so I made a serious mistake.
I have been watchin g "Moon Knight", and the main character has disassociation to the point he has a second personality.
Well, today they showed why he became like that, and dam, can I relate.
It makes me wonder - did I invent Dorothy just because I couldn't face what happened to me? Or did I invent the male me to carry a burden Dorothy wasn't strong enough for?
whichever way, I am shaking, and wish I had a way to stop.
Comments
We are all the sum of what
We are all the sum of what happens to us plus what we seem predisposed to be.
Twins are usually treated the same but have different personalities.
Perhaps Dorothy is who the male you always should have been. You were born into the male you, do never had a choice, until you did.
I'm enjoying moonlight, some are panning it.
Leeanna
You are you
I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. (and again... and again... as many times as are necessary until you believe it)
You are Dorothy. You have always been Dorothy. You couldn't have been anyone else if you tried, any more than I could have been someone other than Roberta. (and I did try... for over a decade)
You also didn't invent a male you. All that happened was that Dorothy became hard, in spite of how she/you wanted to be. I know sometimes it seems that there are two of you... that you've been split in half... but it's all still you. It's not the you that you would have been if those things had never happened to you, but the you that is here now is such a wonderful woman that I thank God you're you every day. I'd give my left arm if I could take away those things that made you hard... but I can't. All I can do is tell you that you're loved and that you matter to a whole lot of people... just the way you are.
::huggles::
Roberta
<Sad button click here> Sorry ...
... I'm a little uncertain as to how to respond.
What smidgen of sense I think I have, says I stay out of this one, except to say:
- Time to chat with therapist ...
- Whatever a tangled up way we got here ... here we are now, "as is". And we have only the eternal "now" to act in, trying for a better future.
- Make decisions based on what is good for your >current and future self, and your family<.
- Oh, and don't break anything or anyone you care about now, or might in the future.
---
PS: It's time to stop watching that show. Just like there are places I do not go, documentaries I will never watch. {Very long and very depressing list omitted.}
They're both "you"
I doubt it was a matter of "inventing." My guess is that, if you have two distinct "me"s (which it sort of sounds like you're saying), it's because in order to survive, you had to be two different people: maybe one when you were with your abuser and the other when you were at home (and had to hide what went on with the abuser from everyone, including yourself.) At that age, children's selves are still not yet formed, so the proto-"you" ended up developing along two different paths. But they're both "you." (And probably neither is who you would have been without the abuse.)
I'm sort of split myself, but I think it's a little different for me. It's clear to me that there's an inner "me" that contains all the stuff in my inborn nature that I was forced to hide, even from myself, and the outer "me," that was also my self, but warped into a form that didn't draw as much abuse and was the part that dealt with the outer world. And there are the "bots" -- reflexes that punish me if it looks like I'm about to show some part of myself that I feared might get me into trouble, or would have back then (but not really any more.) I didn't choose to create them, they were the reflexive, desperate attempts to survive in a world that was making my life unbearable. As it happens, when I imagine who I am, I think of the outer "me" (I sometimes call it the mask or the façade), but there's also the inner "me" -- the child who would have become me if it hadn't been sealed in a coffin and buried in the cellar. (There's also the "inner oracle" which has guided my life, but that's another story.)
I hope you have access to a trauma-aware therapist (from what I've seen, most are not trauma-aware), who can sort of act as an anchor or life ring. This stuff can be frighteningly confusing.
Also: you might want to look up stuff on "plural persons" or "plurality" It might or might not give you some perspective on your own situation.