March 11, 2025 • 60 mins
Judy and I on Dissociative Identities
This program comes out of seeing one more untrained therapist postulate that folks with dissociative identities (formerly known as multiple personalities) are rare and dysfunctional or simply do not exist. Judy and I are here to push back against this assumption that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you are a woman in Canada and haven’t heard of Judy Rebick, you haven’t been paying attention. Judy is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and is considered one of Canada’s leading feminists. She was the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and held the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy. She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions. She has been the TV host for CBC programs and was the founder and publisher for rabble.ca. Judy is known as a vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion and taking on a protestor with a pair of garden shears pointed at Dr. Morgentaler. She is the author of Heroes in My Head (2018) which outlines not just her political life but that of her personalities.
And while my audience has come to know me over the years, for the purpose of this program it is important that I fill you in a bit more. I am a graduate of Emily Carr University and an established visual artist, curator, and instructor. I worked as a film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and consultant for those with childhood trauma and dissociative identities. For 30 years, I have been an award-winning mental health advocate and am the host of this program which is Canada’s longest-running syndicated show on mental health where we disregard colonial-based ideas about mental health and the DSM. I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years speaking out against organized crime. I currently provide peer support through TELL the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation. I am a public speaker providing workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors. And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir, Coming to Voice, which chronicles surviving an abuse therapist and the role my dissociative identities played in saving my life.
So to dispel the myth that folks with DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judy and I are here to answer the questions sent into ReThreading Madness listeners of what DI is from our lived experience.
This program comes out of seeing one more untrained therapist postulate that folks with dissociative identities (formerly known as multiple personalities) are rare and dysfunctional or simply do not exist. Judy and I are here to push back against this assumption that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you are a woman in Canada and haven’t heard of Judy Rebick, you haven’t been paying attention. Judy is a Canadian writer, journalist, political activist, and is considered one of Canada’s leading feminists. She was the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) and held the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy. She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions. She has been the TV host for CBC programs and was the founder and publisher for rabble.ca. Judy is known as a vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion and taking on a protestor with a pair of garden shears pointed at Dr. Morgentaler. She is the author of Heroes in My Head (2018) which outlines not just her political life but that of her personalities.
And while my audience has come to know me over the years, for the purpose of this program it is important that I fill you in a bit more. I am a graduate of Emily Carr University and an established visual artist, curator, and instructor. I worked as a film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and consultant for those with childhood trauma and dissociative identities. For 30 years, I have been an award-winning mental health advocate and am the host of this program which is Canada’s longest-running syndicated show on mental health where we disregard colonial-based ideas about mental health and the DSM. I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years speaking out against organized crime. I currently provide peer support through TELL the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of therapy abuse and exploitation. I am a public speaker providing workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors. And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir, Coming to Voice, which chronicles surviving an abuse therapist and the role my dissociative identities played in saving my life.
So to dispel the myth that folks with DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judy and I are here to answer the questions sent into ReThreading Madness listeners of what DI is from our lived experience.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Vancouver Corp Radio CFR one hundred point
five FM. We're coming to you from the unseated traditional
territories of the Squamish, Muscream and Sleighvey tioth nations around
Vancouver be seen. I'm your host, Bernardine Fox, and this
is this show that dares to change how we think
about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness. We have ever
(00:27):
been fir.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
No, what the hell I am? I'm gonna do?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This program comes out of seeing one or more untrained
therapists postulate that folks with dissociative identities formerly known as
multiple personalities are rare and dysfunctional, or simply do not exist.
Judy and I are here to push back against this
assumption that couldn't be farther from the truth. If you're
(00:54):
a woman in Canada and haven't heard of Judy Rebick,
you haven't been paying attention. She is a Canadian writer, journalist,
political activist and is considered one of Canada's leading feminists.
She was the former president of the National Action Committee
on the Status of Women commonly known as NAC, and
held the Sam Ginden Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.
(01:16):
She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions,
and she has been the TV host for CBC programs
and was the founder and publisher for rabel dot Ca.
Judy is known as the vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion
and for taking on a protester with a pair of
garden shares pointed at Dr Morgenthaler. She is the author
(01:38):
of Heroes in My Head, which outlines not just her
political life, but that of her personalities. Judy Rebick lives
with dissociative identities and while my audience has come to
know me over the years, for the purpose of this program,
it is important that I fill you in a bit more.
I am a graduate of Emily car University and an
established visual arts curator and instructor. I worked as a
(02:03):
film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and
consultant for those with childhood trauma and associative identities. For
thirty plus years, I have been an award winning mental
health advocate and am the host of this program, which
is Canada's longest running syndicated show on mental health, where
we disregard colonial based ideas about mental health and the DSM.
(02:25):
I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years
speaking out against organized crime. I currently provide peer support
through Tell the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of
therapy abuse and exploitation. And I'm a public speaker, providing
workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors.
(02:47):
And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir Coming to Voice,
which chronicles surviving an abusive therapist and the role my
dissociative identity is played in saving my life. So if
this intro alone doesn't dispel the myth that folks with
DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judia and I are here
to answer the question sent into three Threading Madness by
(03:10):
our listeners of what DII is from our lived experience.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
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Radio CFROO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr O one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox,
and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Judy Rebick. Welcome, Judy,
thank you, it's nice to be here. Judy and I
are going to talk about having dissociative identities, and so
the first thing I want to know from you, Judy,
and I'll talk about it a little bit as well,
(03:48):
is what are some of the things that you want
your friends to understand about dissociative identities. I know that
I read your book and you did talk to some
of your friends about it. What did you want them
to know that time and does that changed now?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Well, I don't talk to my friends about it anymore
because I don't experience it anymore, or I haven't many
many years. But when I first experienced it or realized
that I had it, which was in the late nineteen eighties, yeah,
(04:24):
very late, like close to nineteen ninety, I didn't tell
hardly anybody. I told my very closest friends, and I
explained that I had these voices that took over when
I was feeling threatened. And yeah, I mean the way
(04:49):
I explained it is the way I explain it now,
which is I hear the voices, I know they're not
my voices, and I know they're not other people, their voices.
In my head, I don't see the people they're not,
you know, I don't see what they look like. I
just hear their voices. And in my case, I had
(05:09):
I think it's eleven different personalities fixs that were pretty present.
And they were all children, all but one. So so
I knew that it wasn't it wasn't me, and and
that's how I explained it to my friends and a case,
and the my therapist made a deal with them because
(05:33):
that was a really public figure when this happened. You know,
I was famous. I was like on the national at
least to the national CBC News, which was whenever they
watched back then, at least two nights a week, and
I often did press conferences, sometimes when they were hostile reporters,
you know. So uh so, my therapist made a deal
(05:58):
with the what she calls all as that they would
never speak in public and they could only speak to
my friends who knew about them, And the only ones
who knew about them were my closest friends. So I
didn't talk to my friends about it much until I
(06:19):
was pretty well over it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Had they come out before you knew.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
About them, I'm sure they did, but I experienced that
as a loss of time. I didn't hear. I just
knew that there were Like, I'll give you one story.
One of the times they always came out was if
I was tempting to have sex with a friend, it
was okay to have sex with the stranger. They didn't
feel threatened by that, but they were felt threatened by
(06:48):
sex with a friend because it was my father's confused me,
so someone I was close to, and then you know,
sometimes that turns into a sexual thing. And so for example,
with the one I remember best was with a friend
of mine who I shared a house with. You know,
we lived in communes back then, and you know, I
(07:11):
remember we went out. He was playing, he had been
asked to come. He was a musician, he was asked
to come up and play with the band, and I'd
never heard him play before, and blah blah. And when
we came back, we were kind of cuddling, and then
I went up to his room and I remember opening
the door, and then I had no memory of what
(07:32):
happened after.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Did you ever find out what happened after her? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
I did. I did many years later when I told
I got together with him, and I told him about
what had happened. What was wrong with me? And I
asked him and I told him I didn't remember, and
I asked him to tell me what happened, and he
said it was kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I'm sure. Yeah, what you had were child personality that
a child came forward, and that always complicates intimate relationships terribly.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Although he didn't experience it that way. He just experienced
that I was not myself, you know, I was troubled
or something. You know, he didn't experience it as a child,
because you know, that's a big leap, like you're having
sex woman and talks to you in a child's voice,
like yeah, yeah, it's no kidding weird, So he didn't
he experienced it, just that it didn't work. You know,
(08:31):
we're still friends after, Like it didn't ruin our relationship
or anything. It just didn't work right. So, and I
guess the most recent experience I had that I that
I was aware of was praying about and mus pray
about fifteen years ago when I was having a really
(08:51):
serious argument with someone a friend, like a serious enough
argument that I didn't think God was going to keep
being friends with her right and I walked into the
my I was in my house and I walked into
the kitchen and she came in and she said, and
I said, well, we really have to talk about this,
and she said, what do you mean we just did?
(09:14):
Oh no, And I had. I had completely dissociated that party, right,
and that was with a woman, which was very rare
for it to happen with a woman. So but she
had actually been a little inappropriate with me. She was
she was queer, so so so yeah, yeah, so it
(09:38):
was like I didn't talk to my friends about it.
It's because when I when I was healing from it,
was you know, nineteen ninety, right, Let nobody even talked
about childhood sexual abuse.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Not yet. They were, well they were starting to, but
not really a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
There was like one book, you know, there was my
Father's House.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I remember that book, of course. Yes, that's true. That's
true though.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah. I was just really lucky that I worked in
the pro choice struggle. I met this therapist, Marsha Wiener,
and I knew she was working with survivors of childhood
sexual assault. So I asked her me. And I was
really lucky because she was great.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh, she was and just so the audience knows it
is a connection between Judy and I and that I
also worked with Marshall Wiener, but I came from Vancouver
and flew out to Toronto for and intensive so it
was a very short period of time. But she was
the first person that I told that I had these
other parts of me, and I didn't. I didn't experience
(10:47):
lost time in the same way a lot of people did.
I think because I got really good at controlling my life,
so you know, for instance, I was really aware that
in my mind, in my life that you know, if
men then that certainly was my My focus at that
(11:08):
point was if you know, men had any interest in you,
you couldn't show it back or else that meant you
had to have sex with them. And that was the
conditioning of my childhood. I was so used as a
sexual object by that point that that's it. So I
did a lot of things outwardly to control things so
that that never happened. But I do know that when
(11:30):
I went through therapy, abuse and exploitation and came out
of that, I attempted to have relationships with other people.
There were three people in particular, and I toasted every
one of those relationships because I couldn't handle it, like you,
I was being triggered like crazy anything that was even
close to being intimate and h and I could not
(11:55):
control the parts of me. They just kept coming out
and saying things and doing things, and then I'd be
left with, what the hell are you guys doing? Like
you have to stop talking, Like just stop it, because
you come out and you say something and I get it.
You think you're helping, but you leave me to deal
with that, and it's just a mess. You're making a mess.
(12:16):
And they did. They did eventually stop, but not before
I toasted three relationships, two of which I've kind of resolved.
The other one I'm not sure we'll ever talk so,
but that's the one I feel the worst about.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Well, in my case, I had I did have relationships
with men and including one that lasted about six years,
but they were always men that I just knew, just
meant right, that was okay, that was safe.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But once I started dealing with in therapy, I wasn't
able to do that anymore. I never had another relationship,
another sexual reship. It was the time of my life
when I was like super busy. I was the president
of the largest women's group in the countries. You didn't
meet a lot of men, right. If you did, they
(13:10):
were scared to death at you.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So that so that's how I excuse the van.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I heard that they're scared to death of you.
So tell me how did how did having dissociated identities
impact on working?
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well, I mean it gave me. You know, I was
literally fearless. You know, people say about me, she was
fearless because you know, I know, you know the story
that when I was involved in the pro choice struggle
in the eighties and when the Morganhller clinic opened the
day at open, Doctor Morganhle arrived three o'clock in the
afternoon and he was in. He got to have a
(13:51):
taxi across the street and I was escored him into
the clinic and as we were walking, a guy attacked
him and the guy had a very sharp pair of
garden shears that he was going to stab Morganteller with,
and I pushed the guy away. And I mean I
had training as a marshal, so I first I tried
to talk the guy down, you know, I tried to
(14:13):
That's what you always do with a violent person on
a march, and when that didn't work, I pushed him
with both my hands back and that got There was
tons of cameras there, right, so that got That got
broadcast everywhere and has been ever since. Whenever they have
(14:36):
a news report on Morganteller, they show that clip. So
it's kind of what made me famous was that doing that.
And then people would call me fearless, right because and
I was fearless. I really was fearless, Like I never
experienced fear or anxiety never, and so because if I
felt fear anxiety, I would associate, right, So so you know,
(14:58):
people say you're fear listen. I said, yeah, I was fearless,
but it's not a good thing. This function. Fear is
an important the.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Most fear is important. It's like, I think.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
I'm still a courageous person. I still I'd still have
courage even when I'm afraid I'll do something. But I
was literally fearless. So the impact that it had was
I think it was you know that it helped me
to work more effectively because I and my my ex
(15:30):
says that what I would do is I would work
and work and work and work and work and work,
and then I would collapse for two weeks. And so
I think it made me incapable of balancing my work.
I think I just like fanatically working all the time.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, being a work I understand being So.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's probably the biggest impact it had. And I wasn't
the only thing I can remember feeling. I could feel.
I could sense of humor, so I could laugh, but
I couldn't feel love. And that's pretty bad, you know,
when you can't feel loved.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, I understand that, but I think it was for
me it was more that I actually didn't. I call
it not having love receptors in your brain because I
grew up in a childhood that did not have love
in it, and so I did.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I did.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, that's a very different thing. So yeah, I think
what saved me.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
And I actually I was at a funeral, an online
zoom funeral.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I hate those ones. Actually was it wasn't bad.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
You know, it was my New York family. It was
somebody in my New York family. And I don't know
these most of these people anymore. I don't know their
kids or anything. But the adult, the adults, the old
people there I grew up with, right and and I
don't have anything in common with them anymore. They're all Americans.
But but and I came here when I was ten, right,
(16:56):
So until I was ten, I was part of an
extra ended family. Like my best friend was my cousin's
cousin sort of thing, right, And so I think that
helped me a lot because I had that. I did
have a lot of love that's wonderful from my grandmother. Less,
I think from my mother because of the abuse. Like
(17:18):
I don't think she knew about the abuse, but she
knew something was wrong. And when I disclosed abused to her,
she said, well, you know, when you were five years old,
you turned away from me, you stopped connecting with me,
and you know, like I said, ah, why didn't you
do something about it? Like if I a five year
old stopped connecting with her mother and you don't do
(17:39):
anything about it. And of course she said, well, we
didn't know about things like that then, right. My mother
was a very loving person, but she was with my
father and she wasn't willing to confront him.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You know, did you have any male personalities?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And you did they come forward to help you.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
About the mission what they call it, what Marsha would
call the guardian personality, the one that knew about everybody
was the man. His name is Simon and he was
like my brother Alban, who's to this day my closest friend.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
That's cool, Yeah, that is cool. How would you actually,
we just need to take a little break here, so
I'm not going to ask this question, but when we
come back, I'm going to ask you how would you
describe having d I like, what it was that like?
And I think that that's maybe a hard question, but
we'll talk about it when we come back. We'll be
right back, folks. How can you protect your keys?
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Speaker 1 (18:47):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver called Radio CPR
one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox and I'm
talking with Judy Rebick about having associated identities, which is
something we both share. Judy, you are talking about being fearless.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Nowadays, people are very afraid to say what they think
you know, because they'll be attacked. Right, And this is
something I see all the time in my students, right,
Like they like my class because they don't have to
be afraid about what they're saying, particularly on Israel Palestine
that's become there, it is resent, And I've never felt that, right, So,
(19:23):
like in my whole life, I've never felt afraid to
say what I think. So it's like I made a
living doing that, Like I was, you know, the left
wing host of a right left debate show, debating right
wingers every night of the week, right, And I'm never
nervous about saying what I think, ever, And so it's
it's kind of weird because it's unusual for especially for
(19:45):
a woman, to never be afraid to say what she thinks,
no matter what the cost of that is, right, I mean,
and including like, and I've never been fired from a job,
but I came pretty close a couple of times. And
part of that is the dissociation and part of that
and the practice of that, and part of that is,
(20:05):
I guess being in the pro choice struggle at a
fairly young age. And so I mean I wasn't young.
I was in my thirties early forties. But was you
know youngish and to me now and that there you
had to really steal yourself because we're facing violence too.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yes, true, but I was.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Dissociated then, right, But I just learned to say what
I think and not to worry about the consequences when
I couldn't feel fear, And now that I can feel fear,
I never feel afraid to say what I think. Ever,
I never feel nervous about it or anything. So it's
hard for me as a teacher to talk to people
about it because I don't I mean, I always try
(20:45):
to be sympathetic, and I am sympathetic, but I don't
understand it, right, Like I don't understand through my own experience.
So it's a good thing and a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
True. But I would imagine if I just make sort
of speculate here, is that if you were able to
not feel fear, you also then acted in ways that
you didn't feel fear, unlike somebody else, and therefore you
learned a lot of skills about how to be fearless
in the world that somebody else whose fear took over
(21:20):
they didn't learn because their fear took forward. So can
you describe having dissociative identities from your perspective, I think
we're clear that we both had a different experience of
having dissociative identities. But what was yours life?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Yeah, Well, my experience when the actual and this is
like this was almost always in therapy, right. It only
happened once like this outside of therapy, and I can
talk about that, okay, Well, but in therapy, the way
it worked is that there was a voice and I
was speaking, but I wasn't speaking. I could hear this
(22:00):
voice speaking. It wasn't my voice, it was another voice. Yeah,
And I couldn't control what the voice was saying. I
didn't know what he was going to say next. It
was like I was my consciousness, the Judy Rebit consciousness
was in the back of my head somewhere listening. I
never saw what they look like or anything. I just
(22:21):
heard their voices, and all their voices were different because
they were different ages, different genders. And the one time
I did that, one of the altars who one of
the altars asked if she could talk to my friend
Robert had a crush on him, and she was a
little girl and she wanted me to meant to be
(22:45):
my boyfriend. Right, He was my friend and he had
worked with kids who were abused in daycare, so he
was even though I didn't know him all that well,
he was a friend that I shared stuff with because
he knew about this, right, yes, so and so Marcia
(23:06):
said that that was okay. So we arranged that she
would talk to him and he said, and I said, well,
what was it like to him? Like? And he said,
it was like you introduced me to a friend that
I didn't know and then you left the room, right,
So how could it be? It's my body? It was
my body and he said, yeah, but it wasn't you, right,
(23:30):
So that was interesting. Now you know, pray if it happened.
Now we take a video of that. But I don't
have a video of it. No, I don't, you know.
I don't know except from how it was inside my head.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
And in that experience, were you aware of what was happening?
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No, okay, so you.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
But I was aware of completely. Experience was more watching
that I was outside the room watching right, right.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So you did have memory, but it was of being
of watching. Yeah, yeah, when I've been in crisis. I
mean we talked a little bit about this at the
break was, you know, my abuse was very severe and
very structured, and so my system developed in a very
structured way, which meant I was very controlled about what,
(24:18):
where and how. And but when I go into crisis,
parts come forward trying to deal with the crisis, and
they're not always doing what would say is helpful. But
it's like that you know where you're saying something and
you're going, what the hell stop talking, like, just just
(24:40):
stop talking people, But you can tell they're trying to help,
They're trying to do what they think is right. And
the certainly in my experience, I don't have eleven. I
have more than eleven, but I don't know how many.
I stopped counting because it really didn't matter. It was
sort of like being in a all town, say, for instance,
(25:02):
or a small group. You don't need to know how
many you just you know you're conversing with whoever is there.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
But well, when I converse with them, I never actually
talked to them. I did it by writing, Yeah, I
just do it in my head. That's like the front
page of heroes in my head. That's what the artists did,
took their writing and so yeah, I did it. Through writing.
I never you know, because I would feel them getting
(25:30):
restless and when I was doing something and I would
write right there and they would write back. So that
was how I communicated with them. I didn't talk to them.
I wrote to them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, mine is all an internal dialogue unless they're outside talking,
and then I have to like do outside talking myself
to tell them to shut up.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
But I think the writing helped to control them not
to come out.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well maybe for you, yeah, absolutely. One of the things
that I heard that I found really insulting was, you know,
this idea that we're rare and fragile and dysfunctional and
so how could we possitive whatever? But somebody was it
was a thread, and somebody responded to in that thread
to say, well, I heard that somebody had thirty one personalities,
(26:20):
Like how is that even possible? How can they even
keep track of them? And that to me is a
very sort of really naive comment made by somebody who
I would term as singular, somebody who lives with one
body and one personality, and you know, people who are
(26:43):
plural don't think about it in that way. It's it's
the same way as if you had thirty one friends
you you're not you're not keeping track of them. You
just know who they are. And so it's fascinating to
me to see how you can sort of see how
the treatment that I treatment I put in quotes, or
(27:03):
the therapy for d I is about creating one personality
that seemed to have been the focused at you know,
for a long time. I don't know if it's still
the focus, but I think when you lived plural, that
is how you live. That's who you are, and you
can learn to live with that very well. I mean,
(27:24):
you've demonstrated that, you know, there are ways that you
can live with it and still be you know, function
at a very high level, and having to be singular
is not necessarily the goal. It is for people who
are singular, they norm you know, the same way we
used to norm everything based on men. I think singular
(27:45):
people norm treatment based on their own idea of what
is normal for them. I certainly haven't gone that way
and probably never will. I function at a very high level,
and in fact, I've always said that if I was
(28:06):
somebody who had a business and had to hire people,
I would hire people based on the fact that they
had multiple personalities, because you're going to focus and you
can dissociate all the stuff that doesn't have to be
at work and you do your job and you do
it well. And so that's not my experience at all. No, well,
that's interesting. Tell me your experience.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Well, my experience is that I didn't want to keep
having this. I wanted to I want to stop having it.
