Tag Archives: confusion

DCMS Mailbox: My Disability Hearing

Posted on June 7, 2012 | 10 Comments

Pretending is part of navigating life successfully. And by “successfully” I mean “in a way that is palatable and non-threatening to others.” For the most part, those of us with Dissociative Identity Disorder are naturals at pretending. Making believe that things are not as they are is, when you get down to it, the essence of DID. But that also makes this socially acceptable dynamic – pretending something doesn’t exist, or isn’t what it is – an extremely unstable one for us. So when I read this email from Dan Kline, I wasn’t at all surprised:

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First some background. I am 42 years old and have been diagnosed with the following limitations, DID, complex PTSD, manic depression and anxiety. I have had multiple unsuccessful suicide attempts and have been hospitalized 4 different times in 1 year for them. So now I will get to the meat and potatoes of what I am posting about. Continue reading →

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Posted in DCMS Mailbox

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Poll: Learning about Your Dissociative Identity Disorder System

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 18 Comments

I had an experience with state-dependent memory recall recently that has me questioning the almost-exclusively-internal focus typical in Dissociative Identity Disorder treatment. Have a problem, but don’t know what it is? Ask inside. Don’t know how to handle a particular situation? Ask inside. I’m wondering how many people with DID find this self-focused method successful.

If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, I hope you’ll respond to this poll:

I also encourage you, as always, to leave any comments you wish to share. Thanks so much for participating.

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Posted in Treatment Talk

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Conflict, Identity & Self-Expression

Posted on July 30, 2010 | 7 Comments

One of the most eloquent things I’ve ever read about DID is from a book called Multiple Personality Disorder From the Inside Out.

Healing from MPD is like putting a puzzle together without seeing the picture on the box. -Amie R.

I would add that it’s not just the recovery process that feels that way, but the experience of living with it too. The puzzle pieces are identity fragmentation and dissociation is the force that blocks the picture from view and drives the pieces away from each other, like magnetic polarity.

What I find most frustrating – for today, anyway – about that puzzle and the weird force that resists bringing the pieces together is the sense that parts of my mind are always just out of my grasp, but not so far away that they can’t influence what I feel and think and desire. When varying influences jockey for lead position, the result is internal conflict that leaves me in a state of helpless confusion and, ultimately, not knowing who I am.

For me, that internal conflict feels like this:

I decide. I turn towards my decision and take half a step in its direction. Something inside me rises up to block my path with a fierceness that is almost tangible. I cannot identify the obstacle. I can’t see it, hear it, or touch it. I have ideas about what it might be, but I don’t know. All I know is I can’t move. So I step back. I rethink. I choose differently. I move, and a new obstacle appears. One that, again, I cannot name. In these moments, I am a person who doesn’t know how she feels, what she thinks or what she wants. I am a person who doesn’t know who she is.

DID has stretched and sharpened my ability to tolerate ambiguity, a helpful skill whether you have DID or not. But sometimes I feel angry at all the not knowing.

Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been, but that today, even after years of effort, I cannot say what I think and feel – that bothers me, that rankles. -Henry Miller, from The Tropic of Capricorn

I do care when I die. In fact, over the years I’ve come to fear death. But larger than that is the fear that parts of my mind will forever be strangers to me. I feel like Jason Bourne, in that scene from The Bourne Identity when he faces his reflection in a mirror and says, in different languages – hoping, I assume, to happen on the one his mind understands, “I don’t know who I am. Do you know who I am? Tell me who I am. If you know who I am, please stop fucking around and tell me” to no avail. There is only confusion and a deep sense of frustration that I cannot simply express myself. And like Henry Miller said, that bothers me. That rankles.

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Posted in Dissociative Symptoms, Struggles

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Is This Real?

Posted on July 27, 2010 | 6 Comments

I’ve never spoken to anyone with DID who didn’t, at one time or another – but more often chronically ask themselves, “Is this real?” Rather than settle for a simple yes or no, I developed theory after theory to explain what was really going on with me. My favorite, the one I came back to again and again, was the Lie Theory. The Lie Theory states:

None of this is real.
It’s all a lie.
It’s not a purposeful lie.
But it’s still a lie.
A lie so artful not even the liar knows it’s a lie.

The therapist who first diagnosed me patiently listened to my theories but ultimately interpreted the Lie Theory as an habitual inclination towards self-blame. She may have had a point, but it was lost in the unrest I felt. I couldn’t shake the idea that, without ever consciously intending to do so, I had fabricated my entire experience of DID. Repeatedly the question would flare up, “Is this real or did I make it up?”

I’ve concluded that the predominant reason the Lie Theory was so irresistible was not some pathological need to malign myself, but because even though it was a distortion, it was a distortion of the truth.

Yes, it’s real. And yes, I made it up.

Beyond diagnostic criteria, there are certainly hallmarks of DID. There are similarities in system structure and functionality, common experiences of living with DID, characteristic struggles. But just like no two people are the same, no two systems, experiences, or struggles are the same. The dissociative reality is shaped by the individual’s unique human psyche. I was born with certain traits, inclinations and capabilities that not only helped make DID possible, but also served as a framework for how DID manifests for me. My experience of DID is a product of my own mind: how I assimilate and process information, how I make sense of my internal and external environment, the perspectives that expand and limit my ability to tolerate new ideas, and so much more. My mind has an active, albeit subconscious role in the design of my specific dissociative reality.

The Lie Theory is a distortion because it assumes that creation negates existence. It asserts that if my mind affects my experience of DID, it must not be real. In hindsight, I’m surprised I entertained such an idea. Because DID or not, human beings have a hand in creating the self. We are influenced by many factors: sociological, physiological, cultural, etc. Within the boundaries of what we are given, we become. Under the influence of external stimuli, and without conscious choice or awareness, I created an internal reality from the textures and flavors of my own psyche, along with external characteristics and traits I adopted for myself. That reality exists despite my mind’s participation in its creation.  And the participatory process is not exclusive to DID. It is part of  being human.

People make themselves up. And they are real.

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Posted in Struggles

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“You’re ugly like your mother.”

Posted on June 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

I don’t forget any more than the average person does. Though from the outside it quite certainly looks like I do. Worse than that, I imagine it can appear that rather than take responsibility for the things I do and say, I simply deny them. But I’m not forgetting. And I’m not lying. I just don’t have access to information that, by anyone’s estimation, I probably should.

In fifth grade I was in class one day when another teacher, a classmate’s mother, knocked on the classroom door and asked to speak to me in the hall. She was furious. I was confused and scared. “I know what you said,” she told me. I thought hard – what was she talking about? What had I said? She clearly believed I knew precisely what she was referring to and was playing dumb. Finally, after a lot of “I don’t know what you mean” and “You know exactly what I mean,” she told me that at a classmate’s birthday party the previous weekend I rudely said to her daughter, “You’re ugly like your mother.”

Not only did I have no recollection whatsoever of saying that, I couldn’t recall even wanting to say that, even thinking it. There was nothing in my memory to suggest we’d had a confrontation of any kind.

These sorts of incidents, from the trivial to the very serious, pepper my everyday life. Prior to diagnosis, I assumed these were misunderstandings and was genuinely perplexed as to why they happened so often. Even now, five years after having learned I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, I struggle to accept as possibility what others claim as fact. After all, misunderstandings do happen. And sometimes people do confuse one person for another. Not to mention that most of these occurrences are far more easily explained by misunderstanding or confusion than by DID. The most logical explanation is never DID.

Unless of course you have DID.

Failing to form a core identity, I instead developed a highly fragmented identity with amnesic barriers between these fragmented states. Which makes it not only possible, but likely that many of the things people insist I have said or done really did happen. There is a certain sinking feeling, a powerlessness, that accompanies that awareness. I feel a renewed sense of helplessness and failure each time I learn that , despite my best efforts and intentions, the fragmentation and amnesia have again caused what looks like chronic forgetfulness or lying. And, as in the case of the fifth grade birthday party, I often feel fear. What have I done or not done? Will someone be angry with me? What will the repercussions be? I don’t remember what the outcome of the birthday party incident was; but I am now certain it was not a misunderstanding. I know I didn’t say, “You’re ugly like your mother.” Even so, someone did.

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Posted in Dissociative Symptoms, Struggles

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