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Does Anyone Else Feel Like They Have Other Personalities Within Them?

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No, no!

Phew!

Go and read about structural dissociation as Lucykat said, as well as OSDD. The two seem to me to be very much the same thing. Yell if you need references.

Thanx @Pencil I read thru the IFS link that @lucykat posted and found it extremely interesting and comforting as well to know that I'm not alone or 'a freak'! Is this something I should discuss with my T? We already spoke about something like this last week when all of a sudden something she said brought out the angry part in me.

I'm still only learning about all this and it's quite overwhelming considering in the last 2 or 3 months I have gone from living my life in a blur and not knowing there was anything wrong, to discovering that not only do I suffer from PTSD which I thought was because of an extremely abusive relationship, but also that I have disassociated since I was a very young child (about the age of 2 or 3?) due to trauma. My whole world has been turned upside down but then on the flip side so many questions that I've kept inside have all of a sudden got answers?!

Also just a quick question, my dr prescribed me Zoloft but I have been too scared to take it cause I'm scared of being dependant on antidepressants...do u think this could be something a person can deal with without medication?
 
I have gone from living my life in a blur and not knowing there was anything wrong, to discovering that .....
This was how it was for me. I was first diagnosed with PTSD in 1998 but was completely underwhelmed, thinking yeah yeah, shit happens then you get over it. Errrr .... Not. Then it hit me like a runaway freight train in 2012. Roamingnome posted about a similar experience yesterday.

Others will be able to give you informed answers about therapy (but, yes, you must discuss it in therapy) and medication. I'm not on medication - for my own idiosyncratic reasons, of which I'm not always certain.

When she takes over ... I feel completely different and everyone who's close to me can see something's up. I haven't been able to say any of this to anyone cause I feel crazy..... It even get to the point sometimes that I hurt myself, bad! I've scratched my face to shreds, cut myself, punched myself repeatedly and even smashed my head into walls. I don't think the angry me wants to kill myself tho, (the sad one does) just really hurt myself! The angry one wants to kill my ex and almost did about 10 months ago, but I feel like I can almost control it enough now that I can feel when it's about to take over and I use a kind of grounding technique maybe, to a point, control it. Wow ok so I just put it out there! I feel like I should delete it....
Good for you for not deleting. Out there in the world: batshit crazy. In here: perfectly normal.
 
Good for you for not deleting. Out there in the world: batshit crazy. In here: perfectly normal.[/quote]

Lol that's definitely the response I'm sure to get out there! So in here is where It will stay...altho I am guessing I will have to discuss it with my therapist at some point.

Sometimes I just wish I could go back 2 and 1/2 years ago to when I was blissfully unaware (thanx to my amazing mind!) of all the horrible things I had experienced and that I was yet to experience...I wish I could go back a few months ago even, to before my amazing mind started to be less amazing and let slip a few things!
 
Do you understand or know that part of you? How do you deal with it in therapy?
That part is the Child Part. Very young - sometimes literally having temper tantrums and stamping of the feet - husband loves it:eek:
Unstable because she is mostly terrified. It is always with hindsight that I recognise her - not when she is actually out and misbehaving.

In therapy it has been more a matter of talking about the part, althouh T has spoken with her in the past and reassured her that we would take care of her. All weird

T has been clear that integration is not always possible or necessary, and I should not have that as a goal. Coping/managing is a better aim and as I get better in other ways the Part is less troublesome.
 
And all of this is described in the OSDD criteria.
But here we don't use the DSM and I had a look at the ICD 10, and there are so many classifications of dissociative disorders that I gave up at the index.

I don't have a label other than Complex PTSD as T says it is not necessary. I was not sure at first, but now I am fine with that. I probably don't need any more letters on my file...
 
How did she feel about that.
Again it was only afterwards that I realised that he was talking to me as a child. Together we agreed that my 'Safe Person' would help take care of the child. I had to imagine the hugs that the Safe Person would give to the vulnerable small child when she is so scared. In reality I then had the task of contacting my Safe person for simple reassurance before the next therapy session. Safe Person lives in Australia and I am in the UK. I did not know her when I was a child, but she has been incredibly supportive as an adult. She is the person I would have like to be my mother...
 
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