Multiple Personalities

Are people with the multiple personality disorder proof of men's ability to shape the body only by thoughts? And how come that I can't do it, too?

I haven't met people with multiple personalities yet (I guess that people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorders don't count, though it sometimes feels as if these people host completely different personalities, too). I know this disease only from thrillers where imaginative authors used the drama of these poor people to their stories' advantage.

I'm reading a book that focuses on the healing of poor eyesight. In it, people with multiple personality disorders are used as an example of the fact that the different personalities that share the same body can also have different visual acuities.

This prompted me to do some research about this disease and I found articles and books about it. They confirmed that different personalities that share one and the same body not only have different voices and handwriting; they also have different memories, ages, talents, and completely different characters.

Affected people split parts of their personality due to severe, traumatic events in their childhood. Apparently, it is possible for them to develop between two and more than 50 sub-personalities that are often unaware of each other. But what really interests me is that the same body with different sub-personalities also can have different diseases. That means that personality A may have allergies, but personality B doesn't. This also applies to other diseases, such as diabetes and stomach ulcers. But it also happens that even eye color can change with each sub-personality.

Isn't that amazing?

I'm a passionate advocate of the principle that most of our diseases are caused by our psyche. I believe that our experiences, thoughts, beliefs, memories and associated emotions "form" us. This includes our body and its organs. I am not alone in this opinion. Many psychologists and medical practitioners agree.

It is generally accepted that diabetes, at a certain stage, is not curable. Luckily, it can be treated nowadays and with insulin a normal life is possible for a diabetic. But now imagine that the blood test sample of the same body, which just  revealed severe diabetes, regenerates within a few hours. Suddenly the blood sugar level is perfectly healthy. And a stomach ulcer can just disappear but shows up again with the next personality change. If this is not proof that our mind causes many of our diseases, then I don't know what.

As I said, this is not new for me. But the idea that a stomach ulcer can disappear in a very short amount of time, just because the personality that has no ulcer doesn't have the same memories, thoughts, and feelings as the personality with the ulcer, touched me immensely. Personality C suddenly appears and, “Boom!” The ulcer is gone but the diabetes is back. That's crazy, isn't it?

I think the reason this touches me so much is that even I sometimes have my doubts about whether it is really possible to heal diseases by healing the psychological causes of these diseases. This is due to that I am lazy by nature. When I'm sick, it's soooo much easier to take a few pills and to feel sick, rather than to sit down and meditate or do other exercises to find out what this disease actually has really caused.

And then there's the part of me that seems to think that my body works like a machine that does not really have anything to do with my real self. I must constantly work against the feelings and thoughts that tell me that my body is completely separate from my emotions and thoughts.

But if it is possible for people with multiple personalities to spontaneously create or eliminate different diseases with each of its sub-personalities, then it must also be possible for me. Of course, I couldn't do it as quickly as they can. I can't just scratch my beliefs and memories from my mind. But I know that I can change my beliefs and therefore also my feelings (Byron Katie's "The Work" works pretty good for me).

But first I have to be aware of how I feel and what I think before I can change my beliefs. Sometimes it is not necessary to change anything because it turns out that it is sufficient to face my emotions, instead of running away from them.

I know that works well for me. Nevertheless, I also know that I will keep reaching for a pill when I am sick. The thought that pills and operations can cure my body just has something immensely reassuring in and of itself. Because then, not I am responsible but my medication or the doctor who has prescribed it is responsible for how I feel. I can relax and feel just miserable.

Looking for the psychological or even spiritual reasons for a disease takes time and energy and patience. And I usually don't feel like committing to that. That's probably why sometimes I prefer to suffer so long until I get to a point where I'm tired of suffering. But then I usually manage to heal or at least mitigate my illness.

But anyway, I will probably continue taking headache pills when I sense that a migraine is coming. It's just too tempting to have these little helpers. I can never resist them.

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 Find this article also in German - Multiple Persönlichkeiten - Die deutsche Version dieses Artikels