Posted by tinydancer on April 8, 2004, at 15:49:24
In reply to Re: Multiple Personality: A shameful, nonexistent dx?, posted by Miss Honeychurch on April 8, 2004, at 15:20:07
This is a very interesting question. It really gets to the heart of what having other people coexisting inside you is all about! I want you to know that I speak only for myself, and would never dare to speak for anyone else who has the same condition. Also, I don’t think you are ridiculous nor are your questions!
I’m not TinyDancer 100% of the day, no. That’s never happened, in my entire life! I don’t sense that I have a core personality, no. I really do feel a sort of duality in every aspect of my personality. I’m not sure who I really am. It sounds more sinister than it actually is. But there is definitely TinyDancer, somewhere in there, but its more like pieces that make up a puzzle.
I found out I have, to a degree, co-consciousness, which is when I am aware of another personality coming out. Not always, but it happens sometimes. People around me will notice my mannerisms change and I might be “dully” aware of it in a sort of faraway sense. I have a lot of time loss-I end up places all the time and cannot remember how I got there. I can be in the middle of a task and suddenly I don’t know how to do it. I can’t drive because I could be sitting in a car and suddenly not know how to. There is a lot of forgetting how I got from Point A to Point B. I can sit for hours reading, writing, or exercising without having any sense of time passing whatsoever. That’s the more benign side of the dx.
To put it in a more concrete sense, for me, my people (as I prefer to call them) reside in a sort of neighborhood. At present I’ve got 12 alters, a couple of whom are very intensely embedded in my own self, so that I often don’t realize until someone else points it out that they’ve been running the show. In the “neighborhood” there is one young guy who guards everyone. He comes out whenever I’m threatened and protects me. But at the same time there is intense dischord within all of my people. They all want me doing different things and often are displeased with the choices I make. They are all sort of pulling me in different directions. Each of my “people” has a definite personality, appearance, tone of voice that I am aware of instantly in my head. Contact is more one sided-I can’t always contact them if I want to. They usually have running commentary all the time, about everything I do. I see them as my friends, that I’m never alone. (Although some people find that horrifying! It isn’t for me.) I can be pressured by them to do things that I don’t want to (self injury) but usually I can differentiate what is going on.
It is also good to point out that the voices I hear reside INSIDE my head. I do have psychotic episodes with hallucinations (audible and visible) and this belongs to a certain place in “the neighborhood” It seems to be another protection thing. It is very difficult with the hallucinations. I don’t feel like any medication helps and I can become very afraid of moving a muscle because I can’t handle what I might see.
During a day I’ll probably exhibit a lot of contradictory behaviors, which are brought on usually by different triggers. One personality can take over for days at a time, usually not longer than that, in my experience.
About the disassociation side of it, that’s probably the worst for me. When I sense that I’m losing control of my body and my emotions and feel locked inside myself and confused. It’s terrible. Luckily my T specializes in DID so he is incredibly understanding and patient walking me through all this. If you can believe it I’ve been in psychiatric treatment since 14 and have always told them that I heard voices, but my current T is the first one who said, “Well, can I talk to them?” What a shock that day was. I never knew there was anything strange about hearing voices. It’s amazing and strange. I feel like I’m rambling here but does any of this answer some of your questions?
poster:tinydancer
thread:334109
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040402/msgs/334179.html