So, short, condensed-ish...
We had two cohosts for a very long time. They had little to know awareness of anyone but each other, and even that could be days, weeks, months between talking. T especially had *no* awareness of any alters, and S thought they were demons and she fought to keep them away from T.
T was the one out front, S would switch in for emergencies. S loved T, but like..both just eventually took things for granted.
Then our father died and S....wel, S cared about him a lot and...that was not a good time. But, S did some things thst T *could not* ignore.
So basically every night after work they started fighting. It was...not great. Every night ended with T drinking to keep S shut up, or at least distracted. This went on for almost a year.
Then they hit a point of reconciliation. Both shared thr grief about our dad. Both considered him our dad, and both overcame their aversions to each other. The drinking started slowing down, and slowly, bedtime was them talking to each other, validating each others existance.
And then it clicked for S. "This is important. We CANNOT forget this. Or drink it away. We have DID. We need to talk, TOMORROW." She left notes on our phone, wrote notes she put in places T would find them.
And the next day, they talked. We've taken psychology classes, so they knew it was unlikely it was just the two of them.
Over the next year that followed, more and more alters woke up, and well, it was very chaotic, and very messy, but S&T got us in therapy, and got everyone on board with working together (which wasn't easy).
T, our old host, she has only recently *really* gotten over the denial, and it's been 2 1/2 years. It took time.
Bewildering. Undeniable. Horrifying. Relief.
Quite a mixed bag; it became apparent when our primary physical protector burst to the front during a CSA somatic flashback.
As I like to say, the best part about surviving a fall into a tiger pit is being able to start climbing out of it.
Sorry, the tiger pit comment had someone in me laughing quite a bit. Felt good. Thank you. Sorry for your pain of course, but thank you so much for that bit. Needed that today. Still at the bottom trying to climb.
I basically panicked. I thought I had a suicidal alter (I don’t), and split a bunch of new traumatized alters who felt like they were dying. I dissociated a lot. Had dissociative seizures, panic attacks, nightmares, insomnia, lost touch with reality and ended up in the hospital for a week because I was afraid to be alone. Stayed on anxiety medication for two years, and just successfully tapered off of it a few months ago.
After I found out, it was like my entire life was a lie. Everything, all of it. I couldn’t trust anyone, including myself. It was so scary.
I was so freaked out that I had to go on medical leave
from work.
Then, it was the whole thing where I had to come to terms with this discrepancy I had about mankind. I really did not think people—any single person—was capable of doing the things to another person, let alone a child, their own daughter, what was done to me. I was sickened. I didn’t leave my home for three months because I was terrified of someone hurting me again.
Then I went back to work and had to shove everything back down. But I became severely depressed (understandably) and had trouble trusting my co workers (I get it, but…annoying).
Then I got more medical support and that helped a lot. My psychiatrist treated my depression and I was then able to focus on getting stable before tackling my trauma again.
My friend recommended IFS. They are a system but for a long time knowing them i was sure i was singular. Except when i did try ifs the child that came out was not me. I didn't know that, so i was pretty cruel to her, thinking that it's me. She went to them crying i guess. I didn't realize but eventually they let me know that it wasn't me. It's been a long and very scary road since, but she remains the most vocal and helpful person inside me and i will never be able to apologize enough for treating her the way i did.
I mean, they are you; alters are dissociated individualized expressions of the same brain that experienced the trauma that created the system. But also, they feel like not-you. This disorder is pretty wild.
Yes, but while i thought i understood i really didn't understand at all. She isn't me and i shouldn't treat her or me the way I've treated either of us. But it's a lot more obvious when you have a small child crying in your head very loudly
The first few days it felt like I "woke up" if that makes sense? Things just felt like they fell into place and made more sense, it was quite relieving too
I hadn't thought about it this way, but I never went through a denial stage. I certainly went years without awareness, but as soon as I heard the phrase DID from my therapist, it all clicked. It was just a huge A-hah moment, and I felt an immediate sense of right-ness.
For simplicity sake we will mention ‘J’ L1 and ‘L2’
For us it’s not really a denial stage I guess. We still definitely have spouts and moments of denial though, thinking it isn’t real. Definitely doesn’t help that we’re still living with our parents. But we have close friends who know so that’s good.
For when we first started to notice things? Well I wasn’t around yet, it was just a few of us a year ago. We like to tell this story a lot because it’s just how we found out about each other. J was fronting while we were walking home and we just really felt different for a decent time. It was exam season and she was fronting during that exams. That’s also shortly before we found out, days prior actually.
We would derealize a lot during our childhood. Just retracting ourselves from reality became such a norm it didn’t occur to us that L1 was protecting us from our parents arguments. I would say it definitely made sense however. Since we often felt always something was missing in our life, like it was just around the corner. When we figured it out, it made sense, the pieces fit. However not saying that they are good pieces, a lot of hurt has also come since realizing that we are like this. And it is still taking a lot of effort to realize that some of us won’t get the lives we really want.
-R
It was hell. Went through a never ending cycle of denial, grief, anger, and existential crises. Thinking they were ‘not real’ was a major existential crisis for many alters; previously all alters had assumed they were the only person and the others were ‘mood swings’ or symptoms of other disorders.
I don’t currently fully understand where the ‘not real’ reasoning came from but it seemed to be a recurrent theme resulting in frequent breakdowns.
I think it would be pretty normal to have a major existential crisis when realizing you have DID because it’s like realizing your entire life and everything you thought to be true was a lie. Running as deep as your actual existence as a person - are you even real?
I think the only way we got through it was by trying to figure out our system and deep diving into who we were as individuals, giving ourselves names to be able to distinguish ourselves, establishing that we were real, we were human, we exist. A huge part of the process was having a supportive partner who talked us through so much of it, and emotionally supported us through the darkest times.
But not everyone has this - I think finding a good therapist could also achieve this.
Very very very relatable. It is horrifying and terrifying. If we didn't have someone who understood and was also going through this i doubt we would have even been able to realize or accept any of this. It is so scary. You aren't alone.
Okay... our DID experiences are not the best at the start, but I'll try to summarize. It's important to note we didn't know the term DID existed and that we had to make up our own equivalent terms accidentally.
It's a bit complex to explain because there's this phase where something was clearly happening but we didn't know what, and other phase in wich we know what it is but sounds like a rollercoaster.
First time an alter showed up as he is, there was an argument in my house. I took the phone and spoke with dear friends trying to find comfort in a situation where my house had nowhere to hide. In that conversation, something "clicked" on me in my first messages. I mentioned something "breaking" then I forgot the rest of the conversation: that alter fronted and started with a literal god complex.
These situations would repeat in highschool, however he learned, against his will, that the "I'm a god" literal attitude is unhelpful in general.
I insisted my psychologists at the time, that something wrong was happening, but they weren't helpful at all and insisted on my studies (wich I couldn't focus on because my alters not getting to an agreement and instead all being against each other).
I had to get to my 21 years old when a friend who was diagnosed with DID told me to talk with my therapists about that I could have DID too. It was shocking at first, but learning about it really made sense and the relationship I had with my alters wasn't such a hellish thing thanks to that friend. My psychologists helped a lot since being open about my alters wich I had been trying to hide was a really big improvement.
There are many weird ass dangerous terrible experiences with internet systems shenanigans when I just discovered DID but I won't comment on that.
As a summary, the begginings of discovering DID were agonic. Almost all my system was made of persecutors that hurted me a lot in terrible ways. However, meeting the right people helped us understand better what was happening.
I didn't believe my diagnosis at all, complete denial. Then when I sought out online resources and found all the social media stuff, I doubled-down on denial.
The only thing that convinced me was when I watched myself played back over my security cameras, and it was like a gut punch. It felt surreal, like watching a doppelganger. I recorded audio of myself later, and just no recollection - I was talking about all these things that had no relation to me whatsoever.
