Comment by Sierra on 12 Oct 2009 at 9:40 am

Dear Karen After all you gone through in life can you share some personal beattitudes?

Dear Sierra,

My Be-Attitudes:

Be aware of all that surrounds you.

Be careful not to judge others before knowing the facts.

Be cautious of those who claim they know everything.

Be able to forgive your abusers hold on you.

Be able to live despite what was taken from you.

Be able to live the life you once thought not possible.

Be able to trust your own instincts.

Be able to take care of yourself first.

Be fearless. Do not allow past pain to guide you.

Be careful to guard your heart, for it’s easy to be taken advantage of when trying to find loving relationships.

Be able to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, and truth from lies.

Be hopeful that you will survive.

Be sure to have faith.

Be proud of all of your accomplishments, whether big or small.

Be certain to smile.

Be yourself.

Wishing you all my best!

Karen

Comment by Ms Williams on 15 Oct 2009 at 10:57 am

Hi Karen,

I know you’re probably a really busy person so I’ll make my comment easy. I am so relieved you are answering questions for people like us. I was diagnosed DID three years ago. When your story hit the shelf I was the first to by your book at Barnes and Noble. I took my time reading it. I cried, laughed and experienced every emotion I had, even some I never had. I read your blog answers all the time. Thank you for inspiring me to get up each day. I know my therapist is happy you exist. He told me so and said one day he was going to contact your doctor, Richard Baer to say what a fine job he has done with you. I am doing very good with my journey because you gave me hope without even knowing me. Thank you.

God Bless you, beautiful lady!

Ms. Williams

North Dakota

Dear Ms Williams,

I am touched by all your kind words. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on my story. That means a lot to me! I truly appreciate hearing that my story inspired you with hope so that you could heal as you continue your own journey toward becoming one.

Please know that your therapist can contact Dr. Baer on Facebook.

Wishing you all my best!

Karen

Comment by Barb on 15 Oct 2009 at 6:35 am

Love you Karen Overhill, hope you have a good day, hope Richard Baer loves you and has a good day too. Keep on truckin….

Dear Barb,

Thank you so much for wishing me and Dr. Baer a good day! We wish you a good day, too! Thanks for writing in. We hope to keep on truckin…for a long time!

Karen

Comment by Loretta on 13 Oct 2009 at 10:19 am

Karen,

Do you have any unpleasant reactions to such things most people can enjoy such as sports, amusement parks, Halloween and anything that triggers aggression? Integration combined all of your alters together but some had fears? Do you continue to suffer from past individual fears?

You and Baer are two awesome people to contribute this site and so much of your lives.Thank you.

Loretta

Oak Forest, IL

Dear Loretta,

Unpleasant reactions are a part of everyone’s life and there’s no difference for me.  Certain things trigger dark thoughts and sad memories. I don’t like to watch certain sports, such as boxing, wrestling, and sometimes, depending on the game, football. I can enjoy football at times when not distressed. I’ve become less anxious watching football since my son played on a football team during high school. I felt the excitement of the game then. Before that I hated any contact sport that brought on pain. I hate seeing anyone get hurt, especially punching each other as in boxing. All I can see during a boxing match is my father’s punches coming toward me.

Years ago I hated Halloween, especially when people wore masks and clown costumes. The anxiety I once felt has lessened, so that now I may be startled and jump, but laugh afterward. Amusement parks pose no threat to me now. I don’t like to be enclosed in any ride, but most open-air rides leave no fear.

Although my alters did harbor individual fears, I couldn’t tell you now what they were. All of my alters are me. I am all of them.

Thank you for your questions and kind compliments! Dr. Baer and I truly appreciate them.

Karen

Comment by Molly on 12 Oct 2009 at 9:47 pm

Hey Karen,

This is so cool for me to actually chat with you like this! you and Dr. Baer have been a total inspiration to me and what i want to make my life into. My sister brought me the book Switching Time and i instantly fell in love with the book and everyone in it. Your story is utterly amazing and you are such a strong person for going through it all. I have a lot of respect toward the both of you. I would love it if you or Dr. Baer would be able to help me accomplish something and give me some pointers on it. I want to go to collage to do what Dr. Baer does. I want to make a career for myself from this. I have always been a huge fan in studying psychology but i could use a few pointers on how to go about this in majoring for it in collage. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for your time.

Sincerely, Molly

Dear Molly,

It is cool, isn’t it! I enjoyed hearing from you. It’s nice to “hear” the excitement in your voice. I’m glad that your birthday gift of our book, Switching Time, turned into an inspiration for you to choose psychology as a possible career. I’m sure Dr. Baer would agree that being a therapist can be draining but also one of the most rewarding fields in the medical world. To help one survive through pain and suffering takes time and patience. The medical world needs good therapists.

