Thread by @TheRingsSystem

In @houseNYX 's keynote on plural dispersion, they mention how the ISSTD's current treatment guidelines state that DID systems in group therapy should not be allowed to socialize outside of the group, at risk of losing professional support they've worked for years to obtain.

While I don't want to re-hash their entire presentation, I'll give a quick overview with quotes from the ISSTD before talking about connections we've made.

You can watch their full talk here:

ISSTD guidelines admits group therapy is helpful for systems, stating "[it] assists in the development of specific skill sets (e.g., coping strategies, social skills, and symptom management) and helps patients understand... they're not alone in coping with dissociative symptoms.

However, they continue to say "These task-oriented groups should be time limited, highly structured, and clearly focused."
"Groups of this type require an explicit treatment frame with set expectations and boundaries for the participants’ actions inside and outside the group."

There are two examples of these boundaries and expectations given in the treatment guidelines: "limitations on discussion of trauma memories in group" and "no socializing between members outside the group."

The section culminates in:
"Nonprofessionally led “self-help” groups are generally viewed as contraindicated for DID patients."
"Many experienced therapists will not treat DID patients who insist on participating in these types of groups."

Many systems participating in these groups have been left stuck between a rock and a hard place: choosing between socializing and getting support from their system friends (the few people who understood them) or the professional help they might've spent decades looking for.

tw: inc*st mention

However, "nonprofessionally led “self-help” groups" weren't the only group which could result in professionals refusing treatment. 12-step incest survivor groups were also cited alongside community spaces as being harmful for DID systems to participate in.

tw: inc*st mention

Specifically, this quote:
"12-step “incest survivor” groups... are generally viewed as contraindicated for DID patients, as their typical format is unregulated and may result in emotional flooding and other psychological distress.

"In addition, there is the potential for poor boundaries among group members, including disturbed, overdependent, and/or exploitive behavior."

(remember this negative description)

(I'll also refer to these groups as 12-step groups for the rest of the thread).

Even when these 12-step groups are professionally led (assumed to take measures against trauma-dumping and model good boundaries), the ISSTD still states that "Many experienced therapists will not treat DID patients who insist on participating in these types of groups."

Why? Why are 12-step groups blacklisted like this? Were they somehow worse than any other professionally-led trauma survivor support group? Why are 12-step groups specifically named to be prone to "overdependent, disturbed behavior?"

The truth is, they weren't.

When we look at our plural history, 12-step groups were the opposite of "encouraging poor boundaries."

In fact, a 1988 DID survivor 12-step group was the birthplace of one of the earliest documents calling for the proper treatment of all entities within multiple systems.

12-step groups helped multiples stand up for themselves, calling on therapists to acknowledge their personalities, find alternatives to denying or suppressing each other, and to encourage "communication, cooperation, and assistance among our personalities."

There's evidence that group members put a lot of time into building positive internal boundaries, and ending cycles of abuse within their own systems. Helping traumatized entities "grow and come into the present" instead of fighting them.

They de-centered the idea that their multiplicity was inherently wrong - instead, it was "a healthy response to a sick situation," a defense against abuse.

They could've easily been one of the birthplaces for healthy, functional multiplicity instead of integration.

These 12-step groups are not what I would call encouraging of "overdependent, and/or exploitative behavior." Working to end internal cycles of abuse and acknowledge DID as a healthy response to horrible situations isn't "disturbed behavior."

12-step groups (and community spaces) are the last thing I'd call counterproductive to healing for those MPD systems that participated.

But, it is counterproductive to pushing the narrative that fusion is the only way to achieve stabilization for DID systems.

For professionals like Kluft (who coined the idea of that systems are narcissistically invested in multiplicity, causing systems to resist fusion) it's easy to see how these 12-step groups and their radical ideas around healthy system cooperation could be deemed "disturbed."

Accepting ourselves, encouraging communication and functionality, ending internal cycles of abuse, and working towards healthy multiplicity all challenge the singlet-normative status quo. For professionals dedicated to the idea that singlet=healthy, these groups challenged them.

The ISSTD historically supports Kluft's ideas around fusion being the best/only treatment, using phases in the guidelines such as: "At this point, if the patient is no longer narcissistically invested in maintaining the particular separateness, fusion is ready to occur."

There's many citations throughout the ISSTD's guidelines, but there are no citations in the entire section on group therapy (which this thread covers). Meaning: no studies, no case narratives of any soft were used to show 12-step groups & DID gatherings were harmful to systems.

The guidelines cite no research that 12-step or community gatherings are harmful to systems. They give less than 3 small bulletpoints about what could go wrong, with nothing proving WHY those environments are so harmful.

It's implied it's cited, with no actual research.

When we allow singlets to write treatment guidelines glorifying unification, with no input from the DID community, this is how our community spaces and gatherings are talked about. Professionals are told to actively discourage them.

Nothing about us without us.

The '12 goals for Multiple Personalities' document survives due to the Many Voices magazine, specifically in the June 1989 issue, page 6.

Plural history is so incredibly important, because if we don't learn from it, it will be re-written and twisted by those who hold power.