Two of my partners had a literal diagnosed DID, while I myself can’t dig up separate metaphorical parts even after trying, which leads me to believe that there is a spectrum of people between “not even metaphorical” to “it sort of makes sense to talk about an inner child” to “IFS reflects how my brain operates pretty accurately” to “I think I have mental parts inside me I have no control over” to “What do you mean by ‘I’? This particular me that is writing this is just one of many parts that show up at different times and in different circumstances, sometimes in groups, sometimes in mixes, and I wish I had my own body!”
Iirc, Dr. Tori Olds also talked in one of her videos about it being a spectrum. And Scott’s Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics talks about how most psychiatric conditions are spectrums, not binary “you have it or you don’t”. However, it doesn’t talk specifically about parts/DID stuff.
Scott seems to be behind the times re DID. Most psychiatrists are, for some reason, despite the diagnosis being in DSM-V and in ICD-10. Therapists are somewhat less conservative. But he is certainly accurate about the continuum part. It’s not a disorder unless it affects your daily life strongly enough, which is exactly what he says:
In my practice, I’ve moved away from asking questions like “does this patient really have ADHD”? Those kinds of questions make me feel like I’m trying to decode their symptoms to uncover some secret variable that could be either 0 or 1. But there is no such variable. Instead, I ask “how much trouble does this person have with paying attention?”. This is usually pretty easy to figure out; the patient will just tell me if I ask!
Likewise, I’ve moved away from thought processes like “If this person has ADHD, they genuinely need a stimulant; if not, they’re just faking”. Instead, I try to think of how much the patient’s symptoms are disabling them, whether a stimulant would relieve some of those symptoms, how likely the symptoms are to go away without an stimulant, and, based on all this, whether the benefits of a stimulant outweigh the risks.
No, not that post. I think there was another post on how a mental illness is a product of the culture which muses that DID is more frequent (and iatrogenic) when society accepts it or something. The post itself is great though, can’t find it now.
Two of my partners had a literal diagnosed DID, while I myself can’t dig up separate metaphorical parts even after trying, which leads me to believe that there is a spectrum of people between “not even metaphorical” to “it sort of makes sense to talk about an inner child” to “IFS reflects how my brain operates pretty accurately” to “I think I have mental parts inside me I have no control over” to “What do you mean by ‘I’? This particular me that is writing this is just one of many parts that show up at different times and in different circumstances, sometimes in groups, sometimes in mixes, and I wish I had my own body!”
Iirc, Dr. Tori Olds also talked in one of her videos about it being a spectrum. And Scott’s Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics talks about how most psychiatric conditions are spectrums, not binary “you have it or you don’t”. However, it doesn’t talk specifically about parts/DID stuff.
Scott seems to be behind the times re DID. Most psychiatrists are, for some reason, despite the diagnosis being in DSM-V and in ICD-10. Therapists are somewhat less conservative. But he is certainly accurate about the continuum part. It’s not a disorder unless it affects your daily life strongly enough, which is exactly what he says:
What do you mean by this? To clarify, I was saying that his post wasn’t making any claims about DID specifically.
No, not that post. I think there was another post on how a mental illness is a product of the culture which muses that DID is more frequent (and iatrogenic) when society accepts it or something. The post itself is great though, can’t find it now.
Oh I see.