Quotes & Sayings About Personality Disorder

Man can commit atrocities, or incite others to commit them, not because of a personality disorder, but because of his belief in ideas that provoke and justify atrocities. — Branimir Anzulovic

An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation — Kiera Van Gelder

It is unlikely that one ANP will serve as a constant throughout the person's life. Your client is, therefore, likely to have others besides the ones you know, or several who you might think of as "the host". Adults with dissociative disorders often have several ANPs from earlier stages of life inside. They usually have the same name but are of different ages. Sometimes, there are several current ANPs, each of whom assumes she or he is the "real" person and is amnesiac for the existence of the others. Their current knowledge and experience may overlap, while their other characteristics differ somewhat. This makes them glide easily from one to the other, and the therapist can easily miss the switch. p22 — Alison Miller

That was the crux. You. Only you could work on you. Nobody could force you, and if you weren't ready, then you weren't ready, and no amount of open-armed encouragement was going to change that. — Norah Vincent

The tragedy for comedians is there's nothing more they want than to be liked. We desperately seek approval. It's almost like a personality disorder you can do as a job. — Jimmy Carr

I'm self-aware enough to know that I have a somewhat fractured personality. Not exactly multiple personality disorder, but clearly there were different drivers at the wheel depending on my mood, and depending on my needs. Over — Jonathan Maberry

Most dissociative parts influence your experience from the inside rather than exert complete control, that is, through passive influence.
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In fact, many parts never take complete control of a person, but are only experienced internally.
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Frequent switching may be a sign of severe stress and inner conflict in most individuals. — Suzette Boon

Welcome to the psychiatric hotline: if you are obsessive compulsive press one repeatedly. If you are schizophrenic listen closely and a little voice will tell you which number to press. If you have borderline personality disorder hang up; you have already pushed everybody's buttons. — Barbara Oakley

It is important to learn about being multiple, and what works for their healing, from your client. To work with the alters, rather than trying to get the ANP to control the rest of the personality system. — Alison Miller

Over centuries, organised perpetrator groups have observed and studied the way in which extreme childhood traumas, such as accidents, bereavement, war, natural disasters, repeated hospitalisations and surgeries, and (most commonly) child abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional) cause a child's mind to be split into compartments. Occult groups originally utilised this phenomenon to create alternative identities and what they believed to be "possession" by various spirits. In the twentieth century, probably beginning with the Nazis, other organised groups developed ways to harm children and deliberately structure their victims' minds in such a way that they would not remember what happened, or that if they began to remember they would disbelieve their own memories. Consequently, the memories of what has happened to a survivor are hidden within his or her inside parts. — Alison Miller

A crucial element of the real self is its unconditional acceptance of itself. — Michael Adzema

I've grown up with an ethic, call it a part, that insists I hide my pain at all costs. As I talk, I feel this pain leaking out - not just the core symptom of BPD, but all the years of being blamed or ignored for my condition, and all the years I've blamed others for how I am. It's the pain of being told I was too needy even as could never get the help I needed. — Kiera Van Gelder

Changes in Relationship with others:
It is especially hard to trust other people if you have been repeatedly abused, abandoned or betrayed as a child. Mistrust makes it very difficult to make friends, and to be able to distinguish between good and bad intentions in other people. Some parts do not seem to trust anyone, while other parts may be so vulnerable and needy that they do not pay attention to clues that perhaps a person is not trustworthy. Some parts like to be close to others or feel a desperate need to be close and taken care of, while other parts fear being close or actively dislike people. Some parts are afraid of being in relationships while others are afraid of being rejected or criticized. This naturally sets up major internal as well as relational conflicts. — Suzette Boon

What does borderline personality mean, anyhow? It appears to be a way station between neurosis and psychosis: a fractured but not disassembled psyche. Though to quote my post-Melvin psychiatrist: "It's what they call people whose lifestyles bother them. — Susanna Kaysen

To stave off the panic associated with the absence of a primary object, borderline patients frequently will impulsively engage in behaviors that numb the panic and establish contact with and control over some new object. — Christine Ann Lawson

