Portions of this FAQ were adapted with permission from http://ra-info.org/faqs/
Others were adapted as noted.
Notice
The material in this FAQ and on other linked NATRC pages is not meant as therapy or to take the place of therapy. Some of the pages on this site may trigger reactions in survivors of abuse, so if necessary, please use caution while reading this material and/or read them with a support person.
Trauma & Dissociation
What is Trauma?
What is PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)?
What is a Flashback?
What is Dissociation?
What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
What is an alter?
What is multiplicity? Is it the same as DID?
What is DDNOS (Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)?
What is Co-Consciousness?
What is Integration?
Trafficking & Torture
What are Human Trafficking & Slavery?
What is Torture?
Who are the victims of torture?
What are the effects of torture?
What is Non-state Actor Torture?
Who are the perpetrators of torture?
Extreme Abuse & Ritual Abuse
What is Extreme Abuse?
What is Ritual Abuse?
What is Ritual Abuse-Torture?
What Ideologies are used to justify Ritual Abuse?
Who perpetrates Ritual Abuse?
Mind Control
What is Mind Control?
What is deliberate trauma-based dissociation?
What is programming?
What are triggers and cues?
Who practices Mind Control?
Why would anybody want to control another person’s mind?
How is multiplicity used?
Trauma & Dissociation
What is Trauma?
Trauma is injury – physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. A traumatic event is that which causes the injury, such as a car accident, a verbal assault, a critical situation that demands too many decisions at once, catching a partner cheating, or being misused by a religious group.
Trauma occurs on a spectrum and to varying degrees. Any injury involves individual factors that determine whether or not an event is experienced and responded to as a trauma. A scraped knee may be minor physically, but the fall that caused it can be a traumatic emotional experience. Likewise, someone with a dangerous and demanding job may be subject to a great deal of physical injury yet experience none of it as traumatic.
Trauma activates the survival-based fight, flight, or freeze responses, speeding or slowing the heart, sending chemicals rushing to the brain to power emergency functions, and/or turn off, alter or adapt normal functions. This can enable quick thinking and/or actions, or halt them with shock. Trauma can also activate the survival mechanism of dissociation, and when extreme, can result in dissociative manifestations that initially serve a helpful purpose but may at a later time cause difficulties or interfere with a person’s life, as in PTSD experienced by war vets.
Treatment for trauma can address either physiological or psychological symptoms.
For detailed information on trauma and its’ effects, see David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages at: http://www.trauma-pages.com/
What is PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)?
(From the US Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs National Center for PTSD)
“Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can occur following the experience or witnessing of a traumatic event. Most survivors of trauma return to normal given a little time. However, some people will have stress reactions that do not go away on their own, or may even get worse over time. These individuals may develop PTSD.
People with PTSD experience different kinds of symptoms. [T]here are also clear biological changes associated with PTSD. PTSD is complicated by the fact that people with PTSD often may develop additional disorders such as depression, substance abuse, problems of memory and cognition, and other problems of physical and mental health. These problems may lead to impairment of the person’s ability to function in social or family life, including occupational instability, marital problems and family problems.”
The diagnostic criteria for PTSD are: the intrusive re-experiencing of the traumatic event, usually in the form of flashbacks, abreactions, or nightmares, avoidance of reminders of elements of the experience, and hyperarousal, including hypervigilance. Other symptoms can include insomnia, depression, feelings of detachment, and feeling emotionally numb.
Some professionals and laypersons now refer to this condition as “PTSS,” or post-traumatic stress syndrome, because the term “disorder” is a misnomer in the sense that it’s a normal response to extreme stress.
What is a Flashback?
A flashback is a dissociated memory, or elements of a memory, returning to conscious awareness. It can include an entire, integrated experience, or fragments of an experience: a smell, a taste, a sound, an image, or an emotion. It can last a moment, or linger for weeks. People describe smelling alcohol or perfume when none is present, hearing a phrase over and over again in their heads, feeling panic or dread for no logical reason, or seeing images, like snapshots or movies in their mind’s eye.
