Transcript: Episode 11
Dissociation v. Psychosis: Interview with System (Pride and Liberty)
[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
This is Dr. E and one of the things that I wanted to talk about is dissociation versus psychosis for two reasons. One, when you don’t understand what’s going on with dissociation, it could very easily feel crazy or overwhelming. It can feel crazy and overwhelming even when you do understand what’s going on. And two, from the outside, there are times when it can look crazy or what their describing sounds crazy, if you don’t understand what’s going on. So it’s important to understand the difference between dissociation and psychosis.
There’s several things about this in the way perspective is changing and the way research is changing as well. So, for example, the old school ways of differentiating between Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder were pretty simple. It had to do with whether the voices were coming from inside or outside the person and whether, for example, if the voices that were heard made sense in context of the person’s stories or memories or need to keep safe as opposed to command hallucinations, for example that were incoherent or did not make sense in a reality-based way.
Last week however in the ‘Mad in America’ article for Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice, there was an article published, I guess in May, by a Social Worker, that talked about distinguishing dissociative disorders from psychotic disorders and compounding alienation. And I will provide a link to the article in the blog. But, the article itself was interesting and there was a lot of discussion about it online. So, I wanted to talk about it on the podcast as well. There’s several things to know about the article. For one, from the very onset of his thesis statement, in the article, he makes clear that his approach is that of both Psychosis and DID being an illness. This is important because while it is true that when there is trauma, although there’s some systems that say that they are not trauma-based. But, generally speaking, when there is trauma that is caused...um...a lack of integration of the personality in development. Or, further dissociation because of ongoing trauma and neglect, then that is a developmental and trauma-response, which does cause changes in the brain. And so there is that pathology if you’re looking at it from a perspective of what has gone wrong. But as we pointed out in the podcast, when we interviewed Dr. Ross, that pathology of looking at what is wrong is different than saying, “you are wrong” as the client, or as the consumer for mental health services, or as the person with DID. There’s a difference between the pathology of this is wrong and the story of what happened to you.
So, the example Dr. Colin Ross gave in episode 9 of our podcast was in an emergency room, when someone has been in a car accident and is brought to the emergency room for a broken leg, the pathology is the broken leg. That’s true. But, the cause is the car accident, not the person. So we have to be careful when we’re talking about pathology and how we assign that to a person, because it’s one thing to say this is not working and is not functioning and another thing to say, you are not working or you are not functioning or you are unwell or this won’t work for you at any level, ever. Or, you can’t work in this way. Like, it’s a very delicate line and balance just from that per -piece. So, when he starts his article and the quote is “distinguish between...” the quote is, “distinguish between dissociative disorders with their roots in trauma and psychotic disorders which are definitely illnesses of the brain.” So, it’s unclear because it sounds like he’s referring to psychotic disorders as an illness of the brain and dissociative disorders with their roots in trauma. But the way it’s written, it also sounds like he’s both are definitely illnesses of the brain.
So, that was the first sensitivity people had. And I think that piece maybe was just a misunderstanding of the phrasing of the sentence. Because I do think he’s giving...because he has that clause between there...I think he is saying that dissociative disorders...with their roots in trauma. And then separately from that, he’s also saying that psychotic disorders...which is an illness of the brain. So, I don’t think he meant it the way a lot of people took it. I think it’s unfortunate that the reading came across that way and I understand why people were upset about it.
Then the next piece of his article that I think was confusing for a lot of people was when he talks about...a person recognizing alien parts of themselves and how for dissociative disorder, that alien may be perceived as an actual alien or alien as in just foreign. That is something separate or different than who I am. And so that could be attributed to different personalities which would be appropriate for dissociative disorder. But if someone is seeing those alien parts of themselves because of being literal aliens or demons or CIA agents...talking to them through a brain implant, then they would be diagnosed as psychotic. So, he’s trying to differentiate again based on the reality and likelihood of what it is that’s happened. So, he’s saying most commonly people in the general population who are not well-educated about DID...much less anything like RA or any kind of Ritual Abuse...that they would not understand what to do with that and rather than being diagnosed with a dissociative disorder ,they would be diagnosed as psychotic.
