Back in 1994 when I put myself in the Charter Hospital in Plano, Texas I got to meet severely dissociative (MPD/DID) women. Two of the women had male alters. You could tell when they were in that state because they would walk around like a tough male looking for a fight.

These women had been horribly physically and sexually abused by family members and later abusive husbands. The therapist explained the psychology behind this to me. She said that the women felt like they would not be abused as much if they were a tough, macho male. Obviously that would not work with the people who knew them. It probably only made the abusers abuse them worse.

I do not have that severe of a dissociative disorder. My family was dysfunctional but not total psychopaths. In my case the physical abuse was constant from my brother but not severe. My brother did not start to draw blood until we were teenagers. It was more the psychological and emotional trauma that caused me to have dissociative disorder and borderline personality disorder.

How we were mistreated plays into the fact that we all exhibit our symptoms differently.