• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

DID Looking for Suggestions to Explain Fragmentation

Status
Not open for further replies.

whiteraven

MyPTSD Pro
Ok, I am looking for ideas or suggestions for explaining DID/fragmented selves to people without actually saying it's DID.

Backstory: I am going to be doing a thing at church in the near future (I am a member of the UU and pagan), a kind of "membership moment" - why I became a member. I may end up declining (or just lying), but I really would like to speak as close to the truth as I can. I don't want to reveal a history of DID because some other folks don't know about it.

The DID is directly related to my joining this church. We had a bit of a spiritual crisis, where one wanted to convert to Judaism and one wanted to covert to Catholicism, so I looked for a place that would accept all of us. I found the UU and, surprisingly, everyone was in agreement. When I am at church, I go by a name that includes us all, our system name. It works; the name is pagan-ish, and when people talk to me, they are talking to all of us, so it didn't matter who showed up.

I get LOTS of questions about the name, and my go-to is either "I'll tell you that story sometime," or "It's a pagan thing." Neither of which answer the question.

So, how can I be true to the story and NOT explicitly reveal the diagnosis?
 
I often tell people that my personality is very 'compartmentalised', and explain it in a way they can relate to: you have work me that turns up to work on your behalf, sleep-in me who chills out and doesn't care at all about the things that work me cares about and lacks all the energy and that work requires, mother-in-law me that takes on courtesy and priorities that I never otherwise have, and watching-the-footy me who has a mouth like a drunken sailor and is high-energy but low on priorities!

All the things that make up who "you" are vary dramatically between those situations: dress sense, priorities, interpersonal skills, language, taste in music, energy levels, concentration, the list is endless...

It's relevant to everyone, because it would be really dysfunctional for sleep-in me to turn up at work, and a complete disaster for watching-footy me to have lunch with the mother-in-law.

People understand that (I don't actually have a mother in law or watch football, but the cultural analogy holds). I simply have an extreme form of it. Work me and sleep-in me never cross paths. They have nothing in common. For a long time they'd never met (till I started therapy anyway).

For you? You have a Catholic me, and a Judaism me. Whether you want to share that is up to you. But if you explain that you're simply more 'fragmented' than the average person, you're explaining something that rises to the level of pathology in you, using language and examples of it in the average experience.

That's just how I approach it outside mental health spheres. I'm sure there's dozens of different, equally successful approaches. It's definitely helpful to know which approaches sit most comfortably with you.
 
Ok, I am looking for ideas or suggestions for explaining DID/fragmented selves to people without actually saying it's DID.
I have OSDD, not DID but similar enough. I tell people dissociated parts of my personality. It seems more then I realize know what disocciation is. Some don't, most seem to get the idea. I don't usually explain further and though most know what DID (or maybe many may know it as "multiple personalities") but like no one knows what OSDD is and not only do I not want to explain it and how it's different then DID, as DID is where everyone's mind goes but it tends to scare people I've noticed. The only exception to that is the pastor I'm talking to as I was afraid I would switch while talking to him. I do, but he doesn't notice. Don't think he would unless he knew the inter-workings of each alter and even then, most are good at covering it up. My therapist only knows because my body language and micro expressions change as does some of my language and thoughts and feelings and such and he reads my body language and micro expressions and knows me and each alter SUPER well. So, yeah, anyway.

Thinking of ways to explain it without the word of disocciation but disocciation isn't just a DID/OSDD thing and everyone knows I have PTSD so not really found a better word that doesn't give it away. You'd think disocciated parts would but with PTSD too, it really doesn't. And if it does, I can lean back onto PTSD.
 
I get LOTS of questions about the name, and my go-to is either "I'll tell you that story sometime," or "It's a pagan thing." Neither of which answer the question.
Which part of you is saying you need to answer anybody's question? That seems like a part that desperately needs to be understood. So rather than appeasing others with a response, maybe shifting the focus to - why don't I feel the right to maintain my sense of privacy? Unless you believe these LOTS of questions people have the right to know your most personal psychological underpinnings.

I would think carefully about this. There are lots of people out there who love to exploit others vulnerabilities. I would hate to see that happen for you.
 
Which part of you is saying you need to answer anybody's question? That seems like a part that desperately needs to be understood. So rather than appeasing others with a response, maybe shifting the focus to - why don't I feel the right to maintain my sense of privacy? Unless you believe these LOTS of questions people have the right to know your most personal psychological underpinnings.

I would think carefully about this. There are lots of people out there who love to exploit others vulnerabilities. I would hate to see that happen for you.
There's no desperate need for anything - my primary issue is that it's important for me to be honest when speaking to others. I would come right out and say I had been diagnosed with DID were it not for my mom. There is only a slim chance she might find out, but...she's 87 and already worries and feels responsible for how I feel; she doesn't need to be burdened with this. I've been dealing with this for almost 25 years, so I'm very much aware of how people react to this sort of thing; I'm not worried or concerned about the reaction from the congregation, though.

Nowhere did I say I don't feel I have the right to my privacy. But I have the right to choose what I keep private and what I share.

I don't see this as a vulnerability. AT ALL. It's barely an issue for me, anymore. And besides, rather than see it as a pathological condition, I see it more as just the way I'm wired. We are all many, imo--we all have different aspects of our personality. There's a spectrum, though; i just happen to be more aware of my selves (and they of me).
 
It's an interesting way of looking at things. I wish I was able to. I have just had so many people slash my character due to 'thinking differently', it makes it difficult to think about putting it out there to anyone ever again. I appreciate your need for honesty. Please forgive if you were offended by my response. I was not meaning to offend.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top