He was shocked, since we hadn’t given much indication of our impending decision, and of course there was a backlash of vicious gossip defaming my character and claiming that I had “forced” my family to leave.
That was, in a way, the first step in my healing road back from DID. I was totally alone, and this solitude gave me time to begin to piece my life back together.
I looked for a grief group to heal from what felt like a divorce after leaving the controlling group. Since displaying any kind of emotion or grief was labeled as negative or “depression” in the controlling group, my emotional self needed a lot of help and support.
I wasn’t able to find a group to help me separate from the controlling group or to help me rebuild my life. Instead, I ended up at a grad school that claimed to help people heal from unhealthy religious groups. It turned out to be much more fundamentalist than the school claimed to be, but I toughed it out to earn a master of arts in counseling. Through those three tough years I also discovered that I wasn’t a Christian at all.
All students at the grad school were required to see a therapist, so that introduced me to the world of counseling. My first therapist was able to listen to and show compassion for a lot of my childhood issues. But her bottom line was to bring me back to Christianity. She was unable also to admit the depth of my dissociation. When I began running into the same roadblocks of obedience and submission that had held me back in the cult-like group, I sought another therapist.
This one was also Christian. She was kinder than the first, but not able to discuss with me the depths of the depravity that had consumed my parents. When it turned out that she, too, hoped to lure me back into organized religion, I went out on my own once more.
At this point I did many things. I read horror novels to understand the mindset of people who abused others. I studied the works of Alice Miller, Susan Anderson, Ellen Bass, Laura Davis, and Bruce Lifton. To ease peer pressure in grad school I took several art classes. I reclaimed some of my favorite music from childhood and even found an online group of people who had escaped the controlling group I’d belonged to for most of my life.
