Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance

This entry was started by Sam, one of our alters, while we were trying to work today...but then Girl Crush showed up and he took a "backseat", because he doesn't like people much, but likes her...and didn't want her to see him as angry as he was.

Most people on Twitter have met Sam, but he never sticks around much and we usually end up leaving Twitter for big portions of time when he is out...he doesn't like The Room we have to work in on Wednesdays because it makes him front, and the Wednesday people make him extra angry.

Apparently a couple of our Twitter followers don't like Sam much, we even lost one because Sam was cussing a lot more than this follow thought necessary. One girl asked if she could follow some of us but not others, and we had to explain that, just like being our friends in real life, you don't really get to choose which one of us you hang out with, just like sometimes we don't get to choose who we hang out with, when we end up hanging out with each others friends; we don't always like the same people.

So, here's what Sam had to say...we will indicate areas we added on our own in red, because now we're "blended" a bit, and so our views may not be as strong, or the same...

(Sam writes every once in awhile, usually we don't promote the sharing of his writing because it's ugly and angry...but this one we agreed had some relevancy, more of a point than what he usually writes)

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I understand I am not some people's favourite person/personality, and honestly, I don't really give a flying fuck about that. What I do care about, and do get pissed off about, is people who make fun of, reference, or pretend to deal with things that they don't even have a basic understanding about.

I wanted to talk about one of the many things that pisses me off, and it's about Twitter. (though that place pisses me off in general) Sam hates Twitter...we make him use it once and awhile, but he'd prefer not to.

One thing that makes me FUCKING angry on Twitter (besides inspiration quotes people pull out of the asses of other people who were apparently born with said asses filled with sunshine - that pisses a lot of us off, actually) is people who make fun of/joke about mental illness and get them all them mixed up - it only works to spread misinformation and increase the stigma that revolves around mental illness disorders. Fine, joke about it, but at least know WHAT you are joking about.

Understand that hearing voices is NOT Multiple Personality Disorder; while it can be a part of it, hearing voices is more schizophrenia, unless those voices are other people who use the same body for their own purposes and goals; like sharing a vehicle. Of course we hear voices, but we recgonize them as each other, not some outside source. Many people, including ones we know, associate their voices with angels, demons, and other types of "characters"...they do not recognize them as other people - from our understanding, and from the descriptions we have found regarding the differences between the two disorders.

Furthermore, you cannot just "develop" Multiple Personality Disorder for no reason - there are criteria involved in the development of this disorder, most notable is trauma of some sort. Following Sams entry there is information on what MPD/DID is, what the causes, symptoms and characteristic are.

One post that Sam found today that pissed him off is this one, though over the past week or so, probably since it's #MentalHealthMonth, we've seen a lot of Tweets of this nature...he gets angry a lot easier than the rest of us, so he contacted this kid openly...

Twitter username removed to protect identity of said "#douche"

Schizophrenia is not as "us" situation, the person with it does not associate it with being part of them, they [not sure where Sam was going with this sentence...and we will not finish it for him, sorry. The rest of this post is information....we've got another entry to work on, more of a group one, so we'll leave you with the rest of this to read...we encourage people to learn about these disorders, because they are often misdiagnosed, and are all separate, with their own issues and hurtles to overcome]

We wrote about the diffrences, pulling the info from actual sources, this month in our entry: 

We Discuss Three Mis-Diagnosed Mental Illnesses

http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/05/we-discuss-three-mis-diagnosed-mental.html

Contrasting the Three Very Different Disorders

People with bipolar disorder usually can lead fairly “normal” lives, hold down a regular job, have a happy relationship and family, even be very successful in a career. People with bipolar disorder do not hear voices that aren’t there, and they do not have multiple personalities in their bodies. People with bipolar disorder do best when they stick to some treatment regimen.

Many people with schizophrenia often have a more difficult time functioning in normal society. Because of the nature of the disorder, people with schizophrenia often have a hard time staying in treatment, and an even harder time with social relationships, family, friends, and work. Still one of the most stigmatized disorders in mental health, help in many communities can be hard to come by and many people with schizophrenia end up homeless and forgotten by their family and society.People with schizophrenia who have strong community and family support and resources do well, and can lead happy, healthy, fulfilling lives, with rewarding family and social relationships. People with schizophrenia can be depressed or manic, but it is usually as a result of the schizophrenia itself (e.g. they are depressed because they have schizophrenia). If a person hears voices (not all people with schizophrenia do), they do not recognize the voices as being a part of themselves. 

People with multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder (DID), can often lead successful, “normal” lives with healthy, happy relationships with others. While, like people with schizophrenia, they can “hear voices” in their head, the voices are recognized by the person as different identities within themselves (not as external voices from outside themselves). Such identities may help the person function in life, and may allow the person to live their lives with only disruption. Others with DID have a more difficult time, because the identities take over parts of their life, making accounting for time throughout the day challenging and frustrating. While a person may become depressed with DID, it is secondary to the DID symptoms themselves (e.g., the person is depressed because they are trying to cope with their DID).People seem to most often confuse someone who is suffering from schizophrenia with someone who has dissociative identity disorder. While both are chronic, serious mental health concerns, the differences between these two disorders are stark. People with schizophrenia hear or see things that aren’t there and believe things that aren’t true, often tied into a complex, irrational belief system. They do not have multiple identities or personalities. People with DID do not have delusion beliefs, outside of their multiple personalities or identities. The only voices they hear or talk to are these identities

[source: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-differences-between-bipolar-disorder-schizophrenia-and-multiple-personality-disorder/] 

In another post, entitled A Chat With The Father About DID: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/04/chat-with-father-about-did.html, We provided the following information about Multiple Personality Disorder to our readers:

"We did an entry on our other blog awhile back, highlighting our symptoms: http://issueoffrank.blogspot.com/p/did-info.html and provided very little information, leaving it up to people reading to to do their own research.

We figured we'd throw some information in here, and then move it somewhere else around this blog, or our other one.
Here are other sources, in addition what we provided below:

• http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder
• http://sascwr.org/resources/pdfs/Mental%20Illness/Symptoms%20of%20DID.pdf

This information that follows is from an online source called eMentalHealth:

Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder

Summary

Dissociative identity disorder (known in the past as multiple personality disorder) is a condition where an individual develops different personality states, generally following repeated physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

What Is It?

Most of us have experienced some form of dissociation at some point in our lives. For example, you may have dissociated or spaced out during boring situations such as a long, boring drive, and then not really remember how you got somewhere. Or you may have experienced stressful situations where you were numb or spaced out and can’t really recall what happened.

However, when a person is faced with overwhelming stress as may happen with abuse, dissociation is a normal process that can happen to deal with the stress. For example, a child who experiences sexual abuse may ‘space out’ as a way to protect herself from remembering the event. When such stress or trauma happens over and over again, it can lead to dissociative identity disorder.

When dissociative identity disorder does occur, it usually happens when the trauma has occurred in childhood (e.g. before age 7-9). Young children are the most vulnerable because they have not yet had the opportunity to develop a stable sense of self or personality. People who are easily hypnotizable (i.e. prone to go into trance) are also at high risk.

Although dissociation may be a useful coping strategy in the beginning to deal with trauma, dissociation that continues to occur later on in life can cause problems in day-to-day life, and can cause severe problems in a person’s school, work or personal life.

DSM-IV Criteria

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a complex condition, and thus, it can take very long before it is properly diagnosed. Many times, people with DID are diagnosed with other conditions before finally receiving their DID diagnosis.

According to the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) of the American Psychiatric Association, the criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder are:

The presence of two or more distinct identity or personality states, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior. Inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. 

The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures). In children, the symptoms are not attributable to imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.

Signs and Symptoms

The key symptoms which are unique to Dissociative Identity Disorder are the presence of two or more distinct personality states or “alters” that have control over the person’s behaviour.

Other key symptoms may include:

• Amnesia (loss of time, or ‘blackouts’), whereby the person can’t remember periods of time, or even portions of their childhood. 
• Dissociation, which is a mental process where individuals are not fully connected with their      thoughts, feelings, behaviours or memories 
• Derealization, which is the feeling that the world is not real or in a haze. 
• Depersonalization, which is the feeling of being detached from your body, as in an “out of body” experience 
• Switching to different alters, which may appear as sudden changes in mood, behaviour or      personality
  
  • 
    Other symptoms (or conditions) that an individual may have include:
• Depression, which is problems with extremely low or sad mood 
• Mood swings, which is problems with moods going from one extreme to another 
• Anxiety, panic attacks or other anxiety problems 
• Thoughts of suicide, due to the high level of stress that persons with DID often experience
• Alcohol or drug use, as an attempt at coping with stress 
• Post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that may be seen after individuals experience high stress or even life threatening situations 
• Borderline personality disorder, a condition where individuals have severe problems with emotional regulation and controlling their feelings, often seen in those with past trauma
  How Common Is It?

