Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

  Obviously, my misgivings about mental illness are what kept me from facing my disorder for so many years. It was overwhelming to accept that I was not normal and never would be.

  Diagnosis is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can be a tremendous relief to finally have a name for all the mysterious problems and symptoms one experiences. There’s a wonderful “Aha!” moment as everything finally makes sense. On the other hand, a serious diagnosis can feel like a scalding steel collar that simultaneously binds and brands a person for life.

  Too often, I’ve watched mental health professionals dole out life-altering diagnoses with no thought to how such labeling might affect the patient. What’s more, they are often all too eager to share some bleak prognosis with the patient and his family because it is based on what they know to be the “facts.” While it’s not always possible or prudent to avoid diagnostics, psychologists and psychiatrists need to be extremely aware of the power of their words. If an authority tells someone they are doomed to lead a lessened life, chances are that person will believe it and live down to the expectation.

  I will be forever grateful to Leah for patiently allowing me to figure out my diagnosis on my own. She obviously knew I was a multiple; she was buying me teddy bears and crayons, after all. But she never imposed the diagnosis on me. She respected my denial system and allowed me to build up the strength to finally face the truth when I was ready.

  —

  AFTER I REALIZED I was a multiple, a lot of things in my life immediately made sense. I’d been dealing with the battle between the Preppy and the Writer for years, so it was a relief to finally understand that this inner conflict was the result of two distinct identities who were constantly fighting for control of my life. Right away, I also understood that I had a third identity—a little girl who was responsible for the bangs, the coloring books, and the bear. Though a child, this identity was one of my main personalities and quite persistent at getting her needs met. Her goal was always to feel safe and loved, so she was the one primarily responsible for attracting trustworthy people like Leah, Chris, and Steve into our life.

  For years, I’d been aware of a destructive force inside me—an angry, hateful persecutor who constantly put me down, called me names, and told me to kill myself. This force is what always drove me to attempt suicide. It was cruel, abusive, and relentless. Once I realized I was a multiple, this inner persecutor finally made sense. It was an alternate personality who for some reason hated me and wanted me dead.

  I was also aware of a benevolent force inside me. This protector had been around since I was very young and felt paternal, almost God-like. It was the force that kept me going through all the years of torture, the force that pushed me to survive and thrive. I felt this identity as a protective presence inside me. Usually, it offered silent strength. But once in a while it voiced its no-nonsense wisdom. It was the voice that told me my parents would never love me so I should stop trying to win them. It was also the voice that told me I shouldn’t trust my parents long before my conscious mind knew why. This benevolent identity seemed to know my whole history—a history I couldn’t remember—and it felt like it was in charge of doling out the truth to me when it thought I could handle it.

  By the time I left Leah’s office, less than an hour after realizing I had multiple personalities, I could already identify five of them. It took no effort to figure out the main players living inside me.

  Why would it? I’d been dealing with them all my life!

  Still, the knowledge that I had dissociative identity disorder, a mental illness, was hard to swallow. I felt deeply ashamed and, in my humiliation, assumed others would be equally horrified. Driving home, I wondered how the hell I was going to tell Chris. I braced myself for the end of our seven-year relationship.

  When I walked in the door, she was making dinner.

  I begged her to step away from the stove.

  “I’ve got news,” I said. “It’s very upsetting. I really think you should sit down.”

  Reluctantly, she moved to the kitchen table.

  I sat across from her and struggled to find the right words.

  “Chris,” I whispered. “I have something to tell you, and it’s really serious. It’s the kind of thing that might completely change our lives. I saw Leah today, and it turns out . . . I have multiple personalities.”

  Chris stared at me blankly, then rolled her eyes. “Really, honey? That’s your big news?” She went back to the stove and started to chuckle. “I mean, please! Tell me something I don’t know!”

  Steve’s response was fairly similar. He, like Chris, was not surprised. What’s more, they could both instantly describe most of my identities, which made sense. They’d both been dealing with them for years.

  —

  HAD I FOLLOWED the normal course of psychotherapy, this major diagnostic breakthrough would’ve been followed by a period in which I got to know more about dissociative identity disorder. I would’ve spent a lot of time getting to know my alternate personalities—their names, ages, needs, goals, emotions. Then I would’ve worked to get them all communicating more effectively. Communication between identities is necessary to function efficiently as a multiple. The more the alters can get along, the less stress there is on the whole person.

  After the personality system is stable, trauma therapy can usually move forward. Remember that even though I knew I was a multiple I still didn’t have access to my full memory. I knew that Gary had abused me, but I still didn’t remember anything about the sex ring or the pornography. That’s because different identities experience different parts of the abuse and then hold on to those memories. In order to fully heal, DID therapy dictates that each alter show up for therapy and share his or her part of the life story with the other identities. As each part works through her or his individual trauma, healing and the integration of all the memories occur.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the prescribed course of DID therapy. For one thing, Leah didn’t have an expertise in that kind of treatment so she didn’t suggest it. But even if she had, I doubt I would’ve played along. The whole multiple personality thing freaked me out. And so I did what I’d done a thousand times before when something bothered me.

