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A strong ,caring outside therapist is also important to healing, by modeling healthy nurturing to a system that may have no concept of this, while balancing the need of the infant for outside nurture with the need for the internal system(s) to learn their own self nurture techniques. Internal helpers can reach the infants, ground them, share present reality (that the body is older, the infants are safe, etc. These helpers may be internal older children, as mentioned before). The survivor may also want to find support adults when possible, who can help with modeling healthy caring with good boundaries. A THERAPIST OR FRIEND CANNOT RE-PARENT THE SURVIVOR. The survivor will long for this, but realistically, the survivor has one set of parents, good or bad, or sadly, even terrible. No outside person can come in and redo the complete re-parenting of another. What the therapist and support person can offer will be caring, empathy, listening, while the survivor grieves over the loss of adequate nurture. They can offer friendship or empathy with good boundaries. They cannot become the survivor’s parents, or therapy will not progress. Instead, enmeshment will begin. 3. The First Five Steps of Discipline (there are twelve total; others will be addressed in later chapters) Try to find the parts that experienced the abuse. This may mean doing system mapping (drawing pictures of what things look like inside), and going to the cognitives (intellectuals) or controllers (head honchos inside) for information. An internal helper, or recorder, may also be extremely helpful in doing this. Allow these parts to slowly acknowledge the agony that they experienced during their deprivation: heat (being held over a fire, or stove); cold (such as being placed in freezers, or ice, for example), lack of food, etc. Encourage the sharing of the cognitive portion of the memories first, while allowing amnesic alters to grieve over “hearing about” these things. Allow them time to absorb hearing about these traumas, as they occurred over several years during early childhood, and will take time to assimilate. Healing can’t be rushed. Allow feeling alters later to step forward, and share their feelings, while more cognitive or helper parts are inside holding their hands, grounding them to the here and now throughout the process of remembering. Be prepared for floods of emotion at times, as well as body memories, as the abuse is recalled. A group of inside people can be designated as a “grounding team” to help ground these parts as they step forward and share their memories. — 124 —
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