Looking back on more than 3 years of treatment, by Ynsa (personality part of Esther)
A very heavy process that seems almost impossible. As if it will never end, the memories keep coming back and the feelings are mega intense and heavy every time again. Through the pain it is the only thing that helps.
The pace and intensity of processing is enormous. Every time I tell myself or someone else that I'm going to stop for a while, that I'm going to take a break and recover. I can't do this anymore. My tongue is hanging on my ankles and my energy is finished. I feel shattered and broken. That is what I call out after an intense couple of days or weeks of trying to get through the worst of it. Then I have looked my enemies in the eye, felt everything, again, that was hiding somewhere inside me and remembered facts and memories that I never wanted to remember. With every memory comes a new step. A new piece of freedom also gives a new piece of responsibility. Should I do something with this? Do I have to change my thoughts or way of life? Make other choices from now on?
New insights turned my whole life upside down.
What do you do when you suddenly remember that all those unpleasant nights when you were terrified and couldn't sleep came because every moment you thought the person you trusted had brought visitors who wanted to play with you. But actually just raped you. That situations are different from what people told you. That you have double feelings and thoughts that are mixed up, so you couldn't see the real motivations. That you start to realise that the thoughts you always had that you are bad, not good enough, always doing everything wrong, are not because you are, but because you heard that continuously at times when you couldn't change anything about the situation. If a 3-year-old knocks over a cup of drink, that is not grounds for torture or days of confinement in the cupboard. It's not, but until recently, I've always thought, that was normal. So how do you still visit these people? What do you do when they call? Do you do as always: you play nice and that nothing is wrong, or can't you do it anymore? It's a continuous struggle on every aspect of my life.
If the traffic light is red, then I have to think about whether this is really red, or is it actually green and my brain thinks it is red.
At one of those times when you have gone straight through something, learning new ways to live more normally, the next one already presents itself. Sometimes I have not even left the place, where I had just locked myself up for days to go through heavy memories, and there is a cult member waiting by my car. Signalling to wake up memories, only to make me weak enough to want to go back again. Full steam ahead several persons in me then go on, we can't stop.
Taking a break for a day is 99 times out of 100 not possible, but because we keep going and don't stop I am where I am. I can say that I am safe, that I dare to ask for help and most importantly, in return I can tell all my other personality parts that it is okay to talk, to cry and to be there. Who knows, maybe we will succeed in really trusting people and to hold on to this. For now it is a process of trial and error, but because I don't have to do it alone, we keep getting back up.
About 3 years ago I mailed Aline. I did not dare to call, I have never been a star at that. We had to switch therapists and I had tried to do without for a while, but the little ones that had just been discovered[1] inside and the memories that had burst open tried to force their way out. My nights were full of nightmares. My husband had a burn out because of the intensive contact with the smaller personality parts and lack of sleep and my memories and what I experienced in the now of the cult were not in my husband's cold feet either. I just learned a few years ago with my dis[2] to deal with and accept that there was more than just abuse by a family member. When quarters fall, it's tough and when you also have a busy family, it's leaden.
I wanted freedom. I had tasted more and more of it and felt the promise of Jeshua that He would help me. I had no idea who, but I had to find someone who did. I had nothing more to lose on that level.
A phone conversation with Aline soon followed. She asked a bit more in depth and took her time with me. Although I could never do this kind of phone call and always passed this on to my husband, I did this one myself. I felt such a drive in me that I needed to do this myself and after I hung up, I had a very nice feeling that this call had succeeded over the phone.
Aline could not do any treatment, I had to look further, but she would not let me down and would help me look/think along. We would call again after a few months to hear how it had gone.
2 intake interviews with 2 different people followed and both indicated that they could not or would not treat me. I slowly lost courage and had not forgotten Aline's phone call, but knew that that was also hopeless. She might have been able to give me a last straw if she had thought about other colleagues.
We had contact and after a while she mailed or called with a proposal for a trial treatment for a few months. In any case I had help, also for my husband who was going through it even more. I needed a second supportive person to prevent me from getting back into the cult. In the meantime I was getting out more and more, but still far from free. I kept falling back and couldn't resist the pull of the cult and only needed a few threats to make me come back. You can't hold someone captive who has decided they don't want to be captive anymore. Even death is better than staying in their clutches. There's truth and freedom too!
The first weeks were terrifying. I had a lot of problems with trusting people and time after time that had taken a huge knock.
