Multiplicity can be a choice

First, I want to say that there is so much I have to talk about, that I collectively have experienced over the past week. I have come to an amazing place in my healing process where I feel absolutely confident that I will never again feel as bad as I did in the past--I will feel bad at times, because that is part of the human condition. But the horrible, hopeless despair is gone, and that degree of pain is unlikely to return. The joy and relief are incredible, and I want to share them with everyone I know. But right now, I'll just share the thing that made everything click for me. Maybe later, I'll write more about how it feels to be where I am.

So. Multiplicity as a choice.

I had inklings of this from the beginning, but I never realized it. Once I realized I was multiple, I knew it was important for me to accept it without shame. I knew that would be a vital part of my healing process, because shame is simply not an emotion that leads to healing. Shame helps to cement unhealthy patterns, and no matter how many healing skills we learn, the shame will undermine them every time. (But be aware that you have to go ahead and learn the healing skills, or else you won't be able to get past the shame. And try not to feel ashamed of being ashamed.)

If multiplicity is something that was imposed on me by abuse, it would make sense to say "well, then, my healing won't be complete until the things caused by the abuse have been healed." It would make sense to focus on "healing" my multiplicity.

That never seemed to work for me. Parts of me were very resistant to the idea of being healed until they couldn't be fully and discretely themselves. They never liked the idea other people described, of integration meaning that all of who the parts were got blended into one single person. Their experience is one of being individuals, having thoughts and feelings that are fully their own.

And when there was a focus on healing the multiplicity, it really got in the way of internal communication. Parts who felt they were more healed--the ones who had more access to healing skills--often felt invested in being the ones who led the rest of us. They did have a point, because everyone did need to heal. They were right about that. But they thought they knew the right way to do it, and on that, they were wrong.

So, awkwardly and uncomfortably, we did our best to accept our multiplicity. There was always some doubt, about whether this was really a path that would lead us to healing. Maybe we were wrong, a lot of us worried. Maybe we were slowing the healing process by defining each part concretely. Maybe we were so warped by our childhood, or so invested in some kind of, I don't know, exhibitionist need to be multiple that we were making the problem worse.

But at the same time, we were also sufficiently self-aware to keep checking on a simple thing: whenever we started to act as though we were all individuals in here, people who share a body and absolutely have to compromise, communicate, and cooperate on our mutual life... things would start to get better. The headaches would go away, we could get more done, there were fewer panic attacks and less lost time. When we started to act as though we were a singleton, we lost cooperation. There was more depression, more fear, we were less able to live the life we want to have.

There was still shame and doubt, though. We kept on ignoring the comments from the little kids inside, who insist that lots of people around us are pretty similar to us. We bought into the idea that multiplicity is caused by abuse, and that that it's fairly uncommon. Our shame led us to think that our sense that lots of people are multiple was simply a desire to feel like we had less to be ashamed about.

Then we realized something: what do we have to be ashamed about, anyways? We didn't cause the abuse. We didn't ask for it. We didn't seek it out. For the entire span of our life that we've had control over, there has been no abuse. When we have had a choice, we have chosen healthy relationships. So if multiplicity is anything, it's a lucky development. Our mind, for whatever reasons, gave us tools that allowed us not only to live through the abuse, but to achieve our goals, and live a healthy adult life.

Honestly, we suspect we were going to be multiple regardless of what happened, in one way or another. We might never have chosen to have our own names, and we certainly wouldn't have had to spend years in therapy to cope with being multiple. The problem isn't the multiplicity, and we've realized that more strongly than ever. What has caused problems in our system is that the parts have spent their lives coping with being abused. Healing has taken so long, because we're going through a bunch of different "people's" healing process, and we didn't understand that for most of the time we were working at this.

I started listening when parts kept saying "trying to become ex-multiple, for us, is like trying to become ex-gay." And we have strong opinions on that one, for ourselves. We *are* queer. We accepted that from the outset. We chose to be who we are, without shame or guilt. We didn't listen to the people saying we were only a lesbian for reasons outside of our control. We chose to embrace it. Even though we believe it was true for us from the beginning, we also actively chose to be who we are.

So why not choose to be multiple? It's gonna be there whether or not you choose it. It doesn't matter where it came from, it's there. And there are so many advantages to just going ahead and treating ourselves as a multiple.

