Have you shared your diagnosis with anyone outside of your care team? If so, who and why?
Yes, I have. My close friends know about my diagnosis, as well as people from (peer) support groups I attend. I also participate in multiple online support groups where I typically help others using my own lived experience.
I ended up telling my family in the beginning, which was a bad choice because (1) they were the cause for my trauma and (2) they proceeded to claim I don't have DID, "they'd know that" and just generally tried to drive me away from something I'm very actively aware of that it is a part of my life.
I am planning to publicly present myself and disclose my DID, as I am a poet/songwriter and my art often centers around the themes of trauma and (complex) dissociation. I also just like the idea of building myself a platform where I can both present my art and educate/advocate about (complex) DID. I don't want to treat my diagnosis as something to be ashamed of and I want other systems to feel more comfortable when they see someone taking the stage while being open about something so vulnerable.
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Do you have a specific type of therapy that is your favourite and that works best for you? What types of therapy haven't worked in the past?
I can't say too much to this one because I've so far not had too many types of therapy, at least not long term.
I can say that art/music therapy (tried in a clinical setting) isn't for me because I deal with the internal pressure to create something perfect when I'm only meant to express myself through it and process through it.
I did acting therapy once in a clinical setting and it was extremely challenging because I struggle to improvise etc. but that's probably why it was good that I attended it. It didn't help much sadly.
Else I've only had talk therapy and that hasn't helped much either. I think I had different models of it? I don't remember. I've never had specialized trauma therapy so far, I'm not sure if that would work better than the therapy types I've done in the past.
To me, healing is learning to feel normal about things. Getting triggered less often and managing triggering situations in healthier ways. Getting ahead in life, having nice experiences, not letting my trauma and the resulting illness stop me from taking every nice thing I can get. Actually taking in what I experience instead of dissociating from it. Keeping memories instead of forgetting them.
Learning to trust and seeing that it ends well, learning to step out of my comfort zone without immediately rushing back inside. Learning that maybe the world isn't as dangerous as it was made out to be.
Healing is finding friends who stay despite the hardships, healing is finding out that I can enjoy and want to help another person because of genuine care. Healing is companionship and loyalty without devoting myself to the other person.
Healing is accepting my place in the world and being satisfied with it, healing is no longer chasing the clouds, chasing the unrealistic, and instead building something real right where I'm at. That doesn't mean I don't want to dream and reach for something greater, but it means that I want to learn to be happy with what I have. I want to practice modesty and gratitude and not feel like I reject those concepts altogether.
How do you experience DID? Do you find your symptoms manifest more physically, emotionally, mentally, etc?
My DID is rather covert. I function more through co-fronting, co-consciousness and passive influence than though full switches of the main fronter, however already co-fronting/co-conscious alters can and will take turns on the main front. I have 24/7 passive influence from the cores of my system (I use the term differently from most, I do not believe in a "first alter" and they also do not identify with the body) which can drastically change my thoughts, emotions and behaviour regardless of which regular alter is present. This is the only symptom of identity alteration that others around me may notice, because generally my system is built to hide itself and only then it fails.
I experience primarily grayout amnesia, and I experience it "globally", which means that it is not alter or switch based, but instead the front itself remembers and forgets. Alters can forget their own memories and remember memories that aren't theirs. My amnesia also sets in with a delay, memories fade over time rather than being instantly gone. That time is currently between a few hours and up to a day. On bad days it can be less.
I dissociate on a daily, my baseline is a 3-5/10, on bad days it has risen to 7-8/10. I feel disconnected from my body, my emotions, my thoughts, words and actions and my identity itself. I usually do not notice the presence of my dissociation as it only comes with physical symptoms like dizziness or exhaustion once it rises above around 5/10.
I'm not sure which way my symptoms manifest the most. I assume it is mentally, but that affects the physical and emotional sphere just as much most of the time. I can be in pain and exhaustion or feel sick from dissociation alone. My emotions can be all over the place from dissociation alone. And I can experience full mental blocks that keep me from doing the things I need to do or convince me that doing them would be dangerous. This can come with both physical and emotional consequences.
I think I first found out around the end of 2021? I had been noticing bouts of identity alteration and that I felt disconnected from those identities I was moving between. I only considered DID because it had been a hyperfixation before so I knew the basics about it. I was however dismissed by my therapist I had at the time in an outpatient clinic and therefore decided it must not be DID and tried to ignore my symptoms.
I rediscovered the symptom of identity alteration multiple times throughout 2022, identifying a few alters but hardly finding any other symptoms — I was unaware of my dissociation and my amnesia levels were oddly low (later I'd understand that happened due to my specific structure and functioning). In October 2022 our host at the time switched out fully and from that point on we somewhat stopped doubting the existence of alters (although our denial lasted 2-3 more years anyway and sometimes still resurfaces).
We aren't professionally diagnosed yet but DID has been a suspected diagnosis on our papers by now, our current main diagnosis is UDD and we are on the lookout for a professional we can afford who can properly assess us.
