"I am insane."
"No, Jean, you're not insane," my psychiatrist answers softly, "but now we know what's wrong with you. There's another person living inside your head."
"I don't believe that."
My violent nightmares don't terrify me as much as the realities of my conscious life. Healing is a slow and painful process. Silencing the Voices: ... covers a ten year period of my life, through therapy sessions with my psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Reiter, and into my personal life to deal with my illness and recovery.
From my earliest childhood, I live in confusion, never quite finding anyone who could help me. I marry a mentally abusive husband to escape a physically abusive family, but I am determined to make the marriage work--divorce isn't part of my vocabulary.
After a psychiatrist in Chicago hospitalizes me for a short period, I determine I'm done with them. However, a few years later, I'm driven to see Jack by the horror of my rape in Florida. I provide him glimpses of fear in my daily life, including screaming in my head and my confusing life in Chicago. However, I hide my feelings about a strange man I had seen outside my office window in Chicago, blowing me kisses.
Late one night, driving home from Seattle, I see a small, severed hand lying by the side of the road near the railroad. When I go back to check, it isn't there. In a therapy session, I discover that the hand was a memory--it had been that of a child killed in a train accident when I was about four. I had seen it lying on the road back then. Jack believes I suffered from hysteria as a child.
I've had enough of Jean and her visits to Jack. I 'm going to see what they're up to. I can pretend to be her. However, I am amazed at how quickly Jack finds out that I am not Jean, but Jody. Jack, on the other hand, is delighted to have the puzzle of what is wrong with Jean explained-multiple personality disorder (MPD) is something he can work. He doesn't think much of me though. After talking to me half the session, he makes me give mental control back to poor, confused Jean. She doesn't believe I'm real....
Nearly drunk with fear and confusion, I run off to Mount Rainier to think through what Jack told me. Jody in my head? She can't be real. Yet, where have I been for the last two days?
This synopsis is just the beginning of my journey. The actual book is written in a more intense first-person style to give you insight into the thought processes through the whole cycle of healing, and to bring you a message to have faith in yourself, in God, and in others to guide and support you.