The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder QUOTES

1 " It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.
Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I’ve learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

2 " Controlling my environment was still a compelling need for me. I did everything I could to not be surprised by anything...

Looking back, I think that my need to predict how my day was going to unfold was a direct response to the amount of chaos in my childhood. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

3 " I'm here as a person who coped in a way that allowed me to be here today but made me vulnerable to abuse when I was a teenager and young adult... "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

4 " I was so moved that she remembered my birthday that I cried harder than I had in years. When I returned her call, she told me her computer was broken and she couldn't afford to replace it. My heart fell. As I had done so many times before, I went to her rescue. Still on the phone, I went online and bought her a new laptop, top-of-the-line. That was what she had really called for, She thanked me and hung up. I went to Casey, sobbing. Soon afterward, I closed the bank account and asked my mom to not ask me for any more gifts or money. Now my relationship with my mom is very limited, and it's still very painful for me. She continues to occasionally send me bills she can't pay. I respond by telling her that I love her but I cannot pay her bills. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

5 " As I was growing up, no one in my family got their needs met through respectful negotiation and compromise. The only victories I had ever seen my mom achieve were small, and she had accomplished them through manipulation, which was one of the few techniques she had for surviving her relationship with my father. Later, after his death, manipulation had become a way of life for her. It became innate for me too, even though I wanted her to be more direct, and I hated it when she manipulated me. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

6 " As I was growing up, no one in my family got their needs met through respectful negotiation and compromise. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

7 " When David and I went to visit my mom, she treated me well and seemed interested in our lives, focusing less on what she needed from me or how I should be taking care of her.

Mom saved those conversations for our daily phone calls because she thought David wouldn't find out about this other side other. But he could see the changes in me when I talked to my mom. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

8 " Sometimes a stare comes from too much anxiety or stress. Your system can become overwhelmed." I didn't know it then. but parts inside were scared because he was looking at us so closely. He's getting too close. He's going to find out about us. I didn't make the effort to try to catch any of these thoughts. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

9 " I was shocked and terrified to hear Dr. Summer say I had what was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Is that like Sybil? Am I like the woman in The Three Faces of Eve? My head began to spin. What do I have inside of me? Is there a crazy person in there? What am I? I felt like a freak. I was afraid to have anyone know. I have a mental illness. People make fun of people like me. Upon hearing my diagnosis, I stopped thinking of myself as smart, creative, or clever. Even though Dr. Summer had worked hard to help me understand that I had developed an amazingly adaptive survival technique, I no longer thought of it that way at all.

I was overwhelmed by fear and shame. The words multiple personality disorder echoed in my mind. I thought of all the ways people with multiple personalities were ridiculed and marginalized: They're locked away in mental institutions. They are really sick. I'm not going to be the subject of people's jokes. I am a lawyer. I work at the U.S. Department of Justice. The more I thought about it, the deeper my despair grew. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

10 " For years I described dissociation but didn't talk about the disorder. Sometimes I could tell from people's questions that they knew must have developed DID to survive, but they didn't ask outright. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

11 " It upset him to see my family spend so much money and watch me rescue them. He didn't like bailing my mom out of the consequences of her impulsive buying decisions and encouraged me to help her set up a budget instead "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

12 " dissociating put me at higher risk for attacks in my neighborhood and at school, making me more easily identified by sexual predators "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

13 " I wanted to go to a few therapy sessions and be back to normal. As I saw it, the panic attacks were the problem. What I really wanted was to stop having them. I genuinely thought I could do that. I didn't want to think about the past. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

14 " I opened my eyes and felt better, exhausted but relieved of a burden. The pressure to tell and the weight of the emotions had been with me for weeks. Now that I'd told what had happened, the burden lifted a bit. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

15 " I started crying. "When will it stop hurting?"
"I don't know. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could take the pain away. But it will get better and easier for you over time. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

16 " Dr. Summer explained once again that he believed I was remembering real abuse that happened to me when I was growing up, that the thoughts were memories frozen in time by a dissociative process. We were piecing together a clear picture of what had happened to me so we could put my memories in their proper place: the past. He explained that the pain was my body remembering what had happened. He had explained the process many times before, just like this, but I still didn't understand. The words wouldn't connect. I asked, "How can I be a lawyer, be married? How can I be functioning if all this happened to me? I don't understand. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

17 " How could I even function today if all of this happened to me?" I pleaded, wishing Dr. Summer would tell me that he'd been wrong, that all of those thoughts didn't belong to me.

Dr. Summer reminded me gently, "When you were attacked, your mind went far away so you could survive. Some people describe this as an out-of-body experience. Your mind creatively and instinctively protected you by dissociating from the violence and terror. When you talk about the thoughts in your head, you have a flat demeanor like you're talking about someone else. Doesn't it feel that way to you?"

"Yes. It doesn't ever feel like I'm talking about me. It doesn't feel like it happened to me. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

18 " In the mirror, my eyes looked red and puffy from crying. That was as expected. But I was surprised to notice that I looked older than I should be. I didn't expect to be dressed up for work. I looked down at my shoes and feet, and they didn't look like mine. Alarmed, I splashed my face with cold water and looked again. The reflection didn't show who I thought I was.
As I washed my hands, they didn't look like mine either. They looked too big. I was wearing rings. It was all very startling and confusing. I felt a little panicky and didn't want to think about it too hard. Disoriented, I banged into the doorway on my way out of the restroom and thought, Why is this door so small? Why am I taking up so much space in this hall? Whose hands are those? Whose eyes and face was I seeing? My thoughts began to race and I started having trouble catching my breath. Then I felt the fuzziness in my head, followed by calmness, and finally numbness. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

19 " Sometimes I look older than I feel. Sometimes my hands seem bigger than they should be or I feel taller than I think I should be. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

20 " I felt a catch in my chest and a pulsing in my ears and then I felt calm and numb, with a fuzziness that I couldn't think through, much thicker than before. "

― Olga Trujillo , The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder