Doctors, therapists (people who help people think better), and psychologists (people who study how minds work), have come up with some information about multiples. Some is good information and helps multiples, some is a little iffy and might not do them a lot of good. Some applies to almost all multiples, but some of it only applies to some multiples.
One thing they've come up with is a fancy name for "multiples" -- Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID.
Dissociation is where all your 5 (or more) senses, memories, feelings, and sense of being inside your body become disconnected from each other. In short, it means "to separate" or disconnect. So this means that multiples are unplugged.
Identity is like who you are -- or what you make of yourself. How you see yourself. How other people see you.
Disorder means out of order -- broken, sick, ill.
So DID is essentially saying "sick people who have separated their self". That isn't very nice. My mom says that a lot of multiples don't like saying they have DID.
Some multiples don't think they were ever only one person, so they couldn't have separated themself into different people -- they never were one person to begin with.
Some multiples disagree with the "disorder" part and don't think that DID is a sickness. Sometimes only few people in their head are a problem, sometimes no one in their head is a problem. Sometimes the problem is just that a few of them need help, just like a lot of singletons need help.
With all this trouble calling it DID, my mom just calls it "being multiple" -- I guess it just makes it easier and less people fight about it. But she says that if a therapist is asked to help her, they're probably going to call her "DID."
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