"I was absolutely frightened as I approached the therapist's office for the first time. It was a large office building with a fairly clinical atmosphere. . .
    "I sat on a comfortable chair facing the therapist, and he sat on another comfortable chair facing me. He asked me if I was okay with him video-taping our sessions. . . I didn't have a fear of being recorded, so I consented.
    "He asked me to close my eyes and look inside of myself. This was how the first therapy session began and it was typical of sessions thereafter. When I looked inside of myself, I would often see the vivid image of a child. When I let the child speak out loud, she (or he) would tell the therapist about an abuse that had happened, and the therapist would hear the voice and vocabulary of a child.
    "Later, I was able to watch the tapes of my sessions. I was surprised when a different voice, clearly a child's voice, would come out of me. I also realized through watching the tapes, that I had different mannerisms and behaviors for each of the different personalities that came out, and that the vocal qualities and expressions were different for each.
    "It was interesting to me that it was all so consistent. When a specific child part came onto the screen, I could see and hear myself use a particular tone of voice, use particular mannerisms, and age-appropriate vocabulary. I would then switch, and different 'people' would emerge. I might switch back to the original child part and the voice quality and mannerisms were completely consistent with how that child part had been previously.
    "I was amazed at how quickly the child parts were wiling to let me know they were there and how willing some of them were to explain what happened to them." (My Tears Fall Inside, page 55)

    It was amazing to me that even if a particular child part hadn't spoken to the therapist for several weeks, when she talked to him again, her tone of voice, mannerisms and vocabulary were totally consistent with what they were several weeks previously. Being able to observe this consistency by replaying a video of earlier sessions made it harder for me to deny the reality of the parts, much to my chagrin at the time.

    "Another 'Cinderella slipper' occurs when something is NOT present that should be. One of my most perplexing experiences was having missing memories. I had holes in my memories and was unaware for a long time that I was missing those pieces of my life. My memory loss was so complete that I was unable to 'remember' that I couldn't remember. In other words, I truly believed that I was the product of a perfect childhood because I could not remember otherwise in spite of growing evidence to the contrary. Where there were missing blocks of memory, there was no discomfort or feeling of loss, so I was blissfully unaware that I was unable to remember." (My Tears Fall Inside, page 45)

    One of my first memories to return was about Tony. This memory didn't return until I was in my mid thirties. I had no conscious memory that there ever was such a person as Tony. Then I had terrible, vivid nightmares and flashbacks that there was a hired hand that lived with our family on the farm by the name of Tony. In these nightmares I was five years old and he took me out of my bed at night and sexually abused me.
    I had total amnesia that Tony even existed before my memories returned but because there were other members of my family, I realized there was an easy way to establish if I had just "made up" Tony. I called my older sister and asked, "Did we ever have someone named Tony live with us?"
    She immediately replied, "Yes we did and I didn't like him at all!" So the memory of this man, including the sexual abuse, had been lost to me for many years.
    Total amnesia about traumatic events in our life can be very merciful. Unfortunately for me, that amnesia was temporary.

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    "On a summer day in 1990, my neighbor called. She said she was going to an education week at the local university where they offered a week filled with various classes and workshops for the public. She invited me to go with her and I agreed to go.
    "There were many classes to choose from and I noticed one on childhood sexual abuse. I felt apprehensive about going to that class but thought I might learn something that could help me. I decided to risk it. . . I was late, so I grabbed a seat near the back. The professor's lecture was already in full swing.
    "After being seated, I heard the instructor say."

    "If you think you might have been abused as a child, and you actually were, the symptoms you experience will not go away; they will continue to get worse and worse until you deal with the actual abuse problems. 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' (John 8:32)"

    "When these words were spoken, a powerful feeling came over me and I knew that this was true for me. As I thought back on the previous several years, I clearly saw how much worse my triggers and symptoms had become. I didn't know what had happened to cause those reactions, but suddenly I knew I HAD to deal with whatever it was, even if I didn't want to. . ."
    "Three months after attending the university class on childhood sexual abuse, I started to see a therapist. It wasn't long before memories of my childhood began flooding back. Sometimes the memories returned through nightmares that increased and intensified. Other times they came back through the child parts of me that had been hidden from me prior to receiving therapy." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 53-54)

    When life has been agonizingly painful or we have made bad choices, facing the truth about ourselves, the experiences of our past (and even about the present) can sometimes be extremely painful. In a desperate attempt to avoid that pain, it is not uncommon for us to re-write history and to create our own reality--one that isn't "that bad." The problem with living in that make-believe world is that we cannot progress in that place. The answer to that dilemma is to take the steps necessary to face our pain. When we finally have the courage to face the actual truth about the painful parts of our life, eventually that process leads to becoming healthier and happier. We no longer have to hide behind our fairy tale world and we can see life much more clearly. We are finally free to see life as it really is.

