i need to soapbox about DID more, because its kinda like being trans, you'd think that you'd notice if you had it but that's just cultural osmosis giving a skewed impression, statistically you probably wouldn't. statistically you need to do rigorous work to notice.
you might have entertained the idea once and discarded it because u have put DID in this box of rare implausible fantastical mental disorders when it is simply far more mundane than that.
it's still unbelievable to me how well my system was hiding, if i hadn't tapped that first domino of "trying IFS in therapy" all my alters would still probably be covert. but trying to talk to parts was enough to bring them out of hiding so they could enlighten me on how they've been driving my behavior for decades
something i think about a lot is how the sensationalized perception of DID as being this extremely rare disorder that only occurs in response to the worst possible kinds of abuse imaginable makes it so much harder for people to realize that they have DID. i mean, for one, even for people who have been through those kinds of abuse, complex dissociative disorders are defined by the obscuring of trauma, meaning it’s extremely common for dissociative systems to just not even realize they were abused or traumatized at all. but also, that level of abuse is not required for a dissociative system to form at all. it’s not like a dark souls status effect where once your trauma bar fills up enough you get DID; the disorder is a complex response meant to allow the mind to cope with severe chronic stress at a very young age, and there are lots of things that can contribute to that— any kind of abuse, neglect, bullying, isolation, disability, neurodivergence, queerness, etc. these factors tend to compound. autistic people, for example, are both far more susceptible to stress and far more likely to be traumatized, and so we also have a higher incidence of dissociative disorders. it took me so long to realize and internalize that my experience of being emotionally abused by my mother while also growing up queer and autistic was “bad enough” for my brain to respond by developing DID to protect me. i’d completely written it off as a possibility before then, because, like the original post said, it’s far more mundane than people are led to believe. that’s why i think spreading awareness is so important.
