Welcome Survivors!
Nick and I want to welcome you, the wholeness of who you are, and let you know that there is hope as you embark on this journey of integration. We want to let you know that integration IS possible. We are writing this post to start to give you resources, information, and examples so that you can begin the journey to get to know yourself, the fullness of who you are, for the first time.
You may only have a glimmer that something is missing in your life, or that something is just “off” and you don’t know why. You may have gone to many different counselors or ministries to try to find help from well meaning people, but walked away hurt and frustrated, more sure than ever before that you are beyond help. You fear that something is wrong with you as a person that cannot be fixed.
Our Background
We want you to know that is not true. I (Julie) spent twenty years searching for answers to what was wrong with me, pleading with God to help me, but feeling like I was probably just fatally flawed and unredeemable. I felt like I was crazy, a liar, and that I tainted everyone I came into contact with even though I could not explain why. I thought I would probably be better off locked up in an institution and on heavy medication.
On the outside, however, I thought that I was doing fairly well. I had been to counseling for sexual abuse, read through books and did workbooks on the subject. I had gone to prayer ministry and deliverance to work through spiritual issues. I prayed, studied the Bible, and served in a local church assembly. I raised my daughter as a single parent for those 19 years as well as being a full-time teacher, first at a middle school and then at a local technical college. What I didn’t realize was how isolated I was. I didn’t go places or do things that triggered me. Other than serving at church, I really did not have more than one friend at a time, and getting together with them was usually at their request. My life was very controlled.
When I married Nick in 2014, I fell apart. I couldn’t hide anymore. Nick was around all the time and I could only sustain my “Christian presentation” for about two hours. Then I got tired and would switch where I would not be so “gracious”. I would feel like a two year old having a temper tantrum at times, feel sulky and moody like an adolescent at others. Sex was an issue as well for us. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t “hold it together.” To top it off, Nick is a social person. He loves to meet with people, so when we married, I was immersed in meetings and social situations. I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know why. Nick was gracious and steadfast through it all, but neither of us could figure out what was going on with me.
In 2018, when I was in despair, I heard God whisper to my soul, “Seek Truth and listen to yourself for the first time.” My first thought was, “Is that a Christian thing to do?” But I knew that He was saying to seek Him as Truth Himself and to let Him show me the reality of my life. I also know that He was saying to stop calling myself crazy and a liar and to actually listen to what was going on inside of my head. Once I began to do that and realized that DID was the framework for my life, the way I thought and perceived my experiences, it was both freeing and terrifying. It was freeing because I finally had an answer to “what was wrong with me” and saw that I could actually heal! It was terrifying because I knew so little about dissociation, and DID in particular, that I thought I was crazier than I’d even imagined.
Take Heart!
If this is close to where you are at, take heart! You are not crazier than you ever imagined. God gave you an amazing ability to survive horrible circumstances as a child where there was no hope to be found. No one can survive without hope, so when children are faced with external circumstances where no hope of comfort or escape can be found, they find hope within their own heads. Their little hearts get tucked away “safe and sound” where hope is stored. The emotional and physical pain, the need to believe they are loved and known, and the social aspects of their life get divided up in their personhood, compartmentalized, so that they can grow up, go to school, have families and careers, and keep the horrors of life tucked away and “forgotten.”
DID is a very normal reaction to a very abnormal situation.
I will explain more and give examples in other posts, videos, and podcasts on this site, such as DID: A Sane Response. In the beginning of my journey, I read counseling textbook after counseling textbook on trauma, DID, Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) as pertaining to DID, and programming to find the best path to integration. I listened to videos and podcasts by counselors and ministers on the subject, and sought out counseling and ministries in my area who were experienced in helping those with DID.
In the textbooks, most of the psychological theories explain DID from a slightly different perspective, but most are saying basically the same thing. The healing process is also basically the same: get to know all the parts of the system, map out that internal system, work on the trauma that each part holds, and only after that is done and co-consciousness is established then the work of integration can happen. This is a long and tedious process, one that I tried for two and a half years. At that point I had mapped out over 100 parts of me, had established co-consciousness to a degree, and felt as far from finished (and maybe even further) than when I first began.
Many of the Christian ministries that pertain to DID tend to have an approach that is similar in terms of focusing on each instance of trauma. In ministry, the focus is to present that trauma to the Lord and ask Him to heal it. There are also ministries that “do integrations” or focus on deliverances that help to get rid of the undesirable voices, thinking that they are demons. It is impossible to “cast out” a part of the person that the person just does not like or is doing or thinking harmful things. (See Doug Rigg’s article on the Demonic Element of SRA/DID.) In addition, healing from DID is not a “one and done” affair, but instead, it takes time to resolve the internal conflicts which are in place to protect the essence of who the person is, her heart.
Many ministries tend to ignore the research done by the psychological community about the effects of trauma on human beings. To ignore this research is to ignore the way God designed us so intricately as human beings, giving us the ability to survive in a sin-filled, evil world and still maintain hope and develop a relationship with Him through His Son Jesus Christ. The DID system took years to build and has been in place for years. It takes time for the Lord to bring you to a place of healing through stages of integration.
