Looking Inside

Paperback, 136 pages

English language

Published March 1, 2001 by Universal Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-1-58112-682-2
ASIN:: 1581126824

(1 review)

Looking Inside gives the reader an intimate peek into one woman's incredible journey with multiple personalities. In this amazing book, Judy Castelli shares her delightful journal drawings and poetic prose. Castelli learned at age forty-four that she has multiple personality disorder. Determined to move beyond a lifetime of mental hospitals and internal chaos, she used her journals to explore the complex system of personalities that share her body. Because she understood that words are sometimes not enough, she encouraged her alters to speak through art. The entries in Looking Inside are ideal to use as individual meditations and personal inspiration, and would also lend themselves to use within the context of group work with DID survivors. This book contains very appealing line drawings and text that come directly from Judy's journal entries. Readers may recognize many of their own thoughts and emotions in this book and can use it as …

Looking Inside gives the reader an intimate peek into one woman's incredible journey with multiple personalities. In this amazing book, Judy Castelli shares her delightful journal drawings and poetic prose. Castelli learned at age forty-four that she has multiple personality disorder. Determined to move beyond a lifetime of mental hospitals and internal chaos, she used her journals to explore the complex system of personalities that share her body. Because she understood that words are sometimes not enough, she encouraged her alters to speak through art. The entries in Looking Inside are ideal to use as individual meditations and personal inspiration, and would also lend themselves to use within the context of group work with DID survivors. This book contains very appealing line drawings and text that come directly from Judy's journal entries. Readers may recognize many of their own thoughts and emotions in this book and can use it as a basis for their own therapeutic journaling. Each entry and drawing offers the reader a wonderful opportunity to explore individually or with others the common challenges of coping with trauma as well as the joy found in healing from it.

1 edition

Ri reviewed Looking Inside by Judy Castelli

"We will be seen, / And heard, / And believed."

5 stars

❝ You will survive this night. We have survived together all this time, and we did not know.

This book is a collection of poetic prose taken from the journals of a woman with DID, and each poem is illustrated with a drawing. Additionally, at the end of the book the author shares a bit of advice for other multiples suffering from dissociation and trauma and struggling to get to know each other and love themselves.

This book is warm, vulnerable, and filled with love. The poems focus on supporting one another despite the hurt and on building community within the system, making reading it a very touching and healing experience.

A lot of the poems stuck with me, reminding me of my - our - own struggles when we discovered we were plural a couple years ago, and had to handle building internal communication, getting to know each other, …

❝ You will survive this night. We have survived together all this time, and we did not know.

This book is a collection of poetic prose taken from the journals of a woman with DID, and each poem is illustrated with a drawing. Additionally, at the end of the book the author shares a bit of advice for other multiples suffering from dissociation and trauma and struggling to get to know each other and love themselves.

This book is warm, vulnerable, and filled with love. The poems focus on supporting one another despite the hurt and on building community within the system, making reading it a very touching and healing experience.

A lot of the poems stuck with me, reminding me of my - our - own struggles when we discovered we were plural a couple years ago, and had to handle building internal communication, getting to know each other, coping with the previously dissociated trauma that proceeded to start spilling out, all at once. And it reminded me of how we knew that we had to cooperate and learn to love each other, how we had to support the ones who were scared and the ones who were scared of the ones who were scared, how we had to show compassion to those who were hurting us without meaning to and how we had to do our very best to stop hurting the others. This book felt personal. It was personal.

I’m very glad to say this is a book written primarily for other plurals: one that means to give them hope and show they aren't alone.

Thank you for sharing it with the world, Judy.

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There is also a free PDF the author shared on her website (which is, unfortunately, gone by now - but still accessible using the Wayback Machine, thank god) as an introduction to journaling. It can be found here - the password is "hope".

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