    "Over the course of many years I went from the misery of being a fragmented personality to a highly functioning and joyful person. So how did my healing process begin?
    "As an adult in my mid-thirties, I was unaware of what my 'Cinderella Slippers' meant. I had no conscious memory of the serious problems when I was a child. . .
    "I was perplexed and disturbed when my older sister started to have memories of childhood sexual abuse. She called me a few times. . . These few phone calls upset me deeply.
    "On one hand I didn't think my sister was a liar, on the other hand I simply did not believe that it was possible for a person to forget such horrible things. I felt bad for her, but I could not stand to hear her talk about this crazy part of her life. She eventually quit calling because she sensed my distaste for the conversations. In our last phone conversation she mentioned the word, 'triggers.'
    "Having never heard the word in connection with abuse, I asked, 'What are triggers?' She informed me, 'A trigger is where you have fear or a panic attack from something and you don't know where it came from.'"
    "I didn't say anything out loud, but my heart sank and I thought, 'Oh my Gosh! Is that what all that is?' I knew that I had experienced many episodes of unexplained panic and extremely intense fear, but until that conversation, I had never associated my experiences with the word, 'trigger,' and the possibility that these episodes could relate to some forgotten childhood trauma. This really bothered me." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 52-53)

    Sometimes the act of discovery is a difficult and painful process. At this point, I figured out that something terrible must have happened to me to cause all of the reactions I was experiencing. However, I didn't remember anything. So I decided to leave well enough alone and just be glad I couldn't remember. Unfortunately, in my case, this plan of action (or inaction) couldn't be maintained permanently.

    "A look at the journals from my youth and adulthood reveals another 'Cinderella slipper.' My handwriting would change dramatically, as if the writer were different people. Sometimes on only a two page spread, there were three or four totally different styles. On one page, my cursive letters would be very large and full of big loops, and only a few sentences later it would turn instantly into tiny printing. . .
    "What I didn't realize for quite some time was that I was a person who had distinctly different parts of my personality. These parts were so different from each other, in fact, that they had different mannerisms, different ways of talking, and different handwriting. Several of these parts would take over at different times while I was growing up. Some simply waited quietly in some mental 'closet' for a later time when I was ready to heal. In the healing process, personality parts would act as 'guideposts' to help me map my way back to wholeness and healing.
    "From my childhood to my adulthood, I did not consciously know all the horrible things that had happened to me. . . Later, in my 30's, I experienced triggers, body memories, panic attacks, unexplained bruises and the realization of broken bones, as previously described. Conscious recognition of the reality and enormity of what had happened to me came to the surface one piece at a time, paced in a way that would allow me to 'survive the healing.'
    "Having multiple personality parts was ideal for a paced healing process. Each part retained only a small portion of an experience, thus the process of gaining a conscious awareness of my childhood abuse meant I had to wait until each part of me felt safe enough to share with my whole. If I had taken years' worth of horrors and processed them all at once, I would not have survived." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 49-50)

    Sometimes God gives us unusual gifts and we don't even recognize them as gifts until many years later, or not at all. The fact that God gave me the ability to develop multiple personalities as a very young child, also gave me the ability to totally block out all of the horrible memories. In this way, I was able to lead a normal life and the memories did not come back to me until I was "capable" of dealing with them. Look carefully. What gifts has God given you?

    "Dreams and flashbacks were also 'Cinderella slippers' in my life. I have been plagued by horrible dreams and terror at night. This writing describes one such dream:

IN MY DREAMS
(1992)

The night drags on
and in my restless sleep
I break out in a cold sweat.
I tremble and shake violently.

My dreams are vivid
and the eight year old I become
can't speak
for she is overcome with terror. . .

In my dreams
I feel physical pain.
The covers are too tight
and I can't move.

My panic intensifies
and I awake still feeling pain.
I continue to tremble,
awake and adult. . .

