September 10, 2012

Parts or Peoples?

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 10:59 pm by Kathy Broady


Hi Everyone,

Recently, I had a conversation asking the question whether the insiders in a dissociative system should be called parts or people.  And now, after recently reading Insomniac’s cute comment to me about that very same topic, I’ve decided to make a quick, informal post about it.  I’m interested in hearing what the rest of you think about this topic.

Of course, the official “politically correct” term is probably parts.  Well, maybe it’s still “officially” supposed to be alters, but yuck.  Personally, I really dislike the term alters, and I really don’t use it often – it’s not a comfortable term in my opinion.  Nope.  It has too many other implications for me, and I just don’t go there very often.  But the word parts – that one I have used many times.

However….  It is true, that when I get to know people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD), and I get to know their insiders, those inside people become exactly that to me — people.  DID people are people with a lot of people.  I don’t see the insiders as “parts” anymore.  I see them, experience them, interact with them, relate to them, remember them, refer to them just like they are people in their own right.  Real people.  Not a part of one someone.  A group of individual someones.

For right, or for wrong – that is how it feels.

I realize this is probably not at all the expected “mental health professional” stance on describing dissociative systems.  It’s not an intellectual approach.  This is a statement about what the experience is like for me when I meet you all.

So yes, to me, insiders are like people.  They are people that share a body, but they are people, many of whom are easily recognized as their own person within the group of people.

Inside people very much have their own voice.  They have their own presentation, their own thoughts, beliefs, memories, feelings, body sensations, facial gestures, perceptions, clothing, jobs, etc etc.  They can each make the same body look very different (that’s so fascinating to me!).  They have their own eyes, their own way of sitting, their own way of walking.  They have their own way of speaking and their own way of writing.  They become their own selves.  And in a way that they are not parts of any one someone, but more like they are important members of a group.

Groups are one, but the groups are filled full of lots of different individuals.  Each of these individuals will have their own unique reason for being part of the group, and the whole of the group is completely flavored by the individuals that belong to it.

It is amazing to me that there are such differences between the people in a dissociative system.  I realize that many of these differences are probably related to the differing demands being placed on the person as a whole at the time of creating each specific new insider, including some not-so-happy reasons to need to be somebody else.  However, the basic ability to become somebody else (even to pretend to be somebody else) has got to be an incredible talent in itself – I know I can’t do that very well (and yes, I have tried, funny enough.  I guess that’s why I’m not a Hollywood actress, lol.)

My hat is off to dissociative people who have created and developed highly sophisticated life skills at being different people.

It’s a rather awesome ability, if you ask me.

Warmly,

Kathy

Copyright © 2008-2012 Kathy Broady and Discussing Dissociation

January 4, 2009

Internal Communication – The Core of Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder, part 1

Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Internal Communication, mental health tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , at 4:16 pm by Kathy Broady


I ended my last post with this paragraph:

Focus first on relationship building with your parts.  Get to know them.  Talk to them.  Learn their names.  Overcome your fears of who they are.  Appreciate their strengths.  Develop friendships with them.  I guarantee that your overall stability will greatly improve as you are more connected with your internal system on a genuinely friendly, caring basis.


In my opinion, developing good internal communication is the core of the treatment work for Dissociative Identity Disorder.  If you cannot or do not talk well with your other internal parts, you will not be able to complete your healing work effectively, thoroughly or sufficiently.

Imagine going to your place of employment and not being able to speak with any of your co-workers.  How well would businesses work with that approach?  Have you ever been to a big department store?  Imagine if the employees couldn’t speak with each other for days-weeks-years at a time.  That store as a whole would find it extremely difficult to manage busy days, or to handle simple, basic operations.  It would crumble.  Even if all the employees continued doing their own jobs perfectly — if they are not communicating with anyone else in the store, then the store as a whole would be less effective.  It would likely go out of business sooner than later.

Dissociative systems cannot function without internal communication any better than large department stores can function without internal communication.

If you don’t talk to your inner people, and if your various insiders do not speak with each other, none of you are going to function as well as you could.

Also, if you run your system with an attitude similar to Hitler’s, that’s not going to work so well either.  Approaching your insiders as inferiors or nuisances that you want to kill off, or dispose of, or get rid of in some way will not be helpful.  As our real-life example has shown, this type of dictatorship and abuse leads to tragedies like genocide and world wars.  Don’t go there with your internal world.  Treat your inner people with kindness and respect.

I promise you that every single one of your insiders has value, importance, strengths, and significance.  You might not understand who they are at this point in time.  And when you don’t know the positive value held by each person inside, that’s a big clue that you have some therapy work to do.

Allowing your system to stay scattered, chaotic, disorganized, and messy will not help your stability or ability to function.  Keeping with the store metaphor, who wants to shop in a cluttered, disorganized, messy store?  Can you find anything?  Does it take twice as long to find the things you need?  And are some items just impossible to find without taking huge chunks of extra time?

Permanently blocking your internal system behind walls or curtains or an unexplored blackness is not helpful either.  I realize that all DIDer’s have dissociative walls and barriers already — walls that could have easily been there for years.  That is the nature of DID/MPD.  It’s the initial point of having a dissociative disorder — surviving by using those same dissociative walls to separate yourself from yourself and from the situations and feelings that were too conflictual, too painful, too difficult, etc.  In the here and now, the treatment goal is to gradually lower and remove those barriers between your system people, and certainly not to create more walls or to support more distance between everyone.

Internal communication is the key to doing this work.

Doing your system work — meeting each other, getting to know each other, will in itself create a greater sense of order and structure within.  More of you will know who can do what, where the other parts are, and how they got there.  It won’t feel so strange or unknown to you.  Insiders can become friends with each other instead of being strangers separated from each other.  Even though there are additional steps to take, start by encouraging everyone in your system to be willing to see, meet, and greet as many others as possible.  You all need to know who you have in there.

My next post — Internal Communication, part 2 — will list specific ideas for how to develop communication within your system.

For today, in preparation to do this work, please think about the following:

  • How willing are you to speak to your insiders?
  • How willing are you to listen to your insiders?
  • If you are afraid of some of your inside people, what are you willing to say to them?
  • If some of your insiders have experienced a different life than you have, are you willing to listen to them?
  • What will you do if someone says something you don’t want to hear?
  • What will you do if your insiders squabble and argue with each other?
  • How will you handle it if certain insiders hurt others within your system?  What if they are hurting child parts?  What if they attempt to hurt you?
  • What if meeting the others folks inside means learning that you were more hurt and abused than you realized?  How will you handle that?
  • What are your thoughts and feelings about finding new insiders — ones that you didn’t realize you had?
  • Do you know how to speak to child parts?  How will your address them if you see that they are hurting emotionally or physically?

.

You can do this.  Your healing depends on your talking with your internal system.

__________

By:

Kathy Broady, LCSW

www.AbuseConsultants.com

www.SurvivorForum.com


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