DID becoming more popular

The treatment of Chris Sizemore by her therapist described there is utterly horrific.

Kim Noble is a British artist with DID.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Oh1L1aN8M&t=2s

www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/us/chris-costner-sizemore-the-real-patient-behind-the-three-faces-of-eve-dies-at-89.html

Book is 'Eve' or 'I'm Eve' by Chris Costner Sizemore

Ah, OK.Thanks.

Thinking back to other MPD books I read (a long time ago), how about 'The Three Faces of Eve' written by her therapists, I think, which portrayed her as being cured, & Chris Sizemore's book the name of which escapes me, in which she reveals that she is Eve & she isn't cured?

IIRC, she went to other therapists but was rejected by them on the grounds that she must've seen the film of Eve & was pretending that it was about her. Even bigger

@ifIwerenotanandroid

Asfaik, the I haven't read up on it as I don't want to go back down that rabbit hole, the abuse and probably some mental illness was true, but the multiple personalities weren't?

[quote justawoman]Sybil has indeed been debunked:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4268459[/quote]
The writing style portrayed in that article put me off, for a start. I won't be reading the book for that reason.

One thing I'd like to know, if it's all supposed to be fantasy/invented, is that in the film the therapist speaks to Sybil's childhood doctor, who confirms that he saw her internal injuries: was that made up? Because if it wasn't, then surely the story is true/more likely to be true.

I often think of a line from another MPD book & film, 'When Rabbit Howls'. Stanley (the name the patient gives to her therapist) is with a group of people who are suggesting any number of possible reasons for MPD & Stanley says something like, "People will look for any reason other than child abuse'.

Sybil has indeed been debunked:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4268459

I think this has got much worse during lockdown because teenagers are spending less time talking to their real life friends, who and more time talking to online friends. It can become a bit of a competition of who is the most anxious/depressed etc.

The current crop of DID pretenders remind me of something my friends and I did after seeing Sybil on TV in the seventies. We made up a bunch of imaginary head friends and wouldn't answer each other if the other person used the wrong name, etc. That lasted about 2 weeks until it became too tiring for our 10 year old selves to maintain...and of course our parents refused to play along and we didn't push it with them. I suspect there is something in being validated online that prolongs this process, along with pressure for parents to cave to the ploy.

I've known a real DID person. She did not catalog her headmates on social media and if I ever saw her at a point where she was one of her alters or was switching, I certainly never knew. Real DID people, like other people with mental health issues, tend to get on with it and deal with life.

I am undiagnosed ASD. DS is Asperger's and I have been tested and told to get a formal diagnosis and yet I am hesitant. Part of it is the culture that I see emerging from it. My child was brought up without knowing his diagnosis until his teens. We both agree that not making a big deal of it was likely better in the long run in not forming a personality based on a single trait. I am pissed at the self-identifying activists who claim the 'born this way' as a 'get out of jail free' card to excuse bad behaviour and I feel I cannot access unbiased useful information on how to deal with my social and learning deficits especially at this late date. The funny thing is I probably need such support and spaces now as decades of masking in public have left me tired and worn and the old scripts don't work anymore.

@GNCQ
I read "Sybill" as a teenager and the details of her abuse are so upsetting I've never forgotten them.

I watched the Sally Field film in my early teens and the horror of it has never left me. Although I think her multiple personalities were later found out to be fictional?

I would love to see some kind of serious comprehensive investigation with what is going on with young people and identity. Because I think there is something really seriously gone wrong.

Well since it enables kids in school to say "I didn't do it miss, one of my alters did" or self-identifying into Tourettes can excuse what comes out of their mouths, you can expect this to be appearing in schools in the near future.

Anything to make themselves seem special, unique and standout from the crowd.

Except it's not anything, ironically it's whatever the current in thing or passing bandwagon is. Just like being a Goth, Mod, Alternative, Emo or whatever – you assert your differentness by following a "differentness" trend that gives you a read-made community.

Totally anecdotally from a secondary school teacher’s experience, we definitely see ‘waves’ of students claiming membership of some troubled marginalised group or other. This is not to say that any of these issues don’t exist or that some students haven’t genuinely suffered, rather some teens can copycat behaviours and I’m convinced this comes from a slightly childish, narcissistic desire to be ‘interesting’. Waves have included eating disorders, depression, anxiety, a few years ago it was self-harm and more recently trans ideology. Haven’t heard of the DID thing in schools yet though.

I don't think the people I'm talking about describing themselves as systems generally mean in the sense of the academic theory libertymole. They may have coopted terminology from it.

There is also an increase in the number of people claiming to have tiks/tourettes as well.

Anything to make themselves seem special, unique and standout from the crowd.

Re: the people who are just trying to get on with life (so true, & so touching to read)...

I remember someone discussing acting & saying that some actors play a drunk unconvincingly because they';re trying to appear drunk, whereas a drunk IRL is doing everything in his power to appear sober.

Personality systems are an academic theory that applies to everyone though.

They aren’t like non binary where the claim is that only some people have them.

I tried to post about this a few years ago and got deleted. Perhaps I failed to properly articulate that what I was seeing was not DID itself but a wider phenomenon. Or perhaps I still am too clumsy in my language on the subject and will get deleted again.

My impression is that systems/multiples is to DID as trans or maybe nonbinary identity is to gender dysphoria. It started off as a last resort way of dealing with a difficult condition and has been coopted by a type of identity politics.

What I am trying to say is that some of this conversation is conflating different issues:

Dissociation through depersonalisation and derealisation = mental illness without dissociated multiple personalities.

Dissociative identity disorder = mental illness with dissociated multiple personalities.

Multiple personalities, parts, sub personalities = not a mental illness.

As shown by people describing their experiences on this thread, the most common forms of dissociation are depersonalisation and derealisation. They are very common in DV and sexual violence survivors and as such are a feminist issue, not something to write off as attention seeking.

There are models of the mind that view the mind as plural and models that don’t.

Most people who view themselves as having multiple personalities, sub personalities, alters or parts do not have and are not claiming to have a dissociative identity disorder or mental illness symptoms.

In a dissociative identity disorder the different identities dissociate from each other; it is the dissociation that make it a mental illness.

That Twitter hashtag is a bunch of people claiming to have alters. They are not all saying they dissociate or are mentally ill.

Only DH really knows but about 18 years ago out of nowhere I had a panic attack and once it finished I had a prolonged period (months) of depersonalisation/derealisation, as well as severe migraines. It was awful. Then it happened again 10 years ago but with the migraines being less severe.

I never went to the GP, mainly as, especially the first time, I was terrified that I was going mad and I'd be locked up somewhere. I had no knowledge of what was going on. It's only a few years ago I came across a piece written by someone who had the same thing (panic attack followed by these symptoms) that I could give it a name. Never had any trauma in my life, no idea why it happened.

So I can believe that there may be people like me who never got formally diagnosed but recognise their experiences in someone who did. But it's not something I ever want to go through again (and now I recognise it have some calming techniques for when I might feel panicky).

To jump on this as means to self identify, excuse behaviours and to classify yourself as a victim is bloody offensive. I thought I was losing my grip on reality FFS, that's not something I'd want people to know IRL (DH and you lovely vipers aside )