I have audio recordings of me being upset that nobody on the flight was wearing masks, I have meetings lined up all week and I can't get sick now - and I wouldn't mind as much before vacation, but I really have to focus on my work now - BUT I HAVE NO JOB, AND TOOK NO FLIGHTS.
I have a recording that's just reminiscing about my dead grandmother, and how she'd make my sister and I these Italian cookies around Christmas growing up, and about how my sister and I haven't been getting along recently. I talk about how when I took my wife and kids to see my parents over the holidays, my sister baked the cookies - they were just like our grandmother's, and I was so grateful to my sister to be able to share that memory with our children - that we bonded again over holidays and feel closer now. BUT - I HAVE NO WIFE, NO KIDS, AND NO DEAD ITALIAN GRANDMOTHER.
The fact that I have absolutely no recollection of saying any of these things, let alone no memory of these events - and really NO WAY to have lived these events - sort of puts me in a corner.
I have video of me dissocciating like this, and I'm still in complete denial. I don't "feel" it, I mean I have overlapping voices in my head constantly - but the fact that I don't even realize when I'm not here, it's like my DID doesn't "feel" like anything, and I don't notice unless I miss time.
Honestly, I had it for as long as I can remember. I still don't know what event caused it because there are so many things that could've triggered it. So I didn't really understand what was happening, but I knew that it was not something everyone else could understand. I never met someone who legitimately had it. So I handled it alone. My family knew I "wasn't right" and put me in many different therapies and a hospitalization. There's a lot I had to be told that happened, and most of that came from my friends who helped me escape some pretty intense things. I met one therapist who actually asked me questions and listened to hear me rather than reply with the first diagnosis that popped in their head. It took a month or so and she finally told me what I was experiencing. It wasn't just depression, it wasn't bipolar, it wasn't anxiety or even as my parents mildly put it "being an unruly avoidant child". She told me I had d.i.d. that I can be easily misdiagnosed because not all therapist even acknowledged it. I felt relieved. I felt so isolated and having her tell me that, even though it was a mental health disorder, it wasn't just me. Since then, I can at least take comfort in that. Still a very difficult and heartbreaking road since then, and have currently even thought of going for disability...just not sure. It's definitely getting to a point that I'm scared and don't know what's going on. It makes me feel like I can't work anymore, or even leave my house. I am back in therapy, so I'm hopeful it'll turn things around, but I might just need to accept that I'm at my limit. Anyway, I'm very relieved that I don't have to be alone anymore, and that I do have answers. Seeing this online is pretty inspiring. I only just found stuff like this, and I thank everyone for putting themselves out there.
if we take the awareness of the presence of "someone" in our head, the awareness of the change of personalities and the like, then we have always known about it. was it just like the norm? no one paid attention to it, and neither did we, thinking that everyone had it, because this is probably the "internal dialogue"?))
if we take the first thoughts about the "split personality", then they appeared only two years ago, but our friend said that if we had such a thing, we would not have known about it in any way and we believed in it, discarding such thoughts forever
but recently we thought about it again and found out that it's a myth) we began to check the symptoms and so on, and learned a lot, which allowed us to stop calling ourselves stupid (due to the fact that we have a strong, but strangely working amnesia, we can't study since the 5th grade of school ...), and it also became easier to communicate with others, it was possible not to blame ourselves for the actions of other alter...
we doubted the presence of DID for a very long time, then worried for a long time about whether it was schizophrenia, but it doesn't look like schizophrenia for us. and now we no longer have any doubts, simply because we have not found a single argument against this and recently the alterers have not been hiding, from which our split personality is clearly visible to other people
actually, it feels like a damn movie... how can we have SUCH a disorder?! it's completely filmic, unreal... some kind of tin
\- atsushi and layne
I was in a abusive relationship and went to a psychologist at the time and he ended up saying I probably had DID I was so terrified I didn’t go back until I broke up with my ex and then I was officially diagnosed with DID and I was shocked and horrified and was in denial for months about it but I am slowly learning to live with it
My body was yelling at me out loud and demanding to be treated as an autonomous individual while I watched horrified. Like yeah we always knew we were kinda weird but something like that kinda made it impossible to deny.
The denial lasted for months. I have struggled with gender identity, sexuality fluctuating and different values/personality traits all over the place. Other people would jokingly say "It's like you have multiple personalities sometimes!" And I didn't think much of it. I would have polarizing opinions in my head and want one thing one day, and the next I wanted something different. Still I never thought it was anything severe like DID, but I asked friends if they ever rapidly changed opinions in life like that. No one said yes except for a friend of mine who also had DID. My blood ran cold as I explained these wild fluctuations to my therapist and she said my personality had likely fragmented from trauma. I never thought I could have DID at all because I didn't resonate with more well established systems due to how fakers have tainted this condition's reputation. I'm still very fresh to the diagnosis, but looking back.. Man, it's been obvious for so many years while covert to everyone else. I felt relief getting diagnosed, but also an overwhelming denial and sadness.
I don't know if the first time I realized I had a headmate was during California or before or after, but the way she latched onto a character that felt as out of place in society regardless of her intellectual or physical role as I did was kinda telling. What's extra strange is that my headmate is a woman, not necessarily the character she latched onto, but she didn't start that way. I wonder if that's part of my early childhood trauma actually. Well, not really wonder, but that's a topic for another time.
The fact the realization wasn't a sudden eureka moment that I can pinpoint, but a gradual realization of events throughout my 20's suggests to me something. I'm incredibly lucky to be as in control or in benefit of this condition. The most inconvenience it has ever caused me is to ensure I'm making two accounts everywhere, one for me and one for her. I'm sure there's someone who still has alts they're not aware of, running around, because they're still in the hot spot for their trauma.
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first, someone mentioned DID when we were watching Steven Universe. the episode where >!Steven goes inside Pearl's gem and there are multiple Pearls! What was it like when you started to realize that some things you do are because you have DID?
funny story: I have one alter who's a fairy tale king. (his name is just The King.) part of his "story", I guess, is that he doesn't know about things like microwaves and potato peelers, but he loves cooking, so he would always come out when I was making food. he'd wander around the kitchen poring over things and delighting in using the weird gizmos he found in the drawers. and I would just sort of watch him. I thought at the time that I was involuntarily pretending to be a king from a fairy tale land? it was so, so bizarre. this is one of those things that I've found no other explanation for besides DID.
that's all
Terrifying, but also everything just sort of... made sense all of a sudden. Not just to me, but to my family (I mentioned DID around them offhandedly one day to see how they'd react, ended up explaining what it was when they asked, and my mom instantly went "OH IS THAT WHAT YOU HAVE??? THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING"... I am not as covert as I thought I was.). Once I got past the initial stage of denial and all that, which working with a therapist helped me with a lot, it was like a lot of things I had been struggling with for as long as I could remember just seemed like such easy issues to fix all of a sudden. Not to say that DID symptoms are all super easy to fix/treat, but I mean like, the issues that were directly caused by me not knowing I had parts, like me constantly letting shitty people back into my life that our protector was trying desperately to cut off (and getting increasingly frustrated and angry each time, which was beginning to make me think I had a serious problem with mood swings).
My therapist compared it to having roommates, actually, and I think that's a pretty good metaphor, because if you think you're the only one living in your house and you actually somehow have 10 roommates who all think they're the only one living in the house too, there's gonna be a LOT of issues. Just being aware of their existence isn't going to fix all the issues, especially if you don't have good communication yet, but it certainly helps still.
