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About humanness, just because people claim to be an expert on something due to academia and/or experience and have a large following of others or believers does not mean that what they say is an absolute truth or the only truth or without flaws or errors. It wasn’t too long ago that “mentally ill” meant less than human and locked up in an “insane asylum” and experimented on. It’s not too long ago that different from the cultural norms meant “crazy.” Not too long ago, being gay was considered “mentally ill.” Conversion therapy still exists even. False Memory Organizations still exist too. Psychiatric hospitals with the finances and white male Christian medical models still dominate our culture today. It is embedded in everything around us, including our language.

When do we start to change our language and thought processes and incorporate context and diversity to reflect genuine caring, compassion, understanding, and generalized humanness/humanity?

If I stand before you and say I have a brain tumor, you show sympathy, and empathy, want to help, care, and see me with an illness that may be disabling, cause pain, and be life-threatening.

If I stand before you with schizophrenia, you see an illness with derogatory connotations and incompetence; you pull back and away, see me as less than other humans. You see the mental illness, and you do not see me.

If I stand before you and say I have PTSD, you know it’s in the DSM, which is suitable for financial backing for treatment services to heal. You see this as a symptom of trauma. You don’t see something wrong with me. You see me, and you know I have these symptoms and experiences because of something unfortunate done to me or that I experienced.

Taking this one step further is the point I need to bring to light somehow. If I stand before you and say I have DID, you don’t see me. What you see is convoluted and negative. That label is not an illness of any sort. That label is drenched in misinformation, myths, stigma, stereotypes, and ignorance. The understanding of DID primarily comes from the psychiatric/psychological community’s Christian white man’s medical knowledge that dominates our cultural norms, academia, the professional world, and organizations embedded with all the financial backings. Of course, their voices are more robust, louder, and more prevalent with all their privileges in every domain of our cultural norms. They do not have to fight an upstream battle chronically as a marginalized identity. This is mostly who our experts are.

DID is a combination of neurodivergence (the multiplicity) and distressing symptoms that can be labeled best at this time as cPTSD (not a mental illness but symptoms of pervasive childhood trauma). Within cPTSD, there are a variety of issues that disrupt a person’s mental well-being and life satisfaction. Relationships with self and others are disrupted due to developmental trauma. Some symptoms under the cPTSD umbrella include dissociation, amnesia, DP/DR, disordered eating, suicidal ideation, OCD, attachment trauma, phobias, addictions/substance use disorders, self-harm, insomnia, etc. Unhealthy coping skills and dysfunctional relational patterns with self and others can be evident and impair functioning when a child’s basic needs are not met, along with severe abuse.

Mental health is a spectrum that encompasses the whole person, is generalized to all people, and cannot and should not be reduced to the black and white thinking of Mental “Illness” or “Wellness.” All people fall all over this spectrum, and the range encompasses all domains of physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being when discussing health.

DID is a creative, involuntary, developmentally appropriate adaptation in childhood due to living in a pathological environment while lacking protective factors. Basic human needs, including attachment, were not being met. The adaptation becomes maladaptive later in life, especially as the trauma surfaces in the body and mind. The multiplicity of DID is a form of neurodivergence. The disordered piece relates to the distressing symptoms, the negative functional impact, and the difficulties in relationships related to attachment and learned relational dynamics. This piece is rooted in pervasive extreme childhood traumas. Currently, the best language I see to contextualize the symptoms of the disordered aspect fall under the category of CPTSD; however, the numerous expert opinions and dissemination of what DID is and how to treat it create word portraits of the multiplicity aspect that fail to realize that the multiplicity identity is a “normal” human condition in context.

The experts lack lived experience and even fail to agree often on whether DID exists, what it is, and how to treat it. A singleton will not be able to explain or completely understand multiplicity and ascribe definitions and treatments through a singleton lens. Their experiences, views, perceptions, and knowledge are often thought of as the right way, better way, and expert way. The band-aid version of care is to give lip service to I see You, not the “ILLNESS,” by fostering the necessary therapeutic environment of empathy, unconditional positive regard, and claiming to be genuine or congruent. While this is important, no matter what labels people have, people, need to stop viewing DID through a lens of mental illness and the cultural norms of singleton and medical model biases.

A person cannot claim to be genuine, empathetic, and have unconditional positive regard while simultaneously labeling people with DID as mentally ill and, in the same breath claiming not to pathologize. This is gaslighting those with DID into thinking they are sick, less than human, crazy and something is wrong with them and their life as they will never fit into these cultural norms while being derogatively labeled as pathologically mentally ill. These perceptions continue causing marginalization, discrimination, belittling, and condemning attitudes along with unrealistic conformity expectations, furthermore creating barriers to care and further perpetuating abuses that those with DID have already experienced enough of.

Those with lived experience can tell you that not all multiples are the same, just as every person in the world is unique. Some multiples have a core, and some don’t. There are as many variances in multiplicity, the DID piece, and PTSD symptoms as there are psychological theories. Well over 400, I believe, when I last explored this. Each person, body, and brain is unique. What helps one person may not help another.

I hope to invite more critical thinking. The psychological tests used throughout our health and employment systems are biased. I hope to continue to explore and define what DID is and isn’t. I hope to discuss the use of language further and define expert. I hope to be a voice for many that feel harmed by these systems and unable to get the help they need and deserve. Labeling a person with DID is essential to get help and for the health care to be paid by insurance and various other economic assistance available. It can be helpful to understand a general framework for some of the main symptoms a person may experience. Still, the label needs to start to be associated with the realities of what DID is and how those with DID deserve to be perceived, understood, treated, and respected. Those with DID start life disadvantaged and continue to struggle with getting appropriate care, unlike most other health issues. Let’s get these constructs correct concerning what DID is and isn’t. It isn’t a mental illness and does not mean a person is not “normal,” less than human, incompetent, and many other derogatory connotations.

-Written By Michelle