Coming to Terms With My Dissociative Identity Disorder Diagnosis

I remember the day I realized what I already knew, yet couldn’t remember. That there were different versions of me that came forward when I needed them to. It was all I knew, so I presumed it was normal. But on this warm day, in the confines of my therapy session, my therapist suggested we try to work through one particularly traumatic day, one that included the several of the various types of childhood abuse I was subjected to.

It was a weird experience. We started at the beginning, with the seemingly innocuous act of going to school. I remember feeling like I was actually there, it didn’t feel like a memory, but like it was happening now. I couldn’t remember what happened next, I knew something must have happened, otherwise I wouldn’t be here in the now. But what? I didn’t know. My therapist prompted me, somehow she knew what I couldn’t recall. How did she know? I must have told her, but I had no idea of when or how or why. How could I tell her something I didn’t know I knew?

With her gentle questioning, with ever-so-slight prompts, I suddenly found myself having moved onto the next fragment of memory. Suddenly I found myself fully in that moment, that only a few seconds ago I couldn’t remember. But the more I remembered this moment, the less I could remember the previous one, it was like waking up from a vivid dream and for a moment being able to recall it in excruciating detail, but as soon as you try to tell anyone or process it, it slips away.

I paused, slightly confused. My therapist again encouraged me to keep going, but I couldn’t say what I didn’t know. Again, she prompted me and I suddenly found myself in the next fragment of memory with the previous one slipping through my fingers once again.

Ninety minutes I sat in that session, confused, afraid. How could she have known more about my experiences than me? How could I remember so vividly and then forget, with only the faintest idea of what I’d just remembered, and then it was gone again.

I remember hearing her call my name, but I didn’t recognize it. Her voice seemed to be coming from so very far away. It couldn’t be me they were talking to, no one ever spoke to me. I wasn’t aware I was an adult, sitting in a therapist’s room. I was a scared child, with this voice calling me, but I didn’t know where from. My therapist moved herself into my eyeline, I remember being startled by this sudden appearance of an unknown, yet weirdly familiar presence. Then, a slightly confused, not quite in the moment but not quite somewhere else, me, found herself sitting in that therapist’s room wondering what the heck had just happened. The session had massively overrun. I was afraid of what had just happened. Of what it meant. Was I having some sort of mental health crisis? What did it mean?

I have snippets of memory about the rest of that day and the weeks that followed. The feelings of disconnect I now know were depersonalization/derealization. I remember trying to convince myself it was better to err on the side of caution and treat this strange, yet familiar, yet not quite real seeming world as if it was real. I knew it was real, but it didn’t quite match up. It was like I had been thrust into someone else’s life, that wasn’t mine.

I remembered something my therapist had mentioned, that I had dismissed as not me. Because honestly, I just wanted to be “normal,” whatever normal is. But I was desperate to find answers. I looked up this weird word “disassociation,” that I wished had been simpler to spell, to remember, but most of all, I wanted to look it up and realize it was absolutely nothing like what I had experienced. I wanted to know I’d put the trauma behind me, I didn’t remember most of it — only enough to know certain people weren’t safe. Despite this desire, what I read was like it was written about me, yet I didn’t want it to be. I wanted to not be affected by my childhood, yet this indicated I was.

My therapist had been very sure of her abilities, reassuring me she had lots of experience with working across all areas of therapy, that she could cope with whatever came up. We tried to find a way forward, but she was a National Health Service (NHS) therapist who had already extended my sessions by as much as she could, who had gone over the time limit on our mammoth session. The services were changing to cater for people like me, I just had to wait.

I held on for as long as I could. I kept going, until I couldn’t anymore. I was barely functioning, I couldn’t work, my husband had to take time off work to look after our children because I was barely functioning. I went to my general practitioner (GP) and got prescribed medication. That was all they could offer whilst I continued to wait for the “complex anxiety and depression service” to be able to offer me therapy. I was also encouraged to refer myself to a specialist charity.

It turns out the NHS mental health service doesn’t really know what to do with people who have experienced severe, complex, childhood trauma — at least not in my area. It doesn’t fit neatly into a box with sufficiently quick results, they will only offer their services to people in crisis, or once they have cycled through the various tiers of services. Fortunately, despite my reluctance, I managed to refer myself to a specialist charity. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to meet their criteria, I didn’t want to accept the truth of what I went through and the lasting effects of that.

I waited on these seemingly endless lists. Left to try and find a way to cope without any specialist support, to try and find a way to calm the constant chatter in my head that I realized wasn’t just a regular “internal monologue.” I was offered an NHS place two weeks after the charity took me on. I discussed the options with both and was told I would be better off with the charity, that they had more experience and training in cases like mine and they could offer me a much longer course of therapy than the supposedly “complex” NHS service.

I looked into it and there was only one place, over an hour away, that could meet my needs on the NHS, but the chances of getting approved funding, especially without an inpatient stay, was highly unlikely. Accessing the charity service was the hardest thing I had ever done in my adult life. If I could have thought of anything else, I would have done that instead. I wished I could forget again, put everything away at the back of my mind. But that came at a huge price; my body was breaking under the strain of trying not to remember.

It took a long time for me to accept I have dissociative identity disorder (DID). That I still struggle with the effects of an extremely traumatic childhood. It took an even longer time for me to trust my new therapist knew what she was doing and wouldn’t accidentally cause me more harm whilst trying to help me.

The DID websites and YouTubers have helped me feel less alone. Along with therapy and the psychoeducation that goes hand in hand with it, I’ve realized my DID is a natural consequence of trying to survive extreme childhood abuse, that it would actually be stranger if I had gone through all that I did without developing DID. I’ve struggled to find anything about people in the early stages of coming to terms with having DID.

I am nowhere near healed or recovered enough to have the level of internal communication these wonderfully brave people seem to have obtained. I am still coming to terms with managing my DID, with living with the knowledge I am not always aware of what this body is doing, of what’s happening. If I think about it, it feels scary and overwhelming, but I try to remember even if I didn’t realize it, I’ve had DID most, if not all, of my life and I’ve made it this far. I’ve kept my adult self safe, I’ve raised a family. I’ve done OK — well actually, we’ve done OK, the others in my system and me.

I still have times where I find it hard to accept what limited knowledge I have of what happened to me. I know more and more frequently, those in my system who hold trauma are starting to come forward and share their experiences. I know by the changes in handwriting, that no matter how often I read, I cannot remember what was written because they aren’t yet ready to share. I know by finding myself at the end of a therapy session, tears still rolling down my face, used tissues in my possession and a vague sadness and feeling of waking from a dream that is quickly slipping out of my awareness.

My therapist used to outline what was said in the session, feelings shared, etc., but I came to realize we weren’t ready for that. That if someone came forward, they could do so in confidence that what they said would be kept in confidence between them and our therapist. Since agreeing to this and talking to our therapist about it, who agreed unless someone expressed they were happy for her to share what was discussed, she wouldn’t disclose it. The long-term aim for me is getting to a place where we can share with those in our system and try to have a more cohesive narrative of our life. Writing this, I am fully aware it might not make any sense to most people, but if it helps one person to feel less alone, less different, it will be worth it