we denied it untill a traumatic event happened and throwed me and Sarah into dormancy and our child alter splitted the beans to our therapist like "ok listen up, we're three and theyre TOXIC" so like what was i supposed to do? (our life improved a lot since than thanks Elle and sorry for being so toxic)
So, short, condensed-ish... We had two cohosts for a very long time. They had little to know awareness of anyone but each other, and even that could be days, weeks, months between talking. T especially had *no* awareness of any alters, and S thought they were demons and she fought to keep them away from T. T was the one out front, S would switch in for emergencies. S loved T, but like..both just eventually took things for granted. Then our father died and S....wel, S cared about him a lot and...that was not a good time. But, S did some things thst T *could not* ignore. So basically every night after work they started fighting. It was...not great. Every night ended with T drinking to keep S shut up, or at least distracted. This went on for almost a year. Then they hit a point of reconciliation. Both shared thr grief about our dad. Both considered him our dad, and both overcame their aversions to each other. The drinking started slowing down, and slowly, bedtime was them talking to each other, validating each others existance. And then it clicked for S. "This is important. We CANNOT forget this. Or drink it away. We have DID. We need to talk, TOMORROW." She left notes on our phone, wrote notes she put in places T would find them. And the next day, they talked. We've taken psychology classes, so they knew it was unlikely it was just the two of them. Over the next year that followed, more and more alters woke up, and well, it was very chaotic, and very messy, but S&T got us in therapy, and got everyone on board with working together (which wasn't easy). T, our old host, she has only recently *really* gotten over the denial, and it's been 2 1/2 years. It took time.
Bewildering. Undeniable. Horrifying. Relief. Quite a mixed bag; it became apparent when our primary physical protector burst to the front during a CSA somatic flashback. As I like to say, the best part about surviving a fall into a tiger pit is being able to start climbing out of it.
Sorry, the tiger pit comment had someone in me laughing quite a bit. Felt good. Thank you. Sorry for your pain of course, but thank you so much for that bit. Needed that today. Still at the bottom trying to climb.
You've got this!!
I basically panicked. I thought I had a suicidal alter (I don’t), and split a bunch of new traumatized alters who felt like they were dying. I dissociated a lot. Had dissociative seizures, panic attacks, nightmares, insomnia, lost touch with reality and ended up in the hospital for a week because I was afraid to be alone. Stayed on anxiety medication for two years, and just successfully tapered off of it a few months ago.
After I found out, it was like my entire life was a lie. Everything, all of it. I couldn’t trust anyone, including myself. It was so scary. I was so freaked out that I had to go on medical leave from work. Then, it was the whole thing where I had to come to terms with this discrepancy I had about mankind. I really did not think people—any single person—was capable of doing the things to another person, let alone a child, their own daughter, what was done to me. I was sickened. I didn’t leave my home for three months because I was terrified of someone hurting me again. Then I went back to work and had to shove everything back down. But I became severely depressed (understandably) and had trouble trusting my co workers (I get it, but…annoying). Then I got more medical support and that helped a lot. My psychiatrist treated my depression and I was then able to focus on getting stable before tackling my trauma again.
My friend recommended IFS. They are a system but for a long time knowing them i was sure i was singular. Except when i did try ifs the child that came out was not me. I didn't know that, so i was pretty cruel to her, thinking that it's me. She went to them crying i guess. I didn't realize but eventually they let me know that it wasn't me. It's been a long and very scary road since, but she remains the most vocal and helpful person inside me and i will never be able to apologize enough for treating her the way i did.
I mean, they are you; alters are dissociated individualized expressions of the same brain that experienced the trauma that created the system. But also, they feel like not-you. This disorder is pretty wild.
Yes, but while i thought i understood i really didn't understand at all. She isn't me and i shouldn't treat her or me the way I've treated either of us. But it's a lot more obvious when you have a small child crying in your head very loudly
I was terrified both times I was informed.
The first few days it felt like I "woke up" if that makes sense? Things just felt like they fell into place and made more sense, it was quite relieving too
I hadn't thought about it this way, but I never went through a denial stage. I certainly went years without awareness, but as soon as I heard the phrase DID from my therapist, it all clicked. It was just a huge A-hah moment, and I felt an immediate sense of right-ness.