The next piece is that the author goes forward in saying that professionals in the field could do a better job of acknowledging what the person has inside them and what they are going through and that regardless of how this is described or presented that it could be very well a human response to difficult circumstances. Or he says quote, “A very human response to very difficult experiences and the brain may simply be responding to those experiences” end quote. So he’s saying clinicians make it harder for people with DID, or even psychotic disorders, or people with DID that is mis-diagnosed as a psychotic disorder...that professionals make it harder for these groups of people when they don’t understand what’s going on and don’t listen to the story that goes with what’s people are describing.
His approach however was sort of the fourth point because he’s speaking clinically. He speaks so much from a pathology perspective that a lot of people who do have DID were really offended and hurt by the article because they felt that he was describing alters as a symptom. So in a way, this is true if you’re looking at the DSM and part of the requirement to have a diagnosis for Dissociative Identity Disorder is having alters. That is part the diagnosis and that’s where he’s coming from - the clinical pathology piece. However, from the perspective of insiders or headmates or personalities or the alters themselves, however you call them...It was really offensive. So, many people with plurality as a community were really intensely discussing this, because there were pieces of the article that were really helpful and pieces of the article that were a little bit confusing or easily misunderstood and easy to take offense about - the way he presented things.
His main point is here - let me quote this. “That the idea that professionals can define voices as more psychotic if people find themselves unable to talk to them also ignores the possibility of a spectrum. It ignores the possibility that inability to talk may be another function of the degree of alienation.”
So, he then goes on to talk about how in any circumstances there’s something difficult to deal with, we have a harder time approaching it. And so, just because someone who presents as psychotic has difficulty discussing the issue or discussing what’s going on or describing the voices that they’re hearing or what the voices are saying or doing, does not mean that they’re psychotic. It could just very well be that those particular voices are dissociative states that have more difficult issues that they are dealing with and so in that case, rather than dismissing and medicating them, professionals should actually listen more attentively and work more carefully to work with those particular states. So, I think that’s his approach and that’s where he’s going clinically. But it is a very clinical language and so, for just insiders, who are alters, being described as a symptom, that...that’s where I think the offense happened and where some hurt feelings came in because no alter wants to be described as a symptom. An alter wants to be described as a person or, or or whatever is true their nature and how they present themselves and this particular article did not leave a lot of flexibility for that.
He did, to give him credit, he was trying to advocate for clinicians to improve their practice and he was supporting the functional purpose of dissociation. He even said, quote “There are times it is helpful and some degree is part of healthy human functioning.” And then he even says, “A particular kind of dissociative experience can also be part of a healthy human functioning” end quote, and then talking about how without help or organizing that or communication internally that this becomes more difficult. And then ultimately what he’s doing is selling his CEU course that is supposed to help clinicians address these issues better.
So, in some ways his motives are very good and he’s trying to actually help the client, but the piece that’s off or felt misguided, I think to a lot of people in the world of dissociation or the community of multiplicity and plurality. I think part of it had to do with the way he talked about pathology and the way he described alters, sort of from the outside. Rather than recognizing each individual.
So there was some heated debate about this article online and actually asked one system to join us to talk a little bit about their perspective on this article and some of their position on this article and some of the community response to it.
I will let our guest introduce themselves and we will speak to two of the alters in their system...ugh...which they refer to as a Sisterhood. They will also explain their own view of dissociation and multiplicity using the Social Model of Disability. They make some significant statements about how coming out empowered them to find their own voice and relieve them from so much stress and energy they had used to hide previously. After discussing the article, we’ll talk a little bit about community within the plural and multiplicity community and why that sense of community is so important. We’ll also discuss the trauma of having mental illness as a child and how dissociation actually protects us from psychosis. And then at the end, after the article, we’ll come full circle...we’ll talk some more about differentiating between dissociation and psychosis.
***Interview begins***
Interviewer - not in bold font
Interviewee - bold font
I just wanted to include you in the podcast. Thank you for participating.
No problem. Our pleasure.
Why don’t you go ahead. I’ll let you go ahead and introduce yourselves and then also let us know who we’re talking to today.
Right..um..so thank you again for having us on the show. Um my name is Pride and with me is Liberty and she’ll come in, um when she’s talking at the last and I can’t get her out of the front. Um, so, a little bit of background on us. Our system is call New Absolonzi, and that’s three different Greek letters and in Roman letters, that’s NYX. With the goddess Nyx as our Patron Goddess and in a way she represents the collective unconscious and that’s really where in our own kind of inter-system mythology...you’d sa...you’d call it..that’s where we come from. There’s 18 of us. We refer to each other as Sisters, um not, not alters or other terms you may hear more commonly. Um..we have no central person so it ..it’s broad essentially um..you know all the time here.
So, we’ve also got a high level of co-consciousness and what we use to help keep memories together is what we call the fit...a shared eye. And that’s like the singular...the singular pronoun..shared “I”. That’s where any one of us can use that to refer back to a time when it might’ve been someone else.
Oh wow, that’s kind of amazing.
Yeah, it..it’s ..it’s just for us. Um..switching...uh since like I said, we’re co-present right now...so really the switching is, just very, very smooth and I will typically ugh switch mid-sentence while someone else is talking. Whereas Liberty will just come crashing through almost like Kramer on Seinfeld.
*Laughter*
That’s about it um as fair as um...Just to give details on, you know...basic idea behind it. Ugh...okay...ugh, we can do a disclaimer or so..so, we’re not experts and everything we say is purely our opinion on ugh the topics.
Sure.
Like I said, we read these so we’s reading out of this ..um.
Okay.
So, again, as I said, my name’s Pride. Um...and I am not an expert and this is purely my opinion. I reflect more or less my personal opinion and in a way a general collective set of opinions too. So, first and foremost, we consider multiplicity and DID to be separate concepts. We see multiplicity existing as a part of and a part from DID.
To us... multiplicity is a form of devel...developmental adaptation. Growing up, one uses tools available to them to adapt and survive in their environment. Some of us that have the ability to dissociate become multiple, others don’t. So ultimately, we see multiplicity as being...as a way...as being in and relating to the world.
I myself, Pride, look at DID through the lens of the Social Model of Disability. It isn’t that multiplicity itself is disordered. It’s that we live in a society that is hostile to the very concept itself and Liberty will go into this later. It’s society what’s broken, not us.
Were society to accommodate for multiplicity, things would be different. We, our system (name of system), have the privilege of working in a position that allows for us to be out and no longer remain in hiding. When we stopped hiding and were accepted by our colleagues, our ability to function increased significantly.
Wow…
It wasn’t about how much effort and energy went into suppressing each other, or holding each other back and hiding ourselves from the world until we no longer had to and I’ll just break here. The best example for that is myself. I had to hide my voice for so long and once I was able to just speak out as myself in different classes, it is just an immense...it is an immense feeling of relief. To not hear voices, but to hear one's own voice.
Wow...
Finally spoken aloud and again, it’s becoming more and more acceptable among colleagues. We do work in the behavioral health field, so we don’t experience as much stigma or oppression or something as a system who works in another field. Um… would in ….so we do recognize and acknowledge that privilege that we do have.
Alright, well I played that all out. Yeah, so *chuckles* Sorry, okay. So, I’ve been waiting for this.
Hi, ugh my name’s Liberty. *chuckles*
Hello.
Ugh... good to be here. So I am a writer, okay? I, I love writing. I am a wordsmith and I have... I have written about over 80 articles, almost 80. Um...in a series of what I call “talking back to Tumblr” and on Tumblr there’s a huge, huge um.. Ugh, community of system that is just at each others throats. And it’s basically just social commentary on all that.
Um...so that’s a little bit of a background on me. I was one of the last of the Sisters to come out. I was so close to the front, I mean, people would think that I am a… I’m a core or original person, but um… I’m a 23 year old woman. *chuckles* and the body is...not, and I am nothing like anything else so. Um.. yeah.
