We sat there with my arms extended over the void between us like evidence in court, then I pushed down my sleeves again. 'I'm so sorry, Alice,' she said finally and I shrugged. 'It's not your fault, is it?' Now she shrugged, and we were quiet once more. ~ Alice Jamieson
Dissociative quotes by Alice Jamieson
000-x02 Dissociative reaction
This reaction represents a type of gross personality disorganization, the basis of which is a neurotic disturbance, although the diffuse dissociation seen in some casts may occasionally appear psychotic. The personality disorganization may result in aimless running or "freezing." The repressed impulse giving rise to the anxiety may be discharged by, or deflected into, various symptomatic expressions, such as depersonalization, dissociated personality, stupor, fugue, amnesia, dream state, somnambulism, etc. The diagnosis will specify symptomatic manifestations.
These reactions must be differentiated from schizoid personality, from schizophrenic reaction, and from analogous symptoms in some other types of neurotic reactions. Formerly, this reaction has been classified as a type of "conversion hysteria. ~ American Psychiatric Association
Dissociative quotes by American Psychiatric Association
Feeling disconnected from their peers, they were also internally disconnected from their own humanity. It seems clear that violent video games can promote derealization in a susceptible person. For disaffected adolescents who may have undetected and untreated dissociative symptoms, spending hours and hours playing these games in isolation can be dangerous. ~ Marlene Steinberg
Dissociative quotes by Marlene Steinberg
The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 1975). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur. ~ Philip M. Coons
Dissociative quotes by Philip M. Coons
During intense shopping episodes like this, our clients often describe dissociative-like states, periods of time where they are so focused on the item they want to buy that they forget about the context of their lives - such as whether they have the money, space, or need for the item. Some people may have a tendency to experience this ~ Anonymous
Dissociative quotes by Anonymous
When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. ~ Flora Rheta Schreiber
Dissociative quotes by Flora Rheta Schreiber
With regard to complex trauma survivors, self-determination and autonomy require that the therapist treat each client as the "authority" in determining the meaning and interpretation of his or her personal life history, including (but not limited to) traumatic experiences (Harvey, 1996). Therapists can inadvertently misappropriate the client's authority over the meaning and significance of her or his memories (and associated symptoms, such as intrusive reexperiencing or dissociative flashbacks) by suggesting specific "expert" interpretations of the memories or symptoms. Clients who feel profoundly abandoned by key caregivers may appear deeply grateful for such interpretations and pronouncements by their therapists, because they can fulfill a deep longing for a substitute parent who makes sense of the world or takes care of them. However, this delegation of authority to the therapist can backfire if the client cannot, or does not, take ownership of her or his own memories or life story by determining their personal meaning.Moreover, the client can be trapped in a stance of avoidance because trauma memories are never experienced, processed, and put to rest. Helping a client to develop a core sense of relational security and the capacity to regulate (and recover from) extreme hyper- or hypoarousal is essential if the client is to achieve a self-determined and autonomous approach to defining the meaning and impact of trauma memories, a crucial goal of posttraumatic therapy. ~ Christine A. Courtois
Dissociative quotes by Christine A. Courtois
It's as though I'm sitting in the audience caught up in a well-made film. ~ Joan Frances Casey
Dissociative quotes by Joan Frances Casey
Identity confusion is defined by the SCID-D as a subjective feeling of uncertainty, puzzlement, or conflict about one's own identity. Patients who report histories of childhood trauma characteristically describe themes of ongoing inner struggle regarding their identity; of inner battles for survival; or other images of anger, conflict, and violence. P13 ~ Marlene Steinberg
Dissociative quotes by Marlene Steinberg
I want everyone that has been abused by someone in their childhood to know that you can get past it. Having DID is not the end of the world; it's the beginning of your new life. DID allows the victim of exceptional abuse the ability to "forget" the abuse and continue living. Without it, I may have gone crazy as a teen and spent my life in a as a teen and spent my life in a psychiatric hospital. ~ Dauna Cole
Dissociative quotes by Dauna Cole
Over centuries, organised perpetrator groups have observed and studied the way in which extreme childhood traumas, such as accidents, bereavement, war, natural disasters, repeated hospitalisations and surgeries, and (most commonly) child abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional) cause a child's mind to be split into compartments. Occult groups originally utilised this phenomenon to create alternative identities and what they believed to be "possession" by various spirits. In the twentieth century, probably beginning with the Nazis, other organised groups developed ways to harm children and deliberately structure their victims' minds in such a way that they would not remember what happened, or that if they began to remember they would disbelieve their own memories. Consequently, the memories of what has happened to a survivor are hidden within his or her inside parts. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Most DID patients are rather muted compared to those cases incorrectly assumed to epitomize the condition (Kluft, 1985b). The personalities enact adaptational patterns and strategies that developed in the service of defense and survival. Once this pattern, which disposes of upsetting material and pressures rapidly and efficiently, is established, it may be repeated again and again to cope with both further overwhelming experiences and more mundane developmental and adaptational issues.
