Tips for Learning a New Job?

Backstory: My good friend's system and the large system of my adopted-in-my-heart kids, separated by an amnesia wall for 20+ years, all share one adult body. This realization was only made in September.

After a few months of unemployment due to psychiatric hospitalizations etc, my friend and my kids have accepted a new job! My friend is happy and excited. The kids are excited but nervous.

We have learned it is important for the young adults / older kids in the body to learn the job alongside my friend so they can fill in on days that my friend is struggling and stays inside. Hopefully we can prevent the issues they had at the end of their last job when the amnesia wall separating my kids from my friend's system first began to crack and my kids were stuck out without a clue how to do the job.

Communication between the bisected systems is in its infancy. When my friend is out, my kids have to work hard to be aware and it's exhausting for them. I suggested they all carry a notebook during training and try to make lots of notes of what they are learning.

How have your systems learned a new job? Any tips? What do you do if someone comes out at work who doesn't know how to do the job? Thanks!

Hi there,

My hubby with did works as a specialist in his field and he works hard to be high functioning. Does your friend's boss knows? I ask because for us, we fear being stigmatized so we keep his did to ourselves.
It is anxiety provoking for us but we keep it to a minimum through various ways. Doug and Theo are the parts out for work. If one part is out and gets into a meeting, he would pass this info to the other part and keep each other informed. Note taking as you mention is important and to do lists to make things easier for the other part. I told him he has to learn to be more aware externally and not be communicating with other parts internally, so that you take in information from outside and communication with parts is best done through to do lists and work diaries. This was what we discuss after he got feedback from his manager about being spacey at work. I knew he was spacey because he wasn't concentrating on what's outside, but talking internally with Doug. So we came up with the work diary to keep track of tasks. So that if Theo is out later part of the day, Doug don't have to be co conscious to tell him what to do, Doug can go and have a break inside and Theo can just read off the diary.
I heard systems can lost skills if the part fronting for work goes away but we didn't deal with this and hopefully it never happen. It only happen once temporarily when he had a episode of amnesia, he forgot personal details including who I was and who he was and what he do, the night before work. It was very scary but I managed to bring him home and he went to bed. That 'reset' his system and he came back and remember everything when he woke up. But I don't know if this works for everyone, I know it works for us as his switches normally happen when he goes to sleep. Good luck, as a friend and close family, it affects you very profoundly if you choose to be a support person, but it pays off.

We agree with taking lots of notes & making lots of lists!

We kinda have a rule, like get everything in writing! We want customers to email so we have what they want in writing, cos spoken words are too easy to forget. If someone insists on doing stuff by voice then we hafta take notes ourself & hope we don't forget or lose the notes lol.

Theres stuff we do for work thats like a regular routine thing, but any time someone new is fronting and has to do it the 1st time, someone else should be coconsious to walk them thru it. If thats not possible in your friends system then absolutely notes notes & more notes!

We also hafta be consistent about where the notebook is. Our todo list never leaves its spot on our desk. If we lose it we're ####ed lol. We hafta be very consistent with routines & stuff. Even then its so easy to forget stuff, cos of amnesia, dissociation, switching, whatever.

The way you describe your friend with like two very separate systems its possible there's gonna be trouble getting the work skills transfered, so again more notes, and if possible, someone from both systems should be awake & listening for the training & stuff.

In our system we lost some 'important job skills' when previous host went away. Stuff that's simply gone / inaccessable. (basically previous host was a computer genius / programmer / etc and that's all gone now.) We've been able to fake our way through stuff, mostly, but theres a few times we hafta just straight up say we can't do that anymore. Luckily noones pressed us for like, why not etc.

We also try to mask or whatever the word is, with customers. Cos like, we do everything by email or most everything, so we hafta be more careful how we write & make sure we put the right name at hte bottom lol. Its harder for some (like me lol), to sound 'businessy' or whatever lol. I hafta be extra careful with like spelling & tone & stuff to sound 'professional'.

So its been like 2 years now since our DID crisis/awareness stuff started & we haven't blown it with work yet, but we also know its gonna happen sooner or later. Like its bound to. One day someone will forget & use the wrong name or say the wrong thing. We've had a few super close calls lol. Maybe thats not a problem for every system, but cos we don't have like the 1 or 2 'dedicated work alters' its just whoevers fronting, so we just kinda accept sooner or later it'll get out.

Viola

I took a relatively simpler job to avoid stress. I find learning is ok. I randomly know codes i don't need to know from work now, my brain takes in alot of stuff. Trying to throw out unnecessary info is what I'm doing. And when self employed I just remembered stuff - when and where I was supposed to be. I tend to remember things as I need to.

Everyone is different with how their brain works and I can "fake it till I make it" so a simple job where I can soon start doing some self employed stuff again and focus on writing my books (fiction, not DID related) is what I opted for.

