September 2024
I am a critic of the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. Although I accept that I have the underlying disorder that the label of DID is attempting to describe, I strongly disagree with how the disorder is understood, conceptualized, and portrayed. It took me a long time to accept this, and I was very confused by what DID was and how it presents for over a year after my diagnosis. It was only once I realized that I am experiencing the exact same things that others who present their disorder as being more florid are experiencing, I’m just interpreting and portraying my experiences differently did this diagnosis make sense to me—I am not someone who is dramatic or easily influenced by culture, yet culture greatly influences how DID presents.
culture DID dynamic nominalism Hacking identity looping kinds philosophy
10 minutes
June 2024
DID is (mostly) a culture-bound disorder
It’s been nearly 2.5 years since I first started my DID self discovery journey, and in that time I’ve gained massive amounts of insight into how my early childhood experiences have shaped my way of experiencing the world. Before I gained this insight, however, came confusion. Specifically, I truly didn’t understand how this fantastical-sounding diagnosis of DID that had been given to me by multiple mental health professionals applied to me and my experiences.
conceptualization culture DID Hacking identity looping kinds
3 minutes
December 2023
The sensationalized conceptualization of DID
When a DID diagnosis was first put on the table for me, I thought there was no way that I could have this disorder. It sounds, quite frankly, fantastical. There is a common narrative of one having “multiple people living in the same body” which dominates the representation of this disorder online, in the media, and even in most therapeutic spaces. In reality, that is only one conceptualization of this disorder, and is not what I personally subscribe to.
autism conceptualization culture DID identity language narrative
15 minutes
March 2023
… it’s about childhood trauma. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) can be thought of as a coping mechanism one may develop when they experience repeated trauma in early childhood. It is arguably one of the most misunderstood and controversial mental health conditions, perhaps because it’s been repeatedly sensationalized in the media. Or, maybe because the name and clinical description of the disorder implies that it’s about having multiple identities or personality states.
6 minutes