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I think that Ann is saying something else. Let Ann clarify.

To try and present yourself so that it pleases others and not make them feel bad. That is not hiding any thing about onself, but more about say-

You are a Buddhist. i praise Buddhism to make you feel good, but i personally may have different ideas about it.

Ann, your turn.

Ah, well, let's see..... If you are a homosexual, you might! Especially if you live in a homophobic society!

Ann. (been there, done that!)

Ann, how about dealing with others in a way that is hypocritical?
I was focusing on that.

Yes, I take your point in this, thank you. That's their problem but it makes it yours... very sad and very wrong, but thank you for bringing that point up.

Das, I'm not sure what you mean here. Can you give me an example?

Ann.

Dear Holly, I don't know where you read that, but it isn't correct. Different personalities DO exist. They were 'created' by the original child as a means of coping with extreme abuse.

They exist independantly of each other and the original child.
They have different genders, different ages, different talents and abilities and are often physically different, health-wise.

This quote explains it more fully:



Perhaps it might clarify this condition to look at this link - which explains the nature of DID and of alter personalities very well, and accurately.

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I was referring to not airing our honest opinion about something.
What we may do in place is to- give an opinion that we feel the other person may like.
that is hypocrisy and is against the word- authentic self.

Dear Holly,

First of all, let me assure you that I am not at all threatened or upset by what you have said. In fact, I am delighted that you are interested in this condition. I wish more people were like you!

I apologize for this lengthy response, but it will take some space to comment on the information. So, everyone, please bear with me?

It is quite true that there is only one mind involved here. So in that sense, what the psychiatrists say is correct. It begins with one mind, one identity and one person.

As a side track here, I'd like to say that it is not always a good idea to place your trust in what Psychiatrists say. There are many different opinions out there, and the Psychiatrists who do the research only have their knowledge from those survivors they have had personal experiece with, and we are all different.

As Alexandra rightly said in a previous post, psychiatrists don't have all the answers, and many of them are actually quite wrong, and do a lot of harm because of their opinions. Really, if you want the truth, the only people who can give that to you are the ones who are experiencing DID, and every one of those will manifest the condition somewhat differently, depending on their experiences and HOW they became dissociated, as well as what roles their alters play in the complete picture.

So we, who live with the condition, tend to take Psychiatrists with a large grain of salt! They aren't the ones with the condition, and they can only go by those survivors they have seen, and even then, they place their own interpretations on the 'why's' and 'wherefores'. Nobody really 'knows', but the survivor knows more than the psych doctors and therapists. There are some top psychiatrists out there who do not even believe that there is such a thing!

The links I gave you are from people who know, and who are not interpreting it from text-book opinions. (I could give you scores of them, but I chose that particular one because it speaks plain and simple English and is easy to understand) They are facts from those who have experienced DID and who have worked extensively with others in helping them to deal with the condition. It works a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous.

I will try to go through this, part by part:



Yes, this is partly true. But the alters are NOT 'different aspects of the personality' - as if parts already existing somehow become detached. In some ways they are not even similar to the original personality. The person IS one person, - there are not 'many persons' but 'many personalities' and that is very different.

I will refer here to my own, to give a living example of how it works.

When a child is enduring great trauma, some are unable to cope, so they 'split off' or 'create' another 'self' who takes the abuse, and the child it is happening to does not experience the trauma themselves. All alters do not appear at the same time, as the quote above suggests.

Others are 'created' to protect, or to be inner helpers (Patience 'created' me for that purpose and that was my primary role until recently)

It is true that some alters were not the result of conscious dissociation. These are the 'fragments' explained in the link I gave you, and they never develop into 'personalities' or separate identities with their own thoughts and feelings. They are also the easiest to integrate, simply because they are NOT personalities. Our baby, and our 3yr old were examples of this, and they were easy to integrate. They 'split' automatically when physically hurt beyond their level of tolerance. You might liken it to an electrical shock, when the tiny mind just splits off and recedes into the subconscious.

At the time of the 6yr old's 'advent' the mind of the child was more developed, and able to consciously place the pain into another part of the mind, which then began to operate independantly as it continued to 'take the pain'. Percy came about because Patience felt alone and afraid, so she created in her mind, a boy who would protect her - and he did! (He physically 'came out' on some occasions and literally 'flattened' the schoolyard bullies.)(boys) Likewise, the 6yr old and 9yr old, who 'took the pain and bad memories' gradually developed into full personalities, with their own identities. If you could talk to these parts, you would understand that you were talking to someone who was not Patience, or me!

Good therapists attack the problem by calling out the child alters, and talking with them. They are the keys to healing because they hold the WORST memories of what happened. So healing begins with them.



