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Split Thread Multiple Systems / Healthy Multiplicity

Orphia Nay

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Orphia Nay
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Just came across a story about "healthy multiplicity". Apparently there are people who profess to have alters, but they don't believe they have DID. They say all their alters are aware of each other; that they can change from one alter to another at will; that their childhood sexual abuse did not cause their multiplicity.

Splitters! :pythonfoot:

http://betabeat.com/2013/03/me-and-...e-many-many-many-faces-of-internet-multiples/

Personally, it sounds like more proof that all multiple personalities are just acting, in order to feel special.

 
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Orphia Nay said:
Personally, it sounds like more proof that all multiple personalities are just acting, in order to feel special.
Click to expand...

I have to say as one who vehemently opposes this diagnosis, I don't think that is the case. Iatrogenic DID is not so much acting as conditioning. Yes some may act but the real tragedy of this diagnosis from therapists who work with susceptible people and actually condition them to "switch" from "triggers" so that the patient actually almost self hypnotizes themselves to react to certain stimuli.

I witnessed seizures in one particular person after years of therapy that would happen when this person encountered real life stimulus related to a trauma narrative. The trauma narrative did not exist prior to the therapy and the therapy consisted of reliving the narrative over and over again. Not at all healthy. In such cases a imagined trauma can become as real as any other memory.

The person I knew was highly suggestible when it came to relaxation techniques and was probably on the high end of the scale of hypnotic susceptibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_susceptibility

For such people the therapy almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy...the "expert" therapist suspects trauma and does some age regression relaxation techniques without necessarily even calling it hypnosis. The trauma is created/remembered in collaboration with suggestion from the therapist. If DID is suspected "alters" than can be called out in an elaborate role-play where where the therapist is actually creating the behavior she or he things she is observing by cuing the patient with positive feedback.

All this leaves the patient very screwed up. The amount of triggers they are taught to fear can leave them unable to cope with day to day living. When you see someone have a seizure over something innocuous because it was associated with their therapy induced trauma (totally invented but real---imagine if you sat in sessions that had you imagining yourself vividly in a burning building for 30 min every week for years how you might react to the scene of a fire) it's really heartbreaking. This stuff should not be happening.
 
Altus said:
I have to say as one who vehemently opposes this diagnosis, I don't think that is the case. Iatrogenic DID is not so much acting as conditioning. Yes some may act but the real tragedy of this diagnosis from therapists who work with susceptible people and actually condition them to "switch" from "triggers" so that the patient actually almost self hypnotizes themselves to react to certain stimuli.

I witnessed seizures in one particular person after years of therapy that would happen when this person encountered real life stimulus related to a trauma narrative. The trauma narrative did not exist prior to the therapy and the therapy consisted of reliving the narrative over and over again. Not at all healthy. In such cases a imagined trauma can become as real as any other memory.

The person I knew was highly suggestible when it came to relaxation techniques and was probably on the high end of the scale of hypnotic susceptibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_susceptibility

For such people the therapy almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy...the "expert" therapist suspects trauma and does some age regression relaxation techniques without necessarily even calling it hypnosis. The trauma is created/remembered in collaboration with suggestion from the therapist. If DID is suspected "alters" than can be called out in an elaborate role-play where where the therapist is actually creating the behavior she or he things she is observing by cuing the patient with positive feedback.

All this leaves the patient very screwed up. The amount of triggers they are taught to fear can leave them unable to cope with day to day living. When you see someone have a seizure over something innocuous because it was associated with their therapy induced trauma (totally invented but real---imagine if you sat in sessions that had you imagining yourself vividly in a burning building for 30 min every week for years how you might react to the scene of a fire) it's really heartbreaking.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I meant, but you iterated it far, far better than I did.

This stuff should not be happening.
Click to expand...

100% agreed!
 
Orphia Nay said:
Just came across a story about "healthy multiplicity". Apparently there are people who profess to have alters, but they don't believe they have DID. They say all their alters are aware of each other; that they can change from one alter to another at will; that their childhood sexual abuse did not cause their multiplicity.

