dougvincent1138
New member
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2018
- Messages
- 50
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
[MENTION=37666]natalia93[/MENTION] Yes, it is possible...even if you have MORE THAN ONE self!
Allow me to explain. I have DID. If you're not familiar with that, it stands for dissociative identity disorder, but you might know it better by its former terminology, multiple personality disorder. When we first found out about the MBTI, we wondered if we could type the individual parts/alters within our "system". We tried it, and found out that we absolutely can. It's difficult, but as others in this thread have stated, you have to look past the symptoms of the illness to see who you really are, what really motivates you.
Now, you might ask, how is typing the multiple "you's" separately looking past the illness? Isn't that what the illness of DID is? Well, that's a common misconception about DID. The truth is (and it took us a LONG time to fully understand this truth), that having multiple selves is not the problem. That is something that started as a coping mechanism to help us to manage the true problem, which was the trauma that we experienced as a child. Once we started developing as multiple, that IS who we are. The dysfunction that is a part of having DID comes not from the fact of being multiple, but from the complications that arise due to each self's own trauma history: low self-esteem, trust issues, not understanding emotions, etc. These factors, especially when you also factor in amnesia, cause difficulty in cooperation, communication, and trust within the system, which leads to dysfunction. Once we learn to cooperate with and respect each other, we can learn to function just like any other human being. It is more difficult, because we have to manage interpersonal relationships both internally AND externally at the same time, but it can be done.
And so, for someone like us to accurately type ourselves, we need to type each one of us separately, because like I said, that is who we are. We haven't typed everybody in our system yet (there are seventy of us, so it will take a while), but so far we have found that we have at least 11 of the 16 personality types. We actually see that as a potential strength, and we will be really excited if we eventually find out that we have all 16 within our system. Why? Because that would mean that we could potentially learn to have ALL of the strengths of ALL of the personality types, and avoid our weaknesses by letting someone else who is strong in that area help us.
It can be very difficult for us to type our selves. As our therapist warned us, these personality tests were created with so-called "normal" people in mind, so they are not really made to handle the extra complexities of being multiple. We find that it helps to think, "How would I act if it were just ME in this body?" Because of the fact that we all share one body, we sometimes have to pretend to be someone we're not to keep up the illusion of being one "normal" person. To us, that's part of our way of dealing with our illness. So imagining each self as if we were separate is our way of looking past our illness to the real "us". I hope that makes sense to you, and helps you to better understand both how to type someone with a mental illness, and how DID works.
Take care,
Leyna of the Doug Vincent system
P.s. I'm the one of "us" who started our account on this forum, so INFJ is MY type. Doug's is actually INFP, and like I said, we have at least 11 types, maybe more...
Allow me to explain. I have DID. If you're not familiar with that, it stands for dissociative identity disorder, but you might know it better by its former terminology, multiple personality disorder. When we first found out about the MBTI, we wondered if we could type the individual parts/alters within our "system". We tried it, and found out that we absolutely can. It's difficult, but as others in this thread have stated, you have to look past the symptoms of the illness to see who you really are, what really motivates you.
Now, you might ask, how is typing the multiple "you's" separately looking past the illness? Isn't that what the illness of DID is? Well, that's a common misconception about DID. The truth is (and it took us a LONG time to fully understand this truth), that having multiple selves is not the problem. That is something that started as a coping mechanism to help us to manage the true problem, which was the trauma that we experienced as a child. Once we started developing as multiple, that IS who we are. The dysfunction that is a part of having DID comes not from the fact of being multiple, but from the complications that arise due to each self's own trauma history: low self-esteem, trust issues, not understanding emotions, etc. These factors, especially when you also factor in amnesia, cause difficulty in cooperation, communication, and trust within the system, which leads to dysfunction. Once we learn to cooperate with and respect each other, we can learn to function just like any other human being. It is more difficult, because we have to manage interpersonal relationships both internally AND externally at the same time, but it can be done.
And so, for someone like us to accurately type ourselves, we need to type each one of us separately, because like I said, that is who we are. We haven't typed everybody in our system yet (there are seventy of us, so it will take a while), but so far we have found that we have at least 11 of the 16 personality types. We actually see that as a potential strength, and we will be really excited if we eventually find out that we have all 16 within our system. Why? Because that would mean that we could potentially learn to have ALL of the strengths of ALL of the personality types, and avoid our weaknesses by letting someone else who is strong in that area help us.
It can be very difficult for us to type our selves. As our therapist warned us, these personality tests were created with so-called "normal" people in mind, so they are not really made to handle the extra complexities of being multiple. We find that it helps to think, "How would I act if it were just ME in this body?" Because of the fact that we all share one body, we sometimes have to pretend to be someone we're not to keep up the illusion of being one "normal" person. To us, that's part of our way of dealing with our illness. So imagining each self as if we were separate is our way of looking past our illness to the real "us". I hope that makes sense to you, and helps you to better understand both how to type someone with a mental illness, and how DID works.
Take care,
Leyna of the Doug Vincent system
P.s. I'm the one of "us" who started our account on this forum, so INFJ is MY type. Doug's is actually INFP, and like I said, we have at least 11 types, maybe more...