My husband prayed for me beneath his tallit. One of the things he prayed was for me to understand what is going on inside. I believe his prayer was answered.
I am constantly pushing into the “enemy’s” territory. Plus, I am finding new freedom as I push forward in my own healing. The enemy does not like that, nor do all the people who are under his spell.
I have a training coming up that will make me more effective. This morning, as I read the preparatory email, I had the overwhelming feeling there was no way I could go through with this. As I thought about it though, it did not make sense. I have already been preparing my clients that I will not be available that week. I certainly have the smarts and abilities to do the training. I took a similar training to get my current certification. I believe I have resolved my laptop zoom issues. So, what is up?
As I thought about the fact there is no logical reason for my being unable to do the training other than this emotional upheaval happening inside of me, it hit me. THEY don’t want me taking it. They also don’t want me having a case manager, a therapist familiar with DID, and a life coach of my own. They want me ineffective…useless. They are sending spiritual forces against me. Well, tough!
Once I figured out I am under spiritual attack, it lifted. The darkness, when exposed to the Light, cannot stand. It is my constant prayer for any darkness within me to be exposed to the Light and driven out. I also pray against the powers of evil and darkness that surround me.
Thank You, Avinu Shebashamayim, for the spiritual warriors You have assigned to me to protect me. You did not give me the privilege of seeing them, but You did give that privilege to someone else. I am strong in You and in You alone. I have no strength of my own. I only have that which Your Ruach HaKodesh gives me. You empower me to do what I do. I leave the results in Your hands. Thank You for covering me with Your wings. Beneath Your wings I am safe and secure and there is NOTHING the enemy can do to hurt me that You do not allow. And what You allow, You use for good and I trust You to get me through whatever comes my way.
It’s been a rough month. I have been reminded of my sister a lot. As I wrote in my previous post, when do we survivors get to grieve?
When you are in survival mode, you don’t have the luxury of taking time to grieve. Your main focus is on staying safe and, in my case, keeping my child safe. Who has time to grieve? Who has the energy to grieve?
But life, eventually, brings those reminders and our minds and hearts are satisfied we are in a safe enough place to start grieving. Those reminders could be anything. For me, it not even things that necessarily pertain to her.
I have a lot of years of not being able to fully grieve a lot of losses. When those losses came, I was usually having to scramble to deal with the results of the losses. And when it seems as if life just keeps hitting with one thing after another, those things I need to grieve just pile up.
So, now I am wondering. Is this the time to start to let that wall come down? Am I ready for the flood of emotions? Do I even have a choice?
I have to trust Creator in all of this. I know He knows best what needs to happen in my life. He knows best when I am ready to deal with the buried grief, whether I “feel” ready or not. I have seen Him work in so many ways over the years. I trust Him to not allow me to collapse or implode. He is always good, even when I am not. He is my Rock to stand on. He is my Tower to run into for shelter from the storm.
I will–I must–continue to trust Him. My life, my stability, my emotional and mental health, everything depends on it.
It took years to get out of that marriage that I did not even know I needed to leave. The whole marriage was more unpleasant than pleasant. Oh, we had our good times, but his behavior toward me was not one of real respect. At first, of course, it seemed so. But I was also blinded by my own brokenness… a brokenness I did not understand and the roots of which I did not know.
I kept wanting to grow, to get better, to understand my brokenness and fix it. He did not. That is the simplest explanation for how it all came apart. I was moving in one direction… toward God and he was refusing to budge. The strain on our relationship grew greater and greater. His attempts to control and manipulate stayed strong. But, as I grew, I began to take baby steps out from under his control. Eventually, it came to a head.
During the marriage, there were times he would force himself on me. Being cult trained, I was unable to say “no” to anything if I could not come up with an iron clad justification… anything. When he would rape me, it would feel as if a piece of me inside would just break off, shrivel up and die. The day came when God impressed on me that I needed to set a boundary and if I didn’t, the same feeling I had during the rapes was going to become my life. I was not going to survive.
