Christine Pattillo - I Am WE: My Life with Multiple Personalities

CHRISTINE IS ONE OF THOSE clients a therapist grows with over the years of work together (1995 to present). As we explored the nature of human suffering and her suffering in particular, there was an extraordinary degree of collaboration across the hundreds of hours we spent in sessions. We have learned together about change, healing, and healthy relationships.

Since she sat frozen in silence during much of the first several years, I decided early on that I would at least do no harm. My instinct was to be with her in a gentle way. At the time I was working a lot with very young children and saw the beautiful results of providing them with the experience of being seen and understood without analyzing, without pushing for an outcome, or giving advice. When she first came in, my therapeutic experience and vocabulary were limited; I mostly knew my own yearning for kindness and acceptance for the hidden places within.

Nonetheless, it was hard to sit with her without wanting to push for change. I made many mistakes, which she always generously tried to make sense of. From the beginning she brought her thoughts and feelings to me via writing. Oftentimes her comments on our sessions were insightful and therapeutically intelligent. For example, the letter she gave me at our third session (March 2, 1995):

... after last weeks session I was a little troubled with what we came up with for expectations or goals. I really felt that it somehow simplified my situation. I realize you have guidelines that you need to meet [I was working at an agency at the time] and filling out that form was one of them, but I felt much smaller after I left. To sum up all that one wants to accomplish in one or two lines, then have them sign it and be on there (sic) way was not pleasant to me. There is so much going on in my mind and I have thought long and hard on what I want to address and improve on or deal with. It goes much farther than 2 lines....

And she had the courage to proceed to write one-and-a-half pages of what she wanted for herself. She continued to write voluminously throughout the years.

After some time of accepting her silence, (but really expecting her to break through and start talking), I finally realized she was seemingly unable to speak enough for us to do talk therapy. I was confused because she had a responsible job, appeared well put together, and in a loving marriage. I began asking her to draw what she was feeling. She took readily to the crayons, both as a medium for expression and as objects to fiddle with, stacking and restacking them in their basket like little sticks of firewood. It was through the pictures she drew that I first became aware of the terribly violent, conflicted, tormented world within her. The alter SHE was drawn as an evil presence, often a green-eyed, scaly monster, always engaged in violent acts and threats of death. The alter Rim was also drawn repeatedly committing horrendous acts of homicide and mutilation. So much violence, so much blackness.

There are images of her various selves in drawings done as early as 1996, although for a long time I thought the images were only symbolic representations of her various feeling states. I understood that she had tremendous internal conflict, but for quite some time I did not appreciate the traumatic nature of what was hidden in her. I certainly did not understand where all the violent, sexually explicit references were originating from. She did her best to both tell and show me while at the same time resisting with all her might the reality of what had happened to her.