The United States of Tara and Mrs. Leftystrat

I have mentioned before that my wife suffers from multiple personality disorder (new name: dissociative identity disorder).  I suffer from it too but only in a secondary sense.  If you have the Showtime network or friends, you might have watched The United States of Tara, a show about a woman with multiple personalities.  Steven Spielberg is the executive producer.

I am incredibly impressed that Mr. Spielberg put his name on this, whether or not it was his idea.  DID on tv to date has been nothing more than a freak show, ala Montel Williams (who verbally abused a multiple) or Dateline (who pretty much stated that it didn’t exist).  `Tara’ is a really good treatment of the topic, even considering what they had to do to make it tv-friendly.

There is so much accuracy in `Tara’ that it’s frightening.  The husband is incredibly accurately portrayed.  Husbands can tend to be just like this, except not necessarily as flow-with-it.  They’re generally caretakers who just want to help FIX IT, whatever `it’ is.

The kids are pretty accurate too: no one escapes DID, especially the kids.  A spouse or significant other at least has a choice: kids don’t.  The circus-like atmosphere of the family could almost be lifted verbatim from many households of which I’m aware.  Even Tara’s sister is really poorly adjusted, which one might expect, depending on whether or not the same thing happened to her that happened to Tara.

Most interesting, at least to me, is Tara herself (herselves? - go ahead, everybody thinks it’s pretty funny, even the multiples themselves).  Obviously when my wife switches, she doesn’t appear in different clothing and hairstyles… it’s one of those things they had to do to make it more tv-friendly.

For the first part of a relationship, maybe even the majority of it, the spouse might not notice switching.  Before there’s a correct diagnosis, everybody’s pretty confused.  I sure as hell was.  I wish my wife would have changed clothes and hairstyles when she switched - it would have saved us both years of grief.  I was seeing all kinds of alters, only most were so subtly different that I didn’t notice: they all looked and sounded more or less like my wife.

WHAT CAUSES IT?

I obviously can’t give away any info on Tara because I don’t have the script.  However, knowing a bit about it might give you some hints as to where it’s going.

DID is caused by severe, repeated trauma in childhood, mostly sexual.  It does not happen to every child who is molested: some grow up with substance abuse issues, some with sexual issues, some with other unpleasant disorders.  When the right combination is reached, some of the children will split - it’s the mind’s ultimate defense.  After that, splitting can become a coping mechanism, with each alter being `born’ for a specific purpose, like mother, protector, helper, babysitter, and other things that look like RAGE.  They can be male or female.  They can be non-human or infants.  This takes place before the child’s actual personality would be formed, roughly before the age of nine.

I told a coworker last week that Tara meeting the guy who raped her at sixteen wasn’t the beginning of the story.  The above is how I know.

I have some links to DID sites on the right side of this blog, further down.  Don’t hesitate to go there if you’re curious.  It’s wonderful that DID is being recognized and brought into the light.  There are still many who don’t believe it exists.  After fourteen years of marriage I can assure you it exists.  I have met many other multiples, which will surprise many `professionals’ because they’re taught it’s very rare, if they’re taught much about it at all.  But don’t take my word for it… take the word of the other four hundred people in a small online support group for significant others of people with DID.  I never learned statistics but if there are 400 of us in a small online group that nobody knows about, how prevalent must DID be worldwide?

Ever see the Manchurian Candidate (either one)?  It’s not fiction or just a good movie: it’s fact.  Abusers can be family or close, or they can be of a more intentional nature; satanic ritual abuse or any variety of abuse perpetrated upon children by some of our governments.

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But multiplicity has its lighter moments too and I wanted to share some with you:

It’s amazing that you can be sitting there and watching something yet not having any idea what’s happening.  I think it’s odd that my wife washes her windshield every time we get in the car.  Today I watched her pull the lever to squirt the fluid, then the wipers cleaned it off.  Immediately thereafter, she squirted it again.  And again.

A moment later I heard, “STOP IT. You can only squirt it once.”

She looked at me and said it was no wonder she was always out of washer fluid.  The kids (alters) get such a kick out of watching the fluid squirt that they do it several times.  It’s a form of recreation for them and she’s not always aware it’s happening (until she needs more washer fluid).

One of the kids is an extremely bright nine year old who has all the confidence in the world.  She thinks of herself as a beauty queen that the world really needs to see.  Unfortunately she doesn’t always remember that people don’t see her, they see my wife (the alters see themselves in the mirror and are all different looking).  As a result, my wife has found herself in some interesting situations.

The nine year old loves Barbies, so I bought her a Barbie steering wheel cover.  She was not entirely aware of what a steering wheel cover was, unbeknownst to me, and applied it to her head, as a cross between a scarf and a crown.  She looked magnificent, at least to hear her tell it.

My wife goes out front to smoke every twenty minutes or so and sits on the step.  She was getting some odd looks from the neighbors but didn’t think much about it.  Later on she got into the car, adjusted the mirror, and saw what was on her head.   She turned many colors and instituted a rule stating that she was to be notified of any headgear that was not normal.

Unfortunately the rule didn’t sink in as well as she would have hoped.

Last week I was in the kitchen doing dishes.  My wife came down the steps to start making dinner.  Easter is coming up so I thought nothing of the bunny ears on top of her head.  Finally I complimented her on her ears.

No response.

“I said nice ears.”

Confused look.

“Nice ears.  On top of your head.  EARS.”

Tentatively, the hand went up, only to discover she was wearing a set of bunny ears.  She yelled out the name of the child responsible and told her this was not to happen again without notice.

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Apparently there are other things going on to which I’m not always a party.

Have you ever seen someone argue with herself?  In different voices? I have.

I’m told they talk aloud all day long because no one’s home, only I don’t know this because they don’t do it when I come home.  Lately they have been doing it more and more when I’m there, which can lead to great confusion.

Are you talking to me?

Huh?

Are you talking to me?

Huh?  No, why?

Because I just heard you talking and there’s nobody here but us.

Oh, were we talking out loud again?

Apparently.

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Of course you have to understand it from her perspective:

Do you mean everybody doesn’t hear voices?

It’s not normal to lose time?

To find `someone else’s clothes’ in my closet?

To not know how I got somewhere and what I’m doing there?

Are you sure everybody doesn’t do this?