About Integration and the Anti-Integration Agenda

I have heard many people -lately, and just always on the internet, unfortunately- asking questions about ‘integrative therapy’ as an option for the treatment of DID/OSDD-1, and nothing could be more frustrating to hear…. Because it’s such an indication of the profound smear campaign that several forces in the online community have launched against education, clarity, and truth about our disorder. And I have reached a point where I honestly cannot just endure standing here silently, pretending it is useless to provide people with reality and information that combats that.

There is no such thing as integrative therapy. There is just therapy. And if you do enough of it for long enough you will integrate. Integration just means the long process of healing your trauma. Because an integrated complete identity is what the human brain was quite literally designed to build from the moment you were born. It is not death, loss, or denial of anything. It is the construction of a consciousness and vehicle for experiencing life that holds ALL of the component abilities, skills, emotional potentials, and memories.

Since that is what a brain is designed to build, if by any means it can, that is exactly what will happen. The only thing stopping your brain right now is unaddressed and unhealed trauma. So, of course naturally when that is addressed, so too is your identity made whole finally. This is an incredibly slow and grueling process. It is also the most rewarding thing you can ever possibly do and the ONLY way to find out what it feels like to be fully alive. No one can force you to heal [not even yourself] but if anyone ever says a single other thing about integration than that? Either they’ve been a victim of the misinformation campaign that has cropped up these last few years so virulent it borders on mass brainwashing (and believe me, my system has had to heal more than enough literal brainwashing to know how close that comes to hitting the mark) that is designed to keep all of us from ever healing or people who are not really systems from having to fuck off and get a life……. OR they are quite literally the people purposely trying to instill said indoctrination into you, and they are LYING.

I never have been that forceful before in public statements, because I believed that no one would hear me over the screaming and bleating of hysterical sheep-in-wolves-clothing who do not want to admit —or, more importantly, let you admit that Truth— because it would cost them one or more things they value and covet. But you know what? I have decided I have faith in all of you. You deserve to see at least ONE person, anywhere, state this. There IS no door number three, for the options of who promotes anti-integration propaganda— there are just the perpetrators, and their victims. You can’t parrot propaganda as an ‘ignorant but innocent bystander’. If you’ve fallen prey to a piece of missinformation, enough so that you repeat it, you are one of the victims.

And to those who want to howl or lambast me for saying that? Go ahead. Do your best. Scream like an incoherent, rabid beast until your throats are raw. Reblog and respond with long virulently aggressive rants. Post as many links to the same three articles or the the blogs of the propoganda promoters and pretend it agrees with any book written about DID. Show pictures of out-of-context excerpts from those books. Even go ahead and send me all the hate you want in my ask box or personal messages. I don’t give a fuck, and I will not shut up. There is nothing any of you can do to me that can cost me anything at all. *laughs* What exactly the fuck do I have to lose? I don’t do all I have for the community for attention, popularity, or friendship. I don’t need support as an individual in the healing process from anyone here — I have a strong support network in real life, and I don’t lack any information I might be able to find there. The ugly truth is that, in the several yearsI have been here, I have quite literally never encountered ONE single fact about the disorders I hadn’t already known — most of it was presented far worse and more distortedly than I imagined it was possible to do. I don’t gain anything from posting on this blog except the potential to make a difference that brings healing to people who need it most. Anyone who would like to take thataway from me…. Well, too bad. You can’t get me to delete my blog, and you don’t have the ability to delete it yourself. Or you’d have done that a LONG long time ago.

ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SIGN A CONFESSION TO BEING ONE OF THE PERPETRATORS OF THIS MASS-INDOCTRINATION OF ANTI-RECOVERY PROPAGANDA, I FORMALLY INVITE YOU TO DO SO BY REBLOGGING THIS POST AND TRYING TO ATTACK ME, TRUTH AND SCIENCE.

-Samael

subsystems:

Let’s talk about full integration / final fusion where the parts are never erased and where being a whole-yet-multifaceted person is the goal of the fusion.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone talk about this. Then again, I don’t think that there are many systems on Tumblr who are at this point in therapy with this particular goal.

Final fusion is usually thought of as the merging of all parts into one self. Before fusion, there are metaphorical walls of dissociation between you and other parts of your mind. Whichever part of the mind is active is perceived as “Me” while the other parts are perceived as “Not Me”. After fusion, those metaphorical walls disappear, allowing all parts of the mind to become “Me”.

