Revolving Door

by **Patience** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 1:41 pm

Can anyone describe to me what it is to be in "the revolving door" in your own words? I've researched it online, but for some reason am not entirely clear on it.

Is it a lot of alters coming forward, sort of like rapid switching?

I don't know if this is a widely accepted term or not but I've experienced it. Around the time of my mother's funeral, I was quite a mess. At the gravesite, I felt completely dissociated. I asked to hold my estranged sister's hand to ground me, to keep me from spinning somewhere I couldn't guess. As the preacher went on, I could hear nothing. I felt a bunch of people, virtually everybody then awake, slip forward to witness and register the event, for a couple perhaps to say goodbye, for others to grasp that this woman was their mother, though they hadn't met her.

It felt very much like a revolving door of alters pushing forward, watching briefly, then returning back in as someone else nslid forward. Nothing has caused a similar experience. It was eerie and out of my control but I could sense what and why it was happening.

I believe it was felt necessary by Jonathan and he worked with Sphinx, as often happened, to organize the line and help those too young to think of attending on their own.

by **debetoile** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:49 pm

Johnny-Jack, from what you describe it sounds like what our system has called 'floating in and out' where our head is a mess and ppl are constantly coming and going, as you said to see what is going on, know whether the situation is safe etc then let someone else have a look.

by **Patience** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 6:31 pm

Thanks to you both; Johnny-Jack I can even relate to your post (I'm a supporter) because you described it so well. This is what singletons feel like sometimes when we're under an immense amount of stress and in a surreal situation.

This might be a Richard Kluft definition, revolving door, but I'm not sure about that. I thought it'd be easier to understand in your own words, though...

by **Una+** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 9:32 pm

As far as I know the first use in print of the term revolving door crisis was by Frank Putnam in the 1980's. It refers to rapid switching that is bewildering to watch. Richard Kluft later coined a similar term, co-consciousness crisis. The difference is that in a revolving door crisis the host (and possibly other alters) are at a minimum very dissociated and may even lose time, but in a co-consciousness crisis the host remains aware of what is going on.

Either type of crisis is a frightening experience for someone who does not know they are a multiple.

I had a brief revolving door crisis once in a therapy session. I lost time very briefly while at least one alter interjected some comments into my conversation with my therapist. She asked me if I knew what I had just said. I repeated what I had just said, which proved to her that I had lost time while some very disturbing new information was related.

Just a few weeks before starting therapy 3 years ago, and a big reason why I started, was that I had a co-consciousness crisis where I was experiencing a wide variety of "made thoughts" and "made feelings" that were "not me". And they were mutually incompatible, producing intense cognitive dissonance. I even managed to say out loud that what I was thinking and feeling was not me and something was very wrong and I needed help. Of course, on a deep level all those thoughts and feelings were mine; they belonged to other, dissociated parts of me.

by **Una+** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 10:10 pm

Frank W. Putnam, "Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder", 1989, page 63:

Thought Disorder

At times, MPD patients may appear to have a profound thought disorder. This is caused by a dissociative phenomenon known as "rapid switching" or the "revolving-door crisis," which occurs when no single alter personality is able to gain and maintain control over the patient's behavior. The revolving-door phenomenon often follows and further contributes to a personal crisis by producing a marked psychosis-like picture. The patient appears to be extremely affectively labile, typically cycling rapidly through a wide range of inappropriate emotions. The patient will appear to have signs of a major thought disorder, including blocking, thought withdrawal, and "word salad" speech. In a revolving-door crisis, the patient may exhibit extreme ambivalence, doing and undoing some act in a psychotic or perseverative fashion.

What is happening is that the patient is failing to stabilize in a single alter personality state long enough to carry on coherent and integrated behavior. A series of alters are whizzing by, and the lability, incoherence, and ambivalence manifested by the patient represents the sum total of his or her often incompatible affects and behaviors. Rapid cycling may represent a struggle among alters for control of behavior, each attempting to displace the others; or it may be caused by an abandonment of control, during which the major personalities have surrendered executive control and other alters, often unwillingly, are being thrust into this vacuum. Probably the most important feature that distinguishes this presentation from a true thought disorder is that it is usually transient and can be related to a specific crisis. MPD patients do not show a true sustained thought disorder, such as is often found in schizophrenia (Coons, 1984; Putnam et al, 1984). A more extensive discussion of revolving-door crises follows in Chapter Eleven.

by **Patience** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:05 am

Now we're getting somewhere. Thank you, Una+ for those very interesting posts. The latter explains revolving door very well, and easier to understand.

I am also now perplexed with this "co-conscious crisis." As you may recall, my SO of several years had a major switch and left. As of the last few months, different alters have contacted me, after a long period of silence, leaving me wondering if there was a revolving door crisis going on. It hit a peak, and he has since gone dark again. He seems to be experiencing this "cognitive dissonance", or at least what I think may be "cognitive dissonance", more or less "damned if you do, damned if you don't" or, if I pick A then I surely will have wished I picked B, can't move forward or backwards and "I am stuck mode."

Sorry if that didn't make sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me either..

by **Seangel** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 3:04 am

WOW Patience, I'm glad he contacted you. Hope it's good news to you.

Sea

by **yakusoku** » Sun Feb 02, 2014 9:51 pm

Oh my gosh...is this what has what has been happening where other parts are trying to do stuff and I am fighting to interrupt it? Or else we had someone saying something happened and then another saying it was a lie or deserved and another feeling (not safe/triggering) things about the shame related to it and whoever thought it was deserved wanting to do something to finish the punishment to make it over. In front, I was successful at aborting or interrupting when they started doing stuff, but with sudden jerks when I get back in control, push back to front to stop what they're trying to do (when I realize I'm losing front). It made me exhausted and hard to stay in front after a while, but I was able to abort. In back, my success at stopping it was much more limited.

This has happened to me in several crises where it feels like traumatized parts and protectors and/or introjects are all interacting either out front with me not really there (vaguely aware others were there) or in the background while I try to stay focused. Usually, I end up going into what might seem to others like some sort of psychosis, shaking/bouncing my leg, rhythmic slight rocking, clicking a pen over and over again, to stay grounded throughout it. It is frightening and confusing. It's been happening on and off for days since I got triggered in physical therapy. It happened in church this morning just from a simple trigger of being ashamed about a mix up on having the wrong chords for one song...and the shame feelings ended up leading to full-blown flashbacks and then other parts reacting and me trying to stay front.

This is really a thing? Something (DID) normal that is happening to me? I'm not just making it up or crazy? :cry:

Revolving Door

Revolving Door

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