Inside Karen’s Crowded Mind

Claudette, by now, the fact that you write before you read, that you speak without thought, and that your comments have not one scintilla of reflection in them thus means that you reduce yourself to personal attack. Sadly, you do so in a way that betrays an utter lack of knowledge of the material at hand. Do you really think questioning my gender advances your "cause"? And, of course, in resorting to personal attack, you studiously avoid comment on any of the content in the posts. As a result, you sound hysterical, rigid and frankly, ill-informed. You may well have a position informed by your own life experience, but the abrasiveness of your posts and the attack dog mode of your language means that, by now, the only ones listening are the ones who actually already accept your position.

So, I reiterate that I am multiple, that I have used therapy to create and shape a more constructive and happy life, that my memories were confirmed, and that my memories returned well prior to entering therapy. Thus, I am hardly a candidate for any of the presumptive myths of which you speak. I was not hypnotized and my therapist did not lead a process of recovered memory therapy. I am confidant of my own story, and of my own reality. Does it validate or vitiate the stories of others? those continuing to read what has now become drivel, and no longer constitutes a discussion or a debate, can draw their own conclusions. As for me, I'm done. For the other multiples who have posted on this site, bravo. For the caring and thoughtful therapist who have weighed in, bravo.

The true facts and hideous fallout of this controversy is so extremely important to many patients and their loved ones - I would ask that people try to contain their own personal sorrows, frustrations and outrage as they attempt to make their experience, knowledge and convictions known. Claudette - I know you've had loss. I know you are driven to help others so they are not hurt in the same manners. I know that fighting against 'the specialists' creates such fire in you - all very understandable. However, if you don't compose yourself and refrain from being sarcastic or hurtful - your bad behavior does not lend credence to the important information you can share. When you are proverbially 'on attack' - you remove all compassion and
put yourself in a bad light. Your losses deserve more dignity Claudette. Go forth gracefully with your story and the facts you've gathered. Shaming does not teach.

Sorry Erlaia! I really thought one of your (female) personalities would take the constuctive criticism better! How do you know your (extras) aren't female, have you checked out their genitilias??
Hope I am awakening YOU, the only one there IS YOU!
Claudette

Dear Induced: You go baby - finally we're seeing some LOGIC!
Claudette

Regarding AD21's post: "...was recommended to us by a member of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. (ISSTD- a good, but not fool proof, way to begin a therapy search is on their therapist's listings. But lots of good people aren't on there.) - - Wow. This is truly very scary. This organization is built upon things like, oh Corey Hammond's "Greenbaum" mass conspiracy beliefs. Their careers and financial status DEPEND upon these disorders. They tell you to SEEK OUT ONLY the therapists that believe in SRA and DID... Can you see what is wrong with this scenario? When was the last time you heard that this organization investigated and assisted in REMOVING therapists who had clearly done harm to their patients? They are not proactive. They are not 'policing their own back yard." Yet, they'll gladly throw accusations of "malingering" or FMSF abuser-denying at anyone who dares speak out against these modalities of malpractice and the therapists using them.

Claudette-why are you so nasty. Why do you have to put everyone down and attack those that do not agree with you? Attacking their side of the argumant is one thing, but attacking the person themselves is vile and abusive. . Which Im sure at heart you are not. Why are you attacking someone who cant soell everything correctley? Thare are many great people with brillant minds in our history that had/have learning disabilities and could not spell or read. This does not make then any less of a person.Thanks for the info on the United Way investigating. I will be in touch with them so at least they can make an informened descision after hearing both sides of the subject. I also want everyone to know, not everyone in canada is like this. I wish you well and hope that one day you will find peace within yourself and your world. That there will come a day when you are not in so much pain. be well

as previously noted on this site twice, my brother confirmed my memories, some of them in great detail, prior to his suicide. my mother is not living. And yes, there was substantive evidence that this happend. Your fantasy is that all sexual abuse memories are iatrogenic. That may be true for a tiny percentage. it is not true for most, and for you to have the arrogated pomoposity to tell me that I am engaged in a fantasy construct due to malevalent therapeutic intervention is naieve, stupid and wildly inappropriate. The bulk of my memories returned prior to therapy.

