11/29/11

Plex:

I think of myself as a pretty patient person. I admit to wanting to complete the sentence for people who are struggling to come up with the right word to express their thought. Occasionally I get a little short of patience; but this computer is going to drive me up a wall!!!! (I’m slightly perturbed at the moment – can you guess why?) I just spent a full 20 minutes connecting with the internet.

One nice thing about dissociation, you can feel something intensely and quickly put it aside by focusing on something else.

That doesn’t sound too out-of-the-ordinary, does it? Thus arises a  dilemma  common to multiples. People tend to either think of it as something so far out there that it is impossible to comprehend or else they see it as a very common phenomenon that other people are exaggerating into a mental health diagnosis.

An illustration comes to mind. I believe it was James McDonald who was making this point in his message on Walk In The Word yesterday. He had been in a Harley Davidson shop in conversation with a sales person there when he was asked the question: “With so many religions out there and everyone thinking they have THE true one, how can you know there even is a right one?” (or something along those lines). While he was thinking of a response, someone outside of the shop started up a Harley and one of the two in conversation commented that there was no mistaking the sound of a Harley – there just isn’t anything quite like it. [inspiration:] James picked up the previous conversation with: ” A lot of cycles are made to look like and sound like a Harley, and some of them can come pretty close; but the very fact that there are so many imitations out there attests to the fact that there is a real Harley out there worth copying.James McDonald’s point is obvious -the presence of so many religions out there attest to the fact that there is a true God and true religion.

I think he makes a good point, but it also made me think of how it applies to multiplicity. There is a wide variance of thought on the topic of DID. Some people believe it is a disorder created by unethical professionals who use hypnosis or other mind manipulating techniques to create separate personalities in some of their clients. Other people believe individuals with this diagnosis are doing a really convincing fake job in order to get attention.  In fact, there has developed a secondary disorder where people convince themselves falsely that they have multiple personalities when in reality they only act like they do in order to get attention (They have a genuine deficit of attention and poor social skills so they respond to a variety of different stimuli/situations by acting like they have switched personalities.) Still others believe all personalities except the birth personality are demons. Then you have the people who see it as really one personality that is affected differently by different stimuli. It can get to be a really big and frustrating challenge to sort it all out. Some of the people who disagree about it have the credentials to indicate that they ought to be right, yet they disagree emphatically and with wide disparagement. So how in the world can a lay person possibly know what to believe?

While I have little trouble believing that there are some unethical professionals who may try to create separate personalities in their clients; and I know that demons can and do oppress and even possess people today and may chose to present themselves as separate personalities of the person, the very fact that there are so many false multiples seems to make the case that there are some legitimate cases.

So how do I know if I am a legitimate case or not? I think I will cover that in the next post.