#1 Common DID Myth

Myth # 1: It’s easy to spot if someone has DID (Multiple Personalities)

This (like this picture) is what you’d expect if you believe the depictions of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), former MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) in movies or TV. They are weird looking, weird behaving, and easy to spot. And if you take the latest movies featuring a main character with DID (Glass, Split) you better be careful, because THEY are lethal on top of being weird.

I’ve just released the psychological thriller GIRL FROM THE TREE HOUSE about Elise, a woman with multiple personalities who’s fighting for her sanity and freedom as she is accused of murder. A friend of mine said the other day, “Watch out, soon you get a movie contract for the book.”

I had to disappoint her because, movies especially, sell bizarre, exaggerated, sensationalized portrayals with heaps of horror, blood, preferably good looking young girls stabbed to death…and perhaps even a landing of an alien spaceship thrown in. So I’m not staying awake waiting for Hollywood to knock at my door.

The reality of living with DID is much more mundane, much more subtle. Often friends, colleagues, or neighbors don’t have a clue. Even professional health providers don’t always notice. People with DID can spend years in the health system without being diagnosed. Co-morbidity is high among them. Topping the list are severe depression, PTSD, eating disorders, and substance abuse. If treatment focuses on the latter, the person with DID will not get much better.

My aim with my book is to debunk the myths about DID and show the heartwrenching and heartwarming struggle they call ‘life’ as well as show pathways of recovery…all wrapped into a thrilling plot. Sorry, no human monsters, no silence of the lambs. The ordinary, daily life delivers excitement enough.

I think I achieve it, going by the reviews that are coming in, for example:

What an incredible story! Stepping into the world of a person with multiple personalities was fascinating. This psychological thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat. Beautifully written, hauntingly powerful, and a true testament to the power of the human spirit. Highly recommended. (Leeanna Morgan, USA Today bestselling author, BookBub)

Easily the best book I’ve read about DID (dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder) with clear insight into how, why and when the personalities surfaced and interacted with each other, and how it affected the life of a young girl in New Zealand.
This helped me understand much more about how the disorder can consume the mind and life of people and how their emotional well being is further constrained by society’s stigma and their own fear of being hospitalized.
Well written and engaging, I look forward to the next book in this new series.
Thank you to the publisher and author for sharing this e-book ARC for review. (Dorie, Goodreads)

What do you think? If you haven’t read it yet, get your copy and let me know if I achieved what I set out to do. I love hearing from you.

Facts and Fiction about MPD/DID

It is almost ten years since I started working on my book GIRL IN THE TREE HOUSE. Back then I stopped after a few months frustrated and discouraged. Somehow what I wrote didn’t feel right. What I read on paper looked like a hybrid between fiction and non-fiction. Weighed down by years of academic writing, I struggled with a piece that, in my eyes, had a serious identity crisis. “Am I a novel, a scientific paper, or an instruction manual?” As it turned out, it was none of them.

Is it like the United States of Tara?

This article was previously published in “The Voices in the Tree House Blog.” I put it here for two reasons. 1) I’m interested to hear what people thought about the TV series. There are so many conflicting opinions out there, including some very nasty stuff. I can only shake my head when I read some of the venomous comments.

2) I’d like to spread the word about the book I’ve written. It’s in the post-production phase they would call it in the movies. A few more weeks. I have worked with multiples–I still call it multiples… the term DID never DID jell with me. I guess I’m oldfashioned like that–for 25 years and am deeply saddened by the misconstructions and misunderstanding multiples have to deal with. Not much has improved since I started this blog 11 years ago. With my book Girl From The Tree House, I’m portraying the inner world of a multiple (written from the alters/parts point of view) and how they deal with some nasty stuff that equally nasty people throw at them.

