[Editor’s Note: Saoirse & Janet were co-conscious for this post.]
So we have gotten some questions offline that we’re going to try to answer tonight. The first is simple – no, we don’t usually switch this often. We’re under a lot of stress right now, and stress makes it worse. It’s a defense mechanism after all.
Our lives don’t usually revolve around D.I.D. as much as this blog may make you think. For whatever reason, the floodgates kind of opened. This blog was originally intended to primarily track the whole Pulmonary Hypertension saga. The show you’re getting right now wasn’t exactly planned. Well, neither was the Pulmonary Hypertension.
The other question was about integration, what its like, etc. This is REALLY hard to explain. So we decided to go watch some youtube videos about it and see how other people describe it. And, news flash, we learned something.
In the olden days, integration was described to us as the combining of personalities into one new personality. But, what we learned tonight, is that these days the latest understanding is that “integration” is all about bringing down the walls between personalities, and that basically, Janet & Saoirse are more or less “integrated” right now, even though they are still, well, Janet & Saoirse, and not some unique, combined, singular “JanetSaoirse” personality. Or at least that’s our understanding after some youtube watching. Really, we’d need to talk to a D.I.D. specialist, or read some books, to be really clear on the topic.
The word used to describe the combination of two or more alters into one is now “Fusion”. So, what Saoirse has experienced in the past is Fusion.
The difference we see? Although we’re both here, we’re still “talking” to each other with our own voices. In contrast, Saoirse’s fused parts don’t talk to each other, they are just, well, Saoirse.
There are two explanations of Fusion we watched, and Saoirse says the truth is kind of a mixture of the two. So, here goes
Example One – Mixing Paint Colors
So, combining Red and Blue gives you Purple, right? But what if there was more Red than Blue? What shade of Red was it, and what shade of Blue? Was one a very dilute color, while the other wasn’t? What if one was really light and one was really dark?
The Potential Purple Person could be almost an infinite array of Purples, depending on the original colors. But, once the colors are completely mixed together, they don’t un-mix easily. They are a completely new color. Neither Red or Blue, but something new and different.
Example Two – Mushing Play-Doh together
OK, this time lets start with one ball of Red Play-Doh, and one ball of Blue Play-Doh. We can squish them together, and then roll them around just a little to make a new Play-Doh ball. The new ball is a single sphere, but still has visible Red and Blue parts to it. If you wanted, you could pull the Play-Doh apart where it was mushed together. Now you’d probably end up with some Red on your Blue pulled apart piece, and vice versa, but you could separate them and end up with a Blue-ish and Red-ish piece. They aren’t so much mixed together as they are stuck together.
Saoirse said these are actually different stages of what its like to go through Fusion. You get stuck together, maybe pulled apart, stuck back together… and eventually you get mixed together like the paint colors, and can’t get pulled apart.
Saoirse has had two Fusion experiences. One was “one and done, bam, you are fused” and one was a longer process that started out much like Saoirse & Janet are right now. Sometimes apart, sometimes together, eventually staying together for longer and longer periods…. It took awhile.
That’s all well and good, you say, but we want details! Well, part of Fusion, in Saoirse’s experience, is fully processing all the memories of the separate selves. That’s. Not. Fun. There’s a reason we were walled off from each other, and it wasn’t because Saoirse forgets to take a shower sometimes.
Even once you’ve processed trauma, accepted trauma, grieved, integrated (fused?) the trauma into your personal history and sense of self, it was still, well TRAUMATIC. It doesn’t just become nothing. “Oh, that ‘ol thing? Doesn’t bother me a bit.” NOT. It was bad enough a young brain couldn’t handle it. While as an adult Saoirse can, that doesn’t mean its not still distressing to go into specifics. And, while Saoirse can handle it, Janet may very well not be able to just yet – so bringing it all up in the blog? That’s a good way to trigger some bad shit.
If you happen to have known the old system, Saoirse is a combination of John, Rage, and a big part of Jim. (The “part of” gets complicated – remember how those PlayDoh balls can be pulled apart, but still have some of the other color on them?). Saoirse’s memories go back to a young age.
Janet, on the other hand, was a new creation at age 20. As far as we know, she’s the last full personally in the system created from scratch. (Although you can only develop D.I.D. in childhood, once you have “the gift” it can continue working throughout an entire lifetime.)
Saoirse actually knows a lot more about Janet’s “birth” than Janet does. Which we’re talking about internally right now. Janet is processing that while she was created from scratch, her new form was originally unstable, so a piece of the old system’s playdoh was broken off and fused with her. So, although she didn’t know this until tonight, she contains the remaining portion of Jim. Mind Blown.
Normally we’d try to end on a joke, but major internal shit is going down right now over this. We’re also very depersonalized right now, which is why we’ve been using a lot of third person language. D.I.D. – where you get the joy of alllll the Dissociative Disorders in the book.