And clearly, brainwashing is troublesome to overcome, and I wish you well with what appears to be a hysterical introject within your personae

induced1: I am articulate and passionate because I know what happened in my youth, it was confirmed, and I have used state of the art therapeutic working tools to heal the malignant effects of that childhood sexual trauma. It is as simple as that, induced1. and yep, I am a multiple. I understand the phenominum, I understand how that defense of splitting undoubtedly saved my sanity and possibly my life in my youth and I work in my adult life, to establish a clear line of internal communication. as noted before, I have used EMDR to process profound repressed affect with gentleness and effectiveness. For me, it works.

And, as for hysteria, look at the tone of your own language in these postings. I haven's seen such excitablility since my mother denied that I was being routinely raped......... I really don't know what you are so afraid of, but your fear, your hysteria, and your rigidity are palpable in your language. It is sad, were it not also amusing. Your blanket assumptions leaves no room for the reality that there are many folks who are DID, who work diligently with skilled therapists and who achieve measurable improvements in quality of life as a result.

Dr. Corey Hammond - the poster boy of "specialty and advocate" for the ISSD, MPD, DID, SRA - (just to mention a few.) Someone is spending a great deal of time and effort spouting about how limited false memory therapies or shoddy therapists are - - but that doesn't quite make sense, given the huge volume of people who bought Hammond's entire package of hysteria - hook, line and sinker - returning to their patients to 'save them' with Hammond's remarkable "tools of the trade'. Once again THE GREENBAUM speech - representative of the lunacy and iatrogenic practices. Erlaia - you are so articulate and passionate... yet you seem to have evaded the question. A few isolated 'bad apples' - you need some common sense and a calculator. Truly you do.

thanks dataonabuse - it confirms the emperical awareness of anyone who has lived this issue and the emperical experiences of skilled clinicians who really work in this arena. I doubt, however, that it will sway some of the embedded hysteria we've observed in some of these postings.

Hey dataonabuse: Take a look at the copywright - 1998! Anyone can finds well written nonsense to suit their beliefs.
This is almost 2008, and we have become very inlightened in a decade compared to the horrible days of rampant belief (hysteria) of abuse in child care centers and other such scandals.
You had better get back to the drawing board and catch up with the latest findings largely due to the multi-million dollar lawsuits that have been won against mental health quacks.
Open your mind my friend!
Claudette

The information for this part came from ???Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law??? by Brown, Scheflin and Hammond, W.W. Norton and Co. New York and London, C 1998 (www.wwnorton.com) Page 370-381

The base rates for memory commission errors are quite low, at least in professional trauma treatment. The base rates in adult misinformation studies run between zero and 5 percent for adults and between 3 - 5 percent for children. These numbers are quite different than what you might here from the pro-fms people or the media.

???Occasional unwitting misleading suggestions (Yapko, 1994a), even the suggestion of a diagnosis of abuse, cannot adequately explain illusory memories of child sexual abuse.??? (p. 379) Occasional suggestions about abuse are not generally effective, except in highly suggestible people.

Research on the Effect of Trauma on Memory - Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia...Others use terms such as repression , dissociative state , traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting . Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences....Summary of the results of scientific literature showing a high prevalence of full or partial dissociative amnesia for traumatic events in traumatized populations. Studies show that a period of either partial or full amnesia is reported by between 30 and 90% of adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. Moreover, no study that has looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse has failed to find it. ...Research has shown that the content of recovered memories are just as likely to be accurate as those of continuously held memories of trauma....Research shows that children rarely fabricate stories about being abused."
www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/tm/tm.html

suzy and crew, my best wishes for your interview. I know you will bring hope, cast light, inspire, and reassure. We both know there are a wide variety of opinions out there, but we both know that it is possible to heal, it is possible to have a joyful and rich adult life!

Guess one will never be able, as hard as you try, to help the hopeless.
I wish them luck inside the wall they and their so called therapist have built around them.
Claudette

I am going to be working with C.B.C. radio. i am doing a program.."outfront" in which listerners tell their story. I hope to be able to tell the listerners what its like to live with D.I.D. , how it is for those aroiund me, meaning family and friends, and what it was like for my doctor to have me as a patient before and after the diagnoses. I have done some tapeing already and will start working with a prodoucer soon. If one person hears it and learns that they are not alone, then it is worth it. If one person in the profesional fiels become "curious" about D.I.D., instead of this fear that seems to be rampet in the medical profesion, then again, it will be worth it. I know there will be many who wish and will fight very hard to disput what I have to say. They are intitled to their opion for I know what is my truth...hopefully it will help many