What DID Is and Isn't

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A friend of mine made an excellent post today on social media, and I thought I would add to it and post it here. It’s taken me over an hour to write this, due to my own mental health. After this posts, I will be retiring from the internet for a couple hours/days, so my own system can recharge and heal. The following may hold triggers for some people, so please proceed with that in mind, as I do talk about trauma, mental health, current global/national events, and some negative/toxic people.

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My friend said the following on Facebook:
“DID is not fun.
DID isn’t cool.
DID isn’t trendy.
DID fucking hurts.”

So, allow me to tell you WHY it hurts, and WHAT living with DID is really like:

It is being constantly on guard, watching out for triggers, both positive and negative, so that certain alters aren’t pulled to the front when they shouldn’t be.

It’s debilitating PTSD flashbacks that can cause severe side effects, sometimes lasting weeks at a time, infecting your sleep (or lack of) and increasing the chaos in your system, not to mention other psychological and emotional distress.

It’s blinking and finding yourself in a different place, situation, and time than you were when you were last conscious, not able to remember anything that happened when someone else was fronting. It’s the terror of not knowing what happened, how you got to this point, or even who was out.

It is massive amounts of hard work and therapy, sometimes even a battle of wills, to try to learn to understand and communicate with your alters, so you can try to get better mentally and emotionally. It’s constant missteps, numerous flashbacks, and sometimes you push too hard and the amnesia walls come down too fast, crippling you with memories and trauma one or both of you were not ready to deal with. It can take years to get to a point where you can be fully co-con, so you can have some idea of what goes on when you are not the one fronting, and you have to repeat the process with EVERY alter, because not all alters are able to be seen or heard by one another.

It’s frustrating conversations, when people ask you questions about events you were not conscious for, recognize you because of a different alter, or because they tend to favor one alter over another. It’s constantly reminding people that you have little to no control of who fronts or when they front, and that you can’t just “ask them to come out”. It’s biting your tongue so you don’t scream or cry when hanging out with someone and they ask you to “let _ out so I can hang/party/talk to them”, especially if you put extra effort into making sure you were the one that could be with that person/at that event.

It is additional stress and work when it comes to relationships. It is a learning curve for lovers and spouses, trying to learn each alter’s name and what they like/dislike/need. It’s them learning how to respond to each alter, and learning how to react/treat each alter differently, because while you and your SO might be romantic, another alter might see them only as a friend/sibling/rival/caretaker/etc. It’s you being patient with them as they learn about each alter, understanding that they might make a mistake or accidentally say/do the wrong thing. It is both of you having to learn that sometimes being intimate isn’t possible or has to be postponed, because of what is going on in the system or because your switches are too sporadic that day.

It’s having to have the same conversation over and over again, with each person you tell for the first time about your diagnosis, explaining what DID is and how it forms. It’s having to constantly live in fear of how people will react when you tell them: will they be afraid? Call you crazy? Accept it? Treat you differently? Compare you to Split?

DID is NOT something you should try to copy/pretend to have! It is not all “party in my head” or “super cool”. It’s a Disorder, caused by repeated childhood trauma before the age of 7-9 years old, especially in those who did not have a good support system through it or who were cut off from those that they needed. It is NOT okay to ignorantly/deliberately mock, or try to become, a part of the DID community. Your negative and triggering behavior can often cause damage to systems, including new alters (inactive alters becoming active again, alters splitting, new alters being formed, etc), flashbacks, triggers, chaotic switches, system breakdowns, and even a regression, meaning months or years of therapy and communication down the toilet!

Please be thoughtful of your words and actions, and if you have a loved one or know someone that is being effected by the current pandemic, certain damaging YouTubers, or the economic downfall, please reach out to them! They are suffering even worse during this time, and many are going to be worse by the time this is all said and done. Just a simple “hi, I have been thinking about you. You do not have to reply, just letting you know I am here for you, all of you.” can go a long way.