I also believe studying psychology is fascinating! In my opinion, when you set your heart and mind on what you would like to do with your life, the learning begins. Trust your instincts!

Dr Baer says you can either become a clinical social worker, psychologist, or psychiatrist.  The paths are very different, so look them up online and see what suits you best.

Wishing you all my best!

Karen

Comment by Cherrilyn on 05 Oct 2009 at 6:34 am

Good day, Karen Overhill and Richard Baer, Good Day!

Switching Time knocked my socks off! Great work for a doctor and patient. Quite interesting that Karen stuck with just you, Richard Baer, as her therapist for all those years. I admire your strength Karen, to stick it out and heal. In analyzing my thoughts I am concerned as to how well your life has been after the book published. I read in a previous post it’s two years now. I have a feeling things did not turn out so well for you Karen. God forbid I don’t mean something’s wrong. I am a reader and have been feeling a draw to your newest pain. Live Karen. Don’t allow the pain of past circumstances to bury you. I am inspired by you. Don’t give up. I see an increase in comments to you. It’s a sign that you are doing great work. This will not be your year. This year is your ground zero but next year you will be rewarded.

Cherrilyn

Dear Cherilyn,

Thank you for all your compliments! Although Dr. Baer and I had stuck together, we had our moments!  But we were able to work through them. Being a multiple isn’t easy; there are many frustrating moments that had left both me and Dr. Baer exhausted.

I admit I’ve had a rough year. There were many changes in my life that I needed to deal with as one person. My journey continues on. I try my best to keep moving forward. Since the integration of my alters I’ve had to re-learn many life lessons.

I am looking forward to next year! I enjoy answering questions from all those who write to me. I feel privileged to be available for this and to live a life I once thought not possible. Thank you for being concerned. I am trying to keep my past in my past. Rarely do I dwell on the actual abuse I suffered. I try to bury that pain. What I do experience are occasional sad feelings that are usually not attached to any particular trauma or thought.

Thank you for caring.

Karen

Comment by Ten Four on 08 Oct 2009 at 5:10 am

Do you have the itch to fight someone? Argue them done now that you are one person? I am a multiple too but not fully integrated. I have four more to you. I am itching to fight people to stand my ground. When someone angers and hurt you to you ever feel like punching them out? Think of yourself as lower then they are? Slap the s**t of them for what they said? I integrated six of my ten and become angrier after each integration. The four left a mild compared to the others ones. Should my therapist have integrated the mild ones first? What do think about suggestions? Do you have lots of people suggesting you do this or that? Do you ever feel like telling them off? Do you? I love you Karen for sharing your life. I swear I learned more from you than my therapist and psych professor in college. More in the way because you have a heart that healed. a once damaged heart that learned to love and give hope despite the people who abuse you. Thank you Babe.

Ten Four

Dear Ten Four,

Sometimes I do get the itch to fight someone, but I never do. It’s not worth it!  People are human and some people will always annoy me. I try my best to stay away from those who aggravate me. I find myself feeling anxious when confronted by ignorant people. Dark thoughts get triggered leaving me feeling temporarily depressed. It’s hard for me to comprehend anger. I’m still learning. I find mistrust very difficult to overcome.

I don’t believe there was any particular pattern for my alters to be integrated. I believe Dr. Baer asked my alters and they decided who was to go first, second…last.  My alters had the best wisdom for who to integrate when. As each alter integrated, I regained their particular individual fragmented memories. Of course, that meant I was becoming whole and receiving more information and knowledge of what had happened to me. In turn, I felt angry at times. The process of integration can cause angry dark thoughts. How could it not? My alters were horrifically abused, protected me, and were finally sharing with me what they had spent a lifetime keeping secret.

Thank you for loving me. And thank you for sharing that my experience has brought knowledge to you in a way that textbooks can’t. That’s a very high compliment. I believe we can all learn from each other.

Karen

Comment by Stella on 07 Oct 2009 at 6:38 pm

Hi Karen!

Still reading and learning so much from your answers here. As you know, I am not at this time able to read your book because of the traumatic content, so my question may have an obvious answer to someone who has.

Were you aware of your internal system before you started therapy, or was this awareness something that came about gradually through your therapeutic process, and if so, what did that look or feel like for you? And as a follow up, how long did it take for you to come to know all of the alters in your system? Were there times you thought all were accounted for and then taken by surprise to find others?

Quite a lot, I know, and probably not easy to answer.

Thank you as always for your time and thoughtful responses, they are invaluable.