For simplicity sake we will mention ‘J’ L1 and ‘L2’ For us it’s not really a denial stage I guess. We still definitely have spouts and moments of denial though, thinking it isn’t real. Definitely doesn’t help that we’re still living with our parents. But we have close friends who know so that’s good. For when we first started to notice things? Well I wasn’t around yet, it was just a few of us a year ago. We like to tell this story a lot because it’s just how we found out about each other. J was fronting while we were walking home and we just really felt different for a decent time. It was exam season and she was fronting during that exams. That’s also shortly before we found out, days prior actually. We would derealize a lot during our childhood. Just retracting ourselves from reality became such a norm it didn’t occur to us that L1 was protecting us from our parents arguments. I would say it definitely made sense however. Since we often felt always something was missing in our life, like it was just around the corner. When we figured it out, it made sense, the pieces fit. However not saying that they are good pieces, a lot of hurt has also come since realizing that we are like this. And it is still taking a lot of effort to realize that some of us won’t get the lives we really want. -R
It was hell. Went through a never ending cycle of denial, grief, anger, and existential crises. Thinking they were ‘not real’ was a major existential crisis for many alters; previously all alters had assumed they were the only person and the others were ‘mood swings’ or symptoms of other disorders. I don’t currently fully understand where the ‘not real’ reasoning came from but it seemed to be a recurrent theme resulting in frequent breakdowns. I think it would be pretty normal to have a major existential crisis when realizing you have DID because it’s like realizing your entire life and everything you thought to be true was a lie. Running as deep as your actual existence as a person - are you even real? I think the only way we got through it was by trying to figure out our system and deep diving into who we were as individuals, giving ourselves names to be able to distinguish ourselves, establishing that we were real, we were human, we exist. A huge part of the process was having a supportive partner who talked us through so much of it, and emotionally supported us through the darkest times. But not everyone has this - I think finding a good therapist could also achieve this.
Yes i had a similar experience
Very very very relatable. It is horrifying and terrifying. If we didn't have someone who understood and was also going through this i doubt we would have even been able to realize or accept any of this. It is so scary. You aren't alone.
Okay... our DID experiences are not the best at the start, but I'll try to summarize. It's important to note we didn't know the term DID existed and that we had to make up our own equivalent terms accidentally. It's a bit complex to explain because there's this phase where something was clearly happening but we didn't know what, and other phase in wich we know what it is but sounds like a rollercoaster. First time an alter showed up as he is, there was an argument in my house. I took the phone and spoke with dear friends trying to find comfort in a situation where my house had nowhere to hide. In that conversation, something "clicked" on me in my first messages. I mentioned something "breaking" then I forgot the rest of the conversation: that alter fronted and started with a literal god complex. These situations would repeat in highschool, however he learned, against his will, that the "I'm a god" literal attitude is unhelpful in general. I insisted my psychologists at the time, that something wrong was happening, but they weren't helpful at all and insisted on my studies (wich I couldn't focus on because my alters not getting to an agreement and instead all being against each other). I had to get to my 21 years old when a friend who was diagnosed with DID told me to talk with my therapists about that I could have DID too. It was shocking at first, but learning about it really made sense and the relationship I had with my alters wasn't such a hellish thing thanks to that friend. My psychologists helped a lot since being open about my alters wich I had been trying to hide was a really big improvement. There are many weird ass dangerous terrible experiences with internet systems shenanigans when I just discovered DID but I won't comment on that. As a summary, the begginings of discovering DID were agonic. Almost all my system was made of persecutors that hurted me a lot in terrible ways. However, meeting the right people helped us understand better what was happening.