This is what Elise, one of the characters of the book, had to say:…

“We’ve had a long discussion among us about who should write this post. Nobody wanted to step up. All these people speaking about us is not what we anticipated. Yes, we wanted to take part in portraying a more realistic life of a person who has multiple parts to their personality and is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder than what is often found in books or the movies. Honestly, I’d rather buckle down and move on to the next book. I’ve been told it takes getting this one finished first, and it takes some more polishing before it can be published. *rolling my eyes*

I, that is Elise, drew the short straw. We are often asked if the GIRL FROM THE TREE HOUSE is like the ‘United States of Tara’, you know, the TV series that ran from 2009-2011.

The short answer is, I don’t know. I never watched the series. I watched the trailers and several bits and pieces online recently. To some of what we saw we can relate. Although, most of it is like… whoa over the top. They called it a comedy-drama. I completely missed the comedy bit.

Either way, living with DID is not funny. It’s not a Peek-a-boo game we forgot to substitute with Cluedo or Chess as we got older. It’s pretty hard work to keep functioning as a team and making life work for us.

What surprised me was that parts behaved badly without consequences or regard for the system and others around them. If we would have done only s.o.m.e of what ‘T’ or ‘Buck’ (Tara’s parts) got up to, Sky would have stepped in and Ama would have given us a piece of her mind. (No, not the belt, we don’t do that nasty stuff.) Perhaps some people with DID might behave like that (or kill people like in the movie SPLIT) but they would be exceptions and not the norm.

Overall, from what I watched, I feel the series let people with multiple personalities down. I guess, showing ‘normal’ life wouldn’t be exciting enough for the makers of TV series. For us, though, our ‘normal’ has enough hair raising moments, especially when the people from our past show up.

What can I say? You’ve got to wait until the book comes out. It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

If you are curious about the book and its release date, subscribe to my newsletter here. I’m not sending them out very often (I rather keep writing on my next story).

From Research to Practice to Fiction

Since the early Nineties, I’ve been passionate about the wonderful women and men I met in my private practice who went on the sometimes odious path of recovery from childhood abuse. I’m sure if people knew how many obstacles they have to climb and how many hoops they have to jump through, many would think recovery is not possible.

But it is!

I’ve seen it many, many times. Never have I seized to be amazed by the courage and determination I’ve seen in survivors. That determination and courage spoke of Life’s force to be whole and healthy.

It wasn’t an easy decision to take my shindle off my door and retire. But it was time for me. My body told me, enough is enough. Looking back over the last five years in retirement, I know never again to ignore the wisdom of my body.

I became a writer. Well, maybe I always was, writing stuff in here for the last 11 years. After a wee detour into writing romance novels–I never would have learned about writing without the amazing women in my Wellington romance writers group and the NZ romance writer’s conference–I’m now writing about Elise, a woman with multiple personalities, who fights for her sanity and freedom as she’s framed for murder.

It’s fiction… made up, but certainly partially based on my experiences over the many years in my private practice. I’ve seen the struggles, witnessed the inner fights. My aim is to write Elise’s story from a point of authenticity, that is rarely found in the writing, fiction or non-fiction, about MPD. Maybe that way I can contribute to change the strange picture that is still painted about people with multiple personalities.

The characters of the book started their own website a few days ago and told me I’m not allowed to interfere. I hope all goes well and cross my fingers! You can check it out here!

I’m interested in gathering a small group of people with intimate knowledge about the struggles and joys multiplicity brings to read through my chapters and tell me where I’m off track and, hopefully, where I’m spot-on. If that is you, please email me, using the contact form.

That’s me for now. It’s almost Christmas, and I wish you a safe, peaceful holiday. Take Care!

 

Have I created my dissociative disorder?

Have I created my dissociative disorder? This really interesting question has been posted in the comments section and I thought it deserves a more in-depth response because I have heard this question asked many times over the years.

The question whether people (either clients or therapists) can create a dissociative disorder has kept the therapeutic community divided for many years now. The good news is that nobody really knows. Whatever people believe is just that: THEIR BELIEF. We don’t know enough about how our marvelous mind works to be able to give a definitive answer.