It is the Lord who brings integration.
It is the Lord who brings integration, heals the pain of the trauma, brings truth instead of the lies, and delivers us from demons and other Satanic influence (all of which are necessary components to healing from DID). He is the One who knows exactly how to lead you as you say “yes” to Him and are willing to face the reality of your life.
At about the three year mark of my healing process, after attempting to follow traditional strategies and going to a trauma counselor whom I had to teach about DID, I finally came across a minister up in New York who had been working with SRA/DID survivors for over thirty-five years. This man combined the psychological knowledge and theories, biblical foundation, and loads of ministry experience which relied on the Holy Spirit as Counselor to do His work with each survivor. At my first meeting with him over Zoom, he told me that his job was easy. I would be doing the work with Holy Spirit to find out what was really in my head instead of running away from it. It was his job to help facilitate that process, resolve the internal conflicts, do spiritual warfare as needed, and help me connect with myself, and thereby, my history.
It was excruciating work which required me to look at the fact that I had not only been victimized, but I had become a victimizer. I had to repent of being an idolator in all that that meant because at a heart level, I was aligned with Satan through and through. As I worked with Doug and later with Lori (his wife), as well as two survivors who diligently prayed for me and gave input as the Lord led from time to time, I slowly, layer by layer, came face to face with myself without the illusion of dissociation that I had lived with all of my life. I had to lay hold of God’s word by faith, choosing to believe that if I gave my whole self to Him, coming to my senses like Deut. 30 says, He would be faithful to gather me up from all the places He had scattered me. The Lord knew exactly how to lead me and to shake me to my senses. I finally realized that I was a slave to Satan, not exalted and self-contained like I thought I was, and I humbled myself before Him. I cried out for refuge, finally knowing that without a move on His part, I would go to rituals for the rest of my life. I chose to rely on Him and cling to His word from my heart for the first time and that was the beginning of the end of my DID system.
It was also the beginning of revelation after revelation of Jesus Christ as I was able to renounce the lies I had believed about Him and lay hold of the truth about Him by faith. Time and again I was moved to tears at how much I had hurt Him as I began to see in my heart how faithful He has always been to me, loving me and never leaving me, suffering with me and in me. I can finally say that knowing God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is worth it all. I am finally able to begin to see who He really is and not what I was trained to think about Him. He is truly wonderful, beyond what I ever thought or imagined.
In addition, I am finally learning to connect with and trust other people in the Body of Christ.
Having a community is essential in the healing process.
As I moved through my journey, Nick and I became connected to an online Zoom group who met two times per week to listen to and discuss sermons on one day and to pray on the other. I began to share what I was doing through at times with the group and they prayed for and ministered the Life of Christ to me. We also got connected with a local assembly where we made an appointment with the pastor and a couple elders to share about my life and my struggles (I was still cult active, going to rituals, at the time). I was terrified to share and expected to be cut off from the church. Instead, I saw tears of compassion and they all stood with us in prayer as we continued moving forward in God’s integration process. It was humbling to have to report back of still going to rituals, but it kept me accountable and brought more reality to my actions (since derealization is a part of DID, it often felt like I was “playing a game” or was “an actress on a stage” rather than it being the reality of my life which hurt me, Nick, and the Body of Christ.). Now, those same people get to see me learn and grow in the Lord as He builds me anew, heals my heart, and teaches me about His Son.
I’m sure, like me, you have probably tried to share before and been discredited or hurt by local assemblies of Christians. For that, I am sorry. It is not the heart of the Lord towards you. This is what the Lazarus Mandate is all about. It is the Lord who brought life to Lazarus but he was still trapped in the stinky, awful grave clothes in which he was wrapped. Jesus told the people standing with him to “Loose him, and let him go.” That is the job of the Body of Christ. The Lord gives the life. He is the Head and knows where we need to go in Him, but we as His Body get to participate with Him to unwrap the grave clothes of trauma from people so that they can be free to become mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
Part of our mission is to train local assemblies about trauma, DID, and SRA/DID so that they can become effective “joints and supply” to serve their members who are still wrapped in the grave clothes of trauma. We encourage you to keep seeking out local communities of believers who can come alongside of you in your journey. If you would like us to help explain DID and SRA/DID to your pastor, please contact us to see if we can help.
Nick and I both give the credit for this website to the work that Jesus Christ did through Doug and Lori Riggs. This couple poured out their lives as vessels of Jesus Christ so that I, and so many others, could integrate and be free no matter what type of DID people have or what types of abuses they suffered. We have posted many of Doug’s articles on this site in the blog area. You can also go to his website to find videos and other helpful resources including Doug’s Bible teaching which is phenomenal. We would suggest beginning with the Celestial Court series.
Nick and I hope that this website will help you to not only have a framework for your life, but to start to understand yourself and have tools to be able to start to journey towards integration. If you would like to apply to see if we can help you, click here.
For pastors/leaders, click here to see if we can help.