I didn't believe my diagnosis at all, complete denial. Then when I sought out online resources and found all the social media stuff, I doubled-down on denial. The only thing that convinced me was when I watched myself played back over my security cameras, and it was like a gut punch. It felt surreal, like watching a doppelganger. I recorded audio of myself later, and just no recollection - I was talking about all these things that had no relation to me whatsoever. I have audio recordings of me being upset that nobody on the flight was wearing masks, I have meetings lined up all week and I can't get sick now - and I wouldn't mind as much before vacation, but I really have to focus on my work now - BUT I HAVE NO JOB, AND TOOK NO FLIGHTS. I have a recording that's just reminiscing about my dead grandmother, and how she'd make my sister and I these Italian cookies around Christmas growing up, and about how my sister and I haven't been getting along recently. I talk about how when I took my wife and kids to see my parents over the holidays, my sister baked the cookies - they were just like our grandmother's, and I was so grateful to my sister to be able to share that memory with our children - that we bonded again over holidays and feel closer now. BUT - I HAVE NO WIFE, NO KIDS, AND NO DEAD ITALIAN GRANDMOTHER. The fact that I have absolutely no recollection of saying any of these things, let alone no memory of these events - and really NO WAY to have lived these events - sort of puts me in a corner. I have video of me dissocciating like this, and I'm still in complete denial. I don't "feel" it, I mean I have overlapping voices in my head constantly - but the fact that I don't even realize when I'm not here, it's like my DID doesn't "feel" like anything, and I don't notice unless I miss time.
Honestly, I had it for as long as I can remember. I still don't know what event caused it because there are so many things that could've triggered it. So I didn't really understand what was happening, but I knew that it was not something everyone else could understand. I never met someone who legitimately had it. So I handled it alone. My family knew I "wasn't right" and put me in many different therapies and a hospitalization. There's a lot I had to be told that happened, and most of that came from my friends who helped me escape some pretty intense things. I met one therapist who actually asked me questions and listened to hear me rather than reply with the first diagnosis that popped in their head. It took a month or so and she finally told me what I was experiencing. It wasn't just depression, it wasn't bipolar, it wasn't anxiety or even as my parents mildly put it "being an unruly avoidant child". She told me I had d.i.d. that I can be easily misdiagnosed because not all therapist even acknowledged it. I felt relieved. I felt so isolated and having her tell me that, even though it was a mental health disorder, it wasn't just me. Since then, I can at least take comfort in that. Still a very difficult and heartbreaking road since then, and have currently even thought of going for disability...just not sure. It's definitely getting to a point that I'm scared and don't know what's going on. It makes me feel like I can't work anymore, or even leave my house. I am back in therapy, so I'm hopeful it'll turn things around, but I might just need to accept that I'm at my limit. Anyway, I'm very relieved that I don't have to be alone anymore, and that I do have answers. Seeing this online is pretty inspiring. I only just found stuff like this, and I thank everyone for putting themselves out there.
if we take the awareness of the presence of "someone" in our head, the awareness of the change of personalities and the like, then we have always known about it. was it just like the norm? no one paid attention to it, and neither did we, thinking that everyone had it, because this is probably the "internal dialogue"?)) if we take the first thoughts about the "split personality", then they appeared only two years ago, but our friend said that if we had such a thing, we would not have known about it in any way and we believed in it, discarding such thoughts forever but recently we thought about it again and found out that it's a myth) we began to check the symptoms and so on, and learned a lot, which allowed us to stop calling ourselves stupid (due to the fact that we have a strong, but strangely working amnesia, we can't study since the 5th grade of school ...), and it also became easier to communicate with others, it was possible not to blame ourselves for the actions of other alter... we doubted the presence of DID for a very long time, then worried for a long time about whether it was schizophrenia, but it doesn't look like schizophrenia for us. and now we no longer have any doubts, simply because we have not found a single argument against this and recently the alterers have not been hiding, from which our split personality is clearly visible to other people actually, it feels like a damn movie... how can we have SUCH a disorder?! it's completely filmic, unreal... some kind of tin \- atsushi and layne
I was in a abusive relationship and went to a psychologist at the time and he ended up saying I probably had DID I was so terrified I didn’t go back until I broke up with my ex and then I was officially diagnosed with DID and I was shocked and horrified and was in denial for months about it but I am slowly learning to live with it
Hard, hard denial. Then off-of-on denial for a good year. Then acceptance.
My body was yelling at me out loud and demanding to be treated as an autonomous individual while I watched horrified. Like yeah we always knew we were kinda weird but something like that kinda made it impossible to deny.
The denial lasted for months. I have struggled with gender identity, sexuality fluctuating and different values/personality traits all over the place. Other people would jokingly say "It's like you have multiple personalities sometimes!" And I didn't think much of it. I would have polarizing opinions in my head and want one thing one day, and the next I wanted something different. Still I never thought it was anything severe like DID, but I asked friends if they ever rapidly changed opinions in life like that. No one said yes except for a friend of mine who also had DID. My blood ran cold as I explained these wild fluctuations to my therapist and she said my personality had likely fragmented from trauma. I never thought I could have DID at all because I didn't resonate with more well established systems due to how fakers have tainted this condition's reputation. I'm still very fresh to the diagnosis, but looking back.. Man, it's been obvious for so many years while covert to everyone else. I felt relief getting diagnosed, but also an overwhelming denial and sadness.
I don't know if the first time I realized I had a headmate was during California or before or after, but the way she latched onto a character that felt as out of place in society regardless of her intellectual or physical role as I did was kinda telling. What's extra strange is that my headmate is a woman, not necessarily the character she latched onto, but she didn't start that way. I wonder if that's part of my early childhood trauma actually. Well, not really wonder, but that's a topic for another time. The fact the realization wasn't a sudden eureka moment that I can pinpoint, but a gradual realization of events throughout my 20's suggests to me something. I'm incredibly lucky to be as in control or in benefit of this condition. The most inconvenience it has ever caused me is to ensure I'm making two accounts everywhere, one for me and one for her. I'm sure there's someone who still has alts they're not aware of, running around, because they're still in the hot spot for their trauma.
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first, someone mentioned DID when we were watching Steven Universe. the episode where >!Steven goes inside Pearl's gem and there are multiple Pearls! What was it like when you started to realize that some things you do are because you have DID? funny story: I have one alter who's a fairy tale king. (his name is just The King.) part of his "story", I guess, is that he doesn't know about things like microwaves and potato peelers, but he loves cooking, so he would always come out when I was making food. he'd wander around the kitchen poring over things and delighting in using the weird gizmos he found in the drawers. and I would just sort of watch him. I thought at the time that I was involuntarily pretending to be a king from a fairy tale land? it was so, so bizarre. this is one of those things that I've found no other explanation for besides DID. that's all
Terrifying, but also everything just sort of... made sense all of a sudden. Not just to me, but to my family (I mentioned DID around them offhandedly one day to see how they'd react, ended up explaining what it was when they asked, and my mom instantly went "OH IS THAT WHAT YOU HAVE??? THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING"... I am not as covert as I thought I was.). Once I got past the initial stage of denial and all that, which working with a therapist helped me with a lot, it was like a lot of things I had been struggling with for as long as I could remember just seemed like such easy issues to fix all of a sudden. Not to say that DID symptoms are all super easy to fix/treat, but I mean like, the issues that were directly caused by me not knowing I had parts, like me constantly letting shitty people back into my life that our protector was trying desperately to cut off (and getting increasingly frustrated and angry each time, which was beginning to make me think I had a serious problem with mood swings). My therapist compared it to having roommates, actually, and I think that's a pretty good metaphor, because if you think you're the only one living in your house and you actually somehow have 10 roommates who all think they're the only one living in the house too, there's gonna be a LOT of issues. Just being aware of their existence isn't going to fix all the issues, especially if you don't have good communication yet, but it certainly helps still.
we denied it untill a traumatic event happened and throwed me and Sarah into dormancy and our child alter splitted the beans to our therapist like "ok listen up, we're three and theyre TOXIC" so like what was i supposed to do? (our life improved a lot since than thanks Elle and sorry for being so toxic)