DID DID and Denial

[frogthroat]

Did anyone go through a period where they flat out denied they had DID even though their therapist was sure about it and talked about it in multiple sessions? I had quite the experience recently and now my t wants to talk about it. I told him I don't believe in it and I must need attention subconsciously. He didn't buy that from me.
It doesn't help that it scares the shit out of me and makes me feel insane. I told my other therapist about the incident and my psychiatrist too. My meds haven't had to be adjusted yet.
Things keep happening in therapy but I keep denying I'm fragmented and have parts. I'm sure I'll eventually accept it but I'm struggling. I just want to pretend it's not there.

 

[Weemie]

It helps to learn about how identity forms in childhood. Essentially as children our identities do tend to be more fragmented, and as we grow up those fragments will converge into a single point. Even in healthy adults, we understand that many people have different personas and facets that they don't always display at the same time. It's actually a fairly mundane process && much less "magical" and bizarre than people think. According to incidence, about 1.5% of the global population has a dissociative disorder that results in shifts of identity states, which is roughly equivalent to how many people have schizophrenia.

When you introduce extreme trauma, these fragmented identity states instead get pushed further away from one another and develop parallel. I am fairly polyfragmented (many, many parts, some that differ only in small ways) && my therapist has also brought up the fact that my environments were drastically different as a kid. On one hand I was indoctrinated into armed violence and on another I went to school and daycare and had to keep those worlds completely separate. So it makes sense that I simply developed multiple separate identities at the same time, especially as my role in the gang was multi-layered (I punished and trained others but I was also raped on a daily basis and victimized).

One thing that often goes unaddressed is that BPD and DID can look very similar to one another, and BPD is also caused by formative adverse experiences. BPD can be so severe that the changes of identity state/behavioral phases can be so drastic that it looks like alters. Some people subjectively experience their BPD symptoms as so strong that they feel like they have alters. There is also some evidence that mania can be so severe that you can develop what essentially amounts to "dissociative states." (And mania occurs both in BPD and bipolar, and I know you have a bipolar diagnosis -> which, often, BPD gets misdiagnosed as bipolar. I've personally known people with non-misdiagnosed bipolar who get such severe mania that they describe having two different people inside of them.)

BPD also, like DID, features age regression, and dissociation. I don't know whether or not I have "cluster B spectrum" (what I think all cluster B disorders should be merged into and graded from mild to severe) or DID. Having been diagnosed as RAD, the likelihood that I am cluster B is far higher than the average population and I have fully met the diagnostic criteria for ASPD at least once in my life. I also used to have far more unstable relationships and patterns of interaction that are more common with unregulated BPD when I was younger.

But I also hear voices and have discernible switching. Not every part of me is the same and some parts are more "cluster B adjacent" than others. Some are extremely kind and nurturing and others are sadistic and cold. I've went years of my life in one "state" or another, similar to being a "host." I have as far as I can put together had that happen about 3 times. I feel like me for the duration but when it shifts again I do not relate to the person I was at all. I also have moments where I clearly switch and it's visible and obvious to everyone and I am not aware of it because my subjective transition is seamless.

I've come to view it as simply the way my mind operates, and have decided not to worry about diagnostic labels. I was raised in an abnormal environment and I developed abnormal, but adaptive responses to it. As I've grown older I've learned to cooperate internally to the point that my "state of being" isn't harmful to myself or others, so conceptualizing it as a disorder that needs treatment is not valuable to me. But all that to say that absolutely, I am deeply familiar with feeling skeptical about my experiences and about the prevalence of real dissociative identity disorder. I have often presumed it to be something else, something more common (like BPD, bipolar, ADHD, psychosis).

Especially since so many kids these days on Tik Tok clearly have factitious disorder and are faking DID.

My "DID-esque" symptoms look nothing like theirs.

 

[Sideways]

It doesn't help that it scares the shit out of me and makes me feel insane.

This was me!!

When I got diagnosed, it became very apparent that in my mind, there was such a thing as 'completely insane', and that my understanding of DID fell squarely in that category.

So yeah, I swung between "nah, they've got this completely wrong", and blind panic about the fact that I was clearly very insane. That lasted quite a while tbh.

Everyone deals with dissociation and having different aspects of their personality, the difference is only a matter of degree. So no, not insane, just at a difficult point on that spectrum than you'd ideally like to be.

The panic eased once I got better at dealing with my parts. Because that's when it became much clearer to me that actually, it ain't even a thing. I've been dealing with this my whole life. It is my normal. And if I stop winding myself up about whether or not it makes me "insane" and just work on the skills (internal communication), it isn't even a big deal.

So now? Yeah, I have the diagnosis, but I've also had treatment for it. Which means that 95% of the time, things that used to cause complete chaos for me and make functioning in the world reeeeally difficult are now no longer an issue. I function as well as anyone else most of the time now, so the diagnosis is has very little meaning. All it actually does? Is change the way I deal with myself internally.

I just want to pretend it's not there

I hear you. I really do. But honestly, how well is that working out for you? And...what if you didn't need to struggle so much with life, just by changing the way you communicate with yourself?

 

[frogthroat]

I've asked about BPD. I was sure that was what it was at first. The thing is I've isolated myself. I don't have toxic relationships because I don't have them. I also don't fear abandonment to the point of obsessively clinging to someone. I expect abandonment. I can go days without talking to anyone. I'm also aware of what my emotions are and I don't feel empty just in a state of extreme shock. Both t's have talked to me about dissociative disorders and I've talked to my trauma t about BPD. I was afraid of it because the thought of acting like that and knowing it was very upsetting to me. I do trauma dump on my trauma t sometimes when I'm upset but I've drastically scaled that back. I'm not as much in a crisis now. I would say I had BPD too if I didn't avoid human contact pretty much all together. The psychiatrists were pretty thorough when I was initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder. No one talked to me about BPD. I can ask my psychiatrist if they do screenings next time. My t's don't diagnose and my trauma t doesn't like labels unless it's for insurance purposes.

 

[frogthroat]

Especially since so many kids these days on Tik Tok clearly have factitious disorder and are faking DID.

This is so true. I tried to look up more information on DID on youtube and it was just a bunch of 13 to 20 year old pretending to become Goku or something. It was very frustrating. A Google search faired better and I already have links to a website from someone on this forum.
I wrote about the BPD already but it might be psychosis from overwhelm too since right now it's been a singular incident with my trauma t.

I hear you. I really do. But honestly, how well is that working out for you? And...what if you didn't need to struggle so much with life, just by changing the way you communicate with yourself?

It's not but I'm going to have to go through a grieving process for either a diagnosis like I'm doing with bipolar. I already told my t that if I have BPD then I need to continue to stay away from others. Maybe at this point a diagnosis wouldn't be helpful.
Of, course I thought about am I subconsciously playing my therapist because I don't want to deal with therapy? But I contacted him as someone else and I don't remember doing it. I've had many meltdowns in my life, I'm ashamed to say, but I wouldn't do something that cringey on purpose now at this age. It's just more bullshit I don't need and I've been sober because there's the potential of me accidently killing myself if I drink because of the meds I'm on.