Well, you asked, so: I believe this is a legitimate and problematic situation, and I think that the part of a person that is concerned about it is
innocent, or at least has learned better which is good enough, and does not deserve to be at the mercy of the other part/s; effort should be made to
resolve that.
It IS a form of compartmentalization, but I think I feel that it is not always something developed as a result of dishonesty in people who should have
more integrity -- this can be developed in children as a survival instinct.
I have known (and had the misfortune to live with) a pathological liar and they are terrifying; and they can indeed eventually get to the point of
having what amounts to whole templates-of-personality they slide in and out of for their convenience, and they can blithely, utterly destroy the lives
of people around them. People like that are like snakes. Get away from them or shoot them. Since the latter is not acceptable... get away from
them.
But that is not the only way of that psychology coming about. Sometimes more extreme cases in much younger people occur.
Although I have not had this particular problem (all of my other-identities are not embodied in this reality, not even in mine thankfully ROFL!) I did
have an issue when I was younger where I was pretty much a mild and growing sociopath. Clearly not fully, or I'm not sure I could have resolved it.
I realized what was going on when I was 17. I read an article about a study on sociopaths in prison that talked about brain chemicals and their
experiences and I realized my situation. It explained a lot, holy cats, it was like everything fell into place for me. I saw what was coming. I was
seriously worried that I would not make it to 18 without murdering my stepmother (a paranoid schizophrenic who was the last straw in getting me into
that state), given how horrifically violent I was in my head (for someone even looking at me wrong), while I had this unbelievable self-control that
made me the most gentle, harmless seeming sort on the surface. (Really, in retrospect, that is pretty frightening.)
What I needed, I knew, was more therapy than I could ever afford or had time for, but clearly something needed doing. It wasn't that I cared a lot; I
couldn't feel anything. It felt like there were emotions but they were a million miles away and I couldn't even quite hear the whispers. But I
believed that this had been generated by my life experiences, and I believed that I deserved better than to be the monster events had made me. It
seemed like the ultimate unfairness that I should spend my age 9-17 period in such misery, only to result in then spending my adulthood in misery or
prison from it as opposed to "finally being free" of it at 18.
I pursued self-hypnosis very intensely for years, and when I was in my early 20s I finally "broke through" as I thought of it. It was a movie, of all
things, that finally broke me (Peggy Sue Got Married when it made me cry), and I laughed and cried maniacally in turn, interspersed with totally
exhausted sleep, for a couple days.
I was very fragile for a couple years after that, and I discovered that when all my emotions abruptly shut off (trauma overload, finally) the day
after my 15th birthday, well when I kind of got my 'self' back at 24, I was still emotionally 15. It took years to try and kind of mature that part of
me up to where the rest of me was. (Whether or not I am emotionally mature now is probably still up for debate, heh.)
There were some interesting (from the armchair after the fact) symptoms that came with that, and went away not long after it did. Like a nearly
staggering level of intelligence, learning at great speed and memory although those latter two had always been very strong in me but they were kind of
out of this world during that era, and multi-track "observation" of the world around me as if multiple 'aspects of me' narrated every possible danger,
subtleties, vulnerabilities, details and inconsistencies in people around me, etc.
Not until it went away (abruptly) did I understand, as a sort of sudden insight, that it was a truly profound degree of paranoia, and that it required
an enormous amount of energy to hold -- and once I didn't need it anymore, I let go of it. I understood at the time that I was literally losing a
pretty big block of my intelligence, but it seemed ok. Like it was only there for my protection and I understood then that I didn't need it.
This was an experience that I seriously thought I was alone in the world with, until I saw the movie "The Zero Effect" many years later. Clearly, Jake
Kasdan, the guy who wrote that movie, has met someone with the kind of experience and situation that I had. It's too close. His character was
incredibly like I had been during that era of my life. Well, I hope that I was a better songwriter for sure, and I'm not nearly as good looking as
Bill Pullman heh, but the whole thing of this guy's personality -- incredibly adept when in 'defense' mode socially, uncannily good at perceiving
about people, completely inept alone and socially aside from that, paranoid beyond belief, with nearly impossible speed learning and memory skills --
but really, really seriously F'd up.
I woke up the morning after I turned 15 and my first thought was: "Everything is different now." And it was. The character even described exactly that
experience! It really blew me away. So I guess I am not nearly as unique in the experience as I thought, since I think that script just had to have
been written about someone with the same kind of personality profile. If there's two of us, there are probably a lot more.
I am glad to have finally healed from it, though it took years of pretty intense self-hypnosis work. And I can't say I was perfect after that, just
that I was no longer a sociopath -- when the utter-repression of emotions stopped, the brain chemicals changed, and my instant visual desire to
horrifically murder people went away... which was good. Untamed rage and need for emo-brain-stimulation is bad.
(I actually met a genuine sociopath at 18. He wanted to kill me and I was stuck alone with him for 6 hours when we had axes (we were in the CCC), that
was not fun, the most incredibly careful survival behavior of my life. And almost like in media, he was beautiful in that angelic way, gah. The guy
probably had corpses all over. It made me more determined I was going to get better, that I would not become like that, that I deserved better. So
maybe in a way he helped me. That was sure a long day...)
Anyway, what I am getting around to is, anybody can have a serious psychological disorder, and sometimes they are caused by events and longer-term
situations beyond our control when we are too young to be held responsible for the causation.
Yet, we are responsible for ourselves as adults. If one has the objectivity to see this, and the concern to worry about it, then they become
responsible to themselves for dealing with it.
How, or why, or when, it came about, is not really important. At this point, you are where you are. You could be in the situation where you had all
these problems; but worse, you're in the situation where you have all these problems, but you also have a projective denial that segments them off
into their own person like you aren't responsible. You are, though, now.
There are psych majors who truly could be helpful to you with this. Many insurances cover counseling.
edit on 9-11-2013 by RedCairo because:
typo