I wanted I wanted it to stop. I didn't. I
didn't think at the time. I just thought it was crazy.
Like I would say that, you know, now I know better,
but you know I didn't. I had no idea, Like
(28:48):
you know, after they were off and out after therapy,
and you know, like one time there was one that's
five years old, little boy, kind of mischievous, and he
wanted to go for ice cream. We went to an
ice cream place nearby, and he as soon as I
stepped into the ice cream place, he comes out and
he says what color ice cream is? He got So
(29:11):
she thinks she's dealing with some lunatic. I wasn't old,
but you know, your lady woman saying what.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Color ice cream is?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So that's funny.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
But you know, no I understand.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Oh I don't see, so I guess I mean, I
see the advantage in my life that again, sure, I
don't really see an advantage now to it, like I
think that I can do I mean, you know, I
can do most of the things I used to be
able to do. You know I can't. I can't work
(29:47):
as madly, but that's partly because I'm just older. I
don't really see that it gave me. You know that
it that it's a positive thing. What's weird though, is
that you know, my book is mostly about this, right,
it's a feeling from abuse, and yet I would say
(30:08):
in the interviews that I did, especially in Canada, they
don't want to talk to me about it, like because
they have this idea Judy Rebik is a very powerful,
very strong, very effective person and you are. Yeah, but
they can't put that together with having what they considered
to be a mental illness. Absolutely, I don't think it's
(30:31):
a mental illness. I agree with you that it is
a brilliant coping mechanism for a child who isn't being protected,
right because basically, you use what a child has in
more better than an adult, which is imagination. You're using
your imagination to create people who can protect you. When
(30:55):
people who are supposed to protect you aren't protecting or
actually or abusing you, right, right, So it's a brilliant
mechanism to cope right and not loser, tonnot lose your
sanity if you want exactly. But but would I want
it now? No, it would be a pain to have
(31:15):
it now, and I have no desire to have it now,
I said, I said too earlier that you know, I'm
a really good speaker, like especially at a rally. I
just it's like a gift. I have a talent and
I clab it so I can like really move a crowd, right.
And what I do the way I experience it is
(31:37):
that I take the energy of the crowd and I
give it back. I learned to do that in the
pro choice movement. Well, what I notice now that I
never noticed before is when I stopped speaking, I'm in
a different state of consciousness like that I've been in
a different Like I'll go to a rally without preparing
(31:59):
anything right to say, and I just step on the
stage and I and I say what I have to say,
and I almost never think about what I'm going to say.
It's just there, like it's like some mode of communication
that I have energy that just comes to me. What
does this crowd need? You know? And and so I
(32:22):
don't do that if I'm giving, you know, a paid
speech or something with slides. But if I'm speaking to
a crowd, right, and I need and my job is
to get them going. Yes, that's what people want me
to speak, That's why they invite me, right, get them going, right,
That's what I and and what I realize is if
(32:43):
I get interrupted somehow and actually not even that, just
at the end of it, I feel like I have
to pull my consciousness back to normal because it's somewhere else. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And so do you think this is a personality?
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Alan?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I think what is this a personality? Or is this
a talent?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
I don't know. I don't know because the only people
I know, the only people I know who have expressed
something similar is Bruce Springsteen, and his memoir says that
when he's the only time he's chronically depressed, the only
time is not depressed is when he's performing. And he
describes something very similar to what I. Yeah, and actors too,
(33:29):
write actors do it too. So so yeah, and actors
I've seen actors like moving from in character to themselves
and they do the same kind of thing. So I'm
not I don't think it's a different personality. I just
think it's a different consciousness.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
M h. It's an interesting correlation though, to trying to
look at both of those things and determine, you know,
what part is what part you You had a personality
that as an adult, Why did that happen? I've had
the same thing, and it happened. I'll just say this.
It happened because I was in serious crisis and I
(34:09):
was acting out in ways that I had never done
before in my life. Like I told you, I'd been
very controlled, but I went through a very terrible experience
of therapy abuse and exploitation, which is a profound betrayal
to victims, and I started acting out really badly, which
(34:30):
I documented in my memoir about it. But this part
came forward at that point and I knew that it
was a new part. It was not somebody that had
been there before. And she literally took control, like just
took control, got rid of clothes, got rid of jewelry,
got rid of you know, made rules, and just literally
(34:51):
pulled me out of that and put me on a
different track. I mean, it was just really clear why
she was there. So, but you had a personality that
developed as an adult. What was that like for you?
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I don't remember. Oh, like, it wasn't It wasn't a
major thing. It was just one of the personalities that
came out was older. That's all. I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Was she older as in the same age as you
at that time, or was she.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Older She would have been older, like in her twenties.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Okay, all right, but you're not.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
I don't know. Maybe it was, you know, it's possible
it was related to the to the the Garden Shears incident.
There was another incident where I was almost killed. I
try to throw me off the subway platform, so it
could have happened then, right, this was all during the
(35:42):
pro choice struggle. But I don't really know because that
personality was did appear once or twice, but never we
never got into it. So, you know, I don't even
know what her name was.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
They don't need names.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, I don't have an answer to that. And something
take over. No, I was lucky because after the confrontation
with the Garden Shears. I was lucky because a woman
was there, not Marsha, but another woman who was a therapist,
and she asked me to come behind the clinic and
(36:20):
asked me how I was doing and giving me support
so that I could come back. If I had been
at him myself, I could come back. Okay, So she
did that for me, But I don't really know if
it was you know, I don't you know that in
that incident. What I remember and what I've seen on
television three hundred times, it's hard to distinguish.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
We just need to take a little break books, but
we'll be right back with Judy and I talking about
dissocial do identities.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
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To find out how you might benefit from the Greater
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donate money or volunteer your time, please visit their website
(37:11):
at Foodbank dot BC dot c A.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
If you're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver cop Radio
CFR one hundred point five f M, I'm Bernadine Fox
talking with Judy Rebbick about dissociative identities, which we both share. Judy,
what convinced you you had d I did you always
know it? And or no idea?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
I mean I was I was in you know. What
happened was I had completely repressed my memories of sexual
abuse and then well it actually happened around don't know,
very few people remember Barbara Dodd. But after we won
the abortion fight, there were there were two legal cases
(37:54):
where men tried to say that there had to be
an abortion low so that they could have, you know,
part of the decision of whether whether to have the
abortion or not. After she won her case and she
had the abortion, then she turned right because the anti
choice pressure on her, and she said the women's movement
had convinced her to have the abortion. What happened was
(38:18):
her sister called me, and her sister was really freaking
out and saying, he's got control of her mind. That's
what she said to me. And that was her boyfriend,
her ex boyfriend, And and then I was watching TV
and the sister was going after this guy, physically going
after him, and the cops grabbed her and she just
(38:42):
was completely out of control. Right, the cops drabbed her
and forced her into the car, and for whatever reason,
that triggered all my memories of abuse. Really that interesting, Yeah,
And you know, i'd been in therapy because i'd been
diagnosed with a clinical depression a few years before, like
about five years before that, like you know, depression. I
(39:05):
couldn't get out of bed depression, and I had had
one memory of being abused at the end of that therapy,
but I decided not to tell my therapist because then
I'd have to keep going to therapy and I didn't
want to, I really, you know. And it was another
three years later that this happened, and all of a sudden,
(39:27):
my mind was just filled with the memory of me,
but I didn't know who it was, right, So I
called Marcia and I said, look, I'm having these memories
of abuse. I don't know what to do, like, and
so she had me, like you know, she hypnotized me, right,
and when she the second or third session of the hypnosis,
the first altar came out, and that the first time
(39:49):
I ever knew that they existed or heard the voices
or anything. So I was completely unaware that this was
you know, that this was happening.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
And did you did you find that you believed it
all right away or did you have problems?
Speaker 4 (40:07):
You know, so you know I kind of I kind
of dissociated from it, right, That's what was happening in therapy, right,
you know when I say it now, I think what
was it? So like really, at the very beginning of
this therapy, I was approached by UH two, by by
Doris Anderson and Normous Scarborough to run to be president
(40:30):
of NAC. Okay, like, like you have to realize, like
NAC was a very middle of the road women's group.
Now they've been a president the year before, but I
mean generally it was like women politicians who were in
that there was a left wing, but you know, it
wasn't a radical group. And I was like really a radical,
like I was in the street radical right right right
(40:51):
in the choice struggle. And they knew with mulroney coming
in that he was going to go after the women's
movement and they needed a fighter. So they asked me
to do it, and Marcia didn't think I should do it.
My brother, who was the other person who knew the
shape I was and didn't think I should do it,
But I just had this feeling that the only way
I'm going to get through this is to be powerful
(41:14):
in my life, and so that's what I did. And
it's like very dramatic, but I did that right. Like nowadays,
you have no idea how famous I was. Even I
have no idea how famous I was, because I got
a political memoir now and I'm going, holy.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Shit, yeah, that's how I felt.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Magazine. You know, I'm on in television all the time.
I'm debating cabinet ministers, political cartoons of Joe Clark. I think,
Judy please please, and me think no means no Joe.
It was crazy how famous I was, right and all
(41:55):
in conflict with the government. So it was like I
just knew that this would be good for me. Everybody else,
I mean, there weren't that many people who knew what
I was going through, but everybody who knew what I
was going through thought I was out of my mind to.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Do so tell us why it? Tell us why it was?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
I think because because the only frame I had for
understanding this was mental illness right at the time, and
I couldn't stand to be weak my whole life. I
needed to be strong, and so I had a proof
to myself that I was still strong, and even though
(42:37):
I was facing what was wrong with me, I could
still be strong. I think that was really important to
my survival and to my getting through it. And like
I say, Marcia said to them, you know, because their
job is to protect me. Marcia said, if you come
(42:59):
out public, you'll get Judy in trouble, right, And so
they never did. They never did come out to pull.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Them And I think that's one of the things that
people don't understand about dissociative identities is that every personality
is there to protect, even the ones that we think
are really bad and horrible and you can do bad things,
they are there to protect some part of the system.
