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.
.
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
really the only thing i dont like about it is this.
i dont like how time is so, so mixed up. really mixed up.
like something from many years ago seems like last week.
but something from last week feels like months or years ago.
it happens all the time with all of us.
it mixes us up a lot.
it isnt fair to people around us or to our talker lady.
it makes us really confused. becuase we think something bad happend just yesterday. but good things that happened yesterday feel like long ago.
it makes things that were nice seem like not real dreams.
and it makes bad stuff from a long time ago seem like they happening right now.
we dont know how to switch that around.
we got to learn how to live right now but i dont know how to do that.
if anyone got ideas that would be great.
from rylie
Hi Rylie,
Wow … that is a million dollar question!!! Time is that illusive anchor in our lives. I really hate feeling so mixed up as well. I used to pretend a whole lot that I remembered things that I did not. I felt so stupid and out of it when my husband (or family and friends) would talk about things that I had no memory of. I just go along with the conversation and fake knowing what they are talking about. With my husband and trusted friends, I will now admit when things are muddled and let them help me sort it out.
And, it does often feel that the bad things are present forever in immediate time and the good things melt away in memory. As my husband’s T told him – bad things stick like Velcro and happy things slip off like Teflon.
I am not sure what the solution is here. As I learn more about my history and get memories back, I am better able to sort out a narrative of my life that has a better time perspective. However, my insiders (especially the little one) have no sense of time. So, I endeavor to try and stay grounded as much as possible to try and “stick” memories to real time. Mostly I journal the important parts of my life so I can go back and keep reading and rereading and rereading my life in hopes of sorting out some sense of time.
I will be interested to read what others do to try and stick time as well.
ME+WE
12/04/2017
we relly relly relly hate having DID
a lot
it makes to many problems
theres to many of us
its to loud inside
we hate being this way
Hi Pilgrim.
It really sounds like you are going through a rough time of it right now and just need a break. I know that all of us here can relate to that. Sometimes the chaos in our heads is overwhelming to the point of screaming for it all to stop. Put lack of sleep in the mix and you have a toxic cocktail of despair. Then when you do get to your safe place – your T’s office – the time goes by and you find yourself out the door having just entered. Two weeks ago, I switched back to find myself (the host part) out in the hall with my T asking me if I could manage the stairs. I do not know where the session went. Sometimes I tell my insiders – “hey gang, I am the one paying for these sessions so give me at least a part of the time okay?”
Hum … having DID really sucks a lot of the time. That is really okay to scream out here Pilgrim. We hear. We understand. We support you.
What can I do to help?
I want to invite you to hear what the elder in my system tells me – “stand quietly in peace and let the chaos whirl around you but do not touch it.” I think that what she is saying to me is to go inside of myself to my inner place of peace and let my insiders do their thing but do not engage with them. It really is a meditative state. It does bring me peace and rest from the chaos when I am diligent about my meditation practice. You can learn to disengage from the chaos without having to stop it. As soon as you push back, you give that which you are pushing energy and, in the end, you make the situation worse for yourself. There are a lot of guided meditations out there on the web. Check them out and see if you cannot be guided to a place of peace even if for a few minutes.
You might also want to try and communicate with your insiders and negotiate agreements with them for cooperation, quiet times, taking turns in therapy, etc. Whatever you need to get some peace of mind. So, for example, I have a little one that loves to talk to me continually. I have negotiated “quiet times” with her – times where I can ask her to please let me have some quiet time with no conversation. In turn, I have agreed to craft times, ice cream breaks and visits to the dollar store (where she has a budget but can buy whatever she wants). It can be simple, silly things like — who gets to order from the restaurant menu this time. Start small and simple to build these agreements. It sounds strange but it starts to bring some control and order to the chaos.
I have seen that you are an active participant on this website Pilgrim. If there is anything that your friends can do here to help you, please give a shout out. We are all here to support one another and to offer our compassion, understanding and experiences.
I have moved over to the “i hate it” category this week. I used to not mind. But i need a break from it. There is always something going on with the inside kids. I get tired of the noise and talking and crying and flashbacks and all that.
I havent slept much at all this week because of stuff the kids have going on. All we do is toss and turn at night. If we do sleep at all, its bad dreams.This happens more and more frequently. Things never settle down. Things never get solved. Theyres never enough time to talk problems out. Theres always an incrasingly long line to talk to our therapist and that never goes away., i would love for some peace and quiet. I would love to have a good nights sleep.
Betty, I hear you. I think when you are younger you can believe that stuff is still ahead of you, but once you get to a certain age, things look different. I was diagnosed in my 20s and wasted a decade completely immersed in the mental health system and this diagnosis. It is time I will never get back.
I am fortunate that I somehow broke free from the mental health system and lived somewhat more of a normal life and have kids. But now I find myself all messed up again and it is really hard to hold it together for them. I have days where I long for it just being me and not having that responsibility of kids. Days when I am really messed up but have to pull it together to meet their needs. I suppose some would say it is good that I have them to make me pull it together and keep myself alive. But, it is a constant battle.
Also, as I have gotten older, I am seeing friends get cancer diagnoses, one just got a death sentence with hers. It made me stop and think how I can be fooling around with this DID stuff when I could get struck down by cancer tomorrow. I am sure I am not making sense, sorry. But yes, if you accept the diagnosis, you are in a sense accepting you will not have the life you should have had…
As odd as this may sound, I guess accepting I have DID is in fact accepting what has been done to cause it! It would also mean accepting it that I will NEVER have the life I could have had! I will never have a family, children, the joys most people have & at 54 years old it is hard to think there is a point to life! don’t get me wrong, I surely keep trying but it is a constant battle inside and out!!!!
I am very early in my treatment and my therapist has been teaching me that the dissociation was to protect me, and to try and love and accept that it kept me safe. I know this to be the healthy thing to do because I do want integration, but I sometimes get frustrated when my DID affects my relationships with people negatively, especially with my youngest son, and when I’m trying to make new friends. I realize now that I have not been accepting at all and instead have been working through the anger and embarrassment I have felt in the past over the lost relationships that DID has caused me. I am now trying much harder to be accepting and loving and communicate with my alters because I have no co consciousness and I think it’s because of the anger and frustration I’ve been working through for so long. If I could snap my fingers and have DID gone, I would surely do it right now. But since that’s not possible i am working on communicating with those other parts of me. I’m sure they don’t communicate with me because I am working through all the negative emotions of the trauma and not accepting that the DID is there to help me when my mind is overly stressed and not functioning well. I have learned a lot through all of the other posts I have read from other multiples, and also from people on a DID forum that I just started going on. I wish now that my alters would communicate with me, but so far they are quiet. I think it’s a trust issue with them after seeing so many years of being angry that I’m DID.
Reblogged this on The Paradigm Salon.
Reblogged this on adifferentlifebeinglived.
This post is written well and is given from a different perspective that is interesting and thought provoking. It gives me fresh insight into compassion for oneself. All of us have difficulty at times being kind to ourselves, but hating a part of yourself would be a heavy load to carry, I think. Thanks for the thought you put into writing this article. I enjoyed reading it.
Reblogged this on Discussing Dissociation and commented:
Hi everyone,
I selected this article to re-blog because it already has 46 comments connected to it, and links to an article about the benefits of being multiple with 59 comments. That tells me y’all have a lot to say about these topics, and I’m certainly interested in hearing more.
I’m not multiple, so I don’t really have a say. I’m looking forward to hearing from those of you that know all about it.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Warmly,
Kathy
I dont usually mind it, its all we know. There are a few things that are too challenging for my taste:
1. Getting a good nights sleep is impossible. Inside kids are up all night long, talking and singing and arguing.
2. What we call “radio head”- sometimes we get woken up because there is a loud radio playing music too loud, or a group of people talking too loud. So loud it wakes us up. But there is really nothing there, we are just in a silent bedroom. We dont know who it is thats talking so loud inside. Maybe our metal fillings are picking up radio waves. Or aliens.
3. Having to wait forever for a turn to talk to our therapist. EVERYBODY has something urgent to say that they just HAVE to talk about. The line gets very long and frustrating.
4. Too many people all wanting to do different things in different directions.
5 looking in the mirror is horrible. We never see who we expect to see,
Heres what i hate about it. Everybody trying to boss me around just because there biger than me. Like caden and caroline always think they no me better. They just say bad things about me. They talk about me and write things to are therapest like indont no there doing it. And what i dont like is when somebody leaves you, they dont just be leaving 1 peson. They be leaving a bunch of pepol.so when a freind or family or a therapist leaves you, they think they just be leaving 1 person. But really they dont. They leave a bunch of kids who will cry for them for long years.they leave and every body, like 10 or 20 or 30 pepol, has big big feelings. But you have to make them fit all in 1 body. And that dosent work. It dosent all fit. You dont brake just 1 heart . You brake bunches of hearts.
The others dont mind having DID. But i hate it. I just want to be normal. A normal teenager and do normal teenager things.the inside kids are always acting up and always ruining things. Missy and michael are always causing messes. Its hard to get this done. Jadie is always a mess. I just want peace and quiet. Just this morning, something we needed very badly went missing- when all we did was put it next to us, and left it there when we went to sleep last night. When we woke up this morning, it was GONE. Just gone. We looked everywhere. Apparently the kids were up last night messing around, i wish they would go away. Of course, they all probably wish i wouod go away too. Jodie
I dont usually mind being multiple because its all we ever knew.. But lately i am pretty mich hating it? And everything to do with it
i hate that she hates me—llike i ******* did the bad things. i’m NOT going to go away. theres a reason i’m here and until she gets that through her thick, thick floppy head i will scream at her and break her stuff.
so there. how ya like me now. i get it. hating me don’t work. HA.
michael
“You don’t have to go away from here.”
Thanks Kathy. You are the 1st person to tell me that.
It’s nice to read and hear those words in my head.
After reading honest comments by brave and strong people who sound a lot like me, and the knowlege You present in a way i can understand what has been going on in “crazy” me all my life, i am actually starting to believe the words to be true.
Thank You All for letting me come out and stay!
lostindid,
You are very welcome – it is good to see you here. 🙂
Thank you for the positive ways you have been contributing to the conversations occurring on this blog. It looks like you are easily fitting in here very nicely. There is lots to learn and understand about dissociative disorders and the active participation by the readers makes for a big part of that.
Thanks again, and keep on posting! 🙂
Kathy
I have spent the better part of the last 30 years desperately trying to silence the voices in my head. I never liked them. Every therapist i had seen (up to 1.5yrs ago) would just deny that there were others inside me. My mother used to always and still at times can see when i ‘go away’. This was always disconcerting to her, but not enough to get to the problems.
After about 6 months into my recovery of anorexia – alone i might add, i finally did it. I stopped all communication with myself. My dream of silence was finally realized and the horror of the blackness fell hard on me. That was when i Had to get help for other life issues and a counselor was assigned to me. She wanted to do EMDR on me but being dissociative, she could not until i had stoped dissociating. We worked hard and i told her i was “o.k.” She felt positive and we tried it. Only once. Nothing happened.
So now, after reading “how would You feel if…” i am confused and hurting all over again.
I know now that my dream of silencing them was a bad idea now that i have successfully completed That mission. Now i am left with auto-pilot, my body doing the daily routine of housewife and mother, but that is it. I am lost within my own self/mind. I no longer have thoughts or conversations w/myself. This is more scary to me than the actual thoughts were in the first place.
I have a strong and supportive husband who does not understand how a person can “split” instantly like he has seen me do many times, often during intimate relations.
I feel more broken now than ever before.
Yeah, i hated my others. I made Them ‘go away’. What now? Am i healed like i thought would happen? Hardly. Am i scared? Completely. Now that i can’t hear them anymore, are they still there? Lurking, waiting for me to slip up so they can take control once again?
I heard from ‘her’ the other day for the first time in over a year. You know what she had to say to me? “Stop communicating. Just don’t talk. You know he only gets angry when you talk.” Next thing i knew i was staring out the window, his words going in – somewhere, and i was out – somewhere while she kept telling me that over and over. After a time, i blinked my eyes a few times and everything was ‘magically better’. I moved on to something else.
I want them silenced. But i also want my past. There is so much that i had lost. Only a handfull of memories, which are all bad. I know there must have been good ones and good times.
What really bugs me is that i cannot remember the things my kids remember that we did together. Was someone else out with them during these times?
Thank You Kathy for having such a good, safe place to explore these things. Just knowing that i am Not crazy and there are other people like me is somehow comforting.
Based on her 1st words in over a year being criticle and demanding her way of Not communicating i feel i was in the right to shut her up.
Now after reading this, i fear i have become my own worst enemy, even worse that the one who tried to kill me through starvation.
I just want to be Me. Is that too much to ask for someone who hasn’t the foggiest clue of who that is? I know i am inside there. But where? Can i ever get out without them holding me hostage “for my own protection” (they say)?
They have told me for all my life to “go away”. And i did. Now i don’t want to. And i have silenced the very ones who will set me free.
What now?
Lostindid,
Welcome to the Discussing Dissociation blog! It’s good to see you here. I’m glad you are finding this blog community to be helpful for you. There is a good group of readers / posters here, and everyone has lots to learn from each other. Not feeling alone with this kind of stuff is so very important – I’m glad you are feeling like you found a place where you can relate so easily to what others are saying and going thru’. That’s excellent.
Thanks so much for your comments and I hope you feel comfortable enough to keep coming back! You don’t have to go away from here. You are very welcome to come back and stay as much as you want to.
Kathy
David,
I think I might get what you are saying. It is almost like if you had a child that was born with some type of disability. You wouldnt like it, but it is, so you work with it the best that you can. If you could change the fact you would, but since you cant, you deal with it?
MemyselfandI,
Accepting is hard! I was diagnosed twice in the last year. The first time I had never heard of dissociation or DID. Had to have it explained several times. Finally someone used the term Multiple Personality….. I laughed really hard and told them it wasnt a real thing!!! It is funny now, but it wasnt then. I thought THEY were the insane ones! I researched everything that I could find, just to prove them wrong. Well, the more I researched the more I saw me in everything that I read.
The second time I was hoping that it would be something else, it wasnt but at least I was prepared for it.
H~
Oh, that was fast Kathy!!! But once I posted it and clicked on it I had the misfortune to see a few of the comments posted. They may be very hurtful and triggering for some folks so I would avoid reading the crappy comments everyone. Blessings, me
I found this somewhere under a link about “dual personality.” It is certainly inspiring and fascinating and listen to the/their very last comment. It just reminded me of this discussion and of trying to look for positives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkKWApOAG2g
wow.
That’s a powerful you tube video.
Talk about having to work together, and make the best of a hard thing….
Thanks for sharing that, healingone.
Kathy
Hi,
I recently discovered your blog and love it! You pose some very thought provoking questions that have really made me ponder my actions.
I have fought against having DID, I don’t have parts, everyone who’s diagnosed me is wrong. The five questions in this blog hit me hard. It showed me what a disservice I was doing to my parts and that I was hurting them as well as me. I didn’t realize how my denial affected my parts and how damaging it was.
I am more accepting of the diagnosis, trying not to deny any more. Your questions have really helped me see that my attitude affect more than me.
Thank you.
Hi memyselfandI,
Thanks so much for your kind comment, and welcome to the Discussing Dissociation blog!
I’m glad to hear that my questions have given you something to think about — that’s the whole point of them!
I can understand that it is hard to come to terms with being multiple. I hope that if you read more of this blog, you’ll get more reassurance that being multiple is not such a horrible thing afterall…. Complicated, yes. Terrible, no.
I hope you keep reading, and please feel free to join in on the various conversations…
Warmly,
Kathy
*I have not read all the comments on the two threads mentioned, but I have read many, so I apologize if my comment is very similar to others.
I do not see DID as having clear positives or negatives. I think it is important to realize that multiplicity, itself, is not “bad.” In fact, it is most often not the “the real issue”. Multiplicity is the effect of the real issue. It is the trauma that was once experienced that is the real issue. The trauma precipitates, causes, and maintains the DID. It is this trauma that we dislike. To say positives about DID often feels like saying positives about the trauma, but that it not the case. The trauma and the multiplicity, though related, are two completely different things. Trauma is the adversity. Multiplicity is the way we survived it. The trauma is what we lived with, what happened to us. The multiplicity is how we coped. Multiplicity is not inherently bad or wrong. It is a coping mechanism that occurs rather automatically in response to severe trauma. It happens without thought. We do not consciously choose it. It just happens. In its beginnings, it is helpful. It makes it possible for survivors of trauma to function despite the adversity in their lives. The negative feelings we often feel towards our multiplicity come from its causes, the trauma we experienced, the way we got this way in the first place. It also comes from the conflicts we face later in life as this coping skill still exists in a time and place where it is no longer needed to “get through the moment.” In the beginning the walls of dissociation protected our psyche. Later in life, the walls of dissociation often seem to hinder us, or work against us. Still it is important, I think, to honor it’s original function. It helped us in a time when we needed it most. It was there for us when no one else was. And none of us could ever attempt to guess where we would be today without it. In our adulthood, on our path to recovery, it helps us none to pass judgements on it,though we all go through that many times. It’s pretty much unavoidable. But the fact it…it is what it is. Multiplicity is a part of our life. It just is. I really feel like as we heal, we ALL will heal. For now, I try not to think of it negatively or positively. For now I try to just accept that it is…that it exists, and that it is a real part of my life. No judgements. We all did what we could to survive given the resources we had. We made the best choices we could for survival in the moment. Multiple or not, we are all here, we are all of sound mind (though we don’t always feel that way), and we all survived.
Secret Shadows
RockerGirl,
You took the words out of my mouth.
David,
in response to your question about integration: No. I absolutely DO NOT have integration as a goal. I am frankly unsure if it is even possible, and if it were, to me it feels like murdering my best friends who have done nothing but try to help me. I don’t see it as positive or needed.
I am in therapy to heal from the abuse. I don’t want flashbacks, and night terrors and the fear that I live with daily. I want to switch not because some trigger controls us and makes a switch happen, but because someone simply wanted to be out and communicated that and switched. I want coconsciousness and cooperation. I want the programming gone. I want my actions and my behavior and my thoughts and my emotions to belong to us, not the abusers and the damage they left behind.
I am also in therapy because dissociation is not my only “disorder”. I suffer from 3 different anxiety diagnoses, some of my alters suffer from OCD, I have eating disorder issues, post-traumatic stress, and the depression that accompanies chronic illness. To put it bluntly, I have way more challenging things to worry about than just the fact that I’m multiple.
You are right to love that little part so much…
The bottom line here to me is that loving all the parts of yourself is not the same thing as celebrating the fact that you have a dissociative disorder.
[I do not understand this quote]:
[When separating out the multiplicity like that, are you saying that someone hates their parts if they do not like having DID? This is confusing to me.]
And I think it is a … minimization to say the PTSD, anxiety, depression and emotional fallout can be debilitating at times *BUT*…
I resent it when someone says things like that. Especially if you have never had your boss come looking for you because the fact that you have a job kind of fell off your radar for a couple of weeks and you couldn’t prepare for that because you didn’t see it coming. And if you have never woke up in the night to vomit suddenly for no reason when you don’t even feel ill and are not sick. And if you have never suddenly found yourself in a puddle of sweat on the bathroom floor and not be able to figure out how you got there. THAT is being multiple. Anyone who likes that has even bigger problems than DID. Disliking being multiple IS NOT the same thing as disliking the parts of yourself. Unless you are only addressing someone who has done all the healing work they possibly can and can’t or won’t integrate, then I think it’s warped to say that those two things are the same.
(post edited)
1janedonut,
To me, some of the things that you are writing about are more related to the long-term effects of the trauma vs. the effects of multiplicity. Having a history of abuse, severe trauma, and painful memories is, in my opinion, is more the cause of some of the things you have written about.
Being multiple is not what makes people get sick and throw up in the middle of the night. Having a history of severe trauma, and the return of trauma memories, and the resurfacing emotions connected to the trauma can certainly create vomiting.
It’s the same with finding yourself in puddles of sweat in the bathroom floor. To me, that sounds more like a trauma response, not a mutliple response. The “finding yourself there” is dissociative, yes, but the “puddles of sweat” are the trauma response.
You might think I’m splitting hairs to make this distinction, but I think it is important.
Horrific abuse caused the multiplicity, yes.
And that same horrific abuse causes a lot of fall-out for years later, including memories, body memories, physical responses to trauma, etc. The body remembers the trauma for many, many years.
The multiplicity / dissociation might prevent you from being aware ahead of time (or at the time) about feeling sick, but it’s the trauma that caused the sickness.
The abuse made you sick, and undestandably so. I am sorry to hear that your abuse was so very horrific. It sounds like you’ve had a very miserable time working thru’ a lot of your memories.
The multiplicity / dissociation helps you to separate those feelings / experiences from yourself when you need to have more distance.
At least that’s how I separate the two. Does that make sense?
Kathy
Thanks, RockerGirl and healingone … those are both very interesting answers.
I wonder how much my perspective on this issue is impacted by the fact that I wasn’t sexually or physically abused, and so my alters and split-points are a bit different than those of many DIDers. I am more dissociated from my functional selves than I am from my trauma-bearing alters, which may go a long way toward explaining why I find the system so extraordinarily frustrating.
I did, however, think of one rather entertaining feature of being multiple — my current girlfriend, an exceptionally open-minded woman, has recently discovered the fun of corresponding with one of my alters on his email account, which is separate from mine, and which gives her, I think, a feeling of having an exciting illicit affair with me while being in a committed relationship with me. Since I’ve always been entirely co-conscious with this alter, it’s fun for us as well.
I would prefer, however, that he simply be reliably present to interact with her in a more fluid and integrated way. We both miss him when he’s not around.
Oh David, I sure most definitely do have integration as a goal. And Integration is a process that has been hastened considerably recently by the level of acceptance and appreciation for having the parts/dissociative stuff to deal with. And dissonance and discomfort are words that I don’t think are quite so loaded as is frustration. The way I experience the pain of what needs to be healed; the dissonance and discomfort, is by regularly choosing to enter in to my core, young, unhealed, very tearful and in agonizing pain, little me part. Chosen painful sobbing racking pain. Daily. Sometimes several times a day, and clearly chosen. If I don’t, she gets triggered by the stressors that add up over the course of any day or days and then we can count on an unchosen split. Which is no fun at all and which means a sense of revictimization/having been triggered/having had an unchosen switch. When one is daily entering in to the deep down wrenching sobbing pain of a little girl who was unloved, uncared for, emotionally, verbally, physically and even sexually abused, and who experienced loss after endless loss and had to shove it all just to survive and who stayed hidden and hurt and wounded and hiding and desperately lonely for years and years and years and years, except for those times when she was triggered by whatever, then it is not possible to not love this very hurt part, to not want the very best for her, to not want her to be out of such wrenching pain and to not want healing and integration. And we are integrating, and this poor little thing has now got parts to help her in the pain she lived in for years who are saying very nice things to her and are holding her and are pulling in all the people who love us, even when we are crying all all alone without the arms of our husband who is on this healing journey with us. And so then we are in a state of deep emotional duress where switching happens rapid fire and we might be a laughing young silly child, or a mother tigress, or a flaming angry part outraged at so much . . but it is chosen. IT is healing and it is the ability to work with the parts while they are out full force, both by ourselves, with our husband,, with our T, in conversations with another T 🙂 by mail or chat , alone sometimes when it is safe , crying in the car, etc. etc., etc., And as a result we have the daily relief of getting it out. Of things not building up, of not having serious switches unbidden, of knowing what is going on deep within because as host part(s) are going about their day they are more aware of the things that hurt and are getting temporarily somewhat shoved. They do not get triggered hardly ever because there is a window of tolerance now where we can experience the pain within and stop and talk to it a bit and delay any needed venting of that pain. But delay. Because if we do not allow her her need for the pain to be had and to be soothed and to have the relief of tears, even given the desperate pain of those tears, then we all will end up either with gnawing anxiety, a racing brain, an inability to be present with the people we want to be present with and really listen to and much much else. So this is all the process of integration and it has been more quickly proceeding, with access to more parts, now that we are not so frustrated and annoyed by the reality of dissociation. And we have lots more choice and control over the switching now. And we will not allow her to live in pain for any longer than she has to. She has been through more than enough and suffers greatly to help us all and we suffer with her as a result, and now she finally has some loving others there for her in the worst of the pain. We will heal. We will. She deserves it. She deserves much much more of the joy that the young happy part has, and finally finally that young and happy part can be felt by her. She can actually experience the happy deep deep down within her. That has been going on for oh . . maybe a year, but even more recently. It is a blessing and a joy to experence not just the loving silliness of a young part who knows how to be happy, coz that was always in there too, compartmentalized, but for this joy, this deep deep laughter and joy to be experienced by the one who used to only experience deep deep pain, is nothing short of a miracle. This is the process of integration and it is a joy. A true true joy. With the pain comes the joy. So we all do it for ourselves and for her, daily daily daily and work on the communication. And we are clearly healing and integrating. So we don’t have need to be perpetually frustrated by the dissociation because we have the daily experience of a core young me who needs and deserves and wants to heal. And she is a fact. She is very very real and wants to be “me” but not in all that pain, and so for her and us, she has to get out of pain and begin to grow up. And she is. It doesn’t take frustration. It takes love. We love her. She deserves our help. That’s my very vulnerable answer, David. Blessings, us
I don’t have integration as a goal. And, to respond to the implication of that question, seeking integration (or “fixing the fact that I’m multiple”) really isn’t the only reason to be in therapy.
I was abused. Badly. Like everyone else who is multiple. Just because I’m at ease with the fact of the multiplicity does not mean the abuse hasn’t caused a significant amount of pain and damage. It has. It seems that a lot of people think the multiplicity IS the damage, therefore the multiplicity is what they want fixed.
I don’t consider myself to be damaged just because I’m multiple — but I still seek to fix the things I do see as damage. I seek to have everyone in this system be safe, feel safe, and find some healing from the abuse that was done to them. I want all the lies exposed and all the programming undone and all the bonds that tie us to our abusers broken, and I want to know to the depths of this system that no vestige of their power or control remains. That’s why I’m in therapy.
I have a lot of problems that need therapeutic help. I just don’t happen to think that being multiple is one of them.
I agree with you David about what appears to be an “acceptable” way in which to look at being DID. I find this rather scary. Everyone is different, as is the way their DID presents and effects their life. Yes there are commonalities, but they way in which we got to this point in out lives is different. They way in which each of us chooses to heal is also different.
This is part of what has made me uncomfortable putting our sets up on polyvore – they do look different from other survivors works. They’re not better or worse, just different. But by adding them to a survivor’s group, they do stand out a bit in their difference. Sometimes we feel as if that difference is frowned upon with some of the comments we get about the sets. Almost like we’re being tested about our diagnosis.
In short –
Do we like being multiple/dissociative – No
Do we like the way being multiple/dissociative effects our life – No
Do we like knowing what has caused us to be multiple/dissociative – No
Do we hate others within the system for being part of that multiplicity – No
Do we appreciate the role each of us takes in making up this life – Yes
Do we want to heal to the point where we are able to communicate with each other freely – Yes
Do we want to stop the hurting that is obvious in some of the ones within the system – Yes
In this short summary, you can see that there are themes – but instead of looking at them as a negative, look on them as a positive. It is possible to love a young one and still hate the actions that caused that dissociative split. It is possible to not like the multiplicity/dissociation and the chaos is can sometimes bring to this life, and still love that young one – it is after all not that young ones fault that she is the result of someone elses evil. She is not to blame, and it does us no good to resent her.
Take care…
Whoops, I hit submit too soon. 🙂
Let me continue that train of thought. I suppose one answer to that question might be that you see multiplicity as something that needs to be healed, but you’re not frustrated with it. And yet — how can you identify something as being a problem if you are not experiencing some kind of dissonance or discomfort with it?
Perhaps those of you who are completely accepting of your multiplicity *don’t* have integration as a goal. And yet, in that case, I have to wonder what keeps you in therapy. If you are utterly at ease with the way you live in the world, why are you seeking guidance?
Well, now I’m curious …
For the folks in this thread who are completely accepting of the fact that they are multiple, and have no issues about it … is integration a goal you have in therapy? And if so, why would you have that goal, if being multiple isn’t problematic for you?
David, I wrote my last comment before seeing your reply to me. I Hear you. I really do. But sometimes the way we experience things is not necessarily the full truth. Our experiences of our inner world are inextricably tied to the subconscious pain we are not yet in touch with or aware of, and as you said, you have some insiders who are not ready for various things yet. Dissociative processes are inextricably (there’s that word again ) linked to the stress and the pain that come our way. We learned to dissociate over the years to deal with all the various stressors and triggers that came our way and most of the time we had no clue we were switching to do this; just to deal with daily life. So any source of ongoing stress in our life, and being pervasively frustrated with being dissociative is most certainly a stressor, and most likely means that the proneness or need to dissociate is hardly being helped by this sense of pervasive frustration or helplessness or what have you. That’s what I’m trying to say. IT isn’t helpful for healing. It just isn’t. But anything we can do to accept and even enjoy our reality decreases the stress of it all, decreases the need to dissociate, and helps us heal. That’s my belief and that’s my personal experience and I just offer it to all in the hopes it may help. But please do not misunderstand me. I honor everyone’s experience of this dissociative mess we have to live in. Each of us experiences it individually and personally and painfully and hopefully joyfully too and I care very much for anyone who is going through this. Blessings, Healingone
Hi David
Firstly, I’d like to thank you for describing what works for you when you said “my response to that is to carefully explain everything we’re going to do during the day” because I never thought of it.
