Hello everyone! Please watch this video! Its about a woman named Jane who lives with dissociative identity disorder. It very much aligns with the book The Sum of my Parts and is very eye opening.

Please comment your reactions and thoughts on the video below!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share this video I came across on the internet. It describes dissociative disorders and their causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options. I thought some of you might be interested in learning more about it. So, for those of you, click the video below to learn more. Enjoy and take care!

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed reading my reflection pieces on The Sum of My Parts. As this is my first blog, I was not entirely sure what I was doing, but I think I managed to live up to the task. For this post, I wanted to share my overall opinion of the book and verdict as to whether or not I would recommend it to others. First of all, I want to begin by saying I loved this book. I found it to be so insightful and educational. Before reading, I had no clue what dissociative identity disorder entailed. From class lectures, I understood what it was and I believe the book depicts the disorder with utmost accuracy. In having some prior knowledge about the disorder, it was eye opening to read about how the disorder affects all aspects of a person’s life. After reading, I feel as though I have a greater understanding of the disorder and what someone living with it goes through. I found the writing style of the book to be easy to follow and its pace to be perfect. There never seemed to be a dull moment and the book progressed adequately. With that said, one thing I wish the author would have done differently would be to ease the reader into the abuse in the beginning of the book. The first chapter seemed to jump right into the abuse, which as a reader I was not ready for and was caught off guard by. I think a little more context and introduction leading up to the abuse would prepare the reader for what is coming. Furthermore, I don’t think the author could have done anything differently to enhance the characters because this book is based on the life of the author and it is non- fictional. I think altering the characters from her personal experience would take away from the reality and impact of the story. In recommending the book, I would not necessarily recommend it to everyone. People who have experienced sexual, physical, or verbal abuse may not want to read this book as it may be triggering due to the detailed accounts of these forms of abuse. In summary, I thought the book was excellent and I would suggest it to everyone, except those who may be triggered by some of the content mentioned above. As a Social Service Worker student, I will carry the knowledge I have learned from this book forward with me as I enter the field and strive to make a positive difference in peoples lives who are living with dissociative identity disorder.

Thanks for reading everyone! Take care and give The Sum of my Parts by Olga Trujillo a read if you are interested in learning about dissociative identity disorder.

Hello everyone! I hope all is well! I have finished the book and here is my reflection piece on chapters twelve to fourteen.

              In the final chapters of The Sum of my Parts, the main character Olga experiences intense suicidal ideations. She doesn’t trust anyone and has trouble performing basic tasks like grocery shopping. She explained how she felt internally divided. Some parts would dictate to her that she wasn’t safe, particularly younger parts, and older parts would try to comfort these younger parts. This must have been taxing to have such a strong internal conflict occurring and I can imagine it would have been nearly impossible to satisfy either demand. As time progressed, Olga learns to cope with this and adopts skills to negotiate with these parts. I find this so interesting that she can communicate with these parts and negotiate with them. Its kind of hard for me to wrap my head around. It’s like she’s having an internal conversation with herself, but instead it’s a younger version of herself that she can’t entirely control. She wasn’t afraid of the thoughts and memories these parts brought forth anymore and she felt as though she was back in control. Her mental health was beginning to improve, but her relationship with David was failing. She explained falling out of love with him and feeling as though she couldn’t trust him anymore. Ultimately, Olga and David got a divorce. Furthermore, she explains having great difficulty in sustaining close intimate relationships, as I had previously predicted. Following the divorce, Olga was diagnosed with a variety of disorders including dissociative identity disorder. She feared telling anyone about her diagnosis as she believed they would judge her and that she might lose her job. This is such a huge problem within society. Stigma attached to mental illness is a crippling phenomenon, preventing people from living their best life. They often fear scrutiny and expand extra effort to cover up any evidence of the mental illness. Today’s society has come a long way in accepting mental illness, but we still have a long way to go in riding the stigma attached. An opportunity arose for Olga to speak publicly about her trauma and mental illness, in which she agreed. It was hard for her at first, but once she got used to it, she found it very empowering. She would speak about the trauma she endured as a child and the psychological effects she experiences from it. She wanted to educate people on the disorder and teach them how to support someone with dissociative identity disorder. Things were going well for Olga and she met her new partner. She came out as lesbian and realized that she had been this way since she was twelve years old. She married her partner Casey and they were very happy together. However, Olga still struggles with trust and doesn’t foresee this changing. I can relate to Olga as I have a very hard time trusting people as well. Due to childhood experiences, I believe mistrusting people becomes a trait that is encoded in you. You constantly feel as though you need to evaluate people and watch for certain triggers in order to protect yourself. Sometimes I believe this happens on a conscious level and other times on an unconscious level. Ultimately, I agree with Olga that this mistrust of people will not go away and that we must learn to cope with it.

Thanks for reading! Please share your thoughts in the comments section. I would love to hear what you think! 🙂   

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?         

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all having a great day! I’ve read chapters four to seven and here is my second reflection piece.

Upon reading chapters four to seven of The Sum of my Parts, I once again found myself shocked and even mortified. In these chapters, Olga’s abusive father had a heart attack and passed away. Now as a reader, I was happy for Olga as I believed the abuse had come to an end, but that wasn’t the case. Her brothers, Alex and Mike, along with their friends, began to rape and beat her. With this, she was also raped by a man in her neighborhood. Despite all of this, she moved out and went to law school. Later, she got married to a man named David and had little to do with her family. Even though she was removed from the abuse, she still experienced dissociations every now and again; especially, when it came be being intimate with her partner David. This put a strain on their relationship as he felt she wasn’t interested in being intimate with him. When they were intimate, she would dissociate and “leave her body”, just as she did as a child. This became an automatic response for Olga and she couldn’t control it. As I predicted in my previous post, this had affected her relationship with David and I believe this might be too much of a strain for their relationship. Untimely, I don’t know if their relationship will survive. In addition, Olga reported that she had no recollection of the abuse and rape she experienced. It’s amazing what our mind does to protect us. In Olga’s case, her mind suppressed what had happened to her deep in her unconscious, so that she could cope with the situation. Essentially, this is an unconscious maladaptive coping strategy. One day, her and David went to the theatre and saw a movie that contained a rape scene. She described having a panic attack and having to leave the theatre. After this, she had reoccurring panic attacks, nightmares, and didn’t feel safe anywhere or with anyone. Essentially, she couldn’t leave her house. She noted that she didn’t know why she felt this way. She couldn’t understand or control it. I think this would be terrifying to experience. It would be so frustrating to feel so scared and not know why. In essence, Olga’s mental health has deteriorated to the point where her quality of life is inadequate. I’m shocked at the extent to which trauma can affect a person’s mental health. Originally, I had no clue trauma could cause such chaos for a person psychologically, even unconsciously with no recollection of the event.

What do you guys think about this? Please comment below and share your thoughts!

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?

If you haven’t done so, please subscribe! I will be posting bi-weekly as I read. 🙂

Hello everyone! As per this assignment, my first post is to be about my New Years resolution, so here goes.

My New Years resolution pertains to taking better care of myself. This includes eating healthy, getting the proper amount of sleep, exercising, and meditating. I have been so busy and stressed with school that my self- care has really been non-existent. In this new year, I plan to change this and make myself a priority.

Hello everyone! I’m a Social Service Worker student at Fanshawe College and this blog was created as part of a class assignment. I will be reading the book The Sum of My Parts, and posting my opinions, reactions, and analysis of the book. Please subscribe and feel free to comment.

Enjoy!