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Dear Psychologists,
Some of you know us already, though you don’t know you know us. You know our singletsona. Some of you are our mentors, colleagues, friends. Some of you are even plural like us. Others are our enemies, abusers, toxic people who have caused us and/or our community harm. So it seems strange to address you all at once. But our field has a lot of issues, as you all know. And I’d like to address you all as people rather than some abstract concept of “the field”. Because at the end of the day, all institutions are made of people.
If you are in that corner of the field with all the renegades who are here to decolonize and depathologize and deconstruct, this is less a letter to you. But still, please listen.
Every day, people like us are dying. They are dying from lack of adequate mental health care, lack of access to care, harmful care. They are dying from what psychologists are doing. They are dying from both intentional harm and unintentional harm from people like you.
This may sound dramatic, and I don’t have the statistics to back it up. But it is the truth. I know this because our community knows this. We know what happens to our friends, friends of friends, our relatives. The reason I don’t have statistics is that you are in such deep denial about our existence that we do not have adequate literature to describe our community’s experiences.
It is possible to die from invisibility. When so many of you don’t believe that we exist- that we are lying or faking or watched Split too many times or whatever else you like to tell yourselves- there are real, deadly, consequences. We are passed from clinician to clinician, with “sorry, I don’t do that,” or “that can’t actually be happening,” or whatever other excuses you have. We are abused in hospitals. We lose our jobs, our children, our relationships. We are feared.
We are entering a field where we are dismissed or pathologized. And it is not easy. You don’t make it easy to exist in your space, much less change anything. We are weary from hiding in plain sight all these years, fearing that we will be gatekept out of our career because of the stereotypes you hold about people like us. Being around the negativity is exhausting. Once, in a classroom, DID was brought up in a presentation. A blank silence speckled with nervous laughter ensued. We left the room.
Once, in another class, a professor went on at length about “psychotic personality structure” and bizarre notions about how people with DID can’t think, can’t imagine, can’t function around other people. We were taken aback. None of it made any sense- a singlet conceptualization of something unintelligible to them, overcomplicated and inaccurate, insulting. We began to strategically skip class.
At a clinical site, we were told that people like us are “too severe” to be seen and must be referred out. Knowing that people like us are “too hard” for our site to see is a bad feeling. Are we actually “too” anything? Too broken? Too troubled to work here?
Because for us, these assumptions are damaging. They bring up past fears. We used to be as afraid of ourselves as you are of people like us, because that was all we knew. The pride we have scraped out of that crater full of shame is delicate. It is easily bruised. We think so often, “can we do this?” despite feedback that we are good at what we do. But if you knew about us, what kind of bias would that feedback begin to have?
At another clinical site, anyone could be seen except for people with dissociative disorders. We asked why this is. We were told they are a liability. Are we a liability? People with DID got kicked out of youth groups, out of treatment at that place, just for having the diagnosis. We have a burning question: if you knew, would we have been kicked out as well? Would we have earned the plaque on our wall announcing our completed placement? If you knew, would we be allowed in the building?
These are questions that no one should have to ask around you. “Am I allowed to exist here?” is not a question your trainees should wonder. We should not have to lie on paperwork diagnosing our clients to protect them from your discriminatory policies.
You need to completely reorient yourselves when it comes to plurality. Hiding from 90s lawsuits by avoiding working with us out of fear- this would not be acceptable with any other client population. People who cannot work with marginalized identities are currently being urged to take responsibility for their education. It is becoming required for us to deal with any discomfort we may have around people who are different from us and to open ourselves to learning. Please do this for our plural community.
Psychology is undergoing a revolution, where we listen to our clients’ experiences and we value their points of view more than ever before. It is time to look beyond the strange, tangled singlet ideas that exist in current DID treatment paradigms, which resemble conversion therapy more than anything else and have the potential for great harm to plurals. It is time, instead, to find out from plural people what actually works for and helps them. Community wisdom is not delusion. We have been surviving and thriving for all of human history. We do not need to become singlets to live our lives, and we should not be forced into your ideas of normalcy when it is frankly unnecessary.
If we did not believe in the potential of psychology to help people like us, we would not be subjecting ourselves to everything you put us through. We would not be learning from you and joining you in the future if we did not respect psychology as a discipline, or you as psychologists. Please, let’s make room for my people. And perhaps, for future plurals, there will be less hate, less death, less fear. Maybe, in future generations, it will be easier for aspiring plural psychologists to make it, and we can add our unique wisdom. Let’s make that happen, together.
