How the first time you realize you are DID ?

hello everyone
i have a simple question but maybe complicated to answer :
How the first time you realize you are DID ?did you realize it yourself then go to doctor and diagnosed ,or you went to doc for something ales and they discover that accidentally ?
i am interested to know about THE EVENTS that lead to diagnostician of DID .
your answer can be as short as you want .
thanks alot

For us it was a long, long process. One or more of us suspected DID as far back as our teens. Then we suspected it a couple decades later but had a poor therapist and not enough evidence to confirm it for ourselves. Over additional years we looked into everything as the possible cause of periodic major depressions. We had a general awareness that something was wrong. Eight years ago we started looking into DID and read many books, especially biographies about DID. Clues started to fit and it became clear over a series of weekly therapy visits until shortly before joining this forum in 2011.

Many people start seeing a therapist and either the therapist, the client or both discover it in the course of therapy. We went to therapy because of depression but were looking into DID because nothing else had ever fit.

I realised about six months ago when I first read anything about DID. I've always had an awareness of two of my other parts we just had some rules about not communicating. When my crisis started I didn't really know what was happening that was a few years ago. I just knew my world was falling apart.

I would was on my 2nd T and had told them enough that if they were knowledgeable or experienced with DID they should have made the connection but neither of them had. The 2nd however did keep telling me I was dissociating to much and that I was to distressed for treatment.

So that led me to independent research because it had been years since my crisis began and I was getting worse, not better and the people I'd been turning to didn't seem to be able to help me.

I ended up on the first person plural site and reading about DID and I recognised a lot of myself and it made so many things not just about my crisis but my whole life make sense. So I did more reading and more reading and it was feeling so right but I couldn't quite accept it.

So I decided to ask Ozalces but I was to scared to ask straight out. I went through different types of dissociation and got to the section listed as identity alteration and said apparently I might not know if I have this so do you think it applies? He immediately answered yes and then he was able to describe them and even parts I wasn't aware of.

So I felt I couldn't really deny it then and asked inside my head if I was alone and then we started communicating. And then things started to improve and work together and learnt about what we want from a T. We now have a new one but we haven't discussed DID yet because we don't feel safe enough yet but we are hopeful that we might in the future.

Hi,

After a major trigger/trauma last year, I thought I was transgendered (this was a switch to a male part) and I started reliving my past. At first this felt like psychosis or something; didn't know how flashbacks or psychosis 'work' and didn't understand any of it. Went to the doctor in panic and while I was on a waitinglist for a T, started reading about childhood trauma when I started understanding that I was reliving my past (memories came 'together'; not just pictures or feelings (or even just smelling things), but everything together, so that made a way too clear picture of my past). I ofcourse also read about DID, but thought that this couldn't be the case because people never said to me that I acted like a totally different person or something like that, and I thought I didn't have amnesia (boy was I wrong).

Then one day I was doing some shopping and the cassier wished me a nice weekend. I panicked for a split second; thought it was just tuesday, and I noticed that I put that panic away just as fast, put up a smile and wished her the same. On the way home I suddenly got a LOT OF memories of resembling situations, never looking in mirrors because that scared the crap out of me, never keeping pictures or personal stuff because that was too confusing; started realizing that there was something going on, bigtime.

Then I wondered if the names I 'felt' (several) regarding the transgenedered thing, might not be just names that might be a good choice, but names I 'already had'. It was a complete shock to me that two of those 'names' already had profiles on certain websites and acted very differently, on those websites, like very different people, although I knew about these profiles; I thought it was all 'me'. This was the beginning of discovering 20+ parts and their memories, and the diagnosis followed soon after.

I do 'remember' a T, ten years ago, bringing up DID (not officially) and me even telling an ex about it, but after she quit her job that just disappeared again; wasn't ready.

We learned mostly through our trauma therapy but suspected prior to this during a stay in the local psych unit. Our psychiatrist doesn't believe in DID and our official diagnosis is of PTSD, BPD, and major depression

There is a statistic bouncing around that says it takes 7 years before the average person is finally properly diagnosed with DID.

Our alters didn't really make themselves known before trauma therapy. And honestly we still have periods of denial.

Mine was abrupt when some local area friends confronted me thinking I was playing some con game about some long-distance friends... who turned out to be me... through therapy and psych testing the doctors determined this was dissociative in nature since I had NO IDEA what was going on when the others, the long-distance friends, were around and chatting, etc.

I have also heard that it takes (average) 7 years in treatments and 4 false diagnosis before getting the right one, if you have DID or some other major dissociation disorder.

I have seen a psychiatric or psychologist (don't know which one) first time as a 6 year old. When I was 14 (I think) I started having more issues which were clearly visible to other people and as a teen I went to school psychologist for about 1-3 years. I don't remember if it was all the time, or was there breaks when I wasn't seeing her.

I was hospitalized first time when I was 18, turning 19 that year. In there psychiatrist made me all kind of tests, and back then the results were I was healthy and have IQ higher than average, but that I was having puberty symptoms, later than they should have come (physically I had very early puberty, but apparently not psychologically). In many ways I was a normally developing teen on my early teen years, I just lacked identity. Late teens I didn't develop normally, and certainly didn't develop to be an adult like others did. That psychiatrist in the hospital then told me two things. Other one is pretty weird thing to say to anyone ever, and even weirder to say to someone who you have just told being healthy without any major mental illnesses: he told me if I would for example commit a serious crime, he would proof that I may not be .. what is the word.. you know, not able to be responsible for it. He also told that at some point, in my future life, I should go to proper psychotherapy, the kind that takes many years, to fix my undeveloped identity. So in a way he pretty damn well got the point what I was having, but probably just didn't have a name for it at all. I was too young to understand what he meant then, and don't remember if he even said it that way.. that there will be a time when I realize what he was talking about when he said the thing about me lacking identity.

About 15 years later I understood what he meant, and I decided to start the therapy I remembered him suggesting me back then. I tried to make applications and sort out finances for it on public health care. But instead of getting that, psych. nurse in the psych. center (who was actually trained psychodynamic therapist too) get interested about my case and told me I probably wouldn't get financial support for psychotherapy because of my abuse of medication, and suggested me to stay with the psych. center, and start working with her. I did, for 3,5 years. Nothing happened, it was total waste of time.

I have been hospitalized several times, don't remember how many, but not more than ten. Sometimes I have had few appointments at the psych.center after been released from hospital, but have not visited there regularly. I don't find talking as a helpful thing in general at all, so there hasn't been any reason to go in there.

Now it's about ten years from that 3,5 year "therapy", and now I finally am in proper traumatherapy, doing what the psychiatrist told me to do back when I was 18. I think it was about 5 years ago when dissociation tests were done to me, and according to them I have OSDD. My nowadays psychiatrist, T and her consulting psychiatrist all think I have DID tho.

I have been diagnosed before with recurrent depression, personality disorder (not specified), borderline personality and OSDD. In my papers diagnosis I have at the moment are: mild depression, not specified anxiety disorder (bad translation, but you got the point), insomnia without physical cause (more bad translations..), DID, just not with the name DID but it's old name, straight translation would be "alter disorder (dissociative phenomenon)", borderline personality (notice: borderline symptoms, full diagnosis unsure, but on the list to describe the fragility of patients identity, and cutting and drug intoxications as an adolescent). ICD codes are F32.0, F41.9, F51, F44.81 and F60,31.

So for me it has been more than those average seven years..

If you want to know when I got to know what's wrong with me, it was about two years ago, due to peer support forums with people who "talk my language". I suspected it for many many years, but that's when I was sure it's dissociation I certainly have. In a way I knew about it before that too, ten years ago I was talking about my alters to an outsider the first time, but didn't think I have DID. About 5-6 years ago I was pretty sure and I was talking about dissociation when talking about my symptoms, not personality disorders, even when those were what I officially had then. And the latest time I have realized it for real is when people in charge of my case are talking about it and I saw DID written on a paper. So I have realized it many times. I'm not sure if have changed myself and that's why I needed to always realize it all over again, or is it just a long process you need to go thru also in your own mind. Maybe it has been different parts of me accepting the reality. Now almost all my parts do suffer from some kind of dissociation disorder as well, which is quite logical, because it's not just me having DID, it needs to be US ALL having DID, and being alters to each other.

For me, I grew up losing time, sometimes hearing people singing or saying something, having a warped view of reality.
Since my trauma began from such a young age, for me, I didn't know any different I thought it was something everything went through (yes they do but normally not as severe). The older I got the worse I got.
I decided to try meditation and eventually started doing it every night in order to help me to sleep (i used to have horrible nightmares, i now take nightmare pills, but i still meditate)
I did a 'spirit guide' meditation and met someone, a girl (who I now know is May) who was confused when I asked if she was a spirit guide.
Everytime I meditated she began to appear and eventually she spoke in my thoughts. She made it clear it was meant to be a secret. She said no one else could know, because 'they' (I didnt know who they was then) tried to hide themselves.
One night Summer appeared, and seemed quite mad, she called May reckless. Every night she began to observe us, and at times different people would come.
Eventually Summer told me everything. She said she and others were formed from my tramuas, and didnt want to hinder my life so they tried to block us off from each other (me and them) when they came out they pretended to be me, they tried to not make me alert of their prescence and so on.

But May was always curious of me, and accidentally started to break the wall.

We didn't know there was a term for it yet. When I went to my T I told them everything, and they started asking me questions and made me fill out all these different sheets.
T said that I/we might have DID, and after numerous conversations and questions and sheets formally diagnosed us.

First time we realized there's "people in my head" was in elementary school. Then several years later again when a male wanted to have sex change and women started resisting the idea. Then again when one of the women took off from our husband. Of course I always go back to denying it and trying our best to make it non existent until again something happens that makes it hard to deny. I wish I'd never become aware of it.

I'd been mentally ill with kaleidoscopic symptoms all of my life. Especially after college I broke down and could not build a career, but I can keep a labor job. The various counselors and doctors I went to were not much help. I studied so much psychology and religion trying to find out what was wrong with me. The DSM was little help either. The sections on dissociation didn't really convey what I was experiencing so I overlooked them. There was even a section about possession trance, and I have experienced the feeling of being possessed by a supernatural spirit, but it didn't seem related to the other symptoms.

And then a few years ago I was in another dysfunctional relationship. I loved this man so much and he drove me crazy. I was looking for answers on the internet again and found a small but important piece of information: Absent-mindedness is memory loss. Not remembering much of your childhood is memory loss.

I realized I have a dissociative disorder, and we called ourselves Front and Shield (aka Sentinel). Others made themselves known too but they had been there all along. Shield introduced herself to the jerk boyfriend. I'm sure that interaction was unsettling to him and was a factor when he ended the relationship. I still haven't found a therapist and kind of gave up since I don't think there are any specialists who take Medicaid (government health plan for low-income people).