I no longer hold the belief that we are a disordered system simply because we are a system. The criteria for both DDNOS and DID indicate that distress or significant inability to live life must be caused by the memory inconsistencies that some systems experience, and/or the multiplicity itself. Before I say anything else about what those criteria state must be in order for DID to be diagnosed, I want to point something out about our experience of being multiple. We haven’t been hampered in our functioning because we were a system; we have been hampered in our functioning because of actions taken by outside people that were most likely based on fear of what they did not understand, as well as willful ignorance about our experience. Discovering that I was multiple was, for all of us, a relief, because it meant that we did not have to live alone, at least from the inside. We did not start experiencing distress about our way of being until we came into contact with people in all areas of our life who treated the situation as though it was a joke, telling me, Maria, that I should be the only one to interact with things like school, telling our children when they were out to “not play that game with them,” and even asking me if the others of the system were actually evil spirits making efforts toward harming me.
It seemed that no matter where we were, there was someone there who wanted us to lie about our life, and even then, when we were only just learning how we had lived apart from one another, that idea was something we never wanted to be involved in putting into practice. The expectation that we not operate as a team, as we had for the whole of our life before our time of discovery, was our first source of significant stress since the truth was revealed to us all, and thus the first cause of our time loss. While such time loss was frightening to us, we did not, and do not, contribute it to being multiple in and of itself, but rather to the stress that outside situations put in our path as far as our cooperation and working as a system was concerned. Regardless, losing time is a symptom of DID, and since it was causing us distress, we were, and still are, able to be diagnosed with the condition. As far as other criteria for DID are concerned, we do not take any kind of substance that could cause time loss or identity changes, and, while we realize that multiplicity is not widely accepted in the culture of America as being only another way of life, we aren’t too worried about that lack of acceptance unless someone uses it to harm us or someone we care about. Time loss when switching from stress, and the fact that it deeply bothers us, are the only reasons that we could be diagnosed with DID, and the only reason we would ever accept such a diagnosis comes directly from the fact that we will most likely not be accepted as we are unless we have paperwork stating that our way of being is at least understood in the context of a problem needing treatment.
I am getting treatment, but not because of the others daring to exist. For the moment, I am in therapy, along with the rest of the system, not working on the fact that we are multiple, but rather the underlying trauma that we’ve outlined in past articles. So far, working with one another and our therapist, coming to understand how all of the system came to be there in the first place, and letting them share their story from their point of view, not attacking or trying to fix the multiplicity, is what has worked for us. I truly believe that trying to label ourselves as having a disorder simply because we were a system formed out of trauma has not been helpful for our healing. In the end, if ever we are professionally diagnosed with DID or DDNOS, it will probably be because we meet some or all of the criteria and are so tired of living a lie that we will have stopped caring what medical name we have in our records, as long as we could be ourselves without being told we were playing games or not learning because of the situation. There have been times where I’ve almost reached that point, but then I think of my ability, as a blind person, to find work, or love, or have children and provide for them the kind of family they deserve, and all desire for a diagnosis leaves me. After all, a diagnosis of DID, to the average person, brings to mind movies that may or may not paint multiples as psychopathic killers. I have to wonder if, with my blindness, something made obvious by the white cane in my hand, having another label in the area of mental health would put potential friendships on hold while everyone involved comes to the understanding that we are not all psychopaths who commit unspeakable crimes, or rejects the notion completely and either refuses to interact with anyone but me or cuts off contact.
All that being said, when I begin to question the idea of not seeking a diagnosis as it relates to employment, and many other things in life that possible stigma associated with being multiple could make rather difficult, I have to wonder if the results would be much different when the truth eventually came out. As I’ve already said, claims of multiplicity, for many people, bring to mind ideas of the infamous Multiple Personality Disorder, even without talk of any diagnosis brought into the conversation. Regardless of a label in our records that marks us as having one condition or another, public image is public image, and the one haunting multiples is not helping anyone but Hollywood. My worry is that, with or without a name that pathologises us, , should we be honest about a key part of our identity as a collective, people will assume that we are just as the movies make multiples out to be, a danger to ourselves and others, not fit for work, or caring for children, and capable of unimaginable crimes. At this point in our life, we aren’t sure if having a name that marks our experience of multiplicity as an illness would draw us closer or further from that idea. Personally, and for the sake of everyone within this system, I don’t want to find out.
At the end of the day, diagnosed or not, our experience is our own and cannot be given a medical label that we would be happy with. Though we meet some of the criteria for DID in such a way that we could, in theory, be diagnosed with it, we are not actively seeking such a thing. As far as our current treatment, we have yet to ask if anything has been documented as far as diagnosis is concerned, but regardless of that question’s answer, we feel no need to force our way of life to conform to the standards set by an outside label whose implications and expected treatment fly in the face of what we are hoping to cultivate among ourselves. We have had at least one therapist who treated all of us without needing a label, and our current one has not put much importance on such things, focusing more on building a complete picture of this life’s events and helping everyone here understand how things have changed from then to now. The only reason we would ever want a label of DID or DDNOS, with all its associated stigma and fear, would be a kind of justification, a way of explaining ourselves that would at least give the inexperienced person a frame of reference from which to better understand our outer mannerisms. At least with a medical name as given by a professional, and the proper documentation, we might have a better chance of being taken seriously as a multiple and not judged for being ok with ourselves as we are. That does not mean, however, that we would be comfortable with a label describing our situation as a problem, or that we would agree with such a description.
If getting a diagnosis from a professional is the right path for someone and their system, I wouldn’t judge them. But for us, our problem is not that we are many, but that people in most areas of our outside life, people who do not share our experience, people who, by their own admission, do not want to understand who we truly are, nevertheless insist that this truth is somehow a lie, or at the very least an issue simply by existing as a reality. It is because of the stress caused by this insistence, as well as other factors from our early life that are currently being addressed, that we have lost time, and while this time loss is frightening to us, it is an effect of stress on our functioning, not a direct result of being a multiple. A diagnosis of DID may explain to outside people why we act as we do, but it never has been, and never will be, how we define our own experiences. Blindness is not a problem for us, not anymore, and I’ve been very lucky to have the resources I do today. But there was a time that I hated myself for being blind, and wished that I could gain site again. Though I no longer subscribe to the views I held in “shifting focus,” I can say with full confidence that getting to that same point about the others within this body is not a choice I am willing to make, and I will do everything I legally and harmlessly can to prevent the whole of ComunityBelonging, otherwise known as Maria and Others, from having to deal with any more pain than we already have. For us, healing begins by realizing that we are not ill for being who we are.