DID

Can you have an alter that has maladaptive levels of over control? I.e. perfectionism, fear of failure, strong need for order, socially disconnected. #DID

Hello everyone! Jules here from the Many but One system.

I had a really big moment with my therapist last Wednesday. Something I've actually written an article for The Mighty about but is awaiting approval. It is the topic of shame and overcoming it. In therapy I had a huge realization that for the first time since finding out about our abuse, I do not feel shame for it. I am not ashamed of the trauma, I am not ashamed of the DID, none of it. Our brain did what it did for survival. It was easy to be angry at the brain at first, but then I realized it saved me. It saved US. I am much more thankful and feeling much less shame than before. It has been so, so freeing!

Something else we spoke about was me wanting to educate people on DID, from the perspective of someone living with it. I want to be able to help people who are early in their diagnosis, people who know people with DID and want to understand them, doctors or therapists that don't know a lot about DID, and people who just plain don't know anything about it other than the problematic stuff Hollywood churns out every once in awhile. I realized doing these things brings me great joy and has also helped me with accepting the disorder as my own. Accepting these experiences as my own. Understanding that the alters or parts of me are not as separate as I thought--they are all ME. We are Many but ONE. Being able to fully accept all parts of me has been huge, and assimilating it under "this stuff happened to me" rather than constantly othering myself from trauma has also been healing. VERY difficult, but really helpful.

My therapist was absolutely excited that I feel this way. We have a LONG way to go in terms of therapy and healing. Like, so long I really can't see the finish line, but I know that it's there and I'm ready for it. However, being an advocate for people with DID is difficult. Being public about it would likely open us up to a lot of shame and ridicule. Even if we did not speak on our trauma with any detail or substance, our abusers would know we were speaking about them and that worries a lot of us. I want to be able to be open, probably not in a social media way. I don't want to be the next big DID YouTuber, because a lot of folks know how dangerous that road is. However, I am very much wanting to be able to share my experiences and let people know they are not alone. Not to mention break down stigmas for people who don't know a lot about it, so for example, if a manager at a company has an employee with DID, they will at least vaguely understand the situation and what to do for their employee. Or a teacher or professor with a student with DID or literally any other combo of people who may not be educated that desperately should be. A biography has come to mind. However, I am not really sure how that process works. I know for a fact I would have to change names, appearances, locations, everything relating to our abusers because while we do have an open report on them, they could and would sue us for defamation if it could even sort of be found out that they were involved.

If anyone has written a biography, edited a biography, or knows the process of something like this, that would probably be kind of "memoir-like" and sharing of our experiences as a DID system, I would really appreciate it! I am also going to speak about it much more seriously with my therapist because I am very sure that I want to do this, I just don't know how to go about it. I want to share what DID is the way it ACTUALLY is and not sensationalizing it. While it can be exciting or "weird" at times, the reality is that we're just highly traumatized individuals with pretty mundane lives that are just trying to Get Through It. Of course the biography itself would probably read much more exciting than I'm saying now, as these experiences are not "The Norm" so a lot of non-systems would probably be quite interested in hearing about it, but it's definitely not like Split or Moon Knight, to put it bluntly!

Any questions, comments, concerns, and advice are greatly appreciated and welcomed.

Happy healing,

Jules, host of the "Many but One" system

#DID #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #CPTSD #PTSD #Childhoodtrauma #biography #writingadvice

Hi everyone! I’m curious as to what other people with DID like to call their parts or alters. What terms do you like or use? Also, how do you refer to yourself? I like the term “community” to talk about myself instead of “system.” For me, “system” just feels too impersonal. Of course I want to respect everyone’s preferred terms, so I’m curious what others like!? #DID #DissociativeIdentityDisorder

Hello folks! This is Jules, host of the Many but One DID system. For those that don't know, DID stands for dissociative identity disorder, previously known as MPD (multiple personality disorder.) I have been diagnosed and in therapy for about a year and a half now, with a DID specialist. It's been a real rollercoaster! However, I have a passion for helping people (systems and non-systems included!) understand what it's like to live with DID and that we are NOT what the media makes us out to be. There's loads of misinformation about DID out there, either from uninformed psychiatrists or from DID systems who simply don't do research or don't understand the disorder well enough, and unfortunately, from Hollywood directors looking to make money off of a deeply stigmatized and misunderstood disorder. I'm not saying I am a professional, however, I want to open up a dialogue.

So please! Ask me anything! Don't worry about offending me or asking something weird or silly! I am open to ALL questions of any manner. I want people to be able to ask questions without fear of ridicule. Questions like these are what help stop misinformation from spreading, and allow us to have a better understanding of DID and its complexity. If you have a partner or child with DID and I don't know how to answer your question, I may source my wife or my parents to give you the answer that would best help you.

Again, I want to preface, I am NOT a professional, and I will mostly be sharing personal experience or experiences I have heard from other DID/OSDD systems I know. (with nothing identifying them AT ALL.) If I feel your question needs research, I will try to provide sources that I know will help answer your question. I also want to say that my experience is not THE ONLY DID experience, as DID is incredibly diverse in presentation and expression.

I'd love to hear from you! Peace!

-Jules

#MightyTogether #DID #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #PTSD #CPTSD #Childhoodtrauma #Trauma #Depression #Anxiety #MentalHealth #discussion #questions #osdd

My therapist keeps messing with the schedule and missing my appointments and it’s I’m getting too dissociated and upset and getting terrible feelings and ideation and feeling so hurt. Each time my reaction is worse and I cry harder sleep less , feel more worthless, feel more broken and unable to recover, trust him less, feel tricked he’s doing it on purpose to hurt me.

I don’t know how to recover from this 3rd time in a month and it is the year anniversary of him unilaterally making a decision with no collaboration reducing my sessions without any discussion and just telling me.

I’m at the mercy of whatever and it’s not safe anymore but I have no other therapist and he’s been mine for 4.5 years.

Was super depressed and suicidal, mainly from PTSD stuff. It was attempt suicide, go to hospital or try ketamine. I picked ketamine. It was amazing! I went in thinking it wouldn’t work! Unlike ECT (over 20 treatments) the Ketamine actually helped!! The Crying stopped. Agitation went away. I was excited to do things. I wasn’t sleeping All the time. I did a deep IV treatment. I’ll do another in 2 weeks when I get back from family trip.
I’ve been battling mental illness since I was 5 years old… I am now 41. Tried over 30 meds. Finally got On clozapine and that saved my life but it can’t make the trauma go away…I take only 4 psych meds daily (when I’m and out of hospitals I was on 7-9!). After 41 hospitalizations, so many years Of treatment and therapies, ketamine has been most helpful.

As anyone else who lives with DID knows, it comes with an array of challenges. In my case, the library is usually a mess and one of my ghosts (this is just how I've come to conceptualize my system, libraries were a rare safe space as a child) is always distracted or pursuing their own agenda making important life tasks difficult.

But I wanted to take a moment to share something small that made my day. Sometimes my protector will go overboard when they are driving but sometimes they will surprise us, especially since becoming pregnant. A favorite cereal has been out of stock at our usual grocery stop and like many, we're not huge fans of deviation from routine so it's rare we can work up the nerve to go somewhere else. (And due to major trauma that happened at a grocery store most of us check out when we are there anyway)

They did the other day though!
This morning we woke to find two boxes of our favorite in the pantry. They hadn't gone far, just about another mile away to a Walgreens that happened to have it. And yes, losing space and time is never a truly good thing, but it was a lovely surprise.

With this disorder we have learned to savor small things like that and hope that anyone reading this also has a moment today that makes them happy. #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #DID #littlethings