I am not a True Crime fan. I am too easily bothered by the anxiety stirred in those sorts of programs, too empathetic half the time to even watch cartoons, much less live action, re-enactments of bad actors murdering folks. This 60 Minute story, though, found below, of Jeni Haynes and her army held my full attention. Probably because I am fascinated with mental health, and the wondrous things our brains do to keep us alive. I found it particularly nice to hear the psychiatrist say multiplicity is not a disorder- but rather it is a highly functional brain strategy that allows humans to survive ongoing, horrendous abuse.
What is Multiple Personality Disorder
Jeni, and her entourage, have a story. You should watch it, because I will not do her story, or even this human condition, justice. Not in an essay. Not in a word. Maybe not even in a book.
Multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder, is really not a disorder, but an adaptive framework that protects a soul from suffering and losing all hope. Can it be maladaptive? Yeah. Once freed from the source of trauma, the artifact that enabled soul to endure unspeakable hardships can result in failing to socially thrive. That is not on the soul who experienced trauma, but on the society that has so often failed appreciate diversity, and or allow for non standard expressions of humanity.
Humanity has a lot of faces. We have more identities, hats, and archetypes than are likely knowable. If you allow that the use of the word soul, one might argue that not only are we not these human shells we put on for a lifetime, but we are also not our personalities. Can actors
channel other personalities? Some better than others, but DID is not acting. Can people who have deliberately created plurality, such as in tulpamancy, be utilizing adaptive features of the human brain that comfort them in the absence of a kindred spirits? Absolutely, but again, DID is not that, either. Can mediums, persons who communicate to non-corporal beings, allow for a few to access deceased souls, or internalized archetypes and caricatures of people known and unknown, sufficiently to get practical information? I think some can. Again, not DID.
But is all of this related?
They say it’s rare.
I have been working in mental health since 2012. I have met seven souls that clearly had DID. I suspect maybe four others. One didn’t realize she had it, but was seeking help because she was experiencing missing time and finding herself in places and situations she couldn’t explain. In the course of assessing, a question triggered her. Her facial features altered. She cursed me out and departed the office. The first person suddenly found herself at a traffic light; she turned around, and returned to me at the clinic- completely unaware of the shift in personality. She just knew something was wrong, because the last thing she remember was speaking to me. Granted, that could have just been pure fight or flight response, but the shift in appearance is something recognizable if you’re a good study of faces. Jim Carrey in the Mask has nothing on true DID
experiencers.
More importantly, and this is a distinction that was mention in the 60 Minutes episode, if you were doing an EEG on someone with DID and they switched personalities, the EEG changes.
Every personality, yours, too, has a specific ‘finger print’ for the typical frequencies for daily consciousness. You can argue different states, like REM, sleep, day dreaming, have their own signatures as well, but they’re all your fingers and all your prints.
Even more profound, per studies using fMRI- people with DID have physiological changes in bodies. So, a person who has no vision problems can have a personality change to a person who needs glasses and the eye becomes physically distorted sufficiently that they now physically need glasses, or the other way around. Eye sight improves with personalities that have perfect vision.
It begs the question, is this the pathway that placebos affect physical cures? Let’s say you have a physical illness, you take a placebo, and then your brain adopts a personality without that illness.
There is evidence in the literature of people having allergies and even diabetes, switching out with personalities that don’t. There is evidence in the literature where adults given medicine experience toxicity the moment a kid personality jumps into the body.
WE ARE NOT ARE BODIES
From a soul perspective, we are not are physical bodies. If this is true, why can’t we go one step further and say, we are not our personalities? Why do we so rigidly cling to personality traits, some inherited, some given, some acquired with a degree of compulsiveness that can sometimes be detrimental to long term well being? Why do we cling to problematic emotions and personality traits, when clearly we have evidence that change is possible?