Experiencing flashbacks can be an indication that one feels stable and secure enough to deal with emotions and realities that couldn’t be safely processed previously. Flashbacks usually diminish in intensity and frequency over time. Flashbacks tend to lose their intensity when dissociated fragments have been assembled into a coherent, linear narrative, and the various threatening elements of the memory have been expressed and processed. This process is sometimes referred to as “integration,” as it serves to integrate the dissociated experience into conscious awareness, and is absorbed as part of the general understanding of one’s personal history and worldview.
What is Dissociation?
”Dissociation” refers to the separation, or disconnection, of things (ideas, feelings, information, identity, or memories) that were originally, or usually are, connected. Dissociation happens on a continuum, from mild distraction to total amnesia. The severity of trauma-induced dissociation depends upon the extremity and duration of the traumatic experience. Dissociation is a natural, built-in survival and coping mechanism that unconsciously and automatically mitigates unbearable pain or trauma.
People normally remember an event in a holistic way that includes sights, sounds, feelings, and meaning. When dissociation occurs as a result of trauma, different parts of the memory are stored and recalled separately, not as a congruent whole. For example, memories of a dissociated event might be devoid of meaning, sensations, behaviors or feelings because they were stored in a compartmentalized way.
What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
In some people, dissociated memory and experience fragments are organized or arranged into discrete “personalities” or “identities” which can be experienced internally as having separate experiences and histories. Often personalities are so compartmentalized that they are not aware of each other’s existence. This is called an “amnesic barrier,” and is an extreme degree of dissociation. Over time, continued dissociation can become unhealthy and no longer serve the survival and coping function it originally served.
In the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, 4th edition Text Revision), published by the American Psychological Association in 2000, DID is defined as the presence of two or more personality states or distinct identities that repeatedly take control of one’s behavior.
The patient has an inability to recall personal information. The extent of this lack of recall is too great to be explained by normal forgetfulness. The disorder cannot be due to the direct physical effects of a general medical condition or substance.
DID entails a failure to integrate certain aspects of memory, consciousness and identity. Patients experience frequent gaps in their memory for their personal history, past and present. Patients with DID report having severe physical and sexual abuse, especially during childhood. The reports of patients with DID are often validated by objective evidence.
Physical evidence may include variations in physiological functions in different identity states, including differences in vision, levels of pain tolerance, symptoms of asthma, the response of blood glucose to insulin and sensitivity to allergens. Other physical findings may include scars from physical abuse or self-inflicted injuries, headaches or migraines, and irritable bowel syndrome.
The average time period from DID’s first presentation of symptoms to its diagnosis is six to seven years. DID may become less manifest as patients reach past their late 40’s, but it can reemerge during stress, trauma or substance abuse.
What is an alter?
An alter is one personality of a person with DID. The personality who is “out” most of the time is often called the host personality, and personalities that manifest less frequently are called alternative personalities, or alters. Some people have only one or two alters, others have hundreds or even thousands.
Some people with multiplicity experience each alter as a separate person. Others experience them as different from their usual self, but not as different people. Multiplicity is not experienced in exactly the same way from person to person; each person’s experience of their inner reality is unique.
Discrete alters often have their own names, have a distinct age, and have specific tasks, or roles. One alter may be in charge of feeling anger, another of going to school or work, or be the one who decides which alter gets to be in control of the body at any given time. Alters may have a different gender from the body or a different sexual orientation from the host. There may even be alters who are animals, objects, or abstract ideas. Sometimes people have alters who are experienced as being dead or immortal.
The formation of alters is a naturally occurring psychological process, normally the result of extreme, usually early, childhood stress. However, abusive adults who are aware of the process can manipulate and train the emerging personalities to their own ends. Alters can also be deliberately induced through torture or other means, and then trained and programmed. Some survivors of ritual abuse and mind control have alters organized in elaborate patterns designed by the perpetrators, with strict rules about how the alters communicate with each other.
What is multiplicity? Is it the same as DID?
“Multiplicity” refers to the state of being psychologically dissociated. The current psychiatric term for this condition is “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” or D.I.D. It was previously referred to as “Multiple Personality Disorder,” or “M.P.D.”
What is DDNOS (Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)?
(Adapted, with permission, from the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, 4th edition Text Revision), published by the American Psychological Association in 2000.)