According to the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, DID occurs in 1-3% of the population.

If You Suspect Dissociative Identity Disorder

If you suspect that you or a loved one may have dissociative identity disorder, start by seeing your family doctor. Your doctor can help make sure that your symptoms aren’t due to a medical condition such as (traumatic) brain injury, medication, sleep deprivation, or drug use. And if required, your doctor can refer to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder

Treatment aims to integrate or connect the different alters into one single identity and generally consists of talk therapy (a.k.a. psychotherapy).

Therapy goals include:

• Mapping out the alters, where the therapist and the person try to find out which are the various alters, and their purpose 
• Integration, which is helping the alters co-exist with one another as a whole, functional personality. Once integrated, the person no longer experiences switches in alters, nor does the person have loss of time or blackouts.

Types of therapy include talking therapy; hypnosis; eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

In some cases, medications may be helpful for specific symptoms such as depression, anxiety which have not responded to non-medication treatment.
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References

Treatment Guidelines for Dissociative Identity Disorders in Adults http://www.isst-d.org/education/treatmentguidelines-index.htm

Treatment Guidelines for Dissociative Identity Disorders in Children http://www.isst-d.org/education/treatmentguidelines-index.htm

About this Document

Written by the eMentalHealth Team.

Disclaimer

Information in this pamphlet is offered ‘as is' and is meant only to provide general information that supplements, but does not replace the information from your health provider. Always contact a qualified health professional for further information in your specific situation or circumstance.

Creative Commons License

You are free to copy and distribute this material in its entirety as long as 1) this material is not used in any way that suggests we endorse you or your use of the material, 2) this material is not used for commercial purposes (non-commercial), 3) this material is not altered in any way (no derivative works). View full license at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ Subscribe to this article's RSS feed

Other Resources

Websites including blogs, support forums

Centre of Knowledge on Healthy Child Development 

www.trauma-ptsd.com 

Teen Mental Health

Printed materials including handouts, brochures and books

Fresh Start

Source: http://www.ementalhealth.ca/canada/en/_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDissociativeb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abIdentityb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDisorderb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDIDb_a12_b8906.html [accessed: April 25, 2010]

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For the month of May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we will be posting this at he bottom of each of our entries, to help provide additional information about us, and about Dissociative Identiry Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder.

10 Things You Should Know About US That MIGHT Surprise YOU:

1. We used to be a Baptist missionary (yeah, can you fucking believe that shit?!) [we are NOT religious]
2. We were once married (didn’t last long) [one of our stories talks about him]
3. We have had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult (nothing could contain us in the early days) [we actually own a house, but choose not to live in it]
4. We’ve lived in 2 countries: 1 province and 6-7 different states (running much)
5. We have lost 120 pounds since the age of 24 (100 of it when we were 24) [and it's close to 140 pounds now)
6. We have a full time job (well, now it's 32 hours a week - but they actually let us work around the other humans!) [it get's harder everyday, and this is the longest we've ever had a single job since we were 17. We've been there almost a year]
7. We deal with social anxiety type symptoms every day (and these days we choose not to leave home much, but for going to work) [there are about three people we feel comfortable with being in public with and sometimes we have to be out there alone]
8. We have multiple “mental illness” diagnoses (doesn't everybody?) [p.s. all misdiagnosed]
9. We have two beautiful cats, who piss us off every day (but they are special, because they put up with us) [though one of us hates them beyond belief]
10. We have struggled to survive, over and over, defeating the odds thrown against us (read our stories) [seriously, how are we not dead yet?]

