A conversation I had with my mother over the weekend prompted this. I think it’s a pretty common misconception that schizophrenia is the same as multiple personalities. I know ever since I was little I heard schizophrenia and “split personality” used interchangeably and while some multiples do exhibit behaviors which are similar to schizophrenia they are not the same thing. In fact the DSM-IV says that exactly (”schizophrenia is neither “split personality” nor “multiple personality.” Furthermore, people with schizophrenia are not perpetually incoherent or psychotic”), and then goes on to say:

Schizophrenia is characterized by profound disruption in cognition and emotion, affecting the most fundamental human attributes: language, thought, perception, affect, and sense of self. The array of symptoms, while wide ranging, frequently includes psychotic manifestations, such as hearing internal voices or experiencing other sensations not connected to an obvious source (hallucinations) and assigning unusual significance or meaning to normal events or holding fixed false personal beliefs (delusions). No single symptom is definitive for diagnosis; rather, the diagnosis encompasses a pattern of signs and symptoms, in conjunction with impaired occupational or social functioning (DSM-IV).

However what it says about multiple personalities (or dissociative identity disorder).

is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness in which a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. The diagnosis requires that at least two personalities routinely take control of the individual’s behavior with an associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness; in addition, symptoms can not be due to substance abuse or medical condition. (DSM-IV)

So, there we are, distinctly different. Just to clarify.

It can be hard for anyone to trust people, but when you’re more than one person it can be that much harder. We’ve found that we try not to be friends with people that not all of us can like or get along with on some level, or at least people that the majority of us can like or get along with. It makes it easier on everyone including the singletons that we’re hanging out with.

It doesn’t always turn out that way, sometimes no matter what your circumstances you have to make concessions and hang out with people that you’re not too keen on, because they’re with other friends that you actually like and things like that. It’s rough, but you do it. I’m sure there’s people who don’t really like hanging out with us but they do it because they want to hang out with our spouse, things like that.

Anyway, it comes to this. We’ve been telling some of our friends about our multiplicity, but there’s an incident with some of the people we’ve been hanging around with for a while and tolerating where they have told some private information to someone we don’t even know, so now we wonder if we can even trust them to know about us if they can’t keep something else confidential.

Trust is hard given. We’ve been burned so many times in our life by abusers, and users, people we thought were friends that it takes a lot for us to trust people with any information let alone something so private as the fact that we’re a multiple. But, Echo, you’re blabbing it around on the internet! That’s a bit different. My identity here is pretty well masked, private domain registration, lack of other information given, aliases and pseudonyms and all the rest of it; but anyway…

The point is that trust is hard given, and easily lost, and even harder if not impossible to regain.

It can be a little hard for people to grasp belief systems. It’s tough to have faith especially when you have a hard time trusting yourself. It took a long time for us to accept that it was okay to believe the way we did.

It can be tricky too because not all of us follow the same belief structure, Max is loosely Christian while the majority of the other alters follow Pagan/Shamanistic traditions, with a lot of respect and worship for nature. I think it helps that Max isn’t fundamentalist, he recalls being raised within a church but trusts more in his own heart, but he’s definitely not pagan.

While trying to sort out what was going on with us we researched many different things. The one which primarily sticks is otherkin, given we’ve come to believe that we fractured along the lines of past lives.

It seems that our initial break was probably when we were young, and then another break around eight or nine which brought out Max and Ami, and then through high school and college some mini-fractures and heals and things until we’re at the point we’re at now.

During college we did a lot of research into metaphysical things, primarily researching the possibility of past and future incarnation and animal incarnations. This led to a lot of stupid practices and a good three months that no one remembers…we’re still not sure if that was a personality schism or a possession, perhaps a combination of both. Up until we found out about the possibility of schisms we accepted it as “being possessed”.

The work that we did wasn’t all bad though. It helped us find ways to deal with and cope with what was going on in our head, and enabled us to find a way to actually function as a system. We’ve come to view our head as an apartment building. Each of the doors gives us a gateway to another lifetime that we’ve had. Some of them were just looked at as life times and those doors don’t need to be opened again, but others have stuck around to help us function, to give us pointers and coping mechanisms that we wouldn’t already have.

Yes, existing like this isn’t for everyone, but it’s what works for us. Without doing this we’d probably have had a complete breakdown and be rocking back and forth in a mental health institution. That wouldn’t be good at all. Because we did this we’ve managed to live a pretty darn good life. We’re almost thirty, we have a great husband, a beautiful, beautiful little boy.

There’s been some crappy things, but who doesn’t have crappy things in their life, sad to say.

