There has been a push from inside over the past couple years to do more "meaningful photography." What I mean by "meaningful" is work that speaks to my own experiences more fully. Put another way, I want to do photography that is psychologically aware.

I got interested in photography around the time my kids were born; that was more than a decade ago. And since the kids were the focus for so many years, photography had been mostly about happiness and documenting happiness.

It didn't take me long to realize that photography was about seeing and not just looking. For someone who had lived a life based on dissociation, this was a real breakthrough and insight for me; a small first step in healing and becoming aware.

I have developed what was a small hobby into something a bit larger. I do some portrait work professionally, but my main interest has been photojournalism and sports which I shoot for local news outlets. Portrait work is intensely personal and requires a huge amount of "presence," engagement with the subjects, and directing. Sometimes I am simply not able to do that, which poses a problem if people have made appointments with me. So, I tend to minimize those kinds of assignments now. I sometimes become scared and forget all my skills and the images come out quite lousy, at least by my standards. It's too unpredictable, because sometimes I can be perfectly "on" and sometimes I can be "not at all there."

Photojournalism, in contrast, is a style of photography that is more detached and a bit less personal, but one could argue has a larger payoff because the images look spontaneous. The idea behind a photojournalism style of photography is that you become an impartial observer and document the details of the event. Mostly, the goal is to document all the scales of detail that you "see", from those that most everyone would recognize as the describing the event to those small elements that nobody really pays any attention to (e.g., the little kids poking their heads out from under the Bride and Groom's head table). It is really the only way to shoot live sports or any event where there are people going about their business.

Photojournalism is a microcosm of what healing from dissociation is all about. To see an event photographically, you must be prepared to do it from an "all of you" perspective. From this whole perspective, you can capture not only the range of length scales (from macro to micro) but also the range of human emotions. Sports is one great example, because there is always "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." Another is a wedding. And a third is any news event.

The photograph above was taken at a local elementary school's art show. I took many real-life people pictures at this event. But as I was looking at some of the art on display done by children, I stumbled upon this scene. In a self-portrait of a boy, I saw the reflection of other framed artwork several feet away. There were rows of art on display, and if I had to do this over again, I would have swapped out the reflected images that weren't self-portraits with ones that were. One of the tricks of photojournalism is that if you can unobtrusively change the scene, you assume you have the authority to do so, granted to you by your press badge, and just do it.

The obvious composition of this image would have been to focus on the boy, and the reflected images would blur. But that's what you see with your eyes and that would be boring. That image would scream "amateur mistake" because who would want reflected images in the background? Since there was no way to remove the reflections from the flourescent lights, I had to think about it in a different way and see beyond the obvious.

This is an image I would never had been able to make just a few years ago. I took me a while to get the meaning of what the reflections were telling me, for my eyes did not see this interpretation. Once I did, I composed the frame with the boy and the green background, focussed on the reflected images and opened the aperture to wide open at f/2.8, knowing that would blur the boy's face. Then, of course, the other trick to photojournalism is to not be shy to shoot because with digital, images are essentially free. So, I fired off about 30 other frames with various compositions and exposures. Then later I can decide which image works best.

There are multiple meanings behind this image. On one level, it could say that nobody really sees the boy as he is (i.e., he's a blur). On another, it could say that behind the boy is a complex world with various compartments and other selves.

What does this image say to you?

For those who are interested, there are some excellent books on photographic "seeing" and composition. They are:

• Andreas Feininger, Principles of Composition in Photography (1972, not in print so you would most likely find it at a local library)
• Michael Freeman, The Photographer's Eye (2007)
• Freeman Patterson, Photography and the Art of Seeing (1985, but updated in a 2004 edition)
• Bryan Peterson, Learning to See Creatively (1988, but updated in a 2003 edition)
• Henry Poore, Pictorial Composition in Art (1976 and still in print)

For other psychologically meaningful photographs on Mind Parts, see my Photography Gallery.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/03/photojournalism-as-psychologic.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/03/photojournalism-as-psychologic.html Dissociation Healing Photography Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:14:00 -0500 The problem I have had with writing this blog recently is related to the "elephant in the room" phenomenon. In the last post, I alluded to the family crisis that has enveloped my family for the last few weeks. I feel as though I now have to write about it in order to move past it.

Here goes the drama:

We had a "family friend" who was continually pushing boundaries for a long time (10 or more years). I had always been incredibly uncomfortable with her, but she was my wife's "whacky" friend. For a while now, she has been trying to insert herself as an authority in our family and trying to control situations. She was overbearing. She thrived on creating conflicts or problems and being there to solve them. Many of these problems were lies or the facts were greatly twisted and exaggerated. I saw through most of them and questioned all of them. But my wife was not able to. This created a huge conflict between the two of us because she was convinced there were real problems, focused mainly on our children and on what I was not doing for the family due to my "problems".

A few weeks ago, my wife came home from her evening yoga class and said she got a phone call from our "friend" who said she got a call from one of our neighbors claiming we do not care well for our kids and one of the kids had said she is very sad and angry. The neighbor supposedly threatened to call child services on us.

I immediately confronted our "friend" through a phone call. I warned her that if this was a lie, that it would be the complete end of her relationship with my family. I am convinced she did not expect me to do this. My wife didn't want me to pursue it because she believed the "friend" might have been telling the truth and didn't want to irritate the neighbor or make waves. The "friend" said not to worry because she had someone on the inside of child services who could help us.

In the past, I may not have been strong enough to see through what she was doing. And may not have been strong enough to take action like I did. But over the past year or two, with my increased awareness, I had begun to question things. And this act was just over-the-top. She had done things like this. But this was well beyond everything in the past. I think my increased awareness pushed the "friend" to act in this way because she saw her control being taken away.

The next morning, I had a conversation with our neighbors, with whom we are fairly close. They said they had no idea what our "friend" was talking about. They claimed that no such conversation ever took place. My neighbor confronted our "friend", but through voicemail, calling her on the lie.

At 3PM that afternoon, I got a phone call from child services stating these allegations. This then required a letter from me to them, phone interviews with both me, my wife, and my neighbors. Child services also contacted my children's school to see if there was anything in their records that caused concern. I told them what I was certain had happened: that this "friend" called child services in order to keep intact her original lie.

For several days I was in "family protect" mode. The only problem was that I was not paying attention to a good deal of me.

After a couple days, the "friend" started to contact my wife, some friends, and relatives and act like she did not do anything and blamed it all on my mental status. In fact, when child services was called she said brought up my mental health issues.

By that time my wife and I agreed that my original warning of no more contact ever would be enforced. We told the girls a kid-acceptable story. I told many of our neighbors and relatives. I changed our house locks, security codes, and got blocks on Facebook. I told the school and talked to the principal. I told the kids that they are to treat this "friend" like a stranger and find help if she ever shows up. Luckily, she lives about 25 miles away, so there is no reason for her to be in our town.

Then I sent her a registered letter. The key paragraphs are these:

The story is bizarre, at least bizarre for my standards, because as this all played out, certain things started to click for me. As one small example, the "friend" had often called my 8 year old "our daughter" referring to she and my wife. And over the past several months she had been pushing to get my daughter to stay over her apartment. I never agreed to that, causing friction.

One of the problems is that I was not completely stable throughout the entire crisis because of being in "family protect" mode. I had periods, especially at night, when younger parts of me thought I was indeed making it all up or at least blowing things out of proportion. Or they didn't know what was going on at all. I had other problems where younger parts felt it was a violation to stand up for ourselves. It was not, in their mind, consistent with how things were supposed to be. Needless to say, this caused a great deal of difficulty and required a good deal of support from therapists, family, and friends.

So far, we have not heard from our "friend" since the letter. And the conflicts and drama we got used to experiencing as a family (due to the constant influence of the "friend") have completely gone away. Family life and married life seems much simpler now!

Now I have said what has happened. And, hopefully, soon I can begin posting some of those 30 "articles" I have started.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/03/our-family-crisis.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/03/our-family-crisis.html Family Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:04:00 -0500 I have been quiet for the past couple of weeks. I have not posted here. Nor have I read the blogs I follow (even though the number I follow has been reduced recently so that I could be more engaged in what I'm reading). I have also cut back on going to therapy.

I have been embroiled in a bit of a personal crisis unrelated to the issues I bring up here. I was going to write about it all, but that did not feel safe. Suffice it to say that my family (wife and kids) has had to deal with an enormous boundary violation and I have been working hard to protect them. What happened was not terribly surprising. But, in the end, my family is in a far safer place. And I am having to deal with a little bit of internal fallout.

So after I decided not to write the details of what I have been going through lately, I started thinking about some of the topics I could discuss here. I have approximately 30 substantive "articles" I'd like to flesh out. These include sex and re-enacting abuse, stigma of the diagnosis of DID, and issues facing male child abuse survivors. But, those are all for another day.

In my cache of materials, I have meaningful poems, photography, and art that I can turn to when I don't want to or cannot write much. Today is one of those days.

Here's a poem, entitled "The Men's Room" from the early 1990s:

Like many poems, they have have huge meanings and use a minimum numbers of words.

Now onto read the blogs...]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/02/shame.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/02/shame.html Poetry Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:12:00 -0500

I first learned about Wordle from a post last month by fragmentz. The other day Castorgirl made the post "Lost for Words". They both got me motivated!

I am a firm believer that diversified means of expression are necessary for healing, especially for those of us who struggle with dissociative problems. But, one could easily argue that this is important for any person to live a healthy life! Being able to express ourselves in different ways helps us be more flexible, encourages creativity, and just plain makes us more interesting people.

The connection to dissociative problems is particularly important. Through dissociation, we become accustomed to having parts of us handle very specific areas of life in mostly extremely rigid ways. If you look at such a person as a whole, one would most likely see all the variety that person possesses, and rigidity would probably not be the word that would come to mind to describe the whole person. Instead, the most common phrase I hear is "remarkably adaptive". That's little comfort most times to the person who routinely dissociates. The experience for someone who routinely dissociates in more extreme ways is usually one of fragmentation, lost time, and discontinuity.

The prognosis for dissociative disorders is good, I think, because we already have within us the necessary components to live interesting and creative lives most everyone strives for. I am not meaning to trivialize the process of healing or the struggles we face, but healing really is within our grasp and the destination is, I think, a wonderful place to end up and the journey itself isn't that bad either.

Art therapy, some aspects of my photography, piano, writing, and poetry have been very helpful in my healing. They have all provided ways to bridge what I know intellectually in my brain with what I feel in my heart. In many ways, through these means, I've been able to create a sort of glue that holds all the pieces of me together.

Wordle is very easy to use. In the simplest way, you can just enter a list of words in a form, and it will create a visual representation for you. More advanced uses allow the ability to weight the sizes of particular words and assign colors. From there, you can use the menus to decide how you want the software to lay out the words. You don't have strict control over word placement. But you can fiddle with the settings and create as many variations as you want.

I suggest to make screen captures as you go along because the software doesn't have a history function. Further I suggest you keep your list of words (and size and color tags if you use them) in a text editor. Then if you want to change anything, just change it in the text editor and paste that into the form.

What does what I created mean? The short answer is that these are the words taken from my "Contract" that have particular meaning to me. I weighted "Balance" the most, and that and "truth" are the only words in white. The pink words are kind of in the same class as balance. Grounding words are green. Nouns are in blue. Action oriented things I have to do to heal are in red. "God" is in purple.

To create your own, head on over to: Wordle.

For something similar, yet different, check out Tagul. It gives more control than Wordle, but many of the things it does you can do in a text editor with a little script control. But it's worth checking out.

Finally, if you are interested in words, see Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus.

If you click on the image above, you will see a higher resolution image.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/02/visual-words.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/02/visual-words.html Art Therapy Dissociation Expressive Writing Healing Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:23:00 -0500 Welcome to the January 29, 2010 edition of Carnival Against Child Abuse. The purpose of the Carnival is to be a place where important posts are shared with others who may not be frequent readers of an author's blog. I, myself, have realized that I cannot follow all the blogs I want to follow, so the monthly Carnival gives me a chance to see what else is out there. There are so many wonderful bloggers and you are all doing a wonderful service not only to yourselves, but to the cause of ending child abuse and recovering from child abuse. My sincere thanks to all of you.

If you, as a reader or author, know of other blogs that you find helpful, please encourage them to submit to an upcoming issue of the Carnival Against Child Abuse; and please bookmark that page so we can continue to receive high quality submissions from a wide swath of bloggers.

Healing Submissions

Kerro from "Kerro's Korner" presents 10 good things about falling apart. In keeping with the David Letterman "Top 10" theme, Kerro shares with us one of my all time favorite posts and she leads off the Carnival this month. Her post is helpful, encouraging, and validating.

Kate from "Kate1975's Blog" presents A Bliss List. Kate creates wonderful lists that I come back to time and time again. Her "bliss" lists are so encouraging. To see all 12 of them, click on her Bliss List Category.

Dr. Kathleen Young from "Treating Trauma in Chicago" presents Shame and Self-Blame After Trauma. Dr. Young addresses head on one of the most difficult topics for survivors. This is a post you may want to bookmark and come back to when you are brought down by shame and self-blame. She concludes her post with: "No child (yes, that includes you reading this!) is ever to blame for the abuse inflicted upon them by others."

