Really Quiet
The voices in my head, that constant noise between parts, have changed. I hear mere whispers most of the day with added coherent and constructive conversation. On a bad day, there is some arguing or otherwise strongly felt communication between parts, but it always gets resolved.
How did I do it? In just one word, Jesus (Just keep reading, it will only take a few minutes.). I know people don’t want to hear this. I know how anti-Jesus people can be these days. Let’s face it, Christianity has become nearly taboo in the mainstream world, because of a few fanatics. Those fanatics take serious topics, like homosexuality or abortion, and find hate in their hearts, rather than love. But Jesus is my Healer.
Jesus showed me how to become more integrated. He showed me that my parts needed to cooperate with one another, and they must be saved. Salvation, believing Jesus as God and man, came into the world to die for all of our sins, was the only way the parts could be restored. Without restoration, the parts would remain trapped in negativity and non-lifegiving thoughts and actions. The parts needed to want to live.
At the time, I had parts that loathed each other and didn’t agree that Jesus is Lord. It was a process to mend relationships between parts and teach them about the Salvation of Christ. But I did it and it worked. I have become more and more integrated over time.
Here’s what I did (and for me this process has taken about six years):
- I identified as many individual parts as I could.
- I wrote about each part: I discovered their names, personalities, beliefs, values, relationships, and their roles within my system.
- I never named them all or discovered all there was about them, and I’m certain the I still have parts today that I haven’t identified.
- I wrote letters.
- I wrote letters back-and-forth between parts that didn’t get along. I got serious in these letters. I laid it all bare. I wrote about everything I could think of, including the hate, anger, love and respect. I jumped in, as Jana (my core personality), and stood in the gap as mediator between parts to build loving relationships.
- I wrote letters between my parts and my core. I met the estranged and wrote to my best friends.
- I got creative.
- I made art out of the letters. I scribbled, I drew, I painted. I covered the words I wanted to let go of and left some of the positive ones I wanted to save. I drew portraits on the letters, I painted shapes, turns and twists. This was a seriously cathartic exercise.
- I wrote a book called, 21 Pieces: Finding Wholeness in Spiritual Truth. The book is a novel based on my story. It is by far the most difficult book I have written to date. All of the others are faith-based non-fiction.
- I prayed for help.
- I began to see a neuropsychologist in addition to my psychiatrist and psychologist.
Now it seems that I become more integrated every year as my parts get along and work together in my life.
And it’s been very quiet.
D.I.D. Inside Out 