To heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder, even those not Christian must do as the Bible teaches about being kind to oneself. The God of the Bible neither condemns people who are hurting, nor supports being harsh with oneself. We will see that any Christian who thinks otherwise is likely to have the most noble intentions and yet will benefit from a deeper look at the Bible.

Healing also requires facing the truth of one’s past. This seems scary but, as the Bible declares, it sets us free. The critical importance of this aspect of biblical revelation is explained in a link at the end of this page. We will start, however, with the Bible’s emphasis on the other fundamental aspect of healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder: forgiving oneself and being kind to oneself.

Ably supported by the enemy of our souls, we Christians have a tendency to unintentionally distort biblical revelation in a way that perpetuates our problems. The goal of this webpage is to explore relevant Bible truths to gently cut through spiritual misconceptions that could be hindering healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

None of us can say we have been ecstatically in love with God every moment of our lives since birth. Having Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) adds another dimension to this fact of life. If you have D.I.D., there are parts of you (alters) that, until allowed to connect with you, have been frozen in time. For some of them, the time in your past that they, through no fault of their own, have been locked into will inevitably be one when you were less spiritually aware than you currently are. In fact, a little thought will confirm that no matter how godly you now are, it is to be expected that you would have some alters who hate God or are angry with him, and perhaps some who hate or are angry with a human you love.

For example, it would be natural, in at least one stage of growing up, for any abused child to have resented God for not rescuing him/her. Another huge incentive for ill-feeling toward God is that it is common for abusers to blasphemously use God as justification for their abuse, and little children lack the ability to see through such lies. It is also possible that someone you love had a dark side you are totally unaware of because alters hid this from you. They freed you to love that person by bearing the pain and memories alone. This heroic attempt to protect you was not only agonizing for them when it occurred, keeping things secret from you has perpetuated their agony by cutting them off from your comfort, maturity and spiritual insight.

As staggering as it seems, if there are any alters who appear to be enemies of what you love, they are not your enemies but your most committed friends. In fact, only Jesus has sacrificed more for your spiritual welfare. That sounds almost beyond belief, so let me explain.

Imagine how courageous, confident and beaming with joy anyone would be if he had known almost nothing but success, triumph and things turning out perfectly. Now suppose this were not because he actually had an abnormally easy life, but because he had D.I.D. and had been spared consciousness of times he had failed badly, been in no-win situations, suffered pain, discouragement, and so on. Whenever life had turned really sour, an alter had taken over. This would mean that credit for this person’s courage and positivity would belong not to him but to his alter who had suffered all the low points so that the host’s faith and spirits could remain high. Consider how unfair it would be if the alter experiencing all the bad times and none of the good were despised for not having the host’s strong faith. (In fact, the host’s faith is not as strong as he imagines but is artificially propped up by a selective memory.)

By enabling you to bury doubts and unresolved hurts that would have hampered your relationship with God, alters have empowered you to love God and others. They so effectively allowed you to pretend serious doubts and hurts did not exist that you were unaware of them.

Such ignorance, however, is only a temporary and superficial solution. It was the best anyone could have done when young and overwhelmed by so many things. Continuing to bury such matters, however, means these issues will keep eating away at you without you being able to identify what is weighing you down.

To take your relationship with God to a whole new level, what is needed is not burying these matters but resolving them. Now that you have matured and your circumstances are more stable, this breakthrough is within your grasp. Until now, however, living in denial has understandably been your primary means of coping. Breaking this deeply ingrained, lifelong habit takes strength and courage. Nevertheless, the rewards are immense, because our Healing Lord is the God of truth and we will see below that his way is for us to face truth and wrestle with it, rather than deny it.

The alters you are sorely tempted to despise have actually done so much for you. Now it is your turn to reciprocate by embracing them and sharing with them all the good things you have learned about God they had been denied the opportunity to discover, and letting them pour out their pain so that they – and you – can finally heal.

I therefore suggest that you regularly speak out loud in the hope that a currently unknown alter might be listening. Say such things as, “Is there anyone who hates God? If so, I want to thank you for bearing those feelings and now I want to welcome you to unburden yourself with me, so that you no longer have to hold on to that pain alone.” And ask the same about anyone who might be angry with key people in your life. I suggest you feel very positively toward such alters, because even if they are filled with strong feelings that repulse you, they have done you an immense service at enormous cost to themselves by empowering you to be single-minded in your loyalty to God and those you love. Embracing the negatives and working through them, however, is the only way to end up truly single-minded. It is not truth that we should fear, but ignorance.

