2007

MAP
NO LONGER ALONE TO REMEMBER

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.

— E.K., Phoenixville, PA