5c74f619   
   From: ritualabuselinks@aol.com   
      
   Interview with Brian Moss: Qualities and Information Useful for a   
   Therapist and a Client Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder   
   (DID)   
      
   permission to post   
      
   Modified from version originally posted in the Survivorship Journal   
   Vol. 18, Issue 2 December, 2012 at survivorship.org   
      
   PERSONHOOD   
      
   TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY   
   Integrating a trauma narrative, especially if it is the result of   
   sophisticated mind control procedures, is a complex and lengthy   
   process where subjective states (hypnosis, drugs) and manipulated   
   states (electric shock, psychic-driving, sensory deprivation, sleep   
   deprivation) are mixed with objective states (veridical memory of   
   ritual/sexual abuse or any other experiences meant to terrorize.)   
      
   CAPACITY TO DISSOCIATE   
   There is a difference between “forgetting” and “forgetting that you   
   forget”; one insulates us temporarily as we metabolize our experience   
   while the other prevents us from fundamentally accessing our   
   experience. The capacity to dissociate in a healthy sense allows us to   
   live our lives in spite of what we know—to balance the terror of being   
   alive with the wonder of being alive. There are so many ways to get   
   derailed: cynicism and anger, despair and hopelessness, or the false   
   relief of numbness.   
      
   TOLERANCE FOR ISOLATION   
   All of us, survivors and therapists alike, got to where we are in   
   stages. Painful truths that do not correspond to what we have been   
   told about the world require new understandings that only gradually   
   come into focus. In sharing what we have learned and/or remembered,   
   there is deep frustration that in telling our most urgent truths we   
   are not believed.   
      
   AT LEAST ONE TRUE “INTIMATE”   
   Whether spouse, partner, mentor, friend, find someone that can handle   
   the material and understand the larger and hidden truths of what you   
   are learning. The reality behind DID is a “through the looking glass”   
   experience and is a journey best not taken alone. Therapy is difficult   
   when the client is lacking outside support or dealing with an   
   unsympathetic spouse/partner. Clients that are still embedded in the   
   deviant social networks responsible for their original abuse have an   
   enormous challenge facing them.   
      
   A SUBSTANTIAL DEGREE OF DIFFERENTIATION   
   A significant moment in my early childhood occurred while I was   
   watching the television adaptation of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds.   
   There is a scene in which the creatures have landed and are zapping   
   everyone. A priest comes forth, holds up a bible and is incinerated on   
   the spot. I remember thinking, “Are they allowed to do that?”   
   Differentiation from family, religion, dominant paradigms of any kind   
   including television, mainstream media, and society in general—gives   
   us the ability to think independently and to tolerate the withdrawal   
   of approval or ridicule that is often the reaction to doing so.   
      
   INTEREST IN CONTROVERSIAL/FORBIDDEN AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE   
   Many DIDs have teams of parts that are used to research psychic   
   phenomena. These psychic skills are exploited in a variety of contexts   
   including military and intelligence work. It was eye-opening for me to   
   see the seriousness with which this research is pursued covertly while   
   being overtly ridiculed in conventional academic settings.   
      
   ABILITY TO DISCERN DISINFORMATION   
   Quality disinformation must contain a high degree of truth or it will   
   be rejected outright. The goal of disinformation is to present pieces   
   of the truth in a way that leads to the wrong conclusions. The other   
   purpose is obfuscation in general. There is an overwhelming amount of   
   disinformation on the internet and in our media. Who would have   
   guessed that when Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” finally arrived we   
   would embrace it as “Wikipedia”.   
      
   COURAGE TO FOLLOW THE CLIENT’S LEAD   
   Abandoning their clients’ experience in order to preserve their (the   
   therapist’s) comfortable view of the world is the same dynamic   
   survivors experience at a societal level. Survivors want—and need—to   
   be believed. No-one is afraid of the dark itself, they are afraid of   
   what might be in the dark. Survivors know what is in the dark. They   
   want to tell their therapists; they want to leave the scenes behind;   
   they want to end the dissociation. They want—and need—to know it is   
   over. It is essential that therapists do not let them down. This takes   
   courage as well as expertise.   
      
   APPRECIATION OF LIFE’S ABSURD MOMENTS IN ORDER TO DEFEND AGAINST   
   CYNICISM AND THE NEED TO UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING   
   One of my teachers had a story that I heard him tell often. It was a   
   true story he read in the newspaper about a man who had given up and   
   climbed a bridge preparing to jump. A crowd formed in anticipation of   
   the spectacle and the police were called who, in their best manner   
   tried to negotiate with and talk the man down. Getting nowhere,   
   running out of ideas and becoming increasingly frustrated, one of the   
   officers pulled his gun and threatened to shoot the man unless he came   
   down. The man climbed down. It is important to understand that not   
   everything can be understood.   
      
   ABILITY TO PERSEVERE IN THE FACE OF SOCIETAL DENIAL   
   Judith Herman named it in Trauma and Recovery: “The study of   
   psychological trauma has repeatedly led into realms of the unthinkable   
   and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.” There will be   
   polarization occurring in society as more and more information comes   
   out and more survivors come forward. There will be attempts to   
   discredit survivors and to misinform and censor content for those   
   seeking information but to no avail. There are too many survivors and   
   they will continue to speak their truth in an ever increasing chorus.   
      
   A BELIEF SYSTEM THAT ALLOWS FOR EXISTENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL   
   Most DID systems contain spiritual guides or transcendents capable of   
   guiding the work of healing. DID survivors benefit from therapists who   
   are comfortable with these realities. The transcendents, by their very   
   nature, are beyond the reach of programming/conditioning and remain   
   untouched by mind control techniques much as the Sun does not cease to   
   exist simply because a cloud moves in front or the earth revolves.   
      
   BELIEF THAT LIFE HAS MEANING   
   In enduring or bearing witness to the desecration of every value the   
   belief that life has meaning frames the ability to go forward rather   
   than fall into despair. What I have noticed both for myself and the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)