On the second thought, I did, but never give it really a try – because it was dismissed as not very good idea since we were raised by our father who all the time changed his mind and what he explained to us we were going to do had always turned into something completely different, so our system decided that verbal description as such is something that should not be trusted at all…
We as a system ended up not being able to trust any communication through words and we could rely on the non-verbal aspects of communication only. It makes me now able to see the reason why the “inner children” never allowed me to trust the therapeutic modalities (and therapists using them) that relied on verbal descriptions, but also feared behavioral therapy because one needs to do what they *say* what one has to do, not show it themselves (the facilitators however do show themselves what is to be done, first, at least in the dance based therapeutic modalities, thank goodness for that and for a friend who showed me nine years ago what they do). Oh, and I can see why our internal communication as well was only done through drawings, pictures, collages (similar to Castor Girl), gestures, dance-like-movement, and only very recently through words.
I understand now why my “inner children”/childhood parts always wanted me to draw where our body will be walking or driving or whatever and to be able to see in advance every step along the way (they would be happiest to have a GPS, which we don’t have, but they want me to buy one as soon as possible), even if the body was going to be walking or going by bus only a few streets/blocks away, sorry I cn’t go on becous im too sad now
Hi David!
It’s me Emmy again. I think you are doing a great job with your inside people. I got the “whole” picture now, I can see that you care for them and I do think you are trying the very best you can to make them feel safe. I just want to say that I understand what you are saying. I agree with you that it’s impossible to plan the day and cont in every litle unpredictable thing that can or can not happened. DID make life harder, that’s a fact. But in the darkest of times there are also light, but that doesn’t take the pain away or make things easy… You are doing a good job with your system and I understand now better what you are frustrated about. I’m sorry I didn’t see that before now…Unfortunately I don’t have a quick solution, I think the best you can do is to communicate with them continually and thoughtfully and carefully explain everything you’re going to do during the day, and make their safety and comfort a priority. And you are already doing that!!!! So one day you have done that job so well, so your inside people really trust you and then they will share their stories/memories/details with you. But it takes time. My T say a lot to me that “annoy” me and one of this things she say is “How many years has your abusers have time to do their bad stuff and brake down your trust?” My T is a question kind of T, she always answer with a question to make me think…But she has a point, it must take time to heal something that has been repeatedly broken, like trust issuies for example. And if people repeatedly let you down and hurt you, then it’s normal to learn you can’t trust anyone. At least I learn that lesion, and if that has been the case for you too, starting from very young age continue up to adulthood, it also need long time to heal and re-learn how to trust again. So, what I wanted to say was that I think I understand your frustration and your feeling of wanting this to heal yesterday, but I think patience is the key to this one unfortunately. I know it’s not a comfort right now, but the day will come, when your inside people has re-learnt how to trust again. I know this because, that’s what I have experienced with my insiders. And if mine could re-learn things, yours can it too!!! Just do what you are doing and add some more patience and time and you will slowly see a change…
/Emmy Dragonheart’s family
Oh, I’ll try to be briefer here. I feel bad sad now. I understand what people are saying and I don’t think anyone is denying how hard and painful it is to have to deal with the daily realities of being divided within oneself and knowing it. IT is very very hard and the path to healing hurts a lot. It is agony. I used to call it ” no hope no love die just die” when referring to the feelings of pain that I had to traverse during one of the grieving storms. IT isn’t like that now, but it is still painful and lonely and truly gruesome at times. Some of the writers on it have very grave grave names for this process that I can’t remember now, that do a wonderful job of labeling the agony it takes to heal. I’m sorry if the hopefulness I have sounds like platitudes and I know Kathy doesn’t think any of this is easy or not really grave. It is grave. And “we” are divided because of the gravity of it all and saying “we” is something it took me a while to learn. I say I when I want to and I say we when I want to but I most certainly am an I that does not want to be divided within myself. My spirituality helps me be grateful for the pain that helps me grow. but it most certainly is pain and it most certainly is nothing anyone should have to feel. But if we’re here we are in the business of accepting and healing all the divided-ness and so I KNOW as soon as I did alot more embracing of all the pieces of me and quit railing against the dividedness and accepted it and even made the effort to both accept and smile along with the switches and be able to accept that, that lots of good good things started to happen. Really good things. I am far more integrated now then I was just a few months ago and I will not go backwards. I just will not. It most certainly is grave. hugely grave and hugely painful. Now as for whatever anybody else thinks . .I don’t give a *&^% . I hate labels. We are people. We are not our diagnoses and some compartmentalization of the ego is normative. No one has the right to know i struggle with dissociation and the fact that much of society is ignorant of the multitudes of divided people out there just means we are more informed than they are. I’m not crazy and whatever ignorant uninformed people out there might think of me is their problem unless I make it mine. I know how healing and healthy I am compared to most of those who choose not to look at themselves period. So it just isn’t worth it to me to hate that. Now educate when called upon, yes that is my choice and my calling. I care very much for all of us here who struggle with dissociation. I believe in both/and. I believe we can both accept ourselves and the reality we are divided and work to honor it and us while at the same time recognizing it is a bear. But ongoing frustration with it hurts us. It doesn’t help the healing process at all. There is healthy grief and hurt and pain for ourselves that has to be worked at that includes grief over being divided, and when we enter emotional/ego/feeling states by choice like this, we can work at that which doesn’t help us. We can put the anger and frustration where it belongs which is on the people who caused this,etc.That’s healthy. The anger is a necessary part of grief. But when it is frustration that is in anyway experienced by the self as with itself or is this ongoing litany that colors our days and our lives and our whole being, then we are living a reality that just increases the dissociative processes. That’s my belief. And I”ve seen the change make a difference in my healing process and in the level of integration and the number of pieces or parts I can access by choice . . Blessings to all . . . healingone
I don’t have a problem with being multiple. Nobody in our group has a problem with being multiple except the ones whose job it is to deny that it’s true. I don’t like what it took to become this way, and obviously a “good life” would be preferable to the life I actually had, but… it is what it is. There are worse ways to live and worse diagnoses to have.
Reading the comments here makes me think of the pseudoboss at work that I hate because he’s an annoying, pompous idiot. He makes my life more difficult just by existing. But who’s suffering for this? I am. Not him, not anyone else in the world, just me. I’m ruining my own day every day because I can’t get past how much I hate him. Which is pointless. I am doing nothing but increasing my own misery by resenting something that no amount of resentment or bitterness or railing against the unfairness of fate will change. So every day I strive for a zen acceptance of his existence. And the days when I succeed are that much better and calmer and more peaceful because I’m not being consumed with an irritation that is only exacerbated for having nowhere to go and nothing to feed on but me.
We can waste a lot of time and energy resenting fate because we’re multiple… that’s a choice that everyone is free to make if it suits them… but it is a waste. And all the things that are already feel so hard are only made harder as long as we’re busy resenting it for being so hard in the first place.
Hello, healingone —
Actually, I think you’re making the same assumption that your little made in her earlier comment, which is that my frustration with being multiple causes me stress which then causes me to further dissociate and/or reject or be critical of insiders.
I don’t experience it that way. It is my frustration with being multiple, and limited by that, which sent me into therapy. It is my dissatisfaction with the current state of my life that inspires me to do the work. I’m quite familiar with my committee,as I call them, and communicate with them continually, and thoughtfully. They have trust issues, and we’re not to the point yet at which they are ready to share all of their information with me, and they are still highly trigger-prone, but my response to that is to carefully explain everything we’re going to do during the day, and make their safety and comfort a priority. Unfortunately, life is unpredictable, and sometimes things happen, due to my being multiple,that are very hard to deal with, because I can’t possibly plan for every eventuality. And that’s frustrating.