It might be wise to be cautious and not believe everything therapists (and other people) tell you – including myself here – because we all make up our own reality as we speak or think for that matter. Our perception is so fickle, it’s more about ourselves and our own history and experiences than what we perceive is going on in the world. When you find that you are able to quieten your mind and use the stillness to listen inside to your own wisdom, you will find your truth. That’s the only one that you can live by! Not my one and no-one else’s.

But I am diverting – back to the question: In my personal view it is naive to think someone only has to read a book and then can talk themselves into having a disorder so severe that it causes mental and emotional distress. “Inventing it yourself” implies a purposeful act – like creating a make-belief story that then is lived out. If we watch a movie we might be affected by it, but we still know it’s a movie, a made-up story, it’s not real. That step doesn’t seem possible for people diagnosed with a dissociative disorder (or any other disorder for that matter).

‘Inventing unknowingly’ is a contradiction in itself – it doesn’t make sense and isn’t really a thought-through statement.

I have always perceived dissociative disorders on a continuum of awareness. To use a stereotypical example: the academic in their ivory tower who is not aware of his/her other needs and feelings, and is complete ignorant about leisure, health, family, etc. This kind of ‘life’ is – even though socially acceptable and at times even admired – in my view very dissociative. It is just not recognised as a pathology because the person is not signalling that s/he is suffering.

The person that ended up with a diagnosed dissociative condition seems to me to be a bit further on the way to ‘mental health and inner peace’ because their awareness is awakened to the aspects of their lives that don’t work for them. One way of going through the mental disorders of the DSM is to view all (or most) of the listed disorders as people’s individual way of coping with the problems life is presenting them with. Does the depressed person chose to be depressed? NO. Does the anxious person chose to wake up anxious every day? NO. Neither does the dissociative person chose to see him/herself as fragmented and disconnected. Due to complex circumstances (age, resilience, support, ability to conceptualise, etc.) these people have learnt to respond to life through these specific ways. There is not really a choice as in “I am consciously choosing x”.

If we look at mental disorders from a medical/pharmaceutical perspective, the answer is usually: it’s some form of mental brain malfunction for which – thanks to pharma – we have a pill that can be prescribed and things may or may not improve. Because dissociative disorders itself don’t respond to pharmaceutical interventions, many people lean to thinking they can’t be real and therefore must be a creation of the patient or the therapist! There you have it!

If we look at mental disorders from the perspective of how human experience is created, than all our experiences are due to each individuals way of making sense of life and ability to respond to life. In that sense we do create all our experience – but is it inventing? Certainly not, it is just what every human being is doing, it’s how nature has designed us to exist.

If someone tells you that you are creating your e.g. dissociative disorder,  depression, or anxiety there is the implication that you’ve been naughty, it’s not real, you shouldn’t have done it, please un-do it quickly. They don’t understand it’s your personal response to life’s circumstances, it’s the best way you could cope with life given your resources, awareness, and thinking at the time. Once your awareness increases you will improve the quality of your responses to life.

Internal Warfare

A reader of this blog commented yesterday on my post “Achieving Co-consciousness” and described in deeply touching words the heartache of living with so much fear, not knowing, not understanding, and internal dissonance. Reading the comment I got a really good feel for the ‘outside’ people who try to manage the everyday life as best as possible, and the ‘inside’ people who seem to try to manage the inner world of memories and feelings that go with these memories.

My first thought was “just like it happens in real life when people go to war against each other”. Whether it’s the Germans against the Western World during the WWII, the Muslims against the Jews, the North Irish against the British, East against West, North against South, there is no difference. Each party is convinced they have a justification to go to war, fight for their right(s), even give their lives for the cause.

None of the parties is listening to what the other has to say. Instead, all they try to do is brow-beating the ‘opposition’ into submission, using all kinds of semantics or other intimidation methods. “I am right” … “… no, I am righter” (I know this is not correct english, go away spell-check!). All parties have their opinion already set in concrete. They are not open to new ideas. They don’t listen with care in their heart, they listen looking for evidence to agree or disagree with what is said. Hop over to my post “Just Listen” to get a clearer picture of what I mean.

What does that mean for ‘inside’ people and ‘outside’ people? Well, for starters, how well do you listen to each other? Do you listen with love in your heart or do you already have a judgement on your mind? And then, what happens when you (outside person) lose time and become an inside person? Do you then become part of the ‘inside group’ and become hostile, difficult, or not understanding?

Given that we can NEVER EVER see reality as it really is, that all we ever can know is ONLY our interpretation of that reality, its highly likely that neither inside nor outside people are getting the right end of the stick. Certainly when people are highly strung, emotionally distressed, or hurting lots, thinking and perceiving what is going on is unlikely to be very accurate. Only when you are in a calm state of mind and at peace is your mind in a state to get a clear picture.

I agree that it is much easier to understand the conflicting inner world when we talk about ‘parts’ – and each person has a psychological mind structure that can be understood by using the ‘parts-metaphor’. On a physical, observable playing field we are talking about the same person, one body, one heart, one set of lungs, and one mind. It’s important that we don’t lose sight of that! In physical reality, this internal warfare takes place in the very small space between your ears. Please, be nice to that poor, overworked, stretched out brain.

Letter To My Younger Self

Today I came across a lovely blog post from a fellow blogger. The title was “Letter to My Younger Self”. I became curious to see what Rachel (the blogger) wrote. (The post is no longer life anymore.) Those of you who know me will understand that: I hold the strong belief that a big part of the recovery journey is to find a place of compassion, love, understanding, respect, and appreciation for the younger SELF who managed to cope with the abuse.

When I make this statement I hear frequently “Yes, maybe, BUT see how much I am struggling, see how much I am in pain, see how difficult it is to reverse the dissociation”. The way the younger Self coped is creating a whole lot of problems today.

My counter-argument is usually: The younger You coped with something horrendously difficult and confusing the best way s/he could. S/he did so with the limited resources and understanding a child has; often with barely any support. You can now, as an adult, make the necessary changes.

However, the first step is to give recognition to the child in the form of love, care, respect, understanding, appreciation. It won’t be long until one by one your problems will start melting away.

Can You Trust Your Feelings?

A big part of recovery from the legacies of sexual abuse is getting to a point where you have a sense of control over your emotional states. That means not to be thrown around all the time – or a lot of the time – by feelings of hurt, anxiety, fear, panic, suspicion, envy, hopelessness,"self-loathing, and hate.

On one hand we are taught to trust our feelings and use them as a guide for the way we behave and interact in this world. "How do you feel about this …?" A common questions we are asked to answer, not only in therapy but also in all other areas of life.

The Creation and Integration of Parts ‘Outside’ of the System

One way to understand the creation of parts is to believe that every part of a multiple has been created to help. Even though we don’t quite know the process by which parts are created, we can assume that by creating parts the human survival instinct has somehow found a way to guarantee that the abused child has some help to get through stressful or painful times.

Re-enactment of Trauma

Yesterday a comment had been posted asking whether it is OK to discuss self-abuse on this site. I had a look through my postings so far and did not find any specifically addressing self-harming issues. I thought it’s a very important issue for many survivors and will start off with some excerpts from the book ‘Traumatic Stress’ by B.v.d.Kolk et all.:

“One set of behaviour that is not mentioned in diagnostic criteria for PTSD is the compulsive re-exposure of some traumatised individuals to situations reminiscent of the trauma. This phenomenon can be seen in a wider range of taumatised populations.For example combat soldiers may become mercenaries, abused women may be attracted to men who mistreat them, sexually molested children may grow up to become prostitutes.