Introductions are hard, ordinarily, but in our case they can be even trickier. For the most part blogs and things like that are usually done by the core of our system, or a few of the more outspoken individuals. There are certain people who don’t really write at all, or will just dictate occasionally.

The System Core:
Overall we’re a late twenty-something female. We emigrated to the US in 1995 and have lived here ever since. We graduated in the top dozen of our high school class and went to college, graduating there with a 3.0 from liberal arts school focusing on English and Communications. We did some grad school, but life and family situations meant that went bye-bye, which really was a good thing. We have a certification in clinical hypnosis and past life regression, know a good smattering of computer coding, enough to put sites together and help other people do the same.

The majority of our system holds to pagan beliefs, worshiping both Goddess and God, lighting candles, doing rituals, reading tarot and prefers herbal and gemstones for healing but will try conventional medicine first and use the others as a boost, or instead of, only with doctor approval.

We’re married. Our spouse is both a singleton and a Catholic, a staunch provider and supporter of whatever we need to do to get back our balance and be happy.

We have a child, who is only young, born in 2006, and is the reason that we’re trying all we can to regain balance. We want to be healthy for him, for our family and for ourselves.

System Members:
We’re just going to go alphabetical order here, because it’s easier.

• Abby: Abby sees herself as college age or thereabouts. She’s a great cook, and very crafty and artsy. She loves to make beaded jewelry, dye hair funky colors, get piercings and plan tattoos. She’s apt to raid Goodwill for clothing and try and make old clothing shiny and new by coming up with t-shirt transfers. She’s pretty easy going, semi-computer savvy but has a killer temper. Hubbie says that Abby is more like the “me” he recognizes as “me” as the default, and we have been seeing that Abby is more what would be considered the core personality when it’s not speaking as “we” and “collective”.

• Ami: Ami is painfully, painfully shy and has obsessive compulsive tendencies. She pronounces her name “Ah-me” after the Mercury character on “Sailor Moon”. She’s a consummate geek, loves computers, and coding and web design and was in her element when we worked at a library. She loves books and reading. She was the one who made sure we got straight A’s throughout most of school, but really had little idea about social interaction. It’s still really hard for her to understand the opposite sex, and she’s constantly worried that she annoys people and that they’re not going to like her, or are just using her for something. She sees herself as about 15 and Asian, but that may have something to do with identifying with the latching on to the anime character factor.

• Crazy Girl: We don’t know much about crazy girl, who is some times called “Crazy Abby” but has no relation to Abby mentioned above. She seems to be a young girl because she likes plushies and carrying a blanket around, but she doesn’t make much sense conversationally, and the system never really remembers anything clearly when she’s more “up front”.

• Debbi: Also identifies as around college age, but is a bit more laid back overall than everyone else. She isn’t around much. I think she and Abby are also pretty close together, the main difference is that she likes to put circles over her “i, j” when she writes. She’s less hair dye oriented/goth type though.

• Echo: How we refer to the system core/gatekeeper. When we’re trying to speak collectively that’s the way we operate. There’s really not much else to say with that.

• Jared: Identifies as a straight male, also around college age. He’s fairly smart, but a bit cocky/lazy. The sort that would bail on classes and go back and ace the tests. He also appears to be intuitive/psychic and is the one who partners with Abby doing a lot of the clairvoyant work that we do, and the tarot readings. He and Max bicker good naturedly back and forth quite a bit.

• Max: There’s a joke that everybody loves Max. Max is the “inner gay boy” it’s hard to pin down how old he is. He’s very hyper and we sometimes wonder if he’s not bipolar. He loves vodka, and is pretty hyper-sexual also. He doesn’t write very well, although he’s definitely late teens at the earliest age wise, and considers himself a ditz. He loves shoes, but not other practical things like cooking and cleaning, which some find surprising. It seems to be more of a concentration thing, he gets bored easily and doesn’t like to be quiet for too long. He’s very social butterfly and loves music and clubs and having fun with nifty people.

• Terri: She doesn’t come out much any more because she’s very angry. She’s one of the last few that’s “bad child influence” who still comes around from time to time. She identifies as an older woman, military type, commander, in control, but very angry and lacking in patience. Her temper flares over the slightest thing, but despite everything it’s hard for her to be motivated to do things.

• Yana: Yana fluxes between stand-offish and sexually aggressive. She considers herself around 19 and thinks English is stupid. I wrote her into a story I have as a hybrid alien who kept people at arm’s length as much as possible so they wouldn’t see how much she cared. She was a medical student, but didn’t like social situations where she might get attached to people. It was okay to be caring towards someone as long as you weren’t going to see them again. When she does get close she’s very possessive and *mine* *my toy*. My husband calls her “the cat girl”.

I think that’s enough for now.

