Rules of Abuse Disclosure for Proper Multiples

Jay Young of Astraea’s web made some valid points about trauma/buse disclosure in “real” multiplicity in her comment on Brenda’s post. I’m not as witty as Brenda is, but here is a list of rules for abuse disclosure if you want to be a proper multiple.

1. Multiplicity is always caused by severe, prolonged, horrific abuse, usually sexual abuse and in most proper cases satanic ritual abuse. I know the Dutch association for people with dissociative disorders had in their newsletter an advice column in which the columnist said other trauma can cause DID too, but this is not apparent anywhere else.


2. For this reason, you must on occasion drop words like “SRA”, “programming”, etc. in conversations about your DID.


3. In the offline meetings of the Dutch DID support group at least, you cannot go into detail about your trauma, or you can if it was not bad anyway. I was actually pretty much expected to disclose some details of stuff I consider traumatic.


4. You must have particular triggers, such as SRA holidays or certain colors. You cannot say why these trigger you, but it’s no problem that you dissociate when such a trigger comes up. Other people constantly doubting your sincerity obviously can’t be a trigger.


5. Validating others’ SRA meories is of utmost importance, but if you’ve gone through more mundane trauma, no-one is required to validate you.

Katinka

Commandments of Being a Proper Multiple

Here’s some stupid rules for being a real multiple according to the Dutch DID community. At least, it’s what we’ve been told by our so-called support group folks both online and off:

1. You can’t use jargon like “co-conscious”, “inner self helper”, etc. if you’ve not had your diagnoisis forever. This is not supposed to be familiar language to a person just diagnosed.


2. Even if you know you’ve got parts because you’ve established a fair amount of communication, you can’t walk into your therapist’s office saying you experience parts in yourself. In fact, you cannot have obvious dissociative symptoms. According to what I’ve been told, saying things happen to you but not quite to you, is not appropriate either (which is what I really came into therapy with).


3. You must’ve gotten into therapy with seemingly irrelevant symptoms like depression, self-harm, etc. Then it’s the therapist’s duty to figure out you’re multiple, but they can’t just straight out ask if you experience parts in yourself. On occasion, they can, but you must be completely clueless to the fact that it’s not normal.


4. You must have some doubts about your diagnosis, and you must fear that it’s all real. If you fear you’re fake, you’re obviously already a faker.


5. You must not switch too openly or demand switches be acknowledged, cause DID is something that’s supposed to be hidden. Keeping the dissociation hidden must be an end in itself. Note that you won’t get a diagnosis of DID if the diagnostician hasn’t seen you switch.


6. You must want to integrate.


7. You cannot have littles who write properly. You also cannot have littles who write improperly but on the right subforum, cause how are they supposed to know where to write? However, you can’t have alterrs write on the main forum either. Why else would there be specific forums for alters?


8. You must recognize just enough of what other DID’ers, who obviously all are not fake, say they experience, but not too much. You must be able to articulate your experiences in your own words, and others determine whether you use your own words.


9. You must have time loss, but how you’re supposed to know you have time loss, is unclear. You can’t just say you lose time when others come out, cause how do you know? You cannot say you don’t remember somethign when asked, because then obviously you could pretend you forgot. I don’t know how a therapist is supposed to realize you lose time if they cannot ask, especially given that implicit memory is often intact in DID, so DID’ers act like they do remember what other identities did.


10. In meetings, you must present as the host (with the birth name) at all times. You must be oriented to the present if you want to participate in meetings. On the other hand, you cannot actually be the person with the birth name, cause that person must’ve gone to sleep, been gone at an early age or be totally unaware of any others. How are you supposed to come to a DID meeting if you are clueless about other personalities?


11. You must have survived horrific abuse, but you cannot talk about it in meetings.


12. You must validate others’ every experience, but you cannot say you can relate.

Brenda

Pissed Off

Trigger for language.

I’m fucking pissed off. I want all those stupid assholes who tell me I’m fake to shut up and sod off. It’s not like a trauma center specialist can make me go away. My T tried for fucking two years to make Astrid take full control and silence us. We’ve known for years that we’re many, long before we’d ever heard of DID. We may or may not technically meet the criteria for DID, but screw that. We’re many and no-one’s gonna tell me otherwise.

Brenda