Fondly,

Stella

Dear Stella,

Thank you for sharing your concerns about reading Switching Time. I’m glad to hear that you are trying to get to know me through my answers here on my blog. These answers are an extension of me, and all that was written in the book.  Once you start reading Switching Time, please finish. I believe if someone reads my story and stops too soon, they will be left with unresolved thoughts, unpleasant feelings, and disbelief, and not witness the true miracle of my surviving and healing from the incomprehensible illness of multiplicity.

I was aware of something going on before I started therapy; that was the reason I sought help, to find out what was happening to me. I felt ashamed and didn’t immediately reveal to Dr. Baer my losing time. I felt afraid to share the truth out of fear of appearing crazy. As time passed, I was forced to face that I lost time, all the time. There were dozens of signs that I could not explain. Losing time started to overwhelm me and brought thoughts of suicide. After I’d fall asleep, I’d noticed that while I thought I was sleeping, things got done.  When I woke, I had no explanation as to how. I had no memory of what I had done during that time. I was always exhausted. And worse, missing from memory were huge parts of my day. I always felt I couldn’t catch up with myself. I questioned my sanity.

No new alters developed during therapy; all my alters were present before therapy started. As I built my therapeutic relationship with Dr. Baer, my alters started to feel secure and slowly revealed themselves. That took more than a few years. I believe my alters were created in my childhood years. Some grew over time, but most remained a certain age always. Early in therapy there was a time when Dr. Baer and I wondered how many alters there were, and the total number of alters surprised us.

Thank you for your questions. I hope that when the time comes and you decide to read my story that you find comfort, peace, and inspiration from knowing that I survived.

Karen

Comment by Shari on 07 Oct 2009 at 11:12 am

Hi Karen,

I understand the switching process now more than ever after your writings but one question still puzzles me. Since integration how have you been able to deal with reality when reality is not consistent. The ups and downs must require an extreme amount of pressure and instability for you, which in turn could cause dissociation. It did in the past, what would be the triggering point today? Do you continue to dissociate, not like when your alters were working but in other forms of dissociation? I read your answer defining the difference between MPD and DID although they are the same according to the DSM. I can see why you may define them differently. If I were you I would too. Do you now dissociate without alters?

I admire you for waking up my senses to an entire new world. Amazing story. God is with you always.

Shari C.

Dear Shari,

Reality is something we all need to deal with. For me, I needed to pay closer attention not to allow myself to be taken advantage of. After the integration of my alters I have learned many difficult lessons living in a new world. There no longer were periods of lost time. I learned very quickly the need to stand on my own. But in all honesty, I wasn’t very good at always making the right decisions. I believe my life started after integration, a life that was new. My inexperience as one woman was an exhausting, rude awakening.

My alters were terrific at masking all that I needed to attend to. There was so much I had to learn all over again. I’ve become stronger in many ways, but there are times when my lack of knowledge can cause me temporary grief. Sometimes I am saddened by missing out on the life I might have had while in survival mode.

I no longer dissociate in the same way as when my alters were present. But I still have a hard time with the concept of the passage of time. I remember everything, but I can’t distinguish very well whether it happened last week or two years ago. It’s hard to explain. And sometimes, if I’m not careful, it can cause problems. I need to make a conscious effort to write down appointments, acknowledge mail, and make sure I follow-up on things.

Thank you for your compliments and blessings.

Karen

Comment by Lee & Anna on 06 Oct 2009 at 12:28 pm

Karen,

Night or day? Which part of your day brings peace, what part of your day causes turmoil? Do you sleep at night with lights on or lights off? Are you afraid of the dark? What about your fathers ghost? Do you take walks at night? when your mind was split up how would your answers compare to now?

Love the mystery about you.

Lee & Ana

Dear Lee and Ana,

My nights are the time of day that causes me the most distress. As I try to settle down for the night and rest, my thoughts keep going and growing. During the day, while I keep busy, there is no room for dark thoughts. At night, dark thoughts can take over if I’m not careful.  I try to keep myself distracted and go to bed when I’m exhausted so I will fall asleep quickly. If I don’t, my dark thoughts can re-surface, leaving me feeling inadequate, sad, and even suicidal.

Mornings bring me the most peace. It’s the time of day when I function my best. I answer my blog questions early in the day when I have time for myself. I rise early, always before 5 a.m. and never need an alarm clock. As a matter of fact, I don’t own one. I’m up before anyone else.

My night horrors come and go. In the past, I would fight going to sleep in fear of nightmares. These days I look forward to going to sleep, my dreams are pleasant, and I rarely have a nightmare. I’m not afraid of the dark. I welcome the stillness of the night.

My father’s ghost? I never saw it if there was one.  There is no room in my life for my father’s ghost. I’ve been through enough. Fear keeps you in prison.

Thank you for your questions, and for loving the mystery of me.

Karen