Once the DID that developed in order to cope with intolerable childhood circumstances has achieved some degree of secondary autonomy, it becomes increasingly maladaptive. ~ Richard P. Kluft
Dissociative quotes by Richard P. Kluft
Switching is the term in dissociation theory used to refer to the change of state, or moving from one part or alter to another. Some writers use the word splitting when referring to switching, creating a further confusion. ~ Donald A. Price
Dissociative quotes by Donald A. Price
I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?"
"Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."
I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward.
"Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.
p150 ~ Suzie Burke
Dissociative quotes by Suzie Burke
Identity confusion... is as if somebody lost their mental road map and has no appreciation of who they are or what is going on in their life. They may know they know but become blustered or baffled as to why they don't. The information is inaccessible and likely would remind a person about things that have gone on in their life that are simply unacceptable and unknowable, in a given moment, because of the emotional gravity involved. ~ Richard A Chefetz
Dissociative quotes by Richard A Chefetz
Fracturing of the psyche is said to be conducive to creating the phenomenon that has been termed sleeper assassins. According to such theories, the first psychiatrists employed to master mind control studied mental patients who had been diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, which medical science has since renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder. Many of those psychiatrists are said to have been Paperclip Nazi doctors who were brought to the US after conducting radical psychiatric experiments on patients during the Holocaust – the same doctors whose victims not only included Jews, Gyspies, political agitators and homosexuals, but also the mentally ill. ~ Lance Morcan
Dissociative quotes by Lance Morcan
Jenny couldn't believe herself a multiple. She was a mother, a nurse, not that screwball who appeared on the screen like some dysfunctional figment of her imagination trying to find a life. Still, she was coming to a realization that accepting who she was would be the jailer's key to liberate her from this cuckoo's nest. ~ Judy Byington
Dissociative quotes by Judy Byington
Complex PTSD consists of of six symptom clusters, which also have been described in terms of dissociation of personality. Of course, people who receive this diagnosis often also suffer from other problems as well, and as noted earlier, diagnostic categories may overlap significantly. The symptom clusters are as follows:
Alterations in Regulation of Affect ( Emotion ) and Impulses
Changes in Relationship with others
Somatic Symptoms
Changes in Meaning
Changes in the perception of Self
Changes in Attention and Consciousness ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
..."Suzette Boon also become very much involved [in dissocation]... She was in my office and was a family therapist, and when I left for a yearlong sabbatical in Isreal, she took over my patients. And the interesting thing is that she was very skeptical about what I was seeing, while now she's one of the real experts in Europe and has done marvelous research with regard to the diagnosis of the dissociative disorders! ~ Onno Van Der Hart
Dissociative quotes by Onno Van Der Hart
traumatic diagnoses such as post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder describe a shared array of human responses to degradation and dehumanization (Good & Hinton, 2016; Ross, 2011) ~ Michael Salter
Dissociative quotes by Michael Salter
Our inner experience is that which we think, feel, remember, perceive, sense, decide, plan and predict. These experiences are actually mental actions, or mental activity (Van der Hart et al., 2006). Mental activity, in which we engage all the time, may or may not be accompanied by behavioral actions. It is essential that you become aware of, learn to tolerate and regulate, and even change major mental actions that affect your current life, such as negative beliefs, and feelings or reactions to the past the interfere with the present. However, it is impossible to change inner experiences if you are avoiding them because you are afraid, ashamed or disgusted by them. Serious avoidance of you inner experiences is called experiential avoidance (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, & Follettte, 1996), or the phobia of inner experience (Steele, Van der Hart, & Nijenhuis, 2005; Van der Hart et al., 2006). ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
Dissociation is the ultimate form of human response to chronic developmental stress, because patients with dissociative disorders report the highest frequency of childhood abuse and/or neglect among all psychiatric disorders. The cardinal feature of dissociation is a disruption in one or more mental functions. Dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alterations are core phenomena of dissociative psychopathology which constitute a single dimension characterized by a spectrum of severity.
Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience 2014 Dec; 12(3): 171-179
The Many Faces of Dissociation: Opportunities for Innovative Research in Psychiatry ~ Verdat Sar
Dissociative quotes by Verdat Sar
Further evidence for the pathogenic role of dissociation has come from a largescale clinical and community study of traumatized people conducted by a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. In this study, people who reported having dissociative symptoms were also quite likely to develop persistent somatic symptoms for which no physical cause could be found. They also frequently engaged in self-destructive attacks on their own bodies. The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words. Dissociation appears to be the mechanism by which intense sensory and emotional experiences are disconnected from the social domain of language and memory, the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced. ~ Judith Lewis Herman
Dissociative quotes by Judith Lewis Herman
Dear little ones, I know this might be scary and confusing right now, but my name is Jade and I'm here to help. ~ Jade Miller
Dissociative quotes by Jade Miller
The mass media stereotype of an MPD patient is a woman harboring an internal collection of delightfully different people ranging from wide-eyed little kids to kung fu masters and nuclear physicists. Skeptics tend to focus concretely on the impossibility of there being 10 or 20 or 100 separate people inside that woman's body (e.g., Sarbin, 1995). By and large, this stereotype will not go away.

Alter personalities are real. They do exist - not as separate, individuals, but as discrete dissociative states of consciousness. When considered from this perspective, they are not nearly so amazing to behold or so difficult to accept. A fair reading of the MPD literature shows that authorities have long subscribed to this thesis: "Only when taken together can all of the personality states be considered a whole personality" (Coons, 1984, p. 53). Paradoxically, it is the critics who implicitly accept the view that the alter personalities are separate people. ~ Frank W. Putnam
Dissociative quotes by Frank W. Putnam
Based on theoretical analysis, clinical observations, and some research findings (e.g., Kluft & Fine, 1993; Nijenhuis, Van der Hart, & Steele, 2002; Putnam, 1997; Reinders et al., 2003, submitted; Steinberg, 1995), as well as on 19th and early 20th century literature on dissociation (cf., Van der Hart & Dorahy, in press), we propose that traumatization essentially involves a degree of dissociative division of the personality that likely occurs along the lines of innate action systems of daily life and defense - what has been called structural dissociation of the personality (e.g., Nijenhuis et al., 2002; Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, Steele, & Brown, 2004). Dissociation of the personality develops when children or adults are exposed to potentially traumatizing events, and when their integrative capacity is insufficient to (fully) integrate these experiences within the confines of a relatively coherent personality. ~ Onno Van Der Hart
Dissociative quotes by Onno Van Der Hart
SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATION
The patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment.

For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver.

In the dissociative individual, 'there is no uniting self which can remember to forget'. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self 'as a central and coherent organization of experience. . . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self' (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others.

Middleton, Warwick. "Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients." Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49. ~ Warwick Middleton
Dissociative quotes by Warwick Middleton
The drug ketamine, used as a 'dissociative' anesthetic, can produce subjective reports of conscious awareness outside the body, as can various other psychoactive drugs. ~ Stuart Hameroff
Dissociative quotes by Stuart Hameroff
In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on. ~ Elizabeth Howell
Dissociative quotes by Elizabeth Howell
On its own, my internal dissociated part now came to the surface, and I found myself hiding from everyone. I still was not connecting it to the dream I'd had. At one time I had thought I could control these sudden episodes, but I was apparently mistaken. I had grown very unsure about every facet of my mental health. A disturbed part of me was taking over and I was terrified. I began to wonder if Big Suzie would completely cease to exist. ~ Suzie Burke
Dissociative quotes by Suzie Burke
People with dissociative disorders are like actors trapped in a variety of roles. They have difficulty integrating their memories, their sense of identity and aspects of their consciousness into a continuous whole. They find many parts of their experience alien, as if belonging to someone else. They cannot remember or make sense of parts of their past. ~ David Speigel
Dissociative quotes by David Speigel
Multiple Personality Disorder - MPD - is not a game. It's not "acting" to impress anyone. Trust me, survivors do not receive positive attention for being multiple. Anyone who fakes it would be setting themselves up for a lot of rejection. ~ Margaret Smith
Dissociative quotes by Margaret Smith
Somatic Symptoms:
People with Complex PTSD often have medical unexplained physical symptoms such as abdominal pains, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach problems, and elimination problems. These people are sometimes most unfortunately mislabeled as hypochondriacs or as exaggerating their physical problems. But these problems are real, even though they may not be related to a specific physical diagnosis. Some dissociative parts are stuck in the past experiences that involved pain may intrude such that a person experiences unexplained pain or other physical symptoms. And more generally, chronic stress affects the body in all kinds of ways, just as it does the mind. In fact, the mind and body cannot be separated. Unfortunately, the connection between current physical symptoms and past traumatizing events is not always so clear to either the individual or the physician, at least for a while. At the same time we know that people who have suffered from serious medical, problems. It is therefore very important that you have physical problems checked out, to make sure you do not have a problem from which you need medical help. ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
Some dissociative parts of the personality, living in trauma time, may experience the same emotion no matter the situation, such as fear, rage, shame, sadness, yearning and even some positive ones just as joy.
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Other parts have a broader range of feeling. Because emotions are often held in certain parts of the personality, different parts can have highly contradictory perceptions, emotions, and reactions to the same situation.
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This explains many feelings, emotions, and doubts about the unknown haunting us at times.
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Awareness and discovering the inner world may help, tremendously. ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
Joe knew that for some, really for most, the derivations of belladonna that blurred their vision and caused their hearts to race would, as well, hasten their forgetting of detail. They would not recall, not readily, any sense of pain or shame or doubt or threat of danger.
[]
There were always children to be used. Members were obliged to offer their children, although not necessarily every child in a family was used. Some were found to be not suited for the rigor. Some were left alone so that if the involved children in a family were to attempt to tell, siblings could not corroborate their experience. ~ Judith Spencer
Dissociative quotes by Judith Spencer
Types of Alters

Most people who have DID have at least several different personalities. Each personality is typically referred to as an alter or alternate personality. Alters may vary in terms of age, gender, and sexual orientation, much in the same way that members of a family differ. Each of these personalities will be distinct from one another and may have differing interests, talents, abilities, and functions. And as different as these personalities are from one another, there are some common types of alters found within individuals with DID. ~ Tracy Alderman
Dissociative quotes by Tracy Alderman
Programming is the act of installing internal, pre-established reactions to external stimuli so that a person will automatically react in a predetermined manner to things like an auditory, visual or tactile signal or perform a specific set of actions according to a date and/or time. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Do not show favouritism
Remember that it is very important to treat all parts with equal kindness; do not pick favourites. Every part is there for a purpose, and is an important part of the system. So, for instance, do not be afraid of hostile parts. It has been said that every persecutor is a misguided protector. Its protector job was important and necessary when it first developed, but it can be a handicap later in life when your needs are different. Most hostile insiders are using anger to protect vulnerable parts inside, usually younger children. If they seem dangerous, talk with them at first through another alter. But if you act scared, you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Watch outfor good kid–bad kid dichotomies. You need to appreciate all your parts, just as they all need to accept one another. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison   Miller
The reported numbers of MPD alter personality states are given great play by critics. As usual, these critics rarely consult the research. Although cases with dozens or scores of alters have been reported, the mode is 3 and the median typically 8-10 (see, e.g., Putnam et al., 1986; Coons et al., 1988; Ross, Norton, and Wozney, 1989f; Kluft, 1991). ~ Frank W. Putnam
Dissociative quotes by Frank W. Putnam
It is important to learn about being multiple, and what works for their healing, from your client. To work with the alters, rather than trying to get the ANP to control the rest of the personality system. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Switches among identities occur in response to changes in emotional state or to environmental demands, resulting in another identity emerging to assume control. Because different identities have different roles, experiences, emotions, memories, and beliefs, the therapist is constantly contending with their competing points of view. Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more "real" or more important than any other.

Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision ~ James A. Chu
Dissociative quotes by James A. Chu
My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant. ~ Olga Trujillo
Dissociative quotes by Olga Trujillo
Once the individual has learned to dissociate in the context of trauma, he or she may subsequently transfer this response to other situations and it may be repeated thereafter arbitrarily in a wide variety of circumstances. The dissociation therefore "destabilizes adaptation and becomes pathological."[6] It is important for the psychiatrist to accurately diagnose DDs and also to place the symptoms in perspective with regard to trauma history. ~ Julie P. Gentile
Dissociative quotes by Julie P. Gentile
Had I not been dissociative, I never would have survived. ~ Wendy Hoffman
Dissociative quotes by Wendy Hoffman
We propose that BPD involves secondary structural dissociation. Consistent with this, Golynkina and Ryle (1999) found that patients with BPD encompassed a dissociative part of the personality that seems to represent an ANP (a coping ANP) and more than one EP (abuser rage, victim rage, passive victim, and zombie). Some patients with BPD have severe dissociative symptoms, and may actually border on DDNOS or DID. Our clinical observations suggest that dissociative parts in BPD patients have less emancipation and elaboration, and less distinct sense of self than in DDNOS or DID. ~ Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis
Dissociative quotes by Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis
Now that she had the diagnosis to explain her sense of reality, she sorted some of the chaotic jumble of thoughts and memories.

"I'd feel funny having 'daydreamed' my way through whole seasons," Jo said, "but then I'd hear someone say, 'Time flies,' or 'How did it get to be three o'clock already?' and I'd think that everyone was like me. ~ Joan Frances Casey
Dissociative quotes by Joan Frances Casey
The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment figures are also principal abusers. ~ Warwick Middleton
Dissociative quotes by Warwick Middleton
This new co-consciousness brought me to a state of awareness in which my core personality was directly able to experience "her" personality. Being co-conscious with her, he explained, would stop me from experiencing the feeling of leaving my body or dissociating. ~ Suzie Burke
Dissociative quotes by Suzie Burke
Also, look for "floating alters." These are not deliberately created parts of the system, but alters that were accidentally split off at the same time as others. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
In order to get to know who is in your System, each individual alter needs to complete a piece of paper in the form of a circle (or triangle) which contains the following information: their name, their age (it might be an age range, like age 4-7), and their traits. strengths and skills. (All parts must have a name. If they do not have a name, they need to choose one. lf their name was given to them by a perpetrator and is too upsetting or if it has a negative association, they may wish to change their name - that is perfectly ok. Any name that is not negative or triggering is fine - it does not have to be a standard 'proper name' as they are commonly thought of.) On the back of the circle or triangle they need to write down what caused them to split off. ~ A.T.W.
Dissociative quotes by A.T.W.
