Abuse

*** QUESTION NINE: What misinformation about DID irks you the most?

Oof. Not sure I want to answer this one. Not sure I should.

I’ve been skirting topics like this because of how deep the rabbit hole goes, and how it makes me feel. I avoid DID-specific social media and stay away from online communities because of it. And because I don’t have the bandwidth for the drama that often accompanies it.

But, from the top of my head (and without any further explanation), here are some of the regular offenders I’ve seen over the years:

DID is rare. DID isn’t real. DID is under-researched. Polyfragmentation isn’t real. Everyone with DID is faking. Nobody lies about having DID. DID never knows they have it. DID only finds out upon diagnosis. DID makes you lose your driving license, custody, housing. DID doesn’t say ‘we’. DID only says ‘we’. Alters and imaginary friends are the same thing. DID thinks internal worlds are a literal reality. DID can start outside of childhood. DID cannot be diagnosed in childhood. DID doesn’t require trauma. Alters don’t require dissociation. DID is a personality disorder. DID is an excuse. DID lets you plead insanity. DID is a choice. Alters cannot be willingly created. Alters cannot be forcibly created. Roles aren’t real. Mind control isn’t real. Certain types of abuse don’t exist. DID isn’t multiplicity. DID is only multiplicity. Only one alter is the real person. A host alter is expected. Integration should be avoided. Fusion makes alters disappear. Fusion is murder. Dormancy isn’t real. Subsystems aren’t real. System-hopping is possible. Amnesia is concrete, absolute, and predictable. Alters can’t have alters. Alters don’t have separate names. Alters who don’t front don’t exist. DID with high alter counts are impossible/non-functional/stuck in mental hospitals. DID is obvious. DID is invisible. Child alters are literal children. Alters are separate people. Alters can’t have physical differences. Alters can’t be similar. Alters can’t talk to each other. Alters are a delusion. Alters are roleplay. Alters can’t choose to switch. DID is doomed to forever dysfunction. People with DID can’t be happy. DID can’t be healed.

Whew. That’s enough of that. Moving on…

*** QUESTION NINE-and-a-HALF: What level of co-consciousness do you have? How do you feel your communication skills are within the system? How do you want to grow in those skills?

We used to distinguish sharing executive control with other alters but with no idea the other is there (co-present) and having awareness of and/or communication with co-present parts (co-conscious).

In the beginning, we were constantly co-present with little co-consciousness. Then, we could be co-conscious, but forgot almost immediately. Now, we blend more than switch, and, while it may take time, effort, and a little internal sleuthing to recall or contextualize a memory, we rarely lose time in our current day-to-day.

A future goal is for all of us to be able to recognize and verbalize our feelings and thoughts (such as signaling distress or discomfort) in the moment rather than hours or days later. To communicate without overwhelm.

To know what’s gonna come out of my mouth before I say it would be nice, too.

#DissociativeIdentityDisorder #dissociativedisorders #DissociationDisorders

*** 30 Days of DID survey credits go to tumblr user 'shihkas', and wordpress blogger 'catalyticconvergence'. Links can be found in the original post ("Dogged By DID") on our website. ***

*** QUESTION EIGHT: When did you first learn/hear about DID, if it was prior to your diagnosis?

Vague memories of mentions as far back as 2002 or 2003, and then again a few years later. I readily saw myself in dissociative symptoms but didn’t realize I could be realistically diagnosed. I didn’t pursue it, and back then, I don’t think our system was allowing it.

Funny thing: whenever this question comes up, I tend to apply it to only the misdiagnosis years in adulthood. I often forget about a book I’d frequently read as a tween- and teenager, the one where the character at the center of the story was diagnosed with MPD. The character I heavily related to, but didn’t know how or why.

Its publication date was in 1992, when Dissociative Identity Disorder was still named Multiple Personality Disorder, and I probably first read it soon after it hit the shelves, if not a little afterward; it was definitely a high-school re-re-re-read.

I still have that book. The same copy, even. It’s been decades; I should read it again, especially knowing what we do now. An upcoming entry for Multiples in the Media, mayhaps?

***QUESTION EIGHT-and-a-HALF: How did you first discover you were [multiple]? Was it before, after, or during diagnosis?

Before diagnosis. We count 2013 as the official date, but as memory serves, I started entertaining the idea in 2006 or ‘07, when presented with and needing to examine some extremely confronting evidence of switching activity.

A lot of extra hi’s in my journals and instant messenger conversations. Friends saying I was acting differently, or that I didn’t seem to recognize them. I asked my roommate, “I’m not the same T.W. you first met, am I?” and the question echoed with a lifelong familiarity.

Their affirming answer wasn’t comforting, either.

DID had been dogging me for at least a year prior to that, but I couldn’t take it seriously; I didn’t recognize my trauma as trauma, or my abuse as abuse. For awhile, I thought of it as another additional diagnosis — not one to replace all the others.

Then I detoxed the decade of psychotropics from our system, and absolutely nothing changed. Well, they did — but not how we’d been warned. Things became clearer; I could think again.

We were mostly on board with the idea of DID by 2012, but even as evidence mounted, I refused to believe until confirmed by a dissociative specialist who’d know what they were seeing.

Which opened up doorways to system discoveries beyond our imagination.

#DissociativeIdentityDisorder #DissociationDisorders #dissociativedisorders

*** 30 Days of DID survey credits go to tumblr user 'shihkas', and wordpress blogger 'catalyticconvergence'. Links can be found in the original post ("Dogged By DID") on our website. ***

*** QUESTION SEVEN: How long have you been in treatment for DID?

Since 2013. We took a break for a few years, then restarted in 2024.

The worst patches saw twice-weekly sessions, doubled or more in length, but our default now is once a week for the typical hour. If we’re struggling with a specific part or memory (and schedules allow) we’ll do an extra-long session. We also take a week off here and there.

A rough estimate of our office hours with Lighthouse has totaled about nine or ten years (even the break had semi-regular check-ins), which means the time spent in proper treatment has nearly lapped the time spent in improper treatment! Success!

*** QUESTION SEVEN-and-a-Half: How many parts do you know of in the system? How many know about each other?

Our named roster once rose into the hundreds, but best guess is, at our most fragmented, we numbered into the low thousands. We stopped keeping track once realizing most alters were groups of parts, or were standing guard in front of groups of parts.

At first, the front-facing, life-living parts were aware only of other surface-level parts, and were kept oblivious to the abuse history and/or inner workings. Deeply-layered or higher-ranking parts knew more, but each section only carried a piece of the bigger picture. A complete overview wasn’t possible until very recently.

I’d say only about 30% of our system directly interacted with the outside world, and things changed so much in recovery that tracking numbers became an unnecessary and distracting task.

At this point, our multiplicity (and togetherness) is understood innately. We don’t need to be Named to be known, and once an alter is known to one, they are known to all. The recognition, acceptance, and welcoming to the fold is almost instantaneous.

#DissociativeIdentityDisorder #DissociationDisorders #dissociativedisorders

*** 30 Days of DID survey credits go to tumblr user shihkas, and wordpress blogger catalyticconvergence. Links can be found in the original post ("Dogged by DID") on our website. ***