The First Five Steps of Discipline

 

(there are twelve total; others will be addressed in later chapters)

 

Try to find the parts that experienced the abuse. This may mean doing system mapping (drawing pictures of what things look like inside), and going to the cognitives (intellectuals) or controllers (head honchos inside) for information. An internal helper, or recorder, may also be extremely helpful in doing this.

 

Allow these parts to slowly acknowledge the agony that they experienced during their deprivation: heat (being held over a fire, or stove); cold (such as being placed in freezers, or ice, for example), lack of food, etc. Encourage the sharing of the cognitive portion of the memories first, while allowing amnesic alters to grieve over "hearing about" these things. Allow them time to absorb hearing about these traumas, as they occurred over several years during early childhood, and will take time to assimilate. Healing can't be rushed.

 

Allow feeling alters later to step forward, and share their feelings, while more cognitive or helper parts are inside holding their hands, grounding them to the here and now throughout the process of remembering. Be prepared for floods of emotion at times, as well as body memories, as the abuse is recalled. A group of inside people can be designated as a "grounding team" to help ground these parts as they step forward and share their memories.

 

Remembering safely assumes that the person has a qualified therapist, and also has laid the groundwork for good intrasystem cooperation, as discussed above. Memory work should not be done until there is good communication and cooperation inside, or the person will be overwhelmed by the memories as they come out. They will be flooded and re-traumatized instead of helped, and may de-compensate. With good communication, memories can be brought out a little at a time, in manageable pieces, while cognitive alters continually help keep the survivor from going completely into the memory, and they can also help ground the more wounded parts.

 

The cult will put people through certain types of programming in order to achieve a specific goal: separating the intellect, or cognition, form the feelings in a person. Cognitive alters in these systems are always considered "higher" than the feeling alters; cognitive alters are taught to "pass down" their feelings to the "lower" feeling alters. While these labels are untrue, the cognitive alters will fear feeling the intense, overwhelming emotions that caused them to split further and further from the more limbic, or feeling alters internally. This will drive continued system divisiveness in the survivor. It is important that cognitive parts realize that the feeling alters are part of them; that they can practice sharing their feelings in SMALL steps without needing to be flooded, or overwhelmed.

 

A reminder: EXTERNAL SAFETY IS PARAMOUNT TO UNDOING INSIDE PROGRAMMING. You HAVE to be able to promise these parts external safety, and deliver on this promise, or they will understandably balk at working inside on undoing programming. Why should they try and change, only to go back and be punished again? No system will undo its own protective dissociation, if the abuse is ongoing, or it will continue to destabilize and re-dissociate over and over. This is because dismantling the dissociation would mean dismantling its own survival and protection.

 

Stopping contact with perpetrators and having a safe therapist are the very first steps to take, before attempting to undo internal programming. A system can still work on stopping cult contact, and begin healing, while being accessed, but it will slow therapy down tremendously as the internal energy will be diverted to staying safe rather than undoing trauma. A person can heal, and most survivors are still in cult contact when they enter therapy. BUT the progress will go much more quickly once cult contact is broken. (see chapter on preventing accessing of the survivor).

 

Chapter Five: