(no subject)

[eternalism.livejournal.com]

So, I recently told my mother about being part of a system. It went rather well, I think. The first thing she said was that she didn't know much about multiplicity, but she knew it wasn't schizophrenia. That's more than most people understand.

It took a bit of courage to do that. I figured she wouldn't understand, or she'd be freaked ut and think I was crazy or something. I know I'm not, but having a reasonably close family member think you are would kind hurt. It was bad enough when I first started going through depression all those years ago. But now I'm out of the closet, so to speak.

*chuckles* My closet has many brooms. I've taken to referring to them as my broommates. XD

So, out of curiosity, how many people within your family know of your situation? How did they react? What did they say, and how did they treat you?

Comments

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

None know, none ever will know. Our biological family is split roughly 50/50. Maternal side are all sweet loving caring Christians with very few exceptions, paternal side are all smoking drinking cursing Scots bastards. Oh, and that side are pretty much all athiestic, typical "Aye don't give me that crap haha, what you been drinkin hen"

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

our mother doesn't believe us.

our chosen family, is another matter, they're comprised of lots of other multiples.

Faith Alana Alastair
Pack Collective

[khlara.livejournal.com]

My mother found out from my therapist. My therapist thought she was giving me brand new news. We just wanted confirmation. (I think we conned her into the idea). Anyway, mommy thinks we're all healed now because of our last therapist. At least, I think she thinks we're healed. We may someday in the future try telling her again. Father will never know because we hate him.
Our BF knows and handles it well. No other family members know but several friends do.
As I heard once told, "Straight people don't have to come out of the closet, why should we?" and our stance on multiplicty (and our bi-sexuality) is the same. (Unless it comes up in conversation, then we'll jump in if it's appropriate)

[tempusfrangit.livejournal.com]

My host's mother hasn't the foggiest. She would not understand and would most likely pray for the Mormon kids to cast the demons out. ::chuckles::

The father was understanding and promptly tried to obtain more information about it. The grandmother was understanding and then went on to tell the host about how her great great grandmother was a multiple.

*yawns* Don't forget Grandpa.. he actually made jokes and we all got a good giggle out of it!

[nynomi.livejournal.com]

Her great great grandmother was a multiple? Wow! Did she say any more about it?

[tempusfrangit.livejournal.com]

Just that they gave her electric shock therapy.

[eternalism.livejournal.com]

Yikes!

Though back in the 'good old days', that's really all they could do about it in terms of 'treatment'. >_< Thank god the world knows more now.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

You'd never know it from what's been said on alt.support.dissociation... where ECT has not only been discussed at length as viable therapy for multiples, but actively welcomed by them because "it makes the voices stop".

You may also want to check out http://www.mindfreedom.org. ECT is becoming more and more favoured in recent years, particularly with the Bush admin's policy of No Child Left Alone Behind.

It's 1984, baby. Everybody Normal.... OR ELSE!

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

we've pretty much always chosen to live our life open book. when we came 'unglued' letting ppl know seemed natural.
we get along with the folks (still married, middle class, christo-conservative, hella old) and when we came out to them it went well enough.
they took a while believing it. we happen to really trust our therapist so we made him let us sign a waver to tell them anything he thought would be useful. it probabaly helped. they dont trip on it. they also tend to forget about it.
it was a bit nutty at first. Tia came out to my mom. she almost blew a wire. we can laugh now, but my mom hollering at her "youre my son and you'll always be my son!" (Tia REALLY hates being reminded of the girl-boy thing)
Being split sort of retro-explains alot of odd things about our life, and they grasped that.

we drew lucky with my folks tho. they did recovery and became some very 'good peoples'. it helped the whole ordeal.

i think 'coming out' is a risk everytime we do it. u cant really replace parents, so if u care about em not going stupid on you, id recommend getting them to see a good therapist that can educate em or whatever.