Hope from "Hope for Trauma" presents One Year Strong, saying "It's about my Journey throught my first year without being inpatient. The search for trust, support and acceptance." It's a peek into what hospitals are like, and a commentary on how a therapist who specializes in trauma work can lead survivors in a new and different healing direction.

Ivory from "Shades of Ivory" presents All in the Telling, saying "Telling is the most difficult 'start' to healing." In my comment to her post I wrote "I am so sorry that you have lost so much in your journey, for your 'telling'. But I am sure you realize that if you didn't 'tell' there would be other consequences, and perhaps you would not have survived those." Thanks for telling Ivory!

Sarah from "A bit of this, a bit of that" presents If I'd Known Then, saying "Although this isn't really a survivor blog in the way that many of the blogs that submit to the Carnival are, I am a survivor, and that does affect my writings. This post has received such a powerful response from my friends that I wanted to share it with a larger audience." Her post speaks of a wonderful book where authors write letters to their younger selves. Sarah herself wrote one in her blog post. It's a wonderful technique, and personally I'd love to do that someday.

Shhh from "My Shush Blog" presents elephant in the room. Shhh writes about her experience with a "transitional object". If you don't yet have one, you would do well to consider one. I have several.

Innocencestolen from her self-titled blog presents Bikini Season, saying "I wrote this post based on my own frustrations with my body and realizing how alot of my problems with myself have all stemmed from my mother." She touches on the trouble many of us have with body image and how lessons from long ago still stay with us today.

Cornnut32 from "Picture of Experience" presents Pooh's grand adventure. This post speaks to the power of interacting with children in a healthy way.

Marj aka Thriver from "Survivors Can Thrive!" presents Trauma Processing, Therapy & Counseling, saying "In this post, I talk about my experience with therapy for my dissociative disorder, trauma processing and counseling. I also lament a bit on the fact that I have never been able to find a therapist who could provide all three of these things for me as I navigate the healing-from-abuse journey." It's a personal account of some of her healing journey. Thank you, Marj, for sharing what is obviously so personal to you.

Mike from "Child Abuse Survivor" presents Healing Isn't a Smooth Timeline. Mike reminds us that there are ups and downs in the healing journey, that we can make huge progress in a short time, and make little progress over a long time, and everything in between. This is good to be reminded of, because many of us have high expectations of ourselves (added also to outside expectations).

Temperance from "Crackers & Juiceboxes" presents Dear Trauma Therapist.... Tempy has done something here that few of us think to do or are able to do. She made a clear statement to her therapist about who she is, what her limitations are, and a commitment to healing. This reminds me of Elia Wise's poem "For Children Who Were Broken"; if you have not read this poem, I suggest you look it up.

Art Submissions

Shen from "Reunited Selves" presents Anger Work. Her work goes through a whole process of inner communication. She uses a left- versus right-hand technique to help her communicate inside, and it's something worth trying for those of us who have trouble with that issue.

Paul from "Mind Parts" (me) presents My Symbol, my most recent art therapy post.

Advocacy & Awareness

Katie at "Sharing our Spaces" presents False Memory Syndrome, saying "I wrote this about my recent research into whether or not FMS is valid." It's a very good look at some of the current debate on a hot topic.

Paul from "Mind Parts" (again, me) presents Is Dissociative Identity Disorder Real?. I've been meaning to address this for a while, and so here goes... I take on the ongoing debate on the existence of DID because there has been much discussion on blogs about this topic recently.

Paul from "Mind Parts" presents The Burden, a wonderfully done campaign video to end child abuse.

Patricia from "Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker" presents Ask About Incest If You Suspect It Is Happening, saying "I wanted someone to ask. I needed someone to ask. If you know a child that you suspect is being abused ask them. It may be what they are waiting for." As survivors, especially, we cannot turn a blind eye. Thanks for reminding us Patricia!

BloggerT7165 from "What about when MOM is the abuser?" presents Female sex offenders and their victims: Reference materials and scholarly papers. This post presents a comprehensive bibliography on the topic of female sex offenders.

Poetry

I deliberately don't provide commentary on poems. I feel as though they should stand on their own

Mary from "Nippercat's Home" presents The Boogieman.

Little Sheep from "My (getting better) story" presents scrubbing it off, saying "It's so worth it in the end!"

Little Sheep from "My (getting better) story" presents poem.

Jumping in puddles from "Sharing private moments through poetry" presents Don't find me.

