Materials

December, 1999

Edited selections from the ASCA newsletter.

The original newsletter (pdf)

Contents

  1. ASCA Meeting Ongoing Education Moment: Guideline #4: What you hear today is told in confidence and should not be repeated outside this meeting.
  2. Book Announcement: Multiple Journeys to One: Spiritual Stories of Integrating from Dissociative Identity Disorder
  3. Possible ASCA Meeting Topic for December: Holidays: Lost & Found

1. ASCA Meeting Ongoing Education Moment:
Guideline #4: What you hear today is told in confidence and should not be repeated outside this meeting.

During an ASCA meeting, we take participants into our confidence. We share a mutual expectation that people in attendance will extend to each other reciprocal support and respect. Within an ASCA meeting, we have faith and trust that members will do no harm to us. In fact, we anticipate that members will gently hold whatever we express, as they would caress a vulnerable infant.

Repeating something from the meeting to another person outside the meeting is a breach of confidence. Repeating something that directly or indirectly violates a person’s anonymity is a gross violation of that person’s confidence. It is okay to discuss with others one’s own share, but not the shares of others. It is okay to discuss with others the themes that come up in a meeting. Naturally, these themes would be discussed from one’s own personal perspective and would not include confidential information from others.

2. Book Announcement:
Multiple Journeys to One: Spiritual Stories of Integrating from Dissociative Identity Disorder

by co-author Terry Popp

Can ten, fifty, or one hundred autonomous personalities coexist in the same body? Multiple Journeys to One: Spiritual Stories of Integrating from Dissociative Identity Disorder offers eight stories that cover eight modes of dissociation, alter systems, processes of integration and fusion, forms of wholeness, and expressions of spirituality. Some of the writers’ backgrounds include incest, familial torture, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and programming. All involve mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse at a young age. The book focuses on the integration and fusion process rather than on the abuse. The writers trust that within their stories will be found a connection that leads to hope, strength, insight, inspiration and a unifying spirituality. The role of spirituality and the journey to self-acceptance and love of all our aspects mirrors the healing of our dissociated planet and a return to an integrated global consciousness.

Our goal in gathering these narratives was to present a sufficient number of writers to adequately cover some of the diverse experiences of multiplicity and the integration process, and to give readers an idea of what these are like viewed from different perspectives and backgrounds. Not only will Multiple Journeys to One be of help to those who are still multiples, but it will also allow those who have completed this phase of the process to acknowledge and honor their accomplishments. The book will also be a source of information for partners, therapists, and anyone interested in learning more about multiplicity and the role spirituality can play in healing.

Multiple Journeys to One may be purchased directly from the publishers at danserpents@juno.com, P.O. Box 8115 Santa Rosa, CA 95407-1115 [update: may no longer be valid], or http://www.sonic.net/~tpath [update: no longer valid]. It is also available through Amazon, select bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Book People’s Distributors, Oakland, CA.

3. Possible ASCA Meeting Topic for December:
Holidays: Lost & Found

Holidays often evoke the full range of feelings for many survivors of childhood abuse. Usually, a puzzling mixture of hurt and sadness, joy and warmth, shame and loneliness, acceptance and hope, anxiety and depression, pleasure and wonder, dread and tension, etc., wells up within our being. These feelings and accompanying memories almost feel embedded in our bodies and our spirits, encased within the very fiber of who we are.

For many survivors, holidays bring nothing but dread, resentment, anguish, and unhappiness. Yet other survivors have managed to instill the holidays with aliveness, generosity, compassion, joy, and enthusiasm—a renewed spirit.

Part of the holiday spirit seems to have been lost, some would say stolen. What did we lose? What was stolen from us? We lost out on part of a child’s innocence, joy, and wonder. Many lost out on cherished, sustaining, nurturing memories. Many have lost the holiday spirit itself, with its warmth, reassurance, and sense of hope.

Yet, most of us look and yearn for something more from the holidays. We want to experience some of the season’s joy, hope, warmth, and enthusiasm. Many of us need to reconfigure, re-manage, and rewire ourselves for a renewed sense of holiday spirit. Holidays seem to have something to do with spirit, that intangible flavor of life.

The keys to finding and reclaiming the holidays for ourselves seem to rest on what we want from the holidays and how we begin to regenerate for ourselves a sense of holiday spirit. Holidays were lost. But they can be found and enjoyed again.

Questions:
  1. What do the holidays evoke in you?
  2. What did you lose? What was stolen from you in reference to the holidays?
  3. What are you looking for from the holidays?
  4. What might be some of the things that you need to do to renew for yourself a sense of holiday spirit?