multiplicity_archives | Discrimination, and losses

This is a spin off from a recent post but pretty tangential so I'm posting it as its own topic.

I have no doubt that discrimination exists against multiples - at its most extreme, forced hospitalization.

But I myself have not really come across it personally to a huge extent yet. I have been out at work and survived layoffs and was promoted a few times after that (of course I work in a creative field, so there is a lot of leeway); I have been out to some healthcare providers and haven't been pressured into anything odd. So I am curious as to others' experiences and if anyone is willing to post theirs here I would be all ears.

I do find media and creative images of multiples (where they exist) stereotypical and exceptionally bad, so I think that counts as an atmosphere of intolerance. But again, this hasn't impacted on anything I can point to like losing my job, etc. Nor do I, as a writer, think there should be any legislation or anything like that about this - I just think there should be better options. (Working on it, too. :))

I also was thinking on what multiples (as a generalized group) would stand to loose if multiplicity were de-listed as from the DSM-whatever-version. I think most multiples in treatment could probably continue to access services under PTSD, and I wonder if their disability cheques and (in the US) ADA protection would also be maintained.

I am reminded of a likely apocryphal but still interesting story someone told me about how in California, when homosexuality was still on the books, there were a (very) few people who were collecting disability for being gay, and when that was removed their income was cut off. But I'm not sure that would apply give that most disordered multiples probably fit under other umbrellas.

The reason I am thinking of both together is that I think in order for people to be super-public about themselves there would likely have to be something that they would perceive that they would gain that would be worth the personal price and hassle of being out. (And even where there are legal protections against discrimination, I think there are often personal costs. Like in Canada gays and lesbians have many rights including marriage, and yet often coming out of the closet still costs them their family and community ties.)

Any thoughts?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

weirdiguess.livejournal.com

The girls have been out to shrinks, and there doesn't seem to be any worse discrimination for that than they get for being autistic. One guy said he couldn't help because his school of thought would mean he'd have to ask us to integrate, but he admitted that wouldn't be right for them and apologised.

Elsewhere, the mother was fine with it, fiance was ok with it, friends have been ok. Never been out to anything like jobs or college, never been any reason to be.

Personally, I don't think it should be delisted. So they can still get help under other labels, that doesn't mean a genuine condition should be removed.

From:

cirape.livejournal.com

I agree with Michael. There are a good numbered of disordered multiples, so removing the label would be next to impossible and quite unfeasible. What you'd want to aim for, is trying to add something to it--or perhaps a separate label itself--that notates healthy multiplicity. Sadly, that means it'd still be listed as a mental illness (which, in a way, it is), but at least there'd be a note that it isn't always bad.
For what its worth, we've had no trouble with any of the psychiatrists/psychologists we've been out to.

From:

sethrenn.livejournal.com

Personally, my view is that multiples aren't so much discriminated against in the strictest sense as multiples but in a broader sense as psychiatric patients (i.e. if they're involved with the system, whether they're disordered or not, being subject to the same kind of discrimination that all other psychiatric patients are subject to) and/or as neurodiverse people (if you happen to view multiplicity as possibly being a matter of different brain wiring, though there isn't much evidence either way iirc).

I do not feel much commonality with the online multiple community, personally. I feel more commonality with the mad movement and the neurodiversity movement, these days. I haven't run into many multiples interested in bringing the whole issue under the umbrella of either. It doesn't really bother me if most of the online multiple community doesn't. I feel commonality with those other two movements for reasons besides plurality-- because I've/we've been 'disordered' in the past for reasons having nothing at all to do with our being multiple and had that mishandled by doctors, and then also because of being autistic (yes, we have a diagnosis, I won't get into the "legitimacy" or "professional vs. self-diagnosis" issues here) and the problems we've had because of that.

We aren't likely to out ourselves any time in the future to family, workplaces, or anywhere else. We already have enough, less hideable "weirdnesses" affecting people's view of us, and I have a general sense that compounding it with one more (and one that is somewhat more on the fringe than either autism or "weren't you suicidal/depressed/delusional/etc at one point?") would not do much good for us. If it were not for those other things-- if we were "just multiple" and nothing else "odd" in addition to it-- it might be different.

I think that if anyone wants to start a movement, they need to come to a point of seeing that it isn't just about their group; that if they are experiencing discrimination, it's part of a larger picture and not restricted to one or two of people, and to be able to incorporate their own ideals and goals into that bigger picture. I did see the post by

shared_space a few days back (if that is the post that this one is in reference to). It reminded us very much of our own views and ideals about five or six years ago. A vision is a good start. If my experience is any guide, the best place to go from there is to start fitting it into a larger picture, into general patterns of discrimination and larger movements.