In the past, the westernized approach to self often led to therapists pressuring fully fused systems to stop valuing (or even acknowledging) that they had parts. It makes sense to me why those older systems would often compare fusion to death. In the present day, the plurality of self is being valued more. Especially with therapeutic practices like internal family systems, it’s more normalized to acknowledge that everyone has multiple parts to themselves.

When I fused with all of my parts for the first time, we still felt each other. We were one person with full access to each other, but also somehow still parts. We were connected parts and a single person at the same exact time. I thought that maybe I did it wrong, or maybe I wasn’t fully fused yet, but my therapist (who is from a culture where having parts is more normalized) told me that this is just another way that final fusion can be experienced.

So, full integration / final fusion doesn’t mean that parts have to go away. Maybe that’s how some people want to still do it. If someone wants to recover like that, please let them. But this is a type of final fusion that I have never heard talked about before. 

I often felt alone with this experience. I felt like no one would believe me if I brought this to Tumblr, because people can get so aggressive about fusion. Something that can be so beautiful is often shoved aside and attacked. I think it’s important to talk about this, though. Hearing about this can probably really help some people.

I want to share some statements from former DID patients who have fully fused, from this professional study. These statements helped me feel less alone with my experience.

Rebecca:

“Today I feel I am fully aware and present both as the collective of parts and as any individual part. That is, even when a part of me is present, there is a collective awareness of the experience.”

Irene:

“It gradually dawned on me that I could get some relief if I paid enough attention to the voices and their pain. I understood they needed to be heard… . My integration is about being in control, being aware, being able to understand myself. Whenever I’m anxious and I can’t understand why, I turn inside and I ask: What’s going on? I usually get an answer that either helps me deal better with an external problem or guides me as to how to calm myself down… . There is a clear advantage to my situation: I have better access to my subconscious than most people do. I call this ability Creative Disintegration.”

Loraine:

“I think the best way to describe my integration process is as a progressive one. First, there were brief moments of integration; later on I was integrated during some of the time but wasn’t on other occasions. This developed into a period in which I was integrated most of the time and then, into full integration with only momentary periods of disintegration… . It is a process of forward and backward movement on the dissociation continuum, but the general trend is towards a decrease in dissociation… . once you’re integrated, you don’t feel fragmented anymore, but in emergency situations there is a proclivity to utilize the mechanism for brief periods of time to help with coping.”

Some notes from the study:

“It is noteworthy that integration was not always described in terms of a renunciation of dissociative capabilities. Rebecca, Loraine, and even more so, Irene described occasional post-integrational awareness of the old psychological entities that once formed the personality alters… .  Whereas Sara and Tina talked about their lives as ‘one,’ others were clearly continuing to utilize some of the advantages of the dissociative process. It is probable, though, that rather than representing ‘imperfect’ integrations this variance portrays the naturally occurring distribution of dissociative phenomena in the population. It is, perhaps, not only an unreasonable expectation but also an undesirable outcome to have a useful defense mechanism, naturally occurring in society, completely abolished in this particular population.”

I think maybe it’s important to recognize that the boundary between multiplicity and fusion isn’t as clear cut as social media likes to make it out to be.

Photo: African-American and Caucasian Children at Fairground Swimming Pool, 1949-06-21, St. Louis Globe-Democrat,  St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri St. Louis.

Swimming pools, popular sites of leisure during the summer, have also been spaces of racial tension in American history. The Fairground Park Pool, located in St. Louis Missouri, was the city’s first municipal pool and one of the largest in the Midwest–able to hold 10,000 to 12,000 swimmers at a time. 

Photo: ChildrenSwimmingatFairgroundSwimmingPool, 1933-07-02 ,  St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri St. Louis .  

On June 21, 1949, the pool opened to black residents and it soon became the site of a race riot. In response to a 1949 federal court decision that cited the prohibition of African Americans to public facilities as a violation of the 14th amendment, the pool was forced to integrate. 

On the opening day of June 21, African American youth entered the pool.  A crowd of white residents surrounded the pool, shouting threats to the children, and the city police were called to escort them out of the pool. A riot of white residents broke out through the evening as black residents were chased and beaten for entering pool grounds. After nearly twelve hours, officers were able to restore order.

Learn more about swimming pools and segregation: bit.ly/1MtNKhH