Learning from others

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei

One of the things I learned from my mother, if you have a problem, someone else had the same problem and wrote a book about it.  Now the updated version would add that they blogged about it. I started this blog with the idea that someone else was facing some of the same challenges I was and I discovered an amazing community of people sharing and caring on the internet.  I have read self improvement books since high school.  Then it was books on how to decorate a teenagers room.  I also read "The Little Prince," "Belview, a State of Mind," and "I never Promised you a Rose Garden." After I married, I read books on how to be a better partner in my marriage.  I still remember reading some of the books and wondering if we lived on the same planet.  I didn't know then that my internal complications interfered in trying to improve my life.  When I started counseling, I was a long time veteran using books to help me solve problems.  I learned to pray as I researched some problems which would sometimes lead me down avenues that I would not normally tried and found answers that made a difference in my life.  I learned that the Holy Spirit will bare testimony to the truth of ALL things.  When I was given my diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Dissociation at a severe level, it had no meaning to me.  The first time I saw it in writing I read it over 10 times trying to wrap my mind around what this meant to me.  Who and what was I?  I happened to be working at an university so I had access to the libraries that psychology students used for their research.  Ten books later, plus the other books I read not from that library, I still wasn't too sure what I was all about but I learned no one else really knew either.  Complications exist.  No two multiple personalities are the same.  None formed the same, functioned the same or integrated the same.  There is no control group.  There is no consistent pattern to follow.  Nothing to pin down.  By the very nature of multiple personalities it adapts and rearranges on the fly to help keep the inner core safe.  Even the definition of the inner core is different.  I described my experience of splitting similar to the tree at the park that had too many kids sitting in it a the same time while it was still young.  The trunk split.  On the front cover of my book is a picture of that tree.  I devoted an entire art project to this tree and what it represents to me of how I came to be a multiple.  The difference between me and the tree is that I could integrate, the tree healed in that position and stayed that way.  An interesting side light.  The tree was split by too many children in the tree.  When it grew it became an awesome climbing tree for children.  Being damaged hurt the tree but it didn't destroy the tree and it took on a new purpose and gifts to children that was different than it was born to be.  I admire the tree for taking what life dealt it and made a difference any way.  

Splitting is not the end.