Opening Doors (Ch. 8-11)

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! I’ve read chapters eight to eleven and here is my third reflection piece.

              In reading chapters eight to eleven of The Sum of my Parts, I have gained a greater sense of empathy for the main character Olga. In my previous reflection, I noted that I had no clue just how devastating dissociative identity disorder was and in continuing reading, I feel as though I have yet a greater understanding of just how debilitating this disorder is. Along with this, the therapy someone living with this disorder has to endure is astonishing. In order to cope with abuse Olga experienced in her childhood, she separated the painful experiences into little parts unconsciously. In accessing therapy, she now has to try to put these segments of memories together and relive the trauma she once experienced. She explains that our mind stores these memories instinctively somewhere we can’t reach them in order to protect ourselves. Since, these memories were coming back to Olga intensely and all at once, she became very suicidal. Not only would she experience a flashback of the trauma, but she would experience the physical pain she felt during the trauma as well. I never knew this was possible. I have always thought that experiencing a trigger happened on an emotional level with no physical symptoms of pain. Olga also noted that she had a hard time connecting to her memories and thoughts because she felt as though she was talking about someone else, when in fact she was referring to herself. She reported struggling with believing this trauma actually happened to her. In her therapy sessions with her psychotherapist, he would use hypnosis to access these suppressed memories. In doing this, as Olga recited a memory, she would revert back to the age she was when she experienced the trauma. It was almost as if the younger version of Olga was trapped in her unconscious and was trying to express what had happened to her. I had no clue this was possible. This really changed my perspective on this disorder and I now understand that this is a highly complex disorder, requiring specialized and intensive therapy. It shows similar traits to multiple personality disorder as these younger versions of her (about four of them) surface every now and again and demand to be heard. They make Olga re-live the trauma she experienced though flashbacks and physical pain. They also cause Olga to act and speak the way she did when she was of that age. This leaves me wondering how dissociative identity disorder and multiple personality disorder differ and if one can ever fully recover from the devastating symptoms.

Please comment and share your thoughts! What do you guys think about the correlation between dissociative identity disorder and multiple personality disorder based on what I shared? Do you think Olga will fully recover?