obligatory introduction...

[mcraven333.livejournal.com]

your own psychiatric disorders aren't exactly the type of things people talk about at dinner parties, especially when you're studying to be a clinical psychologist... i guess i always thoughts some things are supposed to be left unsaid, and none of my friends even know about my diagnosis... my mum was the only one in my family that knew, but she passed away a little over a year ago... as a younger adolescent, i was treated for manic-depression, but i never responded well to the therapy... after a while, i came to attribute a lot of my problems to drug therapies, and i started to use meditation and other forms of mental discipline to keep myself in check... i was 17 when i was informed i had "ddnos," so that makes 5 years of living and coping with a known disorder...

no matter how hard i try, i still have days where i am walking around in a strange haze and my thoughts really aren't coherent... it feels as if reality and surreality shake hands and blur then fade into one, leaving me a mile away and looking from the outside in... it's hard to concentrate, and it feels like i have to wrestle with a sentence just to hold it down onto the page... it's on days like this where i feel the most lost inside my head, and even my own name looks funny in black and white... my personality can pause and shift and slide from place to place depending on the environment... i'm not one to wear masks, but sometimes it feels like i have entirely different faces that i've grown into or apart from... and when it gets really bad, i can even disappear completely...

i don't know if i'm a multiple or not, but i know that i dissociate and tend to display symptoms of having more of a split personality... i can't help but to wonder if anyone really knows me because of the fact that i am so different in different situations... sometimes, i am the shy introvert that reads entirely too much and just wants to be left alone, and sometimes i am the outspoken extroverted social butterfly and life of the party... it's all much more complicated than that, of course, but the thing i've been struggling with the most is trying to distinguish the "real me" and develop a sense of self-identity... but that only feels as if i'm trying to decide which me is the real me more often, because i'm always just "being myself"... i just thought i'd share with some likeminded people, since i've never known anyone else with the same or similar diagnosis.

~mcraven

Comments

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you could identify more with 'median' or 'midcontinuum' aspects of multiplicity?

http://www.asarian.org/~vickis/index.html
http://www.kitsune.cx/~amaliel/
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/

[christian-woman.livejournal.com]

wow...that was really beautiful and eloquent and very well described. I don't think I've ever been able to describe it like that.

[perse.livejournal.com]

My partner, who is really the only person in the known world to ever and still know "all" of me, often comments on how little other people know about me - and how close they feel they really are. People around me tend to think that we are extraordinarily close and intimate when in reality I am very intimate with them and they only know the barest surface of who I am.

I have found it easier, though, to live that way than to suffer rejection by trying to present sides and faces that are diametrically opposed to each other.

People tend to expect predictability and often equate that with dependability.

As for the strange haze with non-cohesive thoughts... I went through that directly before I came to know my alters. It's been a very bumpy ride in the 5+ years since then... and it is only within the last year that I've begun the often difficult process of growing up. For me, that has meant that the most functional child personality has taken front and is learning to deal. I switch far less and when I do it doesn't last nearly as long. Everyone else is still "here", but not as needed as they once were.

I'm still depressed and I still take meds for that, but my coping mechanisms are much better and the amount of brokenness I feel is much much less.

Having a competent therapist can help tremendously - esp one who doesn't view your diagnosis as "the problem" but simply an aspect of who you [collective] are.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

No one's personality is static. Everyone changes over time and everyone has different sides. It's perfectly normal to be shy in one situation and be out going in another. The only way multiples are different with that is where a single is one person with lots of modes of behavior a multiple is many people each with lots of modes of behavior of their own.

You say you worry that people don't know the real you but then you admit that you're always just acting like yourself. Wouldn't it be better to allow other people to see more of the different sides of you than to put up artificial divisions and turn yourself into a cardboard cut out of yourself?

[kuponutmalt.livejournal.com]

If you're not sure if you're multiple, by all means, don't try to shove yourself into a box. I, myself, am having a bit of a falling-out with my mid-continuum self-diagnosis, and I know exactly what you're talking about from what you've described. Sometimes it's easier to talk about different fragments of personalities with names, but you can also get carried away in your paradigm and add a lot more frustration than you already have. For example, I'm missing a few years of memories because "someone else" has them right now--but that someone else is a fragment of me, so there's no method of communication, etc... I don't mean to steer you away from multiplicity if you think it applies to you--but I warn you to not get wrapped up in the idea if it doesn't fit right.