This week, the readers here have posted a wide variety of reactions to the idea that being multiple could have benefits.  If you haven’t yet read all the comments on that blog, please do so.  They are very interesting.

When people have DID/MPD, they have experienced life as a multiple since their childhood.  It is their norm – basically the only way of life they know.  Multiples typically have not experienced life any other way other than being multiple, even if they didn’t realize they were as split as they are.  Sure, one or two of the host personalities may not have a strong personal connection to what it’s like to be multiple, and many of them can deny the existence of the internal others to some degree, but the internal system as a whole would have been there for nearly your whole life.

And frankly, many DID’ers that are newly diagnosed just haven’t realized how much they have been switching their whole lives long.  But just because they haven’t recognized their dissociative abilities doesn’t mean that they haven’t been living their life as a very active multiple, switching, possibly losing time, and putting amnesiac walls around anything that is too uncomfortable for them.

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So what if you are dissociative and you really really detest being a multiple personality?  What if you can’t stand being DID/MPD, and you hate it, and you despise it, and you make sure that everyone in your system knows it, and that everyone in your treatment support team knows it too?

Then what?

• How does that affect how your internal system views you?
• Will they feel loved and accepted?
• Will you feel good about yourself?

For sake of argument here, let’s be sure to separate the fact of being dissociative as being very different from being traumatized and abused. I will clearly and adamantly acknowledge that no young child likes the trauma and abuse that happens as the first step in the process of creating various alter personalities.  I am not proposing that the road to becoming DID is a pleasant one.  It clearly is not.  The very idea of being forced to become a multiple is horrifically tragic in itself.  Any trauma, abuse, neglect, violence, horror, pain, that you’ve gone through is too high a price for anyone to pay.

Often the fact of being multiple becomes inextricably entangled with the fact of having been abused. The multiplicity comes to represent all the pain and fear and wrongness of the abuse, and rejection of the multiplicity is part and parcel of rejecting the reality of the painful past that caused it.

But how do those feelings of adamant rejection affect your healing?

One of the ways to treat and understand multiplicity is to join in, to some degree, with the idea that the alter personalities are their own individual people.  Of course they are all connected to the same one person, but you can balance that out with also seeing each of the insiders as their own unique person.  How would an outside person feel if they were treated the same way your insiders are being treated?

If your internal parts know that you hate the fact that you are multiple, might they begin to internalize that feeling as if you hate them?  I would think so.

How would you feel if you were repeatedly told that you were disliked and unwanted and despised?  Remember, your insiders don’t have to be told these things in actual words.  They are connected to you, and they will know how you genuinely feel about them, whether or not you make a point of telling them.  They will be able to feel how much you don’t like them.  You will not be able to hide this fact from them.

How would you feel, if day after day after day, the people that you lived with refused to speak to you?   Or to acknowledge you?  Or to care about you?  Would you feel cooperative?  Would you want to be friendly and helpful?  At what point would you lose your patience and tolerance?  How might you act when that happened?

In this context, if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and you also firmly believe that multiplicity in itself is a horrible way of life, that strong pervasive belief will negatively affect your treatment progress and your healing.  How could it not? Your insiders are aching for acceptance and kindness and comfort no less than you are – and constant rejection can and will make them continue to act out in resentment and anger and desperation. Nobody else’s acceptance will ever mean as much to them as the acceptance of their own group – their own self – and if that is perpetually withheld from them, then both they and you will be at a self-created stalemate in your healing.  

Because the flip side of treating your insiders like individual people is remembering that they are the same person as you.

If you are repeatedly telling yourself that you hate the way you are, what does that do for your self-image and self worth?

If you believe that the way you are is not okay, not good enough, not right, not acceptable, not normal, then you are reinforcing a lot of negative beliefs of yourself – and it is a short road from having a low self-esteem to have a ton of self-hatred.

• What if hating your multiplicity is a version of hating yourself?

• What if accepting your multiplicity is a version of accepting yourself?

Multiplicity is simply what it is – the fact of having more than one personality / “person” in your head.  In my opinion, it does not have to be a bad thing.  The trauma and the abuse were devastatingly bad – absolutely.  The dissociative walls can really cause problems in the current day, even if they were initially helpful.  The PTSD, anxiety, depression, and other emotional fallout can be debilitating at times.

But the multiplicity – just the multiplicity… does it have to be bad to share your life with others?

Again I ask….

Is accepting your multiplicity a version of accepting yourself?

Warmly,

Kathy

Copyright © 2008-2017 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation