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I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma. > The people who ha

I'm friends with someone who has clinical DID. It is, as near as I can tell, not induced by media, etc, but by extreme and profound trauma. > The people who have traditionally been treated for DID have suffered, greatly, and not in the cool arty time-to-dye-my-hair-again type of suffering common to social media performance, but actual, painful, pitiable suffering. Those patients who have been diagnosed in the past with the disorder, by doctors, and who have spent years and years dealing with the consequences, are often truly debilitated people, whether the disorder itself is real or not. They require intense therapy, are often medicated with powerful drugs, and are frequently subject to long-term hospitalization. They tend to live broken and pain-filled lives, like most people with serious mental illness. This is a relatively accurate description of their life. Clinical DID is not cute or something to parade in front of people you don't know. I have extraordinarily little interest in open DID fora like Reddit, because these fora don't adequately encompass my friends' reality.

mav88 4y ago
Yeah it's horrible. I have had contact with half a dozen people with severe DID because of extreme trauma experienced before the age of four. DeBoer is a great writer and he's dead right about the effects of social media on all this but he is completely wrong about the literature. The so-called Greenbaum Speech, alternatively called "Hypnosis in MPD", is just one example of the consistent body of work out there showing that it is very real.
- ralusek 4y ago
  Unless you work in a field that exposes you to extremely rare psychological conditions, there is absolutely no way for any person to have had contact with a half a dozen people with severe DID. If you're talking about the new wave of people who are self diagnosing with nonsense, then sure, but that's not what we're talking about.
  - mav88 4y ago
    Run along sonny. There are plenty of ways that someone can have contact with survivors of ritual abuse who also experience DID. In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me. One was sexually assaulted by Roman Polanski when she was a child, two or three were beta sex kittens, one was a courier and at least one had an assassin as an alter. So yeah, fuck you.
    - ralusek 4y ago
      Rather than saying that one would need to work in a specific field, what I actually meant was "unless you have a highly concentrated exposure to this subset of the population, there is no way to know a half dozen people with this exceptionally rare psychological condition." > In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me If you put yourself out as a resource for people of a specific characteristic to reach out to you, then your exposure is far from a random sampling. My broader point is that a random sampling of the population would never produce the quantity of actual cases of DID that is manifesting in young people on social media. In other words, the degree to which DID actually exists and the degree to which people claim to have DID have diverged dramatically in favor of the latter. That statement is not meant to be taken personally as I'm acknowledging that you've established yourself as a beacon for those struggling with this sort of thing to reach out to you.
CactusOnFire 4y ago
I dated someone who had it- was beaten heavily during their childhood formative years, and told me that the separation of identities was a means of coping. It seemed like an extreme emotional compartmentalization which left them with a fractured sense of self. Some people might say that they could have just been pulling an elaborate hoax on me from a year and a half. But the amount of acting it would have required just to convince me of this without any real reward would have been a sign of even greater emotional problems than even the different personalities.
- motoboi 4y ago
  Yeah. Think about years-of-sexual-abuse-and-physical-torture-by-a-relative trauma. Think about locked-in-a-basement-forced-to-eat-excrement trauma. Think about forced-for-years-to-rape-your-brother trauma. This is the kind of thing that create severe DID cases. Those things unfortunately exists and occur. Those people are not faking it. Someone who never had a severe and long term trauma claiming to have DID? Completely different situation.
- mise_en_place 4y ago
  Do they lose memory when switching personalities? I’d imagine it’d be awkward if one personality didn’t know they were dating someone.
thelettere 4y ago
Dude has exactly zero expertise in the field or experience with this population, and yet he makes these kinds of claims. And all based on an article or two he found. Pathetic. Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up. Doesn't mean the emotional/cognitive/behavioral cluster does not exist. The link between trauma and disassociation is incontrovertible, and DID is merely an extreme version of this. Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this, so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd. The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  No matter what one might think of Freddie deBoer, it is worth being aware of his own experience with psychosis. While this is not the same thing as DID, it did give him relatively deep personal insight into aspects of serious psychiatric disorder: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked There re still plenty of people who have a severe distaste for his writing, his political views and his behavior, and I think that's fine. However I think it's unfair to claim that this article is "all based on an article or two he found."
  - thelettere 4y ago
    "I have ADHD so I'm an expert on autism."
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      "I have been treated for ADHD and as a result I understand some of the ways that a lot of psychiatric institutions fail patients with disorders such as ADHD, autism and others." The article (despite the clickbait-y title) isn't really about the existence of DID.
pyuser583 4y ago
Someone very close to me had a serious mental illness. Nobody has any idea what the illness is. Different doctors give it different names. The same doctors give it different names. I eat the impression doctors are less worried about the “anatomy” of the illness, and more worried about finding a cure. If “take these anti-psychotics daily, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and meet weekly with a therapist” prevents symptoms … they really don’t care if it’s a psychotic disorder (as opposed to, say, a mood disorder). Psychology seems to going from a “deep mind” approach to a “shallow mind” approach.
- moonchild 4y ago
  You seem to be implying that this is a bad thing. Diagnoses and categorisations are all fake, and constructed. The only reason why it's interesting to diagnose is that we may notice similar treatments are helpful for people with similar diagnoses. Diagnosis isn't inherently useful; it's a means to an end.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    It leaves out a very important part of processing illness: knowing what happened. When people are sick they want to know “what’s wrong with me.” When given medication they want to known how the medication works. Unexplained healings are better than being sick, but not as good actually knowing what was wrong with you. For example, someone has 6 hour episode where they detach from reality and have intense hallucinations. What are these hallucinations? Repressed fears? Forgotten desires? These hallucinations are possible the most intense phenomena this person will ever experience. What do they mean?!? The real upside is that psychiatrists have the humility to say “we have no idea how this works.” The downside is it leaves room for pseudo-experts to peddle whatever trash they want.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Psychology diagnoses (i.e. DSM diagnoses) are mostly about being able to reliably diagnose and communicate between providers, billing, etc. They are very much not about concrete underlying causes but about the ability to decide what label to put on a person. The usefulness of these diagnoses are rather low and treatment tends towards "throw shit at the wall until something sticks". There are lots of things to try for each cluster of symptoms in common and useful heuristics, but the plain truth is that psychology's top-down approach to identification and treatment of conditions has had limited success and will be (and has been) slowly replaced by bottom-up neuroscience approaches which are starting to reach the levels useful to psychological conditions.

