Hello everyone! I hope your all having an awesome day! I’m excited to announce this will be my first reflection piece on the book. I’m not too confident in my blogging skills as I have never blogged before, but here it goes!
In reading the first four chapters of The Sum of my Parts, I was completely shocked and disgusted. These chapters describe the main character Olga and the abuse she suffered in her childhood. At the age of just four years old, her father beat her and began to molest her. As she got older the abuse worsened and he forced her brothers to molest her and sold her body to strange men. Olga describes a coping mechanism that she used to deal with all the abuse and to protect herself from the pain. She explains that when she was being molested, she would feel as though she was leaving her body, feeling tingling in her hands, and then she would watch what was happening to her body from above. She said this numbed her to the pain and made her feel safe. Olga notes that this is a symptom of dissociative identity disorder. As I’m not familiar with this disorder, I did some research and found that dissociative identity disorder is a mental illness “which produces a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity” (https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder#1). In Olga’s case, this disorder was caused by the trauma she endured. I was very surprised to read that this was possible. I had no clue this was something that someone could ever experience. I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel numb and watch over my own body. So far, this disorder doesn’t seem to be negatively affecting Olga, but in the future, I think it could pose some challenges for her. For instance, having a triggering event causing her to dissociate from reality. I could see this impacting Olga’s social ability and her future relationships.
Feel free to comment and let me know how I’m doing so far! Also, leave comments about dissociative identity disorder and your thoughts about what I’ve shared. For instance, how do you think Olga will be affected by this disorder in the future?
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Courtney's Blog 
I agree how crazy it is of how DID is formed. I also can’t imagine going through such a thing where an incident, or a reoccurring incident, can create such a complex sever mental illness. It would be hard going through with your daily life tasks when there are triggers. Good work on identifying the disorder and gaining knowledge of it!
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As I understand it, trauma can cause a whole host of issues for an individual. Although I am not an expert in the subject, I have heard of people having “out of body” experiences as a result of intense trauma due to abuse and/or people who experienced “near-death” experiences. It sounds as though Olga has not had the best start in life. Out of pure curiosity, with what you know of Olga’s situation and experiences, what kind of plan or strategy would you use with her as an SSW to keep her safe? Does this character at any point mention having ideas of suicide? If she is detaching herself from the situation enough to form a dissociative disorder, her trauma would no doubt require extensive treatment. I realize we aren’t social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists or intensive care mental health professionals, but it would be interesting to imagine yourself in that role and work out a theoretical plan with Olga as your client.
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