DDNOS is a diagnosis that describes individuals who have dissociative symptoms, but do not meet the minimum criteria for any of the specific dissociative disorders. A person who has some (but not all) DID symptoms, and who does not have amnesia for important personal information would be an example of a person with DDNOS.
What is Co-Consciousness?
When two or more alters are aware of what is happening in the present, they are said to be co-conscious. When two or more alters share control over the body’s actions, they are said to be co-present.
A person may have alters who are unaware of each other, alters who are always mutually aware of each other, and alters who are aware at some times but not others. Alters who are aware of the presence of other personalities know they are multiple, while alters who aren’t in contact with other personalities often firmly believe they are “the only one there.” An alter may even have a subset of multiple alters.
What is Integration?
“Integration” is a term that can be used to describe two different processes. One is the process of alters learning to communicate and cooperate and share their memories. The other sense of the word is the actual merging (or fusion) of two or more alters to become one. Nothing is lost: all memories, talents, and personality traits are preserved, but organized in a different way. One survivor described integration as “falling in love with myself” rather than as the death of part of herself, as she had feared.
Some people do not fuse and find that their lives are perfectly satisfactory as long as their alters are communicating well. Others fuse partially, reducing the number of alters. Most people with many alters do this in stages, allowing time for the system to stabilize and get used to the new internal organization. Some people “become one” for a period of time and then either form new alters to deal with new life circumstances, or the former alters split off and become themselves again.
Adapting to being multiple is an on-going process. There are choices to make, decisions that make life easier or harder. There is no hard-and-fast rule about what works best, each person’s path in life is unique.
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Trafficking & Torture
What are Human Trafficking & Slavery?
Human trafficking is modern-day slavery, the buying and selling of human beings, usually for the purposes of profit and/or pleasure. This kind of exploitation is a common experience among survivors of extreme abuse, ritual abuse-torture and mind control. Many survivors report being traded amongst various perpetrator groups, including cults and governmental contractors.
(From the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime website.)
“Human Trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harbouring or receiving a person through the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, or abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, for the purpose of exploiting them. Exploitation includes prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims.”
What is Torture?
(From International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims )
“Torture is the intentional infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering by or with the consent of the state authorities for a specific purpose. [It] is often used to punish, obtain information or a confession, take revenge on a person or persons, or create terror and fear within a population. It is widely used in extreme abuse, ritual abuse and mind control. Some of the most common methods of physical torture include beating, electric shocks, stretching, submersion, suffocation, burns, rape and sexual assault. Psychological forms of torture and ill-treatment, which very often have the most long-lasting consequences for victims, commonly include: isolation, threats, humiliation, mock executions, mock amputations, and witnessing the torture of others.”
Who are the victims of torture?
(From International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims)
“Anyone can be a victim of torture – child, adult, young, old, religious, atheist, intellectual, or uneducated. Nobody [is] immune. Being a member of a particular political, religious, ethnic group or minority can often [make] individuals targets for government endorsed violence. Frequent victims include politicians, union leaders, journalists, health professionals, human rights defenders, people in detention or prison, members of ethnic minorities, and student leaders. Victims of torture do not suffer alone. Victims’ families and friends are also greatly affected. Local society is damaged both through the trauma inflicted on its members [and] through an instilled awareness that basic human rights are neither guaranteed nor respected. Freedom is not respected. People are not respected.”
What are the effects of torture?
(From International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims)
“The consequences of torture reach far beyond immediate pain. In addition to the symptoms of PTSD and Dissociative Disorders, torture victims often feel guilt and shame, triggered by the humiliation they have endured. Many feel that they have betrayed themselves or their friends and family. All such symptoms are normal human responses to abnormal and inhuman treatment.”
What is Non-state Actor Torture?
(From Persons Against NST Non-State Torture Including Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT))
”Non-state actor torture is torture committed, for instance, by parents, spouses, other kin, guardians, neighbours, trusted adults, or strangers in the private sphere, for example, in homes, warehouses, cabins, rented buildings, in fields, or in various public and private places.”
Non-state actor torture suffered by victims of ritual abuse and mind control is commonly perpetrated by cult members, or members of other organized crime networks.