-Berke

From:

wantsacracker.livejournal.com

Hi Shandra. What sethrenn says resonates with a position we've kind of ~landed~ in which is that most discrimination is part of a general pattern of discrimination against anybody a bit different or anybody with the psychiatric stigma or insert-label-here so we feel (us, the diplomats so, since you might actually know us! isn't that amazing? so many years now! *cough* Francesca, Hannah, Shell & Just Jo) that we can work towards changing without needing to be specific about what it is to be multiple. I guess another question for us is - what is it that we actually WANT? What kind of treatment would be ideal? Do we want to be known as individuals by say our boss at our new (and very stressful) job? Sometimes we prefer to keep our distance and protect ourselves with our shared identity as a shield. It is so hard to know what has become a defence and what might have been in the perfect world. We won't know, I guess. Tangents abound. Nice to see you here.
various polly

From:

wantsacracker.livejournal.com

Berke of Sethrenn, sorry.
I should have mentioned you as yourself.

From:

lorebesh.livejournal.com

I agree with this. A lot of people don't take the intersection of identity into account; rather, they seem to prefer insisting that "we're not like those other people". The "we're not like..." stuff that comes up all over the place has to go if any kind of plural movement is going to succeed, in my opinion. The splintering-up of social justice movements and lack of connection between "different" causes bothers me.

I relate much more to the mad movement(s) and neurodiversity movement (and disability rights) than the plural community, too. I'd love to see more discussion going on between those communities, given their commonalities.

-mostly Miut

From:

sethrenn.livejournal.com

rather, they seem to prefer insisting that "we're not like those other people". The "we're not like..." stuff that comes up all over the place has to go if any kind of plural movement is going to succeed, in my opinion.

Yeah.

And that is where a lot of groups and subcultures go off the track, in my opinion, in seeking social legitimacy-- that big tendency towards "we're not like those other types," or towards creating divisions within their own group, between "the types who should be socially accepted" and "the types who shouldn't be." This drives us up a wall in the autistic community, for instance, but the pattern repeats across a lot of groups.

And I say this from a standpoint of someone who did go through a phase of "don't associate me with the types who--!!" (etc.) We all did, back when we first started figuring out we were plural. The people we really didn't want to be associated with were the ones who had been conditioned into helplessness by their therapists, but we found as we went on that the hard-and-fast division between "healthy/functional systems" and "systems who let their therapist do the thinking for them" we'd tried to draw up initially didn't really exist. (And part of that had to do with issues we were carrying around, based on what happened to us when we listened to therapists we shouldn't have listened to.)

I relate much more to the mad movement(s) and neurodiversity movement (and disability rights) than the plural community, too. I'd love to see more discussion going on between those communities, given their commonalities.

I would, too. My main problem at this point is that I'm not really sure how to get that discussion going, short of starting some kind of separate community for it.

-Berke

From:

sethrenn.livejournal.com

...oh, another thought re disability rights: I think it might also be possible for those systems who considered themselves disordered to bring that under the umbrella of disability rights in some way.

I actually see a lot of commonality between this community and the Hearing Voices movement, also-- in that some people find their voices distressing and want to work on finding ways to get rid of or make them manageable in some way, and other people don't want their voices gone at all.

Although I've found that it's hard to discuss hearing voices in the multiple community sometimes, because people get uncomfortable-- some people use "but I don't hear voices" as one of their benchmarks, their proofs that they're sane and okay, and the idea of associating themselves with people who do is an "I don't want to go there" place for some. (The irony is that the HVM is taken more seriously and has more doctors backing it than any kind of organized plural movement has ever been. It's even made the newspapers, which we never have.)

At this point, I'm not really even interested in proving I'm "not crazy" any more.

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

I hear voices! :) The voices of my friends who are with me.

-Butterfly

From:

crystalseraph.livejournal.com

We've gotten a bit of crap from people around us, and shit like Ser's friends being really nervy talking to me and stuff, but nothing really bad yet. Give it time, hey?

-Tahl

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

Well with our/my current therapist, she seems to be sticking quite adamantly to the goal of integration, even though I told her we don't want to do that. I don't think she fully understands our relationships with each other yet, but we've only been seeing her a short time, so that can be improved as we go along. Our system has a fair amount of textbook MPD/DID problems, as well as a probable trauma history, but we don't identify with the mindset of the majority of survivors we've spoken with. We do feel kind of pressured; she keeps reminding us we're all parts of one person, which most of us don't agree with at all.

I don't think multiplicity should be de-listed from the DSM. Of course I don't agree with all the diagnostic criteria, nor with the prefered method of treatment, but there are plenty of systems out there that do. The kinds of systems who benefit most from that type of therapy often gain a lot from having a trusting relationship with their therapist, one that probably couldn't be attained by a PTSD specialist. Therapy specifically centered on multiplicity allows room for interaction with (ideally) all people in a system, which is something that would be hard to get with someone who isn't specifically trained or looking for that kind of situation, especially if MPD/DID is de-listed.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining that in the correct terms...

From:

futarinohimitsu.livejournal.com

Your icon is distressing to some here, perhaps to care in using in future? Please.

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

Can't you just ignore it/scroll past it/whatever? I don't mean that to sound bitchy, but...

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

Is it a picture of acupuncture?

-Butterfly

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

No, it's from a movie called Imprint (this icon is also from the same movie). It's one of my favorite movies. The girl in the first icon was tortured, hence the needles.

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

It sounds creepy.

-Butterfly

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

It is, in several ways. Takashi Miike, the director, almost always makes movies that include things most people would never even think of. They tend to be violent and disturbing by normal standards, but I love that kind of stuff.

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

I don't think watching things like that are good for you. :(

-Butterfly

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

Why's that?

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

Because it isn't nice things that are happening. I know that violent movies are very popular because I see the trailers for them on the television. I just don't understand why people enjoy seeing other people being hurt. :(

-Butterfly

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

It's sort of like catharsis for me. Especially when I'm in a really foul mood. I would never ever condone violence happening to people in real life, that I would not enjoy at all, but that's the great thing about fiction is that no one is really hurt. But, to each her own...

Your butterfly icons are really pretty, by the way. See, I have a normal side to me too. XD

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

I don't think you're not normal. Thank you for explaining it to me, and thank you for the nice compliment. :)

-Butterfly

From:

ksol1460.livejournal.com

That's what I thought it was, or a takeoff on the Debbie Harry "Koo Koo" album cover.

From:

futarinohimitsu.livejournal.com

They try, I try (they close face to get past for this time), it upsets, their first especially. It is an ask for future, not for now. Is merely an ask, I am sorry if it does offend.

From:

forever-alone.livejournal.com

I'll try not to use it in this community in the future. Can't make any promises on whether or not I'll always remember, though.

From:

tej-agni.livejournal.com

For the group I'm with they see it all as just how they are. People come and go. People live and are born. There's nothing medical to it at all for them, so I get confused about the medical parts being brought into it. It's different than the way it's described medical. I think they see it more spiritual than medical. Souls and spirits sharing space like spirits might do when they travel to different planes. Some spirits have to use a body in certain planes in order for them to interact within them. I like thinking about it that way because it's not medical sounding at all. I don't see why any doctors would have anything to do with something that's spiritual for this group. :)

-Butterfly

From:

katullus.livejournal.com

I have a theory (which, as with all not really well-thought-out theories which have no research or evidence to back them up, is going to be controversial) that natural multiplicity and dissociative multiplicity (i.e., brought about by abuse or trauma) are two completely different things. Dissociative multiplicity may be considered a disorder if it's debilitating and brought about by unnatural means, in which case integration might be a good thing- returning to a natural state for that particular person. However, natural multiplicity may be another thing altogether. When it's not brought about by trauma, easily (relative term) dealt with by its owners, and a natural state to be in, then not only is it something that's not going to have to be brought up to doctors-> identified for its own terms-> "diagnosed"-> researched or learned about in any way, it also won't get any kind of press, positive or negative. Nobody's learning anything about it because it's something people already think they know about, and it lies on a need-to-know basis and nobody has needed to know. Not until now. It's something we have to hide because it's so commonly associated with the unnatural and debilitating misnomer, bad images in the press, stereotypes, etc. When there's no information on something to begin with, the only kind of information that can be passed around is misinformation. That has to be changed. The only answer is more research and more open minds.

From:

delraith.livejournal.com

Interesting...

Then possibly, a person easily can have both types of multiplicity. I think we might then in this sense.

We're not sure of how one of our person's future is going to pan out, again that's just something time will let us know. Question of the matter being, whether said person will integrate, or evolve separately (and this person was "brought" about by trauma I suppose...)

From:

cactus-guys.livejournal.com

We've thought something along those lines for some time, since we don't seem to have many of the problems associate with DID multiplicity (losing time, disassociating, trauma histories, etc) at all. Although some of us do have the role of coping with all the unpleasent parts of day-to-day life, that doesn't seem to be why we're here at all. We're not sure why we're multiple these days, and even if it did start of as some sort of coping mechanism, we're a healthy and very functional system now.

The only way we can reconcile our experiences of multiplicity as something harmless, and then the experiences of others with trauma-based systems, DID diagnosises, etc, is by saying that maybe there are two different types of multiplicity, one that's healthy and natural, even if it does throw up a few problems from time to time, and one that's (initially) disassociative and may need treatment.

The main problem with advocating this as a theory would be that people would be far too black-and-white, I think. They probably wouldn't accept that people may need help coping with their natural multiplicity, and they may not accept that people could have healthy multiplicity and functionality as a goal, rather than integration, if their multiplicity was trauma-based, and hard to cope with.

