Living with Multiple Personalities

Christine Ducommun was a happily married wife and mother of two, when-after returning to live in the house of her childhood-she began to experience panic attacks, night terrors, a series of bizarre flashbacks, and 'noises in her head.' Eventually diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID), Christine's story details an extraordinary twelve year ordeal of coming to grips with the reemergence of competing personalities her mind had created to help her cling to life during her early years. Therapy helps to reveal the personalities, but Christine has much work to do to grasp their individual strengths and weaknesses and understand how each helped her cope and survive her childhood as well as the latent influences they've had in her adult life. Fully reawakened and present, the personalities struggle for control of Christine's mind and her life tailspins into unimaginable chaos, leaving her to believe she may very well be losing the battle for her sanity. Christine's only hope to regain her sanity was to integrate each one's emotional maturity while jettisoning the rest, until at last their chatter in her head could cease. A riveting story of one woman's decent into madness and how she was able to become whole again-finally, the director of her own life. Integration is the real victory. There have been other books done on the topic of multiple personalities, but what makes this one special is that few therapists focus on integration as the best way to treat the patient (because of the rigor, time and training involved). Ms. Ducommun's therapist focused on integration of her four alters and achieved it.