Who are the perpetrators of torture?
(From Persons Against NST Non-State Torture Including Ritual Abuse-Torture (RAT))
“By definition, torture is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. Those most likely to be involved in torture include prison officers/detention staff, police, military, paramilitary forces, and state-controlled contra-guerrilla forces. (P)erpetrators may also include health or legal professionals, co-detainees acting with the approval or on the orders of public officials or death squads.
In the context of armed conflicts, torture and other forms of ill-treatment could also be inflicted by opposition forces, or the general population (in a civil war situation.)”
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Extreme Abuse & Ritual Abuse
What is Extreme Abuse?
(Adapted, with permission, from NAFF Foundation)
Extreme abuse can be defined as extreme forms of human-against-human abuse such as human trafficking and slavery; cult abuse; commercial sexual exploitation of children; forced participation in pornography, prostitution, drug sales, arms trafficking, murder for hire, and other illegal acts; child soldiering; kidnapping; false imprisonment; torture; ritual abuse; and mind control.
What is Ritual Abuse?
Ritual abuse is the abuse of a person or animal in a ritualized setting or manner. In a broad sense, many of our overtly or covertly socially sanctioned actions can be seen as ritual abuse, such as military basic training, hazing, racism, spanking children, and partner-battering.
The term “ritual abuse” refers to repeated, sadistic abuse, especially of children, within a group setting. The group’s ideology is often used to justify the abuse, and the abuse can be used to teach the group’s ideology, ensure loyalty and compliance, and to create and manipulate alters. The activities are kept secret from society at large, as they violate norms and laws, and violations of secrecy imperatives sometimes result in drastic consequences.
What is Ritual Abuse-Torture?
Ritual abuse-torture can take many forms, and is typically perpetrated by family members, guardians, or cult members, in a ritualized fashion. Ritual abuse-torture can include severe sexual abuse, electroshock, exposure to extreme temperatures, near-drowning, near starvation, forced ingestion of drugs, or human excrement, forced cannibalism and many other sadistic acts.
Ritualized emotional abuse or torture can include such manipulative tactics as trickery, deceit, blaming the victim, offering impossible choices, forced participation in extremely violent acts, or being forced to witness extremely violent acts. Spiritual abuse can manifest as the reversal of good and evil in a destruction-based indoctrinated morality, or the denial of freedom of thought.
What Ideologies are used to justify Ritual Abuse?
Any ideology can be twisted or adapted to abusive ends. In the United States, Canada, and Europe, people have reported being ritually abused under the banner of Masonic orders, white supremacy movements, Nazism, Satanism, Christianity, various pagan and pantheistic belief systems, Santeria, voodoo, etc. Political and national goals in many countries throughout the world have also been used as a justification for abuse.
Who perpetrates Ritual Abuse?
Ritual abuse can be perpetrated by both men and women, from all walks of life. The percentage of the population that perpetrates or is victimized is presently unknown. In general, perpetrators can be classified as:
- Family or Trans-generational: Adults who were abused as children in turn abuse and indoctrinate their own children. Ritual abuse can be passed down through several generations.
- Extra-familiar: Adults abuse non-related children. Children can be accessed at day care centers, schools, playgrounds, church, or through other social institutions, or they can be born into groups that ritually abuse their members.
- Ad hoc groups: Adults who may or may not have been ritually abused as children form a new group with its own ideology and rituals.
- Research & Controlled Application Groups: Adults, related or unrelated, with or without histories of abuse, are employed individually and/or in groups by government, military, medical, pharmaceutical, or corporate entities.
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Mind Control
What is Mind Control?
Mind control, like ritual abuse, has both a broad and a narrow definition. In a sense, all advertising and media, government, or corporate “spin doctoring” is a form of mind control, an attempt to make people buy certain brands or objects, or believe or do certain things. Political propaganda (my country is right and good, and the other country is wrong and bad) is also an example of attempted mind control in the broad sense of the term.
Where individual manipulation is concerned, however, the definition is much narrower and more sinister. In this context, “mind control” means that part of a person’s mind has been programmed to obey another person without question, while other parts of the mind are unaware of this situation.
