August 20, 1999
Multiplicity of Me
I am a believer in the Eight Ball. I asked the same question twice, and it gave me no answer. As in, the eight ball hovered on an angle. Given the question I asked, it's the only answer I would have believed. (Heh. Now aren't you curious?) And true or not, it's just a very cool site. Makes me want to go out and buy an Eight Ball, that's for sure.
I met with Nancy today. It went pretty well, overall. I can tell it's going to take me a little bit to get used to being in therapy again. I spent a good part of the hour with this 'see how okay I am?' sort of face on. I mean, not that things are horrible, but something in me was going out of my way to present everything as 'not that bad'. I hate that, because once I left, it felt dishonest. I kept knowing what I wanted to talk about, but could never find a way to say it or to get there. I feel bad for the way I disappeared on her before. Which is, by the way, the second time I've done that to her. I can't help but wonder if I run when we start getting too close to some issues. Not sure if that's the right answer, but it feels right.
I noticed another habit I have -- and this one's been pointed out to me before. When I'm in a theraputic setting, and I'm nervous, I refer to myself in first person plural as in 'Let's not do that' or 'We don't want that'. Rather humorously, that was first pointed out to me when I had my one and only inpatient hospitalization in April of 1997. There was a social work student (or was she a psych student?) who was terribly young and terribly earnest. She noticed I kept saying 'we' and jumped ALL over it. I know she was convinced she'd found someone with multiple personalities. It took a lot of convincing on my part to reassure her that it was just a nervous figure of speech.
Hearing myself doing that today made me realize something: I do think of myself as many rather than one. Not in an MPD (or is the correct term now Dissociative Identity Disorder?) sense, but just... There are many sides of me. There are many voices in my head. They are all me. I am all of them. They are the different parts of my psyche that fill different roles. Along the lines of the idea of the id, ego and superego, but I'm not limited to just three. There is a Strict voice that tells me what to do, a Child voice that often cries out for nurturing, an Angry voice that fumes and howls when I can't, a Punishing voice that berates me and tries to make me ashamed, an Empowered voice that often tells the Punishing voice to go to hell, and over the past few years, a Soft voice that, although quiet, often can be heard over the others, reminding me of my true worth. There are others, but those are the main ones. As you might imagine, they tend to group themselves along certain lines: Angry and Empowered stand against Strict and Punishing, Child hides behind Soft, and so on. My head is often a rather noisy place. Not as much as it used to be. The trick is learning which voice to listen to and when.
Add to that the numerous characters for role-playing games and stories who speak up and demand their time in the sun, and it becomes clear just how busy my brain is, and why I consider myself a group. But they are all me. If any of them were missing, I would not be who I am.
But I am more than the sum of my parts. Isn't everyone?
Do you have voices in your head? Do you think I'm nuts? Do you understand? Let me know.