So, the time came and I set that boundary and told him I did not want to. It was a huge, groundbreaking step. I had mentally and emotionally prepared myself for the worst possible scenario. I was prepared, if necessary, to be beat. He had never beat me, but he had done things that led me to be afraid he could and would if provoked enough.
He didn’t like it. He picked me up and threw me on the bed. I still refused. From that point, he switched to mental and emotional head games. But I kept my resolve. I knew I had God on my side. He eventually backed down and, at that moment, I found myself saying that I thought we needed to separate. Whoa! Where did that come from? Such boldness!
He said I had to leave. I was bold again! I said he had to leave and the children were staying with me. And he did!
That was the beginning of the final separation and the end of the marriage… a marriage that really wasn’t a marriage anyway. It was one more step in the process of breaking free, although I still did not know just what I was breaking free from, yet.
I did not shoot for divorce. I still just wanted a real family and a home filled with sobriety and love. But it wasn’t going to happen. I filed for separation and, ultimately, filed for divorce as he chased skirts and refused any counseling, etc. Biblically speaking, I had grounds for divorce years prior. But I didn’t want a divorce. It takes two people working together on a marriage. I had to let it go.
It is not unusual for occultic groups to arrange marriages. It can be an alliance marriage intended to bring greater power to both groups as they partner together. It can be a convenience marriage to keep two rival groups from ripping each other apart. I don’t really know which one mine was.
Groups will often pretend to be enemies in order to keep loyalty alive in their members. There is so much deception, it makes it hard to know what is truth and what is not. My family and his family did not get along. There was a constant attempt to manipulate us from both sides. Of course, at the time, I thought this was just normal DIL/MIL, SIL/MIL stuff. I had not yet had memory recall and did not know the fuller story.
Looking back from this side of recall, our whole relationship was rather bizarre. The way we met, the way it played out, our engagement, our wedding, our marriage. The whole thing had elements of the weird in it.
When I got memory recall and my therapist and I started to look at my marriage and things I was remembering, it became pretty evident that it was most likely an alliance marriage. This was strengthened by memories and information that seemed to indicate I have a higher “bloodline” than ordinary members. I had status. Can I prove it? No. But everything in me says it is true. It fits.
Whether the two families were pretending to not get along or whether the truly did not get along, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. The effect was the same on him and I. We were constantly off balance and spending time and energy (or at least I was… I can only speak for myself) on trying to keep the peace and get along with both of them. I was at odds with my own family and at odds with his. The constant vying for loyalty made life very challenging… to say the least.
I am actually still on the planet, although it may not seem like it. Life has been difficult. There are some days when I have to battle feeling as if I am falling into a very dark hole. Yes, I am taking my SamE again to help. I am also praying and focusing on my relationship with my Creator. And that does make a huge difference in my life.
My husband’s physical condition does not seem to be getting any better and I am struggling with how that is affecting the dynamic we share. It affects everything…our schedules…our moods. He, understandably, gets a little short at times. Being an introvert, my energy drain is already flowing due to not really having a private place in the house and also due to being responsible for other people. So, when hubby needs even more than usual, I tend to not be as patient as I wish.
Life is filled with potential changes. A possible move. A graduation in a year. Life in disability (we hope…or a healing would be even better). A trial with no possible “positive” outcome.
There are times I feel as if I am “drowning” and just trying to get through the day. Other times, I feel fairly confident. Thing is, I am the one who has been the driving force of positiveness and “it will be OK” statements. Sometimes, I need someone to say to me! I cannot always be the optimist in the family.
In all of this, though, I/we are growing, maturing. We are having to seek our Creator…Yeshua…the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…even more. We draw closer to Him and find the strength to keep on keeping on.
I am not a “date setter”. But I am also not ignorant. Yeshua said to know the times and seasons…to watch the signs. More than ever before, I see signs of His coming getting very close. There are still some things that need to happen, but the likelihood that those things will kick off starting within the next few years is very high. Of course, we could all be wrong, but I really doubt.
I know that people have been saying for centuries that it is close. But we have something they never had…the rebirth of Israel. No nation on the planet has ever arisen like Israel. No unused language has been brought back into ordinary every day use like Hebrew has. Once relegated to only the scriptures and religious writings, it is now heard from the lips of children. And the outright miracles that took place during Israel’s rebirth are astounding.
So, here I sit, watching the spiritual battle rage. The scriptures tell us that our battle is not with flesh and blood…it is in the spiritual realm. I see that battle raging…in my family…in my country…in the world…and, especially, in the Middle East.
Get ready, folks. Keep an eye on the bigger picture. This life…what you see in front of you…is like the shadow realm. True reality is spiritual and, largely, unseen. I pray your eyes are opened to see it. Your physical life may…for sure your spiritual life will for sure…depend on it.
I recently started reading again about PTSD and what I call “trauma brain”. The stress of some things in our living situation started to overwhelm me and I really needed to find more support and more information. So, I started searching again and found more information. Actually, there seems to be quite a bit more, but here are some things I am finding.
Apparently, they are now coming up with official labels for “trauma brain”…the brain that has developed in a biologically different way as a result of persistent abuse/trauma in early childhood. I am still learning about the labels and how they are separate and how they overlap with PTSD.
They now have something called Complex PTSD…or C-PTSD. I believe this is a new label because I don’t remember seeing it before. I also saw DTD…Developmental Trauma Disorder. There are several articles that I have not read, yet, but I am going to share them here because a quick perusal indicates that they have some very useful information.
A few years ago I read about the push to put DID under the PTSD category in the DSM. There was quite a debate about it. Clearly the two are connected, but not everyone agreed on putting one under the other. I wonder whatever happened with that. Perhaps, some of these articles hold the answer.
So, here they are, in no particular order…more articles on PTSD in its various forms. I chose the ones that went the most in depth (which is why I have not read all of them yet myself).
Gosh, November! Has it really been that long since I have blogged? I guess it has, obviously! There are so many things I could share, but it is challenging to know where to start. So, here, in no particular order, are some odds and ends of my life for the last three months.
I now have a working bathtub!!! I cannot say enough how therapeutic it is to be able to take a long soak. Cheap therapy. Even if I cannot do it in the moment…just knowing I can is HUGE! That happened very recently, about two weeks or so ago? In fact, it happened after we put the house up for sale.
Which leads to item number two (but who’s counting, anyway). One of our sons has offered to move us in with him and our wonderful daughter-in-love. This is because his dad is in a lot of pain and had to quit working. So, our unfinished house that we have been living in is for sale.
Next tidbit…I have sporadic contact with my father via email. He still does not know where we live (other than generally) and does not have my phone number. It is all good..meaning that I am taking care of myself.
I had a cult GF (who also does not know where I am) contact me via email. She has to sell her house (which I thought I saw sold a couple of years ago on the Internet) and wanted to know my address so she could ship me some boxes of books I “left” in her garage years ago. Neither Dave or I recall leaving books. I wrote to ask her what books they were and have not heard from her since. So, yes, I think the feelers still go out. Did I mention that she has met my parents and probably has their number and that her family cult is the same one as mine? Oh yeah, and I had to distance myself from her previously because she was setting off my programming…which is so NOT happening now!
It has been a challenge watching my husband hurt more and more. I believe this move is a good thing, even though it may be moving into the “lion’s den” in some aspects. But G-d goes with us and I believe this move is a “G-d” thing.
I will have to come back soon to this blog because it is time to walk out the door and there is so much more I could say. I want to share some things I am learning about PTSD and “trauma brain”.
is not easy. Nor is walking out my healing. There are many who would not understand my story. They would think it too fantastic…to unbelievable. They would not want to believe that such things even happen. Funny thing is…some of those same people will read the Old Testament in the bible and not question for a moment the child sacrifices and pagan practices mentioned there. (For those who are upset that I use the word “pagan”, get over it. That word is used in the bible, so if you don’t like it, take it up with G-d. I mean no offense.)
