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Kiya wrote:
He is a part of you (ego state or what ever) but if he actually takes control then that is no longer an ego state? like you said the DID has parts that take over....? i would say that if you relinquished control you can't be certain that YOU could come back.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">You're right, Kiya. I guess I don't want to cross that line and am not sure I even could. I was not worried I would never come back as he has my best interests at heart (not letting me come back sounds kind of hostile).

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tulips wrote:
I am fascinated about the ego-states and the roles they play. Did you start to recognize them thru EMDR or just thru talking and slow discovery in this manner?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Actually, neither. Nothing about the ego states has been slow! They can pop up, fully developed, or suddenly I have an awareness of them. They have not been slowly discovered through talking. We haven't done a lot of ego state therapy. Over a year ago when I first came to T, a little girl of about 4 started appearing in my dreams and then coming to therapy with me. T said she was an ego state. Then I recovered, out of the blue, some repressed memories about bad stuff she experienced. I felt so much more whole to have discovered her--I loved her so much--and she felt relieved to finally be recognized after all these years. "Where have you been?" she asked me. T told me it is common for trauma to cause ego states to split off in childhood. These ego states retain the feelings and memories of those events and are not integrated. They're stuck. We used EMDR to help me process the trauma and get unstuck, and T also taught me how to rescue that girl myself. Through this, the girl became less traumatized and less prominent in me. She became more healed and so "wasn't around anymore." I don't even know what that means when I type it. I don't go looking for her. I just know I feel better about that time in my life. I am kind of scared if I go looking for her, I will not find her, and that would make me feel bad, like through healing her, she had become obliterated.

About that time I realized I had some other ego states too, probably from traumas at other ages. But we didn't work with them in therapy, we moved on to other stuff. The other ego states were the one about 7 years old, who is the one we have been planning to work with now, as events in my real life are triggering her and preventing me from living my life and doing stuff I have to do. I also have a teen/young adult. Maybe there are other "me's" too--I don't know. I guess I accepted all that and was fine with these parts and they usually weren't triggered. But seemingly out of the blue this well-developed, adult male ego state came. He is my protector as well as that of the younger ego states. That's his job and he's having a hard time with it right now. Even though I told T a lot about the male ego state, I didn't share with him that I think the male wants to ally with him to help me. Maybe that's why he came out now. He told me all sorts of stuff I didn't know. That made me feel not in control, like who's running the show here? Like I was a passenger. I got overwhelmed with his presence after a few days (I felt squished) and sent him away. T says we need some couples therapy, and we worked a little on that (even though it was just me there in the office).