My intro.

[mad-pig.livejournal.com]

I have not been diagnosed with DID/MPD. But I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and one of the symptoms is a confused sense of self and identity. In fact, I have at least eight (and maybe as many as twelve) "personalities", with partial (not total) amnesia and dissociation during shifts. They don't have different names, but I do refer to them by different colors, and there are Protector, Child, Hostile and some of the others. I also experienced a lot of childhood trauma, but no sexual abuse.

So there you are. I've decided to be more open about my mental troubles lately, spilling my guts in a blog. I've also been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, OCD, panic disorder, and PTSD; in childhood, autism (probably Asperger's in reality, but that might just be one of my "personalities") and ADHD. I'm doing this because I've just hit a low point in my life, and maybe this will keep me from doing something stupid.

(I'm also separated and divorcing, and my ex-wife also has BPD. She showed signs of multiplicity herself.)

Comments

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

Welcome. You might also want to check out fragmentedminds, as they have more members experienced with various levels of dissociation.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

(...Asperger's Syndrome, autism... it's all part of the same spectrum...)

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Hmm... it's not unheard of to be both multiple and Aspie. I stumbled across this place via a crosspost from asperger , after all. If you think that you (or one or more of your personalities) might be on the autism spectrum, you might find it helpful to join. We don't bite, I promise.

I can't really give much help for the rest of the stuff you're dealing with right now, other than offer my best wishes for you. I hope that things start improving for you soon.

(Deleted and reposted because I thoroughly botched an HTML tag the first time around. Sorry about that.)

[mad-pig.livejournal.com]

I was a member of that community, but left because someone accused me of being factitious. That's pretty damn invalidating. Nothing against the rest of the group, but I couldn't deal with that.

I'm only a part-time Asperger's if anything. I think I'm just a nerd in the appropriate mood.

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Yikes.. I've never seen that sort of a reaction from anyone there. Generally people seem to take statements pretty much at face value, from what I've seen. Maybe.. maybe it was the "part-time" character of your Aspieness that set them off? I can imagine that hearing someone say "I'm only autistic some of the time" could arouse skepticism in those of us who live with it full-time, especially if you didn't mention your multiplicity.

There IS definitely an under-sentiment there about not classifying people who only exhibit spectrum-traits part-time as AS. There was a fair amount of snark recently when Courtney Love Hewitt's biography made an offhand reference about her being "mildly autistic" in childhood, so...

In any case, I'm sorry to hear that you got such a frosty reception. As a (full-time) Aspie singleton, I've had people be dismissive of me like that before, and I know how horrid that kind of rejection can feel. Even if you're "just a nerd in the appropriate mood", that's still cool by me- some of my good friends are like that too.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Hi. Don't worry about having or not having a diagnosis here-- plenty of people here have never been diagnosed, or have been but felt the labels DID or MPD were not appropriate to their experiences of multiplicity.

But I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, and one of the symptoms is a confused sense of self and identity.

Hmm. To be honest, BPD is often a diagnosis given when someone's already received quite a few diagnoses but none of them seemed to fit exactly. People can have confused senses of self and identity for any number of reasons-- perhaps they're required to behave very differently for different people in their lives, or did a lot of conforming trying to fit in and now aren't sure who they really are, or they may be getting out of a repressive and controlling environment, or they may be working through denial about being gay or transgendered. This isn't to say that identity confusion can't result from being multiple, of course-- we certainly went through a lot of 'which one is really me' confusion before deciding that they were in fact separate people.

The way you describe it, it sounds like the others represent specific emotions or aspects. You might want to check out some of what's been written on the 'median' concept.

Here's some links which might be useful:
http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/faq.shtml
http://www.karitas.net/blackbirds/layman

[changelyng14.livejournal.com]

Multiple or not, if you wait for a diagnosis to happen before you believe it, you might wait forever.

I heard a rumor that there are only six therapists in my state that will give that diagnosis. The professional psychological community seems to be in a great deal of denial about the existence of multiplicity.

I've been learning that 'systems' come in alot of flavors and shapes.

I'm no expert, but if there are 'entities' with conscious thought that just aren't you running loose in your head somewhere, your probably multiple. if you've ever 'back-seated', witnessed your hands and mouth do and say things you weren't telling it to do, thats probably a pretty good clue too. dunno what other ways of being give you that, although there's more then one states that cause 'voices' in your head.

We never suspected we were split. we pretty much operated under the assumption that if a thought happens in your mind, this is 'your thought', period. we also have an 'operator-type' dude that apparently has been in charge of keeping it that way.

We 'came out' in a moment of self-examination where I found him and somehow got/convinced him to stop doing his thing, at which point we all started gushing out and learning how to front independently of him.

alot of our back-issues started making sense and a few became non-issues overnight.
One example was our depression, which has been our most crippling one for a number of years. We learned that we had, for a long time, been 'dumping' negative emotions into other members. One of us was the 'rage-dump'. somehow I was the 'depression-dump'. but basically, when a person suppresses their anger for whatever reason, we'd been dumping it into 'Loco'.
The end result is we couldn't 'deal' with angry feelings. We just had nothing we were angry about, but this echoing constant anger would just always be there.

We don't seem to be able to process emotions unless were fronting. Loco learned to front, did so. Processed it. We learned that we dump, and how not to. Loco's pretty relaxed these days when he comes around. No gnawing anger issues. The temper we used to spend so much energy suppressing has more or less vanished.

That's one example of us figuring out our nature and it directly doing us some good. We know we have some crossed wiring, we know how to not mess ourselves up as much, and have a clearer understanding of how to undo it.

Therapists have uses, but they are disappointingly confused on multiplicity imo.

My take is they haven't been able to get a solid consistent list of symptoms that point to being multiple, and have rejected it's existence, on the basis they can hypnotize people and get the exact symptoms DID is listed as having. and are at a point now where they discredit and fire each other for believing that DID actually exists.

Many of them get it, few of them will go on the record.
mine explained that its a 'ballsy' diagnosis, and gave me an official 'PTS with possibility of DID' even tho he considers multiplicity in my case to be a no-brainer.

-Lovecry
Just another voice in da ole head.