  I didn’t deal with it.

  I didn’t deal with it for five more years.

  I immersed myself in teaching instead, which turned out to be a wonderful thing. Whatever fears I had about inner-city teenagers, they melted away the minute I met my students. Right from the start, I loved all the lively, funny, intelligent kids and, I was surprised to realize that they loved me back. Teaching was the best medicine I could’ve hoped for, for it forced me to get outside my own head.

  All my life, I’d been trying to heal by focusing on me, me, me. But it turns out that true joy comes from helping others. Within a few shorts months, I morphed from a dissociative mess whose full-time job was therapy into my high school’s Teacher of the Year!

  Buoyed by my success in the classroom, and making my own living for the first time in years, I started to feel better about myself. As my self-confidence rose, so did my mood. Suddenly, the future seemed bright again.

  I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. Most important, I reconnected with Chris. Even though we’d been together for eight years, I’d always maintained a wall between us. My buried grief and attachment issues made it difficult to give my heart.

  Now that my heart was fully open, I suddenly experienced a newfound love for Chris. I’d always loved her, but my fear of abandonment kept me from admitting it to myself. In order to feel safe, I played a mental game where I always had one foot out the door. But I didn’t need to do that anymore. I didn’t need to protect myself from love and attachments. I was ready to commit.

  In 2003, nearly nine years after our first date, Chris and I got married. It wasn’t legal at the time, but we didn’t care. We rented out the
entire main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, put on long white gowns, and threw one hell of a shindig! More than two hundred friends and family came to our wedding, including Steve, who was my best man. Leah was there too, beaming proudly, just like I had imagined in my daydreams.

  After a few years of teaching, I noticed that my favorite part of the job was not helping the kids learn to read and write; it was helping them learn how to live. A lot of my students came from tough backgrounds—poverty, abuse, neighborhood violence. As a result, they exhibited traumatic symptoms like anxiety, depression, self-mutilation, and suicidality. Not wanting to be callous like my teachers had been, I took the time to notice and care.

  I very quickly became known as the teacher kids could talk to, and I found myself often listening and giving advice. Counseling students felt rewarding and natural. I could see that helping other people cope with trauma was my real gift in life. Finally, I felt confident enough to become a psychologist, and I left teaching for grad school.

  All my confidence seemed to wane, however, when the first day of classes arrived. Everywhere I turned, brainiacs were talking about “epistemological issues in the study of metacognition” and “heuristic approaches to phenomenological mindfulness.” Huh? Suddenly, all of my old insecurities returned, and I was sure I’d made a huge mistake.

  Why did I ever think a person like me—a perpetual loser with a mental illness—could earn a doctorate?

  Meeting with my advisor, Patrick, that first day, I broke down in tears. “I don’t think I can do this,” I cried. “I’m a weak person. I can’t handle pressure. I’ve got a lot of problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” Patrick asked, seeming nothing but kind.

  “I . . . I have multiple personality disorder.” There it was, my shameful secret.

  I was sure he would throw me out of school.

  “Wow,” Patrick said, as he stared at me intensely. “You know, Michelle, that’s a really serious thing. I’ve had a few clients who’ve gone through that, so I know it’s hell. If you can handle multiple personality disorder, I wouldn’t worry about grad school. It’s going to seem like a breeze.”

  While I appreciated the encouragement, grad school was not a breeze! It was challenging and intense and required me to work harder than I ever had in my life! But despite constant stress and a ridiculous workload, I never lost focus and always kept my cool. Every time I finished a thirty-page research paper or passed a test or secured an internship, my faith in myself improved. I started to see myself as more than just some crazy person. I started to think I might, just might, be able to be the doctor.

  —

  I ALSO GOT IT in my head that I’d like to be a mom. This wasn’t a new idea; I’d always wanted children. But in the past, I felt too unstable and crazy to take on that kind of responsibility. Now I had several years of drama-free living under my belt. I felt like I was finally healthy enough to raise a baby.

  At the age of thirty-six, I got pregnant via IVF. The day I peed on the stick was the happiest day of my life up to that point. Although I suffered morning sickness for all nine months, I didn’t care. Being pregnant was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Every time I felt the baby squiggling in my belly, I was in heaven. Although I hadn’t met him yet, Baby Mikey was already the love of my life.

  The first time I held him, my entire perspective on everything changed. I know most parents experience this when their first child is born. Anything that had happened to me in the past suddenly lost its meaning. All that mattered now was being a good mother to the perfect little man in my arms.

  For me, that moment marked a line in the sand in terms of my mental health. All my life, depression and suicidal feelings had plagued me. Now I knew I would never, ever attempt suicide again. I felt so honored and humbled and blessed to be Mikey’s mother that I knew I could never do anything to cause him pain, especially abandon him.

