DID Is dissociative identity disorder real?

[HappyJock]

I've had two therapists. One who thinks I have DID and the one who says DID isn't real and there isn't sufficient evidence to prove it's a real disorder. Both of the advice really caused me to get so confused I don't really know what to believe anymore. I do believe in it I just get confused when I hear such opposing arguments I just want to know the truth.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

I for one believe in it, because I have it. It's a hard diagnosis to accept and it really gave me struggles when people oppose me. When they question the diagnosis and then it causes me to think my experience isn't real and then I must be really crazy because if it's not real than I have made it all up. I have been to a trauma unit (inpatient) that really excels in working with DID and it helped me accept the diagnosis and understand why it makes sense that I have it. That doesn't mean I don't struggle with the diagnosis because I do. The truth is what you experience. Do you think you fit the criteria, does it make sense in your experience (regardless of whether you want it to be true or not)? If your answer is yes, I would start listening to the therapists that believe in DID. That's my opinion. It's tricky stuff and I wish that more professionals believed in it or understood it because that would sure help me a lot.

 

[Stickler]

The people in my head would like to collectively state, for the record, that it is a real condition.

However:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/blind-w...pontaneously-regains-vision-few-her-10-363300

Note in the above linked article, the woman in question was not feigning blindness. When the two blind alters presented, there was no activity detected in the visual cortex.
Her other 8 personalities can see now, they spontaneously regained vision in therapy...it was obviously a psychogenic blindness.

Note also this comparison study:
Dead Link Removed

Researchers attempted to get subjects to simulate dissociative identity disorder in an fMRI machine, alongside persons diagnosed with DID. The simulating subjects were unable to create the same sorts of brain activity.

So, there's some evidence to say it's real. If you feel like digging you can find more.

 

[Ronin]

Whether or not D.I.D. is real doesn't change that dissociative issues related to trauma & identity shifts in perspective are very real, so are amnestic issues & skill accessibility and whatever else you get usually lumped in under 'D.I.D.'.

It is still worth addressing as real, diagnostic controversies aside.

 

[EveHarrington]

Would it help to throw away the diagnosis (for now) and focus on symptoms?

Yes a diagnosis is important (as I stated in one of your other threads) but sometimes we do need to take a step back from it all.

Is it possible to get a third opinion?

 

[Sideways]

I used to have a psychiatrist who was in the non-believer camp and "refused to entertain" my DID switches when they happened. It was comforting for a little while - if he was right, then I'm just making it up, and surely I can stop doing that...

That relationship ended badly.

I now have a therapy team comprised entirely of the "believers" group. They've seen it happen. They know I couldn't possibly be somehow "making it up". It's crappy, because it means that I have a real and serious condition that actually requires treatment.

But it's also a whole lot better. Now that we're actually dealing with it, I understand what's going on a lot better, and I'm gradually learning to control it.

Hard to accept and understand? Totally. Real? 'Fraid so.

 

[Ronin]

Yeah, I've had massively abusive therapists & psychiatrists /to/ D.I.D. / adding new trauma because it's one of my conditions. Into all sort of mindscrew and manipulation because they believed they have the right.

So also adding another: Whether they 'believe' or 'not', please be careful they respect your humanity, body autonomy, choice, and safety, first.

 

[Ice_Fire]

Yes. But I think that it's not as clear cut as it's made out. So much of my dissociation is so subtle that I wonder if it is real or not. And it's that subtlety that makes it hard to "prove" I guess.

 

[Thinkbig]

For me, I always thought it was just normal to have this vision of a child that I would physically abuse. Later it turned into self abuse. It wasn't until I started learning about DID that some things started to make sense. I'm not diagnosed but would say I'm on the lower end of the scale. Like someone said above, the diagnosis encompasses quite alot. I was also extremely disassociative during trauma (age 2-5)

 

[Powder]

Advice: A T needs to make your getting well the core focus and their opinions on diagnostic minutia a secondary concern, right?

You really need to share with both of them that this discrepancy is causing you to feel stuck and stressed.

--On a personal side note--

As a kid I related to the "Velveteen Rabbit" who constantly asked the question "Am I real?" This existential question reverbs for me with my dissociation and my amnesia for large parts of my early childhood. As long as I can remember, I was aware that I was "not real."

My discovery behind this sense of confusion is that I have been lied to all my life about everything important to my sense of identity. Lies upon lies from both parents who told me they knew the realities and was dependent upon them for the truth. Rather the opposite is true. They have done nothing but pretend and lie, and I have always had the truth but didn't know it WAS the truth because it lies in stark contrast to the gaslighting.

The question became "how do I still retain this sense of "I" as a constant after all I've been through.

I honestly see DID as a collection of states growing up gaslit constantly where the rules changed. A set of separate identities were the side of effect of the shifting roles that were demanded by that kind of situation, nothing more.

For me, I see a lot of identity as performative anyway. Even when I'm alone, if I try to feel or think outside of what I'm showing myself that I'm doing, I cannot. I cannot find a way to be authentic and not somehow "acting" even when I'm alone.

I believe that my dangerous environment shifted my sense of self into survival mode in which I have always to be predicting and responding with some kind of dance to my environment. So much so that I have developed severe phobic reactions to non-trauma related things, such as crowds because I try to read the 360 degree of the crowds by default and cannot switch this off. Yes, this is PTSD, but where DID comes into it is how there is no luxury of a return to rest within an authentic self at any point. I see it as having PTSD from too young an age to have developed what others refer to as a self. I have states that I work within, like masks, and underneath the mask is always more masks. Where is my face? I cannot find it. I have no memory of such a thing as a core self within which to rest.

I have called this "my missing baby" and I began searching frantically for this in my dreams back in 2010. :(

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I'm struggling with this question too, but it's directly related to my own sense that it might fit me, specifically, and that's scary (for me).

What's confusibg for me is that there doesn't seem to be a solid language used. Plus, definitions vary. Then there is the media representation, and the diagnostic representation, and then what it might actually feel like to have it.

I don't have much advice, but you aren't alone.

 

[shimmerz]

My discovery behind this sense of confusion is that I have been lied to all my life about everything important to my sense of identity. Lies upon lies from both parents who told me they knew the realities and was dependent upon them for the truth. Rather the opposite is true. They have done nothing but pretend and lie, and I have always had the truth but didn't know it WAS the truth because it lies in stark contrast to the gaslighting.

If I could like a post a million times, this would be it. Thanks Muse.