Dissociative Identity Disorder-Part 1
May 11, 2009 by Diane
As someone who has integrated about twenty personalities into one, I am very interested in assuring that other survivors get proper treatment for this disorder. It is very disturbing that there are therapists who continue to say “I don’t believe in multiple identities/personalities,” and professors who actually tell their students the same thing.
I am going to be spending a lot of time on this issue because it needs to be discussed openly. Hopefully, this will generate discussion to give survivors the opportunity to hear that they no longer have to feel ashamed or keep their illness a secret. Our abusers are the ones who should feel ashamed and hide their faces, not the other way around.
Dissociation is a learned response to trauma. It is a self-preservation technique that the brain unconsciously deploys to enable a child to briefly leave the reality of being forced to participate in grotesque behavior. When a child is repeatedly abused over a period of time, dissociating becomes natural and automatic whenever dealing with any distressful material. It allows her/him to function without feeling the overwhelming affect and bodily sensations. For me, the minute I started feeling nauseated, angry or fearful, I just spaced out.
Some therapists and professors, believe it or not, tell clients and the media that survivors use their Dissociative Identity Disorder “claim” as an excuse to:
- Draw attention to themselves, and
- Not take responsibility for their “real” problems in relationships.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
One of the reasons that survivors can’t get the proper treatment they deserve is because many of these deniers of this disorder come from prestigious universities. It is implied that somehow what they say must be true. I was made to deny my experiences the whole time I grew up. I am certainly not going to deny the resulting impact of what happened to me.
As I wrote in a Letter to the Editor in the Baltimore Sun in response to a therapist spouting this same nonsense, I said I didn’t ask to be physically, mentally, emotionally, and sexually abused the first 21 years of my life, but it was my responsibility to seek treatment to recover and heal from my abuse. I spent 23 years in therapy and went through 5 hospitalizations. During that time, I devoted 11 of those 23 years integrating all my alters into one. And I certainly didn’t jeopardize and eventually lose both my marriage and corporate job just because I wanted “attention.”
I’m interested in other survivors’ and therapists’ opinions on this issue.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under DID. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 1, 2009 at 1:50 pm
My opinion is that of a fellow survivor, although one who hasn’t reached your level of intergatrion (yet). Not sure if it was your ‘responsibility’ to society for you to seek treatment, but it was the right thing to do for yourself. Similarly, all those prison inmates who had horrible childhoods, drug addicts and sex workers and other tortured souls may have an ultimate power who will hold them responsible for their actions at some time, but it’s not our job to ask anything of them. If there is a higher power, he/she/it is the only one who knows what they’ve been through other than their abusers and maybe themselves if they remember.
Isn’t it possible that the nay-sayers are themselves either in denial of their own abuse or that they are abusers? I think one of the famous nay-sayers has a daughter who came out with the supposedly shocking news that she was the victim of abuse by her mother, who was one of the founders of the False Memory Syndrome. Once you put the word Syndrome on the end of something, it sounds so official! If you are a doctor, maybe you could coin such a term to describe these folks, such as: “Pharmaceutical Disciple Syndrome” or “Difficult-therapy Issues Avoidance Syndrome.”
Wasn’t Loftus & followers discredited after many inconsistencies were found in their published research?
DID-lite? Maybe therapists/Dr.s would find themselves too traumatized or depressed about losing their faith in humanity if they did not vehemently deny that a child victim’s survival instinct could allow them to escape emotionally during horrifying abuse.
November 1, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Maybe some of the blame lies on the following faulty recipe for a pop-culture movie.
Mix together at room temperature:
Ingredient # 1: Sally Fields (too cute)
Ingredient # 2: Sybil (the movie from the 1970s starring ingredient # 1 that contained subject matter too horrifying for the general public to believe)
November 1, 2009 at 5:58 pm
In my series on DID, in particular Series # 11, 13, 19, I address your concerns about the made up diagnosis – False Memory Syndrome – and Elizabeth Loftus’ role in supporting their organization. I agree that among the nay-sayers are possible abusers, but we have no way of knowing that.
November 1, 2009 at 6:00 pm
That’s an interesting perspective. It would be nice to see the media actually do credible investigative journalism and portray the diagnosis with understanding and clarity.