From Trauma to Triumph with DID: The Jason Hopkins' Story Part 4

What if your own mind was a maze you couldn't navigate alone? Join us on this heart-wrenching episode of the Hopeful Perspective Podcast, where I uncover my personal battle with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) amid the fallout from the economic recession of 2007. Through the unwavering support of my small group, including leaders from my church, and intensive therapy sessions in Baldwin, Michigan, I embarked on a journey to understand and integrate my multiple personalities. We'll explore the neurological impacts of DID and how the disorder reshaped my experiences of memory, fear, and perception.

I'll also take you through the darkest alleys of my past, confronting memories of satanic ritual abuse and the emotional toll they took on me. From the shocking discovery of an RFID chip in my hand to the validation found in news articles about local occult activities, my story is one of resilience, faith, and the power of supportive relationships. Discover how intercessory prayer and spiritual warfare played crucial roles in my healing journey, despite facing personal and relational upheavals, including a harrowing affair. This episode is a raw, honest portrayal of how I slowly pieced my life back together with faith and community by my side.

*The intro and outro music is entitled "Lite Saturation" composed by 'Epic,' utilized from the source Free Music Archive (FMA) and licensed for commercial and person use (CC BY-ND

Chapters

• 0:01 Journey Through Dissociative Identity Disorder
• 13:19 Healing From Trauma and Abuse
• 24:14 Dark Events in Healing and Restoration

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Hopeful Perspective Podcast. I am your host, jason Hopkins. If you are with me today, there is a real chance. You have already taken time to listen to the first three segments of my story, where I reveal the vision that this podcast can bring to your life and cause you to go from survivor to thriver, a victim to a victor, as well as from a hopeless survivor to a hopeful storyteller. I am grateful to have you along with me today and if this is your first time joining me, I hope I can earn your support as an additional resource in your podcast library. So I encourage you to grab your favorite snack, hot or cold beverage, get comfortable and come on this journey with me, as I continue to share with you a most vulnerable, honest portrayal of my origin story.

Speaker 1: 0:54

We concluded our last episode with me having just been let go from my first ministry position at East Hill Church, where I served as a high school pastor. The Great Recession of 2007 had just hit and I was amongst the first of the wave of layoffs that affected our church. Simultaneously, I was submitted to a holistic treatment plan to treat my newly diagnosed dissociative identity disorder and was involved in therapy both locally as well as taking week-long intensive trips to Michigan for therapy. This is where we will pick up the story. In addition to me having my treatment plan that was intended to support me, cass and I also hosted a weekly small group that was filled with a number of leaders from our church Our head worship pastor, interns, as well as other adult leaders from our high school ministry, and volunteers and their spouses from a variety of church ministries were a part of our group. Cass and I had grown intimately close with the members of our group and valued their relationships as well as their support in our marriage. We naturally invited them to walk with us in our battles and we walked with them in theirs. When the diagnosis of DID happened, the impact and response of our small group was incredible. The group committed to walking out the journey with us, and this proved significant to our healing and success as a family. We had my psychologist come out to the group and she graciously shared with them about the disorder as well as informed them how they can best support Cass and I. This dynamic was unlike anything I had ever heard of, as the spiritual warfare bonded us as friends and we became as close as family as time went along and I was let go from the church, my ability to stay present as the Christian host where I would have ability to manage the personalities became more and more difficult. It was about this time that my therapist recommended I go for an intensive therapy clinic in Baldwin, michigan, where I could have more focused and deeper treatment in three to six hour sessions for five days.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Care Incorporated, standing for Consulting, advocacy Resources Education, was an established intensive prayer ministry for those who are survivors of ritual abuse, trafficking and trauma that my therapist was also part of their board. The idea was to bring a prayer person with you who would attend the sessions and commit to interceding on your behalf as you proceeded through the therapy. This person would need to be safe enough to entrust the darkest of memories and need to be safe enough to entrust the darkest of memories and flashbacks and mature enough to not become overwhelmed when they would learn so much. I knew that my first pastor, who had both married us and I viewed as the closest thing to being a father to me, was a natural choice given his own background in Christian counseling. In the sessions were me, my pastor, my best friend, a note-taker who lived full-time in Baldwin and, incidentally, was a survivor of DID and then the therapist. The therapist was perhaps the most gentle yet authoritative moment I had ever met. She served as the vice president of the ministry, had over 25 years experience in the field of trauma recovery and held a master's degree in social work. She no longer practiced as a licensed counselor because of her desire to involve prayer and deliverance ministry techniques in the counseling sessions and recognizing that God is a true healer.

Speaker 1: 4:18

This initial trip to Michigan was spent learning about the nature of DID, trauma, the brain and building in everything I learned while at home in therapy. I discovered quite a lot about my system that I had upwards of 80 to 100 different personalities who are organized similarly to a military type structure, complete with divisions, brigades, battalions, companies, platoons and squads, all ranked according to the level of trauma they were exposed to. The most powerful of these personalities were called the generals and they were proven to not only hold on to the most severe of trauma, they were also influenced by demonic forces. The goal of the intensive sessions were to have the personalities come out that felt safe doing so and for my therapist to discover who they were and why they were created. Through this process, a number of personality parts eventually emerged to the surface and shared what they were willing to do.

Speaker 1: 5:19

We learned that there were personalities who had different names and roles, some defined by the job they had, the age they were created, and some were projections of people who had performed traumatic acts against me. For example, I had the vigilante, whose job it was to inform me of keen details and environments. I was uncomfortable in the kid who was thought to be around 5 years old, the drunk Mexican who spoke only Spanish and was well actually inebriated. I had a part called the intellect, who spoke and reasoned with a far higher IQ than I had and utilized logic to protect the system beneath. Beyond just the roles, we learned that there were physical abilities that differing personality parts had, not just the roles. We learned that there were physical abilities that differing personality parts had.

Speaker 1: 6:05

To understand this next aspect, it is important to state that, when compared to the brains of normal controls, did patients actually show smaller cortical and subcortical volumes in the hippocampus, or the part of the brain in the temporal lobe responsible for learning and memory, in the amygdala, which is the almond-shaped part of your brain responsible for detecting fear and survival, also called the limbic system, the parietal structures involved in perception and personal awareness, and frontal structures involved in movement, execution and fear learning. Though this is all statistically factual, patients with DID have demonstrated on brain scans to access more of their brain than those without. Recent studies suggest the average human utilizes up to 35% of their brain when dealing with complicated mental tasks. Did patients utilize 8-10% more to perform the functions of their personalities. This is significant to understand some of the experiences I had throughout my life.

Speaker 1: 7:06

I was capable of feats like seeing in the dark as though it was day at certain points. My most prominent memory of this was when I attempted to commit suicide as an adolescent, as I discussed in a previous episode, and I climbed the mountainside on my John Day foster home property to climb a tree and just end it that night. I proceeded down the dangerous mountainside in the middle of the night and yet I could see as though it were day. I had the ability to turn off my pain when I realized I would be hurt. I had personality parts wherein I was stronger or could run faster than when I was alone. I had personalities that could run faster than when I was alone. I had personalities that could speak different languages Spanish, as I mentioned before, though more fluently than I learned in high school, slavic or Russian, hebrew, beyond the working knowledge I learned in Bible college, and even a part who knew some Mandarin. I had personalities that seemed to be more animalistic or even demonic than human. Other people claimed to see a different face on me as my eyes changed and face expressions differed. My personalities had differing tastes as well as varying tolerances to food and beverage.

Speaker 1: 8:17

One particular instance in our small group, on my return from Michigan, I had a difficult time remaining present due to the vulnerable state I returned in. I'd switched into the drunk Mexican who asked for his coffee a certain way, and yet when it was served, it's switched personalities again to somebody who spit the coffee out, finding that it was overly sweetened. This same night I switched to a personality who literally tore the plaster cast I had on my right hand with the other one. Personality parts are keenly aware with our five senses and each are affected differently. I learned I had personality parts that could not handle alcohol whatsoever, like the kid, whereas others could drink far more than my host personality was capable of consuming. When I would switch accordingly, the alcohol effect was heightened and I would become drunk, whereas others could drink far more than my host personality was capable of consuming. No-transcript, it was necessary.

Speaker 1: 9:12

I learned of the plethora of triggers that would affect me. I quickly found out that music was a significant trigger and, as a matter of fact, worship music in church was impossible for me to listen to for a season. Even the name of Jesus became a trigger to me, which was difficult given my faith. I became familiar while in Michigan with the idea of referring to him as Yeshua. I found out that red wine was a trigger for reasons I will get into later. Foods I had been around as a kid, for example sauerkraut just the smell would trigger me and at times, even being around my children was a trigger. The most common time of the day for me to be triggered was at night and my wife awoke several times with me, triggered into some of my most difficult personality parts that invoked reasons to fear. My wife learned, through dealing with my DID, the power of prayer as well as the power of people who came alongside us.