The attitude of letting go, of letting things be as they are, of non-attachment, does not imply a condition of reactive distancing or detachment, and is not to be confused with passivity, dissociative behaviors, or attempts to separate yourself even the tiniest bit from reality. It is not a pathological condition of withdrawal adopted to protect yourself. Nor is it nihilistic. It is exactly opposite: a supremely healthy condition of heart and mind. It means embracing the whole of reality in a new way. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
Dissociative quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Everyone seemed to be getting healthier, happier, and more productive... I now felt that I was sharing this body, this physical space, with a whole group of very interesting and worthwhile people. ~ Joan Frances Casey
Dissociative quotes by Joan Frances Casey
I was not descending in a plane, coming Home.
I was watching an alien world as it ascended towards me - and one that I could never begin the process of readjusting to, because I knew that I would just as soon be returning to another world, whose normality was as alien to this home as I now was. ~ Jake Wood
Dissociative quotes by Jake Wood
Imagine the moment when you realise that the little girl you have known all her life is actually your own daughter. What do you say? There's nothing to prepare you for that. I'd known Aimee since she was four months old. She was always in my house. In fact, usually I was the only person with her. The clues were all there.

But I never joined up the dots. I always came up with a justification for it. There was always some logical reason why I was in charge of a friend's little girl - even though I'd never actually met that friend.

Looking back, it was obvious. Something, in my own mind was preventing me from making the link. The brain's a funny thing. It's also very clever and mine was protecting me. Because if I ever accepted that Aimee was my baby, then I had to accept other things - things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. ~ Kim Noble
Dissociative quotes by Kim  Noble
Many MPD patients have spent years in unproductive therapies based on the assumption that they were borderlines. ~ Donald R. Ross
Dissociative quotes by Donald R. Ross
There's so much misinformation about dissociative disorder treatment out in the world, and especially on the internet. ~ Richard A Chefetz
Dissociative quotes by Richard A Chefetz
In this paper I propose the existence of two distinct presentations of DID, a Stable and an Active one. While people with Stable DID struggle with their traumatic past, with triggers that re-evoke that past and with the problems of daily functioning with severe dissociation, people with Active DID are, in addition, also engaged in a life of current, on-going involvement in abusive relationships, and do not respond to treatment in the same way as other DID patients. The paper observes these two proposed DID presentations in the context of other trauma-based disorders, through the lens of their attachment relationship. It proposes that the type, intensity and frequency of relational trauma shape - and can thus predict - the resulting mental disorder.
- Through the lens of attachment relationship: Stable DID, Active DID and other trauma-based mental disorders ~ Adah Sachs
Dissociative quotes by Adah Sachs
when evoking personal recollections, patients with depersonalization often complain that memories feel as if they really didn't happen to them ~ Mauricio Sierra
Dissociative quotes by Mauricio Sierra
The first thing you need to know if you are a survivor is that parts of you have probably been trained to create a variety of symptoms and behaviours. Abusers actually train child parts to cut the body, to make other parts cut, to attempt suicide, to create flashbacks by releasing pieces of visual or auditory memories, to create body memories of pain or electroshock, and to create depression, terror, anxiety, and despair by releasing the emotional components of memories to the rest of the personality system. The front person and most of the rest of the system do not know that this is the source of these feelings and behaviours. p126 ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
Dissociation leaves us disconnected from our memories, our identities and our emotions. It breaks the trauma into digestible components, so that different aspects of the trauma get stored in different compartments in our brain. What happens as a result is that the information from the trauma becomes disorganized and we are not able to integrate these pieces into a coherent narrative and process trauma fully until, hopefully, with the help of a validating, trauma-informed counselor who guides us to the appropriate therapies best suited to our needs, we confront the trauma and triggers in a safe place. ~ Shahida Arabi
Dissociative quotes by Shahida Arabi
I was shocked and terrified to hear Dr. Summer say I had what was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Is that like Sybil? Am I like the woman in The Three Faces of Eve? My head began to spin. What do I have inside of me? Is there a crazy person in there? What am I? I felt like a freak. I was afraid to have anyone know. I have a mental illness. People make fun of people like me. Upon hearing my diagnosis, I stopped thinking of myself as smart, creative, or clever. Even though Dr. Summer had worked hard to help me understand that I had developed an amazingly adaptive survival technique, I no longer thought of it that way at all.