Since some form of child abuse is usually at the heart of Dissociative Identity Disorder, let’s briefly consider what even mild child abuse does to a person and how Christians are tempted to react to it.

Childhood is too short for little children to question everything adults tell them and the danger is simply too great for them to refuse to accept as truth whatever they are told until they have proved it for themselves. It is vital for their safety and development that children be virtually prewired to accept as gospel whatever respected adults in their lives tell them. This works beautifully when children are nurtured by kind-hearted people as God intended. It makes them alarmingly vulnerable, however, when an adult they accept as a source of truth and a role model, instead of manifesting the heart of God, repeatedly puts them down.

Moreover, child abusers do not want to be caught. They have a vested interest in throwing everyone off the scent by acting very differently in public and establishing a high degree of respectability in the community. The result is highly confusing to young victims because not only does it make any reporting of the abuse likely to fall on deaf ears, observing the high regard other people have for the abuser reinforces a child’s conclusion that what the abuser says must be true.

So even without anything physical, simply being subjected to repeated verbal putdowns during one’s most formative and impressionable years is devastating. It mutilates one’s self-image so profoundly that the damage will last a lifetime unless a determined and prolonged effort of almost herculean proportions is made later in life to counteract the negative effects.

No matter how well-respected a person might be in the community, it remains ungodly to put people down or be harsh or unkind. No Christian wants to take on the values of an ungodly person and yet this is what we inadvertently do when we fall into the habit of verbally abusing ourselves or treating ourselves with the harshness of our childhood abusers. Tragically, however, the habit becomes as strong as heroin.

As astonishing as it seems, rather than facing the devastating conclusion that we have taken on board the values of an abuser and are even addicted to it, we Christians are easily seduced into letting ourselves off the hook by actually convincing ourselves that we are pleasing God by acting like the devil in how we treat ourselves. It is frighteningly easy to re-label as humility or dying to self or fighting the flesh, what is actually a deeply ingrained addiction to perpetuating in our lives the ungodly way our abusers treated us. If we verbally abuse ourselves or think lowly of ourselves as our abusers did, let’s at least not pretend we are being godly by modeling ourselves on them.

Even more confusing, some abusers claim to be close to God. This adds spiritual abuse to their crimes but the perpetrators’ approval rating among those they gather around themselves makes it harder than ever to realize that this person’s behavior is actually spiritual abuse. We might even be so bewildered that the very thought seems blasphemous and presume that the person must be reflecting the heart of God and allow his/her rants to drown out the Spirit’s whispers.

These whispers will seem disturbingly foreign and unbelievable because they are gentle, encouraging and uplifting – the exact opposite of what our abusers have taught. God has faith in us and has great plans for us, and if this is contrary to what key humans have told us, we are preconditioned to conclude that the Spirit’s promptings must be nothing but our own misguided wishful thinking.

In short, even without deliberately intending to, abusers can so corrupt their position of trust and power that they browbeat and brainwash and undermine their victim’s confidence so appallingly as to render them unable to think for themselves or even believe God when he speaks to them.

Just as there was much that was right and Bible-based about the beliefs and preaching of the spiritual leaders who crucified their Messiah, so it is with the wolves in sheep’s clothing that enter the very church of God (Scriptures). “Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’ ’ warned Jesus (Matthew 7:22-23).

Of course, we must never passively accept less than God’s best in our lives. There is no room for acting like spoilt brats, irresponsibly demanding that God do all the work while we laze around, content with mediocrity. We must cooperate with our Savior in passionately wanting change and not only praying for it but exerting every effort to persuade, encourage, inspire and urge every part of us to surrender to our Lord so that he may reign supreme in every aspect of our lives, as he does in heaven. This is neither cold-hearted indifference and sloth, nor is it imitating the devil by condemning ourselves and beating ourselves up like some hate-filled tyrant. Let’s get this right: Satan is the accuser (Revelation 12:10); God is the forgiver. Suppression and oppression come not from the heart of God but from his enemy. Refusing to join forces with the devil means refusing to slander, ridicule or belittle ourselves or anyone else. Neither demeaning self-talk nor being cruel to oneself is in heaven’s spiritual armory.