Speaker 1: 10:10

When I returned home from my first trip to Michigan and I was in such a vulnerable state I had difficulty remaining present as my Christian host. We actually had people stay in our small group and other close friends who committed to staying the night with us. My best friend, who lived just a few houses down, if you recall, spent many a night with us, away from his own young family to be certain that my family was safe, away from his own young family. To be certain that my family was safe. Cass instituted safety plans for she and the kids to stay other places when I was switched into personalities that did not seem healthy for them. Unbelievably, though, my kids would be exposed to experiences they would need to process as they were older. They were actually saved from other experiences that would have caused far greater emotional, mental or even spiritual trauma to them due to their personalities that became present. My therapist became a significant resource, as did my pastor and best friend who came along the trip.

Speaker 1: 11:07

I know that, for me, I still, incredibly, dealt with the credibility of the diagnosis as a whole, and, though I was aware I had a difficult life, I had trouble understanding why this severe dissociation was necessary for my survival. I had always felt I was capable of tolerating difficult times, as my history demonstrated. It wasn't until my next trip to Michigan, though, when the darkest revelations would come forward through the intensive therapy that I would learn the genesis of my disorder. This particular trip, my pastor, as well as another good friend who I had also worked with in ministry, came along. This trip was initiated because I had come to a place at home that was harder than ever before. The intensive therapy came not a moment too soon. Personality parts came forward with snapshots of memories that were darker than I had ever experienced. Now I am going to share these to the best of my ability, recognizing how difficult they are to hear for someone not familiar with the subjects of trauma recovery or in working with DID.

Speaker 1: 12:12

I was having flashbacks as a young kid. I was having flashbacks as a young kid, I would say between four or five years old, standing in a line of other kids. I would come to the front of the line with the young kid who laid down in front of me, appearing to be bound and gagged. I cannot see the adults around me, though I know they were there. There is a fire burning, as it is outside. I'm handed a knife and then, given a choice from one of the present adults, I could either use the knife to take the life of the kid in front of me or one of my siblings would take the place of the child. Given my age, my brother would only have been a young toddler, maybe three years old or younger. Though I do not remember him being there, I remember that this double bind I was placed in caused me a fear that was impossible to understand. I cannot say what happened next. At this point, the memory ends. For that I can say that I am grateful. The memory ends For that I can say that I am grateful.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Other similar memories involve the drinking of red wine, of eerie incantations and of music playing in a setting that I would later learn to be the scene of what is called satanic ritual abuse. I was aware of where I was, in a specific location not far from my home in Hermiston. I do not remember my parents being present in any of the satanic ritual episodes as it was referred to. These memories and traumatic events shook me in a way that even learning I had DID, hadn't. I recall walking away from the sessions that day feeling darker and more disgusted than at any other point in my life, and I felt unworthy to even live.

Speaker 1: 14:03

We had learned of these events the last part of my last day, I was to be in Michigan. The counselor concernedly wondered if I could extend my stay, although my pastor and friend needed to return home, being that I was staying at a local hotel, I would be there alone, and though this was concerning if my friends left me part of the reason they were there to. Even to begin with, I made the decision to stay that night, my first. While alone in the hotel, I proceeded to go to a local pub, where I do not even recall the events of the evening, only that I awoke in a jail cell. Apparently, I had become intoxicated and attempted to drive my rental vehicle back to my hotel while drunk. I had to appear in front of a judge in a city and state that wasn't my home, having been aware of the facility of care and the work they did there. The judge was merciful, charging me with time served and a mandatory fine given to all DWI offenders in the state of Michigan. I left the state with a new, dark revelation of my past life and as a criminal that had a record during that trip that had a record during that trip. Upon my returning home, it was now more difficult to stay in control of myself and I found I was experiencing what seemed like blackouts more consistently and at longer sessions. In reality, I had been switching personality parts more capable of dealing with the raw emotions I now had regarding my life.

Speaker 1: 15:33

I had returned home the end of January, and it was during a Super Bowl. I had returned home the end of January and it was during a Super Bowl party I had with close friends that a most extraordinary event occurred. I had brought back several materials and pamphlets on DID and specifically satanic ritual abuse that I could give friends and family Information regarding the healing of ritual abuse and specifically from that of what's called mind control. This led to the most dark of findings. I ended up taking a steak knife and carved into my left hand digging out an RFID chip. The chip was less than the length of a fingernail, the shape of a tiny cylinder and had been placed in the top of my hand. The shape of a tiny cylinder and had been placed in the top of my hand. My friend shared the shock with me of not only my traumatic effort of digging out this chip, but also the mere fact that one had been in me for whatever period of time it was. I do not recall ever having the tracking chip implanted, yet had read material from care that survivors from the occult had found such tracking devices in their body during x-rays in their teeth that it was common to not know the time or the origin of the device. Oftentimes, survivors are trafficked as kids and the RFID chips are used to track them to their location. This discovery served to rock my world and that of the people around me.

