DID Did question: how do parts come about?

[Keen]

For those diagnosed with DID, how do you understand how your disorder came about i.e. how you have parts/alters? I've read a lot, but I don't understand what it means for a personality to be in separate pieces, I don't understand how we can develop these parts/alters that are us, yet so different from us or how they can exist and be independent from our regular self. I am really struggling to comprehend this, because its so abstract to me. Does anyone have a more concrete way of understanding it?

 

[Sideways]

I think the working theory is that in most cases, people develop DID as a coping mechanism when they experience trauma, particularly as a child. It's a way of keeping traumatic experiences seperated off in the mind.

So, say a child is gets abused by an uncle: when it's happening, they dissociate and create a comparment in their mind to deal exclusively with the uncle. All of the experiences with the uncle get locked awsy safely in that alternate personality. As though the abuse was literally happening to someone else.

The rest of the time, they shut off that comparment completely, so that they can function like any other ordinary kid, without having the disruption of all those traumatic memories and emotions running amok in their mind.

Once a child's mind develops this as a coping strategy, the mind can then decide "Hey, this is an awesome, simple way to be the perfect kind of person in all sorts of situations". So the mind then starts creating new personalities: a personality to deal with high school, a personality to deal with boyfriends, a personality to deal with feeling threatened, etc etc. Each personality is able to deal with its alotted environment perfectly: you can be an awesome girlfriend, then switch automatically into a super-human threat-response person, then back to you, automatically. Cool!

It's pretty clever.

Of course there's glitches in the system, like not being able to acces all your own memories, and not having conscious control of who you are and how you behave from one situation to the next. Which is why we work on getting some degree of integration between the parts as a typical form of DID treatment.

That's just my understanding of the current theories though, and it'd be good to get other interpretations.

 

[Keen]

Thank you, @Ragdoll Circus, I really like your explanation.

At one point you wrote:

they dissociate and create a comparment in their mind to deal exclusively

How do you understand how a person creates a compartment like this? Is it just they imagine themselves being this other personality and then slowly it takes on a life of its own and end up becoming its own thing?

 

[Sideways]

This is all stuff that happens subconsciously. Particularly as children, there isn't an awareness that we've dissociated, and even without trauma, we don't really have control over the way our brain is deciding to process and encode memories of what's happening around us.

Adults with a lot of training may tell you "I learnt to compartmentalise my job", etc. But for most people, this is just a coping strategy that we use to get by in the world. When the average person goes to work (as an example), they have all the training and skills and focus and motivation thtat they usually have at work, until they go home. Then they kick back (mentaly as well as physically), and "switch off". Lots of people without DID, or any specific training in mind control (!!) will describe a really similar process.

With DID, this process is all happening without our realising. Which is why a lot of this is still just theory...

 

[Keen]

Particularly as children, there isn't an awareness that we've dissociated, and even without trauma, we don't really have control over the way our brain is deciding to process and encode memories of what's happening around us

That makes sense, how we're just kids and don't choose how our brain is processing/encoding.

I just find this whole condition so difficult to comprehend and overwhelming to deal with. I wish I could get a better handle on understanding it, maybe it'd feel more manageable.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

DID also develops exclusively during childhood. People can't get it from adult traumas.

Children's minds aren't integrated naturally. That happens through love and care and support from caretakers. DID and the parts that happen are also simply amnesiastic barriers that form along pre-existing fault-lines in the brain.

You might like this article that talks a little about this all: http://www.janinafisher.com/pdfs/structural-dissociation.pdf

 

[anonymous]

People can't get it from adult traumas

Really?!

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

Yes, really.

Pop culture stuff like that movie Split aren't accurate. It's understood to be traumagenic, and result from multiple interpersonal teaumas before the age of 9.

 

[anonymous]

I haven't seen the movie Split, but I can tell you that my adult trauma ( sexual assaults and brainwashing) is what forever changed me. My childhood traumas were dealt with and I worked it through, but my adult trauma has been debilitating.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

Anonymous, do you have DID?

Adult teaumas can be traumatic. Absolutely. No question. They can reactivate DID parts and can result in more splitting in people who already have DID. But adult traumas can't cause DID that doesn't already exist.

 

[Keen]

DID also develops exclusively during childhood. People can't get it from adult traumas....

Thanks! I'll check out that article.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I hope it helps. I haven't read it for a while, but if I remember correctly, it talks about structural disaociation (DID is tertiary structural dissociation) in a really accessible way.