Dissociative Identity Disorder looks like a psychosis to people who don’t understand it or who think that all people with DID act like Sybil or Norman Bates.
Yes, I hear the voices of my alternates, but those voices are not hallucinations; they are more like thoughts in another person’s voice.
Each alternate has its own memories and skills.
Some alternates communicate autonomously with each other while
others remain in hiding.
There are memory boundaries between alternates but over time
these boundaries became more permeable.
“Dissociative identities exist in a third reality, an inner world that is visualized, heard, felt and experienced as real. This third reality is often characterized by trance logic. In trance logic, ideas and relationships of ideas about things are not subject to the rules of normal logic. Because (the alternates) are kept in separate compartments (of the brain), contradictory beliefs and ideas can exist together; they do not have to make sense. In the way, the internal world has many alternate selves that experience themselves as separate people. There is a pseudo delusional sense of separateness and independence.”
I don’t experience the inner world of my dissociative system as vividly
as the alternates that use VR do.
I’m Rob Goldstein.
I was born as an adult and I function as an apparently normal self.
That means that I smooth things over, I look and sound like an adult…albeit one that does not know how old he is.
I look at what comes out of VR and try to understand it, but I don’t.
It’s not my job to use Second Life.
My job is processing photographs and writing political essays.
This means is I know very little about the VR members of my strange inner Family.
I don’t feel anger. I don’t experience grief.
I wonder if I am made in the image of Star Trek’s Spock.
I think in terms of logic.
A blogging friend once asked me if I feel proud of the art made by my alternates and I replied that it feels illogical for me to feel proud of work produced by other people.
If one stays with the logic of Dissociative Identity Disorder the alternates are separate people with their own special place on my brain.
I think of my brain as a busy server.
The little boy who imagined this elaborate coping mechanism was smart enough to create a good Mother.
Each time Sara takes a kid alternate into VR she comforts him and corrects some of the damage done by the real Mother.
Sara gives them what they need.
When she stands up for them she also says that they are worth fighting for.
I cannot think of a child who does not need a parent or a parent figure who
will fight for it.
The child invented a good Mother and gave her a place on his brain.
After seven years of intensive psychotherapy I can see that even with DID I am healthy, creative and strong enough to protect myself and survive.
Now I’m ready to thrive.
(c) Rob Goldstein 2015-2016-2017
First posted on September 26, 2016
re-edited 3/08/2018