Speaker 1: 17:00

During my most recent time at care, I struggled greatly with the legitimacy of my memories of satanic ritual abuse and whether or not said events actually occurred in my life. My therapist informed me that this was common and, as a matter of fact, the occultists will program the survivor with belief systems that serve to doubt the credibility of the memories. In the event, they seek the truth in the future. My pastor, who also lived in Eastern Oregon, discussed in my session the fact that there were indeed news articles and other evidence of satanic ritual abuse and occult activity in the very place I recalled memories of SRA having occurred. I am not sure if this served to reassure me of my reality or to galvanize the darkness and dread that was hanging over me. I want to take a moment to discuss the restoration paradigm that CARE Incorporated utilizes to help a survivor with DID or history of SRA.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Care has nearly 30 years of experience in helping survivors of ritual abuse, human trafficking and complex trauma heal. They provide ministry to survivors of ritual abuse and other forms of complex trauma, including human trafficking, and they give education and consulting to those who support them, including therapists, pastors, and they give education and consulting to those who support them, including therapists, pastors, prayer ministers and church support teams. Care is a ministry to survivors of sexual abuse, including that human trafficking, ritual abuse and mind control. In a day when the stresses of modern life drive many to seek comfort in drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, abuse and suicide, care is a non-profit organization reflecting Christian values and beliefs, rising to the call to help set people free from the cycles of destruction that have ruled their lives and destroyed their homes. Care would serve to provide intensive prayer ministry in an office setting to survivors of trauma, as well as their supporters, and to offer consultations via phone to laypersons, pastors and professionals in order to develop and or enhance their skills in working with severely wounded men, women and children. The ministry provides resources and training for both survivors as well as professionals who desire additional teaching, training and support, dealing and healing complex trauma.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Now, if you were to spend time with survivors, eventually the question will come up what does healing look like? This question is asked with a mixture of hope that life can get better and fear of how different or challenging things will be. The survivor may wonder if they will ever heal and how to know if they are arriving at this longed-for destination. Healing will look different for each individual, since each person has a different life's history, different traumas, different personal strengths and weaknesses, different gifts and even different goals, just as in treatment for any other condition or issue one faces. There is no necessarily template that describes healing for all, but there are some milestones that some survivors begin reaching as the healing journey progresses.

Speaker 1: 20:09

So what did the healing process look like for me in specific? As I learned about my system and further the cause for my developing DID, we discovered that the Lord had internally developed a healing process of my personality parts, risking to walk onto the water of faith, utilizing the metaphor of crossing the Jordan River to the promised land. If you are familiar with the biblical narrative of Israel entering this Promised Land, you may remember the Jordan River marked the last boundary between the wilderness where the Israelites have been wandering for 40 years and the land that God had promised to them. For this intent and purpose, the Jordan River marked the amnesiac barrier that separated my conscious from my subconscious and the border that protected my parts from pain and suffering. The hope and prayer was that individual personality parts would utilize faith to cross the Jordan River into the promised land and that the unconsciousness of my frontal lobe where they can experience the gift of healing for the trauma they carried.

Speaker 1: 21:14

Now, as you can imagine, the spiritual warfare for this journey was intense and my therapy notes reflect this battle that ensued for my heart and soul. My sessions would take place in the upper room of a building that looked nothing more than a warehouse from the outside. The room provided an intimate setting that just fit the people who would be sitting in on the sessions. On the wall was a picture of Jesus on the water, reaching for Peter as he was sinking beneath the waves, as described in Matthew, chapter 14. I remember this scene would later serve to center me as I would engage therapy, and years later I would purchase prints and posters of the painting to put on my walls at home. This idea that we need to take our eyes off the waves that are there to sink us and keep our eyes on our faith on Jesus, who defied the laws of nature and invites us into the supernatural, was crucial to my own integration with my personality parts and the healing of their trauma.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Now I want to spend some time discussing what occurred during one of these trips, as well as what transpired following, to lay the foundation for this situation. You may recall me mentioning earlier that I had inquired of my therapist at home about the possibility of marital affairs or suicide affecting the one who has DID In my wife and my network of support. We had couples and friends who were powerful intercessors and devoted themselves to synchronizing with my personalities, which was crucial to them feeling safe when they were present. Simply put, the person who has the quote, bigger or mature, unquote brain, then the personality part seeks to match the emotion and the energy of the personality who has become present. We had one couple in particular who'd we grown particularly close to and were even in their wedding. The wife had this gift of intercession and during a trip to Seattle for New Year's one year, we outlined a plan for this couple to serve as my prayer partners in Michigan. Everyone agreed this would be a crucial step for all of us, except one thing served as a barrier the husband was unable to take off work to make the trip. We discussed the various possibilities resulting from this obstacle, yet we determined that so long as my pastor, john, who had been on each and every trip to Michigan, came along as well as the wife, that our basis to remain above reproach would be covered. You see, trauma has this deceptive stronghold that bonds people together, and we recognized early on the risk we would take if the opposite-gendered people were to be in these sessions together. We even consulted mentors and pastors to give us counsel as to whether we were walking in integrity for the sake of our marriages and our personal friendships.

