I just want to highly recommend the channel “Early Morning Barking” to anyone in the Cluster B community, esp people with BPD and NPD. It’s a YouTube channel that has informational videos and coping strategies, by someone who has both PDs. Easily the best content I’ve seen out there about the subject and is very compassionate and personable, while also being focused on recovery and making a better life for yourself.
As a DID system I’m fiercely protective of non-traumagenic systems. Here’s why:
- Developmental processes are constant throughout the lifespan. Identity formation and curation, despite what most folks on here claim, is likewise an ongoing process and does not simply stop at the end of adolescence or even in young adulthood. Literally crack open any lifespan development textbook and you will notice this.
- Personality and identity is fluid and multi-faceted, which is why it’s so difficult to capture in a psychometric sense (for staunch advocates of the MBTI or Jungian archetypes, I hate to break it to you, but those are both notorious examples of pseudoscience). The best non-clinical personality inventory that exists out there is The Big Five, (also known as OCEAN or CANOE) and even that is limited by its circumstances and has its own unique flaws.
- Moreover, some people find it helpful to organize their various emotional states, characteristics, habits, and what have you into different identities, perhaps as branches off of one holistic cognitive “system.”
- An elaboration on that last point: Consider the anatomy of the human brain. It consists of various cellular structures on a micro level and cortical/subcortical structures on a more macro level. Such structures are then grouped together into lobes, regions, tissue classifications, and so on. Similarly, the mind consists of different thought patterns, sensory/perceptual patterns, emotional states, etc, that can thus be grouped together into different identities.
- More to the point, this happens regardless of trauma (though I feel obligated to mention that, while the vast majority of DID cases are recognized to have emerged from some kind of trauma that is usually experienced in the formative years, not all cases can be explained by trauma. Indeed, an etiology of trauma is not outlined in the diagnostic criteria of the DSM V).
- Further, this seems to be a lot more common than people realize, though perhaps to a lesser magnitude. In a sociological sense, individuals often find themselves with multiple roles in life, in which they must fulfill different duties, perform different behaviors, express different emotions, and even abide by different values. Some people will often express internal conflict between “parts” of themselves, as another example. These are arguably both instances of plurality as they occur outside of clinical contexts, but they are not exhaustive and are merely examples of how plurality is a much more common experience than previously thought.
- Another point to consider: Some systems may identify as endogenic at first, only to later discover that their system-hood is indeed tied to trauma. I cannot emphasize this enough, however: it is not your duty or even your right as an unlicensed, non-professional to go digging through a system’s personal medical or psychosocial history. Not only are such topics highly private and are only to be disclosed at the system’s discretion, the unwanted unearthing of someone’s past may be highly triggering at best and could implant false memories of trauma at worst (if you’re unfamiliar with this phenomenon, google the satanic panic and DID). It really should be common sense not to ask strangers on the internet what trauma(s) they experienced, but apparently it bears explaining. Just… don’t do this.
- One last item for your consideration: for some people, plurality may stem from one’s culture or religion/spirituality. DID and plurality in general are not merely Western phenomena and do not begin and end with white people. To put this into context, this is similar to how a lot of white folks will try to capture gender identity within a binary lens, when there are in truth myriad genders recognized by different cultures and religions/spiritualities. So really, you might think you’re being woke when you dismiss these cases in your crusade to defend traumagenic systems, but you’re actually just being an asshole.
To sum up, trauma is not an inherently plural thing. Plurality occurs on a much more common basis than you might think, as is evident in the fluidity of identity and the complexity of the mind. It cannot be explained by a trauma model alone, nor is it bound specifically to Western societies. Furthermore, any attempt to identify possible trauma within a system without their explicit consent runs such risks as triggering the system or even implanting false memories of traumatic experiences.
I want to add that it’s OKAY to want to have separate spaces to discuss system-hood in the context of trauma. As a traumagenic DID system I think this is perfectly reasonable. But the incessant infighting of the plural community at large is something that consistently tries my patience, which is to say nothing of the irreparable harm that it causes.
Be open-minded. Be decent. Be kind.
