DID Multiple personalities but not really

[PointlessExistence]

Does anyone know if there is a term for this, and does anyone have similar symptoms?:

I have multiple personalities but not in the classic sense. It's not as if they have identities. It's just a whole different me depending on the situation. It usually happens automatically, but there have also been times when I purposely assume a certain personality to better handle a situation. (Also, there are times when the lines between the personalities blur.)

I'll give an example. It is the easiest one to explain. I have a personality that enables me to be sexual. If I try to use any other personality, I usually cannot be sexual, and when I am, it is not nearly as pleasurable as when I'm in my sexual personality.

But that sexual personality does not have a healthy ego, has no sentimentality, can barely pay attention to people who aren't sex partners, and even has a very strange dynamic with those partners. He's not a wretch or a total louse, but he isn't someone I want to be. But when I haven't had sex in a while, I inevitably turn into him. And other times when I see an opportunity for sex, I will purposely become him so that I can perform and so that I can enjoy it.

I have maybe six distinct personalities like this. I never really noticed it before maybe a year ago, or rather I noticed it, but never realized it wasn't "normal". I told my last psychologist about it, and though I liked our sessions, she didn't really shed any light on this phenomena.

Anyone have any ideas? I've read about "splitting", but I don't know if that really fits.

 

[watundah]

Read up.on Internal Family Systems

Dealing with similar fuzzyness.

 

[Candleflames]

Your description sounds a lot like what I have experienced.I always thought of myself as not a whole person but fragments of a personality so compartmentalized that they couldn't coexist together. I went years with starving various parts of me at different times. For example the mom side of me and the sexual side of me were at odds and I would need several hours to days to transition from one to the other. The student in me was outgoing, eloquent and intellectual while my daughter side was either scared and timid or a rabid rat in a corner. Yet as a big sister the kick ass protector would come out. Sometimes it was like a switch got flipped and boom, different person was standing there yet memories remained.

I've since learned that that was a coping mechanism of dissociation. Here's a thread on the forum here that explains in detail. You are not alone in this.

Dissociation Explained

 

[PointlessExistence]

Read up.on Internal Family Systems

Wow! Already I googled it and can already see you hit the nail on the head. Will be spending tonight scouring the web to learn as much as I can. Thank you!

 

[Panda Bear]

I've had work done with Internal Family Systems...

I may have 'parts', but I am not DID.

Dissociation to an extreme, in my past.

 

[MisterCatLady]

Read up.on Internal Family Systems

Dealing with similar fuzzyness.

OMFG this explains so much of my life! Thank you!

 

[EmmaOwl]

Hey PE! That sounds a lot like me. Recently my therapist mentioned that I am higher on the dissociation scale than I had previously thought. It makes sense, that it might be difficult for a person to realize one's own dissociation.

I think of it as a persona, rather than using the word personality. I'm fully aware and in control of my actions. I "put on" a very friendly, positive face. Asking how people are doing, saying funny things, so on and so forth. I can't help but feel like a public persona is the proper thing to do...

My main example these days is how tired out I get from simple encounters with people in public. Like, when going to the pharmacy (which I do a lot, when I can't wheedle someone into getting my meds for me ;) ). It even makes grocery shopping tiring, talking to the checker and thanking all the kids with the carts. Being friendly to fellow shoppers. I was at a little art shop recently, and the manager was new - I knew the inventory better than the clerk, and I helped a woman find what she was looking for! (I felt like I should've charged a commission!) Seriously, though, I was glad to be able to help.

HOWEVER.

The biggest downside is, it's EXHAUSTING. I get home and collapse. It also leads people to think I am healthier than I really am, both mentally and physically. I generally find that physical therapists & pain management doctors cannot understand how much pain I am really in. I try my best to be straightforward when speaking to a doctor or other health professional... but it is difficult to communicate the depths of despair when I feel a huge amount of social pressure to act a certain way. I mean, when I was growing up, my mother would dress me up to go to the doctor for a checkup.

 

[EmmaOwl]

Hum. It seems like my experiences are less serious than a lot of the others described here. I'm sorry if I misunderstood the OP. :(

Pretty much what I have is a public face, and a private face. I don't think it goes much beyond that, in my own case.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

Mtie personalities is an old term; new term is dissociative identities.

The term "parts" gets used in many different ways to describe many different things, from simply the way we act differently in different situations up to having separate personalities. Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka what MPD used to be called) requires amnesia between parts, so if your aware, then it isn't DID - which is a super good thing.

I second looking at the IFS model.

 

[watundah]

That is one thing that confuses me because Ive read that amnesia is not a requirement of DID - though most common.

 

[PointlessExistence]

Hum. It seems like my experiences are less serious than a lot of the others described here. I'm sorry if I misunderstood the OP. :(

LOL. Yeah, your condition is typical even in the "normal" people. Be glad :)

 

[PointlessExistence]

That is one thing that confuses me because Ive read that amnesia is not a requirement of DID - though most common.

I had specifically ruled out DID, because it always mandated that it required "memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary forgetfulness".

I suppose I have some level of forgetfulness, but it's definitely not "memory impairment for important information". It is deeper rooted and more abstract than "ordinary forgetfulness". It has to do with the perspective of the different personas. Each is called upon depending on the situation and each has his own approach. Sometimes when I slide into one, it's as if I had totally forgotten he existed. It's like I'm personality-3, and then there'll be a trigger. Personality-3 will be struggling with it for awhile and at his wits' end, and then it's like BOOM personality-4 steps up to take over, and I'm like "Oh yeah, I remember you. Thank you for coming to the rescue!"