And so in that way, you set up a system
(43:28):
intuitively that allowed you to to heal. You could go
into those places you felt weak and little because you
had this other part of you life, of this other
part of your life that was identified you as strong
and fearless. You know, so kudos to you. One of
(43:49):
the things that I want to chat about is the
notion of mental illness when it comes to dissociative identities,
and I and you know, people sometimes very often mistake
it for schizophrenia. This is not schizophrenia. It is a
response to trauma. I know that there are some people
(44:10):
who identify it as something that happened to them, that
they developed, not from trauma, but I don't understand that,
so I can't speak to that. But I'm really, as
I said before, cannot see something that allowed you to
survive terrible trauma. And you've said it too, as something
(44:32):
that is wrong with you. So you know, here in
rethreading madness, we actually don't even use the term mental illness.
We talk about people with lived experience of mental health challenges.
It's all mouthful, but it means that.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Well. I think we should take a cue from the
neurodiverse people, like it's it's everybody's got issues, you know,
like everybody's nobody's perfect as perfect mental health, you know,
it's like physical illness, right, like not you know, like
you don't when you're physically ill, you don't say, oh
(45:10):
my god, you know, like unless you're going to die, right,
everybody is physically ill and everybody is it is mentally
off I'm dying to die. There's nobody who's not mentally
off balance. Somehow. It's a spectrum and dissociative identity disorder
is pretty far over on the spectrum if you have
(45:31):
actual multiple personalities, but it's still on that spectrum. And
I think that, actually, I really do think that most
of people in our society who accomplish extraordinary things are
on that spectrum somewhere.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
I agree, I.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Agree somewhere on the spectrum. And the more I hit
and the more I understand about it, Like great performers
are like Springsteener or Jimmy Hendrick kind of performers that
just have that incredible energy, right, like you know, Okay,
maybe not in a band, I don't know, but individuals
who can do that, like, how can they do that?
(46:12):
It's only because there's something wrong with.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Them, or there's something right with them.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Something right with them. But they're not normal. They're not
in the normal part of the spectrum. They're extraordinary, right,
And you know, because I had the privilege of an
extended family, because I have a pretty good mother, even
though she made a mistake about how she handled it,
(46:39):
and because who knows what other reasons, my father, I guess,
felt guilty and so outside of the abuse, he treated
me better than he treated his sons.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Wow, which was.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Really like he'd say to me, you're more of a
man than your brothers, right, interesting, which his view was
a compliment. So he taught me to be powerful in
my life, which is really unusual. Right. And so yeah,
when people ask me why I'm so powerful, I watched
(47:14):
my father was very powerful and he was really fucked
up too, you know. So I think we should see
mental health as a spectrum, just like we see now
that we see neurodiversity as a spectrum. Yeah, or maybe
it's a form of neurodiversity. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Maybe I don't know. I don't know the answers to
that because I'm just somebody with lived experience who has
a radio show. So but I do know certain things.
That is that both Harvard and Canada have both done
research that has shown that one in two people in
their lifetime will live deal with a mental health challenge.
(47:51):
That means who's normal? You know which part of that
is normal? I'm not really sure. I also know that
there are people who've been involved around the DSM, which
is our diagnostic statistical manual. I hate that term, but
it is the you know, many many hundreds of pages
of diagnostics criteria about mental illness. And I say that
(48:15):
in quote and what they know, and what they've said
is that if they took out every one of those
diagnoses that have to do with trauma, they would be
left with a pamphlet, which means that we have pathologized trauma.
We have pathologized a normal, natural response to trauma, which,
(48:36):
in my opinion, is what dissociative identities is. It is
something that helps little kids and maybe even adults, continue
to survive in a world that is not survivable to
them any other way. It is the only way their
brain was able to cope in that moment. And I
certainly know.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
I think soldiers probably have it too. But you know,
they don't call it that. That's all.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Or right? They often don't remember what happened, right?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Is that partly that? Or is that from PTSD or chronic?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
I just don't know.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
I mean, well, yeah, what is the difference. That's a
good question, Judy, what is the difference between chronic post
traumatic stress and associative identities? Hmmm, I'm sure one of
my listeners will be able to tell us what did
healing look like for you?
Speaker 4 (49:34):
Well, for me, it was I it's been a it's
a really long process like the other Like I had
a friend, a friend's daughter who i've known since she
was a baby, killed last year and I experienced grief
for the first time. I've been sad when somebody died.
(49:57):
I'd never experienced grief before, and that was just last year.
So I'm still healing in that sense, right, because grief
is probably the most powerful emotion that you can feel,
except maybe falling in love, which I've never felt. So
I think that I'm still healing in that sense. And namely,
(50:21):
was that I started to have feelings like I could
get angry. I could feel angry, but I couldn't feel
other feelings. I never felt really happy, I never felt
I never almost never cried or had we ever cried.
I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel anxious ever. Like
I remember about fifteen twenty years ago, I felt I
(50:43):
had broken I had a broken bone, and I was
had a speaking engagement and I had to speak and
I felt something and I didn't know what it was,
and I was anxious. I was anxious. I never felt anxious. Right,
The actually healing process of of the personalities actually have
(51:05):
In my book, I write this and you know, it's
like it reads like something a writer made up, but
I actually experienced it that I had a dream that
all of the all of these children are on the
other side of a fence, and there's one child still
with me, and they're all calling to that child, and
finally he runs across and jumps over the fence, and
then they all wave to me and they go away.
(51:27):
And that was my experience of it. And after that,
I never experienced it again in therapy or anywhere. What
was your original question, I don't remember. That was my experience,
and it was after I don't know, two years of therapy.
You know, them be intensely around and me communicating with
(51:51):
them and so on. And then every once in a
while when I was talking about it, especially when I
was doing the book tour, and when I talk about it,
I would feel this sort of the uneasy feeling. I
get it once in a while, and I think that's
kind of yeah, sort of getting ready to dissociate. But
(52:12):
i'd never do and I haven't been a long time anyway.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
So let's go back to the book. Then, you wrote
this book. It was really very much a memoir of
your political activities, but also of your personalities. But you've
talked about how people want to talk to you about
your political activities but don't kind of mention this other part.
Why do you suppose that.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Is Well, because they see me as a powerful person
and they can't they can't equate that with mental illness,
what they consider mental illness, so they don't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
Yeah, it is unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
Maybe it's because they don't believe it exists. See, there's
people also who don't believe that this is a real thing.
I don't know that they think a therapists made it up,
you know, the false memory syndromes.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Everybody knows that both fit now. Yeah, it like with
my parents when I confronted my parents about it, that's
what they hung on to. It's that because it had
just emerged.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Yes, and it has been debunked at this point.
Speaker 4 (53:16):
And quite seriously, I know someone who's a therapist who
doesn't believe multiple personalities exist. So go figure.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
You know, part of that is their training. They I've
talked to therapists who actually one of them was the
former president of the International Society for the Study of
Association and Trauma and She said that in her training,
they got to the chapter on dissociation and associative identities
and they were literally told to skip that chapter because
(53:47):
either a it didn't happen or you'll never come across
it anyway, because we're so rare. So so there is
a lot of things that happen in the training that says,
don't look here, don't talk about that. And then then
we have things where you know, people are debunking it
on no, I shouldn't even say debunking it because they're
(54:07):
not debunking it. In fact, there is a lot of
physical scientific evidence that dissociative identities exists, but they are
are trying to say it doesn't so and I, you know,
you really have.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
To They're not doing that with schizophrenia or with depression.
They don't think like depression is made up. Why this
is the one that they try and debunk it makes
It's the way it was presented in literature, like three
Faces of Eve, you know, which is like the Three
Faces you know the movie? Right?
Speaker 1 (54:40):
I do, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
Yeah, maybe that's why I don't know.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
But well, the other thing to know about the Three
Faces of Eve, which ties into therapist abuse and exploitation,
which where I kind of focus my mental health advocacy
these days, is that she her name was Christine Seizemore.
I believe that was Eve. Her psychiatrist got her to
sign away the rights to her story, her life story.
(55:05):
He wrote the book, he starred in the movie. He
made himself famous that way, and she came back to
him several years later and said, there are more personalities,
and he told her this is what I've been told.
He told her you can't talk about that because I
own the story of your life and you can't talk
(55:28):
about it. And she wasn't able to talk about it,
I think until he died. There's actually a documentary now
about her and this process, and so it's just another
story about how, you know, somebody a therapist made themselves
famous off the story of, you know, the trauma of
their client and then did wrong to their client. So wow, yeah, bad,
(55:52):
it's really bad. And so give me a link.
Speaker 4 (55:55):
I'd be interested.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
I will send you a link to that. I will
actually put a link. Also think it is.
Speaker 4 (56:00):
That dissociation that makes it so scary for people for
mental health experts that they deny it exists. So why this.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
One why this one? Okay? So I have a Jewish
friend who once told me who does it benefit? Think about?
Who does it benefit to deny that dissociative identities exist?
People who are perhaps committing the crimes that cause trauma
to a child that requires them to dissociate. And those
(56:34):
some of those people have a lot of power. You know,
in my case, I was traumatized through human trafficking and
organized crime. Those people have a lot of power, and
they still have a lot of power, and you know
that whole you know, denial came out after that. We
had been doing a lot of work to get people
to understand it and recognize it and deal with it
(56:55):
and understand it as a response to trauma. All of
a sudden the backlash began. And so to me, the
backlash happens from people who have in some way benefit
from it not being recognized or acknowledged or treated. So
my personal, humble opinion, and we have to stop. I
can't believe I have to say that, but we do
(57:16):
have to stop. So thank you Judy for this wonderful conversation.
It really has been a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
It's my pleasure. But it's okay, it didn't upset me.
So that's there, you go.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Well, it has been my pleasure.
Speaker 4 (57:29):
I haven't talked about it in a long time.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
So well, I'm glad. I'm so grateful you came and
talked to us about it here with us because it's
a well, it's a lot of people out there who
have dissociate identities who have been silenced, and I think
it's important that we provide some kind of platform for
them to know that it's okay to talk about it.
So thank you, and I kind to be disabled by
(57:54):
it like no, absolutely and you're not absolutely not. That
is the whole key to healing is management and taking
control of it for yourself, certainly something I do all
the time. So thank you, Judy, and I hope I
have a chance of talking with you against you. That
would be lovely And that's our show. I'm hoping by
(58:17):
the end of this program you are looking around you
at the very strong, fearless people in your life who
always get things done and realize that they may well
live with dissociative identities as well. And if you want
to know more about how to discern between DII and schizophrenia,
take a listen to the program more than One, a
conversation with doctor Colin Ross, which you can find on
(58:39):
any podcast platform. You can find Judy Rebick's book Heroes
in My Head and my book Coming to Voice on Amazon.
My sincere thanks to Judy Rebick for engaging in this
discussion with me, and to Sherry Alrich for the gift
of her music. But most importantly, my thanks goes out
to you for joining us today. Stay safe out there.
(59:00):
You've just listened to Rethreading Madness, where we dare to
change how we think about mental health. We air live
on Vancouver co Op Radio CFR one hundred point five
FM every Tuesday at five pm or online at co
opradio dot org. If you have questions or feedback about
this program, or want to share your story, or have
something to say to us, we want to hear from you.
(59:22):
You can reach us by email Rethreading Madness at co
opradio dot org. This is Bernardine Fox. We'll be back
next week. Until then, we have ever.
Speaker 4 (59:33):
Been fir.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Do what the hell I'm gonna do? When I can't
see a fine away under over too? Just want?
Speaker 1 (59:52):
I'm ready and give the life
Speaker 2 (59:56):
They are when we tell
You're listening to Vancouver Corp Radio CFR one hundred point
five FM. We're coming to you from the unseated traditional
territories of the Squamish, Muscream and Sleighvey tioth nations around
Vancouver be seen. I'm your host, Bernardine Fox, and this
is this show that dares to change how we think
about mental health. Welcome to Rethreading Madness. We have ever
(00:27):
been fir.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
No, what the hell I am? I'm gonna do?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This program comes out of seeing one or more untrained
therapists postulate that folks with dissociative identities formerly known as
multiple personalities are rare and dysfunctional, or simply do not exist.
Judy and I are here to push back against this
assumption that couldn't be farther from the truth. If you're
(00:54):
a woman in Canada and haven't heard of Judy Rebick,
you haven't been paying attention. She is a Canadian writer, journalist,
political activist and is considered one of Canada's leading feminists.
She was the former president of the National Action Committee
on the Status of Women commonly known as NAC, and
held the Sam Ginden Chair in Social Justice and Democracy.
(01:16):
She rubbed elbows and engaged with politicians in intense discussions,
and she has been the TV host for CBC programs
and was the founder and publisher for rabel dot Ca.
Judy is known as the vocal spokesperson to legalize abortion
and for taking on a protester with a pair of
garden shares pointed at Dr Morgenthaler. She is the author
(01:38):
of Heroes in My Head, which outlines not just her
political life, but that of her personalities. Judy Rebick lives
with dissociative identities and while my audience has come to
know me over the years, for the purpose of this program,
it is important that I fill you in a bit more.
I am a graduate of Emily car University and an
established visual arts curator and instructor. I worked as a
(02:03):
film production manager before becoming a peer support worker and
consultant for those with childhood trauma and associative identities. For
thirty plus years, I have been an award winning mental
health advocate and am the host of this program, which
is Canada's longest running syndicated show on mental health, where
we disregard colonial based ideas about mental health and the DSM.
(02:25):
I am a survivor of human trafficking and spent years
speaking out against organized crime. I currently provide peer support
through Tell the Therapy Exploitation Link Line to survivors of
therapy abuse and exploitation. And I'm a public speaker, providing
workshops on TAE and facilitating peer support groups for fellow survivors.
(02:47):
And I have, like Judy, authored a memoir Coming to Voice,
which chronicles surviving an abusive therapist and the role my
dissociative identity is played in saving my life. So if
this intro alone doesn't dispel the myth that folks with
DI are fragile and dysfunctional, Judia and I are here
to answer the question sent into three Threading Madness by
(03:10):
our listeners of what DII is from our lived experience.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
If you want to listen to us anywhere you travel,
you can go into your Google Play Store and then
download the Radio Player Canada app and you can then
you can listen to your favorite radio station co Op
Radio CFROO one hundred point five FM.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver co Op Radio
cfr O one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernardine Fox,
and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Judy Rebick. Welcome, Judy,
thank you, it's nice to be here. Judy and I
are going to talk about having dissociative identities, and so
the first thing I want to know from you, Judy,
and I'll talk about it a little bit as well,
(03:48):
is what are some of the things that you want
your friends to understand about dissociative identities. I know that
I read your book and you did talk to some
of your friends about it. What did you want them
to know that time and does that changed now?
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Well, I don't talk to my friends about it anymore
because I don't experience it anymore, or I haven't many
many years. But when I first experienced it or realized
that I had it, which was in the late nineteen eighties, yeah,
(04:24):
very late, like close to nineteen ninety, I didn't tell
hardly anybody. I told my very closest friends, and I
explained that I had these voices that took over when
I was feeling threatened. And yeah, I mean the way
(04:49):
I explained it is the way I explain it now,
which is I hear the voices, I know they're not
my voices, and I know they're not other people, their voices.
In my head, I don't see the people they're not,
you know, I don't see what they look like. I
just hear their voices. And in my case, I had
(05:09):
I think it's eleven different personalities fixs that were pretty present.
And they were all children, all but one. So so
I knew that it wasn't it wasn't me, and and
that's how I explained it to my friends and a case,
and the my therapist made a deal with them because
(05:33):
that was a really public figure when this happened. You know,
I was famous. I was like on the national at
least to the national CBC News, which was whenever they
watched back then, at least two nights a week, and
I often did press conferences, sometimes when they were hostile reporters,
you know. So uh so, my therapist made a deal
(05:58):
with the what she calls all as that they would
never speak in public and they could only speak to
my friends who knew about them, And the only ones
who knew about them were my closest friends. So I
didn't talk to my friends about it much until I
(06:19):
was pretty well over it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Had they come out before you knew.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
About them, I'm sure they did, but I experienced that
as a loss of time. I didn't hear. I just
knew that there were Like, I'll give you one story.
One of the times they always came out was if
I was tempting to have sex with a friend, it
was okay to have sex with the stranger. They didn't
feel threatened by that, but they were felt threatened by
(06:48):
sex with a friend because it was my father's confused me,
so someone I was close to, and then you know,
sometimes that turns into a sexual thing. And so for example,
with the one I remember best was with a friend
of mine who I shared a house with. You know,
we lived in communes back then, and you know, I
(07:11):
remember we went out. He was playing, he had been
asked to come. He was a musician, he was asked
to come up and play with the band, and I'd
never heard him play before, and blah blah. And when
we came back, we were kind of cuddling, and then
I went up to his room and I remember opening
the door, and then I had no memory of what
(07:32):
happened after.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Did you ever find out what happened after her? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
I did. I did many years later when I told
I got together with him, and I told him about
what had happened. What was wrong with me? And I
asked him and I told him I didn't remember, and
I asked him to tell me what happened, and he
said it was kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I'm sure. Yeah, what you had were child personality that
a child came forward, and that always complicates intimate relationships terribly.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Although he didn't experience it that way. He just experienced
that I was not myself, you know, I was troubled
or something. You know, he didn't experience it as a child,
because you know, that's a big leap, like you're having
sex woman and talks to you in a child's voice,
like yeah, yeah, it's no kidding weird, So he didn't
he experienced it, just that it didn't work. You know,
(08:31):
we're still friends after, Like it didn't ruin our relationship
or anything. It just didn't work right. So, and I
guess the most recent experience I had that I that
I was aware of was praying about and mus pray
about fifteen years ago when I was having a really
(08:51):
serious argument with someone a friend, like a serious enough
argument that I didn't think God was going to keep
being friends with her right and I walked into the
my I was in my house and I walked into
the kitchen and she came in and she said, and
I said, well, we really have to talk about this,
and she said, what do you mean we just did?
(09:14):
Oh no, And I had. I had completely dissociated that party, right,
and that was with a woman, which was very rare
for it to happen with a woman. So but she
had actually been a little inappropriate with me. She was
she was queer, so so so yeah, yeah, so it
(09:38):
was like I didn't talk to my friends about it.
It's because when I when I was healing from it,
was you know, nineteen ninety, right, Let nobody even talked
about childhood sexual abuse.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Not yet. They were, well they were starting to, but
not really a whole lot.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
There was like one book, you know, there was my
Father's House.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I remember that book, of course. Yes, that's true. That's
true though.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah. I was just really lucky that I worked in
the pro choice struggle. I met this therapist, Marsha Wiener,
and I knew she was working with survivors of childhood
sexual assault. So I asked her me. And I was
really lucky because she was great.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh, she was and just so the audience knows it
is a connection between Judy and I and that I
also worked with Marshall Wiener, but I came from Vancouver
and flew out to Toronto for and intensive so it
was a very short period of time. But she was
the first person that I told that I had these
other parts of me, and I didn't. I didn't experience
(10:47):
lost time in the same way a lot of people did.
I think because I got really good at controlling my life,
so you know, for instance, I was really aware that
in my mind, in my life that you know, if
men then that certainly was my My focus at that
(11:08):
point was if you know, men had any interest in you,
you couldn't show it back or else that meant you
had to have sex with them. And that was the
conditioning of my childhood. I was so used as a
sexual object by that point that that's it. So I
did a lot of things outwardly to control things so
that that never happened. But I do know that when
(11:30):
I went through therapy, abuse and exploitation and came out
of that, I attempted to have relationships with other people.
There were three people in particular, and I toasted every
one of those relationships because I couldn't handle it, like you,
I was being triggered like crazy anything that was even
close to being intimate and h and I could not
(11:55):
control the parts of me. They just kept coming out
and saying things and doing things, and then I'd be
left with, what the hell are you guys doing? Like
you have to stop talking, Like just stop it, because
you come out and you say something and I get it.
You think you're helping, but you leave me to deal
with that, and it's just a mess. You're making a mess.
(12:16):
And they did. They did eventually stop, but not before
I toasted three relationships, two of which I've kind of resolved.
The other one I'm not sure we'll ever talk so,
but that's the one I feel the worst about.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
Well, in my case, I had I did have relationships
with men and including one that lasted about six years,
but they were always men that I just knew, just
meant right, that was okay, that was safe.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
But once I started dealing with in therapy, I wasn't
able to do that anymore. I never had another relationship,
another sexual reship. It was the time of my life
when I was like super busy. I was the president
of the largest women's group in the countries. You didn't
meet a lot of men, right. If you did, they
(13:10):
were scared to death at you.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
So that so that's how I excuse the van.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I heard that they're scared to death of you.
So tell me how did how did having dissociated identities
impact on working?