Throughout our times with Christopher [therapist] we were encouraged to work together at communicating on the inside. He pointed out that it would be good for us all to listen-in when an alter was telling his/her story - that it's now safe, no harm will come to us from telling or from knowing. There was once a time when it was very important that we didn't know what had happened; that knowing meant danger or being so overwhelmed with pain and grief that we wouldn't survive. But now it was different. We're safe and strong, and our goal now are to uncover the grisly truth of what's happened to us, so that it's no longer a powerful secret. We can look at it and face the past for what it is - old memories of old events. Today is now,and we can choose to live a different way and believe different things. We were once powerless and vulnerable, but now we were in a position to make choices. We had control over our life. — Carolyn Bramhall

Many ritually abusive cults deliberately divide the personality system down the middle of the head, making sure that there is no communication between the two sides. "Left side" parts might be instructed to speak to no one other than the perpetrators. — Alison Miller

The Gang of Four may have run multiple systems on a single motherboard, but each had its own distinct topology and they only surfaced one at a time. — Peter Watts

Bed the woman until neither of you can walk, and get her out of your system. Remember, no matter what they are or where they come from, all women have one simple birth defect. BPD.
BPD?
Bitch Personality Disorder. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure. — Judith Lewis Herman

There is no evidence of spontaneous remission or integration of personality alters without mental health treatment. Therapy is long-term and requires the establishment of a strong therapeutic relationship with the individual. — Danny Wedding

This will sound strange, and yet I'm sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round of hypercritical thinking, to escape the ravages of an unoccupied mind cannibalizing itself. — Norah Vincent

Parentified children learn to take responsibility for themselves and others early on. They tend to fade into the woodwork and let others take center stage. This extends into adulthood - adult children may put others' needs before their own. They may have difficulty accepting care and attention. — Kimberlee Roth

The primary driver to pathological dissociation is attachment disorganization in early life: when that is followed by severe and repeated trauma, then a major disorder of structural dissociation is created (Lyons-Ruth, Dutra, Schuder, & Bianchi, 2006). — Frank M. Corrigan

I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself. — Kiera Van Gelder

Bitch Personality Disorder — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It was soon after that I, overwhelmed with the implications of that memory, overdosed - well, somebody did but as it was my mouth and my stomach that was involved I had to take the consequences. Somehow or other (did an alter ring him?) Bruce (from my support group) got to know, drove over and took us to the hospital. — Carolyn Bramhall

Thirty seconds of pure awareness is a long time, especially after a lifetime of escaping yourself at all costs. — Kiera Van Gelder

As an undergraduate student in psychology, I was taught that multiple personalities were a very rare and bizarre disorder. That is all that I was taught on ... It soon became apparent that what I had been taught was simply not true. Not only was I meeting people with multiplicity; these individuals entering my life were normal human beings with much to offer. They were simply people who had endured more than their share of pain in this life and were struggling to make sense of it. — Deborah Bray Haddock

The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself or herself as having separate alternate identities that have relative psychological autonomy from one another. At various times, these subjective identities may take executive control of the person's body and behavior and/or influence his or her experience and behavior from "within." Taken together, all of the alternate identities make up the identity or personality of the human being with DID.

- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p7 — James A. Chu

The moment was surreal. A sometimes-autistic young man with two identities lecturing a room full of zombies on feelings and realities. — Jonathan Friesen

Nin - " Jasper said, and his pained tone was a reminder that, however he had transgressed, he hadn't done so entirely callously. His affection for her was not fake; it just was partial. Or perhaps it was fake, he was faking emotion now, and he had a personality disorder; but between these possibilities, she preferred to see him as inadequate rather than clinically diagnosable. "I'm going to do better," he said. "Starting now, I'm getting my act together. Don't give up on me." "Oh, Jasper," Liz said. "I already have. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It appears that the picture of DID as the ongoing clash of polarized personality types (e.g., good girl-bad girl, upright citizen-sociopath) is hard to sustain, although such clashes, when they occur, arrest attention and at times become a concern of the forensic psychiatrist. Most patients have personalities that are named, but there may be those who are nameless or whose appellations are not proper names (i.e.. "the slut," "rage," etc.).
Child personalities, those who retain long periods of continuous awareness, those who claim to know about all of the others, and depressed personalities are the most frequent types enumerated (Putnam et al.. 1986). — Richard P. Kluft

When a client enters therapy with a prior diagnosis, it might be difficult for the therapist to think outside of the box presented. One reason a dissociative individual might have several different diagnoses, however, is that as different parts present, they may also be presenting with diagnostic issues that are different from the host. Such differences especially make sense given the nature of DID. — Deborah Bray Haddock