In addition to not being able to fully share my story, there is the fact that I still have to deal with what I dub “trauma” brain and PTSD. I kept thinking I was getting better and then things would happen that would seem to throw me backward. Now, the reality is that I AM better on so many levels. But my other reality, as I have been discovering over the past 6 – 8 years, is that abuse in childhood results in the brain developing differently than the brain of a child who is not abused. I have a whole page dedicated to articles on that topic. Abuse, Trauma & the Body/Brain Most of the articles are technical and deal with medical studies. There does not seem to be much in the way of practical information on how to heal from this or live with this. So, I do the best I can.
There are some things I have noticed. One thing is that the PTSD leaves me very vulnerable to “over”reacting to stress. In other words, I cannot handle the same stresses that a non-PTSD person can handle. What might be merely an annoyance or discomfort for someone else can result in my insides shaking like crazy. The intensity can be huge. I also have flashbacks that are sometimes so strong that I want to rock back and forth to deal with all that energy.
It can be very challenging for me to be out and about as I never know what will hit or when. I can be at the store or on the road when, all of a sudden, I just want to be home…NOW. It diminishes over time, that is, until I get hit with some other life event that knocks me for a loop. Then I feel as if I am thrown back to square one. For a long time, I thought I should be able to fix this…I just need enough therapy or counseling. But that won’t fix a biological problem. Even the PTSD has a biological tie-in and is connected to the trauma brain…seeing as how the same things caused both.
Between trauma brain (which affects how memories are stored and retrieved) and PTSD (which leaves me more vulnerable to life’s stresses ), day-to-day living can be very interesting…to say the least. Oh, and did I mention that I am also rather amnesic? Yep, I am missing all but a handful of memories of ten years of my younger sister living with our family and a whole host of other things in my growing up years and some of my adult life. Some of it may be missing due to improper storage or non-storage because of trauma brain. Some of it is repressed. Some of it may be hidden behind the cloud of dissociation.
At least I now know that there is precious little I can do about a lot of this other than to pray and just keep pushing forward, one day at a time. I used to think there was something I was neglecting.
Ever since my son was arrested, I have been struggling a lot more than usual…a lot. I am forgetting things…or as one doctor once told me…I am probably not forgetting them, I am simply not recording them. I find myself oftentimes leaving things unfinished as I get so easily distracted. I cannot focus as well. Food gets burned. I leave things out in recipes (not often, thankfully, as I have really been working on checking my recipes multiple times while cooking).
Even before his arrest, I was noticing flashbacks, but my ability to handle them is diminished. Too much added stress, I think. I see things and can feel the stress inside starting to skyrocket, so instead of going through that door or down that tunnel to see what is there…what memory is trying to surface…I find myself pushing it away.
Anyway, that is life for me right now. Or at least some of it. I feel overwhelmed. I cannot call people I want to call. I am just making it through each day and trying not to feel guilty for not being “better” than I am. Yeah, I know this is not my fault and largely out of my control, but the rest of the world does not understand and that is what makes it hard. I so want to look “normal” to others because I don’t want to have to tell my story to them. But the reality is that, sooner or later, I need to tell at least a part of it. Maybe…just maybe…they will understand.
To all my friends that I am not calling. I am sorry. It is just beyond me right now and has been for quite a while. I was hoping things would calm down by now…but they are not. In fact, the family situation just keeps getting worse and I am fighting against the effects of it.
I don’t have the energy to proofread this. I hope it turned out OK.
These are the things I am dealing with. Life has changed…drastically. And yet, life also goes on. I am focusing on things other than the tragedy.
I am refusing to allow this tragedy to define my life. Yet, I cannot pretend it did not happen…nor would I want to. Life is better lived when truth is faced and confronted…not when we run from truth.
I know I have not been writing on here much. I have been busy doing life. I am studying the bible and watching as more and more prophecies are being fulfilled. More and more signs are happening and I am certain that time is winding down.
I have been studying the Hebrew language and it is unlike any other language in the world. The symbolism and patterns are very unique and the letters have meanings all their own. The wording of the beginning of Genesis is unique compared to the rest of the scriptures. It follows an unusual pattern. It is through the alef and how it appears in that very first sentence of Genesis that it has been believed by the Jewish sages from way back that the earth has six thousand years and then the 7th is the millennium of the reign of Messiah when He returns.