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Well, I mean it gave me. You know, I was
literally fearless. You know, people say about me, she was
fearless because you know, I know, you know the story
that when I was involved in the pro choice struggle
in the eighties and when the Morganhller clinic opened the
day at open, Doctor Morganhle arrived three o'clock in the
afternoon and he was in. He got to have a
(13:51):
taxi across the street and I was escored him into
the clinic and as we were walking, a guy attacked
him and the guy had a very sharp pair of
garden shears that he was going to stab Morganteller with,
and I pushed the guy away. And I mean I
had training as a marshal, so I first I tried
to talk the guy down, you know, I tried to
(14:13):
That's what you always do with a violent person on
a march, and when that didn't work, I pushed him
with both my hands back and that got There was
tons of cameras there, right, so that got That got
broadcast everywhere and has been ever since. Whenever they have
(14:36):
a news report on Morganteller, they show that clip. So
it's kind of what made me famous was that doing that.
And then people would call me fearless, right because and
I was fearless. I really was fearless, Like I never
experienced fear or anxiety never, and so because if I
felt fear anxiety, I would associate, right, So so you know,
(14:58):
people say you're fear listen. I said, yeah, I was fearless,
but it's not a good thing. This function. Fear is
an important the.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Most fear is important. It's like, I think.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
I'm still a courageous person. I still I'd still have
courage even when I'm afraid I'll do something. But I
was literally fearless. So the impact that it had was
I think it was you know that it helped me
to work more effectively because I and my my ex
(15:30):
says that what I would do is I would work
and work and work and work and work and work,
and then I would collapse for two weeks. And so
I think it made me incapable of balancing my work.
I think I just like fanatically working all the time.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, being a work I understand being So.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's probably the biggest impact it had. And I wasn't
the only thing I can remember feeling. I could feel.
I could sense of humor, so I could laugh, but
I couldn't feel love. And that's pretty bad, you know,
when you can't feel loved.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, I understand that, but I think it was for
me it was more that I actually didn't. I call
it not having love receptors in your brain because I
grew up in a childhood that did not have love
in it, and so I did.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
I did.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, that's a very different thing. So yeah, I think
what saved me.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
And I actually I was at a funeral, an online
zoom funeral.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
I hate those ones. Actually was it wasn't bad.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
You know, it was my New York family. It was
somebody in my New York family. And I don't know
these most of these people anymore. I don't know their
kids or anything. But the adult, the adults, the old
people there I grew up with, right and and I
don't have anything in common with them anymore. They're all Americans.
But but and I came here when I was ten, right,
(16:56):
So until I was ten, I was part of an
extra ended family. Like my best friend was my cousin's
cousin sort of thing, right, And so I think that
helped me a lot because I had that. I did
have a lot of love that's wonderful from my grandmother. Less,
I think from my mother because of the abuse. Like
(17:18):
I don't think she knew about the abuse, but she
knew something was wrong. And when I disclosed abused to her,
she said, well, you know, when you were five years old,
you turned away from me, you stopped connecting with me,
and you know, like I said, ah, why didn't you
do something about it? Like if I a five year
old stopped connecting with her mother and you don't do
(17:39):
anything about it. And of course she said, well, we
didn't know about things like that then, right. My mother
was a very loving person, but she was with my
father and she wasn't willing to confront him.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
You know, did you have any male personalities?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
And you did they come forward to help you.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
About the mission what they call it, what Marsha would
call the guardian personality, the one that knew about everybody
was the man. His name is Simon and he was
like my brother Alban, who's to this day my closest friend.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
That's cool, Yeah, that is cool. How would you actually,
we just need to take a little break here, so
I'm not going to ask this question, but when we
come back, I'm going to ask you how would you
describe having d I like, what it was that like?
And I think that that's maybe a hard question, but
we'll talk about it when we come back. We'll be
right back, folks. How can you protect your keys?
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Speaker 1 (18:47):
You're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver called Radio CPR
one hundred point five FM. I'm Bernadine Fox and I'm
talking with Judy Rebick about having associated identities, which is
something we both share. Judy, you are talking about being fearless.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Nowadays, people are very afraid to say what they think
you know, because they'll be attacked. Right, And this is
something I see all the time in my students, right,
Like they like my class because they don't have to
be afraid about what they're saying, particularly on Israel Palestine
that's become there, it is resent, And I've never felt that, right, So,
(19:23):
like in my whole life, I've never felt afraid to
say what I think. So it's like I made a
living doing that, Like I was, you know, the left
wing host of a right left debate show, debating right
wingers every night of the week, right, And I'm never
nervous about saying what I think, ever, And so it's
it's kind of weird because it's unusual for especially for
(19:45):
a woman, to never be afraid to say what she thinks,
no matter what the cost of that is, right, I mean,
and including like, and I've never been fired from a job,
but I came pretty close a couple of times. And
part of that is the dissociation and part of that
and the practice of that, and part of that is,
(20:05):
I guess being in the pro choice struggle at a
fairly young age. And so I mean I wasn't young.
I was in my thirties early forties. But was you
know youngish and to me now and that there you
had to really steal yourself because we're facing violence too.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yes, true, but I was.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Dissociated then, right, But I just learned to say what
I think and not to worry about the consequences when
I couldn't feel fear, And now that I can feel fear,
I never feel afraid to say what I think. Ever,
I never feel nervous about it or anything. So it's
hard for me as a teacher to talk to people
about it because I don't I mean, I always try
(20:45):
to be sympathetic, and I am sympathetic, but I don't
understand it, right, Like I don't understand through my own experience.
So it's a good thing and a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
True. But I would imagine if I just make sort
of speculate here, is that if you were able to
not feel fear, you also then acted in ways that
you didn't feel fear, unlike somebody else, and therefore you
learned a lot of skills about how to be fearless
in the world that somebody else whose fear took over
(21:20):
they didn't learn because their fear took forward. So can
you describe having dissociative identities from your perspective, I think
we're clear that we both had a different experience of
having dissociative identities. But what was yours life?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Yeah, Well, my experience when the actual and this is
like this was almost always in therapy, right. It only
happened once like this outside of therapy, and I can
talk about that, okay, Well, but in therapy, the way
it worked is that there was a voice and I
was speaking, but I wasn't speaking. I could hear this
(22:00):
voice speaking. It wasn't my voice, it was another voice. Yeah,
And I couldn't control what the voice was saying. I
didn't know what he was going to say next. It
was like I was my consciousness, the Judy Rebit consciousness
was in the back of my head somewhere listening. I
never saw what they look like or anything. I just
(22:21):
heard their voices, and all their voices were different because
they were different ages, different genders. And the one time
I did that, one of the altars who one of
the altars asked if she could talk to my friend
Robert had a crush on him, and she was a
little girl and she wanted me to meant to be
(22:45):
my boyfriend. Right, He was my friend and he had
worked with kids who were abused in daycare, so he
was even though I didn't know him all that well,
he was a friend that I shared stuff with because
he knew about this, right, yes, so and so Marcia
(23:06):
said that that was okay. So we arranged that she
would talk to him and he said, and I said, well,
what was it like to him? Like? And he said,
it was like you introduced me to a friend that
I didn't know and then you left the room, right,
So how could it be? It's my body? It was
my body and he said, yeah, but it wasn't you, right,
(23:30):
So that was interesting. Now you know, pray if it happened.
Now we take a video of that. But I don't
have a video of it. No, I don't, you know.
I don't know except from how it was inside my head.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
And in that experience, were you aware of what was happening?
Speaker 4 (23:48):
I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
No, okay, so you.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
But I was aware of completely. Experience was more watching
that I was outside the room watching right, right.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So you did have memory, but it was of being
of watching. Yeah, yeah, when I've been in crisis. I
mean we talked a little bit about this at the
break was, you know, my abuse was very severe and
very structured, and so my system developed in a very
structured way, which meant I was very controlled about what,
(24:18):
where and how. And but when I go into crisis,
parts come forward trying to deal with the crisis, and
they're not always doing what would say is helpful. But
it's like that you know where you're saying something and
you're going, what the hell stop talking, like, just just
(24:40):
stop talking people, But you can tell they're trying to help,
They're trying to do what they think is right. And
the certainly in my experience, I don't have eleven. I
have more than eleven, but I don't know how many.
I stopped counting because it really didn't matter. It was
sort of like being in a all town, say, for instance,
(25:02):
or a small group. You don't need to know how
many you just you know you're conversing with whoever is there.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
But well, when I converse with them, I never actually
talked to them. I did it by writing, Yeah, I
just do it in my head. That's like the front
page of heroes in my head. That's what the artists did,
took their writing and so yeah, I did it. Through writing.
I never you know, because I would feel them getting
(25:30):
restless and when I was doing something and I would
write right there and they would write back. So that
was how I communicated with them. I didn't talk to them.
I wrote to them.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, mine is all an internal dialogue unless they're outside talking,
and then I have to like do outside talking myself
to tell them to shut up.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
But I think the writing helped to control them not
to come out.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Well maybe for you, yeah, absolutely. One of the things
that I heard that I found really insulting was, you know,
this idea that we're rare and fragile and dysfunctional and
so how could we possitive whatever? But somebody was it
was a thread, and somebody responded to in that thread
to say, well, I heard that somebody had thirty one personalities,
(26:20):
Like how is that even possible? How can they even
keep track of them? And that to me is a
very sort of really naive comment made by somebody who
I would term as singular, somebody who lives with one
body and one personality, and you know, people who are
(26:43):
plural don't think about it in that way. It's it's
the same way as if you had thirty one friends
you you're not you're not keeping track of them. You
just know who they are. And so it's fascinating to
me to see how you can sort of see how
the treatment that I treatment I put in quotes, or
(27:03):
the therapy for d I is about creating one personality
that seemed to have been the focused at you know,
for a long time. I don't know if it's still
the focus, but I think when you lived plural, that
is how you live. That's who you are, and you
can learn to live with that very well. I mean,
(27:24):
you've demonstrated that, you know, there are ways that you
can live with it and still be you know, function
at a very high level, and having to be singular
is not necessarily the goal. It is for people who
are singular, they norm you know, the same way we
used to norm everything based on men. I think singular
(27:45):
people norm treatment based on their own idea of what
is normal for them. I certainly haven't gone that way
and probably never will. I function at a very high level,
and in fact, I've always said that if I was
(28:06):
somebody who had a business and had to hire people,
I would hire people based on the fact that they
had multiple personalities, because you're going to focus and you
can dissociate all the stuff that doesn't have to be
at work and you do your job and you do
it well. And so that's not my experience at all. No, well,
that's interesting. Tell me your experience.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
Well, my experience is that I didn't want to keep
having this. I wanted to I want to stop having it.
I wanted I wanted it to stop. I didn't. I
didn't think at the time. I just thought it was crazy.
Like I would say that, you know, now I know better,
but you know I didn't. I had no idea, Like
(28:48):
you know, after they were off and out after therapy,
and you know, like one time there was one that's
five years old, little boy, kind of mischievous, and he
wanted to go for ice cream. We went to an
ice cream place nearby, and he as soon as I
stepped into the ice cream place, he comes out and
he says what color ice cream is? He got So
(29:11):
she thinks she's dealing with some lunatic. I wasn't old,
but you know, your lady woman saying what.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Color ice cream is?