This next statement isn’t directed at you, healingone, but is just an observation. This thread, and the thread prior to it, about benefits of being multiple, have given me a curious sense that having DID is rather like belonging to an exclusive club of some kind, and I’m perceived as not playing by the proper rules of etiquette. I have a sense that it’s “illegal” or bad form to say hey, this is a really hard way to live, and I’d rather not be living this way.
It’s a familiar feeling to me, this voicing of an unpopular opinion; I’m invariably the person who does it, regardless of what kind of group I’m in.
there are so many other things i could say here, i’d like to say here, but the words don’t come so smoothly. i don’t hate my parts, i hate being a multiple. i am glad my parts are here, because i know what their purpose was, and i am grateful for all that they have done for me. but having them doesn’t make my life any easier, it doesn’t make it move smoothly, it forces me to be trapped and entangled more in secrets. i am so full of secrets and trying to keep them hidden to maintain any source of normalcy, to not be looked at as a freak or a crazy person. to have a decent chance at a decent life. People look at multiples and they think a lot of things, either that we are faking it, that we don’t really have parts, they think that we are crazy and incapable of taking care of ourselves, even though most of us have done that all our lives, and taken care of others outside our own systems. i hate labels, and i hate being judge before i am ever met. I know that if the people i work for found out i had DID, they would never trust me to take care of their children, even though i have sucessfully without any incidents for nearly 4 years now. Even though i love their children as if they were my own, i know that that wouldn’t matter. I would be treated like a crazy person, and probably loose every bit of normalcy i’ve worked so hard for. See, its not that i hate being a multiple, its not that i hate that part of me, its that i hate what other people think when they think of multiples. Its that i hate the reputation that multiples will get. We are labeled as manipulators, trouble makers, needy, self-centered, crazy. Im not saying i love who i am, but i do know multiple or not, one day, im gonna.
pieces,
krystle.olivia
I agree that it is just not as black and white as was presented in the post. I do not like living the way I live, but there is not a single aspect of self that is despised and unappreciated. Liking a situation and accepting the people who live in it are two very different things. This is one of the problems I have with therapists and therapy in general. There are so many platitudes and ill-reasoned piles of baloney heaped upon us, that it makes me think of just handling things on my own. At least there will be total honesty then and no one to belittle the gravity of the situation and the unpopular feelings that go with it. True acceptance would include having it understood that all of these thoughts and feelings exist in the same place and one cannot negate another. For me, true acceptance also includes speaking of myself as an “I”. I don’t do it to discount any part of myself. I do it to include every piece under the umbrella, as in I am all of those pieces, and all of those pieces make a ‘me’. So far, “I” am the only person who has been able to truly accept me without laying down random loads of you-know-what in my path. Believing that someone who claims to help and accept all that goes with the dissociative spectrum might even include being able to see one’s own comments about it when one is not logged in.
HI Everyone. It’s me again in a different version and I apologize David for any of little me’s ways of expressing things that meant you felt I assumed things. She speaks her way and she is incredibly vulnerable and vocal. I deeply know the frustration of being multiple and have lived that for a few years now. Not too long ago I was objecting to picturing my insiders because that just meant to me making them even more real, and weren’t the “voices” quite freeking enough thank you very much?? I was living with daily frustration and mixed feelings over all the unchosen ego state switches and a part or parts of me was/were intensely frustrated at ‘autopilot” life and the “stupid” host me who many parts felt couldn’t feel and just kept right on going and then little me had to deal with the pain of all that she was put through in a day or else things built up and built up and built up and then there was an unchosen split to little me or anger or a whole bunch of parts at once, as that’s how things happen in this system of ours right now if we don’t daily face the pain. I was accepting and resisting the “multiplicity” or parts at the same time. I was continually feeling frustrated by it all. After all, it is not exactly fun to not be in control of yourself. Now, I apologize if I”m giving info or opinions that are already on this site elsewhere and/or seeming to assume that anyone may not know what I”m about to say. It’s just that I feel called to present it for whoever may not have been introduced to this information. I am a long term student of trauma and dissociation and can’t help that and that means that all my knowledge sometimes gets in the way of my healing. But the stuff I”m about to explain has truly helped me in terms of it being sort of a theory base or way of understanding things and I just want to put it out there for any one it may help. Many theorists argue that at root there are two basic human emotions; Love and Fear. Now some say Love and Hurt, but the other’s suggest that once one has been hurt once, then there comes Fear and so I just choose to go with Love and Fear. Now these two basic and deeply biological /neurological emotional states are not the same as the affects or the feelings. Affects are something we are all born with it is theorized and so we can see these basic affects on a baby’s face . . I think there are about 7 of them but they include surprise, contentment, fear, anger, etc., and anyone here can look them up. Now the feelings are many!! And they are far more cognitive in nature. That’s why we have so many words for feeling states, because our human experience is so varied, and language itself helps to create meaning and so we have numerous names for feelings. Frustration being just one of many many normative human feelings. We all get frustrated. But if you go with the idea that there are two basic intensely neurobiological emotions at the state level, then it is safe to say that frustration is a feeling much closer to fear than to love. Now if you don’t go with that Emotional premise I urge you to do some research of your own to help yourself. Love and acceptance are peaceful feelings and frustration is clearly not. And our egos, at least for those of us here who accept we are in some way dissociative have all comparmentalized or split into various parts or subparts or ego states or alters. We either have some experience of being aware of them/coconsciousness or we don’t. When we don’t and/or when we seriously lose time and/or are highly amnestic, then things can be real severe and it can be very very hard to accept this mess. But it might be even harder to accept for those of us who have a lot of coconsciousness. Either way, we are all walking around highly prone to dissociation and any internal or external stressor can be the trigger for the need to dissociate. And I am just saying that being constantly frustrated with it all is a stressor that is likely creating more dissociation. Possibly an extreme amount of it . . you split and you realize you split and then you are frustrated and then you split again . . vicious cycle. NO fun. NO fun at all and I know this from personal experience believe you me. Having an attitude of gratitude for the parts that come in to help me through the daily responsibilities of my life has been hugely helpful. Figuring out what set of stressors or stressor triggered a somehow known at the time or only later disocovered split and not being frustrated but being understanding and appreciative for whatever part or parts came in there to handle things is accepting and understanding and loving myself and helps me to figure me out. Having some internal communication that might even actually thank the flame out one from protecting me at the time but asking for oh . .some preparation or awareness of the frustration and anger first then gives me, all of me, and host me, the chance to avoid a hugely reactive painful mess in favor of some chosen . . oh assertion, and then some venting of the pain and even allows for my husband and I to be laughing at the sheer magnitude of the need for angry venting, for example, and avoids such hugely stressful messes as before. So I’m just saying that ongoing frustration with oneself and disliking the fact of multiplicity is an internal stressor that sets us up for more of a need to dissociate to deal with the frustration of it all. And this feeds the cycle of being unable to have some internal communication and acceptance and co-consciousness and ultimately some kind of co-operation or even full integration and therefore access to whoever or whatever we want, at any time we want it . . true choices about our emotional state or our feelings or the affects that show on our face. And all I can say is that being able to smile and appreciate a switch or split and recognizing it for what it is and using all that cognitive adult brainpower of mine to appreciate and analyze me is really really helping and fast. Grateful for an unchosen split???? yes. A smile and a recognition for that fact and a search for some understanding so I can soothe all the parts of me that I am aware of hurting over the split or of liking the split makes for internal communication and everybody starting to understand everybody else’s needs and beliefs and fears and loves and opinions and feelings and really really helps. Acceptance and even love for the part(s) that took over/for the switches helps so much. It doesn’t deepen the vicious cycle. I”ve been frustrated for years. Progress was slow. This is painful work no matter what. And accepting it all and smiling at and accepting the switches and talking within about what happened is kinda pretty fun. you should hear the uproar sometimes inside . . but inviting it and having a loving smart adult host-like person being the loving negotiator means it doesn’t have to be such chaos. Sometimes it is and it hurts, but it is far far better than the frustration and sense of powerlessness. It is pretty empowering to smile at a switch and say thank you to that part while coaching it for the future. Alot more empowering than frustration ever was. And all these parts of me have a reason and a purpose and a history and being frustrated at it all sure did prevent forward progress for a while. IT just did. Accepting it and appreciating it and working on understanding it and enjoying the playful parts mean there has been lots more choice lately over who or what I am. I like that alot. A way lot. So I just hope you all will know I care and am trying to help and I am so so sorry for another part seeming to assume things David. It’s just that I know frustration about being this way like . . like the back of my hand . . . like the inside of my arm that got slapped all the time, like the deep deep crease-line in my nose that’s been there since age six . . because no matter how many times they told me people wouldn’t like me if I kept making faces or that my face was going to freeze that way, they couldn’t fully take my power away. They couldn’t fully take my e
motions away. No matter how hard they tried, I had will. They tried to do anything they could to shove my feelings out of me. They couldn’t. I had to survive. I was frustrated as hell at them for years and years and years, and I love that crease in my nose now. It is proof of what they did to me. And it is proof that I lived angry and hurt for years and years and the only way to survive was to shove it all and go on. And I”m not doing that to me anymore. I don’t deserve to do to me what they did to me. I just don’t. So I won’t. They didn’t ever accept me. They had no clue how to love me unconditionally. So it’s my job now and I will do it for me. Blessings to all healing one
—-
The thing is that living this just isnt this black and white. I see the points but am unable to come down fully in either interpretation.
