r/DID

Are there any people out there who are through the journey enough now that they don’t use the name for their parts anymore and understand that they’re just parts of us, not actual people?

I still use collective words such as ‘We’ when I am confused as to who I am but have noticed that I’ve stopped saying ‘She’ and ‘Him’ unless I’m in therapy doing EMDR or doing parts work.

I’ve been reading a lot of subreddits where people are still referring their the names parts and it kinds of makes me lonely as I am in the part of my recovery where I am very well aware that all of it is ‘Me’. It’s always been ‘Me’ no matter what part fronts.

Honestly, personally I feel it’s the opposite…those are the memories that have come back for me to process…it’s so hard to live in a world no one understands how trauma effects the brain, no matter the age…

we switch without realizing and have to rely on external cues like voice changes to realize that we have switched, and we dont get a lot of amnesia between switches (amnesia happens more gradually for us - for example, i cant really remember most of yesterday very well but felt my memory was continuous throughout the day as i was experiencing it). this has caused us a lot of denial, is this possible within DID?

Hello all!

So I don’t necessarily know if I have DID, it’s just something we’re exploring in therapy right now and I’ve been directed here after some research. Ironically enough, this came up after in therapy after I simply mentioned how throughout my life sometimes I will be in states specific enough that I gave them names. Like Katherine, she is a bit more flirty and a little chaotic, but fine ultimately. Idk, her energy is specific and has been specific enough that she’s probably been around the last…10 years? And when the energy is around I can go “Yup, that’s Katherine.”

Honestly? I was just doing some reading on here about co-fronting and going “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!” So I’m recognizing something familiar in all of this 😂 The way I’ve come to describe it is by using a car metaphor. Usually, I’M driving and all is well and I’m me. Sometimes Katherine is driving, and I’m sitting in the car in the passenger seat instead of the driver’s, so I can see everything happening and I’m just sort of like “Eh, I’m enjoying the ride/it’ll be fine.”? That’s the typical experience. Katherine or even Lucian (a different one that isn’t around anymore I don’t think) driving and it’s fine. But there’s a new “energy”, and this new one feels like someone new is driving, and this time I’m locked in the truck. Like I’m not in the passenger seat or driver’s, I’m locked in the trunk. I can hear and feel what’s happening, but ultimately I feel like there’s a lot less control. This new one…it breaks the script. Imagine if your whole life, you were a vegan. You might have phases where you go down to vegetarian, or pescatarian, but you never eat meat. 27 years of switching, but never eating meat. Then suddenly you’re like “Huh, I kinda don’t care about why I didn’t eat meat before.” And you start slowly trying it, but the second you’re back to yourself you’re like “I DON’T eat meat, wtf.” Haha there’s a better metaphor for this, but truly it comes down to a change in my relationship to my own boundaries.

I guess I’m just wondering if this is familiar to anyone or if at the very least anyone can point me in a direction of some links or sources that might be helpful. The way I describe all of this, is is just how I see it in my head. Can’t tell you why or how, but like, internally, the way I’m describing it (like the car example) is how it feels in my mind. I can see it/feel it in a sense.

Thank you for reading ❤️

EDIT: Ya’ll have been so helpful and informative! Keeping this post up so others may find some help. Still lots to unpack, but S/O to ya’ll being quick to call out BS given people’s generalizations about DID (appreciate it so much cause already I know what it’s like to have a mythologized mental illness and an actual diagnosis) Still figuring stuff out, but appreciate of all ya’ll that have commented so far ❤️

I feel like we all found out at different times and it’s effecting the ability to wholly be comfortable communicating yet.
I have some questions that I can look back through, maybe other parts of us will too if they’re confused as well.

-do you guys hear voices overlapping sometimes? Like I go to type a word and I can’t think of the word, and the “smart one” gives me the word. That’s how I recall ridiculously vocab heavy words through a genuine voice of a different person in my head who is the smarter one. He’s the one who sits in classes to keep a positive face. So of course he would be into the smart stuff bc that shit is BADDDD. I fucking hate math and English and shit but he’s rly good at it bc of that.

-how does weed effect you individually or is this a placebo effect? I feel like it both dissociates and calms anxiety, at least the strain I’ve been buying, which allows us to cohost with only more positive alters and also doing less cohosting and more uni-hosting.