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So that's funny.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
But you know, no I understand.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Oh I don't see, so I guess I mean, I
see the advantage in my life that again, sure, I
don't really see an advantage now to it, like I
think that I can do I mean, you know, I
can do most of the things I used to be
able to do. You know I can't. I can't work
(29:47):
as madly, but that's partly because I'm just older. I
don't really see that it gave me. You know that
it that it's a positive thing. What's weird though, is
that you know, my book is mostly about this, right,
it's a feeling from abuse, and yet I would say
(30:08):
in the interviews that I did, especially in Canada, they
don't want to talk to me about it, like because
they have this idea Judy Rebik is a very powerful,
very strong, very effective person and you are. Yeah, but
they can't put that together with having what they considered
to be a mental illness. Absolutely, I don't think it's
(30:31):
a mental illness. I agree with you that it is
a brilliant coping mechanism for a child who isn't being protected,
right because basically, you use what a child has in
more better than an adult, which is imagination. You're using
your imagination to create people who can protect you. When
(30:55):
people who are supposed to protect you aren't protecting or
actually or abusing you, right, right, So it's a brilliant
mechanism to cope right and not loser, tonnot lose your
sanity if you want exactly. But but would I want
it now? No, it would be a pain to have
(31:15):
it now, and I have no desire to have it now,
I said, I said too earlier that you know, I'm
a really good speaker, like especially at a rally. I
just it's like a gift. I have a talent and
I clab it so I can like really move a crowd, right.
And what I do the way I experience it is
(31:37):
that I take the energy of the crowd and I
give it back. I learned to do that in the
pro choice movement. Well, what I notice now that I
never noticed before is when I stopped speaking, I'm in
a different state of consciousness like that I've been in
a different Like I'll go to a rally without preparing
(31:59):
anything right to say, and I just step on the
stage and I and I say what I have to say,
and I almost never think about what I'm going to say.
It's just there, like it's like some mode of communication
that I have energy that just comes to me. What
does this crowd need? You know? And and so I
(32:22):
don't do that if I'm giving, you know, a paid
speech or something with slides. But if I'm speaking to
a crowd, right, and I need and my job is
to get them going. Yes, that's what people want me
to speak, That's why they invite me, right, get them going, right,
That's what I and and what I realize is if
(32:43):
I get interrupted somehow and actually not even that, just
at the end of it, I feel like I have
to pull my consciousness back to normal because it's somewhere else. Right.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
And so do you think this is a personality?
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Alan?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I think what is this a personality? Or is this
a talent?
Speaker 4 (33:03):
I don't know. I don't know because the only people
I know, the only people I know who have expressed
something similar is Bruce Springsteen, and his memoir says that
when he's the only time he's chronically depressed, the only
time is not depressed is when he's performing. And he
describes something very similar to what I. Yeah, and actors too,
(33:29):
write actors do it too. So so yeah, and actors
I've seen actors like moving from in character to themselves
and they do the same kind of thing. So I'm
not I don't think it's a different personality. I just
think it's a different consciousness.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
M h. It's an interesting correlation though, to trying to
look at both of those things and determine, you know,
what part is what part you You had a personality
that as an adult, Why did that happen? I've had
the same thing, and it happened. I'll just say this.
It happened because I was in serious crisis and I
(34:09):
was acting out in ways that I had never done
before in my life. Like I told you, I'd been
very controlled, but I went through a very terrible experience
of therapy abuse and exploitation, which is a profound betrayal
to victims, and I started acting out really badly, which
(34:30):
I documented in my memoir about it. But this part
came forward at that point and I knew that it
was a new part. It was not somebody that had
been there before. And she literally took control, like just
took control, got rid of clothes, got rid of jewelry,
got rid of you know, made rules, and just literally
(34:51):
pulled me out of that and put me on a
different track. I mean, it was just really clear why
she was there. So, but you had a personality that
developed as an adult. What was that like for you?
Speaker 4 (35:03):
I don't remember. Oh, like, it wasn't It wasn't a
major thing. It was just one of the personalities that
came out was older. That's all. I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Was she older as in the same age as you
at that time, or was she.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Older She would have been older, like in her twenties.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Okay, all right, but you're not.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
I don't know. Maybe it was, you know, it's possible
it was related to the to the the Garden Shears incident.
There was another incident where I was almost killed. I
try to throw me off the subway platform, so it
could have happened then, right, this was all during the
(35:42):
pro choice struggle. But I don't really know because that
personality was did appear once or twice, but never we
never got into it. So, you know, I don't even
know what her name was.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
They don't need names.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Yeah, I don't have an answer to that. And something
take over. No, I was lucky because after the confrontation
with the Garden Shears. I was lucky because a woman
was there, not Marsha, but another woman who was a therapist,
and she asked me to come behind the clinic and
(36:20):
asked me how I was doing and giving me support
so that I could come back. If I had been
at him myself, I could come back. Okay, So she
did that for me, But I don't really know if
it was you know, I don't you know that in
that incident. What I remember and what I've seen on
television three hundred times, it's hard to distinguish.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
We just need to take a little break books, but
we'll be right back with Judy and I talking about
dissocial do identities.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
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(37:11):
at Foodbank dot BC dot c A.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
If you're listening to Rethreading Madness on Vancouver cop Radio
CFR one hundred point five f M, I'm Bernadine Fox
talking with Judy Rebbick about dissociative identities, which we both share. Judy,
what convinced you you had d I did you always
know it? And or no idea?
Speaker 4 (37:33):
I mean I was I was in you know. What
happened was I had completely repressed my memories of sexual
abuse and then well it actually happened around don't know,
very few people remember Barbara Dodd. But after we won
the abortion fight, there were there were two legal cases
(37:54):
where men tried to say that there had to be
an abortion low so that they could have, you know,
part of the decision of whether whether to have the
abortion or not. After she won her case and she
had the abortion, then she turned right because the anti
choice pressure on her, and she said the women's movement
had convinced her to have the abortion. What happened was
(38:18):
her sister called me, and her sister was really freaking
out and saying, he's got control of her mind. That's
what she said to me. And that was her boyfriend,
her ex boyfriend, And and then I was watching TV
and the sister was going after this guy, physically going
after him, and the cops grabbed her and she just
(38:42):
was completely out of control. Right, the cops drabbed her
and forced her into the car, and for whatever reason,
that triggered all my memories of abuse. Really that interesting, Yeah,
And you know, i'd been in therapy because i'd been
diagnosed with a clinical depression a few years before, like
about five years before that, like you know, depression. I
(39:05):
couldn't get out of bed depression, and I had had
one memory of being abused at the end of that therapy,
but I decided not to tell my therapist because then
I'd have to keep going to therapy and I didn't
want to, I really, you know. And it was another
three years later that this happened, and all of a sudden,
(39:27):
my mind was just filled with the memory of me,
but I didn't know who it was, right, So I
called Marcia and I said, look, I'm having these memories
of abuse. I don't know what to do, like, and
so she had me, like you know, she hypnotized me, right,
and when she the second or third session of the hypnosis,
the first altar came out, and that the first time
(39:49):
I ever knew that they existed or heard the voices
or anything. So I was completely unaware that this was
you know, that this was happening.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
And did you did you find that you believed it
all right away or did you have problems?
Speaker 4 (40:07):
You know, so you know I kind of I kind
of dissociated from it, right, That's what was happening in therapy, right,
you know when I say it now, I think what
was it? So like really, at the very beginning of
this therapy, I was approached by UH two, by by
Doris Anderson and Normous Scarborough to run to be president
(40:30):
of NAC. Okay, like, like you have to realize, like
NAC was a very middle of the road women's group.
Now they've been a president the year before, but I
mean generally it was like women politicians who were in
that there was a left wing, but you know, it
wasn't a radical group. And I was like really a radical,
like I was in the street radical right right right
(40:51):
in the choice struggle. And they knew with mulroney coming
in that he was going to go after the women's
movement and they needed a fighter. So they asked me
to do it, and Marcia didn't think I should do it.
My brother, who was the other person who knew the
shape I was and didn't think I should do it,
But I just had this feeling that the only way
I'm going to get through this is to be powerful
(41:14):
in my life, and so that's what I did. And
it's like very dramatic, but I did that right. Like nowadays,
you have no idea how famous I was. Even I
have no idea how famous I was, because I got
a political memoir now and I'm going, holy.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Shit, yeah, that's how I felt.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Magazine. You know, I'm on in television all the time.
I'm debating cabinet ministers, political cartoons of Joe Clark. I think,
Judy please please, and me think no means no Joe.
It was crazy how famous I was, right and all
(41:55):
in conflict with the government. So it was like I
just knew that this would be good for me. Everybody else,
I mean, there weren't that many people who knew what
I was going through, but everybody who knew what I
was going through thought I was out of my mind to.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Do so tell us why it? Tell us why it was?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
I think because because the only frame I had for
understanding this was mental illness right at the time, and
I couldn't stand to be weak my whole life. I
needed to be strong, and so I had a proof
to myself that I was still strong, and even though
(42:37):
I was facing what was wrong with me, I could
still be strong. I think that was really important to
my survival and to my getting through it. And like
I say, Marcia said to them, you know, because their
job is to protect me. Marcia said, if you come
(42:59):
out public, you'll get Judy in trouble, right, And so
they never did. They never did come out to pull.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Them And I think that's one of the things that
people don't understand about dissociative identities is that every personality
is there to protect, even the ones that we think
are really bad and horrible and you can do bad things,
they are there to protect some part of the system.
And so in that way, you set up a system
(43:28):
intuitively that allowed you to to heal. You could go
into those places you felt weak and little because you
had this other part of you life, of this other
part of your life that was identified you as strong
and fearless. You know, so kudos to you. One of
(43:49):
the things that I want to chat about is the
notion of mental illness when it comes to dissociative identities,
and I and you know, people sometimes very often mistake
it for schizophrenia. This is not schizophrenia. It is a
response to trauma. I know that there are some people
(44:10):
who identify it as something that happened to them, that
they developed, not from trauma, but I don't understand that,
so I can't speak to that. But I'm really, as
I said before, cannot see something that allowed you to
survive terrible trauma. And you've said it too, as something
(44:32):
that is wrong with you. So you know, here in
rethreading madness, we actually don't even use the term mental illness.
We talk about people with lived experience of mental health challenges.
