A Life in Fragments : Dissociative Identity Disorder

I often think some people must take their sense of identity for granted but I think there's some truth in the saying that you don't know what you have until it's taken away from you.

Nonetheless, as wholly insignificant as it may sound, I suppose I envy those people who look in the mirror every morning and simply see themselves.

When I look in the mirror, I see mostly different looking faces, none I completely despise but none which I can fully associate with myself.

It has become apparent in recent months that I have been suffering from dissociative identity issues.

This is a relatively new concept for me but the experience of it is definitely not new.

It's more that I've become more aware of the issue, someone put a name and words to it and I have finally come to accept that it is indeed a happening feature of my life.

To put this into context with my everyday life, I am currently in a cafe writing this blog post.
On the way here, I sat opposite my 13 year old self on the train, let her do some colouring and had a conversation with her about how she doesn't have to push herself to the limits everyday anymore, she needs to take some time for herself.

I walked along the seafront and my 6/7 year old self stood on the railings, looking out to sea as she loves how the sunshine and the wind blowing through her hair makes her feel free and reminds her that she doesn't always have to feel sad.
In order to be able to write this blog post I have had to okay it with six different parts of myself individually, which was quite a lengthy process but fruitful, so it would appear!

Needless to say, these were all experiences that nobody else could see but I did and they were very much real to me.

In recent years, I've been far more open about my struggles with my mental health than I've ever been before and I suppose this blog is evidence of that.

However, I have found it much more difficult to tell others about this new diagnosis / newly arisen issue.

One reason for this is probably that I have only recently started to accept it myself so I am dubious about putting it out there for others to accept or reject.  Also, my experiences strike me as being so distinct from those of others I worry that it is too complex for them to understand and any discussion about it will just serve to disturb them.

What I've come to realise though is that most people will want to try to understand if you give them a chance.

And so here lies my motivation behind this blog post.

I want to try to explain what Dissociative Identity Disorder entails based upon my own experiences with a view to help others to understand what it is and in the hope that they might not see it as something scary or to be feared but rather the mark of a survivor.

Not overly accepted...
DID is said to be a relatively rare complex mental health problem, affecting only about 1 percent of the population.  It is thought though that it is far more common than statistics suggest.  This is because it is also common for DID patients to conceal the condition (as I did), hence avoiding diagnosis.  In addition, DID is not overly accepted by medical professionals, many psychiatrists will not diagnose it as they claim it to be created by the individual upon the suggestion of therapists, or they may diagnose other comorbid disorders than commonly run alongside DID and are more outwardly prominent.
In a way, I can understand the controversy that surrounds DID as in all honesty, even I didn't think it was possible until I realised it was actually happening to me.
My psychologist did help me to understand that a lot of my experiences formed part of a DID system but nothing she said felt new to me or as though she was searching for something that wasn't already there.  Rather, she helped me to put words to what I was experiencing and helped me to better understand and make sense of it.

Trauma and Dissociation
I'm aware that I've already waffled on a lot but haven't really explained what DID is.
DID is generally agreed to have its roots in childhood trauma.
As I've mentioned before, when experiencing significant trauma, it is a normal response (particularly amongst children) to dissociate - to cut yourself off from what is happening so that it doesn't feel as though the trauma is actually happening to you.  When a person experiences multiple traumas, particularly early on in childhood, this dissociative response can become very automatic and more pronounced.  The thing to remember is that dissociative experiences occur on a spectrum and DID is at the severe end of it.
I think I've discussed on this blog before about how when you have experienced a number of traumas throughout your life that shape so much of how you view the world and interact with others,  it can feel as though you haven't been given much chance to work out who you are through it all.
I suppose DID is the extreme manifestation of this.
Sometimes when you experience a trauma, it can cause your personality to split off.  It is a defensive move that allows you to be able to carry on living as close to your usual life as possible as a part of you holds the trauma and the part of you that continues to get on with your 'usual' life does not feel as though they have suffered the trauma.  This would explain why after I experienced significant traumas as a child, I could go to school the next day behaving and feeling as though nothing had happened because as far as that part of me was concerned, nothing had happened.
When this happens a number of times,  a person's identity can become very fragmented and almost separated out into seemingly isolated parts that together form one whole person.  This is how DID develops.  I often have to remind myself that DID is not a sign of weakness but rather a very clever system that protects us from the trauma we endured so that we can manage to continue to function in our daily lives.
Essentially, this is what happened to me.  I suppose I see myself as a living horcrux (Harry Potter reference here), except I'm pleased to report that I haven't gone around killing anyone to achieve this status!