But, anyway, I’m seen as kind of this...this mascot...if not spokesperson *chuckles* of the system sometimes, but I don’t like that. So, let me go into my response to that article.
So, I’m gonna build off what Pride was talking about, especially the stuff regarding ugh, like the Social Model of Disability that she brought up. So, um...so mainstream psychiatry has done our community a huge disservice by erasing...erasure. Not just multiplicity, but plurality in general - the experience of being more than one and I would like to demonstrate this. I would like to show this...ugh...for you and your audience. It’s very important for people in our community.
If you’ve ever been curious as to why they changed it from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative identity Disorder, you might wanna listen to this and I’m quoting now. It begins:
“I couldn’t rid DSM-IV of MPD because I had to follow my own rules and there was no compelling proof that MPD didn’t exist as a meaningful clinical entity. It was only my personal opinion, however certain I was. The best we could do to reduce the popularity of MPD and inspire caution in it’s diagnosis was to fill it’s text description with all the arguments against it.”
That….
ohhhh my goodness.
That comes from an article in the Huffington Post entitled, ‘Multiple Personality - Is It Mental Disorder, Myth, or Metaphor?” and its author is Dr. Allen Frances MD who was the chairman of the DSM- IV taskforce. He basically wrote the book, the book where it changed from MPD to DID. *chuckles*
So, as far as...when I say mainstream psychiatry has a problem with multiplicity, it doesn’t get more mainstream than the guy who wrote the book.
Right….
*chuckles*
Oh my goodness.
Okay, so back to the ‘Mad In America’ article though. Okay, so the ugh, so the ugh author suggests the idea of being more than one, being plural, is comparable to a delusion. He suggests that hearing and listening to other people you share a life with, share a body with, share a brain with is comparable to hallucinations and I’m sorry, but I am not a symptom, I’m a person. *chuckles*
*Laughter*
I, I’m pretty sure about that. *chuckles* Yano, fight me.
Right.
So, when you remove multiplicity and plurality from the equation of, you know, the dissociation versus psychosis… when you remove multiplicity from that equation the lines between what the author called dissociation and what the author presents as psychosis becomes blerg.
Right.
Because when the author was talking about dissociation, he was really referring to the general experiences of plurality. But that’s not the paradigm or context he was coming from.
Right.
In the world he comes from, we don’t exist. The author reflects in a very condescending...in my opinion...and passive aggressive way...how mainstain psychiatry has come to view us. Delusional singlets. Because to them there’s no such thing as plurality. You can just listen to the words they use when they talk about us on talk shows and in the media.
“A woman claims to have DID.”
“A man who claims to have multiple personalities.”
And then they bring in skeptical expert doctors to try and quote unquote debunk us.
Oh my goodness.
They treat us as if we are some kind of wheeling and dealing carnival sideshow trying to pull one over on the public and whenever you talk about legitimately recognizing plurality as a valid way of being and recognizing the people in systems as people, they will come up with these bizarre quasi legal what if’s about criminal culpability.
If a system member commits a crime, could you hold the others accountable? I’m sorry, yes. If the people sharing the body with a criminal aren’t able to prevent them from committing crimes, the body goes to jail. End of story. *chuckles*
*Laughs*
I think you’d be surprised to find that his community highly values both individual and collective responsibility. Probably more than they do and we vehemently condemn people who hide...who commit crimes and hide behind the “my alter did it” defense.
So, that brings us back to Pride’s point about how society views us. As either, one, they don’t see us at all or two, when they do see us, they have no clue what to do with us.
*Laughs*
*chuckles*
Here’s the best part, okay? Multiplicity and plurality have yet to be scientifically proven facts. But neither has singularity. There is no scientific definition of personhood, let alone a way to quantify it and limit it to one per body. So, there’s no science on their end either. For all we know, everyone could be multiple and there’s nothing they can do to disprove it.
How do you think that those kind of experiences in this culture shift of things being...becoming less supportive of DID or of multiplicity or being plural or any of the perspectives really...how that’s driven some of the community...like the different groups and the support groups and...
Mmmhmm
...how much we need each other when there's no support anywhere else and then following up on that...why are there systems like attacking each other on Tumblr. Like? *laughs* We have no one else and we need each other. Why is there not more unity across the spectrum really?
Well, to give the community some credit, the “syscorse”, the system discorse as the community calls it, all makes on Tumblr...um..I’ve found great communities to a onine in many different places that are all inclusive. You have people who, you know, form from trauma, people who do not believe they did. People who...but everyone is multiple, I guarantee you that I will only say that there is one system that I know. Okay...there’s only one..that claims to have no trauma experience.
So, trauma is again...it’s… t’s pretty much typical across the board. But, we respect people’s beliefs. And how, how and why they see themselves and what terms they use. Everyone is free to define themselves and each other. So, with that, um...I want...I’ll give you an example about how much our community needs community.
Right.
We’ve been isolated from one another and almost actively kept from one another because..for the...for the longest time and still pretty much...um… professionals have been the gateway to one another.
Right.
We only have these big national conventions once a year or all these other things that are put on by people who are not multiple and we have...and and we ...when we do get together it’s like in the context of support groups. In other words, there’s no chance for us to just sit around..hang around with each other and be normal without the outside….the context of psychiatric treatment.
Ohhh, I see.
And to give..to illustrate this um...us and two other systems...just this last summer were going, um...around the kind of the East Coast...holding ..ugh it was two different conferences we went to holding Plural Conferences. In other words, a session during...you know kind of ..kind of after hours at night...were the only people who come...are multiple or plural in some way. However, they identify along that spectrum.
Right.
The first...well we did two of them. The first one we did. Um..these two ugh systems showed up. I’d say they were about in their late 50’s and they were just kinda sitting their giggling with one another and we were like “Hey, do y’all know each other.” And they said, “we’ve worked together for 22 years.”
*gasp* Aahh, no way!
But they didn’t know the other one was multiple until they both showed up at the conference.
Noooooo wayyyyy.
*laughs* Yeah. It was incredibly moving. It was incredibly..ugh...it it really just was like, wow, that’s how in quote unquote, you know, you borrow a term. That’s how in the closet we are.
Right.
That we can hide it so much, just from systems that we work with and are side by side with all the time. But then again, if you think about it, yet, that’s you’re normal. If multiplicity is your normal and you’re around someone else who’s multiple, you might not even notice it. *laughs* That’s how we found out we were..um...technically we didn’t find out we were multiple it was that we found out that everyone else wasn’t.
Ohhhh, that’s really a good way of phrasing it.
Yeah, I mean, we did not know that not everyone had an inner family that took care of them and that you took care of and that they were the reason that you went to work and that you went to school and you fed yourself and kept yourself alive because there were other people you had to look out for, but no one talked about...any of this. Because if you did people would think you were selfish and that was ughhh...very shameful thing in our family..to be. Was to be thought of as selfish. And so that’s why…
Wow.
...One reason why it took us so long to figure out that yeah, no one talked about it, but yeah, yeah, this is different from everyone else.
Um...so, ...back to the ugh.....back to the story. I, I, but, back to the story, okay? The other conference we had was so much larger. There were about, I would say a good 60 systems there.
Wow.
At this conference. You know? It was a guided discussion. It wasn’t a support group. It was, you know, talking about different topics that were relevant to, you know, ourselves, our community, our future, all those other things that we don’t get to talk about together with each other. ‘Cause we’re always being monitored.
And then the coolest part was afterwards, um, we all...a lot of us..about maybe 20 systems or so went back to the condo we were renting and ugh...just had kind of a house party and it was, in Pride’s terms, and she’ll come in in a second probably...the words that she used to describe that simple house party was extraordinarily normal. In other words, if you were just standing there watching what was going on, and you didn’t know anyone here was multiple or everyone here was...there was just one singlet who’s a spouse of one of the systems...you would not know that anything was different. It was no different.