I am grateful for what allowed me to survive, and I wish daily living wasnt so inexplicably complicated.
Accepting the multiplicity is helping me to understand that no I cant just choose ONE way of feeling about any of the myriad things I do or dont face in a day.
I wish it was all as simple as the above quotes, but living this just isnt.
I dont hate the multiplicity, nor do I hate myself – but I do find all this incredibly frustrating at points.
I have finally decided to treat this and talk to my insides more, and its helping – but its also helping me to feel things such as depression, frustration, intensities of feelings I used to have walled off, but are now more flowing states I have to swim thru in a day.
I am recognizing all this as growth, and seeing how I am becoming more connected to my actual present daily life – but any progress on this path includes pain and discomfort and confusion – and I Do hate this.
I also think its incredibly unfair and frustrating that we had to endure so very much – only to discover that its like a spiral – we just keep meeting these things again and again and any footing gained brings with it more dimensions of feelings, and all of this is incredibly time consuming, and fraught with at least for me, an incredible array of diversions and its just very hard to step thru all this and endlessly trying to stay on top of just so very much going on inside all the time.
I dont hate them inside, but I do find all this exhausting, even as I will suddenly show up to a gig, playing absolutely uncannily beautifully and wonder, and feel immense gratitude that somehow this is possible amidst all this.
I do however wish I could damn get my butt in a practice room on a daily basis without it being such an incredibly charged and complicated ordeal.
So there are aspects of all this that I truly am grateful for, and aspects that baffle and confuse my best efforts, and I cant help agreeing that although my being creative and talented may be in pockets of all this – I just do wish I had more reliable access to and ongoing ability to channel all this even more effectively.
So I also find all this excruciatingly frustrating – and its not a simple matter of hating myself or not hating myself. I just hate how hard and inexplicable living amidst all this just is.
Thank you, everyone, for all your comments on these articles.
I think having this kind of discussion and group exchange is one of the most important aspects of having this blog in the first place, so thank you all for sharing your thoughts and ideas. There is no “right” or “wrong” about any of this, and it is good to have the freedom to express what you think, and how you feel, and how you experience your multiplicity.
It’s truly fascinating to see all the different opinions, and hearing all the different interpretations, and applications of these articles to your own life.
I’m headed out for now, to get my Exhibit Table set up at the Crimes Against Women Conference, but I will be back later to read thru’ more of what’s been said, and to post more of my own thoughts in return.
Keep on posting! Your comments are very interesting!!!
Thank you again for your active participation — you all rock!!! 🙂
Kathy
Sorry, my comment got out of order — my second comment was in response to healingone’s second comment, rather than to the comment that actually does appear above it.
What’s interesting to me is the assumptions made about how I must be communicating with my system, simply based on the fact that I’m vocal about wishing I weren’t a multiple.
David I truly appreciate the clarity and insightfulness of your comments.
I liked the blog article on positives because I had a particularly out of nowhere trigger experience week before last, and after having been thru all that it was somehow reassuring to realize that yes, there are positives amidst all this.
But I have read all your posts and I just wanted to let you know that I feel its very important the distinctions you are so lucidly conveying.
I personally think I would be far more creative if somehow all this inside was more unified in purpose. I believe my career and school path would have been and be far more productive if I had reliable access to ALL of my abilities.
Week before last I got thrown incredibly hard by a trigger I didnt even recognize as a trigger for days. Excruciatingly difficult days that I somehow dragged myself to work and managed to do well in despite fragmenting all to hell inside, and having alot of difficulty amidst – and for days I didnt have a clue WHY? WHAT is happening????
This sort of living amidst minefields is exhausting, and has taken, and continues to take an incredible toll on me, even if I am mostly pretty good at keeping most of this pretty invisible to the outside world.
But I agree that though there are positives to all this, I just cannot believe that they actually outweigh the incredibly confusing and complicated experience of actually trying to navigate a life amidst all this.
I believe that the balance you have struck of being able to see the positives without going all black or all white on this issue is incredibly healthy, and I truly appreciate your comments and can relate very much to your stance on this issue.
Yes, there are positives AND there are negatives – and I wish all this was alot simpler than living it just is.
Please bear with me, I will try to be coherent.
I certainly am angry that I split and perhaps I always will be, that may even in some circles be my “job/role/function” At the same time someone here is perpectually and irritatingly chipper. She always has been. I have communicated with her about my dislike and anger at being split and yet, she continues to be her annoying chipper self. So, I just don’t think your question is a real one in how I experience dissociation.
As an individual does it effect my self esteem, sure it seems to go with out saying that. It doesn’t seem to bother the others though because they continue to experience themselves how they experince themselves.
Tyler
Well — I’m not sure I quite understand the comment above, but from what I am able to glean, it doesn’t seem reflective of my personal experience with my inner communication. It’s possible that I’m not interpreting it correctly, however.
I don’t feel that I’m particularly angry at parts of myself; nor do I censor or ignore any of those parts. I am frustrated with the difficulty of managing the chorus of voices, and with the unpredictability of who is going to react to situations in my life, and how that reaction will manifest.
Again, I’m not sure why being frustrated with the fact of being multiple automatically translates to being angry at or hateful toward parts of the self, but perhaps I’m just incredibly obtuse.
Here’s how I see it.
I am multiple. I was abused. I have other disorders both physical and mental. My life is harder than it would be without those things. These are all facts. They are what they are, and I can’t change them.
So I have a choice: I can a) ignore it as best I can b) hate it and rail against it or c) accept it and try to make the best of it. Same choices as when presented with anything else that is difficult or unpleasant like David’s example of an amputated limb.
I have chosen to make the best of it. I enjoy the good things, fix what hard things I can, and accept the things I can’t change. It only hurts worse and lasts longer if you fight it.
Our host loves us as best she can. Her husband (my very good friend) loves us all and does his best to help. I am glad that I am here and could help her survive, and I am happy that I can continue to contribute to our life.
Alex
davidrochester said:
Okey it is Brian again. Hi David.
I am a part of Dragonheart’s family system. You write “/…/It could just as easily mean that I am so appreciative of them that I want to have reliable full-time access to them /…/”. I just wonder if that is what you truly feel about your insiders, deep inside? If it is, I think that is a great start. Have you told your insiders that you appreciate them? Because if you have, build on that, it is a great start and if not can you tell them?!
I will tell you my story. I don’t know if that will be helpful or not but I want to give it a try. My host really hated me before; she hated the fact that I was a boy inside her female body. I hated her for that and I hated to be a part of her. I wanted to punish her for hating me. I worked against her. I used to punish the female body a lot. I used to hurt her breast, because I really hated the body and her too. Our T worked with host to accepting me for the person I was and accepting me as a boy. Our T worked on me too. T did not accept that I was hurting and punishing the body. She encouraged my anger, but not the way I acted out. T challenged me to use my anger to protect the body from abuse instead. To day I am a protector in our system. I had to change to make our system function, but host also needed to change for that to happen. I needed host to accepting me as a boy and host needed me to accepting her being a female. It is what co-operation is all about, to give and restive. I do not say that you shall stop wanting to become an intact personality, that is up to you. But maybe you need to take steps out of your comfort zone to make that happen? Maybe you need to show your inside people that you are appreciating them? Maybe you need to try to look at your inside people, not only as a problem that need to go away but a resource, in order to have reliable full-time and access to them? I understand your longing for being more intact, I do. We have had parts integrated with body; it was even needed for the system to be able to function in a constructive way. It was parts that could not change their abusive behaviours towards the body, so they really needed to be integrated. But to make that happen, we had to work together with them. Host had to see them and accepting them, ask for their needs, figure out why they were created in the first place, who they were, what they was doing etc and it took time. I think that process is necessary to go thru in order to integrate them and become more intact. This is what I have experience to be helpful, but every system is different and things that is helpful for us maybe do not function for others…I do not know… but I wanted to share my/our story with you./BRIAN
But David, if you frustrated and unhappy with the “system” that prevents you from having access to them, then you creating stress for yourself and whenever we got stress we need to dissociate to deal with it. It always ’bout ‘fear in one way or ‘nother and so if you ‘fraid or mad you no can get to the parts you wanna get to then there goes the stress and there goes the dissociation and there goes the defensive walls so that you no can find what you want to find. And once you take the big growed up cogntive blah blah blah ‘way that thinks it is all so smarty smarty smarty, then you can find the thoughts or feelings of parts that are getting in the way of other parts or thoughts or feelings. the ‘system” is a ‘system” of individual parts or ego state or whatever you wanna call them and they each have their own thoughts and feelings and if you are no liking or frustrated with the “system”, then you are frustrated with your self and that is stress and that causes dissociation and then you no can find the parts you wanna find. And once all the parts are friends and or ‘leastways let each other say and think things and it is ‘leastways okay and accepting reality that you are this way and you can laugh and ‘joy it lots of times in the ‘ccepting of it, then integration starts happening more and more and more and you can be
who you wanna be when you wanna be that. And that is awesome to be able to be who you wanna be when you wanna be that way or part. It is so fun and cool to be able to access everyone ‘stead of being on autopilot with hardly no ‘trol at all. So like David, even I talking young, please think ’bout it coz there just isn’t no system in the whole wide world that works real great if parts of it are so so frustrated at the system. It throws everything out of whack. IT just do. I hope for you David. I just do. Blessings, David, me
Oh yes Kathy, Oh yes. That’s my answer to that last question. I love this post of yours very very much. This one really hits home and i feel the truth of it big time. Some of it I need to chat with you about, but truthfully, accepting me as I am, all of me, even the really angry part/subpart/ego state in here that flames . . so much of it . . . . it has totally changed my life over the last four years to just accept that I am this way. That all the pain I have suffered that caused it and all the pain I have suffered as a result of it makes sense. That a ton of the crappy shame and guilt I unfortunately still carry around for so much $#@#$%, I simply do not deserve. They do; the people that caused the trauma and victimization, primarily the parents, and so when I work on the grief and the pain and the anger and choose to get into that profoundly painful state or states, coz switching comes fast and furious then, I place the anger where it belongs to the best of my ability—on them and the @#$%$ that created this and not on me. And as a result we have all grown to love little me . . well all except that angry adult I think, as I have said before, but really I think that has recently been changing alot. Because as that core young little me “goes to get the grownups,” then there can come the anger part and then there have come a few memories that explain things more and even the anger part is recognizing that little me is the way . . .the way to get to the anger that has been being shoved all these years . . and so we are experiencing a profound sense of gratitude in here lately . . .gratitude and relief at the recent help we’ve been getting from little me as she goes to get the grown ups and for the several new sources of help 🙂 that have sent us down this new road to acceptance of more of the other parts in here than just little me. And #$%^ guess what? If the anger part had not been having to be shoved and shoved for years, there is one ton of righteous anger and pure unadulterated will in that part that does see truths/unfairness/etc., that mean we might not have been so frigging stuck for nearly all the years of our life since . . . childhood . . . feeling helpless and without choices and protection . . . so as the angry part has been allowed to vent to accepting others, there has been some huge movement internally within that means even that angry part is accepting this and appreciating little me and that is truly huge. Truly huge. For an angry adult or adults? who want(s) to be “perfect” and invulnerable and put together and strong and who has/have been a part of the self hate and blame all these years for the helplessness and the tears and even the anger that they spew and so have even been a part of the self abuse as a result, . . for it or them to be feeling gratitude to this little part who is now going to get them and actually “allowing” them their say is . . well, pretty darn near miracle material compared to where we were a few months ago. !!! Once “she” went to get them and her guilt and love and shame didn’t stand in the way of it or them having a voice and spewing what needed to be spewed, then there , there, was some relief and some more trust developing with T over issues that hadn’t been spoken of enough by far as a result of her fear of loss and judgment and pain, more pain . . . so yes Kathy, I whole heartedly agree with your post, and with your “question.” We have some issues that are semantic in nature, but the truth is . . there is more and more integration now that more parts are being allowed to speak their piece, out loud, on paper, etc . . soooo . . thanks again and we will just keep working and we hope that some of what we said helps a few out there. Blessings, us
I left this same comment on another post, but will leave it here as well — I don’t quite see why a DIDer can’t genuinely appreciate the system for what it did, and still dislike the complications of having to live as a multiple. I’m sorry, but it is more difficult than living as an intact personality … if it weren’t, none of us would be in therapy.
Being a multiple makes daily life a minefield. Recognizing that I probably wouldn’t be here without the system doesn’t really negate the fact that multiplicity is hard to live with. If I’d had my right arm amputated to prevent my death from systemic gangrene, I’d find it difficult and frustrating to navigate life without my right arm, even though of course I’d be grateful that my life could be saved. I’m unclear as to why a similar honest complexity of feelings can’t apply to DID.
To play devil’s advocate here — why does disliking being multiple automatically equal a rejection of one’s alters? It could just as easily mean that I am so appreciative of them that I want to have reliable full-time access to them, and I am frustrated and unhappy with the system that prevents me from always having that access.