It's all mouthful, but it means that.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Well. I think we should take a cue from the
neurodiverse people, like it's it's everybody's got issues, you know,
like everybody's nobody's perfect as perfect mental health, you know,
it's like physical illness, right, like not you know, like
you don't when you're physically ill, you don't say, oh
(45:10):
my god, you know, like unless you're going to die, right,
everybody is physically ill and everybody is it is mentally
off I'm dying to die. There's nobody who's not mentally
off balance. Somehow. It's a spectrum and dissociative identity disorder
is pretty far over on the spectrum if you have
(45:31):
actual multiple personalities, but it's still on that spectrum. And
I think that, actually, I really do think that most
of people in our society who accomplish extraordinary things are
on that spectrum somewhere.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
I agree, I.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
Agree somewhere on the spectrum. And the more I hit
and the more I understand about it, Like great performers
are like Springsteener or Jimmy Hendrick kind of performers that
just have that incredible energy, right, like you know, Okay,
maybe not in a band, I don't know, but individuals
who can do that, like, how can they do that?
(46:12):
It's only because there's something wrong with.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Them, or there's something right with them.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Something right with them. But they're not normal. They're not
in the normal part of the spectrum. They're extraordinary, right,
And you know, because I had the privilege of an
extended family, because I have a pretty good mother, even
though she made a mistake about how she handled it,
(46:39):
and because who knows what other reasons, my father, I guess,
felt guilty and so outside of the abuse, he treated
me better than he treated his sons.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Wow, which was.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Really like he'd say to me, you're more of a
man than your brothers, right, interesting, which his view was
a compliment. So he taught me to be powerful in
my life, which is really unusual. Right. And so yeah,
when people ask me why I'm so powerful, I watched
(47:14):
my father was very powerful and he was really fucked
up too, you know. So I think we should see
mental health as a spectrum, just like we see now
that we see neurodiversity as a spectrum. Yeah, or maybe
it's a form of neurodiversity. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Maybe I don't know. I don't know the answers to
that because I'm just somebody with lived experience who has
a radio show. So but I do know certain things.
That is that both Harvard and Canada have both done
research that has shown that one in two people in
their lifetime will live deal with a mental health challenge.
(47:51):
That means who's normal? You know which part of that
is normal? I'm not really sure. I also know that
there are people who've been involved around the DSM, which
is our diagnostic statistical manual. I hate that term, but
it is the you know, many many hundreds of pages
of diagnostics criteria about mental illness. And I say that
(48:15):
in quote and what they know, and what they've said
is that if they took out every one of those
diagnoses that have to do with trauma, they would be
left with a pamphlet, which means that we have pathologized trauma.
We have pathologized a normal, natural response to trauma, which,
(48:36):
in my opinion, is what dissociative identities is. It is
something that helps little kids and maybe even adults, continue
to survive in a world that is not survivable to
them any other way. It is the only way their
brain was able to cope in that moment. And I
certainly know.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
I think soldiers probably have it too. But you know,
they don't call it that. That's all.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (49:03):
Or right? They often don't remember what happened, right?
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Is that partly that? Or is that from PTSD or chronic?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
I just don't know.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
I mean, well, yeah, what is the difference. That's a
good question, Judy, what is the difference between chronic post
traumatic stress and associative identities? Hmmm, I'm sure one of
my listeners will be able to tell us what did
healing look like for you?
Speaker 4 (49:34):
Well, for me, it was I it's been a it's
a really long process like the other Like I had
a friend, a friend's daughter who i've known since she
was a baby, killed last year and I experienced grief
for the first time. I've been sad when somebody died.
(49:57):
I'd never experienced grief before, and that was just last year.
So I'm still healing in that sense, right, because grief
is probably the most powerful emotion that you can feel,
except maybe falling in love, which I've never felt. So
I think that I'm still healing in that sense. And namely,
(50:21):
was that I started to have feelings like I could
get angry. I could feel angry, but I couldn't feel
other feelings. I never felt really happy, I never felt
I never almost never cried or had we ever cried.
I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel anxious ever. Like
I remember about fifteen twenty years ago, I felt I
(50:43):
had broken I had a broken bone, and I was
had a speaking engagement and I had to speak and
I felt something and I didn't know what it was,
and I was anxious. I was anxious. I never felt anxious. Right,
The actually healing process of of the personalities actually have
(51:05):
In my book, I write this and you know, it's
like it reads like something a writer made up, but
I actually experienced it that I had a dream that
all of the all of these children are on the
other side of a fence, and there's one child still
with me, and they're all calling to that child, and
finally he runs across and jumps over the fence, and
then they all wave to me and they go away.
(51:27):
And that was my experience of it. And after that,
I never experienced it again in therapy or anywhere. What
was your original question, I don't remember. That was my experience,
and it was after I don't know, two years of therapy.
You know, them be intensely around and me communicating with
(51:51):
them and so on. And then every once in a
while when I was talking about it, especially when I
was doing the book tour, and when I talk about it,
I would feel this sort of the uneasy feeling. I
get it once in a while, and I think that's
kind of yeah, sort of getting ready to dissociate. But
(52:12):
i'd never do and I haven't been a long time anyway.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
So let's go back to the book. Then, you wrote
this book. It was really very much a memoir of
your political activities, but also of your personalities. But you've
talked about how people want to talk to you about
your political activities but don't kind of mention this other part.
Why do you suppose that.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Is Well, because they see me as a powerful person
and they can't they can't equate that with mental illness,
what they consider mental illness, so they don't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
Yeah, it is unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (52:47):
Maybe it's because they don't believe it exists. See, there's
people also who don't believe that this is a real thing.
I don't know that they think a therapists made it up,
you know, the false memory syndromes.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Everybody knows that both fit now. Yeah, it like with
my parents when I confronted my parents about it, that's
what they hung on to. It's that because it had
just emerged.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
Yes, and it has been debunked at this point.
Speaker 4 (53:16):
And quite seriously, I know someone who's a therapist who
doesn't believe multiple personalities exist. So go figure.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
You know, part of that is their training. They I've
talked to therapists who actually one of them was the
former president of the International Society for the Study of
Association and Trauma and She said that in her training,
they got to the chapter on dissociation and associative identities
and they were literally told to skip that chapter because
(53:47):
either a it didn't happen or you'll never come across
it anyway, because we're so rare. So so there is
a lot of things that happen in the training that says,
don't look here, don't talk about that. And then then
we have things where you know, people are debunking it
on no, I shouldn't even say debunking it because they're
(54:07):
not debunking it. In fact, there is a lot of
physical scientific evidence that dissociative identities exists, but they are
are trying to say it doesn't so and I, you know,
you really have.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
To They're not doing that with schizophrenia or with depression.
They don't think like depression is made up. Why this
is the one that they try and debunk it makes
It's the way it was presented in literature, like three
Faces of Eve, you know, which is like the Three
Faces you know the movie? Right?
Speaker 1 (54:40):
I do, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:42):
Yeah, maybe that's why I don't know.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
But well, the other thing to know about the Three
Faces of Eve, which ties into therapist abuse and exploitation,
which where I kind of focus my mental health advocacy
these days, is that she her name was Christine Seizemore.
I believe that was Eve. Her psychiatrist got her to
sign away the rights to her story, her life story.
(55:05):
He wrote the book, he starred in the movie. He
made himself famous that way, and she came back to
him several years later and said, there are more personalities,
and he told her this is what I've been told.
He told her you can't talk about that because I
own the story of your life and you can't talk
(55:28):
about it. And she wasn't able to talk about it,
I think until he died. There's actually a documentary now
about her and this process, and so it's just another
story about how, you know, somebody a therapist made themselves
famous off the story of, you know, the trauma of
their client and then did wrong to their client. So wow, yeah, bad,
(55:52):
it's really bad. And so give me a link.
Speaker 4 (55:55):
I'd be interested.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
I will send you a link to that. I will
actually put a link. Also think it is.
Speaker 4 (56:00):
That dissociation that makes it so scary for people for
mental health experts that they deny it exists. So why this.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
One why this one? Okay? So I have a Jewish
friend who once told me who does it benefit? Think about?
Who does it benefit to deny that dissociative identities exist?
People who are perhaps committing the crimes that cause trauma
to a child that requires them to dissociate. And those
(56:34):
some of those people have a lot of power. You know,
in my case, I was traumatized through human trafficking and
organized crime. Those people have a lot of power, and
they still have a lot of power, and you know
that whole you know, denial came out after that. We
had been doing a lot of work to get people
to understand it and recognize it and deal with it
(56:55):
and understand it as a response to trauma. All of
a sudden the backlash began. And so to me, the
backlash happens from people who have in some way benefit
from it not being recognized or acknowledged or treated. So
my personal, humble opinion, and we have to stop. I
can't believe I have to say that, but we do
(57:16):
have to stop. So thank you Judy for this wonderful conversation.
It really has been a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
It's my pleasure. But it's okay, it didn't upset me.
So that's there, you go.
Speaker 1 (57:27):
Well, it has been my pleasure.
Speaker 4 (57:29):
I haven't talked about it in a long time.
Speaker 1 (57:31):
So well, I'm glad. I'm so grateful you came and
talked to us about it here with us because it's
a well, it's a lot of people out there who
have dissociate identities who have been silenced, and I think
it's important that we provide some kind of platform for
them to know that it's okay to talk about it.
So thank you, and I kind to be disabled by
(57:54):
it like no, absolutely and you're not absolutely not. That
is the whole key to healing is management and taking
control of it for yourself, certainly something I do all
the time. So thank you, Judy, and I hope I
have a chance of talking with you against you. That
would be lovely And that's our show. I'm hoping by
(58:17):
the end of this program you are looking around you
at the very strong, fearless people in your life who
always get things done and realize that they may well
live with dissociative identities as well. And if you want
to know more about how to discern between DII and schizophrenia,
take a listen to the program more than One, a
conversation with doctor Colin Ross, which you can find on
(58:39):
any podcast platform. You can find Judy Rebick's book Heroes
in My Head and my book Coming to Voice on Amazon.
My sincere thanks to Judy Rebick for engaging in this
discussion with me, and to Sherry Alrich for the gift
of her music. But most importantly, my thanks goes out
to you for joining us today. Stay safe out there.
(59:00):
You've just listened to Rethreading Madness, where we dare to
change how we think about mental health. We air live
on Vancouver co Op Radio CFR one hundred point five
FM every Tuesday at five pm or online at co
opradio dot org. If you have questions or feedback about
this program, or want to share your story, or have
something to say to us, we want to hear from you.
(59:22):
You can reach us by email Rethreading Madness at co
opradio dot org. This is Bernardine Fox. We'll be back
next week. Until then, we have ever.
Speaker 4 (59:33):
Been fir.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
Do what the hell I'm gonna do? When I can't
see a fine away under over too? Just want?
Speaker 1 (59:52):
I'm ready and give the life
Speaker 2 (59:56):
They are when we tell
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