And there is more…so much more. It is amazing and mind-blowing.
Time is short, but as predicted long ago, the people of this day and age will not see it. They think it is just life as usual continuing on without change. But any serious student of the bible and of its ancient prophecies cannot help but see what is happening all around us.
Israel has come back. There is NO other nation in the world that has come back after almost 2,000 years. There is no other language that has come back into common usage after centuries of only being used as a prayer language. If you study how Israel became a nation again, you see miracle after miracle…as testified by those who were there.
There is SO much that clearly shows the hand of G-d moving in and around Israel. So many times, genocide has been attempted against the Israeli people…and yet they are STILL here!
The time is short. I hope…I pray…that others will see that. Yeshua is coming back…and it won’t be long now!
My earliest conscious memories regarding my name was of never being allowed to go by a nickname…even to the extent that I was threatened to be in trouble if my mother ever heard someone call me anything other than my full first name. Others did not understand this, nor did I. But it was my reality and the reason for it was more serious than I knew.
I remember coming home in the first grade from school and one of the neighbor girls was teasing me by calling me a shorter name. She wouldn’t stop even when I asked her to. I remember being worried (read that as “scared”) that my mother would hear her. My only consolation was that this girl lived a couple of houses or so before mine and ours was up in the back…behind the main house. Thankfully, my mother did not hear.
As an adult, when I asked my mother about that strict rule, she said something along the lines of wanting to hear my name because she had worked so hard on picking out a nice one. She chose that name and wanted me to be called that name…period. She came across as if she had not been that strict in laying down the rules, but I remember. There is a lot this partial amnesic does not remember, but I remember that. It was programmed into me to NEVER use a nickname. It was not until many years later that I began to understand the truth behind that demand.
I remember struggling as an adult…married with children even…to try to be me. It is like I woke up one day and realized that I did not really know who I was. I did not know what I liked or didn’t like. It was a perm gone awry that turned me onto that. I looked totally different. I got teased a bit for the drastic change, but that is when I looked at myself in the mirror and realized that I really did not know whether I liked it or not. It wasn’t what I wanted. It was drastically different. But did I actually not like it?
I tried to look at the woman in the mirror as if she was NOT me. Would I like that hair style on THAT woman? I decided I did, but I felt a bit of disconnect between that woman and me. That woman was not what those around me expected to see, which got me thinking. I decided that I wanted to become the woman God created me to be rather than the woman I was pressed into being. All my life I was always being what everyone else wanted, but what did “I” want? What did “I” like? And even more importantly, what did God create me to be? So, I set out on a journey of exploration. I wanted to find out who “I” really was/am. And what a journey it was!
Right there in the very beginning I was hit with a strong realization. I use the word “strong” because it was something that I knew for sure, although I could not have explained why or how I knew it. I just knew very strongly that I would never be able to be the me God created me to be if I went by my birth name. So, I decided I wanted to be called a nickname, which was really just a shortened version of my first name…half of it to be exact.
I knew my parents would not like it, so I started with my husband and those closest to me. I remember that some questioned what I was doing. New hair style, which I openly admitted was not my intention, but reassured them (especially since the hairdresser was a friend) that I did like it. New name. What was up? I just kept to myself what my realizations were and what my goal was.
Once I saw that those around me were willing to really try to remember to call me by my nickname, I asked my parents to do the same. Naturally, they did not like it. Thankfully, I did not see my parents nearly as often as I saw my husband and everyone else. And then I noticed it.
I had started to change internally, even if not all that much externally. I started to feel more freedom to gingerly explore, and my sense of who I was altered. I grew stronger, more confident and had a greater sense of my worth. And then my parents would come over and call me by my full name. Bam! It was like a switch was flipped and I found myself struggling to keep the ground I had gained. This happened over and over until I learned to turn it off.
Although I did not know anything about programming or my cult family heritage at that time, I did understand that there was a definite connection to my full name and being controlled and molded. It was one of the key events of my life as I moved toward freedom. I never went back to my full birth name and now have a completely different name.
