MPD/DID - Articles: MPD Pride

MPD Pride

When we where first diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, we didn’t want anyone to know. We couldn’t imagine that anyone would still be in our lives if they knew “how messed up we were.” The diagnosis made a lot of sense, and explained a lot that we had experienced but didn’t have a way to describe. The diagnosis also felt like a death sentence. Would we ever have a career, a husband, a normal life, all the things we had imagined as being part of our life? Or were we not too broken, officially too crazy, to ever have those things?

I quickly began to realize that the diagnosis didn’t really change anything. It was a label. I was still the same human with the same flaws and the same issues. I still had a lot of recovery to deal with, and I still had to fight to get up on time every morning. The only thing the diagnosis changed was that it validated my experience because now a professional said they saw it too.

I came to realize how being Multiple had saved my life, saved my sanity, and didn’t mean I was crazy or incompetent. It meant I had survived horrible abuse. It meant I had found a creative way to cope. It was something I needed to be proud of, because without it I would be dead. Each and every fragment and alter had been created for a specific need, and my mind’s ability to create this internal world and all these parts of me was amazingly beautiful.

I went through a period of time when I wanted to shout off the rooftops “I am a Multiple and I am proud! I have lived through hell. I have survived. I have thrived! I deserve to be free to be me, and being me is being US!” I wanted what the gay pride movement had: flags, celebrities, bumper stickers, jewelry, symbols known by everyone. I wanted to surround myself with other Multiples to understand myself better, to understand MPD better, and to have the support, pride, and safety a group provides.

There are psychological models that show stages of how gay and lesbian people progress in accepting their homosexuality. I think survivors and Multiples go through similar stages of self-acceptance.

Self-Recognition:
“There may be something different about me and I want to hide it...”
We admit to ourselves that we are survivors of abuse and experience symptoms of dissociation. We admit that we sometimes feel like we are not alone in our body, and that we have parts of ourselves that do not feel connected to our awareness and control.
Disclosure:
“There is something different about me and I need to tell someone...”
We admit to someone outside of our body that we have memories of abuse and dissociative symptoms. We try to understand how we are different from “normal” people in our lives.
Socialization:
“I want to meet more people who are different like me...”
We begin to seek out others who share the same difficulties and struggle with the same “non-normal” issues we face. We begin to meet other survivors and Multiples and share our stories with them. We begin to get a better idea of how unique we are, and how similar we are to others who share our same issues.
Pride:
“I’m glad I’m different, and I don’t care who knows about it!”
We begin to focus on the positives our issues bring to our lives. We celebrate our relationships with others who share our issues. We begin to center our life activities and relationships around those who support and believe in our differences.
Balanced Acceptance:
“I have a few differences but a lot of similarities with everyone.”
We begin to expand our lives and relationships to include other aspects of ourselves, our desires, and our goals. We realize we can feel safe, accepted, and whole even when we have people in our lives who do not know about our special issues. We begin to honor the similarities we have with other people who are outside of our pride group. This may also mark the shift of language where we are able to describe ourselves in terms that don’t start with our differences. We may also move from saying “I’m gay/Multiple/a cutter/” to “I am someone who has MPD/self-injures/is gay.” Here the difference becomes just one of many things that can describe who we are and what we are interested in.

I am still proud that I have survived. I am still honored to have been helped along my journey by so many internal and external people. I am still willing to admit that I have MPD, depression, a history of self-injury, and a significant abuse history. But I am also willing to let that take a backseat to the other facts such as I have a job I enjoy, a husband I adore, three pet birds that keep me busy, a cat I think is an angel on earth, and that I fly kites for fun.

Here is the logo for a webring we created (currently closed) called "Free to be We!":

We also have a website called Coming Out Multiple where people share their stories and thoughts concerning "coming out" as a Multiple: