1 thought on “DID or Abuse?

  1. jigsaw analogy

    i tend to be very aware of language and what it might make us think subconsciously, so i’ve had a hard time when people talk about did/mpd as a disease or a problem that we’re healing from. for me, that would be kind of like trying to “heal” from being gay or something. which is to say, it’s part of how i am, and while it might mean that i don’t fit into the mainstream, it’s still who i am (and i mean that collectively!).

    so i tend to think of myself as healing from abuse. i mean, that’s where the problems come from. the parts of my system aren’t problems because they exist. they *have* problems because they went through abuse. and the abuse meant that we developed systems where we didn’t have contact with each other inside, and where parts who were really traumatized kind of hid away.

    on the one hand, being multiple was a good help in overall functioning. i think that i (collectively) would not have been able to cope with as much as i/we did, as *well* as i/we did, at least on the surface. having a bunch of parts meant that parts could take breaks at weird times, but still manage to do well in school, for instance (i can remember parts deciding to go take a nap while, in their mind at the time, they sent the body out to school on “autopilot.” but whoever was out during school was able to do well, because they just didn’t have the consciousness of the bad stuff, so it wasn’t upsetting them as much.)

    when i look at what’s been most necessary for healing, it’s been a focus on healing from abuse. things like getting parts into the present, it’s not because they are parts, it’s because they are still mentally reliving the abuse.

    it’s not that there aren’t some practical things, like learning how to do better internal communication, or being willing to believe that there are others inside. because, obviously, those are important. but when we’ve had serious problems, they’ve stemmed mostly from after-effects of abuse, rather than from just being multiple. and as we’ve healed from the abuse, the problems of being multiple have gotten less bad.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Blue Captcha Image
Refresh

*