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I finally got around to watching a youtube video that friends of ours were interviewed for. I thought it was really good, and actually respectful in a surprising way; most plurality-related content not directly made by plurals tends to sensationalize or stereotype, but this one was okay. Here's the link if you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7JK6pattE&t=467s
We have to admit we had kind of been putting off watching it, despite assurances that it was actually good. The reason for this is probably the fact that we tend to have a lot of confusing feelings after watching DID-focused content, such as people who identify with the DID label talking about their experiences, or academic literature or course materials related to DID as a diagnosis. Having plural friends and being in a psychology program tends to expose us to that sort of thing pretty frequently.
The confusing feelings come in different... flavors, I guess. On the one hand, there's some shame-trauma-triggery stuff from our complicated internalized ableism issue. Growing up, despite our entire extended family being full of people who have various and sundry neurodiverse issues, mental health was something our family didn't talk about. If it was talked about, it was talked around, with this dark implication of something being inherently wrong with whoever was experiencing the issue. Because of this, we as a group have a deep-seeded feeling that being different and having unusual mental characteristics means there is something wrong with us. That's been a focus of our therapy because it does need to be addressed for us to kick our habit of feeling ashamed about our plurality and trauma issues, which aren't our fault. Shame really doesn't help anything when you're trying to be accepting of yourselves.
But other flavors are a bit more intellectual. We feel unnerved when we encounter DID-related material because we are honestly very confused about our relationship with the community. We identify as plural, and have always argued that we don't have DID because we don't experience functional impairment from our plurality. We've also argued that the supposed cause of DID, early childhood trauma, isn't something we have experienced. Both of these things are technically true- we know how to diagnose, and you can't diagnose most things without functional impairment or distress. So we really aren't diagnosable in the sense of wanting/needing treatment for DID. We still haven't discovered the kind of magnitude of trauma in our childhood that would fit DID's cause- our PTSD comes from experiences that happened "too late" according to theory, and weren't severe enough.
So officially, we don't have DID, despite fulfilling all the other criteria, including the memory stuff (we have a number of workarounds to deal with that). But every group we've met who does have a DID diagnosis and/or identifies themselves using that acronym has so many similarities to us. Also, before DSM 5 added the functional impairment criterion, we did qualify, even if we were really against being diagnosed during that time. Talking to people with DID always feels like we belong, like we're internally doing similar things to deal with life. Those conversations always feel so familiar, like we're speaking with long lost family. The fact of the matter is that most of the people who really get us have DID and the reason we can relate to them is that we're DIDish.
This creates a logical issue. We don't want to identify with a disorder for something we don't believe is disordered in ourselves, but even though we technically aren't diagnosable, people with DID are our people. That's who we're most similar to, and who we understand most naturally. In a way, our completely justified identity label logic separates us out of a group of people where we most belong.
Watching this video, we were thinking about how similar we are to the interviewees. But because the video focuses most on DID rather than general plurality, and continuously emphasizes the trauma aspect and the idea that DID exists to keep people unaware of negative past experiences, it was also really alienating for us. Our plurality did function as a way of covering up our PTSD for a number of years, but trauma wasn't the cause for us. We were already multiple, and aware of each other from a young age.
We recently realized the cause of our multiplicity may actually be early childhood trauma in a previous generation, and that our mental structure was passed down one line of our family tree. It was difficult to uncover this because of how little our family is willing to talk about it, not to mention our own hesitation to talk about our mental health with them. But we recently realized that our multiplicity might have originated in childhood trauma after all- it just wasn't ours. We have a very limited knowledge of epigenetics, but enough to know that each generation uses the experiences of generations before to be born as prepared as possible for the world. We have never heard anyone else talk about multiplicity being passed down epigenetically rather than through generational abuse. But it makes sense.
Our story still doesn't really fit the official DID narrative, even if it has come a bit closer as we find out more. We're still left feeling uncertain about using a label that doesn't officially match and that is subject to change by mental health professionals. But I think we've slowly come to terms with the similarities over time. The question remains, how do we feel included in a community we belong in without fitting that imposed narrative?