~Echo

ZOMG Whu? Two posts in one day! This is unheard of!

Well, it’s been a busy and idea filled day, much thanks to my dear friend SaturnFaerie who helped me iron some of these things out while I helped her iron out some things with her own blog.

I’ve had this idea since oooh, 2004? But life, liberty and the pursuit of marriage and grad school kaiboshed the exploration of it for a while. I’d had the idea of a sort of “online clique” back then but it’s mutated a bit in the four years, and hopefully come out better for it. The idea then was for “Otherkin Aware” to be a place where people could sign up and pimp their businesses that were otherkin-friendly.

That’s a bit…biased. So, I was thinking that instead I would make it a bit of a collective, still going along the same idea, business by otherkin, for otherkin and others. Businesses that are otherkin friendly, businesses that are earth-friendly, as many of us are out to preserve this planet, and businesses that otherkin run that aren’t necessarily solely for otherkin but have that link still.

I’m still ironing some of this out, but in the mean time if you’d like me to review your business let me know! I don’t have much traffic yet, but I’m hoping that will change.

In the mean time this place is probably going to change around a bit again as I iron some more things out within the headspace, we’ve decided that we’re going to make a less “one alter” oriented blog under our “group name” and this will be the face of Otherkin Aware if it comes to fruition, if not the blog will go bye-bye again.

I know, I know, but it’s not going away, away, like I did before, it’s just changing and becoming more “system friendly”. I always go with what’s best for us as a whole, and that’s what’s best. The other blog was started and it was essentially duplicating a good portion of what’s on here anyway, so why be redundant?

Over the Easter “break” we came out to our mother.

It was an interesting experience which verified that things do indeed work out better when you trust your intuition and don’t give into paranoia. This is something that certain alters really needed to learn, or perhaps clarify is the better word.

We explained to her that our therapist was interested to find things out about our childhood because of the way I’d been diagnosed and went on to explain to her that the actual diagnosis given was “Multiple Personalities”. She was a bit confused at first but didn’t freak out in any way shape or form. She said that she thought that everyone had multiple personalities in one way or another because there’s different faces that you present to different people. We told her that’s true but this goes deeper than that, this is shifts in things and loss of memory, at certain times, and things like that.

She said she’d never really seen anything like that, and we explained that often there’s only a few of us who come out around her. We told her about the schism in the first semester of college, and about what happened to us when we were younger. The abuse we received from our elementary school friend.

We told her we’d been pretty sure she wouldn’t freak out but we didn’t want her to blame herself that was our only fear. She said she only blames herself for the incidents with our step-father. She said that as our mother she wants to see us, “healthy, happy and whole,” and we explained that we look at the therapy as a means to get healthy, that we are a lot happier since we started and getting happier every day thanks to our family, and that we think whole depends on the definition, if she’s meaning whole as in “integrated” we’re not sure that we want to do that, given we’ve been at least a trio since we were very young, what we really want is just to be balanced again, to be able to function seamlessly, with proper communication and no glitches or fuzziness, and definitely no blank spaces.

She said that she understood. Then we started joking around again as normal as I explained about who was who and if there were any specific things that they can and can’t or do and don’t do, like Max being the bartender and Abby and Debbi being the cooks, the Max likes shoes, but Abby likes making jewelry, that Ami is the computer geek and so on.

Her main deep question for the whole thing, “Who got you the tattoos?”

We love our Mom.

This layout will probably not be permanent but I do love it very much and it’s happy circumstance that I came across it after helping a friend find one for her blog. This one is by the same “author” or perhaps artist is a better term.

Anyhow, welcome to the blog. We’ll do a more formal “who’s who” as a page, but suffice it to say there’s going to be a wide variety of psychological and spiritual topics covered here, and there’s going to be a variety of authors as well, but only one username.

Why? if that doesn’t answer it here’s the straightforward explanation. The author is a multiple. She has multiple personalities. This blog is not some strange treatise on how the author survived the Michael Keaton movie “Multiplicity“, it’s about how she and her family and friends, and head-space residents deal with day to day life.

Still here? That’s really cool. I’d love to hear from you and your alters if you have them.

It’s interesting to get confirmations on things some times. In one of the werewolf lives I remember bits and pieces from I had written that the name of the town they lived in began with F, when pushing I said Flanders because the Simpsons was on at the time, but I was feeling it was more like Fal-something definitely two syllables not Fife where my grandfather now was born and grew up, plus Fife is the name of an area not a town. It was around an hour away from Edinburgh, and they didn’t live in the town itself but in an area around it, near something pretty significant.