-is it normal/realistic to have this high of switching? Sometimes I feel like I switch anywhere from every 5mins to every few hours, rarely going more than 6 hours without switching. Thats my honest feeling. Is that real? That sounds like a lot. I’m definitely not doing the talking to
Self level of switching idk if that’s even possible? And if it is, how do those people even function wtf I’m so sorry.

I’ve wanted a hysterectomy since I knew what one was, about age 14. I’m trans, have had top surgery and been on hormones for 4 years now- I’ve had absolutely no regrets with my transition and know exactly what I want.

I have a hysterectomy scheduled for late this October, but I need a permission letter from my therapist. I semi-recently got a new therapist who is a DID expert, and when I brought up the hysterectomy, she seemed very hesitant. She asked if all parts want it, how I knew that, if I thought it could be related to trauma- a lot of questions about the validity of my need for the surgery. I understand that she’s just doing her due diligence, but I’m scared she doesn’t see me as genuinely trans and won’t approve the surgery.

Has anyone been in this spot before? How am I supposed to convince her this is something I need and unrelated to the disorder?

Perhaps I have stuff that I haven't uncovered.

I think I'm just looking for validation that what I went through was, in fact, repeatable, inescapable, and extremely fucked up?

CW: Slight physical abuse, neglect, religious trauma

I was raised under the Dr James Dobson/Focus on the Family flavour of parenting and Christianity. Some of those things included spanking a kid until they stopped crying to "break their will". But it was just spanking. I wasn't physically hit in any other way.

My parents started me on dieting that I remember when I was 7 but probably before that. I am autistic and have pretty severe OCD. When I was really upset I would be told to go to my room to calm down (not comforted).

I was homeschooled with Christian nationalist/fundamentalist beliefs and denied a lot of real education but was also a gifted kid. I started reading at age 3 and graduated high school at 14 (had to do two more years of online university courses before attending irl university at 16).

My grandmother is something else. I still dont feel like I can even speak in front of her. I have suspicions about "worse" trauma involving her, but at the very least I never felt safe with her.

Does something worse need to have happened to make all of this result in a dissociative disorder?

I was in an abusive marriage which seemed to bring the parts back online but I remember dissociating from a very early age and can recognize some of the parts from age.. maybe 8 to 9 on?

It's been about a decade since I spoke to a new therapist, and I know myself and my parts quite well. I have had a dissociative specialist on and off for... Not quite a decade, but close. I understand what caused my disorder and why it effects my daily life. But because everything feels very "normal" to me, I'm unsure how to approach the conversation with an unknown clinician. I suppose I could start with the worst of our disorder and how I lost years of my life, but things have changed since the inception of our diagnosis. We don't wander six miles from home anymore. We don't try to break into places we used to live. We've... Figured out a lot, and have agreements, amd many parts try to get along.

Still, I almost feel like I know "too much." Like we won't be taken seriously because we've had years of treatment. Because things are less hard than they were before I was diagnosed.

I don't know how much this will resonate with anyone else, but I really am terrified.

How do I start talking to a new therapist?

I found the new app called “Inner House”, which was created for systems.

Has anyone tried it yet? What has been your experience? I’ve tried for 1 day so far and I’m loving it ; but was curious about other people’s experiences.

Everyone always believes my false memories. Yesterday I was talking to my therapist and an alter came forward and talked about a false memory, even stating that it wasn't real. But my therapist almost immediately recommended i see someone more specialized. Im not upset, more confused. She seemed to imply i said something i don't remember but I was there the whole session. I had another therapist say that i had "amnesia for my amnesia" before but I was also there that session and again it was another alter coming forward, that time lying (in a way that can be proven lies by medical recirds!) I don't know if this is a case of therapists just /assuming/ that I dont remember things that I do remember, or if i am really blacking out. Should I be worried? Am I worried? Lol

when i first told one of my sisters she started and crying and said “it just makes me sad that you don’t remember our times together”. i was just shocked. like maybe be sad about all the trauma i went through?? what does this have to do with you? AOE?

was officially diagnosed recently, i mean part of me was expecting it? but part of me was telling my therapist my symptoms in the hopes she would call me batshit and turn me away. kind of reeling from those words being on paper now. i shouldn't look at myself differently, but i still do. it's not like i wasn't experiencing these things before, i just wasn't medically assessed. and now i am. why does it make me feel as if my world has been flipped upside-down?

no advice please. i'm working through my grievances internally. i just want comfort.

A few months ago, I cut ties with a friend (previously a “situationship”) and I wanted to share my thoughts about telling him about my own experience

Sooo, I’ve suspected I have OSDD for years and I try to cope with it as best I can, even though the dissociation is highly frustrating and limiting on many occasions. Hopefully I have enough reasons to keep going.

Now, there was a time with this guy I met (my ex-friend) where I felt so comfortable with him that I wanted to tell him about my experience, as I trusted him completely and knew he wouldn’t judge me. At first he took it well, trying to understand us and doing his best to get us to explain more about ourselves... but within a matter of days, he spoke to me again suddenly telling me that he felt the same way as I did. That after spending hours in systok (he literally said that) he now “understood” many of the things that were happening to me, and that he also “dissociated” and that he was excited to tell me about it. The next day he started telling us about his alters (many of whom seemed to be “complementary” to mine or to belong to the same source). He spoke of headspace as a completely physical space… And he also spoke of “splitting” as if it were nothing, as if it weren’t a painful experience. Whenever it happens to me, I suffer both physically and mentally, so it seemed like a brutal lack of respect to me.

I let it go on a bit longer, just to see what else he’d tell me, until he got to the point of blocking me (on a game) because one of his “alters” didn’t like me (because i told him i didn't want a relationship with him... um). That’s when I snapped at him. I’d had enough. Was I too harsh? The situation was consuming me.

Obviously, the identities formed due to DID are a big indicator of the same trauma that caused them or the means by which that was coped with. But idk whenever I see people talk about DID they talk about the multiple personalities, when I honestly think that’s not as significant (at least to me) as the dissociation?

I have parts formed by trauma, with different personalities, opinions, appearances, beliefs. But I could have gone through that same trauma and just split into identical identities but with different memories, because I did not get this disorders because of the identities, I got it because I couldn’t cope with what was happening to me.

I’m having so much trouble explaining myself here but I’m hoping someone understands. It’s the compartmentalisation of it. Identities are as unique as each person’s fingerprint, so everyone will cope with trauma slightly differently and develop different personalities depending on what their brain felt was necessary.

But all of us have problems with dissociating, with memory and amnesia, all of us have problems with CPTSD symptoms to some degree.

When the public perception of DID just focuses on identities, to me it feels as if someone was purely focused on what visual hallucinations someone with schizophrenia experienced, instead of other hallucinations or delusions or disorganised thoughts or coping with reality or treatment or anything else.

My identities matter to me and should matter to no one else. What should matter is the dissociation, the CPTSD symptoms, the rest of it.

I moved recently so I went online to cancel our garbage services in our former town. I got an email from the company saying they already talked to me on the phone and we cancelled it. They said I explained that we are not in town to give the cans back and the whole thing, like we had a whole conversation. They worded it very professionally, but I could tell they were confused and wondering if I was trying to make an issue because it was so odd to them I would reach out again like nothing happened.

I have zero recollection of this call, zero. As a system we are usually co-con with me (the part acknowledged by the world, so the host I guess) in the passenger seat even when another fracture is driving (the car/van analogy is the one that works for our system) so losing time is still scary even after 30+ years (therapist thinks I first fractured at 3-5 years old).

The thing is, I HATE making phone calls, it gives me so much anxiety and the move had the whole system in fight or flight already so it was nice that someone took over and handled that for us...

but it still makes my stomach drop to know I was not in control of my words, my body, my mind... and even though we've been working together as a system for years now and we've come a long way, it still makes me feel genuinely fearful when I come up against the holes in my memories.

Hello, it’s the Fourth of July, and our system is particularly triggered by this, fireworks that is. We’ve dealt with this for the past 12 years and it’s not getting any better.

Our cohost is a trauma holder, specifically for things related to firearms. He gets really bad and violent flashbacks and it’s really disturbing to be apart of. The past few nights have been filled with terror, sadness, helplessness. He’s deeply emotional and will spend the entire night crying and having panic attacks because of his flashbacks. The only things that help are our emotional protector who will come and help him emotionally recover afterwards so we can function the day after. During it though, he’s inconsolable, no one can front with him, and he’s unable to care for himself.

We also have autism so we have noise canceling headphones but they don’t work as well as we hoped for things like this. Also when he gets overwhelmed with flashbacks he has a tendency to throw them off his head which adds another layer of complexity. Im at my wits end here, our therapist said to text if we need anything but if I or someone else can’t be there nothing will get sent. I have a plan with my partner for a rest day and maybe putting on a loud movie to help but we’ll see. This is the first year of having any kind of support for this so I’m pretty skeptical of things turning out well.

My family also doesn’t think we have any trauma and is actively trying to get us to go to shows and stuff, which we know from experience just makes it worse and re-traumatizes our trauma holder. Any support is welcome, thank you.

Hi everyone 🌷 We’re a system with DID, formal diagnosis. Two parts that had never fronted before recently came out. They come “from the back” and seem to be anchored in a specific period: they believe they’re 19 and that we’re still in an abusive relationship with an ex from years ago. They don’t know we’re a system or that so much time has passed.
Our boyfriend has tried to calmly explain to them that they’re part of a system and that years have gone by, but they get confused and say he’s “crazy” or that something’s wrong with him 😔. Yesterday they were at front for about two hours, switching between them, and today they came out for a little while too.
We’re in therapy with a specialist in DID systems, so this is being worked on with professional support. He’s told us they shouldn’t have access to the phone, because they’ll try to look for that person 💛 I wanted to ask you all kindly: what would you recommend we do, or what are your thoughts 🥺? Any tips for handling those first “encounters” without causing more fear or confusion for these parts?
Thank you for reading. Ali 🌸💛

I noticed this the other day. I was doing something in the kitchen, and I had made some insignificant mistake, I don't even remember what. anyways, a voice immediately popped up and made some comment about how I'm a fuck-up (or something along those lines). it wasn't my voice though, it was distinct from my "typical" negative-self talk, I wasn't controlling it. the voice was my father's.

I realized this happens quite often. I mess something up or I feel shameful about something, and the voice of my dad is right there to tell me how much of a fuck-up I am.

Growing up, my father was always very quick to tell me how I messed up and disappointed him. he drilled it into my head that I'm no good at anything and I can't do anything right.

I'm wondering if this voice i have might be an introjected alter of him. It's never taken control/fronted from what I can tell, but I know some alters can present primarily (or exclusively) internally.

I suppose it could be some sort of "normal" PTSD response, I'm not sure. I've never tried to really communicate or "talk back" to it, so I don't know.

how do you tell the difference?

Hi all, I was dating the host of a system for 7years but recently broke up, about 2 months after breaking up I started dating an alter in the system we will call her B, and then a month after that an alter that recently went through the process of finding themselves completely like their gender etc confessed he liked me from the moment I met the hos( but I didn't know she was a system until 4 yrs in) and loved me for the last 3 years, we will call him D

Now I'm 3 months into dating my girl B and 1 month into dating my man D, and I absolutely wouldn't change it for the world

The things I struggle with is :

Still being very much inlove with the host but she won't date me again for as long as I'm with the others- which I understand she's not Polly and I'd never make her do that. I just feel like a shit person because I don't see myself not loving B and D

Not seeing D for days at a time as they are a gatekeeper/ Liberian so they are busy with system stuff daily

Leaving messages for B and D and the host seeing them and it makes her upset

I see B nearly everyday as she's Co-host and is up when needed, which is good

Now I know what happens in the system affects all because like they all have to live through it together as a family

We have been trying to find a way where we can create each alter in there an avatar but not sure where to start

I feel as if sometimes I can't leave messages for them because of the way it affects the host because I know she is inlove with me still too

I just found out that B and D want to propose to me which melts my heart

My question really is how does one manage not seeing their partners in the system much?

What are ways I could communicate with them I have an app on my phone of the system that I thought about leaving them messages there instead

Like I miss them both deeply but I understand how a system runs due to the amount of research I've done into DID so I'll never be upset or blame the host for when I don't hear from them for a while either

Someone I thought should have a professional view on DID used the words “the less good parts”. And said “you have to keep one foot in reality”. It is really upsetting because many of my alters, especially littles aready think they are bad and don’t deserve to be there. There is already so much self doubt all the time. I fortunately am able to differentiate clearly between imagination (for example inner worlds) and reality. But of course some parts have flashbacks and dissociative episodes and are somehow stuck in the past and that is still their reality because they didn’t have a chance to feel safe in the present yet.
They don’t deserve to be gaslit again, especially from people who are in a position to know better.
I try so hard to be there for the child alters and tell them they are good, all of them deserve respect and care and even if their actions might not always be helpful nowadays, they probably needed to develop them to survive our past. I am sick of people who should know better (because of their position) not understanding DID. It’s hard enough trying to understand it myself