If your dog, your best friend turns on you, take a good look at yourself. You may have a serious personality disorder. — Will Leamon

Uneducated therapists often have an inability to cope with the behaviors of persecutory alters. They commonly focus on helping one side of the personality system and battling with the other side. When "Satan" or some similar part talks in a deep scary voice to you or to the client, it is easy to think this is a nasty perpetrator or a supernatural being, and to and to oppose it or fight with it or try to banish it. However, if you do this, you will engender the hostility of this part, who has probably been very badly hurt and told a lot of lies. You will foster internal splitting in this way, and get nowhere fast.
Once you recognize that these alters have a protective intent, you can see that working with them involves enlisting them in the service of healing, just as they were originally enlisted in the cause of safety. You will see examples of these kinds of errors, which often result in clients leaving their therapists, in survivor LisaBri's story: When therapists make mistakes. — Alison Miller

Complex PTSD consists of of six symptom clusters, which also have been described in terms of dissociation of personality. Of course, people who receive this diagnosis often also suffer from other problems as well, and as noted earlier, diagnostic categories may overlap significantly. The symptom clusters are as follows:
Alterations in Regulation of Affect ( Emotion ) and Impulses
Changes in Relationship with others
Somatic Symptoms
Changes in Meaning
Changes in the perception of Self
Changes in Attention and Consciousness — Suzette Boon

Some people have a personality disorder where they just have to go against the herd, right or wrong. They're so committed to their own lone-wolf image that ... Well, put it this way: if the others suddenly came over to their side, they'd switch sides. — Andrew Vachss

But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to - if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of "normal" or "healthy" because pain and loneliness are all you remember? — Kiera Van Gelder

Research has also revealed that women who have developed PTSD in relation to early childhood sexual abuse often develop borderline personality disorder. Some severe cases will result in the development of dissociative identity disorder or depersonalization disorder. Patients who have been exposed to protracted and repeated sexual abuse may also develop schizophrenia simultaneously with PTSD. — John M. Duffey

If fourteen people believe they were Cleopatra in a former life, does that mean that Cleopatra had split personality disorder? — Patricia Briggs

Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. — American Psychiatric Association

I know," he said in almost bored contemplation. "My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood."
"I'd chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laces with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud. — Darynda Jones

Psychiatric diagnoses are getting closer and closer to the boundary of normal," said Allen Frances. "That boundary is very populous. The most crowded boundary is the boundary with normal."
"Why?" I asked.
"There's a societal push for conformity in all ways," he said. "There's less tolerance of difference. And so maybe for some people having a label is better. It can confer a sense of hope and direction. 'Previously I was laughed at, I was picked on, no one liked me, but now I can talk to fellow bipolar sufferers on the Internet and no longer feel alone.'" He paused. "In the old days some of them may have been given a more stigmatizing label like conduct disorder or personality disorder or oppositional defiant disorder. Childhood bipolar takes the edge of guilt away from parents that maybe they created an oppositional child. — Jon Ronson

My significant other right now is myself, which is what happens when you suffer from multiple personality disorder and self-obsession. — Joaquin Phoenix

It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.
Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I've learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts. — Olga Trujillo

When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. — Flora Rheta Schreiber

PART 2
I felt doomed to death,
But in a flash,
Before I could reduce my thoughts
To an emotion,
I felt a mass leave my body:
Departing.
Then my mind becomes anonymous
As is each night.
Just unfinished thoughts,
and a deep sickness inside,
As I was forced to swallow it,
Something I've tried to bury deep inside my
psyche to this day.
(poem written by alter personality) — Alice Jamieson

Dissociative parts of the personality are not actually separate identities or personalities in one body, but rather parts of a single individual that are not yet functioning together in a smooth, coordinated, flexible way. P14 — Suzette Boon

The closest term to sociopath is antisocial personality disorder. The criteria for diagnosis include impairments in self-esteem, self-direction, empathy, intimacy, plus the use of manipulation and deceit, and the presence of hostility, callousness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a lack of concern for one's limitations: risk-taking. — A.J. Rich

You take after your dad, a high-functioning sociopath with an incurable organic personality disorder. It's one of the special-sauce variety, the kind with a known genetic cause. Your uncle Albert was something different, and worse: He was a man of faith. — Charles Stross

