Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sam Gets Set-Off


God damn people piss us off, more notably, they piss me off.

We respect that writers who write make money, and to survive, to pay their bills and such have to come up with creative ways to sell their books, stories, etc, to gain notice, or whatever; but they should be cautious as to how they are doing it, what methods they are using - it doesn't matter if it is working for them if it is also causing harm and spreading ignorance.

To fain multiple personalities, or to talk about voices in their head that they don't actually have, to gain notice for their own financial/personal gain, is offensive to us. It's probably offensive to other people who suffer from disorders like Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder and Schizophrenia too. For us, whenever I catch wind of someone "abusing" symptoms that they don't have, and WORSE, mixing up mental illnesses (most commonly Bipolar, Schizophrenia and Multiple Perosnality Disorder), I get angry.

I get angry that people try to claim Multiple Personality to describe their "alter-egos" - the other sides of themselves; everybody has to have a work them and a public them and sometimes a family them - that's a given. That is NOT DID/Multiple Personality Disorder, because inside you, you are still you. You maintain the same value system, you maintain the same opinions, even if you have to lie about them - it's still you on the inside. Nobody is taking your body for a drive that you are not in control of, that you are a passenger of.

One of the hardest things for those with DID/Multiple Personality Disorder is that people assume it's used as an excuse to blame the stupid shit that The Body gets used for on someone else, and not take responsibility for the actions that took place; but like we've said before, and we maintain now: We take responsibility, collectively, for everything that The Body gets used for, and everything it gets blamed for. Like the others getting in trouble at work for some of the things I do and say; the others take responsibility, even though they know they didn't do, or say anything - it's not thier fault that I get pissed off at stupid fucking people, and can't always maintain the pitch of my voice, or the way in which things come out of the mouth.

That's a little off track, sorry about that. Back to the issue which brought my to the front, and brought me to writing this entry.

It's not that you can only make fun of disorders if you have it, (though, you might want to consider why you feel the need to do it) but to do it for ones own gain, that's a huge no-no to us. In addition, if you are going to make fun of it, like I wrote this week in 'Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance', you should educate yourself on it first, don't mix up disorders. There is almost nothing worse than spreading ignorance, with ignorance.

It's offensive because we are mentally ill, some might say severely, depending on your view of what is severe, but we are functional. Every day is a struggle, a struggle to maintain control, a struggle to keep our job, a struggle to make sure we get tasks done; simple things, like paying taxes, getting the mail, paying bills, cleaning up after ourselves, feeding ourselves, and taking care of our stupid cats.  That's just a short list. And it's not because of Twitter, if it were not for Twitter we would be laying in bed staring at a wall, medicating with massive amounts of marijuana, like The Other Girl did before we killed her off, and we would be in the same place she was; which is to say sick, but in a different way in which we are "sick" now.

Mental Health Month is coming to a close. We never really got to do the Monday posts on talking about illnesses, such as depression, eating disorders, and other things that people struggle with, and that some of us struggle with. We want to continue to help raise awareness, and we will continue to do so through this blog. We want to help other mentally ill people fear less about being open about their illness, by decreasing societies fear of them; we want people to learn, to love and understand - because people hate and fear the things they do not understand.

Next month we hope to be able to get back to some fun posts, stuff about writing, cooking, music, philosophy, art, movies, poetry, travel, and so many more things that interest each of us, and the completion of our life story, to bring it all to this last year and a half, so we can share with you some of the things we've experienced that brought us here, to the last year of blogging, to being fearful of leaving the house, and not wanting to be around people anymore, and then eventually...to Twitter; where we have made friends with beautiful people who let us be all of us, with one Twitter account, just like we have to be all of us with one body.

I had to come here and post this; we got angry, I got angrier, and when that happens it shuts us down from being able to be on Twitter...mostly because I take over when there is anger, and I fucking hate Twitter, but I also need a healthy release, which is writing for most of us. If I am not around none of the others get angry about this kind of stuff. They see and hear shit all the time that would piss me off, they tell me about it later, usually after it's too far in the past for me to take any sort of action, or to look into the matter further. The others are afraid to deal with anger once it hits a certain level. The head starts throbbing, the blood beings pounding in our ears, it sounds like a wind tunnel is forming...sometimes we get dizzy.