Aftermath

Patricia Singleton from "Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker" presents Inspiration, Denial and Incest, saying "This post was written in response to a previous comment on my blog that told my readers who were survivors to just get over it and get on with their lives. Abuse doesn't stay in our past. It very much affects our today." I think it's important for readers to realize that survivor blog posts aren't all about inspiration. Blogs are heartfelt attempts to find ourselves, and many posts will be dark or about losing hope; they should be looked at from a global perspective. Thank you Patricia for pointing this out.

Colleen from "Surviving by Grace" presents Taking Care of Myself. Colleen has struggled like so many of us have about learning to take care of our bodies despite years of being neglected from abuse. Thank you Colleen!

Colleen from "Surviving by Grace" presents Sisters. Colleen takes on survivor guilt and comes to the healthy conclusion that "It was not my fault".

Kate from "Kate1975's Blog" presents Survivor’s Aftereffects List #1. Kate has posted a wonderful list of aftereffects from the book "Secret Survivors". The full list can be found in the Aftereffects Lists Category.

That's all folks! Thank you all for the honor of hosting this month's Carnival and for your wonderful submissions. You are all truly inspirational.

The Carnival homepage can be found at Carnival Against Child Abuse. There you can find current as well as all past editions.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/carnival-2010-january.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/carnival-2010-january.html Carnival Against Child Abuse Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:00:00 -0500 One of the more interesting, and also infuriating, debates is the question of whether dissociative identity disorder (DID) is real or not. Some say it should be subsumed under another disorder (usually borderline personality disorder is the most often mentioned) and that it's a harmful diagnosis and causes those labelled with it to unnecessarily suffer. Many of these people also say that the disorder is largely iatrogenic, meaning caused by the process of therapy or caused by a societal pressure.

In 15 Years Ago and the Great Debate, I wrote about this in a largely naive and idealistic manner. I'm not so much naive or idealistic nowadays.

The issue can get quite complicated, in part because those of us with dissociative disorders commonly switch in and out of self states based on our level of internal presence or cohesiveness or external demands. It's not uncommon to be in a part of ourselves who thinks nothing is wrong. We have learned to partition things so well, that doing so is not all that hard. Then we can easily agree with those who say it's not real. But these are merely denial states. The denial or seemingly "completely well" states often give us a little reprieve, but they rarely last long. When they do last long, it usually means there is a significant crash of reality to come.

The debate in the psychiatric community is really a "no win" debate. Not only are there conflicts about the reality of DID, but I am sure you all know there are conflicts about the validity of repressed memories. But that's a topic for another day. Both debates are not strictly "winnable" because each side does have some valid points. And each side is beholden to their point of view.

I sometimes do get sucked into these debates internally, but it never ends up in a good place for me. The internal debate attempts to mirror the external ones. And it just ends up causing a mass of confusion. The best place to be is to avoid the external debate and be true to your own experience. That is, if you can do that.

About 6 months ago, I had a discussion with a psychiatrist I know about whether what I experience is "real" or not. She answered by telling a Chinese proverb:

Then she said: "The interpretation that I read, said that the response was meant to negate the question, not to answer it. For centuries there has been debate and discussion of whether or not the dog has a Buddha nature. Just like there is debate and discussion about whether or not there is DID. But I like the interpretation that says Zhaozhou intended to negate the question, because I think that theological hair-splitting wouldn't get the young monk any closer to enlightenment and that a wise teacher like Zhaozhou would have known that. Indeed, my favorite interpretation of this story says that Zhaozhou's answer meant 'It doesn't matter!'"

It's very hard to be in a place where you can just say "It doesn't matter." But, really, I think this is the answer. If we can trust in our own experience and keep working at trying to make sense of it, then this is all we can ask of ourselves. It's not for others to judge our experience or tell us it isn't so. There is a lot of suffering that those of us with dissociative disorders have to come to terms with; but the suffering doesn't lessen by forcing yourself to believe that your internal experience isn't real. Just because it doesn't manifest itself in a simple blood test, doesn't mean it's not real. I like to think our job is to work at becoming more whole. We can have a chance at doing this only if we acknowledge our internal reality. Our internal truth.

Others will debate it for many years to come. Let them do that. And let us heal!]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/is-dissociative-identity-disor.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/is-dissociative-identity-disor.html Dissociation Healing Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:19:00 -0500

Here are some early morning ramblings after not sleeping all night.

I was reading an interview just a little while ago, on the somewhat unrelated topic of "intelligence gathering", and this was said:

I thought it was a rather interesting comment, because intelligence gathering and trauma healing are not so dissimilar. But I think he missed the point a bit.

I like to think of healing as having to put together a bunch of puzzle pieces (with a lot missing and without the picture). But on those puzzle pieces are the little dots, and as you put the puzzle together, patterns start to emerge and you get better and better at predicting and making decisions.