Right.
And we were ordered pizza and surprisingly enough, to have 20 systems in the same party ordering pizza, was surprisingly easy.
*laughter*
That’s funny.
And you know what? No one went into crisis. No one, you know, slept with each other. No one got in a fight. No one..nothing of those things happened. And those are always the reasons that doc’s say, “oh you shouldn’t have them together - they’ll trigger each other and it will just go all haywire and everything.”
That...that always baffles me a little bit, because part of how we’re built is to protect ourselves and each other…
Right.
...and so it kind of baffles me when that line of thinking comes up because it doesn’t seem consistent with what dissociation is at all.
Yeah, and and, so to give you an...example...like an idea of what it was like...one thing that was really neat at the party ...was you know, being able to switch openly and talk with each other and meet tons of new people. Um...and so when psychiatrists say you shouldn’t let multiples get together and socialize because it will be uncontrollable switching. Well, you know what? When you’re in a big group of people and you want to meet new people, you gotta be able to say “hi” to them.
Right.
And so, yeah, people were switching. But, it wasn’t like out of control or anything. It was just, like Pride said, “extraordinarily normal” because it’s what we are not allowed to be. We are not allowed to be normal.
Hm..
You know, we’re not allowed to just have these house parties and just hang around and everything so...there are some systems who are..um...really active..um..being..doing some great activism.
That’s amazing. I’d love to talk to them.
Well, and also, just going back to the story about the two people who worked together for 22 years. That is...
Mm hmm
...so touching to me. I, I found out about the diagnosis, like 20 years ago, okay? And…
Mm hmm
...had been in therapy for almost two years and had no idea. And I went into very much denial - dropped it. Many years passed. I have a Doctorate. I’m a licensed clinician and then when everything fell apart for me, I had to finally recognize, this is a thing and this is happening… there was first of all, no one, who knew how to treat or help me in my area. There was no one I had not supervised and trained myself, and it was really difficult. And now we have a really good T and worked really hard to find a good therapist, we have a good therapist, but she’s four hours away and so we drive every week four hours just to get to therapy and four hours to get back home.
And so, I can only imagine. Well, and then, so then, for me too, just me personally, there’s this layer of… I don’t know better words...like, professional shame. Like I don’t know better words to say for it, because I think I knew enough to avoid, like trauma cases. Like I just would not accept trauma cases and I would not go there. Other people were interested, they could take care of that and I stayed away from that professionally. So, that was a boundary set, sort of protective for myself and other people. But, there was no way to get help and no way to fight my own stigma that the rest of the time I’m advocating against.
Wow.
Does that make sense?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It makes total and complete sense.
And so this story of community that you’re sharing is so touching to me, because I keep finding more and more people, who are clinicians or in the field in some way and saying it was hard for me too. I couldn’t find help either. And I was alone in it. Or I felt foolish for not figuring things out sooner… or not handling it better when I did. Or all these things… like are all our own coming out stories, become a part of this. I just thinking that community piece is so important and so that story of the two people who met and who had been alongside each other all along, is just so touching. And the movement, there’s several different people doing movements...like you said, sort of..to unite us together as systems and I think it’s just really powerful and has its own healing involved in it.
And we’ve got some really great allies out there too. Um..there’s one..um...his name is ...ugh...should out to Jim Bunklemen (sp?). Um...he’s the widow of Rhonda and they were a system. And ugh, his story of allyship and everything else has just been incredibly, um valuable. They..there’s a group called “Plural Activism.” It’s a Facebook group, but it’s also a Yahoo Group, but Yahoo Groups are kinda dying out.
Mmm hmm.
Um..
We used to all be there. I remember that, back in the day.
Oh yeah? Oh my god. *laughs* Oh my god. Yeah. We, we got our start...I mean, we did not come into the community through any of the other avenues like, you know, like “Other Kin”, “ToppleNancy”, you name it..like “Soul Bonding” or anything like that. A lot of other people have. We just came straight into the multiple...the Multiple community...the Plural.