I think it might work, but human nature means that getting it accepted as a theory would be pretty hard to do.

From:

sethrenn.livejournal.com

Possibly. I think my main issue with any kind of division like that would be that I've met some systems who strongly identified as being trauma-based but stated that they had ended up living as a cooperative group and did not want to integrate, and some natural systems who did lose time and fit the modern definition of dissociation.

I think I'm generally wary of attempting to draw a line between "natural" and "trauma" because I've seen nasty rifts caused over the issue in the community in the past (over insinuations that trauma systems must, by default, be unhealthy and need to integrate, and similar), and because trauma can also interact with pre-existing systems in weird ways. A group that's naturally plural, and then experiences some kind of abuse or trauma later, may end up modifying their operating system in such a way that it becomes detrimental to them later on.

-Berke

From:

rabbitsystem.livejournal.com

I think they have different origins, but not neccessarily different natures. I can only speak from how it was for us, but working with Ellen-in-pieces was no different to how working with Ellen is now. They just became part of our system. It did cause some strain, because we grew up as a small group, then things got very confusing for a few years and we were a larger group, most of whom were't quite whole people. It was getting used to dealing with more people, though, that was the problem, not having trauma-based members per say.
(And the depression, but we were non-depressed for quite a while before Ellen integrated.)
-Seb

(deleted comment)

From:

ksol1460.livejournal.com

Agreed. The origins don't matter nearly as much as how are they doing now, today.

From:

mirrorbrothers.livejournal.com

There's always a benefit to being out - the freedom and relieved stress of not having to hide it any more. But maybe by "super-public" you mean publicizing it to people you don't know or similar, which I don't see any intrinsic reason to do. That would need a reason.

Rob

From:

shandra.livejournal.com

Yeah, that's what I mean. I think there are personal benefits to being out in a calm way, but this is more the marching on Parliament sort of deal. :-)

From:

mirrorbrothers.livejournal.com

To march on Parliament I would need very buoyant boots, but I get the picture. :-)

From:

hydra-system.livejournal.com

We've only dealt with serious discrimination once where we were verbally abused which lead to very large internal problems for a while. That was some time ago now, and we have not experienced anything like it since. We've also had to deal with minor things, like therapists telling us we're schizophrenic and needing anti-psychotics, etc. Again, those things happened a while ago and our current doctors are very understanding of us. Also, the friends and family who know about us don't give us any problems. They are, for the most part, understanding.
The one thing that does bothers me is how the general psychiatric community and the public view DID and multiplicity. For instance, while reading my textbook for psych 100, DID was called rare and a fad disorder (in the US). It also said that the people who are diagnosed as such are probably fantasy-prone or role players or convinced by their therapists that they are multiple, etc. etc. Now, I'm sure these things may fit for some people, but I don't think they can lump everyone who is multiple or who has DID into those catagories. But, I guess this is something that bothers a lot of multiples and why there are websites about multiplicty...
And to comment on the last bit, I don't think there are many benefits to being out to the masses. If anything, it may increase discrimination! In this case, I believe the risks outweigh the benefits.

From:

cross-clan.livejournal.com

Not much communication here so the experiences that I express are based on info. from reliable sources along-with my own personal inferences built along the way.
This body's first hospitalization was on an inpatient psych unit around the age of seven. Not sure of the purpose of this, but brain scans were frequent. This was the beginning of many forced hospitalizations including an almost four year stay in the state hospital, and the only thing that got us out for a few hours a week was to satisfy the curiosity of local collage students. Felt more like a lab animal or some-kind of drug testing platform. I was so freaked out by their brutally abusive treatments (most not suitable for posting) that when given the chance I left state for a small midwestern town where we thrived. We landed many jobs ranging from cashier to programming robots, and eventually management.
For reasons still unclear to me one of the others moved back to our home state. Upon our return we resumed our lives house, work, etc.
At one point we felt the need to see a family councilor for issues with one of our teenagers. Then somehow through the councilors mental health affiliations the ball started rolling again. The mental health system here just can't seem to accept the fact that two multiples could raise five children. Thier consistent efforts to remove the children have yielded no results, And seemed to fuel their resolve.
Since our return six years ago my spouse and I have lost jobs, have been forcibly hospitalized, Medicated, Threatened, Taken to court, Told we can't leave the area, You name it. Right now I'm involuntarily committed to the mental health system here in short, I can't leave, I can't miss any of their therapy sessions (Three days a week), And I have to take their stupid drugs. In-addition to the constant monitoring by social workers. All this for what purpose? We were told they're just trying to help. We never wanted their help or thier petty. We just want to be left alone. For those who would find this hard to believe this is not mere conjecture it's happening right now. Would I march on Parliament? No, I wouldn't want to draw any unnecessary attenion to the situation. But yes we feel discriminated against, And I would like to see changes being made.

-Kaci