born this way vs. made this way...

[princesstoots.livejournal.com]

(from my lj)

First, I'm not broken so I don't need to be fixed...

That said, I'm not sure about whether I am nurture or nature. Do I have alters because they needed to help me deal with the abuse of my childhood, or did they help me deal with the abuse because I had alters?

Yeah, that sounds like something Uriel would say...

What I went through wasn't super horrendous or anything, really. silentsweetness suffered most of it, shay_the_great a little of it, Harvey a little more of it, but nothing like what the "experts" talk about in the books and afternoon talk shows.

*sigh*

I just don't know. I mean, born or made? Does it matter?

Comments

[idianshire.livejournal.com]

Ok I am more than a little jaded and bitter about this whole question, so I probably shouldn't even respond. I'm honestly tired of all the debate and proclamations on both sides of the agrument. The thing is for us, it no longer matters. We are multiple, there is a whole bunch of people that share this body and live this earthen life. That's all that matters for us. Depending on which way you look at it I could probably fit into either camp, but I no longer give a shit. So my answer.. it doesn't matter.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We receive mail like this quite frequently from people who are under the impression that in order to "qualify" as a real multiple, one must have undergone some kind of difficulty as a child. Or that the difficulty needs to be of a certain type or severity.

Some multiples did originate as a single person who split through trauma. This may affect their operating system or they might need therapy to help deal with the trauma, but our contention is that multiplicity itself is not a symptom; it need not disappear when the trauma is resolved. The mere presence of more than one person in a body is not in itself a sign that something is wrong.

Stay away from the books and the afternoon talk shows. Lack of an abuse history does not mean your multiplicity is not genuine. There are many origins for multiplicity. This is the secret that the mental health industry never wanted to acknowledge even (especially!) at the height of the multiplicity craze of the 80s and 90s.

What matters is how you live now. All origins are completely and equally valid.

We've known plenty of trauma/splitting multiples who worked things out and lived cooperatively and who we are proud to know. And we've known a couple of natural multiples that were hell on wheels.

Live now and live well.