On my blog entry entitled Getting Triggered versus Having a Prejudice, a reader posted the following comment:
I have a question tho.. “Does having DID render any and all of your opinions null and void and not of any notable value with the people who know of your condition because they know that another alternate version of yourself is more than likely to have different opinion on the subject??” This is my experience, since being diagnosed nothing I say has any worth to those that know i have DID.. Classic prejudice or truth ?? ~ bambooswaysinwind
This attitude is NOT “truth” and is completely unsupportive. It would also say this dynamic is indicative of people’s lack of understanding of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Even worse, this attitude could hinder your healing process because it is a continuation of invalidating you as a person, which was likely a “normal” part of your abusive childhood. My other concern is that people in your life are manipulating you, waiting for the version of yourself that they want to surface, which is about them, not you.
My own personal experience is that each and every part of myself was and is “me.” I did not claim the “good” or “easy” parts as “me” and reject the “bad” or “difficult” parts as “not me” – all parts are me, and who I am runs much deeper than the sum total of the parts. To reject two of my parts because of apparent conflict is a double rejection of “me,” which is not OK in my relationships.
As an example, before I began the healing process, one of my parts signed a petition against abortion, and then a few months later, another one of my parts signed a petition for abortion. Having two parts with opposite views expressed my internal conflict over a controversial issue. Singletons are familiar with having conflicted feelings or beliefs, only they don’t have the ability to split apart to remove the conflict.
To this day, I remain conflicted about the topic of abortion, although I now have the ability to pick a side. I am more against abortion than for it because, as an adoptive mother, I know what a loss my son’s abortion would have been. He was an unplanned pregnancy and could have been aborted but was not, and I am immensely grateful that my son’s birthmother did not exercise her legal right to abort him.
Nevertheless, a part of myself remains sympathetic to the option of abortion. As a child born into an abusive home, the last thing I want is to force people who don’t want to be parents to raise children and potentially harm them. Also, as a parent of a child with special needs who can be very difficult to parent at times, I know how hard being a good parent can be even when you really want to do it – forcing people to do this hard work when they don’t want to doesn’t seem like a good idea for either the parent or the child.
As someone who is mostly integrated and operates mostly from a singleton perspective, I still experience this conflict over my views on abortion. The big difference is that I feel the conflict whereas when I had DID, I was able to remove the internal conflict by splitting these views into two separate parts. The views I had separated into two parts still exist, only I now have the ability to pick a side, and my love for my son outweighs my empathy for those in a crisis pregnancy situation. (I would strongly urge those dealing with a crisis pregnancy to consider the option of adoption but do recognize how emotionally painful this choice is.)
Living with conflicting emotions is part of the human condition, but it wasn’t safe for us as abused children, so we split off the conflict. Part of healing from DID is learning how to live with internal conflict. Both of your views are still YOU and should be respected, not disregarded. Unless those who are disregarding parts of you are multiples and/or have DID, they know what internal conflict feels like, and they should not judge you for experiencing this very normal part of being human.
Image credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Good point raised there. It can be tempting to disregard your bad parts and pretend like they are not you and not take responsibility for anything they do but by doing that you are only fooling yourself. Fresh after diagnosis this was a lesson I learnt very quickly.
As far as I know my therapist are the only ones who do not think the effects of all trauma are known or will be known. Everyone else seems to have an understanding and the understandings are all different.
You do not get to choose if someone feels your opinion is valid that is up to them. All you can do is determine if what you think is valid. Kinda like you get to choose your questions you do not get to choose the answer you get.
I think someone who would say this to another with d.i.d. is attempting to manipulate the person for selfish reasons. I have to work VERY hard to never play one girl off another, and it IS hard sometimes when I know I could get what I want if I just bring out the right girl, but that would encourage the dissociation rather than encourage healing.
Excellent. Glad you wrote this tho’ I suppose some folks can’t get it: how I can support opposing sides of an argument almost every time, and throw a few more sides in for good measure. It makes my wife mad (tho’ she has gotten it) because I appear inconsistent. It’s not an ‘inconsistency’ so much as a multiplicity of views regarding an incident or situation.
Fortunately “We’ve” got to the point where our parts don’t break off into factions and start warring with one another, and if one does, ‘we’ have our negotiator to ‘deal’ with him – with kindness and love, and encouraging ‘us’ to encourage ‘his’ view.
Gave up a long time ago on there being “one” of us always ‘on top’ and in control. This thing runs like a democracy or a family now. So our ‘votes’ for a specific issue are first based on logical demand (there are a lot of scientist sides in me as well as analytical beings), and then the overall benefits from an issue. As we’ve learned, nothing is “all bad” – nor “all good” – so it takes us more time to make up our minds on an issue sometimes. But when we have, it’s generally well thought out – logically speaking. However, we have been learning to include the human heart into the equation as well – a much more difficult thing to do (since it is so fickle).
I just found your blog and I am excited that you talk about DID. There are so many misconceptions and so much fear of even mentioning it. Someone needs to open the door for all of those who have to work through this in their lives.
I don’t think DID is what it is for me. I think what I have is a very good thing~ I was talking to a friend who is also a therapist today. It was my day to hear her, but I got some time in there myself. Anyway~ when I was little, really young~ I feel it was when i was 2 1/2 that i began to carry Owery around. He had no arms or leg and he held all the hurts. I remembered him in my early 20’s and was writing down all these regression memories as they occurred. I had a night mare that caused me to wake up in the night and write about the enemas that my mother had tried to killed me with and drew diagrams of what she did and said. I got Owery all out of me. Into to several books all those shadow thoughts that sucked me into gloom and despair day after day. But I could not handle thinking about it…so I created this girl. I wrote stories about her. I believed I found her as this helpful stranger in the new testament and wrote a side story of this woman secretly in love with Christ. I went about making a wonderful life and failed and tried and failed and tried and…and a couple of decades later I have this created angel this character that I tell myself is my angel who has always been with me. That mothered me as I mother myself. This woman I needed my mother to be and this perfect mother I thought I must be, but knew that I was not. So the IronE or the Iron Enigma became this shadow of my self that I could not understand. This IronE in my life that would cause me to get the opposite results from what I intended to happen. This question about my childhood. A friend at the time that i talked to nearly everyday during that time of my life told me a few years back that at that time she was very concerned for me, because she watched me change and become very OCD about GOD. She told me at the time “Don’t BE too Holy Vicki.” Then years later she reiterates her feelings that I have DID. I don’t feel that these are different personalities as much as they are different perspectives or paradigms that I have developed. I got through childhood putting all the hurts on Owery. Then once I was able to put him to rest (and why I have always seen him as my absorbed twin I don’t know – 3 month gestation) was when I created IronE until my mother’s death and the Iron Enigma or the anemia that was caused by the enemas were what I could not remember. But I put my clue in the name. Once I have been addressing that my mother tried to kill me, now I am remembering and understanding that she was trying to kill me so many times in so many ways. I keep understanding. I keep morning for my children and my childhood and my ignorance and stupidity to think that I could let them go and be with her if that was what they wanted. I figured it was all in God’s hands and it MUST still work out for the best I am still alive. I see IronE as the box I had to hold those memories in till a time when it was safe to look at them. I thought at the time I had forgiven and so I forgotten so life was good regarless, but I had my head in the clouds… while my life took a dump.