I can handle it, they can't; but now Emmie is gone for awhile and I have to be by myself, which is just going to make me upset until someone else wants to step in for the day. I really wish Frank would come back to us, I'm tired of all this bullshit.

~Sam

I wrote this week about being angry about ignorance: 'Sam Gets Angry About Ignorance' http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/05/sam-gets-angry-about-ignorance.html <- I talk about symptoms in this one, criteria required for diagnoses of DID/MPD just in case people haven't caught one of our symptoms posts.


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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)
Some of our writing on this blog we like to promote (consider them highlights), 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 (they are in the What We've Been Up To over on the left). Here are the highlights of what we have written so far this year:

The Mental Health Entries:
Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder
Health:
Work:
Opinion:
Art/Poetry:
Humour/Random Fun:
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 Psychiatric Association: http://www.wpanet.org

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4 comments:

  1. MarisaMay 29, 2011 at 5:20 PM

    May I ask what triggered this?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ADIMay 29, 2011 at 5:39 PM

    Some female writer who was tweeting about voices in her head, with a link to direct people to her blog where the heading of her blog mentions her personalities.

    So we tweeted her: "Szizophrenia?" (because we wanted to know, being that she used voices in her tweet, and personalities in her blog)

    She Tweeted: "Why yes....I'm a writer! HA"

    We tweeted: "We're being serious."

    She tweeted: "Crap,I took the sarcarstic/humerous path. But, just asked everybody and they said, no, we are NOT schizophrenic. MPD? Maybe"

    We tweeted: "...trauma?"

    And then we Tweeted: "you would know if you had #MPD #DID - [there] are clear symptoms. Or maybe your personalities don't tell you when you black out." (because we know sometimes some of ours hadn't, anything is possible)

    Then she Tweeted: "Didn't mean to offend. Voices in MY head are only fictional characters in my writer brain. Never mean any disrespect. Sorry"

    Then she Tweeted: "Just trying to connect with others who write/blog. Again my apologies. Ignorance is a path we all walk down sometimes. Sorry"

    But by that time it was too fucking late. I'd been around all day, getting pissy that we were on Twitter, but Emmie insisted; and then I had to write it out so I didn't blow a fucking gasket.

    Did it come off bad? Sometimes when I write by myself it turns into angry crap.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MarisaMay 29, 2011 at 6:12 PM

    There's not a damn thing wrong with venting. It's good the lady figured out she stuck her foot in her tweet (oh, God there's a nasty pun there) but I don't blame you for pointing out the truth.
    There's a guy at my church who swears he has DID. He's pretty screwed up but he'd not multiple. Delusional and self-absorbed but not multiple. When I make a joke about DID or, more commonly, signal it's getting to noisy and confusing by putting my hands over my ears and screaming "TOO MANY VOICES!" and he tries to jump in talking about his voices, I generally want to beat the hell out of him. Last time I told him off in front of two of the pastors.

    He's been kicked off the worship team for being an insufferable asshat (to everyone and in every area) so I don't have to deal with him on a regular basis anymore.

    I don't think it came off bad. It's always better to come here and rant than tell a stranger to shove her head up her ass and jump. Usually... :P

    ReplyDelete
  4. PumpkinHatMay 29, 2011 at 6:38 PM

    Yeah, I completely understand this frustration but from the other point of view. I'm an artist and writer, not a person with multiple personalities. I draw and do work for characters, specifically, and sometimes people think I'm strange because I do refer to them as separate people. To me, they are. They just aren't real and they don't command me.

    And I have been joked with a little too heavily on this topic by one person in particular, telling me that I'm schizophrenic. I asked him what would lead him to that conclusion considering that I don't have crippling paranoia for one. Then he confused schizophrenia with DID and such like.

    I imagine you wouldn't like this guy. Don't worry. I made sure to set the record straight. I may not suffer from the disorder, but I have friends and family that do. From all different types of those serious illnesses and they aren't something to take lightly like he did.

    This person who sparked this rant probably didn't mean to anger you, no, and neither did my friend want to spark a lecture from myself. But, it's better to correct them now than to let them walk in ignorance. At least they're a day older and wiser.

    ReplyDelete

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