A hundred times every day I remind myself that my
inner and outer lives are based on the labors of
other men. living and dead, and that I must exert
myself in order to give in the same measure as I have
received and am still receiving.Albert Einstein
I’m honored to be a guest speaker on BeyondYourPast.com.
The Beyond Your Past Podcast is hosted by Certified Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, and Mental Health Advocate, Matthew Pappas. He is also the founder of SurvivingMyPast.net, a blog in support of all who have survived the Trauma of Abuse.
Matthew Pappas writes: ‘My guest on this episode of the Beyond Your Past Podcast is Photographer, Digital Artist, Blogger, and Mental Health Rehabilitation Specialist, Rob Goldstein. He is also a former guest blogger on Surviving My Past, where he shared some of his story in a post titled, “Life with DID: When Everything is a Trigger“. That post has been incredibly helpful and validating for so many who live with dissociative identity disorder, or those who have a loved one who lives with DID.
In the Podcast Rob Goldstein shares more of the story of how things finally started to make sense when he began receiving the help he needed.”
(c) Rob Goldstein 2018
If you live long enough you will discover that you are the person you are looking for.
When my adult alternates used Virtual Reality as a social network the other members called them ‘The Family’.
Of course, they did this even as they discussed my DID behind my back as a
fake; albeit a convincing fake.
According to the theory of the Trauma-Related Structural Dissociation of the Personality, a child with DID does not develop an integrated sense of self, thus when children with Dissociative Identity Disorder become adults, they are a fragmented ‘self-state’ of traumatized ‘emotional selves’.
The ‘Self-State’ creates an ‘Apparently Normal Self‘ to interact with other
people.
The ‘apparently normal self’, or ‘host’ alternate may have no clear memory of childhood, the trauma, or the family of birth. The ‘host’ compensates for the system’s deficits and attempts to complete the process of integration, but the ‘self state’ has no clear sense of time or reality:
…The ability to differentiate fantasy from reality is critical in achieving the integrative mode of consciousness. “Trance-logic” (i.e., the tolerance and/or rationalization of logical inconsistency while in a hypnotic state) which is a core aspect of the cognition of DID patients (Loewenstein, 1993), allows the patient to adjust to “normal” daily life while maintaining beliefs which are not only inconsistent with external reality but may be contradictory among themselves…”
‘Dissociation allows the existence of several different (subjective) versions of reality within one person. Thus Kluft (1993) once called DID “multiple reality disorder” (and not multiple personality disorder) and referred to “alternating reality states.” Somewhat similarly, Chefetz (2004) refers to identity alteration in DID as “isolated subjectivities.” Paradoxically, distinct or “alter” personality states are not disintegrated structures only but they also represent a striving of re-establishment of the lost unity (Şar and Öztürk, 2005).
If the ‘host’ fails to integrate, the ‘self-system’ or ‘emotional personalities’
replace it with a new host.
The new host must survive the social environment and compensate for
lost time and the ‘failure’ of the previous alternate.
This leads to overwork, perfectionism, exhaustion, hyperactivity and system collapse which results in a new alternate and a new a cycle of mal-adaptive behaviors and relationships and another failure to integrate.
When I was in my early 20’s I moved on impulse from New Haven to Honolulu.
I still don’t know why.
On day I woke up on a beach in Hawaii.
I looked for a psychiatrist and a job.
The shrink gave me a diagnosis of bi-polar illness, depression and
prescribed Elavil.
I found an excellent job with one of the local hospitals.
One day I woke up and discovered I left the job because I’d met
a hot sailor with whom I’d gone to live on the beach.
So, I was again on the beach without a clue.
The shrink changed the diagnosis to bi-polar illness, manic
episode and added Lithium to the Elavil.
I found another good job and a nice high-rise apartment with
a view of Diamond Head.
One day while swimming at the local beach, I heard a voice:
Voice: “I need to go to the hospital.”
Me: (frustrated) Why?
Voice: (pleading) I’m scared.
Me: (Angry) We’re doing great! What’s wrong with you?
Voice: (pleading) I’m scared.
Within a few weeks, I was out of work and in lock-down on
the local psych unit.
I told my shrink about my argument with the voice and he
added the anti-psychotic, Haldol to the Lithium and Elavil.
I decided not to tell him about the writing I’d found;
“I think I am murdered and feel ashamed.
I hide under my blankets and feel ashamed.
