DID Did formerly known as mpd

[Deleted member 38242]

I have one other personality. It was created when I shattered at 17 due to a sieries of psychological traumas, wrong diagnosis, gaslighting, and covert psychological abuse, also public shaming, and sexual humiliation at the hands of an abusive boyfriend, and bullies who hated me. The only way I could live through it is putting all of my shattered pieces in one fragment. That one personality is polyfragmented. I have only encountered it four times in life. When it was shattered and formed, and then three other times due to abuse, flashbacks, being stalked like pray (which was part of the first trauma), having no support from people I trust, being triggered, and lack of self care (usually caring for others more than myself at the time). Medication for bipolar which they always put me on makes it worse and prolongs the pain, and turns me to angry mush mentally unable to communicate anything except what I've watched on tv, or fragmented thoughts from the past until I'm safe around safe people who won't hurt me emotionally or mentally. It's
I can make sure I never switch again as it has to have multiple factors to comeout, but I have to integrate it this time. I don't know how to integrate a lifetime of abuse I thought I was finally escaping and going to be free from just before I was shattered by a very sick incident that took a few months to lead up to. People are really sick, and cruel. At the time I was being told I was crazy by everyone I loved, and anyone who supported me mainly my abusive family. They put me in a chemical straight jacket, and were cold, and played mind games with me for three months as punishment, and their own disbelief of the nature of the situation.
It feels like shards of metal that can't go back to being soft human parts, and integration is painful. I also get flashes when I can feel her crying saying so much time was waisted, so much happiness, and life taken away. She doesn't want to be almost 40 with nothing to show, and isolated from her siblings who became successful after moving away from parents. She is every tortured piece of a singled out life. Everyone in the family had it better than me, and while they knew this they always promised it would stop when I grew up. They all believed shit rolls down hill, and I was the youngest, and they didn't see outside circumstance causing a lifetime of pain back then, but neither did I.
Anyway I was wondering if anyone has dealt with a shattered fragment that happened later in life. I had no diagnosis until then except maybe childhood teenage rebellion, and being a pot head. I was stable up until a few months before the trauma then due to the nature the trauma started questioning my sanity, but that was part of the trauma, and it was done quite purposefully. Bad people will torture people especially in groups, and have no compassion as they justify behavior that if done individually would never be done. Gang rape (even if only of the mind, and emotions) is always about the predators building each other up, and objectification of a person. Quite cruel, but they can't see it in their frenzy of building each other up.
So painful to have lost so much while others who tormented you had everything, and always will. Including powrr, money, and control. Can anyone relate? The loneliness and uniqueness of a diagnosis only .01 - .05% has is unbearable at times.

 

[pixel]

Whatever the statistics are, you aren't alone here and many people can relate to how you're feeling.

Welcome :)

 

[BlueOrange]

There's a few of us here with a DID diagnosis. I'm currently working pretty directly with my anger, which has me reluctant to interact here; I get scared of my temper.

Treatment for DID has been extremely painful for me, and I think it tends to be that way for others, too. Learning to accept kindness, to deal with pain without forcing myself to 'just push through', these have been very difficult for me.

But I'm doing so much better than when I started.

 

[BuckarooBanzai]

Have you been formally diagnosed with DID?

The general rule is that, in order to develop DID, one must have been traumatized and then experienced one's first split (creation of alter) by age 8 or so. This is because only a child's ego structure is fluid/malleable enough to split and create an alter for the first time.

Now, once you have alters, other alters can be split off no matter one's age. I split off new ones in middle age.

 

[leelee]

Do people with cptsd generally have DID?

 

[pixel]

No, usually the other way around — people with DID are more likely to be co-morbid with PTSD.
but not vice versa.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

@BuckarooBanzai From what I understand, however, DID can be a little like PTSD where the original trauma might occur young and then just get reactivated later. So, for example, a young child is abused, but manages to create a system that functions flawlessly and thus flies under the radar completely. Later, in adolescence, another trauma happens that resurfaces the old trauma, and that is when symptoms become apparent. So, the original trauma happened when young, but it can appear, on the surface, that the trauma responsible for the PTSD/DID was the later trauma.

 

[BlueOrange]

Do people with cptsd generally have DID?

It can be very hard to tell the difference between CPTSD and DID. Especially since CPTSD is a descriptive label, and not a formal diagnosis.

DID is a complex form of dissociation, while PTSD is a simple form of dissociation. So CPTSD might be DID. But it might also be some other complexity.

CPTSD could be DDNOS (especially if chronic trauma occurs after age 8), or PTSD combined with something completely else.

When I see someone say CPTSD, the meaning I take from it is: They have some kind of dissociation, chronic trauma, probably trust issues, and probably more in common with me (who has DID) than with an adult who went to war (typically a 'straighforward' PTSD).

Noting that 'complex' does not mean worse, or more important.

 

[BlueOrange]

No, usually the other way around — people with DID are more likely to be co-morbid with PTSD.
but not...

My view: DID is a compound fracture, while PTSD is a single fault line. So, in a sense, DID includes PTSD. It makes sense for a person diagnosed with PTSD (there's a crack there) to have it revised to DID (there's a bunch of cracks, including some that are very hard to spot).

 

[pixel]

My view: DID is a compound fracture, while PTSD is a single fault line. So, in a sense, DID includes...

i really like that analogy

 

[ms spock]

lack of self care (usually caring for others more than myself at the time).

I also get flashes when I can feel her crying saying so much time was waisted, so much happiness, and life taken away. She doesn't want to be almost 40 with nothing to show, and isolated from her siblings who became successful after moving away from parents.

So painful to have lost so much while others who tormented you had everything, and always will. Including powrr, money, and control. Can anyone relate?

There is a lot of relating going on for me. You are not alone.

 

[Powder]

isolated from her siblings

I can't find it now, but from all my research online about DID, this is frequently mentioned, not diagnostically, but annecdotally, meaning that clinicians see a high correlation between what you said, feeling totally like the black sheep of the family, and feeling isolated from the siblings, especially picked on, like a runt, and usually, when sexual and/or physical/emotional abuse (prior to age 8) of great severity IS remembered, the sufferer felt isolated by that abuse.

Often, the siblings WERE also abused but the child parts of the DID sufferer were hurt during ego development stages when there was no "others" than self to be abused, or they were interjected into the self.

To put it plainly, I was abused as a small pre-school child very severely and have only remembered vaguely as having been wounded in my soul almost to death several times in ways I could not process or remember.

Then I remembered, nay relived, via intense flashbacks.

I also, through flashbacks processed as an adult now, realize that my sibling was also severely abused in my presence and I dissociated because of it, and I experience some of the shock vicariously because of my age and being traumatically bonded with her as well as love-sibling-protective-bonded. Her trauma has been mine, too. Yet, as a child, it felt all MINE.

It's hard to explain what a small child's developing sense of self versus an adult's is. And I feel this has permanently altered my sense of "self vs. other" to the extent that when I see a stranger fall in public, I experience physical pain myself at times.

I have all kinds of crazy things happen inside me that are difficult to explain. I don't have DID as such or the diagnosis, but with complex child trauma and high IQ, things have gotten weird, that's for sure.