The reported numbers of MPD alter personality states are given great play by critics. As usual, these critics rarely consult the research. Although cases with dozens or scores of alters have been reported, the mode is 3 and the median typically 8-10 (see, e.g., Putnam et al., 1986; Coons et al., 1988; Ross, Norton, and Wozney, 1989f; Kluft, 1991). — Frank W. Putnam

I have heard that we are spirits having a human experience. Perhaps those of us who have no conscience are dark spirits having a human experience. — P.A. Speers

Mary was my first encounter with dissociative identity disorder (DID), which at that time was called multiple personality disorder. As dramatic as its symptoms are, the internal splitting and emergence of distinct identities experienced in DID represent only the extreme end of the spectrum of mental life. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Do you have a multiple personality disorder? — Stephenie Meyer

Wikipedia says I have Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is dumb, because I'm all kids of social--I love society, society is like the ocean to my shark--and I have plenty of personality, and it's only a disorder if it messes up your life, and my life is awesome. — Harrison Geillor

When you fall in love, everything is impregnated with new meaning. It is as if you suddenly have borderline personality disorder. — Chloe Thurlow

The general public is bewildered and fascinated by Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder. Through books, television and movies, a distorted view of MPD/DID is often presented. While it may make for good entertainment, it fails to truly present the depth and intensity of the inherent trauma. Outside the ordinary day-to-day life experience of most people, it is hard to understand. — David Yeung

I'm so single. It's funny. I'm usually a relationship girl. I love being in love and having a partner in crime. But it's good to be your own partner in crime. God, that makes me sound like I have multiple-personality disorder. — Brittany Snow

It is properly said that the Devil can "quote Scripture to his purpose." The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes - from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world's religions. Perhaps then it is not so much scientists as people who are morally ambiguous. It — Carl Sagan

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! — Alison Miller

In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn't acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process because of three key biological vulnerabilities (1993a): First, we're highly sensitive to emotional stimuli (meaning we experience social dynamics, the environment, and our own inner states with an acuteness similar to having exposed nerve endings). Second, we respond more intensely and much more quickly, than other people. And third, we don't 'come down' from our emotions for a long time. One the nerves have been touched, the sensations keep peaking. Shock waves of emotion that might pass through others in minutes keep cresting in us for hours, sometimes days. — Kiera Van Gelder

Do You Have DID?

Determining if you have DID isn't as easy as it sounds. In fact, many clinicians and psychotherapists have such difficulty figuring out whether or not people have DID that it typically takes them several years to provide an accurate diagnosis. Because many of the symptoms of DID overlap with other psychological diagnoses, as well as normal occurrences such as forgetfulness or talking to yourself, there is a great deal of confusion in making the diagnosis of DID. Although this section will provide you with information which may help you determine if you have DID, it is a good idea to consult with a professional in the mental health field so that you can have further confirmation of your findings. — Karen Marshall

We don't want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful - not only to that member of the community but the entire community. — Kamala Harris

The final entity was the beast. The steel juggernaut that raked claws made of screams along the bones of their soul.All of the pain that Jango had endured as a child had never left his mind. That pain had created a sort of primordial ooze in his fractured mind that sloshed and bled until the beast was birthed from the suffering. The beast lived in a cage forged of willpower deep in the recesses of the mad matrix of his splintered mind. It rattled the cage and roared for release, but he was loath to ever set the beast loose ... again. — Cedric Nye

The mass media stereotype of an MPD patient is a woman harboring an internal collection of delightfully different people ranging from wide-eyed little kids to kung fu masters and nuclear physicists. Skeptics tend to focus concretely on the impossibility of there being 10 or 20 or 100 separate people inside that woman's body (e.g., Sarbin, 1995). By and large, this stereotype will not go away.