And...if you don’t mind me talking about..again...we’ve been multiple since we were children. Our theory is that early childhood onset bipolar that was untreated..um...people don’t talk about the trauma of actually having a mental illness. And..
Ohh..
..so, when you’re alone in your head as a child and you are feeling things are not your feelings and thinking thoughts that are not your thoughts, that you don’t want to think, it helps to be able to put some distance between that thing ...whatever that other thing is there..and yourself. And, if you can do that...if you are able to dissociate...that...that’s just what you’ll do. And so from a young age, that’s just what we thought was normal because people told us, “no, you don’t have this..you don’t have that..” You know it was just Manic Depression at the time. Um..now called Bipolar Disorder..but growing up..eventually...things started to fall apart and when we were about 17, we started seeing a therapist.
We’ve been seeing her for...now I think it’s been 20 years. We are incredibly fortunate to have her, especially because we..we never knew until much much later that she actually was a specialist in Dissociative Disorders. Because we had no clue about our Multiplicity until, you know, in our 30’s. And she said that when we first walked into her office at about like 7 and a half years old, she knew we were multiple.
No way.
But the reason she never said anything until we discovered it for ourselves, was because she did not want to influence us.
Oh wow. That was really respectful.
And..and we’ve thanked her for that. But, she said, “Yeah, I know..” yano? So it’s been incredibly, incredibly helpful. You know, we wouldn’t be here without her...but we know that’s not the norm. To have...a same..the same therapist all that time. Does know what you’re going through. That has that experience. And who is open to it and can recognize it and validate that is not the norm.
That’s pretty special.
Yeah...yeah, I mean we have to...we do recognize and acknowledge that a lot of what we experience is from privilege and that this is not always the norm. And we, we do, when we you know, disclose to people, we do mention that there are our sibling systems out there who are really struggling and some of us actually believe that..um… with the DSM-5...is actually a good thing.
Oh, yeah?
Because if you look at it, what they’ve done… is they’ve taken Multiplicity itself and separated it out from all the rest of the stuff that make it a disorder...like amnesia, or anything else and it has to be causing a problem in your life. You can’t just walk into a therapist’s office and say, “Hey, I’m Multiple and I need help.” It will be, “Okay, you’re Mutliple, and?” You know? So, you know the folx who do really need help aren’t...are, are able to access it and the folx who don’t...like us...we just go in for bipolar-related stuff. I mean, you know...having one mental illness and sharing the same brain. It all affects us very, very differently. Um...but it’s not DID. It’s not the Multiplicity that is..ugh disordering or disabling for us. That’s actually...it’s actually...that Multiplicity is what has saved our sanity in many cases.
Mmm.
Because that’s what dissociation is...and the...and Multiplicity as its end result is. It...it’s a defence mechanism...but people don’t really ever mention what it is a defense against, and in our opinion...our non-expert..it is a defence against psychosis. It is a defense against going crazy. It’s a way to protect your mind. Protect...oddly enough...protect the integrity...it’s not to shatter anything. It’s to protect your sanity, and so that’s why when I read that article about, you know, dissociation versus psychosis, from my perspective of the whole thing, I just couldn’t really understand, like, why is this confusing to you. Ya, you know? Why are you even confused by this? You’re comparing apples to, you know...not apples to oranges, but you have, like ugh, I don’t know… apples to tomatoes...tomato is still a fruit...sorry, sorry.
*Laughter*
But, ya...you know the comparison..sorry...the comparison..um...didn’t make sense.
That’s really significant though, I think. I think that’s really powerful...what you said about dissociation protecting us from psychosis.
Yes, yes. Because we’ve never been psychotic. We’ve got bipolar. We’ve got it pretty bad. It’s pretty intense if it’s not treated. You know, right now...we are...we’re like on five different medications and they are very, very helpful for us. Um...but, yeah...we’ve never been psychotic. We’ve been to the brink. We’ve been to the edge, but it’s always been dissociation or some form that has brought us back. So I, I mean...that’s our understanding of the relationship between dissociation and psychosis is that dissociation is there to prevent it.