Trusting Aline just like that was impossible and besides that it would only be for a short period of time. But the little ones definitely needed someone to feel safe with, so I let some of them talk to Aline.
Meanwhile, the ‘normal’ everyday issues came up. The nights, dealing with triggers, dilemmas in daily life.
That's also how we came to injuries we saw in the shower, moments when we[3] a lot of time during the day, which for us was normal. And now we were trying to get clarity on what had happened in the missed time. My problems were not only my past and nightmares and triggers during the day, but there were also several things going on in daily life, which other personality parts did not share with me.
Aline's way of talking turned on an engine of processing thinking in me. She always summarised what I said, allowing me to hear back what exactly I had said and how it had come across, and sometimes allowing me to hear for myself that what I said was madness. Not that I understood the madness right away, but it set in motion a process towards healthier thoughts. Moments when she looked puzzled and I had to ask myself again what I was actually saying. Sentences where I defended my offenders, like: but he didn't do it on purpose, or it's because I knocked over my cup, etc. That the punishment was rape or other torture was so normal to me.
Aline asked almost nothing but questions. Open questions that made me think and all the parts that could and wanted to participate could come up with their answers.
Even when we slowly told about the things that were still going on, dates some of us had with 'clients' every week and nightly visits from the cult, Aline got her teeth into it to make us tell as much as we could and make us ask ourselves what we are actually doing and why. Are their threats indeed greater? Can you do anything about the consequences if you do or don't go? We discovered that the most power the cult had in our lives was the power we gave them ourselves in our heads.
I came into the appointment with a bad feeling and I left with 1000 questions. She gave me 1000 kicks in my ass to look at the situations from other parts and to think how situations would have been if it would have been my own child.[4]. From one memory and feeling I came to another and I continued the process by writing about it. The result is Usb-sticks full of memories from a child part of 7 written till parts without feelings or just from feelings. Slowly others added to it, parts of it had their say. We started to see the situation from the whole angle and the memories became more complete.
We're not there yet. We're still fighting every day to get through this. If I stop, if we stop, the nightmares will return in all their intensity and we will fall back into the hands of the cult. They have won for so long, won so many times, but no more. The daily battle is still intense. Almost daily we receive threatening emails with shameful or guilty photos, cars follow me to and from work, and I get signals via finger gestures, for example, when they walk by at work or past my house or when we are having lunch somewhere.
After 7 tough years, the last 3 of which were bizarrely intense and hard, 13 times I locked myself in a room for days to go through the toughest memories, a part time job of apping, emailing, writing and talking, day in and day out.
I wrote this from my vision, my angle. I know that is not entirely our shared vision, as each personality part that has worked with Aline has their own memories to add, their own process and experiences.
Through these years of help, I have learned what freedom is and to want to fight for it. I don't take situations for granted and let others use me, but I fight for what I need.
The trust in others, including Aline has grown more and more. Do I remain suspicious? Yes. Do I believe she'll never do or say anything bad? No, she won't. The chance that she will run away, change her mind and see how bad and dirty we are, that she will hate us or suddenly disappear from our lives, always remains somewhere in my mind. The cult uses this by sending videos of her doing things to others, talking to the police, etc. Our distrust of her over and over again tries to destroy everything and that requires an enormous effort from Aline. But because she is transparent, open for feedback AND because there is nothing the cult can use against her, because there are simply no hidden things, this succeeds. The cult has tried many times to do this by sending pictures, returning mails supposedly sent on her behalf, just to create suspicion.
We need more people like Aline, so that people like me can find the confidence and the courage to take the step to set yourself up, look you in the eye and get rid of all the shit that sticks and has come out of your life with you. To be able to get back up after every disappointment and say, we'll try again. To have the support of someone who says, if it does not go I'm there for you. But really be there, so you know, deep down inside that you are not alone. So you know deep inside that you can handle it and so you know, more and more really know, that there is a way out, also for you!
[1] Ynsa means with little ones: severely traumatized, disconnected young child parts
[2] DIS: dissociative personality disorder
[3] Here Ynsa uses 'we' and 'us' to refer to all her personality parts
[4] Ynsa and almost all of Esther's personality parts had a rock-hard, scathing judgment of themselves: all the horror that was done to them was self-willed, self-chosen, self-deserved by their mistakes. They were just intensely bad. Reading some of Esther's life story, it becomes clear how that came about. In the conversations, I often tried to punch holes in this conviction by giving a different perspective: What would you say to your daughter if she were lying there broken and emaciated on the floor after a gang rape?
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