  My first year of motherhood was the happiest of my life. I took a leave of absence from school so that I could fully focus on my son. I breast-fed and rocked him to sleep and took him for daily strolls in the park. We went to Mommy and Me groups and Kindermusik classes. I was so into being a mom that when Mikey started eating solid foods I decided to make all his baby food from scratch. Never mind that I’d never cooked so much as a baked potato for myself!

  I realize I’m describing a very mundane thing—the process by which a new mother falls madly, deeply in love with her child. It’s a tale as old as time. Yet for me, it was nothing short of a miracle. I’d never felt pure, unfiltered love before. I’d never allowed myself to grow wholeheartedly attached. The love I felt for Mikey was like a salve for my soul. It healed the past and brightened the future. It seemed to solve everything.

  More content than I’d ever conceived, I assumed my dark days were behind me. My PTSD symptoms were long gone. My multiple personalities stayed safely hidden inside. No longer depressed or anxious, I stopped taking meds or going to therapy. My mental illness was a thing of the past. At thirty-seven years old, I didn’t even think about it anymore.

  —

  THEN CHRIS LOST HER JOB, and I lost my mind. Both were long, drawn-out, awful processes. Chris’s company was having money troubles, so they fired the president. Then they fired Chris’s boss and laid off half the company. Chris was spared in the first round of layoffs, but the writing was on the wall. It was only a matter of time before the paychecks stopped.

  While money worries are stressful for everyone, I took it particularly hard. I started obsessing about when Chris would lose her job, and how we would survive the loss of our only source of income. Contrary to common sense, I believed she’d never find another job. As my anxiety ballooned, irrational visions of homelessness and starvation kept me awake at night. A dark cloud settled over everything, and I was sure our lives were about to be utterly and permanently ruined.

  My reaction was over-the-top, no doubt about it. Losing a job is scary, but I wasn’t scared; I was terrified. Lack of money made me feel unsafe. I feared for my very survival. Any time this happens to me, a whole host of symptoms gets triggered. I feel anxious and helpless and hopeless, just like I did in childhood. My terrifying past gets mixed up with the present. This is the nature of PTSD.

  At the time, though, I couldn’t see it. I was too scared to think straight. The fear was unbearable. After a while, I couldn’t cope with it anymore. That’s the trigger. When I can no longer stand to feel fear, I start to dissociate.

  In the beginning, my dissociation took the form of old familiar daydreams. Much of the time, I walked around like a zombie while long-forgotten stories played in my head. I was once again an unwilling princess forced into an arranged marriage with a cruel prince or a kidnapped prisoner forced to live in a cage while a mad scientist performed horrifying experiments on me. These scripts repeated over and over, day in and day out for weeks. They kept me from thinking about my terrifying future by keeping my mind in the past.

  Over time, though, my inability to be in the here and now started eroding my relationships. Lost in my head, I found it annoying to have conversations with anyone, including Chris. The more she demanded my attention, the more I pulled away. Eventually, I wanted nothing to do with her because, honestly, I felt no connection. No love. She was a total stranger to me.

  Yearning to be alone, I moved into the guest room. That’s when things got weird, and I started exhibiting some uncharacteristic behaviors. Chief among them was listening to country music all night while downing bottles of beer. I’d never been a fan of country music, and I’d never had a beer in my life. Yet there I was, drowning my sorrows with Reba and the Dixie Chicks.

  It wasn’t long before I started going out. Late at night, while Chris stayed home with Mikey, I’d hop in my car and drive, seemingly without purpose. Yet somehow I always ended up at some country-and-western bar. It was like I knew where these places were e
ven though I’d never been to them before.

  At these bars, I’d sit alone and drink. Again, this was something I’d never, ever done before. I was always far too shy and reserved to go to a bar alone. And yet there I was, knocking back drinks and checking out men like I’d been doing it all my life.

  It was after one of these late-night trips that I got an idea. Walking into the house, I immediately stripped off my clothes and hopped in the shower. I grabbed a razor and methodically shaved off all of my pubic hair. I had no idea why.

  Next, I went to the computer. We had only one at the time. It was in the living room, just steps away from sleeping Mikey and Chris. I went on Craigslist, signed in with a user name I didn’t recognize, and clicked on a link for “casual encounters.” What the hell was that? I pressed the button to write a post and started typing with no conscious knowledge of what I was about to write.

  Slave with freshly shaved pussy seeks master to teach her S/M.

  I am very bad. But with proper discipline, I can learn to be good.

  Wanna start tonight?

  The moment I posted, I started getting hits. One guy immediately stood out. He was a better speller than the others, and his photo featured a man who was young and good-looking. Within seconds, I was on the phone with him—which is when I first realized that this sexed-up identity spoke with a southern accent.

  We decided to meet at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. On the drive over, I kept screaming in my thoughts, What are you doing? We can’t meet a strange man for sex! It isn’t safe!

  But whoever was controlling my body didn’t give a shit.