ᵖʳᵒᵇᵃᵇˡʸ ᵗʳᵃᵘᵐᵃ ᵖᵒˢᵗⁱⁿᵍ

I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I'm not incapable of understanding morality. I don't hate the people in my life. I'm not intentionally trying to hurt people's feelings when I withdraw from them or don't react to them. I just do not care about anyone, and for some reason people keep assigning more stuff to that that isn't a part of the condition at all.

OSDDID spaces online present their experiences very identity-first and everyone always seems to have personal relationships with their alters, like they are their friends or family.

I don't feel connected to them at all, spare for two. Not only this but I don't see them as people either. Just me in different forms stuck in different periods. They still have different "selves": different interests, dislikes, mannerisms, behaviors, and so on, but I still don't see them as "people". I think when it comes down to it I see them purely as symptoms and nothing else. It's taken me a long time to even call them alters at all.

Knowing I have DID at all terrified me, but to see online OSDDID spaces not represent how I experience this makes it all the more lonely.

Yeah, it's pretty common to experience DID in the way you've described. Not to say that alters having relationships with each other or viewing themselves as "separate people" isn't possible, because it definitely does happen. But people online have a tendency to only discuss DID in terms of its most distinct and obvious forms, when in actuality the majority of DID cases present as more subtle and covert.

It's actually healthier not to view alters as separate people, because objectively speaking they aren't and those feelings of separation only reinforce the disorder. It's why the theory of structural dissociation mentions several times that clinicians should not treat alters as separate people and needs to emphasize them as parts of a whole, otherwise the person won't be able to achieve any degree of integration.

I don't mind people acknowledging the fact that alters can believe themselves to be very separate, I take issue with how this presentation is treated as if it's the one true way to experience DID. And with how people insist that such heavy dissociation is actually healthy and doesn't need to be worked on. It very much crosses the line into treating DID like an identity label instead of a serious mental illness, which isn't conducive to anyone's recovery.

When I started therapy, I was firmly treating my parts as solely parts of one whole. They had distinct selves, but they were also just symptoms of my trauma — nothing more. The end goal was for them to solidify into one identity, which was scary since I didn’t know anything else, but isn’t that what being parts of a whole meant?

It worked for us for awhile, but distinctly, we hit a barrier when it came to distancing those parts from their trauma. The ones who viewed themselves more as people had a far easier time, because they were people, capable of growth and change. Not just a symptom or a brain chemistry issue — real breathing people with lives of their own, desires, wants, etc. They just happened to share their body.

One of the parts who struggled the most was our protector, who was stuck distinctly in the mentality that he had to anticipate everything in order to protect us. What helped him grow from that mentality was treating himself with more personhood, acknowledging he could be a person. He developed hobbies and desires separate from the others, as well as hobbies along with the others.

The ISSTD guidelines impress upon therapists and mental healthcare professionals that, while it’s essential that patients don’t believe themselves to be fully separate people — people as in bodies that have no impact on the others — it’s equally essential to use the terminology that the patient most relates to. This is to help improve dissociation and build trust with the therapist, which is required for stabilization before the trauma-processing and integration phases.

But Haze , no one can say it is healthier to treats alters as parts OR separate individuals. Neither is more healthy than the other. It is going to depend on the person/system and what they need and what benefits them best in order to heal without causing distress and roadblocks.

As Sonnet said, professionals are encouraged to use the terminology their patients use. If they see their alters as separate people they should be respecting this and adapting their approach. The reminder to professionals about alters not being individuals is to make sure they understand they need to push home to their patient that they share a singular body and in turn a singular life. The actions, relationships, and choices of one will affect the others. That is what it is saying.

Maybe at one point the idea of alters being only parts and final fusion was the only way you could treat CDDs was the staple at the time. But as more time has passed, and more cases worked with (and people with CDDs have also entered the medical field) it became very apparent that this was faulty and a new approach was encouraged.

Integration is a lot of things, and it can happen in many ways. For some it is seeing themselves as all parts to one whole and not as separate people. Breaking down the divisions between the parts so everything flows together as one with no interuptions. For others it is staying as individuals who work as a team and collaborate to get to the same seamless flow and functionality. It could be something in-between or something else entirely. This is also why I have started to view final fusion and thriving multiplicity as a sliding bar and not an all or nothing end to living with a CDD.

While I agree there is often misunderstandings and misinformation of what dissociation and CDDs are within the community, stating there is only one healthy way be to a system or one proper way towards recovery is also spreading misunderstanding about the disorder. I also agree some people may be pushing themselves further into trouble, but that is ONLY because they do not always see other options available to them. They may not have a reliable support system or a professional to help them when things go overboard. It isn't the choice of being individuals, or the dissociation that sometimes comes with it, that is necessarily the bad thing in this scenario. It is that they do not understand themselves, their system, or their mental health enough to take all factors into play (and as an outside party neither can we). And truthfully, everyone is allowed to take that risk. That is their choice, their means of finding out what works or doesn't.

As a community it isn't our job to say what someone should or shouldn't do just because we think its best or has been personally beneficial. The reason I would love to see more pwCDDs that do not see themselves, or work, as individuals share their experiences is because then more of us would understand both sides of the coin (plus you deserve the chance to share your experiences). We could see someone struggling and suggest a different route. People encourage and support their own experiences, and as a community I think it is important to understand that our way of existing and healing isnt going to work for everyone. What is safe for us isn't guaranteed to be safe for another. What we do to integrate, handle dissociation, dysphoria, trauma, etc isn't going to be the same for everyone.

This is literally exactly what I'm saying.

And I'm aware professionals are encouraged to use the languages their clients use, I'm not saying you literally have to call them "parts" if you don't want to. What I'm saying is that the core of the disorder is dissociating away from parts yourself and disavowing them as different people or entities, and you are never going to heal from a disorder if you are just constantly reinforcing the core of what makes you sick.

You have to strike a balance with DID treatment. Alters need to be acknowledged and engaged with as they are, you should not be ignoring them or trying to "get rid" of them. But as I've said, doing the complete opposite of that is harmful as well.

Integration refers to processing your memories, personality and identity as all being part of one cohesive whole. Dissociation refers to the separation of these parts and the disavowal of them as being part of the same whole. There is no way to achieve integration while still dissociating at the same time, they are opposite processes.

I'm not saying there is only one way to recover from DID, because as you said how integration presents exactly can vary from person to person. But all integration involves processing dissociative parts as being parts of a whole. That is quite literally the definition.

Claiming that pointing that out is to say there's only one way to heal from DID, is like claiming that "you need to eat to recover from a restrictive ED" is also saying there's one way to heal. There is variation in recovery, but you always need to address what's at the core of the disorder.

A few excerpts from the Haunted Self that I was referring to here:

"Even though dissociative parts have a sense of self, no matter how rudimentary, they are not separate entities, but rather are different, more or less divided psychobiological systems that are not sufficiently cohesive or coordinated within an individual’s personality...These systems are part of a single human being, so we have chosen to refer to the entire individual when he or she is directed by one of those unintegrated systems."

The degree of emancipation of parts varies. Some have a depersonalized awareness that they are part of a larger personality: “I know I’m part of him, but it doesn’t feel like it.” Others realize this only vaguely, and a few regard themselves as an entirely separate person, even when confronted with obvious evidence to the contrary. This can lead to serious problems for survivors.

Various ANPs and EPs may have a strong investment in the belief that they are separate persons. This substitute belief must be met with gentle but consistent challenges by the therapist. If parts insist on being called by another name, the therapist may do so, but also should regularly refer to such parts as aspects of a whole person.