I think that’s really powerful.
Thank you! Thank you for sharing with me!
No problem. Thank you so much for having us on. It’s been great - thank you.
***End of interview***
So, before we sign off, there’s a little bit more to share about this. I want to go back to some of the things that Dr. Colin Ross shared when we interviewed him. The things he has said in other presentations. I can provide a link of some of the videos presenting, where he talks about this very thing - Dissociation versus Psychosis, and differentiating between them. The one thing he points out is that the National Institute of Mental Health has decided to stop funding DSM categories, because now they only fund things with a biological basis.
Which means, there’s no actual direct funding or research into Dissociative Identity Disorder other than the biological aspects, such as arousal circuitry, memory circuitry and things like that - neurologically. However, the conclusions that are being drawn without the other aspects of research are not all appropriately conclusive.
So, for example...so one example Dr. Ross gave was the BRCA gene...the BRCA gene that indicates when a woman is high risk for breast cancer. This is not actually true - testing positive for the BRCA gene means that their body has a low capacity to repair damaged cells and this is more prevalent in groups of people who’ve been traumatized.
So, for example, the Jews who survived the Holocaust. Well, then their descendants have a higher rate of not only cancer, but also this particular gene. Which, I think, he did not say this. Dr. Ross did not say this, but I personally think that’s some powerful imagery. Like symbolically, there’s something going on that breast cancer was not as prevalent or a thing..the way it is now, before that population had to literally wear stars on their chest, or broke...or their hearts were broken by the torturing and killing of their families. It’s a physical grief.
Now, I’m not saying that this group of Jews are the only ones who have breast cancer, or who have gone through that, but it, it’s...when Dr. Ross talks about that and gives the BRCA gene example, he’s talking about a specific study that was done on those descendants. So, that’s why I’m referencing it, but I thought it was such a powerful image because there’s significant, historical trauma in that population.
The other thing that Dr. Ross points out often in his presentations is that, Dissociative Identity Disorders, or even Dissociative Disorders in general, are not in the same category as Psychotic Disorders, however, there’s a high rate of people with Dissociative Disorders who are mis-diagnosed as Psychotic. So, how does this happen?
So, one thing that we need to understand if you don’t know the clinical language - is that, when we talk about symptoms for a disorder, there’s two kinds of symptoms. Negative symptoms does not mean you test negative for the symptoms. It means it’s a symptom that is there because there is something that’s missing. Positive symptoms mean there’s something there that shouldn’t be. Does that make sense?
So, negative symptoms mean something’s missing and positive symptoms mean there is something extra there that shouldn’t be there.
So, what he...what Dr. Ross points out about negative symptoms and positive symptoms is that the negative symptoms for Psychotic Disorders, such as a very flat affect or being disconnected interpersonally are also the positive symptoms for attachment problems that are caused by trauma and neglect. And in the same way, the positive symptoms for a Psychotic Disorder, such as hearing voices, are the same symptoms that are positive for dissociation. So, what he’s saying is...there’s such a high rate of mis-diagnosis of Dissociative Disorders as Psychotic Disorders, in part because clinicians don’t understand what they’re seeing, and when they see symptoms that are positive for dissociation, they’re interpreting them as positive for Psychotic Disorder. And when they’re seeing symptoms that are negative symptoms that also indicate Psychotic Disorder, what they really are...are positive symptoms for attachment problems caused by trauma and neglect and that this is how it’s diagnosed.
So, that’s why I wanted to add that piece at the end and include it..um...in this podcast because I think that explains a lot of what happens clinically. When clinicians and psychiatrists are not understanding dissociation and that this is how they misinterpret and mis-diagnose Dissociative Disorders as Psychotic Disorders which is not the same thing at all.
I hope that’s somewhat helpful. We can talk about it more in depth in the future, but that was what I wanted to share today.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us with System Speak - a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. You can listen to the Podcast on Spotify, Google Play and iTunes or follow along on our website - www.systemspeak.org. Thanks for listening.