I've likely said some of this before somewhere online. I know I once stated on Metafilter that I used to be borderline for multiple personality disorder and my recollection is they deleted it and pissed all over me, their SOP for a lot of things.
I don't typically talk about it because, hey, planet Earth wants to impose Social Death on me for talking about getting PHYSICALLY well and that's vastly more objectively measurable and provable than "I used to be really mentally fucked up and now I'm NOT! Just take my word for it!"
Please remember THIS is:
A. A BLOG post, not a PhD thesis.
B. Anecdotal.
I know you assholes love to say "The plural of anecdote is not data." but it actually is. Surveys routinely ASK people to self report their experiences and then they crunch numbers and blah blah blah and call it data, having stripped it of most of its nuance.
This is my story and I know there's no evidence of any of this because it's my memories of what my internal landscape used to be like and how it has changed. If you think I'm making shit up for giggles, coolios. Don't use my information for anything. Problem solved.
If you have serious problems and no one else can help you and this somehow helps you, yay, I guess -- though this shit still isn't adequately paying MY bills and frankly I'm not entirely sure anymore why I bother. If I had any sense -- and lacked a defective set of genes -- I would get my fool self off the Internet and get a waitressing job or something because this shit is a WASTE of my time, clearly.
Anyway, on with the post:
I spent substantial time in therapy twice, about a year in my teens and I no longer recall whether it was 18 months or two and a half years in my mid twenties in Germany. I spent a LOT of time on therapy while in Germany, keeping a dream journal and sometimes going to therapy twice a week among other things.
A lot came out in Germany, including repressed memories that had been too scary to remember while living on the same continent as my abusers. I knew they were unlikely to visit me there and I felt safe in Germany for the first time and stuff happened.
One of the things that happened while in therapy in Germany is that I began dreaming about "six sisters" and I realized these girls all correlated to some age I had been when something bad happened and they were my splintered personality. Over time while in Germany, they turned into "four sisters" and two of the sisters were an indistinct age, each a blend of two of the previous sisters.
I have always been very open about having been molested and I talked once with a woman who was sexually assaulted and dissociated during the assault and was given terrible advice from mental health professionals that "Oh, that's really bad!" and was made to feel extremely broken and I told her "No, that was a protective action. If you are splintered, you still have all the pieces of you and can be put back together." And that take on her experiences helped her put down a lot of baggage and get on with life.
Years after Germany, with the encouragement of a friend, I returned to school in spite of my oppressive marriage. I wrapped up my associates degree to preserve the old credits and I dreamed about installing SOME cabinets in a dining room and there was room for more and it wasn't really as much as I had planned to do but it wasn't anything "incomplete" either. It was fine to have a small but complete set instead of a large, half finished set and no one else would have a problem with it.
And then I went to GIS school which -- speaking of surveys and ways they go wrong -- was the equivalent of master's level work without requiring me to have completed my BS and my BS was never finished, so I NEVER know what to say on surveys when they ask my education level because I have six years of college and I have completed an AA and two technical certificates and one was the equivalent of master's work but not a master's degree and I have no bachelor's.
So fuck me. None of your answers EVER cover my situation and then I wonder if I've "lied" and maybe I should just start saying "I prefer not to answer."
Anyway, while in GIS school, I dreamed that I could either do x or y epic task and I did BOTH and I woke up believing the dream was about shedding the baggage from my marriage and also about shedding baggage from some other relationship as well instead of feeling like "I can leave my husband... AND marry this OTHER man!"
No, I decided I could choose to be neither man's "bitch" and could pursue a real career now.
After GIS school, I dreamed of conceiving a baby and giving birth. It was a series of dreams over several months and I believed the dreams were about me "being reborn" or made whole and I never again dreamed about multiple "sisters."
After that, I stopped feeling splintered. I felt whole.
No, I still don't have a real career or adequate income. At least not "externally" as measured by big job titles and big paychecks, though my identity is invested in my WORK in a way typical of a career and that's clearly been better for me than being some man's chattel property -- better in every way, not just "mentally."
This story is on this blog because I recently left a comment somewhere and it wasn't well received.
Yes, I do absolutely believe -- and have said so previously on this blog -- that SOME people wondering if they are trans have something else going on and can't quite find the right answer and THIS seems to fit for some reason.
No, I'm NOT saying "You're not REALLY trans. You're a broken nut job with multiple personality disorder who needs therapy!"
IF you are trans -- or wondering if you are -- and ALSO dealing with high levels of trauma, this post is intended to help you figure out what's what.
My understanding as someone who used to read articles about multiple personality disorder and people who had it because it seemed to sort of but not quite fit my experience is this:
1. At least for White Americans and possibly NOT for other populations (per a discussion with a foreign friend who was knowledgeable), multiple personality disorder is typically found in women who were both sexually and violently abused from an early age over a long period of time.
2. Male personalities are typically protectors.
I'm not trans. I had a masculine leaning personality during some especially hard times in my life that I wore like a protective cloak.
I'm not saying "You aren't REALLY trans." I'm saying "You might be BOTH trans AND highly traumatized to the point of being borderline for multiple personality disorder."
And I hope this point of view helps you sort out where one thing ends and another begins so you can find yourself somewhere in the landscape of your own mind.
I eventually did. So that makes me inclined to feel confident that it CAN be done, it's possible, though not guaranteed.
This post exists because someone on the Internet with terrible grammar etc wanted to piss all over me thusly:
as someone with DID (what the disorder is actually called)…. no. gender and gender presentation do not determine an alter’s role. (Source)
That conflicts with everything I have ever read on the topic or firsthand experienced as someone who used to be borderline for multiple personality disorder which was why I had an interest in the subject, but go ahead and openly piss on a potential ally for the trans community because you ungrateful assholes don't want to believe I'm actually nice or some bullshit.
Furthermore, you're basically saying "I'm CRAZY! Ergo my comment has more value than yours!"
Sure, let's go with that theory.
Also also: you do realize being GAY used to be listed as a mental health issue and they ROUTINELY change the "official" terminology for various issues.
Is this REALLY what the LGBTQ crowd WANTS to support in their community spaces? Inquiring minds would like to know.