     "Other 'Cinderella slippers' included unexplained reactions or 'triggers' that would arise in my everyday life. One time I took my little boy to a dinosaur museum where one of the exhibits was housed in a structure built like a tunnel. The sides were made of grey rock and as we began walking through this tunnel and turning a couple of corners, I saw some bars that looked like a jail. Suddenly my heart started pounding and I began shaking all over. I was terrified! I turned around and got out of there as fast as I could. I could not imagine why I had that reaction.
    "About a year or so later, a childhood memory emerged. In this memory, the satanists had taken me into a cave that had tunnels. They put me into a room with bars, like a jail, and had left me there alone in the dark. After the memory came back, I recalled my reaction at the museum. Suddenly it made sense and I understood why I had such a terrified reaction in the museum." (My Tears Fall Inside, selections from pages 41-44)

    Sometimes healing can be a very long and painful process, but over time, it can and will get better. My life now is so much better than it was and I am happy most of the time. Life means that sometimes we have issues to deal with, but as we deal with those issues, we can move on and our lives will continue to improve over time. Progress truly is in the process.

    "Sometimes there are no visible bruises, scars, or broken bones. The body acts as a very reliable record even in those instances. A short excerpt from one of my writings, 'Flashback,' (1994) describes some of the physical reactions I was experiencing.

The Trauma has turned to inside anger,
but since it doesn't come out of me,
it attacks the insides and turns to self-hate,
self destruction.
My stomach spasms with pain.
I feel heavy, heavy, heavy!
AAAAH!

    "I did not always feel stomach pains. Sometimes I would feel horrible chest pains or some other extreme physical reaction. For instance, I would wake up gasping and crying or my entire body would jolt with terror.
    "Another journal entry:
        "For nearly 2 solid weeks before Halloween, I was waking up every single night gasping or crying out and feeling terrified. . .
    "All of these 'body memories' were significant to me. They were often harbingers of memories about to emerge into consciousness. It was as if they were the tips of memory 'icebergs' coming to the surface from somewhere deep beneath the ocean." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 40-41)

    When we don't express our emotions in healthy ways, they affect our physical body. Negative emotions such as anger, can cause physical pain and illness. Many times we misunderstand emotions. Though some emotions are more negative, emotions themselves aren't "good" or "bad." Emotions just ARE. What makes them good or bad is what we do with them in relationship to others.

    Some of the things I have done to diffuse anger and other negative emotions are:

1. Write in my journal.
2. Write a letter to someone expressing all of the anger and hurt I feel, but don't send it. Writing down my feelings helps me to figure out where those feelings are coming from and helps clarify what they relate to. Also, the very act of writing them down sometimes helps to diffuse them.
3. Build a campfire in an appropriate place and imagine my anger burning up with the fire.
4. Buy helium balloons and write on them. Then let them go. As I watch them float up to the sky, I imagine that I am giving this problem to God.

    What are some healthy ways you have learned to express your negative emotions?

    "July 1, 1993 journal entry:

        "I had a memory come back during therapy quite some time ago of the satanists putting my right hand in a vice. They were crushing it and it had to do with brainwashing. In the memory the child part said, 'They were breaking my hand.' I assumed it hadn't literally been broken, but was only a child's interpretation of the experience, 'It hurts, therefore it's broken.'"

    "Later, in a letter I wrote to a church leader:

        "I mentioned in the last letter about the bump on my right hand and I want to tell you what just happened the last few days. I bumped my right hand really hard and hurt it right next to the already existing bump. It swelled a little and hurt quite a lot at first, and when it was still swollen the next day, I decided to go to the doctor to have it x-rayed just to make sure I hadn't broken it.
        "I saw a doctor I have never seen before. When he saw my hand he immediately asked me if I had broken my hand before. I just told him I had injured it as a child. After my hand was x-rayed, the nurse told me that the doctor would be a while because he saw something he needed to talk to the radiologist about. When he came back, he told me that he had seen a definite line in the x-ray that showed a fracture, but that he wasn't sure if it was an old break or a new one. He said the radiologist told him it was definitely an old break.
        "My hand is already doing much better, but it was interesting to have actual proof that my hand was indeed broken once before--especially since I had had no conscious memory of ever having broken it, and the child part remembered it before I had any verification that it might even be true." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 38-39)

    The child part remembered what had happened, even though I had no conscious memory of ever breaking my hand, and the truth of that memory was evidenced by the medical x-ray. The mind has amazing and incredible capacities. If we truly understood all that it can do, we would stand in awe.