We are not meant to turn the Holy Spirit on or off according to the situation. God’s Spirit, the divine source of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on, is meant to be a continuous spring, flowing like rivers of living water from our inner most being (John 7:38). It is unthinkable that sweet water and bitter water should flow from the same spring. Likewise, points out James 3:9-11, cursing anyone made in God’s likeness should never spring from the same heart from which praises to God flow. (This Scripture allows no loopholes for cursing oneself. Since you are as much in God’s image as anyone else, it is still God’s image that is being targeted.)

So the Spirit’s flow springing from within should be both consistent and continual. We are to “ever be filled” with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18, Amplified Bible). Just as we are to love everyone (even enemies) and “Rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16, emphasis mine) and “Make every effort to live in peace with all” people (Hebrews 12:14, NIV, emphasis mine), so we are meant to always be operating in every fruit of the Spirit – not being Godlike in how we think of others and devil-like in how we think of ourselves.

Having D.I.D. makes it inevitable that your feelings and your attitude toward God will fluctuate wildly. There is no shame in that. What I am getting at, however, is that we should be just as Christlike toward the parts of us we dislike, as we are toward the Christians we admire. The Lord wants you to demonstrate how filled you are with the fruit of the Spirit by being good, kind, gentle, patient, peaceable and loving not just to enemies but to ungodly parts of you that frustrate, annoy and embarrass you. As much as your loving Lord wants you to cooperate with him in bringing about changes within you, he does not want you to attempt this by resorting to such carnal ways as hate, anger, violence, impatience, unforgiveness or slander toward anyone – including yourself. Such behavior grieves your Savior, regardless of whether the hostility is directed toward yourself or other people. Hating yourself and having Jesus as your Savior are trains headed in the opposite direction.

My dilemma is that it is vital for you to fully grasp the truth just explained, but I do not want to labor this so much as to risk boring you. So at whatever point in the text you become so convinced that you could not possibly become more convinced, that’s when I suggest you interrupt your reading and scroll down to the next heading: Christian Healing. How we treat ourselves is so critical to our spiritual well-being, however, that in case it takes a lot for you to become that certain, I will continue to serve you by examining this issue from different angles, piling up confirmation after confirmation.

We can easily fall into the delusion of supposing we are fighting the flesh – our ungodly nature – by being hard on ourselves, when often, through the very act of being hard on ourselves, we are actually manifesting the flesh. It is striving to attain holiness not by the only acceptable spiritual way of faith in the power of the sacrificial death of our Lord, but through our own (fleshly) efforts.

Galatians 3:1, 3 Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you not to obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed among you as crucified? . . . Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh?

Philippians 3:3-9 For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh . . . If any other man thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, I yet more: . . . concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. However, I consider those things that were gain to me as a loss . . . and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith

Colossians 2:20-3:1 If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances, “Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch” . . . Which things indeed appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but aren’t of any value against the indulgence of the flesh. If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. (Emphasis mine.)

This is of immense significance to Christians with Dissociative Identity Disorder because they are often tempted to see their alters as manifestations of their ungodly nature and to suppose that by oppressing and suppressing them they are being Christlike.

Many good people think that by despising themselves and treating themselves harshly – especially when they slip up – that it is being godly. It is not. To be godly is to think and act like God. The Bible is emphatic that God is loving and forgiving. So we cannot be godly – we cannot display God’s heart – unless we are filled with love and forgiveness toward those who have hurt us, including ourselves.

Consider also the implications that the key feature of Dissociative Identity Disorder is having not mere urges but alters (short for alternate personalities) all of whom have a will of their own.

We should win alters to Christ the same way we seek to win over anyone else who has a will of his/her own. We know that it would be repulsive to God to try to make converts by using force to compel people to submit to God’s ways. If compulsion were the Almighty’s plan, he would immediately force the entire human race to submit to him. The God of love seeks not our domination but our cooperation. God’s way is always to bring about spiritual transformation by wooing people with his love and truth until they willingly surrender to his love and wisdom. To quote from Romans 2:4, “the goodness of God leads you to repentance”. Consider also these Scriptures:

Acts 14:16-17 who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he didn’t leave himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you [pagans] rains from the sky and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:15 Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him . . .

All these Scripture reveal that God’s way of bringing rebellious people to himself is through love, kindness and patience. We are to follow God’s lead. In the inspired words of Scripture, we must “overcome evil with good,” (Romans 12:21). As Jesus pointed out, the Holy Lord makes the sun rise on those who are evil and unrighteous. He opens the heavens and waters their land and keeps blessing those who curse him, and doing good to those who grieve him. To be his children we must do likewise (Matthew 5:45). If parts of us act like our enemy, we must take seriously God’s insistence that we love our enemies and “pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.”