Bits of you get stuck
This is what characterises my experience of DID.  It is as though parts of me are stuck at certain points in my life.  For example, I realised that I always go to sleep as a 6 year old child as that was the point where my experience of going to sleep no longer felt safe - I was abused.  My 6/7 year old part contains a lot sadness and emotion as I learnt at that age that showing any emotion would result in bad things happening to me and/or others.  I find it very difficult to experience and express sadness as an adult.  Whenever I experience rejection, I tend to respond to it as a 6-8 year old as during those years I experienced a kind of rejection and abandonment that I felt I couldn't cope with or move on from.  I hope this makes some level of sense.  Ultimately, this is why I have to process the traumatic memories and recover from my past because parts of me are stuck in the trauma and interfere with my experiences of life in the present.

When I did x I felt like a different person
It was these kind of experiences that lead me to realise I was experiencing dissociative identity issues. We all experience separation in our identity to some extent. For example,  you may find that you behave in quite a different way in front of your friends than you do in front of your family but that is a way of adapting yourself to the social situation, inside you will still hold onto the same core beliefs and values that characterise your identity.  I'm also sure that we've all done something we regret or made such a stupid mistake that we can't believe that it was actually us who behaved in that way.
Again, this is all a 'normal' part of human experience but for a person with DID it will be far more pronounced and distinct, to the extent that it might even come across in certain circumstances that they actually were a different person.
To put this in perspective.  When I switch into one of my child parts, I may not be able to read and write as well as my adult self.  I also lose my ability to speak as well as I suffered from selective mutism as a child.  I have been unable to recall my current address and instead given a past one.  As well as being completely puzzled and confused by some things such as the sight of a mobile phone!  My voice and body language have become altered though that's not something I am usually aware of as there is a strong element of amnesia associated with DID.  A lot of this, I have been told by others and for a long time I thought it just as far-fetched as some of you reading this might be finding it right now.
I have had gaps in my memory where I have found things I don't remember buying.  I have found messages I don't remember sending and I have found scribbles of writings and drawings that just don't sound like me as I am now but rather a younger or different kind of me.
Generally though I would say these episodes of amnesia are far less frequent for me now than they once were.  I think that's because when I do encounter a gap in my memory, through communication between the different parts of me, I am able to collaborate the details.  Also in most of my more recent experiences, other parts tend to co-exist or feature alongside the adult part who is present most of the time, so I do have an underlying continuous thread of memory to some extent.

It's not always so obvious.
You may question based upon what I've shared so far, why my dissociative identity issues are not immediately obvious to other people.  Surely people will notice if I am acting like a different person?
I suppose my answer to this is that most people know and experience the adult part of me.
That's the part of me who writes this blog but I guess she gets some help and ideas from the other parts that also form a part of my life.
The adult me is like the chair of a meeting with all the other parts, you could say that she's in charge most of the time so that's the part that most people see and know to be me.
Other parts may be around from time to time alongside the adult part but most of the time it's the adult part who does all the talking.
Also, all the other parts are essentially younger versions of myself, they are still part of the same person, so switches between parts may actually appear quite subtle.
In order to function in my current life, my adult part needs to be in what my psychologist calls the driver's seat and most of the time I would say it is.  When traumatic memories are triggered, other parts become more present.  Sometimes they might be in the passenger seat but they might also try to take the wheel.  Occasionally those other parts will succeed in taking over the driver's seat for a while.  This is when I will completely switch to another part, which as I've said is not often, as far as my memory can dictate to me.  Generally most of my switches occur in therapy when I am working through my traumatic memories, which does make sense if you think about it.  Some do occur outside of therapy but not necessarily in a way that is immediately obvious to the people around me.

I'm still 'me', not a 'we'.
I have heard of some people with DID who find it more accurate to describe themselves as 'we' but as far as I'm concerned, I feel like a 'me', there's just a lot of largely separate, distinct and complex parts that make up that 'me'.  All these parts of me are essentially parts of the same person, all of them have the same name - my name.
(having an anonymous blog makes this more complicated to explain than it needs to be!)
These parts are personality states of the same person.
I know that a lot of people with DID will refer to having 'alters' - separate identities with different names and different autobiographical histories.
My parts are all aware of each other and interact with each other to variable extents, though I don't think it has always been like that.  At the moment, I have identified six parts but there may be more that I am not fully aware of yet.  These parts of me don't have separate autobiographical histories, rather they represent parts of my personal history, therefore some parts hold memories that other parts are unaware of.
I consider myself to have 'a body', rather than being able to it as 'my body'.
In this sense, I am quite detached from it but it does carry physical memories of trauma too.  I see 'the body' as a physical thing which the parts inhabit but don't necessarily claim as their own.
Below are some sketches I produced to try to document occasions when a number of parts have been present at the same time.
At these times my head feels quite loud...

Sometimes the parts get on like a house on fire, other times it's like a battle ground.
I think it is possible to relate to this issue even if you do not suffer from DID.  We all experience conflicting thoughts and emotions.  You might even find yourself saying something along the lines of 'a part of me wants to go ahead and do this; a part of me is not so sure'.  This is not so far away from the conflicts that occur among the parts of a DID system except, as ever, they can be far more extreme and pronounced.
Sometimes in my head, it can feel as though all the parts of me click together almost perfectly; they can co-exist fairly peacefully and everything feels as settled as it can be.
At other times it can feel as though I'm trying to chair a meeting between six very different people who are all screaming at each other.  Each part has its own way of thinking, its own priorities, its own needs and wants.  Each part wants and deserves to be heard and you have to try and attend to those needs and wants even though that may cause conflict with another part.
It can feel as though you have a lot of people to try and please.
Sometimes all you can do is listen and try to strike the best compromise you can come up with.

You won't always fit into a box but doesn't make your experiences any less real.
Based upon what I've described, you may question whether I even have DID at all.
Some people might argue that you have to have alters with separate names and identities to be classed as having DID, as well as having regular periods of amnesia when switches between the alters occur.  To be honest, I am not even sure if I would meet the criteria of a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis as I have not been diagnosed as such, just told that a lot of my symptoms seem characteristic of those who suffer from the disorder.
I therefore consider myself to suffer from dissociative identity issues and they have had and continue to have a significant impact on my life.
Something that I would like to get across through this blog post is that any mental health diagnosis is based upon whether a person meets a certain criteria - that is all it is - a criteria, a label that describes a person's symptoms but not their story.
Just because you don't meet a diagnostic criteria, it doesn't make your struggles or experiences any less real or legitimate than someone with the diagnosis.
It is my belief that if something feels like a problem to you, then it is a problem and you should seek whatever help or support you need to overcome it.

What will recovery look like?
You might wonder what recovery from DID is likely to look like.
This is something I am still very much in the process of working out myself.
I've heard that for some people, recovery will entail a merging of all the parts into a single personality.  For others, a greater integration between parts is more realistic to aim for.
A greater level of integration sounds good to me!
What I have discovered so far from my own therapy is that you have to first accept and value every part of yourself.  Each part was created for a reason and they do an important job.  You have to take the time to listen to the parts, understand their needs and concerns and attend to them as best you can.  You should encourage positive communication and cooperation amongst the parts, helping them to understand the importance of one another.  While it is important to listen and respond to the needs of the other parts, it is also important that the adult self is in the driving seat of your life and is like the host communicator between the parts.  The adult self is better equipped to deal with the present situation, the other parts are concerned with past situations.  In this way, the adult part can be used to reassure the younger parts that some of the things that were a concern in the past are no longer a real concern in your present life.  You can take a weight off their shoulders sometimes.
Encouraging communication and cooperation between the parts will assist in gaining their approval to face and process the traumatic memories they hold so the parts can almost be set free from them and those memories won't have such a detrimental effect on your life in the present.

Please note that I am not an expert or psychologist, these thoughts are based purely upon where I see my own recovery heading.
Recovery can mean different things to different people.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long spiel.
I hope it was in some way insightful and not entirely confusing.

Surprisingly, once I gained agreement from all the parts of me to write this, it has actually been a really enjoyable and almost empowering experience.
I suppose it has proven to the parts that I have accepted them as a present and happening features of my life.

DID is not a sign of weakness or even what some might call 'madness' or 'hysteria', it is an incredibly clever and intelligent system that protects us from the trauma we sustained and marks our status as survivors.

Love and Strength,
The One Day Seeker