Speaker 1: 24:14

But what happened next is truly one of the most difficult and dark events that mark my healing and my restoration. While having DID, we went on the trip together and, as you're already imagining, an adulterous affair started forming with a few of my personalities and this woman affair started forming with a few of my personalities and this woman who was one of my wife's best friends and her husband one of mine. Upon our return from Michigan, she would help us with childcare with my own children, as I was having difficulty remaining present as the Christian host. The full sexual affair continued for a period of time until I had sensed in my spirit as the Christian host the complex emotions of disgust, broken attachment and other feelings I could not explain. It was as though I was dealing with the feelings and repercussions of my sin without being able to identify what had occurred to result in such feelings. Upon my confrontation to the wife, our affair was exposed. That very night we proceeded to sit our spouses down and share everything that occurred. This was certainly the most dark and difficult circumstance to date involving my personalities and battles with DID.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Upon disclosing our impropriety to our small group, our pastors, our mentors and friends who had been walking with us for the entirety of my diagnosis, the difficult decision to end the relationship with Cass and I was made. What's worse is they aligned themselves with the other couple involved in the affair and I know this deeply wounded my wife inside, as she was the one to experience the consequences of my choices. Now some of our friends remained loyal to us and were able to see the warfare and the spiritual battle for what it was and how the enemy was seeking to sabotage this community of support that formed around our family. Yet the damage was devastating to the point where even the pastor of our mutual church, who was also my friend, my brother and mentor, made similar decision, as other friends had to support the other couple who were called to be missionaries in another country, launching from our church in the years ahead, but he could not serve to support my family any longer within the healing journey. The consequences of these events proved to be too much for me, the Christian host, and this triggered the second question I had asked my therapist so many years earlier, that of if survivors with DID committed suicide.

Speaker 1: 26:49

I made a terribly serious decision one night following the fallout of the affair to overdose on alcohol and prescription medication and I was rushed to the hospital where, once again, I came to consciousness in my hospital bed, recognizing I once again even failed, taking control of my own life. My wife instituted the most significant of boundaries at this point in our marriage, the most significant of boundaries at this point in our marriage. You see, if you take nothing else from my story, you must already recognize the integrity, strength, faith and loyalty of my wife that she had for Jesus in her own journey. She committed to walking out this healing journey along with her family, alongside of me, even when the dominoes and effects of DID threatened to take us out. Yet when I decided to throw in the towel and potentially forever damage our children in the process, she put her foot down Together, with the support of her own personal counselor. She informed me that if I wasn't willing to battle together with Yeshua as it pertained to my DID, with Yeshua as it pertained to my DID to do whatever it took to pray and remain present, then she had to do what needed to be done for the sake of the children and her own sanity.

Speaker 1: 28:10

Following the suicide attempt, I was positioned in the dark night of my soul where I had to make a decision once and for all. If I was going to literally live, was my family worth it? Was my marriage worth fighting for? Would I be capable of defying the overwhelming statistics of those with DID that were stacked against me in that to maintain my marriage? What would the effect be on my children of having a father with DID and how would my family survive? Was there a day where I could claim healing and hope over my family, over my entire dissociative system and, eventually over my life? Could I have a real, authentic faith with Jesus and live with the complications of this disorder? And those questions is where I will leave the story today.

Speaker 1: 28:56

Next time, on the Hopeful Perspective podcast, I will conclude my story by sharing what it meant to achieve integration with DID, the incredible and improbable healing that would take place, our new opportunity to reenter the ministry that was eventually presented, as well as bring you to the present day and the launch of this podcast. Until then, I want to thank you for joining me along this journey and, if you would be so kind to follow, subscribe, download and, most importantly, with podcasting, to rate and write a review for others who may need the hopeful perspective, know that I greatly appreciate you. My desire is to reach as many people with the message of hope that have lived lives possibly as difficult and dark as mine, and you will be the reason this happens. So thank you so much in advance and until next time. Remember you are loved.