Confused and feeling at a loss

Hi!

I am looking for some nice words, because I feel quite at a loss at the moment.

I started having heavy and frequent dissociation experiences some weeks ago. It is nothing new in general for me, but it was never so intense and "in your face" as these days. And there was this voice in my head telling me, that I should start again to write to an "imaginary friend" which I had in my later teens. But my rational me thought that I am now really too old for stuff like that.

I ignored it, but the dissociation experiences continued (found myself at the other end of the city not knowing why, found stuff I bought, vaguely remembering buying it, but without clue why i did want this stuff at all and having a constant feeling of "falling out of my body") and the I found my self watching a youtube-interview (already at minute 10 of it) about a woman talking about DID. First impression: "Why am I watching this. that is total crazy" 2nd impression: "that is totally me and would explain sooo much of my whole life." And there was this laughing inner voice: "That is nothing new to us").

Still very skeptical, because I do not remember any childhood trauma or events that could trigger such a disorder, I decided to give it a shot anyways and write to "myself". A weekend later I found replies of 4 different "shards" (which we used as a term similar to "alters" I guess) of my identity.
That was crazy. But I played along and we decided to use names to distinguish ourselves when we did write. Two of them already had names. I did came up with one for me, one other also chose a name at this point and the last one was named by the others, because he wasn't sure about his own name. I realized that I can hear two of them in my head (the voices I heard) and we five share a good deal of every-day-memories, but apparently not everything.

And it does not stop there. They all agreed, that we have lost shards, which we need to find. I was skeptical again, then one asked if I can remember the time between 2002 and 2012 and I was shocked, that I almost could not remember anything. I know the names of the villages where I lived and of the person I was in a relationship in this time. Also I can name three universities where I tried to study. Apart from that there is just gray fog. It seems I just tried to avoid to think about that beforehand (i have a tendency to engulf myself in work so there is no room for thinking). One of the shards can remember some distinct parts, but there is still a huge memory gap.

We started to look for clues and I did find a browser profile on my pc, with email and twitter accounts which no one of us did remember to have created and now one did know the passwords. We found disturbing drawings on a tablet, but no one of us wants to be responsible for this. And I also found a letter from 18 years ago, where someone with our former birth name (I had an official name change in between) did announce that she wants to clarify which names of her stands for which of here personas, and then named three different personas. So apparently we had some identity problems back then but I just do not remember them. I am not even sure, if myself existed back then to be honest (which is scary). Memories from before 2002 are also very scattered for me, and more like memories of watching a movie a very long time ago and not of myself.

We tried to write to name which were listed in the letter but no one answered so far. Some of us are also very afraid that waking up these other shards could lead to a disaster, because one of them was in a very difficult state (seems one of the known five saved us from her attempt to... die... but does not want to talk about it).

Now I start again to write, like this is totally normal, but it actually is freaking me out at the same time, because is so crazy. I am not sure if am just loosing my mind, if i have a total crazy dream or if this state of different personas or fragments of personas in my head is a valid state of consciousness and I just have to find a way to find peace with all of my parts and a way how to live together.

It would really help me to talk to other people with somehow similar experiences. There are so many questions in my head right now.

Kiran (this is the name I decided to used to distinguish myself from the 'others'. Muninn is just the digital "face" we now started to use together).

p.s. I am really not sure, if a already did post this on the forums, because of the amnesiac moments i experience at the time. But I know that I wanted to and I can not find the post here. If this is a double post and moderators did not find time to unlock an other post of my, I apologize.

Welcome to the forum. It can be very overwhelming when you start communicating with the others. We definitely felt that way.

I recommend looking for a good T one that has experience and training dealing with DID preferably. I'm currently on my 3rd T the first just had no clue what dissociation was and even less of an idea how to help us and the 2nd told us we dissociate to much for treatment. So it's really important that your T understands dissociation and how to help with it unfortunately not all T's do.

Other then that take things slowly. I can't remember who but someone on here compared progress and stability to a seesaw with one on each side. When one goes up the other goes down. And it's important to keep that in mind. Because with DID progress often makes you feel more crazy or overwhelmed as you start learning about all the things your system has kept hidden from you.

It's not uncommon to have amnesia for the trauma. We don't remember most of our childhood. We have a lot of knowledge about it that other parts have shared but very few actual memories. Don't try to force the memories it can be extremely distressing if you do. Trust your system to share what you can handle.

Muninn wrote:Now I start again to write, like this is totally normal, but it actually is freaking me out at the same time, because is so crazy. I am not sure if am just loosing my mind, if i have a total crazy dream or if this state of different personas or fragments of personas in my head is a valid state of consciousness and I just have to find a way to find peace with all of my parts and a way how to live together.

Welcome to the forum, Kiran!

There is a lot of great information here, and very supportive people.

What you described above it totally "normal" for DID. You're not losing your mind; in a way, you're finding it--finding pieces of it that you've been unaware of.

It's definitely a valid state of consciousness, and finding peace with all the parts and a way to live together is the goal of many of us on here. It's hard to accept it, but the more you can, the more progress you can make.

Like NyxX said, finding a good T who KNOWS how to treat DID is really important. Also, taking it slowly is really good advice.

Hey!

Thank you for your nice welcome and also your advice on finding a good T. The city where I live is sort of a desert when it comes to Ts and it takes a lot of patience to find even a mediocre one. But it is probably worth to wait until we find some one we can trust, especially because I didn't had good experience with Ts in my past.

I am horrible impatient at the moment and would like to solve everything in some days. So it is also a good advice to taking it slowly and accept, that I have to find a balance between progress and stability (and not to force memories at all costs). I think that one reason, that I feel so overwhelmed at the moment is my tendency to be as "efficient" as possible in "cleaning up my mind", and I probably makes it a lot worse instead of better. Some others are complaining about that in my journal too.

What you described above it totally "normal" for DID. You're not losing your mind; in a way, you're finding it--finding pieces of it that you've been unaware of.

Despite of what I said before, I quite like this description, because it does not focus on breaking apart, and also not about losing myself (that is sort of a strong fear inside of me) but on actually finding myself. It is a comforting thought

Kiran