What is deliberate trauma-based dissociation?
Discrete, dissociated alters can develop naturally due to extreme abuse, or other overwhelming traumatic experiences, but they can also be intentionally induced. This sadistic act is sometimes referred to as “deliberate trauma-based dissociation,” and is usually accomplished through the use of torture. Electroshock, forced drugging, isolation, sensory deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, near-drowning, near starvation, forced ingestion of human excrement, forced cannibalism are commonly cited forms of torture used to achieve these ends. People wishing to have total control over another person can thereby force their victim to radically dissociate, push them past the limit of internal integration, leaving what can be seen, essentially, as a blank slate for them to manipulate to suit their own agenda, or their group’s agenda.
Once a victim is “split,” or “dissociated,” that part or alter can be trained and programmed, and exploited privately, by an organization, or commercially. There may be parts that have been programmed to perform only one task or operation, or an unlimited number of operations. A part may be trained or programmed to be a complex or a very simple entity. A part may be programmed to believe it’s a non-human life form, or even an inanimate object.
Perpetrators of these crimes can control which alter they want to “come forward” using access codes they have programmed into the alters. These can be numbers, colors, symbols, sounds, or words, etc. Many victims of DID have hundreds of alternate, programmed personalities. They’re typically programmed to have no memory of having been switched after they return to their original state. The “core personality” or host may or may not notice they have “lost time.”
Victims of deliberate dissociation commonly have programs installed to make them either behave in such a way as to discredit themselves, should they begin to remember their abuse, and especially if they speak about it, or to simply self-destruct.
What is programming?
Programming refers both to the process of manipulating an alter, and to the content of what is taught, installed, or otherwise established by the perpetrator. Thus you can say that a person has been “programmed” to commit suicide under certain conditions, or you can talk about a suicide “program” that is triggered (activated) by certain words, numbers, visual or auditory cues, or conditions.
What are triggers and cues?
Triggers can be situations, smells, sounds, actions, words, or other prompts that bring a memory or feeling to consciousness, or that activate an internal program. A trigger is a catalyst. An example of a trigger for a non-dissociative person could be the smell of apple pie “taking them back to grandma’s kitchen.” Some common devices used to activate programs include hand signals and/or touching the person, telephone calls, gifts, letters or greeting cards, specific dates and/or events. Other cues commonly used to activate a dissociated alter include names, phrases, colors, lights, and sounds.
The term “triggered” can be used in a very broad sense to mean anything from following a command after seeing a hand signal, to having a flashback at the dentist, to getting upset when a friend, co-worker, or supervisor is rude or thoughtless. The word “cue” is usually used more narrowly and refers specifically to a trigger that activates a program.
Who practices Mind Control?
Mind control can be induced by any individual who understands the basic principles involved. These are usually individuals with a background in ritual abuse, government sponsored mind control, or hypnotism.
Many cults and other groups that practice ritual abuse use mind control; many ritual abuse practices are means by which mind control is achieved. Members are often not aware that they are participating in the cult or in abusive acts or ceremonies because of the mind control tactics used by these groups. Governments also have experimented extensively with mind control techniques, and continue to make use of them, primarily through federally funded intelligence agencies and military research projects.
Why would anybody want to control another person’s mind?
A person who is programmed but unaware of this fact can be made to serve the programmer’s will, on a small scale, and can also be made to commit dangerous, illegal or immoral acts. Such people make perfect spies, for example, because they are unable to reveal their mission if captured. They simply don’t know what they did, or were supposed to do, and cannot give out any information. They also make good assassins, drug runners, money launderers, sexual slaves for prostitution, pornography, or blackmail, etc. — anything that requires secrecy and uncontested compliance.
How is multiplicity used?
Trauma-based dissociation, the ensuing multiplicity, and amnesia are key elements of mind control. One or more alters can be programmed to do a certain task and other alters kept unaware of the programming or of the existence of the programmed alter. Different alters can be programmed in different ways, either for different tasks, or roles, or as a back-up.
Not all people who have been programmed “act like multiples.” Some do not even suspect they have alters. In the absence of an order, cue, or trigger from a programmer or handler, they may lead perfectly ordinary lives.
