Multiple personalities

Hello,

It would appear to be a kind of epidemic as of late, especially in the wider alter-human community that everyone in it has to have a multiple personality problem.

As this in a way affects Therian Guide because people come in here with those sorts of preconceptions, I thought I'd post about this in something you can get a feeling for upfront.


Simply put, it you have a medical condition, you shouldn't try to call it Therianthropy and seek shelter in the therian community. You should go to a medical doctor and work with them on resolving your issue.

Therian Guide is not a hospital, it is not our job to protect your mental health and as much as I might wish to the contrary: There is nothing people on the Internet can tell you, that is going to fix you. If you have an actual medical condition, it would be irresponsible of us to let you suffer consequences to your health, so we will insist that you see a medical professional.


If however you don't have a medical condition and you really just want to act like you have multiple personalities, then really we don't have to know. The Therian Community is not necessarily an "alternative community" and we don't all act funky just because we are therians. We are naturally more understanding of people who are different, much like how we are, but outside of that we try to act like normal human beings.


For those of you who believe you have undiagnosed DID. We have a few people on TG who have actual DID and it is like Wikipedia says, people with a history of severe physical child abuse which results in dissociative episodes that disrupt their daily lives.

It does not, notably, mean the people talk to themselves in their forum posts or act rude and request to be called by a different name from time to time, like some of you believe you should act.


For people who do have DID the medical condition but are therians and still want to spend time on Therian Guide, you are of course welcome. The general rule applies that you must have one account per physical body (or expect that we will merge accordingly).

If you are on government healthcare and are therefore forced to cope with the occasional crappy therapist, one of our DID members wrote a very nice guide for talking with them about therianthropy:
https://forums.therian-guide.com/Thread-Communicating-About-Your-Therianthropy-To-Others--4248


If you believe your multiple personalities are not psychological but spiritual in nature, please look at this public guide on actual spiritual concepts that describe the various forms of spiritual alternate personalities by @elinox, so that you don't have to make stuff up:
https://forums.therian-guide.com/Thread-An-Intro-to-Totems-Animal-Spirits-Tulpas-Daemons


Finally, as a general rule mental health is not an excuse for disruptive behaviour on the forums. If the way you act whether due to a medical condition or not, is making other people uncomfortable and you refuse to correct it, you will be banned. Our responsibility lies with protecting our community.

LP,
Dusty

This is a very important post and I am glad it was brought up. I often feel alienated in what should be my own communities when therianthropy, animality or otherkin is not the topic of discussion. That's not to say I have anything against DID or people who claim to have other personalities, but it should be kept in it's own communities where such is the focus of conversation.

Thanks for bringing this up dust. I started to notice this epidemic but I was afraid to bring it up because I didn't want to offend anyone. I agree with what you said though.

Ah, this is a common theme I've noticed in both therian and otherkin circles in recent years. I've never wanted to say anything about it because I didn't want to unintentionally upset anybody. There's nothing wrong with being neurodivergent, however, it's like you said, it is really for the best to seek help from a medical professional or doctor (if you are able or willing to). Therapy and (sometimes, not always) medication work wonders for some people, or at the very least, help one manage symptoms.

Also, "Finally, as a general rule mental health is not an excuse for disruptive behaviour on the forums.", thank you for saying this as well.

I'm not a psychologist, and although it's not exactly an everyday thing, we do tend to see a significant number of "multiple systems" in the therian community. Because of that, I've felt it worth reading up on DID a little, since that seems to be the most common explanation.

From what I've read, it's very clear that legitimate Dissociative Identity Disorder is rare, is generally the result of severe abuse or trauma as the mind tries to insulate and protect itself, and is considered a problem that is treated by attempting to rejoin the splintered aspects of the individual's person.

Two articles that sum up these points nicely, I think, are from Psychology Today and the Cleveland Clinic.

Often, though, those who claim to have DID (and that all or some of their alters are therian - here, meet them!) aren't trying to "reconnect the different personalities into one integrated, well-functioning identity" - they're using it as a vehicle for multuple kintypes. There is never any talk of integration, which is the point of the treatments that the doctors they claim to have are generally going to be ultimately pursuing (I understand there may be preliminary therapy or other steps involved - but I'm talking about the final goal), and their behavior generally seems more geared towards just playing a game in which they have a "real-life" character selection screen, with no obvious differences between each alter, other than kintype.

Obviously there are going to be legitimate instances of DID on rare occasions, but this raises the issue of how to interact with people who adopt the mental illness for online interactions for their own selfish reasons. On the one hand, we could ignore the issue... after all, it's just the internet and telling lies in anonymity doesn't really hurt anyone, so who cares? On the other hand, legitimate sufferers have been through legitimate trauma, and a large majority of these individuals attempt or commit suicide. I don't really think it's a game, and I don't think acceptance of it as a game is helpful to anyone - but I'm not a therapist, and this is my opinion. I don't want or expect anyone to take my thoughts on this as gospel for how to address the issue, and I don't expect my opinion to change the fact that the therian community will always have people with "alters" - whether they are real or not.

I'm happy to talk to therians here... that's the purpose of the Therian Guide.

Hey,

What you got off the links is essentially both in line with my own research and what my personal experience was while talking with people with actual DID. That being said, there is something more to say here...

