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Quote by Alice Jamieson

“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”

Quote by Alice Jamieson

Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

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Alice Jamieson

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“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”

DepressionAbuseMental HealthTraumaSelf ConfidenceSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationHeadacheAnorexiaDisconnectedMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesVoicesDissociativeMigraineAltersAnorexicChild Sex AbuseInternal VoicesAnoreticPorongraphic
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Most organised abuser groups call each particular training a “programme”, as if you were a computer. Many specific trained behaviours have “on” and “off” triggers or switches. Some personality systems are set up with an inner world full of wires or strings that connect switches to their effects. These can facilitate a series of actions by a series of insiders. For example, one part watches the person function in the outside world, and presses a button if he or she sees the person disobeying instructions. The button is connected to an internal wire, which rings a bell in the ear of another part. This part then engages in his or her trained behaviour, opening a door to release the pain of a rape, or cutting the person's arm in a certain pattern, or pushing out a child part. So the watcher has no idea of who the other part is or what she or he does. These events can be quite complicated.”

TriggersDissociative Identity DisorderMind ControlInner WorldRitual AbuseSwitchingAlter PersonalitiesSatanic Ritual AbuseTriggerMkultraCult AbuseMind Control ProgrammingAlter PersonalityMk UltraCuesPersonality SystemCue
Book:Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse
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“More than one personality was created in the hope of being the daughter Nancy could consistently love. More than one new personality was created in response to Mother's unexpected fury.”

Emotional AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderAbusive ParentsAbusive MotherAttachment TraumaImpossible StandardsDisorganized Attachment
Book:The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
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“Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapyEmbarrassmentDissociative Identity DisorderPsychologistStigmaDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistAltersSelf Stigma
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“In my series, five percent presented self-diagnosed. In most cases, this was not believed by the initial clinician. I had the following unnerving experience. Prior to my first multiple personality disorder case, I did not think the condition existed. I saw a young woman who claimed to have multiple personality disorder, and dismissed her claim. She never mentioned it again. Seven years later, while doing research in multiple personality disorder, I asked her to be a control subject for a new multiple personality disorder screening protocol, since I believed she was a medication-controlled paranoid schizophrenic. A protector personality rapidly took over, cursed at me for disbelieving the patient in the first place, introduced me to other personalities, resumed control, and chastized me vehemently at great length. Thereafter, she left, never to return.”

SkepticalDissociative Identity DisorderDisbeliefMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesMisdiagnosis
Book:Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality Disorders
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“I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew. From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationStereotypesMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisordersSurvival Mechanism
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderDissociative PartsDissociative Identities
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
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