Well, the other night when I was running the game I designed for roleplay for some friends, which is set around that universe/memories so that I have a good route to come up with plot the game ended, and we decided to start a new one based around the Arthurian legend but still within the same universe. Well, I as looking up about the Arthurian legends and one of the strong contenders for the location of Camelot is up in Scotland. It turns out that it is six minutes from the town of Falkirk which is surrounded by a lot of farmland as the area where Jared, my werewolf grew up, and Falkirk is, according to Google Earth, 46 minutes from Edinburgh by road.

I got goosebumps.

This has been the big issue with us lately, well, no, one of two big issues with us lately, but the only one I’m going to get into at the moment. The other is being worked out as it’s an issue between a particular alter and everyone else including our S.O.

Anyway, the coming out issue is something that we’ve been wondering about since things became “official” whether we should tell certain family members about what’s going on, whether we should tell the people that we know IRL. This is mostly just an issue of friends because there are no co-workers on my part any more.

We’ve talked about this internally and there are, of course, issues between certain alters about this because of those innate fears of being carted off in a strait jacket. We brought it up to the S.O. the other night because it actually came up in conversation when three friends were over. Part of the anniversary gift that we gave to our S.O. involved a “sex card game” where he gets to pick which alter to have fun with, and how and where. For some reason gifts and things came up in conversation and that was mentioned. One of the friends thought at first it was implying he was getting a “screw around free” card and was wondering why that was because S.O. and I make a big deal about being loyal to each other because we are. S.O. said, “No, it’s because Miri has multiple personalities,” it went without any real WTF which we’d been expecting on some levels and then another comment was made and we said, “Well, no, he doesn’t need to screw around if he gets bored I can change things up for him…”

After this it left me wondering, did they not realize this really was the case? Did they think it was some elaborate joke? It’s hard for some of us to accept that people would be so nonchalant about this because of the way it gets built up…but then these are friends, they’ve known us all for some time and obviously know that we’re not going to axe murder anyone (unless S.O. does wind up being unfaithful somehow and then all bets are off LOL) but S.O. pointed out that while we feel that we act singleton pretty good there are quirks and ticks that observant friends notice and know about, and certain shifts are pretty drastic.

We’ve started to note little things ourselves like Jay tends to sound hoarse when he talks, Max takes the voice pitch up, however and speaks a lot faster,  if Jay and Max are around there’s a chance I’ll bum cigarettes or smoke, or if Ami’s up front I might actually wear my glasses.

I think really our biggest worry is how our mother might take it but she’s the one family member we feel really should know. We’re afraid she’ll blame herself but she’s in therapy herself because of issues to do with our step-father so perhaps this really is the best time to tell her if we’re going to. It may well make a lot of things make sense for her if we’re not as good at acting singleton as we felt.

So, therapy went well on Monday. Therapist and I went through my journal entries from 29 Jan to the date of therapy going over the different aspects who came up and she took notes on their personality traits and names and how to pronounce those names.

She said that a couple of them look to be pretty well adjusted and have a good handle on things, that she was grateful I showed her the journal because it meant we could start working on things properly within two months rather than a year and that it was such a valuable tool she was glad that we trusted her enough to share it with her.

She verified that I will certainly not be being locked up because I’m functional enough to sort a lot of this out by “myself” in certain respects and have knowledge of certain terminology. I told her I credited a lot of that to wonderful sites like the Crisses’ KinHost website.

We went over some of the things which have happened in the past few months because they were listed in the journal. She said that the adverse reaction to Cymbalta that I had could be because whichever alter was forward at the time I took it didn’t need the Cymbalta or that if there are times or have been times where certain medications have suddenly stopped working could be because the alter didn’t need it. She’s seen situations like that where one or two alters benefit from a psychiatric medication but that others in the system might not need it at all.

She said that a lot of the work with multiples other than just straight talking therapy can be done via hypnosis and she figured that we would be receptive to that because we have training in that area. I said that yes we would but we weren’t sure that we wanted to go the integration route if that’s what she was suggesting the hypnosis was used for. She said that integration is primarily aided by hypnosis but that wasn’t necessarily the only thing hypnosis could be used for and she certainly wasn’t going to push integration if that wasn’t what we wanted especially as we’ve been at least two pieces for twenty years.

I said that we have wondered about a partial integration of some alters who are less well adjusted to try and ease things for the whole system because there are some that we’ve essentially locked away because they are uncooperative and would have a negative influence on our son.

It’s going to be a little while before we can have another appointment because we have a lot of other things going on in our personal life, appointments, my SO has surgery and the like but the therapist said that despite the fact that standard treatment for multiples is usually twice a week for six months she thinks we’ll be okay because we’ve got a good handle on things and we’re not in a crisis situation. That we should keep up with the journal and see how things are going from there.