As a person who loves science, and also recognizes a spiritual life, I recognize the challenges I have in sorting this thing. I am interested in the science aspects, and the untapped power of brain, that takes the Sylva Method and the Relaxation Response and essentially turns them into superpowers.
When I think of a bible story, where Jesus essentially cast out demons putting them into swine, I wonder if people in the past had multiple personality disorder and that was a miscarriage of authority- ridiculing people that had suffered from trauma and were strange, even for back then. I assume more people had trauma back in those days, given how difficult life was. Is that a bad assumptions? Could the prevalence of people claiming to have been possessed in the past be related to the greater life challenges in the past?
Channeling a demon is sufficiently scary most people leave you alone. That means, channeling scary is functional.
I don’t think Jeni, or anyone else I have met, or haven’t met, that has DID is broken, or possessed. Do I sometimes wonder about possession and past lives? Sure. Could it be that past life regressions are not about past life, but rather the mind invented personalities that lived in the past, and when we released these souls or cured them with empathy or simply processed these lives as points of references in our own bodies, real or fiction, healing naturally occurs?
Why isn’t there a greater push to understand variances? If all we study and aim for is normality, we’ll never learn our species full potential. We clearly have untapped powers. Those stories of people who suddenly picked up cars to pull out a trapped loved one, those are real! It’s not just David Banner wanting to become the Hulk. Is that just adrenalin, or did someone channel an angel, or do we all carry angels within us?! That old meme of angel on one shoulder, devil on the other shoulder, and you in the middle, that is the trinity that almost all cultures refence. Even psychology recognizes the trinity, the ego, the unconscious, and the superconscious.
How can anyone not believe in magic? Jeni summoned an army! Not for play or amusement. For survival! Every personality had a function. They had a job. The core function of the team was to make it possible for Jeni to survive. One of the personalities discussed his job, the hardest job, of deciding who was the next personality to take one for the team. He was given authority and he had to decide. “You’re up” translated that personality got to be the front line of abuse.
This personality, dare I say soul, had to choose what person would take on harm. Take one for the team. It weighed on him. That reveals a profound level of empathy, as well as a soldier mentality, “you’re up.” These were not two dimensional, abstractions of personalities. They were fully formed, autonomous beings.
And so, as I sit here, reflecting on my life, on the things I endured, sometimes feeling so alone that I didn’t think I could bare another moment of existence- I wonder, is that evidence I have much more resilience than I gave myself credit for? Aren’t we all much more powerful than we know?
It doesn’t mean those of us who go it alone are better or worse than those who summon armies. I can tell you, on the two times that I am convicted I had spiritual interventions- they were needed, absolutely necessary! They occured at the right time in my life. That, too, was a testament to this theme- when we most need miracles, they happen.
The greatest miracle
I think though, these small miracles lead to the realization of a greater miracle. The continuity of life. Maybe armies of personalities can be created in the blink of an eye. Maybe personalities can be created over many life times.
There’s a darkness in the Jeni story that bothers me. There were questions I had that 60 Minutes didn’t answer. In that episode there were photos from Jeni's childhood; one photo suggested Jeni had siblings. Were they spared misery? Were their young lives equally tormented? How are they fairing now? I also wondered if in the discovery they found father came from an equally abusive background. It wasn’t necessary to know that, and for many it’s not helpful. I just like understanding things to the degree that I can.
When I consider the darkness that seems so inherent in life, I am often left wondering what is this life all about. There is a theme in one of the philosophy that brings me comfort me. It’s the philosophy of one. You will find it in the last video linked below, ‘the Greatest Secret.’ The premise is easy- we’re all one. We are all, essentially and literally, personalities of God. We can not die, and when we start accepting that message, it changes our lives.
If you know you can’t die, there is no need to be defensive or aggressive. Attacking is a form of defense. All transgression are forgivable from a frame work of eternity. Maybe I don’t sell that idea as well as the persons in the video below, but I found synchronicity that both ideas in this essay include multiple personalities.
What do you think?
