The thought of remembering scares me too.So much so that whenever I get close to memories,aan angry alter takes over and starts fighting with my therapist.She is just plain mean to her and wants to fight .When its just me,i do art therapy.I draw pictures that bring me very close to these partial foggy memories.Just when I start to feek,my "angry" takes over and refuses to draw or journal and accused T of being a lousy therapist.(sigh) I wish this cycle would stop ,but it doesnt.thank god my t recognizes whats going on with me,but she's human too and my "angry" does alot of damage to our therapuetic relationship.She is cruel and strikes fast...can you try drawing pictures of just any ole thing.you might be suprised at what your sub-conscious will put on the paper.Just pick up a pencil or crayon and freeflow with it,without pre-thinking it

wow so many typos..I meant just when I start to "feel" not feek.

For me, integrating cannot happen until I have processed the memories the parts still hold and give them the opportunity to process them as well. I have only one part that has successfully integrated with me, though I have some parts that have integrated with each other.

The memories are scary and the feelings they bring can be terrifying and overwhelming. But, in order to heal, I have found and been told, you have to get through them.

For me, memory work is the hardest things I have ever done. Some are more difficult than others, but still have to be dealt with. If you hold on to your trauma and don't remember and process those memories, the healing can't happen. Just my experience.

gentle hugs,
Karen

I agree with 2many. I also believe that if we are to remember as the host well then the alter personalities need to deal with everything that revolves around the memories. Imho unless the personalities have done their healing work on the memories they wont allow us to know all the memories. I guess we need to remember that they were created to take these memories of what they actually went through. They need to be able to verbalise and express their emotions based on what they experienced. It is then imho that they might feel safe enough to share those memories with us which may lead to integration. I havnt had any of my inner parts integrate with me, but had 33 personalities up until middle of last year and now am back to my core 12. Im not sure whether I fully want them to integrate.

yes, i was terrified of remembering. we all are terrified of the unknown in general and when we have a sense that it is going to be painful we're more frightened. it's human nature so when it's our own memory that is the issue and we've actually experienced it once and it was so overwhelming we blocked it then it makes sense that we're resistant to face it even now when we are more mature, have support, have more coping skills and believe it will help us.

and it's not unusual to not have a complete split, dissociation occurs on a spectrum from very mild to extremely severe. EVERYONE dissociates. for the average person it is the experience of driving a few blocks and suddenly realizing they don't remember any of it. or they'll think, did i brush my teeth this mornning? or some mundane task like that will get lost in routine activity. for people who dissociate due to pathology - meaning they've had trauma, usually abuse but not always - the dissociaiton is usually much more frequent and can be so severe that they develop what appears to be another personality. i say 'appears' because it isn't a true personality but a fragment, 'alters' never have the full spectrum of human emotion or experience of the individual's life. and for many there is hazy overlap and areas of no memory.

and yes, you may be preventing yourself from remembering. i would imagine that it is something you are not going to be able to force, and the more you try the more resistance you will meet. some parts of you are terrified of what happened and must be assured that you are safe now. part of your psyche was split off at the time of the trauma and sort of frozen in time - that's the theory and it seems to be the experience of many - mine included. often the split off parts are expressed as child alters and until those parts are able to trust that they will not be harmed progress can be slow or none existent.

i found it incredibly frustrating and was very angry at myself for a long time. then with a lot of therapy began to realize i was wasting my time and energy being angry. now i am patient and it is much better. i am still angry at my parents and society in general. my parents for what they did/allowed and society for not doing a thing to prevent it or heal it and now telling me what i need to do about it. how dare they?

a glimmer of hope is on the horizon however. there is an initiative in the us government that is meant to shift the paradigm from 'what is wrong with you?' to 'what happened to you?' i was reading about it last night. i am going to attend a seminar next month about it on 'trauma informed care.' i think if the question is changed people's view of mental health and will also change, at least those like us who might have been closer to the midline had we not been abused.