-Shawn
We have to admit we had kind of been putting off watching it, despite assurances that it was actually good. The reason for this is probably the fact that we tend to have a lot of confusing feelings after watching DID-focused content, such as people who identify with the DID label talking about their experiences, or academic literature or course materials related to DID as a diagnosis. Having plural friends and being in a psychology program tends to expose us to that sort of thing pretty frequently.
The confusing feelings come in different... flavors, I guess. On the one hand, there's some shame-trauma-triggery stuff from our complicated internalized ableism issue. Growing up, despite our entire extended family being full of people who have various and sundry neurodiverse issues, mental health was something our family didn't talk about. If it was talked about, it was talked around, with this dark implication of something being inherently wrong with whoever was experiencing the issue. Because of this, we as a group have a deep-seeded feeling that being different and having unusual mental characteristics means there is something wrong with us. That's been a focus of our therapy because it does need to be addressed for us to kick our habit of feeling ashamed about our plurality and trauma issues, which aren't our fault. Shame really doesn't help anything when you're trying to be accepting of yourselves.
But other flavors are a bit more intellectual. We feel unnerved when we encounter DID-related material because we are honestly very confused about our relationship with the community. We identify as plural, and have always argued that we don't have DID because we don't experience functional impairment from our plurality. We've also argued that the supposed cause of DID, early childhood trauma, isn't something we have experienced. Both of these things are technically true- we know how to diagnose, and you can't diagnose most things without functional impairment or distress. So we really aren't diagnosable in the sense of wanting/needing treatment for DID. We still haven't discovered the kind of magnitude of trauma in our childhood that would fit DID's cause- our PTSD comes from experiences that happened "too late" according to theory, and weren't severe enough.
So officially, we don't have DID, despite fulfilling all the other criteria, including the memory stuff (we have a number of workarounds to deal with that). But every group we've met who does have a DID diagnosis and/or identifies themselves using that acronym has so many similarities to us. Also, before DSM 5 added the functional impairment criterion, we did qualify, even if we were really against being diagnosed during that time. Talking to people with DID always feels like we belong, like we're internally doing similar things to deal with life. Those conversations always feel so familiar, like we're speaking with long lost family. The fact of the matter is that most of the people who really get us have DID and the reason we can relate to them is that we're DIDish.
This creates a logical issue. We don't want to identify with a disorder for something we don't believe is disordered in ourselves, but even though we technically aren't diagnosable, people with DID are our people. That's who we're most similar to, and who we understand most naturally. In a way, our completely justified identity label logic separates us out of a group of people where we most belong.
Watching this video, we were thinking about how similar we are to the interviewees. But because the video focuses most on DID rather than general plurality, and continuously emphasizes the trauma aspect and the idea that DID exists to keep people unaware of negative past experiences, it was also really alienating for us. Our plurality did function as a way of covering up our PTSD for a number of years, but trauma wasn't the cause for us. We were already multiple, and aware of each other from a young age.
We recently realized the cause of our multiplicity may actually be early childhood trauma in a previous generation, and that our mental structure was passed down one line of our family tree. It was difficult to uncover this because of how little our family is willing to talk about it, not to mention our own hesitation to talk about our mental health with them. But we recently realized that our multiplicity might have originated in childhood trauma after all- it just wasn't ours. We have a very limited knowledge of epigenetics, but enough to know that each generation uses the experiences of generations before to be born as prepared as possible for the world. We have never heard anyone else talk about multiplicity being passed down epigenetically rather than through generational abuse. But it makes sense.
Our story still doesn't really fit the official DID narrative, even if it has come a bit closer as we find out more. We're still left feeling uncertain about using a label that doesn't officially match and that is subject to change by mental health professionals. But I think we've slowly come to terms with the similarities over time. The question remains, how do we feel included in a community we belong in without fitting that imposed narrative?
-Shawn
