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30 Days of DID: Day Ten
*** QUESTION TEN: What are some ways that depersonalization and derealization appear in your day to day life?
They don’t, not anymore.
Depersonalization used to be so prevalent that Lighthouse once considered a diagnosis of Depersonalization Disorder separate from DID, but what we experience now is a fraction of what we did then.
We still benefit from daily body work to continue establishing every part’s connection to the shared physical self. Our depersonalization is more subtle now, and generally only rises when stressors do, or if long-buried parts leak outward or emerge.
Derealization was the least of our dissociative triad, but the most unnerving. The constant questioning of what was real and which reality was real was exhausting, and now pondering dimensions is more creative thought experiment than anything else.
In our day to day, we are no longer living in a constant dissociative state, and we haven’t for awhile. Now we’re learning to exist in an all-feeling body in a sensory-overwhelming world, and it’s been quite the experience.
*** QUESTION TEN-and-a-HALF: Have you ever done a system map? How extensively have you mapped your system?
System mapping helped us understand our chaos. Mapping had us noticing each other, and learning which traits belonged to which alter, and who was connected to whom. It let us see where attention was needed and showed us how much we had yet to uncover.
It helped us each see outside our limited scope of self, to understand who the others were. Who the Motley was as individuals, and who T.W. was as a whole.
A daily (or more!) practice early in discovery, but we don’t map on the regular anymore. No more name clouds or sketches that looked like overlapping constellations made of Tinker Toys.
Someday we’ll do an updated map; the most we do now is sign a birthday card for PeanutButter. It can take up to a week, but it’s nice to see which names are still floating around.
*** 30 Days of DID survey credits go to tumblr user 'shihkas', and wordpress blogger 'catalyticconvergence'. Links can be found in the original post, "Deliciously Surprised" on our website.
