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Life After MPD/DID: An Article on Multiple Personality Disorder and Child Abuse
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I will speak to those among you who may know a person with mpd, or may be survivors of childhood abuse. I will speak as a person with multiple personality disorder who continues to struggle with both mpd and with day to day living.

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I have found MPD to be both a burden and a blessing. I have come to love Life.

For me, a normal childhood was not an option. A normal adolescence and adulthood became impossible. I, like most people of a certain age with multiple personality, was misdiagnosed. So little was know about dissociative identity disorders, or child abuse, that it was easy to see me as simply "crazy." I was diagnosed at an early age, incorrectly with schizophrenia. I often received treatment, therefore, of little or no value to the underlying cause of my odd behaviors and my innermost pain. It meant a lifetime of confusion, psychiatric hospitalizations, inappropriate anti-psychotic medications, and an inability to function. My life was full of self-doubt, self-destructive behaviors, emotional pain, and isolation. Suicide was seen as a viable alternative, often the only option.

Before people with mpd are able to find their way to the truth of their abuse, to the existence of multiple personalities, and to proper treatment, they sometimes attempt to end the pain by suicide. I believe that the part of us that is survivor is innately present and will come forward even in suicide. It is my feeling that many multiples die at their own hand by accidental death in a suicide attempt that was unstoppable.

Like many others, I did not know exactly what was wrong, just that something was terribly wrong. I believed forever that I was bad. I did not know what I had done that I could be so bad, but I believed that God hated me and wanted me dead. Then the memories came. I was face to face with flashbacks of childhood abuse that were long ago buried deep inside. With the memories, came the personalities, ready to make themselves known. These alter personalities had been hidden for a lifetime from the world, from each other, and from me. My life, which until then was fraught with confusion, was now in utter chaos.

As I understand it, the splitting apart of the self happens so that the child is spared living through the nightmare of abuse. MPD is always traced back to childhood abuse and trauma. The mind can split into many, many personalities if the abuse is prolonged. In this way, no one part of the mind has to experience the whole of the abuse. The fact that the mind of a child can find a way to separate itself from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse is simply...miracle. Faced with ongoing and escalating levels of assault upon the child's body, the child's mind sends out stronger, more resilient parts to take over. This allows the "self" to cope with the horror. It allows the child to survive what might otherwise be fatal to both body and mind. This splitting has to continue until the abuse stops. If unchecked by the outside world, the splitting will continue. The alter-personalities will often remain hidden until the mind grows, finds its strength, and allows the memories to come to the top of the conscious mind. The secrets can now be told.

No one child could survive this level of abuse--no one child. People who dissociate have suffered horrendous childhood abuse. It is precisely because it is impossible to remain in the abuse, that the child- mind finds a way to leave. It allows another part to come in for the moment, and another, and another--to live through it, and not be present in it. This is how we survived childhood.

When the dissociative mind is able to withstand the truth of the locked away memories, the personalities come out into the open. From my experience, you cannot control it, you cannot make the personalities appear, or not appear. They come. My mind, in part or in whole, knew that it was time for the memories to come and the parts to show themselves. This was all part of the original plan--survival. More than that--a plan to live.

Disorders - Dissociative Identity Disorder