We are to have the same heart as the exalted Son of God, who came not to serve but to serve and to pour out his life for ungodly (Mark 10:45; Philippians 2:5-8).

Do you suppose you would receive God’s approving smile if you heartlessly abandoned a deeply hurting child who was solely your responsibility and you let that little one suffer endlessly, not only refusing to comfort him/her but also preventing anyone else from emotionally supporting the child? Would you be able to stand before your eternal Judge and brazenly excuse your mistreatment by claiming the child is yours and therefore you can treat him/her however you wish? Of course not. Being your own child would merely magnify, not diminish, your responsibility. If this is true for your offspring – someone whose genes are only fifty percent yours – your responsibility would, if anything, be even graver if the child you let languish in needless pain and ignorance is your inner child. It is so easy to become confused and think that acting this way is honoring God. Careful thought, however, confirms that to close one’s heart, defiantly saying, “It’s part of me, so I can do anything I like with it,” would be offensive to the God to whom we must all one day give account.

You and your alters might share the same body but this fact in no way gives you license to be less than loving toward them, any more than a husband and wife being one flesh (Mark 10:7-8) gives anyone permission to mistreat his wife. On the contrary, sharing the same body increases your responsibility to be kind to your alters, just as being physically one increases a husband’s obligation to be tenderly compassionate toward his partner. In fact, the Bible insists that for a man to ride roughshod over the feelings of the woman he is one with will threaten his relationship with God.

1 Peter 3:7 You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman . . . that your prayers may not be hindered.

Scripture gives a powerful example but before mentioning it I must point out that it is not saying people should force themselves, or be forced, to do anything they find distasteful. It is referring to something both parties find enjoyable but one of them, solely for spiritual reasons, (nothing to do with past trauma) wants to fast from physical pleasure (Comment). In this specific situation, the Bible even goes to the extreme of declaring that if you want to devote yourself to prayer, and the person you are one flesh with wants physical pleasure instead, you must let your partner’s fleshly desires take precedence over your spiritual desires (1 Corinthians 7:3-5).

No matter how much we might hate ourselves, we are stuck with the fact that each of us is made in the image of the God we claim to love. We have already noted James observing how twisted it is to bless God using the same lips that curse someone made in God’s image. Add to this what John says:

1 John 4:20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

1 John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.

Jesus declared that “every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it” (Matthew 12:36) and that “whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of Gehenna [hell]” (Matthew 5:22). Again I ask, where is the loophole that allows us to insult ourselves?

“The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious . . .” says Ecclesiastes 10:12. Paul added, “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt . . .” (Colossians 4:6) and to the Ephesians he wrote, “Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up as the need may be, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). What gives us the right to reject this when it comes to how we speak to ourselves?

The Lord who gave his very life for you is worthy of our slavish devotion. Nevertheless, everyone who dies to self and lives for Christ benefits immensely because, without it we remain self-obsessed fools who ruin our lives, like junkies focused on their next fix instead of really living. As our Creator and Savior only the good Lord, not us, truly has our best interests at heart. The One who gave his all for us is so passionately and selflessly devoted to our well-being that the smartest thing we could ever do is to obey him relentlessly. Often, however, we are so blinded by self-hatred or infatuated by short-term illusions or tormented by past failures that our view of life gets so murky that to live the best possible, regret-free life we need to abandon our own whims and focus exclusively on pleasing our wonderful Lord.

True Christians have relinquished all pretense of having the right to treat themselves however they wish. Do you not know that your very body is part of Christ himself? asks Paul (1 Corinthians 6:15). We “belong to the Lord,” (1 Corinthians 15:23; Romans 14:8, NIV). In the Bible’s sobering words, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

“For we are God’s workmanship,” says Ephesians 2:10. Dare we criticize the work of the divine Craftsman?

Through Christ, you are a child of the King of kings. Dare you treat God’s child as dirt?

Of course we should refuse to indulge sinful desires but there is a big difference between that and treating yourself in a way that you would not dare treat someone else’s child, let alone treat divine royalty.

You might know the Scripture, “the joy of the Lord is your strength,” but how familiar are you with the context in which these profound words were uttered?

God’s people had rejected the true God and, despite warning after warning after warning, kept breaking his heart and hurting themselves by falling so deeply into paganism that the only way to shake them out of it was for God’s holy nation to be overrun by enemy soldiers who not only took over their land but captured the people and took many of them as prisoners of war to a foreign country where they languished in defeat and despite for decades. It is noteworthy that this drastic action was so effective that whereas their previous history was besmirched by countless incidents of falling into idolatry, it never happened again. Finally, the captives were released and allowed to return to Jerusalem. They celebrated their first holy feast (that could only be properly held in Jerusalem). During this sacred event, the Scriptures were read and explained to the large crowd. Such conviction fell on them that they wept profusely.

Nehemiah 8:9-12 Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest the scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, “Today is holy to the Lord your God. Don’t mourn, nor weep.” For all the people wept, when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for today is holy to our Lord. Don’t be grieved; for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, “Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be grieved.” All the people went their way to eat, and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

This tells us two things:

1. Although we need to recognize the gravity of our sins, it is not acting holy or pleasing to God to keep being miserable and beating ourselves up over our sins. Forgiveness and holiness comes through faith, not by being hard on ourselves.

2. Reveling in God’s joy strengthens us; staying miserable keeps us weak. If we have fallen because of weakness, the last thing we need is anything that will keep us weak.

The fruit of the Spirit – the very essence of God and product of your union with him – is not criticism or harshness but kindness, gentleness and patience. These qualities should so saturate our lives that they are the way we respond to every situation, including times we dislike ourselves. Just as we must free ourselves from the hypocrisy of the double standard of judging others more harshly than ourselves, so we must rid ourselves of the double standard of slandering ourselves and treating ourselves with a harshness and contempt that we would never treat others with.

A devoutly Christian woman who is dear to me was completely unaware she had a demonized alter until its evil ruined her good reputation built up over decades and even got her jailed for two years. Horrified beyond words, she has not wanted to converse with this part of her. I wrote to her saying:

Christ and I love that alter as fully as we love you. That part of you is just as precious to God as you are – and far more needy. And because this alter is so needy, he is top priority with God, just like the good shepherd who left the ninety-nine in order to rescue the lost sheep. The Lord wants you to be like him and have his heart for this lost part of you.

Christian Healing

Why God Requires Christians with Multiple Personalities to Focus on Healing

We always suspected God would be concerned about how we treat other people, but many of us used to think that if we were to treat ourselves badly it would somehow be less heart-breaking to him. That logic crumbles, however, when we consider that for God to be less concerned about how you treat yourself would only make sense if, to God, other people were more important than you. Tragically, that might very well be the way you have come to think of yourself but it is not remotely how Almighty God thinks of you.

The Perfect Lord is no hypocrite. He does not ask you to love him with all your heart (Mark 12:30) unless this is precisely how devoted he is to loving you. As I have explained in greater depth elsewhere, since it is logically impossible to go beyond all, for God not to be half-hearted but to love you with all his heart (which he does) it is impossible for him to love anyone in the universe more than you. This, as staggering as it seems, makes it impossible for anyone to be more precious, or more important, to the Almighty than you are.

That’s why how you treat yourself matters so much. It is also why it is so important to God that you heal from everything holding you back from truly thriving and reaching your full potential. So for the rest of this webpage we will explore the depth of God’s yearning for you to cooperate with him in healing.

First, we need to crack the fallacy that if your healing is so important to the Almighty then he will bring it about without your cooperation. To expect that, is to expect God to have the heart of an abuser.

As you know, Dissociative Identity Disorder is a reaction to childhood trauma, and almost always that trauma was the result of an abuser’s actions. So you most likely have had bitter, first-hand experience with someone who abused his/her power. For this to keep happening during one’s most impressionable years, predisposes a person to expect that anyone with great power will abuse it. As hard as it is to break out of that mentality, however, you need to do so when it comes to how you think of the God who is not only all-powerful but all-loving. Even the word love can be terrifying in the mouth of an abuser but, for God, love means utter selflessness and tenderly treating everyone with the highest respect and kindness.

