Multiplicity

This is, no doubt, going to be a controversial opinion, but I'm not sure whether BPD actually exists. It seems to be a diagnosis which is most frequently given to people for whom no other diagnosis seems to fit, especially those who have been in therapy for several years and don't seem to be making any progress. Generally, from what I've seen, doctors tend to hand it out to you if you feel generally unhappy with life and not quite sure who you really are, with no obvious 'cause' (apart from living in modern society, which IMO is reason enough to feel that way).

You can be just about anything and multiple at the same time. Like I've said, I'm still sort of up in the air about whether BPD is a valid thing, but if someone has good evidence that it is for some people, I'm open to it. If it is real, I think it's been overdiagnosed (like just about everything else), but if the diagnosis seems to work for you and help you, I don't see a problem with working from that.

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i've never heard of BPD before. No doctor has ever tried to diagnose me with it. Like I said before, I'm just tired of being dianogsed with stuff that doesn't feel right. MPD feels the most comfortable but i'm not 100% confident that's what I have.

I appreciate your last line though, thanks :)

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pengke.livejournal.com

It's a common blanket diagnosis to give to anyone that self-injures. It's also gotten a reputation as being the diagnosis that doctors give to their problem patients. (Or worse the diagnosis used to warn off other doctors.)

Plus there's the whole gender roles problem where most of the people being diagnosed as borderline are women simply because you have men deciding what qualifies as histrionic, manipulative, or promiscuous behavior in women.

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redrainstorm.livejournal.com

People kept trying to give me the dx of BPD. I think it exists, for sure. But I believe they only think I'm BPD because of the Multiplicity. Behaviors/actions/symptoms arise because of confliction or something going on with the system. So I don't believe I'm actually a Borderline.

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idk. reading the description seems to fit me like a glove. mostly the fact that i flip between loving my husband and aboslutely hating him and wanting to get an annulment. its just weird.

in all honesty, I just want to get an evaluation from somebody who knows nothing about me (ie: fill out a survey thingie), be diagnosed with something, or nothing at all, and go on my merry way.

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When it comes down to it, a diagnosis is just a label. Exploring yourself/selves like you've been doing will get you a lot more in life. If you run across ideas that improve your life, use them. Toss the rest. ;)

Even singletons who are very close need time away from one another sometimes.

Steak. :D Yum!

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ksol1460.livejournal.com

The way to get out from under such amateur diagnoses is to stop believing in them.

It's easy to read oneself in the symptoms of practically any illness, particularly mental illness, and conclude that you have it. Friends may "diagnose" you with all manner of things, and it serves no other purpose than to categorise and label you in their minds; you need not accept this labeling in your own.

That said, I agree with

sethrenn. Borderline personality disorder has had so many definitions over the years that I'm disinclined to believe it exists.

Jay says that it began as a condition in which a person felt she had no personality or sense of self; that some doctors who treated Marilyn Monroe thought she might be borderline. In the 1980s, it seemed to be a matter of providing a diagnostic code for insurance purposes in cases where a client's actual illness (if any) would take several sessions to determine.

Today, BPD has replaced the older "dependent personality disorder" and/or "histrionic personality disorder", in which the afflicted is overly dependent upon friends or family (or therapist), clinging and demanding to excess, and loosening torrents of anger or guilt-inducing tears upon those who would seek to extricate themselves. We have endured such people several times in our lives, and they were anything but unaware of a clear sense of self-identity.

Now as to this connection with multiplicity. Apparently some clinicians issued a proclamation in the scandal-ridden late 90s to the effect that all the misdiagnosed "multiples" of that period were actually borderline. I believe this is where the idea of BPD as attention-seeking began; that these women had deceived their therapists so as to ensure that said attention would be showered upon them, that they would indeed be courted and flattered as special beings, and so forth. In other words, let's once again blame the clients. Ballocks.

Remember that even a diagnosis by a mental health professional often serves no purpose other than to enter into your chart a diagnostic code. This may or may not have anything to do with the problems with which you initially presented. It's there for the use of the insurance companies. Even if you have no insurance, most professionals now consider this diagnostic code a matter of ethics. They may also be thinking of possible future civil action, which in our vindictively litigious society is on every professional's mind.

shatterstorm has got it right about self-exploration. To paraphrase Dr. Freida Fromm-Reichmann; What is right with you is and will always be more important than what is wrong.

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Hah. Lu nearly got classed with BPD's little twin, Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. Said she was impulsive. When doctors say things like that, it may be rude but I suggest laughing at them ;) Internally if not externally.

You can be multiple and have anything. You can be multiple and not have MPD.

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*blinks* how can you be multiple and not have MPD?

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The D stands for disorder. Imagine being multiple without losing time or "out of control" behavior. We know multiples with demanding professional careers, strong supportive relationships, healthy well adjusted children, etc...

http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/faq.shtml
http://www.karitas.net/blackbirds/layman/whatis.html

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To be fair, we have known some multiples who had trouble with losing time and didn't consider themselves to be disordered overall-- they found ways to work around it, mostly. But out-of-control behaviour, yeah-- I'd say that, in part, a non-disordered system is one in which everyone has agreed to take responsibility for their own actions.