mav88 4y ago

Yeah it's horrible. I have had contact with half a dozen people with severe DID because of extreme trauma experienced before the age of four. DeBoer is a great writer and he's dead right about the effects of social media on all this but he is completely wrong about the literature. The so-called Greenbaum Speech, alternatively called "Hypnosis in MPD", is just one example of the consistent body of work out there showing that it is very real.

ralusek 4y ago
Unless you work in a field that exposes you to extremely rare psychological conditions, there is absolutely no way for any person to have had contact with a half a dozen people with severe DID. If you're talking about the new wave of people who are self diagnosing with nonsense, then sure, but that's not what we're talking about.
- mav88 4y ago
  Run along sonny. There are plenty of ways that someone can have contact with survivors of ritual abuse who also experience DID. In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me. One was sexually assaulted by Roman Polanski when she was a child, two or three were beta sex kittens, one was a courier and at least one had an assassin as an alter. So yeah, fuck you.
  - ralusek 4y ago
    Rather than saying that one would need to work in a specific field, what I actually meant was "unless you have a highly concentrated exposure to this subset of the population, there is no way to know a half dozen people with this exceptionally rare psychological condition." > In my case I just proved knowledgeable and willing to listen and they reached out to me If you put yourself out as a resource for people of a specific characteristic to reach out to you, then your exposure is far from a random sampling. My broader point is that a random sampling of the population would never produce the quantity of actual cases of DID that is manifesting in young people on social media. In other words, the degree to which DID actually exists and the degree to which people claim to have DID have diverged dramatically in favor of the latter. That statement is not meant to be taken personally as I'm acknowledging that you've established yourself as a beacon for those struggling with this sort of thing to reach out to you.