So, what’s in a name? I think a lot! My birth names were given by my parents. They had really nice meanings and had programming attached to them. My current names have wonderful meanings and freedom attached to them. They were gifts from my Creator…my heavenly Abba/Father. I am no longer bound to programming or to the former names. When someone from way back calls me by that name, I don’t like it, but the effect is no longer there. It is more of just an annoyance.
Life goes on…even after curve balls get thrown at us. I am looking at a loved one in jail and the loss of relationship with other loved ones because of it.
None of this is my choice. It is not my fault one is in jail. It wasn’t my influence that put him there. I have always been against everything he got into and did. It is not my fault that his ex seems to be choosing to keep me away from not only herself, but their children. It isn’t right for her to do this, but it is what it is.
I think what is hardest is that, if she really does keep us apart, what will the children think? Will she lie to them and tell them I am not calling? That I don’t care? That I am related to the one who did bad things? Never mind that he had a brother I am also related to who is a good man!
Sometimes, forgiveness and love are all we have to offer. It is all we can do when things in the world are out of our hands and we are powerless to change them.
I found a really good video on forgiveness. This man defines it well and makes it easy to understand.
I have had to make a very tough decision, but life is what it is.
I will survive. I will continue to find joy in the midst of the grieving…even as things seem to be taking a turn for the worse.
I know the One who turns all things for good…even when it is hard…or even impossible…for me to see it. Actually, I do see some good in this. It is just that I also see a lot of sadness and hurt.
I truly do not believe we have much time left before Messiah returns. This whole situation may become a moot point before we even know it.
When I first started out on this last leg of my healing journey…the awareness of DID and the realization of some of what had happened to me (which was an “aha-now I understand” time)…I had an idea in mind of what healing looked like. For me, it meant that my hard work (with G-d’s help) was somehow going to reverse all that had been done to me and there would be a complete merging which I called “integration”. I looked at it like a broken bone or a sickness. I wanted to be restored to the condition prior to the break of illness…or to be made even better. After all, they say a broken bone that heals is stronger in the area of the break and will never break exactly there again. I wanted to be like pre-DID and trauma.
Looking back, I would have to say that I was pretty naive, but not in a bad way. I believed what I needed to believe in order to start the journey and do what needed to be done. There were things I did not yet understand about DID and how abuse affects the brain. There were also implications in my view of healing that I did not fully think through…implications that would later change my view of healing…and again…not in a bad way.
Initially, my goal was simply to work on whatever needed to be worked. If I needed to face a memory…so be it. If I needed to reach out to an insider…so be it. Whether it was writing, listening, sharing, art…I did it. I believed that if I just kept doing what I was doing that integration/merging would occur naturally. It would not have to be forced. And it pretty much did happen that way. As I focused on healing, integration and merging seemed to happen almost seamlessly and without any real effort. Some of it happened in huge chunks during several days I spent with a counselor at her home. I stayed with her twice and through days of prayer and working with insiders massive amounts of integration/merging happened.
Over time, I came to realize that not all of healing is as simple as that. Now, I believe that a huge part of healing is to simply live my life…enjoying it as best I can…and seeing the beauty around me in addition to seeing what is evil in the world. I walk in the Spirit of the Creator, trusting Him to show me whatever I need to see and to help me with whatever I need help with. He has always been my greatest Healer…my best therapist. And He has helped me see that my idea of what healing looks like was very faulty.
I know the Creator can do anything and I believe He could even make it like nothing had happened…but that is not real. Like so many others, I had to come to terms with a childhood I simply never had. It was not just a matter of putting the brain back to how it was originally created. All my childhood experiences shaped and affected my brain. Removing the effects of the negative experiences does not replace them with the positive effects of the good things that never happened!
I also realized that all those things that did happen a part of what make who I am today. And even with all my foibles and what I perceive as “weakness” and “brokenness”, I am a pretty awesome person. I am a walking miracle and I am doing pretty darn good considering all I have been through. So, part of healing is also accepting imperfect functionality.
