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DID Questions for other did folk

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mytai

MyPTSD Pro
I know there are many threads around here on this topic, but I wanted to start a thread specifically for those of us that have dissociative identity disorder that have questions for each other about things that happen within our systems, or road blocks we run into with getting proper help/treatment.

So to start things off I have a question/situation. In my system not all of us talk significantly different on the outside (what others witness). I know most of us are very self conscious of the way we sound, so we tend to try and stay consistent but can't always. We're self conscious mainly because family (who don't know about the DID) have mocked some of the others for the way they were talking. So they all work very hard to match one consistent voice. But inside we all have our own separate voices, some are similar with slight differences but everyone is very careful to have the same voice as the main host.

Does anyone else experience this within their system, or are we just an odd group?
 
Very much so. The littles have a hard time sounding grown up, and for the acute observer there's big differences in the language that we all use, but for the most part, everyone prefers to go incognito - has always been thus for us!

The only exception is my most aggressive part. Some of the time she hans it up to try and go undercover, but usually if she decides to take over, there are no rules. I'm having a hard time getting her to play ball with the system altogether though, so it's not a surprise that she likes to screw things up for the rest of us.

She's the only one that refers to me as in the third person, as well. Much more of a giveaway when people realise you're talking about yourself in first and third person simultaneously..."Ragdoll just won't listen to me". V obvious!
 
I've got one that I thought I'd post, see if anyone relates, or knows how to tackle this.

My abuse isn't mine. It's something my 12 year old part, Gracie, went through. All I get are the flashbacks she shows me, although apparently if you ask her, she has a freakishly detailed memory of everything.

So denial. It's not my story. It doesn't feel like mine, never has been. It's Gracie's. She's the one that was there. She's the one that went through it and remembers it all. My flashbacks are just clips from her life, not mine.

So I'm struggling with denial: this abuse can't have really happened to me. And in a way, it didn't. It happened to Gracie. Accepting it's my life feels like I'm trying to accept someone else's story, because in a big way, that's what I have to do.

But Gracie doesn't trust me with it, and I don't really want it. So how do I get past that? It's always going to be "someone else's life", not really mine, so long as it all belongs to Gracie...
 
@Ragdoll Circus freaky seeing you have a Gracie too (so close in age to mine) although I know there are only so many names in the world so there are bound to be repeats in other systems. Just freaky ours are only a year apart in age.

Anyhow, to respond back to what you said, yes we experience that too. The main person (mytai) actually went away this summer past because of this very reason. She had such a hard time accepting that something happened to her (technically speaking because it's her body) because she had no memory of it, it was held by several other parts/alters, it was too scary and upsetting for her that she actually went into hiding.

So how do I get past that?
We're still working on that one. Therapy helps, our therapist is really good at her job and helps us piece things together and work on accepting it as our truth as a whole. I don't know if there is one certain way to accomplish this, I think it has a lot to do with gradually gaining communication between all parts in the system, and I guess (don't know) that this would be accomplished once integration takes place. From my understanding of what my therapist has said about integration is that then we will all have the same knowledge and memories that all of the parts have, but in one mind instead of broken up between all of us. That everyone has access to everything... at least that's how I understand it.
 
@mytai - your T and mine sound like they have a lot in common! So I guess I just keep plugging away at it:grumpy:

Funny about the integration thing. That's what we're working towards (sounds like what I want), but I've heard others here talk about how integration is pie in the sky stuff, that's it's not really completely possible and is no longer the current recommended treatment strategy:(. I haven't read anything (yet) that supports that too much, other than stuff from people who say "You've got DID for life", which sounds a bit too defeatist for my liking!
 
Any tips on other parts/alters who don't like our therapist for silly reasons like have the same name as our abuser's wife (who watched the abuse happen on occasion and knew about it)? They don't like our therapist and want nothing to do with her or to talk to her. One of the younger ones shared this little tidbit with T today, so I'm sure this will be discussed in therapy next week.

*Add: it's mainly the boys who don't like our therapist, and a few of the girls. But mostly the boys.
 
Yes, sounds about right to me.

DID is generally a secretive diagnosis. Most of us learn when young that it is best to hide our alters.

In my personal experience, after owning/administering a DID support board, similar to this one, for a number of years, most people try to hide their DID. The ones who don't - the ones who are 'out there' like you see in the movies or on TV - they usually also have borderline personality disorder.

Ben
 
We sound different, walk different and so on... um, some alters are big personalities and some of them not. We try to keep it hide when outside :)
 
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