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It's been eleven years (wow) since the original 30 Days of DID ask meme was created, and there Still isn't one that is not largely parts-focused. So I made my own.
Some questions still pertain to parts but they are much more few and far between than the original ask meme. Answer what you want to, skip over what you don't like. This is all in the name of getting to know yourself better and sharing only what you feel comfortable sharing.
To be clear because unfortunately I have to be, this ask meme is for those with a complex dissociative disorder (so not just DID!) whose experiences with parts are inherently disordered.
When and how did you find out you have DID?
How do you experience DID? Do you find your symptoms manifest more physically, emotionally, mentally, etc?
What does healing look like for you?
Do you have a specific type of therapy that is your favourite and that works best for you? What types of therapy haven't worked in the past?
Have you shared your diagnosis with anyone outside of your care team? If so, who and why?
Are you, as a whole, in a relationship? How does romantic partnership work for you?
How long have you been in treatment for DID?
When did you first learn/hear about DID, if it was prior to your diagnosis?
What misinformation about DID irks you the most?
What are some ways that depersonalization and derealization appear in your day to day life?
Do you have a favourite model of dissociation (eg. BASK, ToSD, 4D model)? Why?
How do you keep track of your symptoms and experiences?
What was your last therapy session like?
What is your favourite sense to ground yourself with? Olfactory, tactile, auditory, etc?
What are some ways that memory gaps appear in your day to day life?
Prior to your DID diagnosis, had you been misdiagnosed with other conditions?
Do you have a favourite movie, TV show, book, or video game that has a character with DID, or one that you believe has DID?
How do you experience emotions in relation to your DID? For you, how are emotions affected by dissociation?
How much internal communication do you have with parts? How do you, as a whole, prefer to communicate?
What are some ways that identity confusion appears in your day to day life?
What songs or specific lyrics do you relate to your experience with DID?
Are you diagnosed with other conditions? How do those conditions affect your DID, and vice versa?
Where is the safest place you can imagine for yourself as a whole?
How do you experience passive influence? How are you able to identify passive influence now, vs. when you first discovered your DID?
Have you read books on DID? If so, what are some of your favourites? What are some books you would like to read in the future?
How do you experience denial in relation to your DID? How do you deal with it?
Do you experience variation in skill correlating to levels of dissociation? If so, what skills stand out as most affected by dissociation?
In your experience, what are the hardest things about having DID in your day to day life?
Do you have a common trait amongst parts, such as a trauma response (or if you want to be less personal, hobbies or interests, etc)?
What is something you feel should be written about that was not asked here?
While I am glad that ARFID has been getting more awareness recently, it really does bother me when people claim that it's something only autistic people have or when they call it the "sensory issues eating disorder".
Because while ARFID certainly can present that way, by definition it's just any clinically significant restrictive eating or feeding disturbance that isn't body image based. It also commonly presents as:
Lack of interest in food or eating—such as a result of major depressive disorder, schizoid personality disorder, the negative symptoms of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, dissociative disorders, etc
Avoidance of specific foods that are PTSD triggers, or of eating as a whole due to traumatic events that happened around mealtimes or in kitchens or dining rooms
Avoiding food due to phobias surrounding vomiting, choking, allergic reactions, etc
Avoiding food due to OCD surrounding due to magical thinking around the consequences of eating (i.e. fearing that a loved one will die if you eat a specific food), obsessions surrounding poisoning or allergic reactions, or food restriction as a compulsion
Avoiding food as a result of delusions or paranoia in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, paranoid personality disorder, etc
And so on. Of course AFRID as a result of autism and sensory processing disorder deserve awareness as well, but it would be great if people could develop a more holistic view of the different ways ARFID can present instead of just calling it "the autism eating disorder".
Our ARFID was primarily the lack of interest in food and eating, even if it featured sensory issues due to us also being autistic. We considered eating a chore and tried to avoid it because of that. When we did feel like eating, we struggled to make the food.
It's currently somewhat in remission although we still have bad days etc., we also noticed that we have specific triggers that make it near impossible for us to eat, which is something we only noticed recently.
But we hate that ARFID is mainly known as the "I can't handle textures and tastes" disorder, for us it was mostly a lack of interest. We're not sure what caused it, it might have been chronic exhaustion or our dissociation.
I am really bad at telling apart AI from regular pictures. I've noticed that over the past months. I genuinely do not recognize the tells that are seemingly obvious to everyone else.
My primary source for pictures is Pinterest, I've turned off every setting that would allow AI suggestions and it still ends up showing them anyway and I fail to identify them most of the time. I don't know how others have an eye for that, I personally apparently don't have it.
So before you come at me, tell me so I can change it.
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polyfragmented culture is trying to find a picture for an alter on pinterest and finding several that might fit and suddenly you get this intense feeling that every single one of these pictures is being claimed by someone who you hadn't even been aware of before.
anyways I didn't log one but five new people yesterday.
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Polyfragmented culture is going "I meet the criteria of being polyfragmented but I surely can't be because my trauma wasn't "that bad" compared to other systems so therefore I'm not polyfragmented despite meeting all the required criteria for that label"
