In my last two posts, Abused Adopted Child: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Abused Adopted Child: Alter Parts, I talked about an abused adopted child's experience with DID. In this post, I will discuss other forms of dissociative disorders.

As I shared in Abused Adopted Child: What is a Dissociative Disorder?, there is a wide range of dissociative disorders that fall between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and DID on the dissociation continuum. As a fellow abuse survivor stated, dissociative disorders are "create your own disorder" disorders, so it is hard to describe a dissociative disorder other than in relation to PTSD and DID. Therefore, I will share examples I have heard from various abuse survivors to give you an idea of the broad range of ways that a dissociative disorder can manifest itself.

Some abuse survivors experience their disorder as dividing themselves into colors. Their happy memories and experiences might be yellow, and their feelings of anger might be red. A darker color, such as brown or black, might hold the most painful emotions. Until the abuse survivor is ready to face their most painful emotions, "looking into" the dark color could cause the survivor to lose time. Other abuse survivors split off into emotions rather than colors, so that the presence of each alter part feels like "pure" rage or "pure" despair.

Some abuse survivors split into two parts – an adult part and a child part. The child part holds the painful memories and emotions while the adult part moves on without being hindered by the painful past. Those who split into only two parts experience significant pain as they try to integrate the two parts back together. While someone who splintered into multiple parts can focus on healing one emotion at a time, those who split into adult and child must deal with an enormous amount of pain all at once as they heal.

Regardless of how a child chooses to split off the painful emotions, healing from DID or any other dissociative disorder is accomplished through self-love, processing the emotions, facing the memories, and releasing the shame. As a child does this, there is no longer a reason to stay "split." The child integrates and becomes whole again.

Related Topics:

• Understanding Integration



• The Caused Disorders



• Adopting an Abused Child series

Related Blogs:

• Older Child Adoption blog


• Parenting Special Kids blog


• Reactive Attachment Disorder blog

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