So…maybe…healing is not about restoration (like a broken leg). Maybe it is more about learning to live as I am and celebrating the me I have become and the me I am becoming. Maybe it is more about giving myself the freedom to enjoy life now…without guilt and with less and less impact coming from the past. It is about accepting imperfect functionality. (What is “perfect”, anyway?) It is about learning not to compare myself to others…not my abilities, my weaknesses or my strengths. Every one of us has abilities of some kind; we just don’t all have the same ones. We all have weaknesses and we all have strengths, regardless of how healed or broken we are. It is about not comparing my healing journey to another’s. We all walk on different paths.
I know I still have more to learn, but I carry one thing with me on my learning/healing journey…one very important thing. I know the Creator of all things and I know who I am in my Creator. I know I can trust Him to continue to lead me. Whatever is ahead, He will help me to face it.
22 Faces is a fairly new site dealing with Satanic Ritual Abuse. It shares the story of Jenny Hill, the only known survivor of an intended sacrifice victim. The goal of the book written about Jenny’s life and the website is to offer information about ritual abuse and to offer support and hope to survivors in the form of several resources.
I am always wary when someone approaches me to share their site or services, as Judy Byington did. I have experienced enough of people not being what they present themselves to be. Or simply of them not being altogether altruistic. I really try hard not to let my nightmare experiences with some therapists online keep me from putting good resources out there. So, here is 22 Faces.
I do not know Judy Byington or Jenny Hill. I have no personal knowledge, good or bad, about them. However, when I read what happened to them on Dr. Phil, I was not surprised. What he did to them is, sadly, very common among “talk show” people. They are not interested in the truth, but in ratings. I watched the clips they showed on Dr. Phil’s site and felt very unsettled. I was uncertain what to believe. After reading Jenny’s “Open Letter to Dr. Phil” and now Judy’s “Dr. Phil — The Rest of the Story”, I am disgusted. I have read of such things happening to others I know so I have no reason but to believe their take on things, especially since I saw hints of it even in the clips Dr. Phil has on his site. It took courage to approach him and go on his show. Shame on him for the way he treated them!
Below are links to 22 Faces and to their responses to what happened to them on Dr. Phil. Read them and judge for yourself. There is also a letter on their site from another therapist who has worked with clients who have DID/MPD which I have linked to on my “What is SRA?” page.
Trusting that the Creator has a plan and that it is for our ultimate good.
Trusting that there is something better for us than this life.
Trusting that the Messiah’s love will continue to carry me through every storm of life.
Trusting that the Creator’s teachings are true and good…no matter how hard they may be or how my “self” chafes against them.
Trusting that He is G-d and I am not.
Trusting that my understanding is not infinite…that I am NOT all-knowing.
Trusting that I do not have to understand everything.
Trusting that my human sense of righteousness is not necessarily my Creator’s…mine is imperfect, while His is perfect.
Trusting that, like a child, I can trust my heavenly Abba/Father/Daddy…even when I do not understand.
Trusting that my Creator’s provision truly is enough for me.
Trusting that, when my Abba says “no”, it is for good reasons…even though I may not see those reasons now.
As I look at the list above, I see that trust is really tied a lot into understanding…or lack of understanding. There have been many times in my life when I thought and lived as a child. I wanted to understand like G-d (my Abba/Daddy) and I wanted to understand NOW. Just like the impetuous child who does not want to obey unless she fully understands (and agrees with) the why of the parent, I wanted to act and live on my own understanding and beliefs about how I thought life should be lived.
It took time, but I eventually outgrew my childishness…mostly. I still have my days, but they are much fewer and farther between…thankfully. Now I am better able to trust when I am walking through the mist…when I cannot see tomorrow. I am no longer afraid when things seem dark and I cannot see my way.
I am better able to remain calm and serene in the face of what appears to be “impending doom” because I have learned that things are not what they seem to be with the human eye and heart. I know that Abba has a bigger plan and that the ‘powers that be’ are going to crumble. I know things are going to get tougher in the world and in our country, but I am not afraid, for I know He walks with me.
I have not had the time to check out every single page on each site. However, what I have checked out seems to be pretty good. Always read with a discerning heart. Ask the One True God to show you what is from Him and what is not.
A Survivor's Thoughts on Life 