I hope you don’t find triggering my attempt to ram this home in this brief quote from what I have written elsewhere:

You cannot fervently love someone without aching for that person to love you – especially if you know that person desperately needs you in his/her life. To deeply love someone means you could have everything else in the universe, and yet without that person’s love you would still be heartbroken. To love is to make oneself so vulnerable that even having unlimited power could not help. Omnipotence could easily force someone to obey you. Or it could produce something like a ‘love’ potion, causing a person to be under the illusion of loving you. But genuine love can never be compelled. If it involves force or chemicals or deceit or bribery it is a sham, and can never satisfy your yearning for that person’s love.

There are things that not even omnipotence can achieve. It cannot, for example, produce a square circle. It can easily turn a circle into a two dimensional square, but the instant it has straight sides it is not a circle. Likewise, if someone is forced to act in love, it is not genuine love. Even with unlimited power, there is little anyone could do to induce genuine love in a person, other than be loving and wait for a response.

We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from a lifelong intimacy with him.

So real love not only wants the best for you, it will not violate your wishes by forcing it upon you. As already mentioned, real love is about cooperation, not domination.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that, as a Christian, healing should be a higher priority to you than your marriage, your children, your job, your ministry and even your relationship with God. Why? Precisely because each of those other responsibilities are so important, and each of them is profoundly impacted by how harmoniously and effectively your alters pull together. Every aspect of your life and future will suffer if you are disorganized inside, and everything you touch will thrive if you are exquisitely functioning within.

None of us has anything good that we ourselves created:

1 Chronicles 29:11, 14 Yours, Lord, is the greatness . . . For all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. . . . For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.

John 3:27  . . . A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven.

1 Corinthians 4:7 For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn’t receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

Everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and, as Jesus so emphatically taught, God holds us responsible for how we develop it. Consider the parable of the man who buried his talent. If you have a moment, it’s worth re-reading (Matthew 25:13-30).

No matter how much we might convince ourselves that we can put our feet up and expect God to do everything for us, Jesus’ powerful teaching demolishes that fallacy and screams that God expects us to put in the effort.

In Jesus’ parable, the servant who failed did not blow his talent on an orgy of self-indulgence. He did not spend a cent of the master’s money on himself, nor misuse it in any way. Additionally, he kept the master’s money safe and returned it the instant the master wanted it. In all these ways this cautious, clean-living man was faithful, trustworthy and honorable. What made him a “wicked and slothful servant” thrown “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” is that he left undeveloped the potential of what had been given to him.

People with Dissociative Identity Disorder are living on a goldmine. They have within them huge reservoirs of undeveloped potential. It was originally outside their control that they found themselves in this situation but now the issue is whether they will leave that potential buried within them or resolve to do all they can to dig it up and develop it.

Every part of you that you know might be a model of devotion to God and have impeccable moral standards, but what about parts of you that you know nothing of – parts that you could be aware of and help them develop a living relationship with Christ, if only you try?

You might never dream of being sexually unfaithful to your marriage. In fact, sex might repulse you. That does not negate the possibility, however, of there being a part of you that has not only successfully blocked out your revulsion to sex but also has blocked out your awareness of God and commitment to his standards and is actually having multiple affairs while you remain totally oblivious to any of it. No matter how inconceivable this seems to you, I know couples who eventually discovered to their horror and bewilderment that this has been happening for years, until their marriage partner finally uncovered it. Likewise, I know of people who would never contemplate sexually abusing a child, let alone their own children, and yet this is exactly what has happened for years while the moral part of them was asleep or somehow lost awareness of a few moments from time to time.

Clearly, this is of stupendous importance to God. I do not wish to alarm you but the stakes are simply too high not to get to thoroughly know every part of you.

What keeps people trapped in addictions that destroy not only their own lives but that of their loved ones (such as alcoholism or the financial ruin of a gambling addiction) are the same two things that cause people to keep letting Dissociative Identity Disorder devastate their lives and loved ones.

The first of these things is living in denial – refusing to admit to oneself that one has a serious problem. This grave mistake stymies everything God longs to achieve in and through us. Our entire spiritual well-being hinges on facing head-on problems in our lives. The God of truth never honors denial:

Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals [or covers] his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

Psalms 32:3-6 When I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. . . . I acknowledged my sin to you. I didn’t hide my iniquity. . . . For this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach to him.

Psalms 139:23 Search me, God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts.

James 5:16 Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. . . .

This divine principle extends beyond sin:

Psalms 26:2 Examine me, Lord, and prove me. Try my heart and my mind.

Deuteronomy 8:2 You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to prove you, to know what was in your heart . . .

