DID Dissociative identity disorder (did) and ddnos-1 differences

[Mercy]

I don't know if this answer will help you much. My life of abuse started when I was about 18 months old. I was terrorized and emotionally and sexually abused until I was 13. The clients who bought children at special week-end events, vacation packages, and typical brothel settings. The men who organized these events were catering to very wealthy, privileged men. {abuse before three}

A well known forensic psychologist, who was my first therapist's supervisor, helped me find the least likely number abusing adults. We supposed based, on the events I could relate and tell my age, if I knew it, or my height that I was only available 'for rent' during half the year and bought only half that time. We also stayed with one gentleman caller per night, which was true sometimes. Lots of times there were many men. It worked out that I had entertained about 90 men a year for 10 to 13 years. The lowest probable number if events is 900 over ten to thirteen years.

I believe that it is fear of death experiences and frequent greatly painful injuries, that begins the DID process when the child is very young, and continues over a long period of time. I have held or seen between 30 and 35 children die in front of or cuddled by me.

When a child is older 10 to 20, I think we would have had only a persona develop, not forming completely independent people and based in dissociation.

I think in pictures most of the time. I remember being tied down in a crib, wet, cold, and hungry and having to decide whether to cry and risk scalding and penetration or just look out the window. No words were formed just idea images. I looked out the window and saw the delightful play of sunlight through many levels of green maple leaves all dancing gently in the breeze. God made me a crib mobile. This is one of my clearest memories from the early days.

I have many personalities who are quite distinct and do 'take over the shell' when they are needed, usually without any communication to Mercy. I also have children parts of me frozen in time. They were systematically brainwashed and tortured in order to better serve the men. As the vacation senarios came more than once, there was a different child who knew the rules of that game. She would have been pushed forward by an inner adult. Child bride was a good example of this. One major young girl, 5-7, would take the lead and then would dissociate and fragment when the pain was too intense to carry alone.

I hope this helps, Mercy

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

Thank you Mercy for telling me all that. I don't know what to think at the moment. All I know is I find it all terrifying whilst being relieving at the same time, the fact that it is in any way relieving then scares me, so it appears to be an endless cycle.

That cycle will end when I talk to my Psychiatrist hopefully. I don't have full personalities that take me over, but there are people in my head, coincidentally I know them all to be me. What that means I don't know. I was gang-raped, drugged against my will, hunted, raped by my father and raped repeatedly over a long period of time. I was asked for forgiveness and agreed just to make it stop. I was trapped in a room full of Junkies coming on to me. It all happened when I was older. When I was living with him. And when I wasn't being raped, I had to look after him. I was told by my grandmother that my father never did anything wrong and I was just trying to hurt people. I was manipulated, told that I was crazy and no one would believe me. I was beat if I struggled, when I tried hiding I was punished by being raped with a machete to my throat and dosed with something that trapped me in my body but so I was still entirely there (not for long because I dissociated, but still not pleasant). Funnily enough I don't like talking about it.

I don't know what that means for me. In my head I have Katy, Katheryn, Kas, AJ, Numb, Broken, Lost (those three don't want names except numb but she can't find one she definitely wants, keeps considering Riley though), Not Again, Head Me, Little Kat and Him. They're all me, even Him. They all have functions and uses, homes in my head. They all help (except Him, he only exists to make us hate ourselves). Am I hallucinating all of that and have been for well over a decade, am I unique and unexplained, is it something else. I don't know. I don't know about the age requirement, all I know is what I experience, what has been noticed by my closest family members. Apparently it doesn't exist, ok, then I will have to work harder to understand my head and I will just wait for the professional to work it out.

But to the case of age of Trauma and dissociative splitting; does different trauma affect it differently, does the age of trauma affect it differently, does the length of trauma affect it differently, does the relationship of the perpetrator or the number of perpetrators affect it differently? I suppose it doesn't matter as the individual will always react differently, but I only wondered about loose correlations.

Thanks for your help.

AJ
xx

 

[Mercy]

Am I hallucinating all of that and have been for well over a decade,

No I don't think you are hallucinating at all. I'm so sorry you had to go such terrible things. It's especially hard when your major perpetrator is your father. There is so much betrayal, so much loss of trust in people and the world.

You did a great job of talking about your inside folks.

In my head I have Katy, Katheryn, Kas, AJ, Numb, Broken, Lost (those three don't want names except numb but she can't find one she definitely wants, keeps considering Riley though), Not Again, Head Me, Little Kat and Him. They're all me, even Him. They all have functions and uses, homes in my head. They all help

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I must remind my self to focus on the big picture, I always end up focused on one small detail and it never helps much, the other day it was trying to work out what the drug they used was - I'm no closer to figuring that one out and have decided to take a step back, it doesn't really matter does it.

Thanks Mercy, you have been really helpful. Just because I'm sulking you (or anyone for that matter) don't have the perfect answer that answers this and every other question I may have now, in the past or future, it doesn't mean that what I have already been given isn't more than enough.

Thanks again
AJ
xx

 

[Beth85]

DDNOS-1
5. The parts of your personality are stuck somewhere between being normal and being an alter (an extremely dissociated personality state.)
6. Parts of the self intrude all the time, you are a mess, you are moody, you cannot deal well with life. You have only one host and a bunch of emotional parts that keep taking over in the form of passive dissociation. You do not totally loose the period of time while an alter takes over such as in DID.

This sounds like me. My therapist has often talked about my parts - and they do seem to emotionally take over - but since they never physically took over I knew that I don't have DID. My therapist would say these emotions were coming from the parts, but I didn't know whether to agree with her, or just think these super strong emotions were just ... normal. Occasionally something will happen though that would make me think maybe I did have DID and alters were just still hiding and hadn't come out yet.

Night before last I was in a panic attack & went into a flashback, during which I started screaming, but it didn't feel like it was me screaming. That sent me searching for answers again on whether or not this sounds like DID. I talked to a friend of mine this morning who has DID about what's been going on and she told me about DDNOS. Hence my search on-line and finding this forum. I will definitely be talking to my therapist about this.

The fact that this description talks about emotional parts really helps. It helps to know that people do have these emotional parts without having full alters. Helps me understand what's going on inside and helps me accept it.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Separating helps me to function. My work self doesn't connect to trauma. my family self connects to trauma, but not to emotions. When I talk to people about trauma or PTSD, I am usually talking from an intellectual understanding of it (like now), but this part is disconnected from emotion.

When I am alone and sometimes in therapy, there is a child self that comes out, and there is another side that feels emotionally, but I can't connect to that. I feel depersonalised, and like I'm just watching those parts of myself, not experiencing them. But I experience the child stuff in flashbacks. They don't last long, and then I go into a dissociated fog and sleep or do something to keep myself going and wake me up a bit, or find another part to play.

My therapist is aware of this, and an aim of therapy is to reintegrate these parts. But i think the point I'm trying to make, is that they're a survival mechanism that is related to trauma. So the immediate focus of therapy is towards accepting traumatic events as being traumatic and as having an effect on me.