How to Integrate Young Child Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) Alter Parts

People with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) often have one or more alter parts who are children. People with DID were severely traumatized as children on an ongoing basis beginning at a young age, so many of their childhood needs were never met. Child alter parts often hold the residue of those unmet needs, such as the need to feel safe or have fun. Those needs have remained unmet and must be healed in adulthood in order to integrate child alter parts. Child alter parts are generally the emotional age that you were when you split off the alter part, so child alter parts typically talk and write like a child of that age. Here is how to integrate a young child Dissociative Identity Disorder alter part.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Strong desire to heal
• Patience
• Courage

1. Establish communication with your young child alter parts. You can do this through writing them messages in a notebook or by trying to talk with them inside of your own head. In either case, use the same communication skills that you would use in talking with any young child. Draw cartoons around written messages and be approachable when "talking" with a child alter part in your head.

2. Build a parent-child relationship with your young child alter part. Reassure your young child alter part that she is safe and that you will take loving care of her. Your adult self can nurture your young child alter part and meet your needs that were never met in childhood.

3. Have fun. Most abused children did not get to enjoy much of their childhoods. Inject some fun into your life that will appeal to your young child alter part. Eat ice cream. Ride on a carousel. Buy a box of crayons and color in a coloring book. Do fun things to meet those unmet needs inside of yourself.

4. Visualize a safe place for your young child alter part. Close your eyes and imagine a safe room over your heart for your young child alter part. It has a door that can only be opened from the inside, so your alter part will be safe inside. Fill the room with toys that will make your young child alter part happy.

5. Invite your young child alter part to integrate into your core. Your core is the part of your spirit that stayed intact after the abuse. Tell your young child alter part that you will always be together if she will choose to integrate. You might need to extend this invitation multiple times before you are ready to integrate this part.

6. Grieve your losses. As you integrate your young child alter parts, you will likely feel holes inside of yourself from your unmet needs. Allow yourself to cry as you feel the pain.

7. Meet your unmet emotional needs as you can. While you cannot go back in time and have all of your emotional needs met in childhood, there are things you can do today to help meet those needs, such as do more things that are fun or love yourself in the way that your abusive parents never loved you.

Tips & Warnings

• Finding a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people who have suffered from similar abuses is an important part of healing from child abuse. Your therapist can provide you with additional tools to help you integrate your young child Dissociative Identity Disorder alter parts.
• The reason you fragmented your spirit is because you suffered nearly unbearable abuse. Healing from the abuse is extremely painful. Do not attempt to integrate your Dissociative Identity Disorder parts until you find a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people who have been severely abused.

Resources

• Understanding Integration

[canisrogeris]

on 7/23/2009 This article suggests steps that are potentially dangerous for someone to attempt without qualified professional assistance. While the warning at the bottom try to address this, the article simply should not have been written at all, warnings or not. It will be very tempting for someone suffering from DID to attempt this instead of seeking help, with results ranging from panic attacks to death.