We've copied the stories written here that are specifically about our past (mostly abuse) and moved them to our other blog, called:

Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"  

(this blog also contains our artwork/photography - the following links will take you to that blog)

•  1. Addressing The Issue of Frank: Part 1
• 2. The Emergence of Frank: The Beginning
• 3.The Emergence of Frank: The Second Coming
• 4. The Emergence of Frank: Three Times A Rescuer
• 5. The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure
•  6. We Go To University & We Take A Lover (links to our other blog)
•  7. Life Without Frank - The First Two Years
•  7b. Collision: The Other Girls Terrible Car Accident - Franks Coma

Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote, these are those entries since mid-January 2011. There are bits of writing in this blog that we do not actually promote due to embarrassment over things that some have written - they are here for our own tracking - they are angry, mean, scary things. If you feel like it you can find them on your own. Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:

The Mental Health Entries:
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder

• Mental Health Awareness Month: Our Introduction
• We Chat With The Father About DID (this post contains information on what DID is)
• Frank Gets Candid (We talk about Catherine, one of our alters)
• **We Freak Out** (this was a very important day, the day we met Marisa, recoverer of DID)
• We Are Fragments
• We / We Get Random / We Have Questions
• Marisa Answers Our Questions
• Frank Gets Candid, About Memories...and Bethany (we talk about one of our alters)
• Frank Lets You Know Bitch (me!) (Bethany got to write her very own entry about herself)
• A Note From Frank, and ONLY Frank (actually not written by Frank)
• Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (we start talking about the death of one of our alters)
• Our Ears May Be Burning (we talk about what people we recently knew might be saying over Easter)
• We Have Nothing To Lose (Cassandra talk about the death of a mentally ill "friend")
• We Just Need A Good Map (Mental Health Awareness Month Post - Frank talks about DID mapping)
• We Don't Do A Blog Post (we talk a little about mapping, Bethany, unicorns & stuff)
• We Discuss Three Mis-Diagnosed Mental Illnesses
• A Day In The Room

Health:

• When Anxiety Attacks 
• Franks/Our 100 Pound Weight Loss Story
• Collision: The Other Girls/Our Terrible Car Accident
• Stress and Expediential Weight Loss
• New Pain and Old Fear

Family:

• Why Most Of Us Dislike Our Mother
• We Chat With The Father About DID (this post contains information on what DID is)

Relationships/Friendships:

• Relationships, Frank...and Love 
• Our First Girlfriend
• The First Boy We Liked, That Liked Us Back
• What Become Of The Broken Hearted
• To A Human, If Indeed That Is What You Are (1 of 3)
• The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain (2 of 3)
• Standby: The Final Chapter (3 of 3)
• Standby and The Death of the Other Girl: Part 1 of 3 (to be continued)
• An Ass-Face Comes A Texting
• We Go To University, We Take A Lover
• Our Ears May Be Burning
• We Have Nothing To Lose
• A Mistress Without Cutlery
• Fuck Face: Who He Is (also work related)
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 1
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 2
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 3
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 4
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 5
• The Demise of Fuck Face...Part 6
• We Have Drinks With Fuck Face
• To Send, or Not To Send...The E-mail Is The Question
• Situation Stand Still

Work:

• All In a Days Work
• All In a Days Work II
• All In a Days Work III
• A Day In The Room
• Another Day, Another Dollar; Fuck Our Life
  
  Life:
• Please Don't Let Us Be Misunderstood
• All We Have Is Hope
• Cooking With Frank
• A Distraction, In The Form of The Jeans
• Seriously...And @NickSilly Answers Some Questions
• We Get A Guest Blogger - Kinky Sex!
• We Have Nothing To Lose
• How We Feel About Advice...and We Ramble

Opinion:

• Religion, You Say? We Have A View On That
• Growth and Change; An Artist Standpoint
• Birds of A Feather, on Twitter, CAN Flock Together
• For Us, It's All About Team Awesome...and Twitter
• Reading We Recommend: Casey Hannan
• Hell Ride: A Film Review

Art/Poetry:

• Evil of Three: A Painting
• Saviour: A Painting
• Deadly Catch: A Painting
• Pretty Things: A Poem
• Erase This Poem
• Envisage of We: A Poem

Humour/Random Fun:

• The Tale of the Barbie Massacre Trail/Part 1
• Happy Zombie Day A.K.A Happy Easter

If you have any questions for us we are very open and will answer to our best ability - this is totally the month to ask us questions. You can either ask us on Twitter, in the comment section of a blog entry here, or e-mail us at justcallmefrank2010 (at) gmail.com.

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Resources for You - facts, figures and personal stories of other people can be found on these sites:

National Institute of Mental Health: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml

American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/index.aspx

Canadian Mental Health Association: http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp

Mental Health Europe: http://www.mhe-sme.org/

World Health Organization - Mental Health: http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-do/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/mental-health

Mental Health America: http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/may

World Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org