When we accepted that we are different people sharing a body, we're holding opposites in our hands: we are one person, living in a single body; we have to learn to cooperate because what one of us does affects everyone here. But at the same time, we are individuals. We each have our own experiences, memories, opinions, and things we want out of life. We can become more fulfilled as individuals when everyone inside is able to understand that they are not the only one here.

The best example is from those times when things are fairly settled for our system. No one is having anxiety, no one is afraid or upset. And then whoever is at the front, if they haven't learned to accept that they are multiple, feels that they are the only one there, or (if they somewhat accept our multiplicity) they think they are the only one in front. So when deciding what to do, they will assume that their opinion is the most important one. "Do I want to check email or play a game?" they will ask themselves when they are getting on the computer. "Well, I want to check email, but I want to play the game more." So they play the game, not realizing that "check email" was a request put in by another part. It can lead to chronic frustration and lack of satisfaction for parts who are less strong-willed, and less able to claim the front. We've been realizing that this is happening recently, and it was a breakthrough in communication. It's really hard to communicate with yourselves if you don't believe there's more than one of you. It's difficult to communicate with people when you assume you know what they want or believe without asking them.

Somehow, this process led us to the notion that by embracing multiplicity, we were embracing something really joyous. It is as though by working to define each part, and accepting that we are each individuals, we were able to click together and accomplish integration of each of our individual selves. We could find all of the parts of ourselves we had assumed belonged to someone else inside.

And that can lead to an amazing realization. It did for us, anyways. We have a part who has been more suicidal than most of us, and who never lost that desperate sense of needing the pain to end. She would say--and we all often thought it was other parts saying this, but now we know differently--she would say "I need the pain to end; I feel like my choices are to continue in pain, to be dead, or to stop the pain." And her first choice was to stop the pain, but she didn't know how. We have finally realized, for us, that acting to stop the pain is all it takes to ease it. Going to therapy, sure, but also, we realized that we have the right to tell people to stop doing things that hurt us. And we have the right to act for ourselves, to reach out, to be honest and imperfect, and not always in control. We realized that there is more safety in taking risks than in constantly being braced for abuse that is no longer happening.

Growing up, we had no choice. We just lived through it, closed ourselves off to the pain, and did our best to survive. As adults, that pattern was ingrained. We would act to avoid things that were painful, and we would stop obvious hurts. But the hurts of isolation, the hurts of being around people who we care about who are hurting... those, we didn't know what to do about, or we were afraid to act.

I can't quite say which came first, deciding to embrace multiplicity willingly and without shame, or realizing that we can choose that third path: the path that leads to changing the rules so that we can be happy and fulfilled. Honestly, it probably happened simultaneously, along with a lot of other things. When we are able to listen to other parts, they will tell us some very healing things.

Whatever the cause, realizing that multiplicity is a choice, and making the choice to be multiple, somehow caused us to experience what has got to be integration for us. We are still each our individual selves, and we feel fairly confident that we've collected all the lost bits and pieces of who we were. It's been delightful to realize that a part who seemed to do nothing but provoke problems is also the one who finds nothing more satisfying than to fix things. Messing stuff up is part of fixing things, and Petra is dedicated to doing both of those things. Most freeing of all is how Why transformed into Tertia--she has always pushed us, in ways that felt terrifying to everyone involved, to find that third path, the one that requires neither living through abuse nor being dead. Her desire to end the pain was strong, and her desire to live a life without pain motivated the rest of us to keep up with the healing process.

Why do I call it integration, if we have not turned into a single person? Because we've realized that integration doesn't have to be--perhaps should not be--about everyone becoming the same. It's about finding a place for every part, and giving them an equal voice in the running of the system. It means that we take each part's needs into account, and work to make a life where all of us can be happy. We are one system, and we've never doubted that. But we are also a collection of individuals, and choosing to accept that has given us access to more strength and joy than we imagined would ever be possible.

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DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness

The conclusion!

So, the voting has ended, and here are the winning designs. I'm pretty proud, since the image on the left is the one I designed.

And, since it's the one I designed, and I had a nice, clean, large version of it on my hard drive, I went ahead and made a Café Press store with a couple of items. I'll probably add more products soon, as I get the chance to spend the time doing it. I can only hope that the process will get easier the more I do it.

So that's the good thing for today.

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Tomorrow is the last day to vote!

