DID becoming more popular

[MondayYogurt]

Possibly not the right place to post this but I just wondered if anyone else has noticed that DID www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/dissociative-disorders/ self-diagnosis is becoming more popular among teens (girls)?

It seems to be going the same way as other so-called social contagions - spread via popularity on tiktok, reddit, tumblr, twitter etc.

AdHominemNonSequitur
Needing protection from housework and carrying heavy bags had me laughing....

Don't we all need protection from them?

Another aspect of people self-identifying as something within a community is that they become really aggressively anti-recovery and vocally against people with actual diagnoses trying to find ways to cope.

Good point, although this happens also with people who have been diagnosed with DID

There is a long and horrible history of vulnerable people, mostly women, being diagnosed with MPD/DID until their insurance policies are maxed out

at which point they mysteriously recover

The problem with DID, just as with the extremes of the transgender movement, is not simply people self-diagnosing. The elephant in the room is the network of avaricious charlatans in positions of power and authority who ruthlessly exploit children and vulnerable adults.

These dangerous therapists and clinicians typically alienate children and vulnerable adults from their loving families so that they can be abused and exploited with ease.

An example of such abuses is here

Possibly the most notorious exploitation of a vulnerable patient was that involving “Sybil” (real name Shirley Mason) in this excellent lecture by Debbie Nathan who conducted extensive research into the Sybil book

Even after Sybil was so thoroughly and efficiently debunked the various charlatans making money from DID training and therapy cling to it and try to dismiss the very thourough research of Debbie Nathan.

I would suggest that readers check out Nathan's lecture, where she presents her research, and make their own minds up

Off-topic hoodathunkit but I went down a rabbit hole with this youtube channel www.youtube.com/channel/UCFQ6Gptuq-sLflbJ4YY3Umw being drawn in by an interesting video commentary about media manipulation but soon my internal alarm bells were ringing (and then comments from your posts came to mind).

New Age stuff turned into social media product but with the reliance on gurus, psychedelics, and permitted thinking dressed up in free-thinking. One modern spin that isn't immediately obvious is there's a fascination with cryptocurrencies. Which in hindsight isn't that surprising.

Internal family systems.

The therapy responsible for a slew of law suits from vulnerable women who were brainwashed into believing that they were involved in satanic cults and had DID

The therapists at Castlewood who were the subject of the lawsuits (which were eventually settled out of court), Mark Schwartz and Lori Galperin have gone on to work closely with the serial sexual predator Marc Gafni - a fascinating man who now teaches courses in tantric sex

Here is a link to where you can see evidence of the creator of IFS Richard (Dick) Schwatz collaborating with the serial sexual predator Marc Gafni

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210409114641/centerforintegralwisdom.org/thought-leader-dialogues/unique-self-and-the-internal-family-systems-model/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20210409114641/centerforintegralwisdom.org/thought-leader-dialogues/unique-self-and-the-internal-family-systems-model/

Readers may be interested in the following interviews with Marc Gafni

nauticant

You are an astute woman

:)

I will check your video later but yes crytocurrencies and MLM feature prominently in the networks I research

running late

You constantly try and smear every therapy that you don’t like Hoodathunkit, even the most mainstream PTSD books like The Body Keeps the Score. I am not going to go through another thread of watching bizarre conspiracy theory videos about therapists.

IFS is a peer reviewed therapy with a solid evidence base.

I'm prepared to believe that anything in this world can be used to manipulate vulnerable people.

without nevessarily invalidating the thing itself, I mean.

necessarily. I'll give up now.

Definitely in the patient therapist relationship there’s a huge opportunity for manipulation and abuse of trust.

You constantly try and smear every therapy that you don’t like Hoodathunkit

Not at all. I simply feel duty bound to raise safeguarding concerns about a subject that I have extensive, bitter personal and professional experience of.

even the most mainstream PTSD books like The Body Keeps the Score.

Many deeply abusive and concerning things have been promoted as mainstream as part of something called “institutional capture”. The situation with Bessel van der Kolk and his book The Body Keeps the Score, which is promoted as a wonderful book by all manner of people, is fascinating.