Candy (mostly)

[pilgrimchild.livejournal.com]

my younger sister knows. One of the others told her last year. She took it well. Sorta in a "well now that makes everything make so much more SENSE now!!" kinda way, ya know? Like it explained a whole lot of odd things I'd done all my life!
She was pretty fascinated.... i'm not quite sure why... i guess just at knowing a multiple. She took it well though, asked approprite questions.
we don't talk about it much now, mainly because things are very hard in therapy right now and i dont want to talk about how its going.

[saturniakitty.livejournal.com]

When my mom has noticed switches in the past, she got freaked out and asked if I had MPD and said I was scaring her -_-;; So, I've decided never to tell her and we've gotten a lot better at switching more discreetly around her (or just not at all). I have no idea why, but I get the feeling that my dad would be completely understanding, but I know he'd tell my mom so I can't tell him either.

[divine-sinners.livejournal.com]

Wow, I envy you ^_^ I couldn't tell my parents, we've even all got what we call a "false personality" so our relatives won't even suspect us as being different people. They are all mostly devout Catholics and stuff, so I don't want them saying I'm full of DEMONS and stuff! :(

Niz

[eternalism.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* Mostly it's me that's fronting, so there isn't too much worry of many people noticing any oddness about me. At least, in public. (One or two occasions, I've found Nick doing things for me. Silly bugger that he is.) In private, it's a tie between Brooke and I. I usually try to give her as much time out as I have, especially since my roommate is Brooke's SO.

But for the most part, everyone can hide behind me, Ria, so that the rest of the world doesn't see anything different. That way, I can aqvoid accusations of being insane, demonic, etc etc.

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

Goddess.. I tried telling my uncle when we were close and he didn't belive me. My cousin, which is more like a brother, did belive me but convinetnly forgot. sorry bad spelling..

my mom and all the rest I never told and never will... but after i broke away form the family my uncle spilled the beans so to say. they asked if I was crazy.. long story short i'm not telling anyone else, if i ever talk to them again

[grey-reverie.livejournal.com]

wow...its kinda depressing how many of us have to live with our biological families in the dark..

i could never tell mum and pops about us, because for one i know they would instantly dismiss it, and say im using it as an excuse for some obscure reason. then if i persisted, being the devout christians they are, they would tie me up like a hog claiming it was for my own good and try to send me off to some psych ward..

plus, a good half of the people in my system hate pops because of what he did to cody and i when we were younger... they dont want anything to do with him. i did make the mistake of telling my sister tracy about us, and at first she seemed fine with it, but considering how shes always treated us like total crap like pops, i should have known better. now she taunts us about it and calls us crazy, but were able to ignore it.

lucky, glad your bio family is understanding about it!

-lukies

[tigrin.livejournal.com]

Huh. Consider yourself lucky, then.

We don't have too much contact with extended family, and I certainly don't talk to them about personal stuff. Of my close family, my sister is completely, totally in the dark.

couple years ago, when I had just found out about multiplicity, I had to tell my mom about it in order to see a therapist... she went along with it and took me... but even before that, she was kind of dismissive about it... I remember long before I knew about multiplicity, I tried to tell her about this guy in my head... she fell asleep while I was talking. I haven't really talked to her about it specifically since I first told her... she thinks I developed it by reading about it, because supposedly I'm so suggestable and hypnotizable. She took a beginning psychology course in college and uses it as an excuse to argue that she knows everything about psychology (though I was talking to her the other week, and she was trying to convince me that someone with paranoid schizophrenia is multiple). As much as I'd love to be able to tell her about us... I just don't think she'll ever accept it. I seem to be the only thing she can count on, supposedly, so... I can't be unstable to her. she's always called me weird growing up as an insult.

I told my dad and stepmom around the same time I told my mom... I haven't heard about it since from my stepmom, but at least she was responsive... both of them have new age beliefs, so they believe in aliens and spirit guides and such. but my dad thinks I'm full of it. so safe to say I never talk to him about it.

