THE THREE PERSONS OF ANITA: A CONTINUOUS DISLODGE OF PERSONALITIES

Faith Boluwatife Ajewole

I was deeply asleep in the dead of the night, when I woke up abruptly, as though someone woke me up. I then lazily stood up, staggered through my bedroom passage and made my way into the kitchen, headed for the hot plate, switched it on, just to place my cold face on it, I had thought to myself. Suddenly! The light popped on, which distracted me a little, it was my Mum who turned it on. I continued with my mission, almost immediately, like I had not seen anyone. I moved closer to put my face on the hot plate, but my Mum's shout, stretches and pulls, saved me that night, but it was really difficult to tame me!

In the similitude of flash, as swift as in split seconds, I switch into my different alternates. One minute, I'm fine and I'm myself and then, after some days or weeks, another alternate occurs and I find myself helplessly expressing an alternate.

One of my alternates, would take a knife and cut me from my wrists up to halfway down both arms and my Mum would find me lying helplessly, in the bathroom. Now, I can't even stand a blade's scratch. So, I knew it couldn't be me doing that to myself. It would be days or probably the next day, when I would come back to myself and find my arms wrapped up, hurting and burning so intensely, without knowing what had happened. This same alternate made me take a wrong medication that landed me in coma for 25 days. It has just caused me constant harm.

My defense alternate, Lois, comes out anytime a situation becomes too hard for my mind to handle, she comes out to deal with the conflict, but usually causes more conflict, she gets out of control and doesn't like to go back, and she does this by putting me in more troubles. One day, she even got me a theft of property charge for stealing things I bought with my own money. When Lois became uncontrollable, then Hope comes out to make her go back and let me take control again.

This is the story of Anita, who was diagnosed of Dissociative Identity Disorder, at age 16. She said, “The doctors said, my mind must have created my alternates when I was around 4 or 5, due to the childhood trauma I was exposed to at a tender age”.

“It is so hard to put up with this disorder” she said.  “When your alternate is out, you don't know if they're going to hurt you or someone you love. And, when you're yourself, you are terrified because you don't know how long you'll stay yourself before one of them comes out again. It's a horrible disorder”. She said, on a sad note.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, is a mental health condition, where 2 or more separate personalities control your behaviour at different times. The patient, constantly experiences Amnesia;  it occurs, when a new identity steps in, you may not remember some events because, it was another personality that experienced them, so when such personality switches to another, the patient experiences gaps in memory, known as, amnesia.

Some of the Risk Factors, includes;

●      Trauma and Abuse

●      Early childhood Trauma, either, physical, emotional or sexual

●      Disrupted Attachments

●      Multiple medical procedures during childhood.

●      War/ Terrorism.

How Does DID develop?

●      An important step in child development - the forming of a central, integrated consciousness, is impeded or prevented by chronic trauma

●      The child uses radical denial and splitting to cope with the traumas, imagining that the traumas happened to “someone else"

●      The child's fantasy capabilities and imagination give the different personality states their individual characteristics.

●      Extremely inconsistent and contradictory behaviour by attachment.

●      Denial of the traumas suffered by the child additionally fosters the dissociative coping strategy.

Symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder

●      Internal Voices

●      Intrusive thoughts, feelings, urges.

●      Passive influence

●      Changing memories, skills and preferences

●      Identity confusion

●      Flash backs

●      Anxiety

●      Feeling like different people

●      Dissociation

●      Delusions

●      Self-harm

And so on…

There has not been, any proven cure to this disorder. But it can be managed, with psychotherapy and medications.