Splitters! :pythonfoot:

http://betabeat.com/2013/03/me-and-...e-many-many-many-faces-of-internet-multiples/

Personally, it sounds like more proof that all multiple personalities are just acting, in order to feel special.
Click to expand...

Um....so how can a person like that be a "healthy mentally dysfunctional" ?
This makes no sense to me at all unless those fake multiples don't have a firm grasp on reality in the first place.

I take the same stand that Jeanette does because certainly no one who understands what she and I have gone through would ever willingly and cheerfully chose to live the life of a person who is actually diagnosed and in treatment for MPD/DID.

What can I compare this to, hmmm......okay, imagine that there are people out there who are completely healthy but pretend to be paralysed and use wheelchairs to....no wait there are people like that.

Okay, hmm hmm hmm, imagine that there is a group of people who share internet chat sites and use baby talk and even sleep in cribs and wear diapers...nope, there are people like that too.

Okay, but I think I am getting closer. Is this a fetish ? Wait, that would require an additional component of sexual gratification, so that's not it.

Hmmm, okay they're probably just attention seekers with a possible borderline personality disorder problem.

Geeez there are a lot of strange people out there eh?
 
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Roma said:
Yipes ! I clicked on that link and my McAfee threw up all sorts of red alerts, I'm not touching that craziness with a ten foot pole :wwt
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My McAfee didn't, and neither did my AVG. All the site's got is a popup ad, which seems harmless.
 
I just read the part of that link you posted on the FMS site,
OMG we need the freakin' crazy police or something :tinfoil
 
It appears that the Wikipedia page on "Healthy Multiplicity" has been taken down. Anyone care to find out why?

Here's a copy of what used to be there: Link.

Searching Wikipedia for "healthy multiplicity" doesn't bring up any similar topics. Link.
 
:D Poor Roma!

Hey, do you think this multiple systems/healthy multiplicity stuff should be split to a new thread? I don't want to derail this one.
 
Orphia Nay said:
:D Poor Roma!

Hey, do you think this multiple systems/healthy multiplicity stuff should be split to a new thread? I don't want to derail this one.
Click to expand...

Yes split it off, this multiplicity thing isn't nearly as interesting as the rest of the thread, just kind of a weird distraction, like driving down the highway and seeing a big freakin' scare crow out in a corn field with a sign saying "Crop Circles Ahead". Then when you've driven a mile down the dirt road to find them all you see are Honey Boo Boo and her mother drawing circles in the dirt with sticks.
 
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Some random quotes from "Luna", the "healthy multiple":

"you're just another random person on the web."

"All these people are talking about me and mine, and the other plurals, and nobody but me is talking about you. Interesting."

"We won't steal your thunder. People will still pay attention to you." (posted by an alter, Rebecca)


Altus, I agree with you that some of the people drawn into this narrative are conditioned to respond in a certain way. I have a lot of sympathy for those who behave this way because they're confined in an inpatient facility and feel forced to compete for what little positive attention they get, or for people who eventually learn to express themselves as a "multiple" (and come to genuinely believe they are) because their therapists just keep pushing and pushing and won't accept anything else.

But we do the DID crowd a disservice if we don't acknowledge that clearly, in some circumstances, there is willful complicity. And some of those willfully complying do so not just to get their therapist to shut up already but because they themselves get off on the power trip and the attention. Look how Luna's comments are so similar to Felicity's constant claims about how skeptics are just pawns, are just anonymous nobodies, are only involved at Amazon in the hopes of gaining attention from some "higher" authority, on and on ad nauseum.

People like Luna and Felicity (as well as most of the Amazon SRA crowd) may have been drawn into it by someone or something else, but they are pretty obviously continuing to push the party line because they get such a high emotional and social payoff. And it's hard to ignore (in fact, detrimental to ignore) the element of conscious complicity there.

Having said all that, I personally believe the shameless attention-seekers actually make things much worse for those who might have a glimmer of doubt and who aren't getting the emotional payoff that the Felicity's and Luna's of the community are getting. The ones who are drowning in despair and need help, they end up getting trampled.

Orphia, glad to see you and Rbt Share inject some reason into the commentary over there :)
 
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