I reach for a faceless cock and feel ashamed.
I feel ashamed and I feel ashamed.”
1978
I didn’t know the voice belonged to a teenage alternate named Bobby and that ‘going to the hospital’ was how a young Bobby escaped his family.
I didn’t know that being in the hospital was the only time Bobby felt safe.
The Self-State of “Emotional selves” hold the emotions, thoughts, fantasies, wishes, needs, and sensations the ‘host’ considers unbearable and unacceptable.
In 1985, ‘Bobby’ wrote about his first hospitalization .
Despite the hospital’s intention to use ‘Aversion Therapy’ to cure
Bobby of his ‘homosexuality, for Bobby it was the first he felt safe
to assert himself.
Bobby doesn’t write about that feeling of safety because he doesn’t
remember it.
Bobby and the Aversion Therapist
Studies of children with DID show that alternates in children are more
alike and have less amnesia barriers between them.
Alternate personalities strengthen and become more individual over the life cycle.
Severe trauma in adulthood worsens the prognosis for people with DID.
(c) Rob Goldstein 2018
Sources:
Living in a Cooperative Self System
Alters in Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD) and DDNOS
Disavowing and Re-Claiming the Self-Identity in the Aftermath of Trauma-Generated Dissociation
Dissociative identity disorder is a childhood onset, complex-post traumatic disorder in which the child is unable to consolidate a unified sense of self. Detachment from emotional and physical pain during repeated traumatic events results in alterations in the way the brain encodes memory. This leads to fragmentation and gaps in memory. Exposure to repeated abuse in early childhood results in the creation of discrete behavioral states that can persist over later development, and evolve into the alternate identities of dissociative identity disorder. The Mayo Clinic
This morning as my partner left for his weekly visit to his ailing Mother he said, “I love all of you.”
I sat as wave after wave of love, pain, gratitude and fear passed over me, then I said, “We love you to.”
I am not an easy man to live with.
One must be willing to live with constant self-examination and bluntly stated opinions.
This September marks the beginning of my eighth year of psychotherapy.
Eight years later, I am someone new. I accept the DID, I accept the violence
that caused it and I accept that I was gifted with a mind that went to extraordinary lengths to keep itself alive.
I am proof of the existence of the human mind and the will to survive and thrive.
At the long-term psychiatric hospital where I worked in the early 1970’s, we
used the term ‘sealed over’ to describe a patient who is skilled at hiding
his illness.
Most of us must learn to ‘seal over’ everyday distress and anxiety as a
skill of daily living.
Healthy people don’t often consider the energy and skill it takes to interact
socially and succeed in our careers.
An illness that impairs social skill is crippling.
We don’t think about what it means to lose our health and ability to work
until we must think about it.
I define ‘healthy’ as striving to become an informed citizen, having a balanced sense of humility, respect for the rights of others, a sense of compassion, and respect for life; which means the born, the fundamental right of all children to food, shelter, education, safe cities and schools.
I define healthy as doing my best to pull my weight; which means using my skills to dispel the lies that make it hard for people with DID to get the right treatment.
There are thousands of easier ways to get attention: one can write a good novel, produce a brilliant portfolio of art, write moving poetry, become a skilled surgeon, strive for excellence at any job that affirms your humanity.
If I’m trying to get your attention by destroying my life in public it means I’m sick.
A man who has to shoot schoolchildren to slake his rage is sick.
The question is not why people have mental illnesses, the question is why Americans collectively refuse to recognize mental illness as a set of real and
serious illnesses?
I cannot ‘think’ my way through DID or Bi-Polar illness.
Mental Illness is not a choice and the ‘well’ make it easy for the ‘sick’ to choose isolation.
I had the worst possible parents in the worst possible neighborhood in one of the most institutionally abusive and violently racist cities of the United States in the 1960’s, and yet I entered adulthood with a fundamental sense of right and wrong, and a fundamental understanding of our political system.
I was broken in a dozen different ways but I knew it was wrong to lie.
I knew it was wrong to hurt people.
I knew it was wrong to abuse the weak and innocent.
In that, I am healthier than 39% of the American people.
Being well with DID means that I’m still in pain, raw and uncertain. I’m still anxious and often panic-stricken. But it also means I’m alive as I am supposed to be and better at managing symptoms. It means always searching for new skills and better ways to be healthy.
It means asking the unwanted questions.
Rob Goldstein 2018
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