result of describing her trauma when she, herself, didn’t know how to deal with those emotions. But what happened next with Mindy and Umaya was even more extraordinary.

    One day, I walked into my office for a session to find Mindy waiting, talking to Umaya. But her voice sounded different. Childlike. As I observed her interacting with Umaya, I realized that Mindy wasn’t acting “like Mindy,” but had assumed another personality. I understood then that Mindy had multiple personality disorder, the result of the trauma she had experienced as a child. Umaya had not just brought out a childlike quality in Mindy; she had coaxed out a child, another self, within her.

    When children are abused in infancy, before the personality has had a chance to form, multiple personalities may be created to help the child cope with extremely difficult circumstances. In therapy, the multiples can look to the therapist as a comforting figure, a parent, but Mindy was convinced that they saw Umaya in that role. The little ones, as Mindy referred to those parts, wanted Umaya to protect them, “almost like they wanted to be enveloped in her love.”

    Though there was nothing unusual about her outward appearance, before Mindy realized that she was a multiple, she felt like she was living in the midst of a war zone. As Mindy and I continued to work together, we would ultimately discover that she had several parts within her that had helped her survive; some male, some female, some adults, some children, sometimes aligning themselves with each other in groups. As Mindy began to remember her difficult past, while working with a psychiatrist as well as with me, the memories were disturbing and she never knew what would set her off. She was balancing three jobs to make enough money to survive, and she felt as if she was constantly running,