Alter personalities are real. They do exist - not as separate, individuals, but as discrete dissociative states of consciousness. When considered from this perspective, they are not nearly so amazing to behold or so difficult to accept. A fair reading of the MPD literature shows that authorities have long subscribed to this thesis: "Only when taken together can all of the personality states be considered a whole personality" (Coons, 1984, p. 53). Paradoxically, it is the critics who implicitly accept the view that the alter personalities are separate people. — Frank W. Putnam

As soon as realized that I was treating MPD clients, I read the few existing books on the condition, attended a workshop at the Justice Institute, and used some sexual abuse prevention money to organize a workshop where therapists could exchange information and educate each other about dissociation. There, I learnt something that I found really shocking. Many people
suffering from MPD had been severely abused throughout their childhood years by organized groups, including Satanic and other "dark-side" religious cults. Moreover, quite a few of them were still involved in those groups, although they were not aware of their involvement, because it was other "personalities" - dissociated parts of them - who went off to the groups' rituals. I was skeptical, to say the least. — Alison Miller

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we? — Alison Miller

Many alters can be "stuck in the past" and still think it is 1968 or 1987 or some other year when they were still physically a child and the abusers were in charge of them. — Alison Miller

Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has at least a rudimentary sense of "I" (Van der Hart et al., 2004). In my view, all of the environmentally based "psychopathology" or problems in living can be seen through this lens. — Elizabeth F. Howell

Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves.
Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else's anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely. — Suzette Boon

You are a warrior in a dark forest, with no compass and are unable to tell who the actual enemy is, So you never feel safe .. — Anonymous

You think she's got a personality disorder?"
"No, she's just a nasty bitch. An unpleasant personality isn't a medical condition. Just a symptom of not being slapped around the head enough. — Karen Traviss

Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and believe it did not exist. She was Joe's perfect mate. — Judith Spencer

The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl's face-- I think Suzanne recognized it. Of course my hand would anticipate the weight of a knife. The particular give of a human body. There was so much to destroy. — Emma Cline

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time. — Deborah Bray Haddock

I'm back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She's lying on an alter, and they're hurting her. The bastards. They're hurting her. There is blood all over the place. There are candles burning and people chanting." I could hardly believe what I was seeing and I cried out, "What is this? I don't understand. What the hell is this?"
"Ask your unconscious mind to tell you, Suzie," he responded, ever so gently. "Ask."
I did ask. And the answer swept over me with a force so strong that I felt as if I had been knocked backward.
"Lord! Oh, Lord. This is satanic ritual abuse, Francisco. That's what this is! That's what this is!" I screamed. "Satanic ritual abuse. And they're using Little Suzie as part of their goddamned ritual.
p150 — Suzie Burke

For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned - and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear. — Kiera Van Gelder

We therapists often make inaccurate assumptions about people living with DID and DDNOS. They often appear to be "just like us," so we often assume their experience of life reflects our own. But this is profoundly untrue. It results in a communication gap, and, as a consequence, treatment errors. Because the dominant culture is one of persons with a single sense of self, most with multiple "selves" have learned to hide their multiplicity and imitate those who are singletons (that is, have a single, non-fragmented personality). Therapists who do not understand this sometimes describe their clients' alters without acknowledging their dissociation, saying only that they have different "moods." In overlooking dissociation, this description fails to recognize the essential truth of such disorders, and of the alters. It was difficult for me to comprehend what life was like for my first few dissociative clients. — Alison Miller

I can honestly say that my misery had been transformed into common unhappiness, so by Freud's definition I have achieved mental health. — Susanna Kaysen

A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one ANP [alternate personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abuse and also of the multiplicity, and to "pass as normal" in the real world. The ANP is just an alter specialized for handling the adult world - in other words, the "front person" for the system. — Alison Miller

It is now recognised that dissociation is a way of forgetting, for a time. The mind siphons off the bad memories into a separate part, and reclaiming those hidden-away memories us a complex process. So, when the memories resurface it does not feel as though they belong to you, it feels alien, more as if someone had told them to you, or you had seen the images in a film. — Carolyn Bramhall

Another of the difficulties of having DID is the denial. DID is a disorder of denial. It has to be because if the original person knew about the alters and felt their pain, they would either go crazy and be hospitalized permanently, or would die. — Eve N. Adams

I spent months fighting the fact that she had a personality disorder, but everything changed when I started asking myself how I had to adapt to work with a boss like her. — John Izzo

I was increasingly both horrified and sceptical about these memories - I had no recall of these things at all, though I couldn't imagine why I'd want to make it all up either. It felt as though it had all happened to somebody else, I was not there - it wasn't me - when those people did nasty things.
But then, of course, it didn't feel like me, that's the whole point of dissociation - to create distance between the victim and her experience of the abuse. The alters were created for just that purpose: so that I'd not be aware that it happened to me, but rather to "others". The trouble is, in reality it was my body that took the abuse. It was only my mind that was divided, and sooner or later the amnesic barriers were bound to come down.
And that's exactly what had begun to happen as I heard their stories. They triggered a vague and growing sense in me that this really is my story. — Carolyn Bramhall