You are not to ignore issues but “in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). God is truth, and this is what he honors. More than once, Jesus asked sick people what they wanted before healing them. He required them to admit their need.

Those who blast through the roadblock of denial, face only one more major obstacle: being unwilling to pay the temporary but considerable cost of a lifestyle change. What would you think of an alcoholic who terrorizes his family, beating them up every time he comes home drunk, and then excuses his atrocious behavior by saying, “If God wanted me to change, he’d give me an instant and effortless deliverance from alcohol”? Would our gracious Lord be impressed by such an attitude?

Similarly, though torturously long and painful, healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder is supremely important spiritually. Occasionally, the Almighty gives a painless, effortless deliverance from a life-controlling problem but I carefully explain in a link at the end of this webpage why it is rare and why it is actually in our best interest for our struggle to be long and hard. The very battle builds Christlikeness into our lives in a way that miracles can never achieve.

Whereas my writings usually frolic in the wonderful benefits of healing, the sober fact is that genuine followers of Jesus have a serious spiritual obligation to do everything it takes to determine whether they have Dissociative Identity Disorder. And when confirmed, God requires them to face this reality, resist doubt and give healing top priority, no matter how much prolonged, painful effort this demands.

If we neglect healing we Christians will be held divinely accountable. I would prefer to bypass this side of the truth but, as loath as I am to mention it, I feel obligated before God to inform of the dire consequences for those tempted to let healing slip in their priorities. We cannot change past mistakes but now that we know better we can receive divine forgiveness and stop repeating those mistakes. The dilemma is that the very truths that will spur some of us to desperately needed breakthroughs and achievement could crush some who are already doing their utmost.

In Accountability I provide still more Scriptures about God holding Christians accountable for how much we avail ourselves of healing opportunities and so on, but if you are currently highly motivated to endure the hard, painful slog that healing demands, you have no need of it. Visit it only if your enthusiasm droops.

It is obvious that to hate someone God loves is to put oneself on a collision course with God. So consider the implications of these three words: God loves you.

We have seen that to think it acceptable to treat yourself worse than you would treat a stranger is as appalling as mistreating someone and trying to excuse your offense by saying it is your child or the person with whom you are physically one.

No matter how much you try to drown it, the truth keeps bobbing up again: the way you treat yourself matters immensely because you matter immensely to the most important Person in the cosmos. You might find that as believable as a bikini-clad talking elephant but if the eternal Son of God gave his life for you, it means the Almighty has invested his everything in you. There is no escaping the fact that this makes you stupendously important to him.

The Infallible One declares you lovable. Dare you sneer at his assessment? The Holy One forgives and pronounces you clean. Dare you arrogantly accuse him of not being holy enough and insist, by the way you think of yourself, that his impeccable standards are too low?

Despite dying to self being divinely required and ultimately in our best interest and richly rewarding, the cold truth is that we initially find it painful. Since love is the very heart of God, a significant part of denying ourselves and yielding to God is loving and forgiving as God does. Obviously, this poses little problem with people we like and respect. Or, as Jesus put it, “For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32). The make-or-break challenge is having a Christlike attitude toward those we resent and despise and blame.

Your personal nemesis – the one who stands between you and your willingness to obey God and be Christlike – probably won’t be Hitler or Stalin, but someone who has personally impacted your life. It is the person you are most sorely tempted not to love but instead vent your wrath on as the scapegoat for something significant that has gone wrong in your life. I use the word scapegoat with care. Like Judas, it is actually a term that has entered our language via the Bible. The scapegoat is a key animal used on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:5-10;20-22) and it points to Jesus, who has literally offered himself as your scapegoat – the innocent One who took upon himself all the blame for your bungles and catastrophes and has removed your sins from you.

Whether it be our own failings or other people’s, and whether it be deliberate evil or unintentional blunders, human failings wreak havoc in our lives. Will we spurn the Holy One’s sacrifice and, instead of accepting what he did as our scapegoat, substitute the satisfaction it gives us to treat the person we most hate as our scapegoat for things that have messed up our lives? Whether the sinner we make our scapegoat is ourselves or someone else, makes no difference to the fact that to let someone other than our sinless Savior take the blame, is to deny the adequacy of Jesus’ atonement. Though we do not intend it as such, it ends up being the ultimate insult to our crucified Lord and a rejection of what he has done for us.

As sin is the opposite of loving God, so is hating oneself.

