Lately I've been seeing several pages in the splitting/therapy/MPD model which start out with the same old crap, severe child abuse before the age of five blah blah blah highly creative survival technique blah blah blah please gag me with my fucking keyboard, and then go on to say, "But I am also an empowered multiple, because I don't think of it as a disorder and we aren't going to integrate!" Uh-huh. Now, I have no clue where these folks even heard the term empowered multiplicity, but so far as I can tell, they don't know empowered multiplicity from their rear end. I don't give a rip how functional you are or think you are in comparison to other multiples-- if you call it "MPD" or "DID" and refer to yourself as a disorder, you are not an empowered multiple. You can call yourself whatever the hell you want, but when your page is about nothing but your therapy sessions and how much you hate being multiple and all those icky alters and your newest horrible flashback that made you want to go jump off a cliff, all I can say is that there's nothing new under this sun. And what's more, it pisses me off to see people spewing out the same old gunk appropriating and mis-using the term empowered multiplicity, thus giving off the impression to the rest of society that this is what empowerment means, that this is really the best we can do. Being empowered is about a hell of a lot more than subscribing to a code of beliefs. It's something you live. Just because you don't want to integrate does not mean you are an empowered multiple. Neither does simply believing it's not a disorder, or that people in a system are people and not fragments or pieces. I've seen some of the most god-awfully dysfunctional multiples bellowing about how they're "not a disorder" and are "a very special gift," and that's as may be, but when you're not even TRYING to take one single step outside the door or make any decisions for yourself without your therapist's stamp of approval, you're not doing those of us who DO work very hard to let people know we are functional, normal human beings any favors by screeching from your soapbox. What is empowered multiplicity? It is about having the power to define ourselves and to refuse the labels and boxes with which society tries to control us. It's about listening to YOU and YOUR SYSTEM, not blindly accepting whatever spew your therapist tries to push on you. Is it possible to be an abuse survivor and be an empowered multiple? Of course; plenty of empowered systems have experienced childhood abuse. Is it possible to be in therapy and be an empowered multiple? Definitely, just so long as you're doing it for yourself and your household and not because you think it's required. Is it possible to have unresolved trauma issues and be an empowered multiple? Sure; plenty of singlets have that too. But if you're the kind of multiple who's been in therapy for a decade and are nowhere near feeling any better and are staying around because you blindly accepted the dictate that you "have to get worse before you can get better," and dutifully report every fuzzy mental image to your therapist who interprets it as a new recovered memory, and can't get through the day without wanting to kill or mutilate each other or the body, and your life consists largely of therapy sessions and dubious horrific flashbacks, you are NOT an empowered multiple. If someone told you to drink drain cleaner because it would help you in the long run, even if it tasted horrible and made you feel like shit and ate holes in your internal organs, would you do it? Would you actually believe that you were going to come out completely cured after going through all that? There's a damn good reason drain cleaner tastes horrible, which is because IT IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU. The body knows that what you're doing is bad for it; the pain and the taste are the warning signals, the body's way of letting you know that this is not good for it. So you've been in therapy for six years and you feel like shit and you're nowhere near the level of functionality you were when you started therapy, and you might as well be drinking drain cleaner for all you seem to be improving, and yet you keep doing it because you actually believe it's going to help you and that you have to get worse first. Hello! Doot doot! Anybody home? You're fucking miserable because IT IS NOT HELPING YOU! IT'S MAKING YOU WORSE! The emotional agony you feel is not "a necessary step to healing," it's your brain's way of letting you know that what you're doing IS NOT GOOD FOR YOU! If your gut instincts say to call it quits and go back to the life you had before, DO IT! THAT, my friends, is an empowered thing to do. To step away from paradigms that are hurting you and define your multiplicity and your selves on your own terms, and if you do need help resolving abuse issues, get them on your terms-- don't blindly accept the therapist's dictates that this is somehow going to make you better. If you keep feeling worse, it's not going to make you better. And neither will drinking drain cleaner. Period. End of story. To be able to stand firm against psychologists, against society, against ingrained attitudes and beliefs, and to say, "No, you are wrong. This is not multiplicity as we live it, and you do not know our truth better than we do"-- and to continue to believe it, in the face of those who try to take our truth and our reality away from us-- that is, to me, the heart and essence of being empowered. To believe that your life and your truth is worth more than what some therapist who's known you for all of five minutes tells you. Because honestly, while it pisses me off to high heaven to see singlet therapists and self-proclaimed experts trying to tell everyone who and what we are-- and that who and what are not our truth-- it also pisses me off just as much to see other multiples stuck in the disordered paradigm carrying on and presuming to speak for us. You do NOT speak for us, any more than Ralph Allison or Colin Ross does. And you do not speak for empowered multiples either, so piss off until you can learn to stop letting your therapist do the thinking for you. Back |