This photograph is of some work I did with my therapist last summer. I painted puzzle pieces of various sizes and arranged them in a way that made some visual sense to me. I had many color options, but I chose only red, white and black. We never quite finished, having intended to go back and rearrange and reshoot. The pieces are still sitting in my therapist's office on top of her bookshelf. Perhaps we'll take them out again soon.

On my A Healing Journey page you will see an image of a dissociative identity (DID) awareness pin. And if you follow the link on the bottom of that page you will see another. I took the inspiration from these, and Castorgirl's blog header.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/the-jigsaw-puzzle.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/the-jigsaw-puzzle.html Art Therapy Dissociation Healing Photography Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:51:06 -0500 OF YOUR HTML PAGE -->

On Christmas Day my wife, kids, and I watched the 1965 film "Sound of Music". It was a lovely movie and uplifting. I remember it being broadcast on television annually; it was a huge event for me along with the "Wizard of Oz".

I identified with the story on a number of levels. And only this past year did I know why. I was sure that it had parallels to my own life, with the multiple children each with their own "quirks", the nanny trying to get control and manage them, the father who was unaware of what was going on, and the threat of the German's and the fear that came with that.

Ultimately, as many of you know, the father protected his children and the story had a happy ending. I'd like to think my life will have a happy ending. Maybe I'm being too naive and too idealistic. But, who knows, maybe that's exactly how it will turn out!

It's all rather interesting because both of my daughters are playing and singing songs from the musical now. My youngest and I have been playing "My Favorite Things" together with her on violin and me on piano for about a month. My oldest is playing a medley of songs with her school band and chorus.

I took a particular liking to "Edelweiss" because the father, Georg von Trapp, sang that song to his children. It was a delightful scene in which he first became "aware", with the help of Maria, that he had not been paying much attention to them. There was another touching scene towards the end of the movie where he began to sing it to the large audience at the Salzburg music festival, could not get through it, Maria had to help him and then all the audience joined in as a statement of solidarity.

I've changed one word in the lyrics, next to last word, to make the song have meaning to both my inside and outside families:

I have been singing this to my kids and quite like the way it "fits". I recorded this song along with a vocal track and published it here a couple of weeks ago. But I had to take it down because there was a visceral reaction. So, a couple of weeks removed from that experience, I just recorded an ever-so-simple piano track. I wanted to play the song very simply because it's kind of like a lullaby.

I think it's perfectly appropriate to make this song my personal anthem.]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/edelweiss-my-anthem.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/edelweiss-my-anthem.html Music Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:15:00 -0500 I am pleased to host this month's Carnival Against Child Abuse.

Submissions are due by Wednesday, January 27th and I will publish on Friday, January 29th.

Submit at: Blog Carnival Submissions

A blog carnival is a collection of blog articles (or art or poetry) hosted on a single site for the purpose of bringing readers and writers together.

There is no theme this month, in part due to time being short.

Don't have a blog or need help? Send an email to paul@mindparts.org and I will help you. In particular, if you don't have a blog, I will be happy to receive your article by email and I will host it here as a "guest" submission with byline credit given as you specify. This is a great opportunity for non-bloggers to make a statement and "test the waters" so to speak.

On the submission page you will be asked to pick a category of: Advocacy & Awareness; Aftermath; Healing & Therapy; In the News; Poetry; or Survivor Stories. There is a new category titled "Art Therapy", so please feel free to send in your art! Also, your blog itself does not need to be about child abuse, just the post you are submitting. And you can submit older articles and more than one article.

I hope you submit! The blogging community has a lot to contribute on the subject of child abuse and healing. Let your voice be heard.

Again, to submit, click on over to: Blog Carnival Submissions]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/carnival-announce-jan2010.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/carnival-announce-jan2010.html Carnival Against Child Abuse Sun, 17 Jan 2010 09:38:04 -0500 The news today reveals a telling commentary on where our society is at. I thought it was untrue when I first heard about it. But, apparently, it is quite real. Or, not real, depending on how you look at it.

Leave it to sex to sell multiple personalities. Yes, the world's first sex robot, Roxxxy, is not only anatomically correct and functional, but comes complete with five personalities. The owner can choose which personality he wants to interact with. And the personalities are customizable and can be programmed wirelessly over the Internet, even allowing owners to share their personality programs with others.

The inventor says his goal was to develop a companion, to help shy people and those with sexual dysfunction.

So, having lots of personalities is good, right? That makes me feel so much better. I can now stop therapy and resume where I was when I started.

I'm not sure if the inventor thought of this, or did his research, but what happens when the programming gets more complicated and the personalities start fighting with each other, or acting out?

We are now entering "Star Trek" land folks. I do remember several Next Generation episodes about this, almost always situated in the holodeck.

I'll wait for the holodeck, thank you very much!

News Story: Roxxxy the sex robot makes her world debut (AFP, 1/9/2010)]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/multiple-personality-robot.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/multiple-personality-robot.html News Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:10:00 -0500 I'm trying to post twice a week here as that's important to me. Originally I was going to try to write something scholarly for today. But I'm just not able to right now, for various reasons. Some of you may know that I posted a musical piece I recorded the other day along with some commentary, but had to take it down the next day because it had a vocal track (alongside the customary piano track) and that, I found out rather forcefully from the inside, was too personal to share. I will post it again, without the vocal track, once I am able to record a slightly better piano solo.

Over the holidays, I found a cache of poems I wrote in the early 90s. I had a difficult time choosing which to post today. I know my last post was an optimistic review of where I've come from and what I've been able to accomplish. This poem is an 180 degree turn from that. It's not purposeful. I am not really this pessimistic. But lately I have been trying to get in touch with where I've come from, and I'm trying to connect the broad pieces of my life. I cannot forget where I was back many years ago, but at the same time I cannot be swept up by it either. This poem seemed to be the most appropriate to share, though I'm not particularly clear on why.

Here's the poem:

They had a name for those who were tortured...
They were Jews
Millions of them died at the hands of others

But millions more stayed alive
They have a name for those who stayed alive
"They are survivors," they say

They are wrong! Really we are Jews

The poem is perhaps a bit controversial. I hope it doesn't offend anyone. I was not raised Jewish, but rather Roman Catholic, so maybe I am stepping over some boundary. I am not really sure exactly what I was trying to say. I can see the obvious meanings.

I am nearly certain I wrote this poem shortly after seeing "Schindler's List" in Winter of 1994. I remember seeing the film alone, and I remember crying for hours afterwards.

I wonder what you all think?]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/jews.html http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/jews.html Poetry Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:31:53 -0500 It was a decade that began, for me as a survivor, with the public airing of the clergy abuse scandal in January 2002. I had thought that was all behind me. I had dealt with all of that a decade earlier, surviving some tortuous "healing" years in and out of the hospital in the early '90s.

By the mid '90s, I filed suit with the church, settled, and then completely distanced myself from therapy and the hospital. I wanted nothing to do with all of that. I was very clear that my DID (dissociative identity disorder) or multiple personality disorder was made up. While that was a huge piece of denial, and I know that now, somehow that allowed me the space to get married, buy a house, build up my career, and twice become a father. But, really, while many good things happened during those years, my life was severely partitioned. I just wasn't aware. Hurting myself would happen in its own box. Being petrified would happen in its own box. Everything went back to the way it was in the '80s, except I now had built a life for myself, which was very real but also somewhat of a facade, something I could hide behind.

It collapsed like a house of cards in 2002. It's shocking to me how quickly it all happened. The more functional parts of me thought they could handle things; the talking to reporters and details of my abuse being in the big daily papers. But something strange happened. I started to realize that my life really was a bunch of partitions or rooms and that things not only were not right in 2002, but they weren't right all along. I was kidding myself about how much I had healed. The depression, the switching, the suicidality, the eating; these all were back again.

After a series of false starts with various random therapists, I called my old therapist, I like to call him Freud, and asked if I could go back to see him. We started working together again. It was hard. I became increasingly symptomatic. I became more fragmented. I acted out in self-harm a lot. And I ended up in the hospital again. And again. And again. But it was different from the '90s and I can't quite put my finger on how. We worked hard. But it was slow progress.

Then things changed. In 2008 I started working with an art therapist. By late 2008, I stopped working with Freud as my main therapist and switched to the art therapist as my main therapist. And things took off, like I was shot out of a cannon. I was not used to working in this new way. The old way was to intellectualize everything. The new way was to explore feelings, draw and paint, hug each other when leaving, and use all those healing words and phrases. The new way acknowledged internal parts in a much more direct way. She wanted to know what they felt too. We started paying attention to everything. I started taking journaling very seriously and now use it to keep connected to my life, no matter how chaotic and confusing. Also, this website was born.

Here's what I accomplished in 2009 (in rough chronological order):

Whew! I've done a lot. And luckily I did a lot in this decade. So, when I refer to the "2000's", it will be known that there were many highs and many lows, but lots of healing, and it ended in a bang.