I was overwhelmed by fear and shame. The words multiple personality disorder echoed in my mind. I thought of all the ways people with multiple personalities were ridiculed and marginalized: They're locked away in mental institutions. They are really sick. I'm not going to be the subject of people's jokes. I am a lawyer. I work at the U.S. Department of Justice. The more I thought about it, the deeper my despair grew. ~ Olga Trujillo
Dissociative quotes by Olga Trujillo
Trapped within the confines of his mind, he is too aware of every thought passing through it, as if he were outside, looking in. At night he often lies awake ruminating endlessly about what's wrong with him, about death, and about the meaning of existence itself. At times his arms and legs feel like they don't belong with his body. But most of the time, his mind feels like it is operating apart from the body that contains it. ~ Daphne Simeon
Dissociative quotes by Daphne Simeon
Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236) ~ Lynn I. Wilson
Dissociative quotes by Lynn I. Wilson
Parts of you are phobic of anger and generally terrified and ashamed of angry dissociative parts. There is often tremendous conflict between anger-avoidant and anger-fixated parts of an individual. Thus, an internal and perpetual cycle of rage-shame-fear creates inner chaos and pain. ~ Suzette Boon
Dissociative quotes by Suzette Boon
I wish I had a magic wand to make things better, but therapy doesn't work that way. ~ Lynn I. Wilson
Dissociative quotes by Lynn I. Wilson
Scientists, doctors, and trained ordinary citizens use drugs and torture to render children machines that do others' bidding. The commands these perpetrators put in the victims are called "programming".
They take an isolated, barricaded piece from one stream in the mind and another and another and sometimes tie them together at the bottom and twist them together and tell them to act but not remember. ~ Wendy Hoffman
Dissociative quotes by Wendy Hoffman
Whatever proponents of false memory syndrome may claim and however persuasively they tell their stories and anecdotes, dissociative amnesia typically involves fragmented recall of trauma and is rather a retrieval inhibition than a forgetting (Spiegel et al., 2011). It may also involve complete loss of recall for sexual and physical abuse but most commonly, dissociative amnesia is partial, variable, and coexists with memories of trauma (Dalenberg et al., 2014). Studies addressing the accuracy of recovered abuse memories show that these memories are no less accurate than continuous memories for abuse (Scheflin & Brown, 1996). Memory is reconsolidated each time it is accessed and therefore potentially distorted (Bridge & Paller, 2012).
Evidently, this does not disprove the possibility that some clinicians are too suggestive, one way or another, pushing their patients to adopt views that serve to confirm the therapist's own perspective and beliefs. ~ Jenny Ann Ryberg
Dissociative quotes by Jenny Ann Ryberg
However, we have to acknowledge that living with DID presents huge challenges; it is complex and complicated. But our diagnosis was the key to us accessing services and funding, which has enabled us to return to life within the community and to have a positive future. We can see constructive, productive elements in our life, and our faith plays a strong part in this. ~ Carol Broad
Dissociative quotes by Carol Broad
During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe their first experiments with marijuana and booze. This buzzword perfectly described a picture in my mind of me, Alice, hovering just below the ceiling like a balloon and looking down at my own small bed where a big man lay heavily on a little girl I couldn't quite see or recognize. It wasn't me. I was spaced out on the ceiling.
I had that same spacey feeling when I cooked for my father, which I still did, though less often. I made omelettes, of course. I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl, and as I reached for the butter dish, I always had an odd sensation in my hands and arms. My fingers prickled; it didn't feel like me but someone else cutting off a great chunk of greasy butter and putting it into the pan.
