I'm not bipolar — I have a split personality

On structural dissociation

In the summer when my mother started sending me long attacking emails in response to me writing about the sexual abuse in my family, she called me delusional and told me she thinks I’m bipolar. I’m not delusional or bipolar, and my diagnosis, for what it’s worth, is officially PTSD, with the psychiatrist telling me that what I really have is called C-PTSD but it’s not an official diagnosis in the DSM. I have been in therapy for many years and there is no indication at all that I have delusions or bipolar.

However, I can understand why the sudden and drastic changes in my behaviour can seem like bipolar, because bipolar is characterized by intense changing mood states. The changes in my behaviour do not reflect a shift between depressive states and manic ones, they reflect my shifting between my parts. I have a split personality, or if you want the technical term, I have structural dissociation.

Structural dissociation is poorly understood and terribly sensationalized, so much so that people don’t take it seriously. For a basic run down on what I mean by structural dissociation, I recommend this article: Dissociation: An Insufficiently Recognized Major Feature of Complex PTSD by Onno van der Hart, Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, and Kathy Steele. To sum it up briefly: the term “structural dissociation” refers to when parts of the personality are dissociated from each other, meaning there is an unusual amount of “distance” between the parts of the personality. Models like Internal Family Systems are doing a great job of normalizing and popularizing the fact that all of us have different parts of our personality. In structural dissociation, due to trauma, these parts become dissociated from each other to varying degrees of intensity. When this dissociation is maintained for a long time, the parts can become very differentiated, each with their own fully developed personality including perspectives, values, preferences, goals, desires, survival strategies, and behaviours.

According to van der Hart et al. structural dissociation exists on a spectrum. On the far end we have Dissociative Identity Disorder. In Dissociative Identity Disorder the parts have been so dissociated for so long that they have differentiated into distinct complete personalities. For a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder there needs to be amnesia, meaning that memories of what one part was doing are not available to the other parts. This is what most people think of when they think of “split personalities.” However, van der Hart et al. argue that this is only the far end of the spectrum of structural dissociation, and that those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex PTSD also have structural dissociation, and this structural dissociation is actually the cause of the extreme and changing states that characterize these diagnoses. I would also argue that many other diagnoses in the DSM include a significant component of structural dissociation, including, possibly, bipolar.

In the model set forth by van der Hart et al. personality splits can be divided into two types, EPs and ANPs. EP stands for “emotional personality.” These parts are the parts we are culturally becoming more familiar with through models like Internal Family Systems. They are not fully developed personalities, but represent emotional states and survival strategies. EPs can be more or less dissociated from each other and from the ANP(s). They can “take over” but they are relatively simple in content. ANP stands for apparently normal personality. This is the more complex structural dissociation in which the parts have been so dissociated for so long that they have developed much more complexity than emotional states and survival strategies. ANPs have fully distinct and complex personalities. According to van der Hart et al. only DID includes ANPs. However, I have ANPs and don’t have full amnesia. Because I see the DSM as a book of nonsense, I am not interested in its diagnostic labels and frameworks, but I do believe that the framework of structural dissociation (which the DSM includes only in relation to DID) is both accurate and very helpful in understanding the seemingly extremely confusing behaviour of those of us who have complex developmental trauma.

I was recently reading the first zine I ever wrote when I was 13 years old. In it I was describing my experiences in grade 6. I wrote “My grades fell and fell. I got so frustrated. I started getting in trouble at school. I went away to my cottage for two weeks and when I got back started getting all A’s. I don’t know what made the change.” In another piece I wrote “My diary entries were like a seesaw. In some, I was angry or sad. In others I was ecstatic.” I remember the times I’m referring to here. Starting in my childhood and continuing throughout my life, I had very intense shifts in behaviour, perception, values, and desires. Sometimes they alternated rapidly and sometimes I went through long periods where I remained in one ANP before changing again. The changes did not simply revolve around mood. They included major changes in what I wanted, what I believed, and how I behaved. These changes were extremely confusing for me and for everyone in my life. And because I could only experience these changes from one ANP or another, not from an outside perspective, it was really difficult for me to make sense of what was going on.