I do give up sometimes. I cannot deny that. In fact just a few hours before I wrote the "contract" a few weeks ago, I wrote to my therapist that I was giving up. But now, looking back, on this decade and a little bit on the decade before, I must know that I can never give up. Too much has been gained. I am a different person. I have healed in more ways than I could have ever imagined. And I look forward to the next decade, even though I know that there will be lots of hard work ahead of me. It will all be worth it!

Happy New Year to all of you!]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/looking-back-and-ahead.html http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/looking-back-and-ahead.html Catholic Church Dissociation Healing Hospital Personal History Self-Harm Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:47:00 -0500

In the hospital this month, during an "art therapy" group, we were asked to "draw a symbol for yourself". This is something I've done before. Often, the symbol is not one object, but a collection of many objects, and this particular drawing was no exception. Being in a particularly fragmented state, I drew on the left what I wanted my symbol to be (and what I knew it could be); a rather smooth whole with different colored parts. On the right, I drew where I actually was at the time. The colored parts were rough and jagged and the "core" of me felt very small and colorless.

I also noticed, quite to my surprise, that it has been several months since I've put up any art, aside from photography. It's definitely something I intend to do more of in the future. You may also be interested in Kate's new list of Creative Healing Blogs and Postings.

Note: I've replaced the original image posted here (which was a merge of two scans) with a photograph. I'm going to use that approach for images larger than letter size.

Related Posts:

• The Core and Flow (May 2009)
• Mental States (May 2009)
• Radiating Parts and Finding Balance (May 2009)
• 24 Hour Timeline (April 2009)
• Safety (April 2009)
• Introduction to Art Therapy (October 2008)

I know Christmas is a complicated time for many of us. For some, it's about getting through. For others, it's about enjoying the time. For most, it's a little bit of both. Whatever the case is for you, remember there is a "next week".

I know this song, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", is wishful thinking. Sometimes wishing and pretending for a little while can be okay. We know that our troubles will be with us. But for a time, perhaps, they can be to the side a bit.

Here are the lyrics:

It's interesting that the original version, written in the 40s, had very different lyrics which were dismissed by Judy Garland and ultimately changed. They are:

Use whichever version works for you!]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/merry-christmas.html http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/merry-christmas.html Music Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:01:00 -0500 I don't really have a good sense of what's happened over the past couple weeks. I am now out of the hospital. But events and experiences are all over the place in pieces. I suppose I could put the pieces together from my private journal entries, and I will do that in due course. I sometimes resist doing that because then it becomes patently clear how discrete and dramatic my experiences really are.

My main accomplishment in the hospital, and there seems to always be a main accomplishment for each admission in recent years, was the eventual "coming together" of all parts of me in order to create an honest and meaningful "System Contract". The Contract is ten pages long (in rather large font) and contains our first definitive statements on what the parameters must be for our system as well as truisms that we often have great difficulty acknowledging (and even deny).

As an oversimplification, the hospital is a place where my system can relax, resulting in a bit of coming unglued (hence the Brief Cohesion post), and then some learning takes place and I make some accomplishment or some meaning that moves me forward.

This is what happened with the Contract. It most certainly would not have been able to be written outside of the hospital. It was done so in four major sections over an intense period of several hours, with each containing a series of very clear and definitive statements. I will not share the whole Contract, but I will share just a few of these statements:

These are four of the 16 items from the first Section, consisting of the core elements. Subsequent sections were more wordy, very personal and specific.

It was signed by every part. When I was discharged late last week, I saw my therapist and I read the entire document out loud in her office. Doing this was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done; but all of me knew it had to be done. I didn't think I could get through certain sections. We cried. It felt as if a stake had been put in the ground and we were propelling ourselves forward.

Unfortunately, the Contract quickly lost its luster. I am quite disconnected from it now. It is a horrible feeling to know you have accomplished something historic, say it's your "mission statement", your "Constitution", your "Magna Carta", but then lose the experience and all the knowing in such a short time.

But this disconnection really does not diminish the magnitude of what I've been able to achieve. There really was a coming together of all my parts; more than the brief cohesion of the last post. It is not surprising that I would lose that complete sense of knowing. And I'm okay with that. I think we have to accept inside that things will still be very difficult and I will struggle.

Even if all that's a given, things are different now. The changes may not be as dramatic and quantifiable as I originally anticipated, but there has been a more qualitative reordering of sorts inside. ]]> http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/the-contract.html http://www.mindparts.org/2009/12/the-contract.html Healing Public Journal Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:44:07 -0500