CactusOnFire 4y ago

I dated someone who had it- was beaten heavily during their childhood formative years, and told me that the separation of identities was a means of coping. It seemed like an extreme emotional compartmentalization which left them with a fractured sense of self. Some people might say that they could have just been pulling an elaborate hoax on me from a year and a half. But the amount of acting it would have required just to convince me of this without any real reward would have been a sign of even greater emotional problems than even the different personalities.

motoboi 4y ago
Yeah. Think about years-of-sexual-abuse-and-physical-torture-by-a-relative trauma. Think about locked-in-a-basement-forced-to-eat-excrement trauma. Think about forced-for-years-to-rape-your-brother trauma. This is the kind of thing that create severe DID cases. Those things unfortunately exists and occur. Those people are not faking it. Someone who never had a severe and long term trauma claiming to have DID? Completely different situation.
mise_en_place 4y ago
Do they lose memory when switching personalities? I’d imagine it’d be awkward if one personality didn’t know they were dating someone.

thelettere 4y ago

Dude has exactly zero expertise in the field or experience with this population, and yet he makes these kinds of claims. And all based on an article or two he found. Pathetic. Almost every psychiatric diagnosis is problematic, and articles questioning any's validity can be dug up. Doesn't mean the emotional/cognitive/behavioral cluster does not exist. The link between trauma and disassociation is incontrovertible, and DID is merely an extreme version of this. Case reports of it across Western, Middle Eastern and Asian societies across the last 2 centuries show a remarkable degree of consistency in their reports of this, so the idea that this is some kind of passing fake fad is absurd. The only thing the article adds is a critique of a Tik-tok sub-culture. Color me shocked that this is not a particularly enlightened group - but I guess this is the kind of hard-hitting "journalism" popular Substacks were made for.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
No matter what one might think of Freddie deBoer, it is worth being aware of his own experience with psychosis. While this is not the same thing as DID, it did give him relatively deep personal insight into aspects of serious psychiatric disorder: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/since-you-asked There re still plenty of people who have a severe distaste for his writing, his political views and his behavior, and I think that's fine. However I think it's unfair to claim that this article is "all based on an article or two he found."
- thelettere 4y ago
  "I have ADHD so I'm an expert on autism."
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    "I have been treated for ADHD and as a result I understand some of the ways that a lot of psychiatric institutions fail patients with disorders such as ADHD, autism and others." The article (despite the clickbait-y title) isn't really about the existence of DID.

pyuser583 4y ago

Someone very close to me had a serious mental illness. Nobody has any idea what the illness is. Different doctors give it different names. The same doctors give it different names. I eat the impression doctors are less worried about the “anatomy” of the illness, and more worried about finding a cure. If “take these anti-psychotics daily, get 8 hours of sleep a night, and meet weekly with a therapist” prevents symptoms … they really don’t care if it’s a psychotic disorder (as opposed to, say, a mood disorder). Psychology seems to going from a “deep mind” approach to a “shallow mind” approach.

moonchild 4y ago
You seem to be implying that this is a bad thing. Diagnoses and categorisations are all fake, and constructed. The only reason why it's interesting to diagnose is that we may notice similar treatments are helpful for people with similar diagnoses. Diagnosis isn't inherently useful; it's a means to an end.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  It leaves out a very important part of processing illness: knowing what happened. When people are sick they want to know “what’s wrong with me.” When given medication they want to known how the medication works. Unexplained healings are better than being sick, but not as good actually knowing what was wrong with you. For example, someone has 6 hour episode where they detach from reality and have intense hallucinations. What are these hallucinations? Repressed fears? Forgotten desires? These hallucinations are possible the most intense phenomena this person will ever experience. What do they mean?!? The real upside is that psychiatrists have the humility to say “we have no idea how this works.” The downside is it leaves room for pseudo-experts to peddle whatever trash they want.
colechristensen 4y ago
Psychology diagnoses (i.e. DSM diagnoses) are mostly about being able to reliably diagnose and communicate between providers, billing, etc. They are very much not about concrete underlying causes but about the ability to decide what label to put on a person. The usefulness of these diagnoses are rather low and treatment tends towards "throw shit at the wall until something sticks". There are lots of things to try for each cluster of symptoms in common and useful heuristics, but the plain truth is that psychology's top-down approach to identification and treatment of conditions has had limited success and will be (and has been) slowly replaced by bottom-up neuroscience approaches which are starting to reach the levels useful to psychological conditions.