(2020-05-04 17:42)coffeebear Wrote:  Often, though, those who claim to have DID (and that all or some of their alters are therian - here, meet them!) aren't trying to "reconnect the different personalities into one integrated, well-functioning identity" - they're using it as a vehicle for multuple kintypes. There is never any talk of integration, which is the point of the treatments that the doctors they claim to have are generally going to be ultimately pursuing (I understand there may be preliminary therapy or other steps involved - but I'm talking about the final goal), and their behavior generally seems more geared towards just playing a game in which they have a "real-life" character selection screen, with no obvious differences between each alter, other than kintype.

Because DID is such a rare condition, many psychologists view it as a kind of status symbol if they've treated it in their career. As a result of this, some people who might or might not have DID, will sometimes get encouraged to view their problems as a collection of different personalities. They will instruct their patients to imagine having multiple personalities or even ask them to give these personalities names. Red flag stuff.

This is stuff that's been known to be wrong and extremely damaging for at least 40 years, yet professional psychologists will still do it.

Those in the USA on a government healthcare system will tend to be rotated between different professionals and eventually come into contact with these "therapists". Because recovery is much slower than damage, these people will end up perpetually stuck in the healthcare system unable to recover enough to lead independent lives.

The world we live in is so very broken... I am lost for words.

Rant (Click to View)

That community of people who were told to imagine they had DID and were asked to give their personalities names, end up amplifying each other on the Internet like flat earthers, becoming more and more convinced that they are correct to have multiple personalities. Some because they are kind of confused about it. Some because it allows them to keep dodging actually having to solve underlying life issues. Some completely healthy people being sucked into the mix for no reason at all. And the end result is... this multiple personality nonsense.

I care about people with DID and I want them to get better and live productive lives. I however cannot endorse this multiple personality stuff. It harms people.

LP,
Dusty

Hey, psychology degree here, who knows a good number of systems, figured I might spread some information here. Dissociative Identity Disorder isn't actually THAT rare. It's around the same percentage as natural red hair, 1.1%–1.5% of the population. However, it's super common for people with DID to not even be aware they have DID, because it's a trauma-based disorder made to allow someone to survive--which means it's natural for the "host" alter to be unaware of the others and the trauma memories they often hold. The reason we're seeing an "epidemic" (I hate that term in accordance with mental disorders) is because DID is finally coming into the light as a real disorder, not just a plot for a movie, and a lot of people are finding that treatments for CPTSD haven't been cutting it because they actually have DID/OSDD-1. There are very VERY few psychologists who have experience in DID/OSDD-1, however, so getting true treatment is difficult and there's a lot of misinformation based off VERY old information that's very opposed to current research.

Not going to lie, some people ARE pretending to be DID/OSDD-1 as ways to dodge responsibility for their actions. In comes the notion of "system responsibility" which is a push in the plural community to not blame their alters for a Bad Action and instead to hold their entire system responsible for the system's actions, no matter who did the Bad Action. This is heavily encouraged in the community, because it cuts off the major compliant people have about interacting with systems, and outs fakers who have been taking advantage of a trauma-based community.

I will say, that I have seen some people claiming on this forum that the current literature says to ignore the separate identities of DID/OSDD-1 self-states/alters, and to that I have to say... No. The current literature says that doing that is actually quite harmful, and can lead to increases in hospitalization, increase in diagnosis and severity of comorbid disorders (depression, ptsd, anxiety, etc), as well as increased risk of suicide.

An animal/non-human alter's form of therianthropy and otherkinism is often different than a therian/otherkin singlet (someone without DID) but their contributions are still valid and broaden the understanding of psychology-based therianthropy/otherkinism, as well as posing as an interesting question to the spiritual side of therianthropy/otherkinism.

If you're interested in more information, I also recommend the The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation for learning about how the psych field is growing in terms of treating dissociative conditions. There are also several DID youtubers who have research-backed information in their videos about their DID, because learning about a community is best done by talking to the community itself.

(2020-05-04 17:42)coffeebear Wrote:  Often, though, those who claim to have DID (and that all or some of their alters are therian - here, meet them!) aren't trying to "reconnect the different personalities into one integrated, well-functioning identity" - they're using it as a vehicle for multuple kintypes. There is never any talk of integration, which is the point of the treatments that the doctors they claim to have are generally going to be ultimately pursuing (I understand there may be preliminary therapy or other steps involved - but I'm talking about the final goal), and their behavior generally seems more geared towards just playing a game in which they have a "real-life" character selection screen, with no obvious differences between each alter, other than kintype.

It isn't accurate to say that the treatment to DID must necessarely involve integration. In many cases, integration simply isn't possible and many systems just don't desire to undergo that process. Rather, the point of treatment is to give the system the tools to cope with negative symptoms stemming from trauma and ways to deal with daily life so as to live a healthily. While that may mean the total integration of a system, it often doesn't as members grow more adept at communication and amnesia barriers are either removed or become less disruptive.

The point of therapy isn't to make one fit into molds of what is normal, but to help someone live a better life.

Integration as a whole is a point of much debate both in the DID community and among psychologists and ressearchers and there are different opinions floating around. Still, even proponents of total integration as the best possible outcome acknowledge that most patients, for whatever reason, will not be able to undergo such thing and must concede that for them, a more realistic outcome is a cooperative arrangement of alters.

Here are some interesting pieces of literature on the matter:

An article clearing up myths and misconceptions on DID

From the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, which is a proponent of integration

A different article, showcasing treatment guidelines for DID where integration is not necessarely the end goal

Some people will grab scraps of stuff and make it into something it's not. Honestly, having different moods on different days could make someone 'believe' this.

I'm not a system but often talk about my tulpa Cletus. Including other weird stuff...Sorry that this stuff has become an annoying norm to therian forums.