Help choose a ribbon and/or icon for DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness!

Vote at this page.

Admittedly, my preferred ribbon is the current frontrunner, but I wanted to make sure everyone who wanted to help decide got a chance to vote. So if you read this blog, and you haven't already heard about this poll, and you want to vote, please do so by December 12 (which is Wednesday, or tomorrow).

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Addition to the DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness poll

Hello, all. Yup, the voting is still going on. But it occurs to me that I didn't make a request of the dozen or so people who read this blog, that you pass on the link to the website for voting. We'd like as many people as possible to have a say in what the image is, because that way, hopefully people will be aware of it, and will want to wear the icon.

Here's the link: http://www.copingincrazyville.com/iconvoting.php

Oh, yeah, and singletons can vote, but preferably will only vote once!

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DID/MPD/Dissociative Awareness

We've gathered all the submissions, and chosen eleven of them for the final round of voting.

So tell your friends to come and vote. Here is a link to the page where you can register your opinions.

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More DID/MPD awareness

just an update on that: i think the gallery is set up so people can leave comments and rate the images now. if you would like to submit an idea for consideration, please email it to me.

plus, there are new dates, with a little more time for people to get involved. at this point, we're taking submissions of ideas from now until Nov. 17, and then voting on the most popular ideas from Nov. 18-Dec. 3. if you'd like more time, please comment here, or at the gallery, and we'll probably be willing to accommodate you.

here is a link to the gallery.

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DID/MPD awareness, continued

Please spread the news around about this.

I posted to A Mind's Journey, asking whether there is a widely recognized symbol/ribbon for DID/MPD/dissociative awareness, and aside from the one website that sells ribbons for every possible issue, no one really knew of one. So people got excited, and started coming up with designs, both for a symbol and for a ribbon representing these issues.

But if we're coming up with something to represent these issues beyond just people on that bulletin board, we figured it would be a good idea to start spreading the word further out.

I suggested that we take people's submissions until Nov. 3 (people were calling for a vote on which symbol to use already, and I was trying to slow things down... I mean, I only posted the initial question five days ago!!). You can send them to my email address (jigsaw.analogy@gmail.com) or post them on your own blog and let me know where they are. I am posting all of the submissions I've received thus far at this site.

Between Nov. 3 and Nov. 17, we'll vote on the submissions that have received the most comments.

I'm going to try to get up a ribbon template for the less artistically-inclined, so you can just color something in. Take a picture with your camera, or whatever. Preferably, give the pictures to me as .jpg files so they're easier for me to post.

So, yeah. Spread the news, and send in your ideas. I guess this is how things get decided. Someone asks a question, and people run with it.

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DID/MPD awareness part 2

the great people at the bulletin board i go to (A Mind's Journey) responded very enthusiastically to my question about whether there is already a symbol to represent DID/MPD. i put up a gallery at my nascent website (because, you know, i don't have enough of a web presence as it is....). anyhow, here is the ongoing gallery of suggestions people have come up with. if you have an idea, email me or send me a link to your idea.

so far as i'm concerned, there can be as many different symbols as people like, but i think there are others (not in my system) who want there to just be a couple.

personally, i'm not loving the whole black-and-teal thing, but some website that sells "personalized awareness ribbon pins" has decided that teal is the color for dissociative disorders (along with SEVENTEEN other things), and so people seem very attached to that. i'd insist on just coming up with something new, but i'm not motivated enough to do that.

but some of the designs people have come up with are really striking and clearly represent dissociative disorders (at least to me). so i guess it's all good.

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DID/MPD symbols

Also, woo-hoo! This is apparently my 100th post! (Possibly that includes ones I never got around to finishing and actually posting, but it's number 100 nevertheless.)

So, I've been wishing I had friends who were multiple (this being the best solution, I think, to us finding friends our own ages, since it is just too creepy for an apparent adult to be hanging out with actual kids, without also behaving as an adult).

And one of the things that I think might make that easier would be some kind of symbols that people with DID/MPD or other dissociative disorders could wear.

I haven't seen anything that seems to be broadly accepted, but it's something I'm thinking about. I mentioned it on a bulletin board I go to, and there does seem to be a lot of interest. I might post a few pictures of ideas I've had, or if someone else comes up with a really good one first, then I'll just post a link to where *theirs* is.

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Who have you met?

Yeah, two long posts, within minutes of each other. Sometimes that happens. Heck, it even happens when the same part is operating.

Lately, as I've come out to more people about having DID, they've been asking, "So, who are you?" or "Who have I met?" As the post I just wrote shows, this is a complicated question to answer. Much of the time, we're not quite certain ourselves.

So, if you know me, who are you likely to have met?

Well, first, the younger kids rarely come out by themselves around other people. It's hard to pretend you're an adult when you behave and talk like a little kid. They do show up in flashes, but they are not the ones fully in control. But Mandy (who is five or six) and Michelle (who is eight) and Amanda (who is eleven) have spent time around many of my friends, kind of in the background. Mandy is more likely, because Michelle and Amanda are a lot more shy.

The Teller (who is seven) doesn't tend to come out around people other than W. or my therapist, because she was created pretty much to tell someone about what had gone on to cause the DID in the first place. So a combination of long-time habit and general reticence keeps her hidden. More of the younger parts simply don't come out at all unless they're alone or with W. They're the ones who hold more of the direct experience that got me to the point of having DID, and given a choice, they hide pretty much all the time.

You may have seen the Story Girl, but she doesn't really talk much. She reads books and makes up stories of her own. Either her age varies, or there's more than one of her. Sometimes, rarely, she might talk about a book she's read, but she's really shy. Strangely, she's not the only one who reads. However, she is the one who, given a choice, would spend all of her time reading, to the exclusion of anything else. So if you've been around me at a time when I pretty much ignore you to read a book, that's probably her.

Of the teenagers, most of you have had the delight (hrm.) of seeing Jamie's effects on W. Mostly, you haven't met her personally, because as much as possible, we other parts try to keep her from ruining our relationships with other people. If you've been around me pretty recently, since the kids made the decision to "lock up" the grown-ups, you've possibly met Rynn. She's 17, and had previously been known as "the oldest runaway." It's been interesting getting to know her, and watching her make the decision to come out and participate in life. You've probably also met "Somebody," who is fifteen or sixteen, but takes over when there isn't an adult in the system who is capable of coping with something we have to do. She's also not an especially pleasant person, since her primary experience of the world is coping with things that are beyond her abilitities and doing things she'd rather not have to do. She's good at it, that's why she exists, but she's not nice about it.

You're most likely to have spent time interacting with the adults.

If you knew me in college, or in an academic setting, you've spent time with "the smart one." Basically, what she does is show up for discussions about intellectual things. As her name says, she's smart. That's what she does. She's actually pretty outgoing, so long as the topics of conversation are either intellectual or related to being in a classroom. If the discussion moves to something else, she's likely to stop being the one in front, because she doesn't have the information to deal with other parts of life.

You've probably also met the Hip Chyck. She's the outgoing, activist one. People who knew me in my early 20s spent a lot more time with her. She's very political, and spends most of her energy thinking of ways to change the world through social activism. Unlike the smart one, she is more impressed with knowledge for the sake of change than knowledge for its own sake. Plus, she likes to have fun while doing it.

You're perhaps even more likely to have met Cleo. She chose her name as a nod to what the system had been calling her before she was willing to accept that a system existed. That was, "Cleopatra, queen of denial." She chose the name because, in a certain sense, denial isn't always a bad thing, or at least, her role was not always bad. She is the adult who can behave as though everything is all right and under control. She has been learning that it can help to improve my/our situation situation to admit everything is not okay. However, there are times when it's handy to be able to act normally. Life is easier to get through when, sometimes, you function as though everything is fine, even though it isn't. It's sometimes okay to not be holding the knowledge of the abuse, simply because it's far easier to do something else when all of that isn't right there. So another of Cleo's tasks lately has been to figure out how to balance her initial role (denial at all costs) with her new role (holding things together, accepting what's going on, but also living regular life). It's kind of like she abdicated as queen of denial, and is now, I don't know, prime minister of denial. (Okay, I'm vague on the specific political terms, but you know what I mean.)

You're a little less likely to have met the Analyst (that's me), but if you read this blog, many of the posts are mine. My job? I analyze things, obviously. Specifically, I figure out why I or other people do things the way they do, and decide on a course of action that will give the best possible outcome. I try to figure out what does and doesn't work for me, and how to make myself get to the point of being mentally healthy. I tend to intellectualize things, so that I can understand them without feeling the emotional pain that goes along with the knowledge. I'm the one who started therapy, and who generally tended to go to therapy until last fall. This caused a certain amount of confusion, since I'm not exactly good at conveying emotions, and many therapists don't quite grasp that someone who can calmly say, "This thing is going on, and I'm upset about it," really means that they are upset, even if their body language says otherwise. In a lot of ways, I think I'm the grown up version of the Teller. And, like the Teller, mostly what I do is talk (endlessly) about the things I'm observing and trying to understand. It helps all of us that the internal censor has been increasingly less effective, so that we can actually talk about things a little more.

Another of the main adult parts is the Mama. She's pretty much like her name (although not as effective as one might expect in parenting my own internal parts). She does a lot of the nurturing, crafty kinds of things. She's the one who actually gets a lot of pleasure out of doing grocery shopping, housework, and crafty things. She is really good and patient with kids. She's the most pagan of us, and the one who enjoys keeping up with spiritual rituals. She's really grounded and calm. She tends to be a little introverted, but she does come out with people she/we know.

I guess how I will conclude this post is to say this. You may be wondering, "Which one is the real or original J.?" And, so far as I (or any of us) can tell, it's best to think of "J" as a collective term. We are all the real and original J. We'll all answer to that name, and it is still sometimes rather frightening to know for certain 1, who we are in the moment, 2, that other people know who we are, and 3, that someone might call us by a name other than the pre-approved collective name. It's a process. Stay tuned for further updates.

And don't worry. We're not going to get (much) stranger than the person you already know.

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Another Introduction

Hey hey, ho ho, the guilt and shame have GOT TO GO!!

I'm the Hip Chyck. I guess I'm just one of the parts, and that's probably okay, but I think everyone would be happier if I were the one in charge all the time, because I'm just more fun to be. And I am happier most of the time.

Okay, so maybe I'm not good at things like really listening to how people feel, or having many of my own feelings, but still, they should let me out more often. I can make friends, and I can get us out of this depressed, over-thinking rut we're in.

I guess some of the other parts are embarrassed by some of the things I do, but I don't think I need to be ashamed of my body, and it's not like I do anything that's really inappropriate. And I like to dance and eat fire and march in protests and do fun activist stuff. When I was in charge more often, our life was better, because we had more friends and we did more fun stuff.

Plus, I have good ideas and I can make them happen. It's annoying that it's been so hard to get the other parts to do things lately, because I know they want the things that I would make happen, especially making friends.

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So, about me

The whole purpose of this blog is to come to terms with being DID. I commented in my journal the other day that if one of my big issues is denial of having been abused as a kid, then this diagnosis is like a very meta dialogue.

I say, "It didn't happen."
My brain says (by having parts, in big letters): DID
And I then added that this makes my partner's line: DID-SO. Which is funny, because she is often the one who has to face the parts of me who really, really don't want to believe that anything really happened, not something bad enough for there to be parts inside of me.

Over the past day or two, I've been following the advice in the books I've been reading about coping with DID, and getting to know my parts. A lot of them I already knew, because even though I wasn't willing to admit they were parts, I'm often co-conscious (meaning, I often am at least somewhat aware while they're active, although I often can't change what they're doing).

And for a few weeks, I'd go and ask parts that kept pushing to come out, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" The part would invariably respond with "I'm not allowed to have any name but Julia; I'm not allowed to be any age but yours."

After therapy this week, I decided that one of the things I need to do in order to stop being quite so stuck at a stage of being crazy (in the sense of fragmented, fragile, cracked, which is the first definition in our big dictionary), I needed to create a sense of safety. And to create a sense of safety, I had to get to know my parts. And this requires breaking one of the big rules: not allowing the parts to admit they exist.

So I've been getting to know the parts. I'd think I was making it all up, except... well, one part of me is saying that I definitely AM making it up, and another is explaining why the diagnosis makes sense, and there are several kids in the background jumping and skipping and shouting with joy, "I have a NAME!! Of my OWN!!! Hello, what's your name? MY name, all my very OWN name is...." I think it's the kids who are convincing me. (The kids are good at convincing me of things, which is probably why I own as many toys as I do.)

In theory, I'll let this be a place where my various parts can write for themselves. I don't know if that will happen, but right now we're getting at least some things past the internal censors, so there's a chance it could work.

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