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Could see that. There's the "I don't have access to whatever happened" kind of losing time, and the "I wasn't there but I can check the records or ask" kind. Maybe other kinds too?

We've still got a few triggers that will get all of us but whoever's up front completely excluded, and whatever happens then isn't reliably put into the shared memory. We've learned to gossip with each other when that happens so we learn what's up and why it happened.

(deleted comment)

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For most of us, out of control would include things like one of us driving off people most of us care about, spending large amounts of $$$ without talking it over with the rest of us, waking up in a strange city with a dramatic new tatoo (we know someone this happened to!), finding out one of us had thrown out the kids' favorite toys, allowing someone we know is abusive close enough that the body has new bruises, finding out that someone had resigned us from our job without talking it over, etc... That kind of thing.

Personally, I like watching when some of the crafters are working - it amazes me that they can take the same hands I use and make such amazing things. :)

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'Out of control' here would mean doing things like spending the group's whole bank account, having unprotected sex with strangers, robbing convenience stores, etc. Or simply failing to keep up with everyday responsibilities which you're technically capable of. In other words, the things multiples always do in trashy movies.

I cede control to other people in here quite frequently. But I don't feel that I'm making an unsafe decision in doing so, because I trust them to not do any of the above-mentioned things, to not get us evicted or arrested, etc.

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*points to the above* There are multiples who aren't disordered (eg us. Well, the multiplicity doesn't cause us problems anyway) There are multiples who have no history of trauma, blah dee blah.

Just (mostly) normal people who share head space with other (mostly) normal people.

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pengke.livejournal.com

You shouldn't link disordered with trauma like that. MPD/DID has a specific set of symptoms that only a certain subset of multiples experience. That's the only deciding factor.

There is a correlation between having a history of abuse and displaying the MPD/DID symptoms but that's not the same as saying that the multiples with MPD are the ones with trauma. There are MPD/DID patients that have no history of abuse and there are others that most definitely were multiple before anything traumatic occured. Similarly, there are plenty of multiples that have had bad shit happen in their lives (sometimes complete with the creation of new people to help deal with the bad shit) that never develop the symptoms of MPD.

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Read my comment again and get back to me.

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pengke.livejournal.com

You state that there are multiples who aren't disorder; that there are multiples without trauma. By stating the two together, that implies that the multiples with MPD/DID are the ones who are disordered with trauma which is a fallacy.

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It implies no such thing. "There are humans who aren't black. There are humans who aren't white." Am I implying that black people are the ones that are white? Obviously not.

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And with all that said: There are multiples who've been disordered who have learned how to adjust how they relate so they aren't disordered. There are people who've been thru severe trauma who've learned how to live without it defining their lives.

Just think about it. Think about it being possible.
Changed our world. ;)

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changelyng14.livejournal.com

without minimizing the amount of 'disorder' in my system. We are not a disorder. Professional whatevers want everyone to be the same. everyone should be 'one person-one body', among other things, and whatever works to get Multiples to be like that, is their answer.

integration, mass murder, co-consciousness, if you give them 'one person' they call you 'back to normal'.

its ignorant bigotry. oh don't get me started on all the people that think all our problems would be solved if we took each other out down to one person.

we are very multiple. I don't understand MPD, but from what I got figured out, it doesn't describe us.

sorry, this subject gets me really worked up.
I hate that I gotta answer to a name that isn't mine and pretend to be someone else all day cuz society doesn't get it.

Candy

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Hah. Lu nearly got classed with BPD's little twin, Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. Said she was impulsive.

*snerk* Yeah, that's a good example of normal behaviour, or behaviour which may not always be healthy but isn't necessarily a sign of a disorder per se, being made into a pathology. We used to know someone whose doctor considered schizophrenia as her diagnosis because she seemed to be 'too emotionally detached'-- in other words, she was apathetic about school.

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echoesnspectres.livejournal.com

what it is, what causes it, and treatment that works (http://www.priory.com/dbt.htm)

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that was interesting/helpful. Thank you.

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hairymonster.livejournal.com

BPD is a frequent alternate diagnosis for DID if it helps (usually by people who don't like admitting that DID exists), and I spent four or five years in "diagnosis" till I said stop, when they get to the pyshcotic illnesses that's when you really need to put your foot down.

Go get your steak and don't worry about it :)

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Some doctors will diagnose you with anything just so they won't have to say you're multiple. We specifically asked the one therapist who ever knew we were multiple to not diagnose us with DID because we didn't consider ourselves to be disordered, but on the other hand, there are places nowadays aren't even allowed to give multiples who do have problems a diagnosis of DID. There was one case we heard of a therapist being fired for diagnosing a client with DID-- her supervisors told her that "there is no such diagnosis."

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bedoneby.livejournal.com

Craving a steak (red meat in general) is a grounding thing, and re-energising after spending a great deal of mental or emotional energy.

Therefore, have your steak; you may need it.

I personally reccoment Kobe Sashimi with a delecate blend of white and japanese horseradish mayonnaise - but you may actually like yours cooked. There's no accounting for taste, and as I tell the few others here who dislike blood spurting from their meals "I also like nightcrawlers."

This, by the way, is compromise; If I don't eat bait while in front, I get my blue-rare stake. Of course, dinner companions are still an issue...

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