As I would prefer not to repeat myself, interested readers can learn more about Bessel van der Kolk, his wife Betta and also about the sexual predator Marc Gafni’s relationships with Mark Schwartz, Richard (Dick) Scwartz and Lori Galperin (all IFS enthusiasts) here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3974868-Lets-talk-about-sects-baby-Psychotherapy-all-the-good-things-and-the-bad-things-that-can-be?pg=2

I am not going to go through another thread of watching bizarre conspiracy theory videos about therapists.

Nobody is making you “go through” anything. You can stay, leave, do whatever you want to do.

I would prefer that you engaged here as I am genuinely interested to know how you can support people like van der Kolk and therapies like IFS when there is so much evidence of safeguarding concerns.

IFS is a peer reviewed therapy with a solid evidence base.

The claim that IFS is peer reviewed is half right. It has been reviewed by a network of “peers”, basically misguided and / or abusive therapists associated with the ISSTD, the ETSD, the Clinic for Boundary Studies, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust and a range of other organisations well known to me and to rationalist / skeptical persons concerned about psychotherapeutic abuses.

Seriously how do you feel about the videos of vulnerable women describing being abused by therapists who brainwashed them into believing that they had ben abused by satanic cults?

How do you make sense of it?

I would very much value your opinion on this video, for example

This clip from a 1993 episode of the Maury Povich Show includes testimonies from three guests, one a woman convinced that she has recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse, one from a therapist specialising in SRA and one from a former therapy client who initially believed in her “memories” of SRA but went on to recant.

Do you seriously believe that the recovered memories of SRA are real memories? Do you genuinely believe that the SRA therapist is right? If so what do you make of the woman who used to believe she was a satanist and has now retracted her views? Do you think she is lying? Mistaken? What do you think?

Please answer because right now you are accusing me of being a conspiracy theorist on the basis of my safeguarding concerns regarding demonstrable networks of abusive therapists.

Where I am standing you are the conspiracy theorist as you are the one inviting readers to give credence to unreliable memories of SRA resulting from abusive therapy.

Has anyone looked at the phenomenon itself, of self-diagnosing MH conditions, disorders and special identities, as an MH issue of its own? It’s kind of like munchhausens I suppose.

You may be interested in this thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3664470-The-mystery-of-screaming-schoolgirls-in-Malaysia

They even have their own Pride flag...

They not only have a flag, they have a System Pride Day!

Tragically however the "system" organising the System Pride Day had failed to check that their chosen day didn't fall on one of the countless days favoured by satanists to do evil satanisty things, as described in various widely debunked "satanic calendars"..

Thus leading to this video

We Owe RA Survivors An Apology

Also, for the avoidance of doubt, it is not the fact that so many psychotherapists and other professionals who promote the diagnosis of DID have network connections to paedophiles, cults and criminal networks that bothers me. Anyone can have network connections to sexual predators and cults and not know. What concerns me is that the SRA promoting “professionals” continue working with predators such as Marc Gafni when they know about their activities.

LibertyMole I would be interested in your opinion of this account written by a woman who was a victim of Gafni’s sexual abuse from the age of 13 years.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210303000840/forward.com/opinion/329620/i-was-13-when-marc-gafnis-abuse-began/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20210303000840/forward.com/opinion/329620/i-was-13-when-marc-gafnis-abuse-began/

Once you have read the account perhaps you could help me to make sense of the following endorsements of Marc Gafni by;

Lori Galperin, Clinical Co-Director of Monterey Health Institute, 2015 (Internal Family Systems therapist forced to leave Castlewood Treatment Centre following allegations of therapeutic malpractice re false memories of satanic ritual abuse and iatrogenic DID)

It’s a pleasure to be writing this introduction about Marc Gafni and his work. Marc Gafni is one of those people who combines deep goodness, kindness, and ethical character together with rare insight and genius. Now to speak directly to the context within which Marc’s work is being received.

The malady that afflicts us as a species is both prevalent and insidious. Mutating to avoid detection, it masquerades as friend. It comes bearing gifts, seducing with offers to “help us be all we can.” Giving with one hand, it takes with the other. Inevitably, we are emptied out. Shame exists where once dwelled joy. Objectification replaces sacred seeing. Celebration becomes constriction, and embodiment, estrangement. The good news is: there has always been a cure to this anti-love, anti-life malignancy. It is the delivery system that has been inadequate. At last – a safe, precise and potent infusion – Unique Self! Not so much a book, as an antidote, Unique Self stands with spiritual teacher, scholar and master Marc Gafni’s Soulprints and Mystery of Love as a trilogy of love and evolutionary healing for humanity. Read and be restored.

Gafni makes these psychologists believe once again that psychology needs spirit. Particularly the notions of self presented in the emergent Buddhist psychotherapy conversation seem inadequate to integrate the core sense of individuality which is so essential to any western paradigm. Gafni’s integral unfolding of eastern and western enlightenment opens up the conversation in a whole new way. The treatment modules that are now emerging from the Unique Self work have the potential to become a significant approach to psychological healing and transformation.

Prof. Richard Schwartz, Founder Internal Family Systems, Author, Internal Family Systems Therapy

I am usually stingy with superlatives because their meaning has been so diluted by overuse, but I cannot control myself regarding this book — it is truly brilliant. If offers an engaging and erudite corrective to tendency in the spiritual community to disdain personal uniqueness and worship transcendental oneness; the striving to rise and remain above the ego and the material world. Instead, Gafni says go ahead and transcend but then reclaim your uniqueness no the other side of transcendence and bring your unique enlightened consciousness back to this world with you, and use your unique gifts to change it for the better. It would be entirely accurate to say that Internal Family Systems and Unique Self are overlapping models which recognize each others insights while each excels in its own domain. The integration of these two models fosters a creative synthesis that is nothing short of revolutionary in its implications for healing and transformation.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210409171626/www.marcgafni.com/marc-gafni-testimonials/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20210409171626/www.marcgafni.com/marc-gafni-testimonials/

Here is a thoughtful, helpful article, complete with links to news articles, regarding Gafni

Marc Gafni, Serial Sexual Abuser, Resurfaces as Tantric Guru
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170622160109/medium.com/@MatthewZGindin/marc-gafni-serial-sexual-abuser-resurfaces-as-tantric-guru-b5e3bee4dc8d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20170622160109/medium.com/@MatthewZGindin/marc-gafni-serial-sexual-abuser-resurfaces-as-tantric-guru-b5e3bee4dc8d

How can you promote Internal family Systems when it has a history of being used to create false memories of satanic ritual abuse? How can you promote it when the man who created it, Richard Schwartz, is a follower of a notorious cult leader and sexual predator Marc Gafni?

How bad do things have to get before you concede that there may be problems with IFS?

Hoodathunkit, you are not raising safeguarding concerns. You are posting on the internet. Most of this stuff you are talking about isn’t happening in the U.K. so isn’t subject to our safeguarding system anyway.

I have no knowledge or opinion of any of the people you’re posting about, other than Richard Schwartz.

As I don’t work in psychotherapy or any closely related fields, or have any specialist knowledge, I am not in a position to make anything other than basic statements on the theory. Other than watching YouTube videos, you don’t seem to have any actual knowledge of it either.

I have recently had basic NHS counselling with an accredited counsellor, and she followed The Body Keeps the Score. I don’t think that throws the NHS into disrepute.

Have you read "The Most Dangerous Idea in Mental Health?" It talks all about DID, recovered memory therapy, Mark Schwartz, Lori Galperin, IFS, Dick Schwartz, Castlewood treatment center among others. And it my family's personal nightmare. psmag.com/social-justice/dangerous-idea-mental-health-93325

You can't learn more about this topic at www.castlewoodvictimsunite.com or www.alsana.org

correct website is www.castlewoodvictimsunite.org, NOT .com

It's not new, it first emerged as a diagnosis in the 80s and was a very popular diagnosis for a good 10 years. It's worth looking into whether the demographic of sufferers between then and now has changed. I think it may have.

DID had a big overlap with BPD and with psychotic symptoms.

I wonder if there is an increase in BPD and that could be part of it.

I was just tidying up tabs & saw the reddit one from this thread, so I had a look at the latest posts. This one is something I've never heard of before:

www.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/mq837n/odd_one_after_either_some_closer_or_help/

Is this poster saying that selves/alters can move between 'systems', i.e. between bodies, or have I misread it?

There was also a post at the time of this MN thread starting, from a person who claimed to have a self which was just a vagina sitting on a pillow. Apparently they think it's lesbian.

They probably think if they have pubic hair they must have some sort of endocrine disorder.

Ignore this idiotic comment. I thought it was DSD

It isn't becoming more popular. It was a really big thing all over livejournal about fifteen years ago. Along with ferries and otherkin

Furries!