Cincinatti was where I learned that running away from your problems has a three-month statute of limitations, a lesson I have found repeatedly to be true. Three months is still a first impression
of a city, of other people, of yourself in that place. But there comes a point when you can no longer hide who you are, and the reactions of others become all too familiar ... — Stacy Pershall

It felt increasingly, as I became more whole, that I had made it all up, and that I was a phoney. I had to come to some place of acceptance. If I made it all up, then I am an unspeakably evil person, leading so many wonderful, intelligent people astray. What a scheming mind I must have. I knowledge will be hard too live with. But harder still is the thought that perhaps, just perhaps it is all true; that I really was horribly, ritualistically abused in a satanic setting, over and over again and as a result my mind fragmented. The implications of that are completely overwhelming. It was me, my body, that they did those things to. No, I would rather believe I am an evil and deceitful person. At least the I can change, and say sorry, and live a better life from now on. — Carolyn Bramhall

People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement. — Marsha M. Linehan

Extreme versions of DID occasionally develop in response to particularly horrific ongoing trauma (e.g., children exploited through involvement in years of forced prostitution), with so-called poly-frgamentation, encompassing dozens or even hundreds of personality states. In general, the complexity of dissociative symptoms appears to be consistent with the severity of early traumatiation. That is, less severe abuse will result in fewer dissociative symptoms, and more severe abuse will result in more complex dissociative disorders. — James A. Chu

Interestingly, the patients who presented to me self-diagnosed [with Dissociative Identity Disorder had tried to tell previous therapists of their plight, but had been disbelieved. These therapists had used fallacious "capricious criteria" (KIuft, 1988) to discredit the diagnosis; e.g., that the patient could not possibly have MPD because she was aware of the other alters [sic!]. — Richard P. Kluft

From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are not infections, but infarctions; they do not follow from the negativity of what is immunologically foreign, but from an excess of positivity. Therefore, they elude all technologies and techniques that seek to combat what is alien. — Byung-Chul Han

I might have some sort of personality disorder. I might not have proper filters; it might be some kind of version of Asperger's meets Tourettes meets prose. — Jonathan Ames

I honestly didn't believe I could bear any more suffering. I was convinced that the child within me was just too young to endure all this, much less understand it. She just wanted to be normal. But another part of me knew that to become normal, all the pieces of this puzzle had to become conscious.
p164 — Suzie Burke

Murk can be described as an enfeebled fog with a personality disorder; it is more troubled than ethereal, sulking moodily over our lives at the end of the day. — Michael Leunig

If you do not have a close friendship with your children, I will.--Child Molester warning all parents from the book Type 1 Sociopath — P.A. Speers

Owing to a poorly defined sense of self, people with BPD rely on others for their feelings of worth and emotional caretaking. So fearful are they of feeling alone that they may act in desperate ways that quite frequently bring about the very abandonment and rejection they're trying to avoid. — Kimberlee Roth

It's just what you're stuck with, the lousy furniture you can't change. The educated me knows hell's nothing, a fiction I happened to inherit. The other me knows I'm going there. There must be a dozen mes these days, taking turns looking the other way."
"It's the postmodern solution," I said. "Controlled multiple personality disorder. Pick a fiction and allocate it an aspect of yourself. — Glen Duncan

I thought the doctor's diagnosis was the first step to mending her. I know now that a diagnosis is taken in like an orphaned dog. We brought it home, unsure how to care for it, to live with it. It raised its hackles, snarled, hid in the farthest corner of the room; but it was ours, her diagnosis. The diagnosis was timid and confused, and genetically wired to strike out. — Christa Parravani

FMSF Advisory Board Members Dr Martin Orne and Dr Louis Jolyon West are CIA and military mind control contractors with TOP SECRET CIA clearance. Both received MKULTRA contracts to study dissociative disorders, implantation of false memories, and techniques for creation of Manchurian Candidates. The dissociative disorders, false memories, and the therapist-created multiple personality are the focus of the FMSF campaign. — Colin A. Ross

Everybody's a bit screwed up, you know. You can take it as symptoms of a disorder, or you can take it as personality. Me, I'd rather think it as parts of personality. — Jarvis Cocker