The first 'personality' is still there, but the dissociated parts are often said to be 'split' and the 'splits' occur often over a period of years. These separate parts are what helped us to survive. You could say that after each split, the mind is divided. It is divided into these different 'parts' - each with a special purpose. Patience is fully Patience, and I am fully Ann, and Percy is fully Percy, but if we integrated, we would take back to the mind all our individuality and experience, and we would 'blend' with Patience. She would still be aware of our presence, and the only difference would be that we were no longer separated in the mind.

You see, just as Patience developed and grew, so did we! We would bring our different talents and knowledge into the mind if we blend, and eventually integrate, but much of what we would bring was NOT in the original person to begin with! All separated parts ARE part of the whole, but exist individually. (I know, it sounds like double-talk!!!)

But integration is not necessary in a system where there is co-consciousness and harmony. It is not necessary for a 'fully functioning' original person.

To give you an example of how this is true, I can only point to my own appearance in the system. If indeed we are all only fragments of a disintegrated personality, then how come I didn't appear until Patience was 12, and I was a 57yr old part? How is it that some systems have adults that are over 60 years of age? Wouldn't they be the same age as the child they had split from?

Why would some be males, when the body is female? Why would some systems have animals as alters?

The answer is, because the child 'created' them so!

So you see, it is a very complicated subject, and no two cases of DID are exactly the same.

Did you know that ritual abusers can actually 'put' alters there themselves, by brainwashing methods? They do this to have control over their victim. They have a 'mole' in the system! I know two cases where this has happened. This 'mole' stops the person from going to the police, or to therapy, and often gives the person's new address and phone number to the cult so that they can track down the victim and continue to control them. This is fact. I counselled a girl who was raped three times by a cult member that a 'mole' allowed into the house. We finally managed to help her to get a restraining order taken out on the offender. She has had to move house about four times. Her therapist was unable to 'get through' to this 'part' and it was later learned that the part was put there by the cult master, with the use of drugs.

So there is a lot that psychiatrists don't know. Survivors have a terrible time trying to find a psychiatrist who understands DID and is open to learning more about it. Most think they know it all, but they don't live with it.

Anyway, that is the clearest I can explain it.

Thanks so much for reading through to here. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.

With love,

Ann.

I see. Yes,if we misrepresent what is true just for the purposes of being 'in the swing' then it is not good.

Ann.

I have just been speaking with Patience, and she has corrected me on some points that I made in the previous post, so I am going to amend some of the statements I made concerning our history.



Patience said that most children create these alters 'subconsciously' - that is, they do so without necessarily being aware that they have. It is something which happens in the subconscious, and sometimes in the unconscious mind. The alter that appears is none the less what the child desires or needs at that time. They may not even be aware that these alters exist until something either triggers them out, or they hear them speaking to them inside. Often too, as Patience told me, you do not become aware until someone else tells you they 'saw' a part of you that was obviously a small child, or a person of the opposite sex.

Patience was aware of Percy from the age of 5yrs, and of me at the age of 12. We were conscious 'needs' in her mind and became separate from her - as individuals, free to act where she was not. However, she was not aware of the fact that she had 'put all the pain and memories' into the younger children. But they were still creations of her mind, even though at a subconscious level. In fact, she only became aware of the 6 and 9yr olds in 2002, when they came out in panic because the body was in danger of dying.

Percy also pointed out that many alters are not aware of the existance of the others. It takes time to 'get to know' them all. Some are very deep within the system. Some hide.

I relate what I was aware of because I saw life 'from the inside' - but Patience saw life from the 'outside', so our perceptions were different. Life on the 'outside' was quite an ordeal for me when Patience went inside, and I had to take over. I had never been out for longer than a day prior to that. Percy was more familiar with living in the body than I was.

Patience also wanted me to point out that some alters are not there with particular roles, but because of trauma, - and these are the disturbed and sometimes violent, or otherwise difficult ones. These are usually the ones who experienced the worst violence. They hold our anger and our fear.

Patience was concerned that readers might get the mistaken impression that we, as children, sit around 'thinking up' alters to do the hard work for us. This is ridiculous of course. The traumatized mind creates them purely as a shock reaction to what it cannot cope with. It creates for itself a 'way of escape'.

I suppose this is why DID is not regarded as a mental illness, but as a coping strategy. We do it in order to cope with things too terrible for our minds to handle. Mental illness CAN develop from the conditions that led to the DID, but DID in itself is not a mental illness.

Patience doesn't care for the word 'split' - she believes that a better description of it is 'breaking away' from a harsh reality, even though she has used that term herself, because it is commonly used among survivors. Young children are able to do this because their minds are still developing and their personality is not set at that early age.

Other DID people will give you different examples, because we all experience this in different ways. This was Patience's experience.

So, I make those corrections.

Ann.