I hope that you can read my reply and know that even though I am disagreeing with you, I have the very best intentions and I’m replying to you because I care about you, your system, and everyone with DID/OSDD.
Tw: for non-graphic talk about child abuse and why persecutors exist.
When it comes to forgiving people outside of your system, I agree with all of these sentiments. I don’t think that you need to forgive the people who have hurt you in order to heal from your traumas. Some people disagree on that, but it seems to come down to how you define forgiveness.
But when it comes to forgiving the persecutors in your own system, things are very different.
Persecutors are not bad, abusive, or troubled people who just happen to share your body with you.
Persecutors are parts of your system who were formed by the same trauma that formed the rest of you and they served a purpose in your system. It might be hard to understand that purpose now, especially since it’s now become harmful and dysfunctional. But when they first formed and first started doing their job, your persecutors were doing what they do to protect the system.
That’s right, persecutors are protectors in their own way.
One of the most common roles that persecutors take is to agree with our abusers. They tell us (either through words or actions) “You’re bad! You deserve to be hurt!” They tell us this when we are little and the abuse is happening, and they continue to tell us this long after the abuse ends, and it feels absolutely awful. Why would any alter of us want to continue hurting us this way?
Well, because it serves a purpose. When an alter believes that the abuse is happening because we deserve it, they believe they can control it. They believe that if they can just make us stop being bad that the abuse will stop. If they can just get us to behave ourselves, the bad thing will stop happening. And that belief, that the horrible things are within our control and not just some completely random and unpredictable thing, that belief is so much safer.
Having an alter that believes that it is within our control, even if that alter also believes that means we are bad, that can help us survive what happened to us.
This is just one example of how one of the common types of persecutors can form. There are many others, but like this one they form out of trauma and out of a desire to help the system survive.
They do the harmful things they do not because they are bad, but because they are stuck in their extreme roles and because they are stuck emotionally reliving the trauma.
It can be very hard to forgive them for what they have done, especially if they have continued to disrupt your life and harm other people.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is healing.
When forgiveness is hard, you can start with trying to understand. Talking to your persecutors about why they do what they do and what they are afraid will happen if they don’t do their jobs is a good way to find out what is really going on.
“What are you afraid will happen if you stop doing that?”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“What made you start doing this?”
Understanding each other is so important to a healthy system.
dededos
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