MAP
NO LONGER ALONE TO REMEMBER
by E.K., Phoenixville, PA
Multiple Personality Disorder is very difficult to treat. After years of working with an excellent psychologist and achieving only modest success, I quit trying. I'm telling this story together about how my MAP team and I came up with a safe way for me to retrieve and clear painful memories. Possibly my story will inspire others to do similar work. In 1989, eleven years before I discovered MAP and the other Perelandra processes, I received a psychiatric diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My psychiatrist and I believed that many of my emotional problems were related to childhood traumas that I could not remember. We spent a lot of time working to retrieve my memories. The idea was to retrieve the memories one at a time so that I could experience and process each memory and then release it, thereby releasing its hold on me. The first memory came at midnight on a Sunday night when I was home alone. I was terrified. After that, I did a lot of work trying to retrieve more memories, but I was afraid to let them come. My therapist wanted me to bring them to the office where he could help me, but I was too afraid that they would come when I was alone and that I wouldn't be able to handle them. After several years of trying to retrieve memories that would not come, I gave it up and focused my energies on my many physical health problems.
In 2001, I discovered MAP. My MAP team has been a great help with many of my physical problems. After two years of working with MAP, I remembered my unresolved dissociative disorders and asked my team if they could help. They could. From my many years in psychotherapy, I was already acquainted with my alter personalities and we were at peace with one another. I didn't need any help in this area. I needed help in finally remembering the abusive situations. Together my MAP team and I developed a strategy.
Occasionally when I ask my team a question, I am able to intuit the actual answer. But usually I end up playing 20 questions and muscle-testing for the answers. Because my body has been weakened from years of health problems, I was told I could only handle one memory a week.
On Sunday nights, I would get comfortable and we would begin. My team determined what memory I was to receive. Through questioning, I learned about the basic facts of the memory. First I determined my age at the time of the traumatic event we were working on for that week, then what other people were involved and where the trauma took place — usually it was in my home. Then I determined the time of day and which room of the house was involved. I did all this with yes/no questions and muscle-testing. At this point, I had facts but no memory. Then I would lean back and ask my team to help me remember the event, and the memory always came.
The memories included physical sensations and feelings and occasionally images. It was a remarkable process. It seems that a certain amount of memory of the event is required for me to process it and then release it. I needed to remember enough that there was some unpleasant emotion, but it was not necessary to relive every gory detail.
I was never afraid of the experience because my team was always there to moderate the event and make sure that I got exactly what I needed and not one bit more. The memories were upsetting, but as soon as I experienced the feelings and the upset, my team cleared it. It was a perfect process. I knew up front that I would get no more than I could handle, that I would never be alone in the process and that as soon as it was over, it would be cleared. I just couldn't believe my good fortune to have such perfect therapists and free of charge too.
Perelandra Voices 2007
