My Healing Journey

Or, an alternative title could be "Why This Site Exists?"

This page was originally very different from what it is now. It was the main page for this site before it was a blog and it was focused on an experience I had of achieving "enlightenment" and how I thought it meant I had finished my healing journey. I do not want to devalue that experience or say it did not happen. I have since put the experience into perspective and learned that it is a touchstone; a place I am able to visit from time to time.

I have a good and rich life. I am a father, husband, scientist, educator, photographer, and musician. And I had what outwardly appeared to be a normal childhood, with loving parents and extended family. But it was not at all normal. I was sexually, emotionally, and spiritually abused mainly by a priest in the late 70s and early 80s, but survived by compartmentalizing very well.

My healing journey began in 1991, shortly after college. It probably began before that in some fashion, but I first asked for help and got treatment at that time. I collapsed in a matter of minutes from a triggering event in the present. I quickly became incredibly symptomatic. I was flooded with memories and flashbacks and became completely overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, suicidal, self-harming and eating disordered. Looking back, I know that my dissociative defenses, which had worked for so long, just completely collapsed. There were many hospitalizations and much effort on behalf of my therapists and myself to find some stability. But for years, stability was impossible to find, which led to three very serious suicide attempts.

After several years of intense work, I did get myself stable. At least I thought I was stable. I stopped therapy abruptly. Soon after, I met my future wife, got married, had children, bought a house, and built up my career. While I was outwardly stable and quite functional, underneath it all was unfinished work. But I did not pay attention to any of that. I just plowed ahead. I did not think much about the fact that I was secretly self-harming (quite seriously). During this time away from therapy, I blamed the hospital and my treaters for causing my dissociative disorder and for exaggerating my memories and feeding into beliefs of detractors I had railed against for years. This was the only way I could live back then. I needed to think I did not really have problems, even when they were right under my nose.

In 2002, the Boston clergy abuse crisis occurred and my abuser's name started appearing in newspaper articles. I felt trapped and it was not long before I collapsed. I started therapy again and there were more hospitalizations. This was my second time around and I think I did better this time. I was a bit older and wiser and this helped me tremendously. I slowly started making connections. I started accepting truths. I addressed head on the enormous problems of dissociation and dissociated identities. I realized this was how I was made up and it was not "made up" like I convinced myself of for several years. Coming to grips with reality helped me to begin the process of changing unsafe behaviors. But I largely did this healing work from an intellectual perspective.

In 2008, I switched approaches and switched main therapists. I felt as though I learned enough intellectually and I needed to focus on healing through exploration of feelings. My healing work is different now and therapy is now more for "all of me." I changed my lifestyle and stopped working all the time. I realized I had to take time for myself. I slowed down. I paid attention to my limitations. I learned to journal. I learned to nurture myself.

In September 2008, I had an experience which I called enlightenment at the time. It was enormous for me. I started this site to document what happened, thinking it was nothing short of a miracle. To my dismay, I was not able to stay at that wonderful place. I now see the experience as a touchstone, one that nurtures me and helps me move forward. From time to time, I am able to access this place, but it is not quite the distilled experience it first was.

This new approach to healing has come at a price. I do have some limitations on what I am able to do and what I take on. Accepting what parts of me have held in isolation has meant I have to feel things I never felt before. Physical pain, sometimes crippling, is a present day reality. Knowing a fuller picture of memories is emotionally painful.

But there are also huge gains. Knowing memories for examples, can lead to understanding them, processing them, and moving on from them. Annual triggers, like Halloween and Easter can be worked on. I can understand what the issues are, and instead of just "getting through" so I can do it all again the next year, I can get through to a better place so that next year is not as hard. When I look at the motivations behind self-harming, I gain control over them and am more safe.

This is how I know I am healing. Because all of this is happening. But it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

If you are new to Mind Parts, and you want to know more about me and my views, you may be interested in the Highlighted Articles, a sort of 'best of' collection of articles, as chosen by me!

Please feel free to write me if you have questions, comments, or to connect. Send mail to: paul@mindparts.org.

The logo above is one of two designed in Summer 2008 by fellow survivors I met online to increase DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and other dissociative disorders awareness.