I'd add a large amount of salt - I knew what it did to your blood pressure, and I mumbled curses as I whisked the brew. When I poured the slop into the hot butter and shuffled the frying pan over the burner, it didn't look like my hand holding the frying-pan handle and I am sure it was someone else's eyes that watched the eggs bubble and brown. As I dropped two slices of wholemeal bread in the toaster, I would observe myself as if from across the room and, with tingling hands gripping the spatula, folded the omelette so it looked like an apple envelope. My alien hands wo ~ Alice Jamieson
Dissociative quotes by Alice Jamieson
Anyway, there are people and organizations, that do recognize them for what they are (like the epilepsy society) and differentiate them from Factitious Seizures (fake) carried out by unfortunate individuals with Munchausen's Syndrome. My "special" seizures are called Dissociative Seizures too (specific to personality disorders in general) and are psychological, brought on by flashbacks or extreme anxiety. Most of my awareness goes. ~ Elizabeth T. James
Dissociative quotes by Elizabeth T. James
Due to previous lack of systematic assessment of dissociative symptoms, many subjects experience the SCID-D as their first opportunity to describe their symptoms in their own words to a receptive listener. ~ Marlene Steinberg
Dissociative quotes by Marlene Steinberg
Dissociation is numbness and nothingness; it is a feeling of being lost; it is floating on a cloud that threatens to suffocate; it is automatic speech and action without awareness or control; it is looking at the world and blinking to try to remove the blurry fog; it is hearing and seeing the immediate world and simultaneously feeling very far away; it is raw fear; it is unfamiliarity in familiar places; it is possession; it is being haunted everyday by unknown monsters that can be felt but not seen (at least not by others); it is looking in the mirror and not knowing who is looking back; it is fantasy and imagination; and, above all else, it is survival. Dissociation is all of these things and none of them at once. ~ Noel Hunter
Dissociative quotes by Noel Hunter
The diagnosis shouldn't have surprised me, as we had been talking about my symptoms for so long. But it's easier to think you just have a bunch of parts inside. Everyone says things like "A part of me wants to go to the movies, but another part of me wants to just stay home." Using the term "part" made me feel normal. I knew I was a little different in that my parts were quite separate aspects of me. I knew my consciousness wasn't whole and knew that it was unusual to have some thoughts come to me in Spanish. I knew most people didn't experience terror and struggle to catch their breath when they were in benign situations. But we hadn't been calling this DID, so I'd been able to avoid fully accepting the implications of having these special parts. ~ Olga Trujillo
Dissociative quotes by Olga Trujillo
The child who attends school does not remember the abuse that happens at home or via the family; those memories are held in another part of the child's mind. The child does not even remember abuse that happened the preceding night. ~ Alison Miller
Dissociative quotes by Alison Miller
no recovery from trauma is possible without attending to issues of safety, care for the self, reparative connections to other human beings, and a renewed faith in the universe. The therapist's job is not just to be a witness to this process but to teach the patient how. ~ Janina Fisher
Dissociative quotes by Janina Fisher
The inscape is an autohypnotic internal landscape populated by the patient's alters (Young, 1994). The alters typically have distinct bodies in the inscape, with inter-alter consensus as to what each one looks like. Some DID patients have reported having access to such inscapes (presumably through autohypnosis) prior to any treatment. If a dissociative patient seems to have no inscape, guided hypnosis or guided imagery may provide one, for example, as developed by George Fraser (1991) in his Dissociative Table Technique. But in my experience even this therapist initiative typically arrives in a space connecting to a seemingly "ready-made" extended inscape, simple or elaborate, whose "inhabitants" (alters) claim that it preexisted the hypnotic intervention. The space and extended inscape will also have idiosyncratic features, perplexing to the patient and therapist, which later (even years later) prove to have dynamic significance. ~ John O'Neill
Dissociative quotes by John O'Neill
One of the most compelling sources on the validity of repressed memories of trauma has been the field of combat trauma. - Advances in Dissociation Research and practice in Israel ~ Eli Somer
Dissociative quotes by Eli Somer
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