But I'm only focusing on the simple job for now. If I put the other things into action too soon I'll get too stressed.

So my main advice would be put as little pressure on self as possible. Notes if helpful are good but also give self a break and let it go into the mind in its own time. Nobody knows everything of how any job works immediately. I'm settling into this simpler new job and that's took 2 months. Usually this type of job would bore me to death but I'm enjoying it. Very little pressure, mentally relatively simply and I'm enjoying the environment of it generally, the people. Just slowly absorbing myself until it is second nature. I'm liking it so much I'm considering doing it full time in the future because it's giving me such minimal stress.

Hi !

Basically with lists. A lot of them. Or by asking the other members of the team.

I sometimes work in a private health care clinic, into the cleaning or kitchen staff, I know the routine, but as we're there only during the summer holidays and sometime through the year, they don't care if we forget some things we're supposed to do, we can just ask. Kind of cool when another one is taking the lead and isn't sure about what to do.

We made a lot of mistakes (and we still do, because cleaning/kitchen work isn't quite stable, they tend to change the organization a lot, so we can't make lists) but it allowed us to learn what our difficulties are, and this was really helpful when they asked me to take care of the laundry for two weeks.

They gave me only two days with the woman who do the job usually to learn it and I would have nobody to ask my questions after that. So knowing what our issues are, I took a tone of notes, asked a loooot of questions about her organization for each day, then put everything clean and organized on my computer and printed it to keep it in my pocket. We also made and kept lists about uniforms we were supposed to prepare, etc (it saved our life a few times, because nurses have the tendencies to steal each other's uniform, and guess who's blamed after that ?...).
And I may have stolen some post-its from the kitchen to put them everywhere inside the laundry room to remember what chamber the clothes were from, whom uniform it was (because they don't have their owner's name on it, but numbers) etc.

People laughed when they saw what we did into the laundry room (literally post-its everywhere), but I didn't care, I did what I had to do to knowing what our difficulties are. We forgot almost nothing during those two weeks even if I wasn't the only one fronting from time to time, and the woman who asked us to do the job was impressed by our organization. Apparently, people tend to mess a lot when they start this job because they underestimate the difficulties.
If she only knew... this isn't far from what I do at home to not forgot everything we've planed to do through the day...

But people usually do a lot of mistakes during the first few weeks of their new job, it's normal. And being DID bring its own difficulties, so they don't have to always try to do as good as "normal" people. They have DID. They will be able to do their best only if they accept the fact they work differently than the others and are ready to learn from the mistakes they will make. Because they will make mistakes, and it will not be their fault. They are learning how to work together, it's not something easy to do. They are brave to try again !

I hope everything will be okay for them =)

Dwelt, the Post-It maven.

We hate making lists, but we've realized that we have to. At this point in our healing process, our head is too chaotic to function without lists at work, no matter how well we could do under other circumstances.

We've been at the same NYC corporate job for over 30 years, so we must be doing something right. *shrug*

MDs

Hello everyone and thanks for your awesome responses.

My friends and "my kids" have been on the new job for a couple weeks now. They're still in training. What's working well is my adult friend "A" and a young adult from my kids' side "Z" have been co-conscious, learning the job side by side. "A" and "Z" can't really communicate with each other so I picture it like they're both looking out but with a wall between them ha ha.

A 15 year old "M" listens in when he finds something interesting but I've encouraged him not to feel any pressure to learn the job or do the work. Not until he's older. "M" had to be the sexual protector for most of the body's childhood and he deserves to just enjoy being a teenager without adult responsibilities.

8 year old "G" is really struggling. He gets SO BORED being at work. I have received many text messages saying "I'm bored. I don't want to be here. Will you come get us?" He is frequently getting locked in his room inside because he pesters and whines to the people trying to learn the job. I don't know how to help him. What do your often-fronting littles do when the body is at work??

Thanks again everyone

Even though I didn't know about my system until much later, I ended up going into a profession where there are kids and toys around. We just gravitated toward places the littles felt more comfortable, because we didn't feel like we belonged anywhere there weren't kids.

And when I first found out about my system a couple of years ago, I would let the littles play with some of my office toys at the end of the day, before I went home. Just so they would feel more valued and important. They don't really need to do that anymore, because I've been better about letting them play at home.

But something that helps a lot when we have to be somewhere that's really an environment for grownups is to make sure to plan something for the littles for when we get home. So, if there are things that G likes to do, he needs to feel like he'll be allowed to do one of those things when they get home. And maybe a special outing or activity on the weekend if he's been patient during workdays that week. Also something as simple as having a cartoon on while they get ready in the morning, or listening to a kids' audiobook in the car on the way to work--those kinds of things help us a lot.