In any layperson’s study of mental illness, there is always a search for the timeless question, “Who am I?” and this search never ends. It has no true solution, no answer. We never know, because no one does. And if nobody else knows who they are, then the search is in vain. With a mental illness, though, it is a quest worthy of Don Quixote and not an exercise in futility: “I need to know”.
Enter Dissociative identity disorder, DID. This is like multiple personality disorders which, of course, exist more in novels and bad movies, usually in pop culture fodder of the 1970s than in the medical sense.
While fools like Doctor Phil, who actually gave up his license to practice medicine and probably is no more qualified than Tom Cruise to tell anyone what’s best for them (neither man is qualified to wield the power they’re using), and the man says he’s not convinced that personalities can exist together in a single patient, I cannot and will never be positive about human behavior or mental illnesses.
I’ve dated women and seen this up close, and it’s sad and frustrating and really quite chilling to see distinct and telling traits each replacing others right in front of you. One of them passed away 6 years after I last saw her and I have no idea how. I know enough that she was progressively worse and that she probably suffered more than she should have. And life is not fair to anyone, but it goes into overdrive when a person has a pronounced mental illness.
What I think is that we don’t know enough about the subject of multiple personality or its bastard cousin, dissociative identity disorders to speak in absolutes, and the gods of the American psychiatric disorder community can’t tell you any different. Look at the World Health Organization and the American mental health establishment and you can start to see how close-minded we really are. This results in discrimination and denial of desperately needed healthcare.
And whether anyone wants to believe it or not, people with mental illnesses can and do lead productive and meaningful lives. They do it every day, and I defy anyone to pick them out of any workforce. Yes, I am counting schizophrenia, which the uneducated public thinks very wrongfully about. In fact, some of the finest human beings I’ve ever known were diagnosed with something others ostracized them for.
And no, schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder. Not even close.
When it comes to dissociative identity disorder, America treats it like it’s a new concept, when it is hardly so. Problem is, no doctors here know or are closed to it and couldn’t diagnose it if they tried. Which they don’t.
I’ve had to open my mind to get this far. I researched symptoms, behavioral problems, my own diagnosis, and there were questions I just couldn’t answer until I found articles, recent ones, that listed CPTSD, and in a descending menu included other disorders and one was DID. I don’t know if it is exclusive to CPTSD, and I rather doubt it, but it it does seem to occur coincidental with it.
Others may see it in you far before you discover that you can’t understand certain things about yourself. Maybe even before you notice symptoms.
How many people get cancer and never know it until it’s too late? We may think it can’t happen that way, but it does. With DID, same thing, except eventually someone close to you will say something. Unless of course you’ve isolated or been shunned. A change in accent, regional or foreign, jumps out at people who know you. But, your personality, your traits, your moral views never change, or don’t at first. Some people will avoid you, some will laugh at you, and still others may speak up.
I’ve spoken in several different ways, even changing vocabulary. Or usage. A Christian leader will tell you that you need an exorcism, a conservative psychiatric doctor will tell you to turn off your television, and there’s really no help for you. No sympathy, and no acceptance. And definitely lots of enmity, even fear, especially in the case of the Christian.
I’m not bashing here; I identify as Christian. But I’ve learned to shed the restrictions and mandated behavior that conservatives use to make you listen to their bullshit and which I call brainwashing. I am a flawed, damaged and dysfunctional human being, and I believe that God knows this and will be more understanding of it then people of the pulpit ever will be. I am free to think, to choose, to make progress when I can, or to make mistakes and, hopefully, to learn from them.
I find it to be very sad that I have lost friends, neighbors who are Christians and pastors. They, like so many, cannot listen or take me for who I am. They judge, and they act from judgment. To me, they’re hypocrites. Like pharisees which Christ read the riot act to. He called them “whited spulchurs” or whitewashed mortuaries, putting on a pretty show but full on the inside of dead bones: decay.
Society in America does not have a single safe place or function that will not demand conformity. You’re with this group or that, hated by other groups, or you’re worthless. Free thinkers, philosophers and the mentally ill will always fall into the laughed at and the ostracized. We are a doomed nation and we will answer for it. A house this divided cannot stand.
Another neighbor who is in denial of his own problems claims that I can be healed with enough faith and daily Bible reading. You should hear his claims. He’s a nightmare in real life. Faith healing is not possible with things we must endure as a part of life are inescapable. Child abuse, war, imprisonment and learned dependence are things we need to fight. We’ll have spiritual help, but life isn’t always cookie cutter Bible study; it’s hard work, it’s a fight, and it mostly sucks. The reward for the struggles we endure are nothing that the rich and the conservatives understand anything about: a life honorably lived.
I’m sorry it has to be this way. But as I search for resources to share with you, someone to help, remember that no matter who you see yourself as, no matter your struggles, you’re not alone. You are not worthless, and you rock! That means there’s always room for one more day, so hang in there!
Memoirs of an American Christian 