Many of my close friends know all about it and are very supportive.

[egyptian-spider.livejournal.com]

We told our mother. She originally reacted -very- badly, causing Mae (the main fronter at the time) to suppress and ignore the rest of us for a number of years.

Once we reemerged, we told her again. This was about a year ago. Now she just rolls her eyes and ignores it. It's obvious she thinks it's just a ploy for attention, or something we're making up. We refuse to hide it, though, and let her know who's out and talk in plural. *shrugs*

Our sister-in-law knows, since she reads this LJ. I don't know what she thinks about it... I don't know if either of our brothers know.. And I'm pretty sure our dad would react badly... *shrugs*

[shadowechoes.livejournal.com]

Our therapist told Our mom about the diagnosis, but none of Us were there for that session. Don't know if she told Our dad about it. Neither of Our parents ever talk about it. And I'm sure what the therapist told them isn't accurate. Sometimes We wish We had the courage to tell them. The kids wish that Our parents would acknowledge them, it makes them very sad.

~Bleach

nobody knows

[reinahada.livejournal.com]

none of my family knos and we intend to keep it that way. its bgeter that way for everyone involved. we wihs we could tell my autn or my mom but we know it wouldn't be good idea.

distraida-Robin and Courtney

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We were completely open to our birth mother about it. She had a number of rationalizations for it from reincarnation to abuse from our dad (he was rough on us because we were multiple, but that didn't cause it.. that would be giving him far too much credit in this proud and ancient House).

One maternal aunt knows and of course she knows All About Multiplicity from some profoundly intellectual thing she saw on Lifetime Television. She advised Mom not to allow us to be executor of her will because multiples can't be trusted. (Image of Gabe doing his "Dim Viewer" look)

One maternal cousin knows & is fine with it.

No one on the paternal side will ever know, because they would believe it and think it was from abuse and blame Dad, who would then have a fine old time patronizingly sneering about how we "fantasized" all the time and thought we were multiple because we wanted to be special and how Mom was always trying to talk us into believing we were mentally ill, and other such tripe.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Our birth mother doesn't know, and our birth father is deceased. He was in a coma for about a week before he died, during which time we'd go in and talk to him occasionally on the off-chance that he could hear us-- one of the things we told him was that we were plural. We had decided we wanted to tell him (but not our mother) at some point before he died-- he passed on sooner than we'd expected, though; we'd wanted more time to think about how we were going to say it; but we did keep our promise, technically.

As far as our mother is concerned, she doesn't know and is never going to. She'd probably feed us some line of BS about how we've always been "overdramatic about our illnesses" (even though we're quite clear about the fact that multiplicity is in no way an illness for us) and "let our imagination run away with us" and believe everything we read. On the off-chance that she did believe us, she'd probably have some TV-movie view of it and decide that it was a result of being sexually abused by our father (despite the fact that our father never sexually abused us, but she's got a lot of bizarre ideas about him that seem to have little relation to reality).

There was a point in our late teens where we would openly switch and talk in our own voices in front of our brother; he got completely freaked out by it, insisted that it "looked like MPD" and thought we should seek psychiatric help, so we pretty much went cold on the idea of telling him. Interestingly, though, he seems to have become more comfortable with the idea recently-- while he was helping us move last summer, Ruka talked with him in his own voice (which isn't dramatically different from the body's, but noticeably different to anyone who's familiar with our 'public voice') for quite some time, and he never got upset. He mentioned recently that he'd decided he was pretty much cool with whatever anyone else believed about themselves as long as it wasn't hurting anyone-- and ksol1460 are all but out to him at this point; they've talked with him repeatedly in their own voices and referred to themselves as 'we.' (They've also referred to us as 'them' a few times in his presence; I'm not sure if he picked up on it, though.) So coming out to him definitely seems like a more viable option now than it did a few years ago.