The One who bore our punishment as he hung on the cross dredged up his last fragment of strength to gasp with his dying breath, “It is finished!” Will we pronounce him a liar? Dare, by the way we continue to treat ourselves as blameworthy, we keep insisting he is wrong? Dare we accuse him of not suffering enough for us? Was the torment he suffered for us so ‘little’ that we must keep putting ourselves down to make up for his ‘failure’ to bear in his body, soul and spirit the full consequences of our foul-ups?

Our destiny teeters on whether we will trust the enormity of what Almighty God achieved by entering the human race and the Lord of Glory suffering the ultimate disgrace for the sins of the world. Will we rest in what the King of the universe achieved on the cross as sufficient to resolve all the blame issues for everything that has devastated us, or will we let doubt drive us to abandon faith in Jesus and attempt to take matters into our own hands? Will we accept the enormity of what Christ did, or scorn it as inadequate?

We have been forgiven, restored and exalted by the One who on our behalf was tortured to death, rose to life again and triumphantly ascended to heaven’s throne. For us, the terrifyingly righteous wrath of the Almighty was poured out on the Lord of Glory instead of us, but to continue to get mad at ourselves is to defiantly refuse to acknowledge that what he did was enough.

If your life has been riddled with putdowns, I not only feel for you, I admire you. For you to still be staggering on is heroic. I would be devastated if anything I have written were to end up making you hate yourself for hating yourself. On the contrary, my longing is to inspire you to see yourself through God’s loving eyes – through the rose-tinted window of the Forgiving Lord who pronounces you not guilty and sees you as his darling child. To him, you are irreplaceable and infinitely valuable. Instead of being at cross purposes with all of heaven, join forces with the divine by treating yourself with the tenderness and patience and graciousness of God. Cooperate with the Almighty in fulfilling his beautiful plans for you by doing all it takes to heal.

An important way of ceasing to be hard on yourself is to give yourself and your alters breaks by focusing on positive things and on good, healthy enjoyment.

It is a necessary part of healing that alters share bad memories but all of your parts also need to share with each other memories of things that brought them even momentary happiness, whether it be sunsets, a pet, an aunt, academic success, or whatever.

Writes one of my friends who has D.I.D:

We are beginning to treasure memories. I tell my alters, “Hold good memories tightly for they bring life. Hold the bad ones gently for they bring strength.” Our abusers wanted to make us putty in their hands by keeping us quaking in fear and hopelessness. So they wanted to keep us from remembering and talking about good experiences.

We have found that people heal better when they look long and hard at the pain but also have times of happiness to build new memories of their own. If left to themselves, people who are hurting tend to stay stuck in the pain and don’t take advantage of the happier things around them. So we have established what we call Support Sisters. A Support Sister is a healed alter whose role is to be a constant companion to the one who is hurting and help him/her maintain a balance of good and bad times. Support Sisters are trained to be assertive enough to get alters active in happier things, and gentle enough to support them in the process of going through unpleasant memories. Right now, an alter is doing this and it’s quite cute. She and the other alter literally roll around and laugh out loud and play a lot.

Many positive things have happened in your life, especially in the years since your childhood, and many alters have no awareness of this and so have much more gloomy expectations of the future than warranted. Younger alters also need to create new happy memories by having safe fun playing with each other and with Jesus. (Yes, Jesus is superb with young alters. For an example, see An Alter Meets Jesus.) Young alters need plenty of opportunities to do things that children enjoy, such as drawing, coloring in, playing with toys, and so on. For confirmation of the importance of this, see Dolls or Stuffed Toys for Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder and for touching proof of how valuable God regards this, see God’s Love for Alters: A Sign. Also, by combining your powerful imagination with that of your alters, you can create an inner world that has beautiful surroundings, treehouses, swings, waterslides, cute animals and all sorts of fun things that delight children. For detailed help with creating a wonderful inner world, see How to Cure Dissociative Identity Disorder.

I have another webpage not specifically for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder. The first part of it is almost identical to the first part of this webpage because far more people than just those with D.I.D. need to learn to be kind to themselves. It ends, however, with a large section about the value of having fun, relaxing, enjoyable times and how this has God’s approval. You might find it helpful. This link should take you to the relevant part of that page: The Fun Part: Celebrating Life.

To reach the point of truly believing that the good Lord is not like those who mistreated you, is likely to be quite a battle. To help you with this I have written the following webpages. In addition, however, I have many more pages specifically to help you heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder.