For me? Yes, absolutely.
This is distress, yeah? As in, the part that is obsessing, or stuck on SI, is dealing with very high levels of distress. Obsessing and SI aren’t very good solutions, but they are a way of dealing with that distress - it’s a ‘solution’ they have some control over. And just that small level of control can be incredibly reassuring.
For me, that kind of distress by one of my parts has required a whole-system response. One of the very few good things about DID is you have other parts who are coping.
The part that’s really struggling right now may not want to trust them, but for me, getting the system (as much of it as can meaningfully help - of the older parts, not young kids) to really wrap themselves around this part and help them out.
It’s likely that none of your other parts can really put themselves in that part’s shoes, and understand what they’re trying to cope with. But they can absolutely help out.
For me, some of the key steps to that have been:
- hearing the part. Give them a safe time and space to be as open as they’re comfortable with about what they’re dealing with right now, and just like you would for your fellow pstd’ers, validate that suffering. It makes sense that it hurts, and although it won’t always be like this, sometimes there’s no way around those emotions
- assessing what aspects of your daily function that part is fronting for, and how your other parts might be able to step in and carry those responsibilities for a while
- have a conversation with your parts about what kind of comfort you can offer that will specifically speak to that part, and bring that in to the daily routine for a while. For example, while one of my parts needs me to go boxing when she’s distressed, another of my parts needs me to hit the chillout playlist on my earbuds and take a walk in bushland.
- try and find out from that part if there’s anything in particular that is making this distress worse right now. Sometimes that conversation can highlight to other parts “this thing that you’re really invested in at the moment isn’t working so well for someone else in the system”. DID is endless negotiation and compromise, and when one part is struggling, it very often means other parts need to compromise, even for a time-limited period, till everyone’s okay again.
- reassessing my internal safe spaces - idk if everyone with DID does this (doubt it!), but every single one of my parts has an internal safe space, and every one of those spaces is unique. Because it’s the place that just one part can escape to, any time, no questions asked, that feels safe to them.
Sometimes some of my really ‘troubled’ parts have had to take some time with my internal diplomat to revisit how they’ve designed their safe space, because sometimes some of them have actually turned it into a living nightmare.
Those safe spaces have saved me countless times, but I do have a diplomat part, that nearly everyone trusts, who now sticks their head in occasionally to make sure that parts who have withdrawn to their space are genuinely in a space that is bringing them a feeling of safety. And there’s been times where I’ve had a part allow another part to bunk in their safe space because that was required for them to feel safe.
Tldr: like so much of managing DID, for me it’s all about a shittonne of communication and learning to be kind and supportive of each other! Not a small task!!