Sincerely,
Your student(s)
Some of you know us already, though you don’t know you know us. You know our singletsona. Some of you are our mentors, colleagues, friends. Some of you are even plural like us. Others are our enemies, abusers, toxic people who have caused us and/or our community harm. So it seems strange to address you all at once. But our field has a lot of issues, as you all know. And I’d like to address you all as people rather than some abstract concept of “the field”. Because at the end of the day, all institutions are made of people.
If you are in that corner of the field with all the renegades who are here to decolonize and depathologize and deconstruct, this is less a letter to you. But still, please listen.
Every day, people like us are dying. They are dying from lack of adequate mental health care, lack of access to care, harmful care. They are dying from what psychologists are doing. They are dying from both intentional harm and unintentional harm from people like you.
This may sound dramatic, and I don’t have the statistics to back it up. But it is the truth. I know this because our community knows this. We know what happens to our friends, friends of friends, our relatives. The reason I don’t have statistics is that you are in such deep denial about our existence that we do not have adequate literature to describe our community’s experiences.
It is possible to die from invisibility. When so many of you don’t believe that we exist- that we are lying or faking or watched Split too many times or whatever else you like to tell yourselves- there are real, deadly, consequences. We are passed from clinician to clinician, with “sorry, I don’t do that,” or “that can’t actually be happening,” or whatever other excuses you have. We are abused in hospitals. We lose our jobs, our children, our relationships. We are feared.
We are entering a field where we are dismissed or pathologized. And it is not easy. You don’t make it easy to exist in your space, much less change anything. We are weary from hiding in plain sight all these years, fearing that we will be gatekept out of our career because of the stereotypes you hold about people like us. Being around the negativity is exhausting. Once, in a classroom, DID was brought up in a presentation. A blank silence speckled with nervous laughter ensued. We left the room.
Once, in another class, a professor went on at length about “psychotic personality structure” and bizarre notions about how people with DID can’t think, can’t imagine, can’t function around other people. We were taken aback. None of it made any sense- a singlet conceptualization of something unintelligible to them, overcomplicated and inaccurate, insulting. We began to strategically skip class.
At a clinical site, we were told that people like us are “too severe” to be seen and must be referred out. Knowing that people like us are “too hard” for our site to see is a bad feeling. Are we actually “too” anything? Too broken? Too troubled to work here?
Because for us, these assumptions are damaging. They bring up past fears. We used to be as afraid of ourselves as you are of people like us, because that was all we knew. The pride we have scraped out of that crater full of shame is delicate. It is easily bruised. We think so often, “can we do this?” despite feedback that we are good at what we do. But if you knew about us, what kind of bias would that feedback begin to have?
At another clinical site, anyone could be seen except for people with dissociative disorders. We asked why this is. We were told they are a liability. Are we a liability? People with DID got kicked out of youth groups, out of treatment at that place, just for having the diagnosis. We have a burning question: if you knew, would we have been kicked out as well? Would we have earned the plaque on our wall announcing our completed placement? If you knew, would we be allowed in the building?
These are questions that no one should have to ask around you. “Am I allowed to exist here?” is not a question your trainees should wonder. We should not have to lie on paperwork diagnosing our clients to protect them from your discriminatory policies.
You need to completely reorient yourselves when it comes to plurality. Hiding from 90s lawsuits by avoiding working with us out of fear- this would not be acceptable with any other client population. People who cannot work with marginalized identities are currently being urged to take responsibility for their education. It is becoming required for us to deal with any discomfort we may have around people who are different from us and to open ourselves to learning. Please do this for our plural community.
Psychology is undergoing a revolution, where we listen to our clients’ experiences and we value their points of view more than ever before. It is time to look beyond the strange, tangled singlet ideas that exist in current DID treatment paradigms, which resemble conversion therapy more than anything else and have the potential for great harm to plurals. It is time, instead, to find out from plural people what actually works for and helps them. Community wisdom is not delusion. We have been surviving and thriving for all of human history. We do not need to become singlets to live our lives, and we should not be forced into your ideas of normalcy when it is frankly unnecessary.
If we did not believe in the potential of psychology to help people like us, we would not be subjecting ourselves to everything you put us through. We would not be learning from you and joining you in the future if we did not respect psychology as a discipline, or you as psychologists. Please, let’s make room for my people. And perhaps, for future plurals, there will be less hate, less death, less fear. Maybe, in future generations, it will be easier for aspiring plural psychologists to make it, and we can add our unique wisdom. Let’s make that happen, together.
Sincerely,
Your student(s)
