Are different selves in DID just “coping mechanisms”? It’s possible that a coping mechanism can be just that – cooking a good meal because it is calming and others appreciate it. Reading a book to escape stress for a while. When these skills became solidified and the part of you who performs them continues to hone those skills with new memories and experiences, are they still just coping mechanisms? Or, because they are often used to escape pain with distraction, are these new, real, selves?

What it feels like

I am amazed at the depth and intensity of emotion that happens in me – sometimes from completely different parts of me. I can become enmeshed in something…like the music – hearing and feeling it, consumed by it. It shuts down every other part of me. I am the music, the strings, the brass, I feel the lines of the score flow through me, nudge my heart, caress my soul.

Diving – complete physical and emotional immersion – overwhelming senses with peace and beauty. Strength. Spending time gaining the confidence of some sea creature, enough for a baby octopus to wrap its tentacles around the end of my camera and then tug on my finger. To play and dance, chase and be chased by sea lions and then be rewarded with a sea lion kiss.

It is joy that explodes from me, too intense to be contained!

Sometimes when I write…sometimes a sentence or a paragraph will be perfect…the emotional process of finding the words – being in the zone to somehow capture 4 dimensions on a flat screen with little black cryptic characters. That is joy! The Artist in me. Silence around me but it is unheard behind the words in my head and fingers.

<There is also deep anger and rage. You punch walls. Tell them that the joy can switch to anger of the same intensity in an instant. You’ve got some screwed up brain wiring. You’ve read the studies. You must write someday of those coping mechanisms as well.>

You have so many positive coping mechanisms

My therapist calls my music, my art, my writing, my diving, etc., all wonderful positive coping mechanisms that came out from the trauma. In truth, she is right – they saved me.

But who I am now, all that I have accomplished in my life, is due to the my trauma. The parts of me who split and then turned their “jobs” of protecting me into their own lives, interests, and eventually, expertises. My published writer could no more lead a class than my nurturer could solve an engineering problem.

This made my DID harder to detect. I was told I was this amazing and organized woman to accomplish so much and still handle raising a family.

But it is so hard to accept that my splits, my selves, what/who allowed me not only to survive years ago, are the reasons for my successes today. The shame of all of this makes it feel like those accomplishments belong to someone else. Not to me.

I pushed back on my therapist – I don’t want to be defined by how I had to cope! Yes, other parts of me wrote my book, other parts of me are the terrific teacher my students love, etc etc etc. But to continue to call these parts of me “coping mechanisms” is not only insulting, it continues to remind me of the attacks that caused this mess in the first place.

The best words from my best friends

Yes, as a good friend said very bluntly to me, “You survived, and after what happened to you, you could have crashed and ended up some dumb cunt. But instead you are a tormented artist rising from the ashes into something beautiful.”

“Dumb cunt, but possibly a happier person,” I challenged.

“But not the strong amazing person you are now.”

Completely eloquent? Somewhat. A positive reality-check into my existence? Yes. I love that man.

My mother echoed that sentiment. Not in exactly the same way (heh heh), but the same message. “You could be married to a bum who goes out drinking beer every night with his buddies, you work at Walmart, and you want me to watch your three screaming kids all the time so you could go out and get your nails done.”

My best friend texted, “U r a remarkable woman. And a brave woman too.”

I know they speak genuinely, from their hearts. Someday I hope I will truly believe them, in my heart. My heart that has such issues with true and continued trust.

Now that I know my diagnoses (PTSD, DID), I have learned so much more. It is no disease. As Wolf asserts, is it a creative coping skill. But it can become so much more, these “coping mechanisms” are now ME. Parts of me. Some still very distinct, but they are all me and many of us are successful in our own rights.

Even though my trauma CAUSED all this, I don’t want to be DEFINED by the trauma or its aftermath. My friends, who try to understand these diagnoses but who cannot, still try to help me believe.

Chewy on the inside

One of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons is the two polar bears breaking into an igloo: “I just love these things! Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.”

I guess that is kind of like us. The birth child in there, protect by these “coping mechanisms.”

I wrote yesterday about an Interview with Valerie Wolf. She commented that the birthchild who all the splits protected may be

somebody who looks kind of flat, who doesn’t have a lot of feeling, who seems kind of pale and passive … the reason is that all of the things that make for character have been split among the parts.

This part or self may be “normal” or may carry much shame. But this part is often unaware of the splits, these other parts that run off and do both great and terrible things. This small and vulnerable part may see the aftermath, the evidence of these good and terrible things, and become withdrawn with questions – what is wrong with me?

For years, I thought I was crazy, that the core of me was somehow damaged and that I must hide it at all costs.

Last summer when I finally spoke to my mother. A word she leaked out on the phone, a question on her mind from years past, and gently even now, not expecting an answer from me, tentatively sliding with a small paw out on the table.

Insanity.

My god, what happened? I am safe now, but my god what did they tell her all those years ago? What did they tell me?

Who are they?

Admittedly, a word with so many connotations and denotations as to be practically useless in any real way other than to whisper the long buried query, what really happened?

Now I know I am not insane. We all know. A tad nuts in the supportive sense, but I am not crazy.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Keats.