The Sum of My Parts Quotes

“I felt like I had been numb most of my life, and now I craved being able to have real feelings: the joy, the sadness, and everything in between.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

Looking back, I think that my need to predict how my day was going to unfold was a direct response to the amount of chaos in my childhood.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“As I was growing up, no one in my family got their needs met through respectful negotiation and compromise. The only victories I had ever seen my mom achieve were small, and she had accomplished them through manipulation, which was one of the few techniques she had for surviving her relationship with my father. Later, after his death, manipulation had become a way of life for her. It became innate for me too, even though I wanted her to be more direct, and I hated it when she manipulated me.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

“I felt a catch in my chest and a pulsing in my ears and then I felt calm and numb, with a fuzziness that I couldn't think through, much thicker than before.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I understood these things intellectually, the way I understand that the world is round or that gravity is a universal force. But it took me a long time to truly grasp what Dr. Summer had told me many times before: "To survive a violent childhood, you created aspects of your consciousness that held information about the violence away from you. That's why you remember it as if it happened to someone else. You have many ways of being you.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I wanted to go to a few therapy sessions and be back to normal. As I saw it, the panic attacks were the problem. What I really wanted was to stop having them. I genuinely thought I could do that. I didn't want to think about the past.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I came to understand intellectually that my mind used dissociation as a way to protect me from knowing things. Dr. Summer repeatedly explained, "If you had woken up every morning and knew that later that day or evening you would be abused, you would have killed yourself". I would always nod, as if in agreement. It all made sense in a theoretical way, but I could not and did not want to truly understand or accept what had happened to me.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“As I was growing up, no one in my family got their needs met through respectful negotiation and compromise.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

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

"Yes. It doesn't ever feel like I'm talking about me. It doesn't feel like it happened to me.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I started crying. "When will it stop hurting?"
"I don't know. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could take the pain away. But it will get better and easier for you over time.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Sometimes I look older than I feel. Sometimes my hands seem bigger than they should be or I feel taller than I think I should be.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

“I opened my eyes and felt better, exhausted but relieved of a burden. The pressure to tell and the weight of the emotions had been with me for weeks. Now that I'd told what had happened, the burden lifted a bit.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

“I finally had the courage to start talking about how I developed dissociation as a coping mechanism as a child and carried that through my life, I talked about being trained to initiate and accommodate abuse and about how these coping mechanisms carried over for me as a teenager and young adult.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I closed my hand into a fist and captured the details of the feeling for later, when I might need them. Storing thoughts in my fist was a way of creating parts of myself, brighter rooms in the house that was my mind, parts that could hold on to feelings of being loved.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The creation of these "happy" parts felt different from the splitting that began at my fingertips when I was under attack. Entering these "good" parts felt less noticeable. There was some dizziness and light-headedness, but it was mainly just a gentle shifting in my mind.

I was unsure of where my body started and ended for just a few seconds.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“One morning in early June, I woke up with my usual anxious thoughts. I worried that Mike wouldn't like me anymore, that I wasn't good enough to play with him and his friends. What I didn't know then was that anxious, obsessive worrying helped my mind keep parts of me that had been raped and abused shut away, removed from my consciousness. Although the worrying was unpleasant, it served as a superficial distraction. It helped me get out of bed, focus on something else, and go on with my day.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I heard this as if the doctor were at other end of a long tunnel. I had trouble connecting his words into sentences with meaning.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

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

“My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“For years I described dissociation but didn't talk about the disorder. Sometimes I could tell from people's questions that they knew must have developed DID to survive, but they didn't ask outright.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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

Mom saved those conversations for our daily phone calls because she thought David wouldn't find out about this other side other. But he could see the changes in me when I talked to my mom.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough. I loved solving problems and getting into the thick of things and also had well-developed skills in reading people and anticipating their needs.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Some of the parts inside me were ready to come up and tell what had happened, but others didn't want me to know they even existed, I learned that when parts were in conflict with each other or didn't like what I was doing, I felt pain and panic, Dr. Summer encouraged me to pay attention to the parts and address the issues they raised, but to also challenge them and keep doing as many of my normal activities as I could.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The first time I caught the ball before it touched the ground, Mike yelled, "Good job!" I held on to the feeling, capturing his words in my fist. In this way I created a part that could play basketball—a part that could focus on the ball to the exclusion of all other distractions. These types of "happy" and "good" parts countered desperate times and feelings and made it possible for me to succeed in school, receive praise and positive reactions from others, excel fearlessly in sports, and develop friendships.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“The diagnosis shouldn't have surprised me, as we had been talking about my symptoms for so long. But it's easier to think you just have a bunch of parts inside. Everyone says things like "A part of me wants to go to the movies, but another part of me wants to just stay home." Using the term "part" made me feel normal. I knew I was a little different in that my parts were quite separate aspects of me. I knew my consciousness wasn't whole and knew that it was unusual to have some thoughts come to me in Spanish. I knew most people didn't experience terror and struggle to catch their breath when they were in benign situations. But we hadn't been calling this DID, so I'd been able to avoid fully accepting the implications of having these special parts.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew.

From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“I'm here as a person who coped in a way that allowed me to be here today but made me vulnerable to abuse when I was a teenager and young adult...”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder