We Are Not Crazy or Disordered; We are Just a We.
Dear Therapists,
These voices I hear in my head are no delusion, I know that now. I used to worry that I was crazy and did my best to ignore them. I tried to shut them out. The inner critic only grew louder the more I suppressed it. I attempted to drown it out with positive affirmations and speak over its words.
Only the voices we heard were not your typical inner critic. Nor were they hallucinations that could be silenced with drugs. They were actual people. They had their own autonomy inside and only fought harder and harder to be heard. They demanded my attention.
I had no other choice but to face them head on and engage with them. I had to listen and hear them out. They needed validation and compassion and reassurance. They were me and I was them and we all were we. They had their own opinions, beliefs, and experiences and they were stuck in my body. It was our body. There were so many of us all together and we were sharing just one body and one life.
Who was I? I was one of them. I was just the one who carried on for the world to see and interact with. I was the one to show up to fit in and appear normal when everything about our life was abnormal.
Who was the voice? She was more than just a voice. This was Jenny. Jenny was the one inside keeping all the secrets as secret as she could. She knew about the unspeakable things and protected all of us from the knowledge of horrors that would break our spirit and soul. What a burden for one so young and so small! How could we not see her? How could we not hear her? Was she any less important than I?
I’m not the only one she needs to talk to. She needs you, our therapist, too! She has her story to tell and she deserves to tell it with her own voice. She deserves to see through the eyes and discover a world with corrective experiences and know that it is 2024, not 1984 or 85 or 86. We will not deny her voice nor abandon her in the same way our perpetrators did.
The more we all talked to each other, the quieter our mind grew. The more we shared our body and our life together, the more we remembered together. We all agreed to be a team and to work together. We negotiated and compromised and included everyone in our decisions and the result is we are now living our best life together.
We’re not crazy or disordered. We are just a we. We are doing it differently. And that’s okay.
Sincerely,
Your client