This is my first post. Please be patient with me.

I have read through the rules extensively, even going back to re-read them just to be sure that I am not in violation of them. I'm also looking over the privacy policies and such on this site and will not be mentioning any names, locations or other identifying information. Particularly because this post is not about me, but it's about someone that I love tremendously. She has never been treated or diagnosed with DID, namely because she has very strong reasons why she fights so hard to maintain this veneer of normalcy that she presents to those around her.

This woman is my best friend and the love of my life and before I continue at all, I do not seek to change her, to 'fix' her, to do anything at all to interrupt or interfere with her system.

About three or four months into a very intimate and nurturing relationship with her, she made one of the boldest steps of her life to open up to me about her system, about her alters, even drawing me a whole map complete with names, ages, likes-dislikes and mini-histories behind each one.

After that day, I took it on myself to get as many books on DID that I could find, from clinical perspectives, from autobiographical accounts, etc. I have always encouraged her and supported her whole heartedly and never been disparaging to her in any form or fashion.

I finally found this forum today and it looks like just the resource and compassionate community of individuals that her and I both need and my only goal right now is to test the waters here and gather resources so that she might have a larger safety support net of others who are similar to her so that she doesn't feel so alone in this.

She is a multifaceted prism and by far the most impressive, brilliant and strongest woman I've ever known. It has been an absolute blessing, beyond anything I ever thought imaginable, to be able to be invited into this life of hers, to learn and grow together with her, to bond and get to know each of these alters of hers.

As we started growing closer in this regard, we found that giving each one of her alters a fair amount of time, to present a safe space for them to interact and express themselves and to acknowledge and truly listen to each one's concerns and cares has done absolute wonders for her and been extremely beautiful to witness from my end of things.

She has never in her life had anyone at all that she has shared these parts of her with. She hides it vigilantly and to the point of mental and emotional exhaustion doing so. As those of you who have DID probably can affirm, when she has to hide these parts, I've learned from what she's expressed to me, it tends to have very negative ramifications, such as other alters coming out in uncontrollable ways, lost time and being in such a dissociated state that she becomes dazed in a very vulnerable autopilot kind of mode.

What concerns me the most about this is that outside of her connection to me, she has next to no support whatsoever from friends or family. Without going into detail lets just say that the 'family' she has, are no help and have only served to create more pain and complications and traumas in her life and in no way would be compassionate or seek to help or understand her or provide any guidance or support in any capacity. Like me, she also does not have very many friends at all in the offline world and as far as she's concerned she does not feel safe at this time telling anyone else, any new acquaintance at all, about her system and what that means. She is also quite terrified about seeking any sort of professional help or guidance or counseling because of the stigma she fears it will place on her.

The fact that she trusts me with such a remarkable treasure that is her soul and her heart, that places a huge amount of responsibility on me that I take on willingly and joyfully. She also is not weak by any stretch of the imagination, nor is she 'sick' or 'ill' as many who don't understand DID might try to claim. She is a brave, warrior-survivor. She is resilient. And I am in awe especially of those protectors within her system that have ensured her safety and helped her create stability in her life throughout all the years when she was still yet alone in this journey.

I find that it places me in a very unique position and one that, at times, I don't quite know how to handle in an appropriate way. This is a huge learning experience for me but also because of how much I care and how emotionally invested I am to all of her, the only thing that I fear is not being more educated on the best methods or best approach in our interactions. I do not want her to be so utterly dependent on me and at this point in time, she is. I long for her to have other friends, maybe she will find some on this forum one day, that can help her see that she isn't alone in this and maybe they would have some guidance and suggestions and things they've learned along their own respective journeys. I just want to do right by her and to make sure that as we move forward and as our relationship grows deeper (going on almost a year and a half now) that I continue to encourage, support and assist her in any and every way that I possibly can.

One final thing, because she is not diagnosed, nor has she really even considered much about what DID is or that this is something other people have and experience, she is incredibly fearful and reluctant to even consider this from a professional/clinical standpoint and is in no way prepared to make the move towards seeking therapy or treatment. I fear that even approaching her in that way would cause her to retreat or run away.

The closest she's come to telling anyone else has been a contact we both had at one point who claimed to be a metaphysician and in a 'reading' he gave he somehow intuitively sensed that her soul was fragmented into many different parts. She didn't confirm or deny this to that person but her and I talked about it later and this person had alluded to her that in order for her to find wholeness she had to work to merge those parts back together to unify them in order to find healing. I told her that is a bunch of malarky and she agrees. That's a bunch of 'snake oil salesman' type jargon that has no place here on a psychiatry forum anyway.

Still, each one of her alters are their own unique individuals, with their own identities, histories, preferences, hopes and dreams. Each one is a gift and a treasure and we both would be broken hearted if anyone dared to suggest that 'healing is only possible' by doing away with any of these alters and merging them back into one singularity.

However, I want to research more on what exactly the options are for building a support system and treatments, therapies or techniques to help with switching, etc so that her life can be more full and worry-free. The other detail I want to mention is that she is also a mother, and a fantastic, loving and exemplary mother at that. But now as her child is getting older, we are both realizing that there does need to be some extra measures taken to manage all of this in a compassionate and responsible manner.

I may have more questions and if for whatever reason this post is in violation of any rules please let me know and I will fix it promptly. Otherwise, thank you for having a place like this and I hope to learn as much as I can while I am here. I hope you all understand why I didn't put this in the 'family, friends' forum or 'relationship forum' namely because I felt those are for all sorts of general psychiatric disorders and such and I wanted to learn as much about DID from those who have it and any advice or questions you have for me, please feel free to ask.

Thank you so much.

Hey cmmrq, Welcome to the forum!

Theres alot of smart helpful people on here, and thres a few SOs who post here too sometimes.

It sounds like you're on the right track I think, with how you're looking to help your friend.

She'd be welcome here too if she wanted.

Viola

Hi cmmrq,

What a beautiful tribute to your SO and to your relationship. She is very lucky to have you. The current recommended treatment for DID is the three phase approach:

https://www.isst-d.org/wp-content/uploa ... ED2011.pdf

And final "fusion" is not a necessary (or desired) outcome for many people. The goal is to decrease the dissociative barriers between alters, so that they can communicate and cooperate. When I started seeing my therapist 2 3/4 years ago, I wasn't even really aware of the others, but one of our questions for him was, "So no one has to go away??" And he reassured us about that.

A good DID-experienced therapist will welcome all the alters, as you do, and get to know and appreciate them all. And a skilled therapist can recognize and navigate the tricky interactions and help repair the relational trauma in a deep and lasting way.

They can do this because it's a unique relationship where they don't expect or need the client to meet any of their needs, or to take care of their feelings. And it's outside the stream of her regular life, which means feelings can get dealt with and new approaches can be tried without the risks and ramifications they would have in her everyday relationships.

There's a lot you can do to create safety and healing for her, as it sounds like you're doing, but you're right to feel like the fact that she's utterly dependent on only you isn't healthy for the long term.

Amythyst wrote:Hey cmmrq, Welcome to the forum!

Theres alot of smart helpful people on here, and thres a few SOs who post here too sometimes.

It sounds like you're on the right track I think, with how you're looking to help your friend.

She'd be welcome here too if she wanted.

Viola

Thank you,

I really do hope that one day in the near future I could get her to come on here. I want very badly for her to develop a compassionate, understanding support system of friends who share the same struggles that she does. Hopefully soon!

TheGangsAllHere wrote:Hi cmmrq,

What a beautiful tribute to your SO and to your relationship. She is very lucky to have you. The current recommended treatment for DID is the three phase approach:

https://www.isst-d.org/wp-content/uploa ... ED2011.pdf

And final "fusion" is not a necessary (or desired) outcome for many people. The goal is to decrease the dissociative barriers between alters, so that they can communicate and cooperate. When I started seeing my therapist 2 3/4 years ago, I wasn't even really aware of the others, but one of our questions for him was, "So no one has to go away??" And he reassured us about that.

A good DID-experienced therapist will welcome all the alters, as you do, and get to know and appreciate them all. And a skilled therapist can recognize and navigate the tricky interactions and help repair the relational trauma in a deep and lasting way.

They can do this because it's a unique relationship where they don't expect or need the client to meet any of their needs, or to take care of their feelings. And it's outside the stream of her regular life, which means feelings can get dealt with and new approaches can be tried without the risks and ramifications they would have in her everyday relationships.

There's a lot you can do to create safety and healing for her, as it sounds like you're doing, but you're right to feel like the fact that she's utterly dependent on only you isn't healthy for the long term.

Hi,

Thank you so much for sharing that publication with me! There's a lot of really great information there. I really appreciate it. The way you explained the benefits of therapy really makes a lot of sense and it's something that I would be very excited for her to get to experience one day soon I hope. I know I sound like a broken record but she really is truly remarkable and each one of her alters are a treasure in themselves. You also described something that I couldn't put into words, the decreasing the dissociative barriers between the parts so they can communicate and cooperate. That has been something that I have had the honor and joy of getting to help her with and it's improved her life in ways that she never thought possible. I read in the publication you sent about it being countertherapeutic to 'play favorites' so I've been very careful to make sure that each part understands how loved and how valued they are, without making one feel more favored or wanted around. I would love to talk to other SO's though to get advice. I guess the tricky part for me is that since I'm not a therapist and this is someone I am intimately and romantically involved with and who I am building a future and family with, I don't ever want any part of her feeling left out or unappreciated or unloved but I also don't want there to be an impression of me playing favorites either. This is entirely new ground for me but it has been such a beautiful journey and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the whole world. Thanks again!

Happy to have you here, cmmrq! We hope you find the help and compassion you and your SO need, both on here and outside this. It's great you care so much, we're glad to have you. <3

-- Thu Mar 19, 2020 9:42 pm --

Happy to have you here, cmmrq! We hope you find the help and compassion you and your SO need, both on here and outside this. It's great you care so much, we're glad to have you. <3

Hi,

Welcome to the forum. I think it's neat that you love your friend so much.

Iain

Hi, this is a very lovely and moving piece of writing about your SO or friend.

However the thing that struck me, which probably comes from my own current relationship issues, is that you believe she is reliant on you due to her expression about parts.

DID in my personal experience primarily develops because an individual has to rely on themselves. From being neglected and left crying in a cot to having no safe care giver in their life for the whole of their childhood, to abused by main carers and the wider community. So your fear of reliance I fear is completely unfounded and misread.

If you disappeared her system would shift. Yes it would be a loss to deal with. Yes she may miss having someone to open up to but that's not reliance. Her system would shift and it could be as extreme as if you were never around. That's the reality of DID. It's born out of survival in horrendous environment. So to loose a confident when you have experienced such isolating horrendous abuse that your brain creates facets to block and carry on living normally is a small insignificant thing.

Not to say she doesn't care about you or she doesn't benefit from compassionate understanding or that alters don't enjoy being able to be themselves with you but to put reality to this.

Other than that lovely to hear that some people have compassion and understanding and an open heart to be able to appreciate all the people in a system rather than want what they want out of the person and to squash the rest which is some peoples with DID experience when opening up to others, including mine. My ex apparently used to scream "you're just a ###$ up alter" at some parts and scream "go back to the dark depths where you came from" even though it was a part who was often out. Whenever he met a different alter he'd verbally abuse them.

Anyway I survived all that and it hasn't put me off being honest with somebody else because I have DID probably is probably why I feel unaffected by it. So now someone who was supposed to care abused knowing about alters and I'm still standing I no longer have that fear of being open. Just because someone knows you have DID, will try to exploit time loss and specifically abuses weaker parts the DID system still works, protects it's self and parts. I put that down to being an adult. The system was created when being a child, children are incredibly vulnerable and have much less knowledge of the world. A grown person with DID is still grown and parts have all kinds of knowledge by adulthood. So tell your SO / best friend that, regardless of how people respond to her she will survive. People are open about their DID, get abused by the person trying to use the DID against them and still survive.

Your SO /friend is very lucky to have you but it doesn't mean they are reliant or that opening up about DID needs to be this safe environment for the person with DID to survive. I'm saying survive not thrive or nurture. You're offering nurture which is very valuable and promotes thriving, that's fantastic. But fear of people knowing isn't so much about survival, it's about shame. Deep deep shame.

Much Luck,

Lilly

Sarandipity wrote:Hi, this is a very lovely and moving piece of writing about your SO or friend.

However the thing that struck me, which probably comes from my own current relationship issues, is that you believe she is reliant on you due to her expression about parts.

DID in my personal experience primarily develops because an individual has to rely on themselves. From being neglected and left crying in a cot to having no safe care giver in their life for the whole of their childhood, to abused by main carers and the wider community. So your fear of reliance I fear is completely unfounded and misread.

If you disappeared her system would shift. Yes it would be a loss to deal with. Yes she may miss having someone to open up to but that's not reliance. Her system would shift and it could be as extreme as if you were never around. That's the reality of DID. It's born out of survival in horrendous environment. So to loose a confident when you have experienced such isolating horrendous abuse that your brain creates facets to block and carry on living normally is a small insignificant thing.

Not to say she doesn't care about you or she doesn't benefit from compassionate understanding or that alters don't enjoy being able to be themselves with you but to put reality to this.

Other than that lovely to hear that some people have compassion and understanding and an open heart to be able to appreciate all the people in a system rather than want what they want out of the person and to squash the rest which is some peoples with DID experience when opening up to others, including mine. My ex apparently used to scream "you're just a ###$ up alter" at some parts and scream "go back to the dark depths where you came from" even though it was a part who was often out. Whenever he met a different alter he'd verbally abuse them.

Anyway I survived all that and it hasn't put me off being honest with somebody else because I have DID probably is probably why I feel unaffected by it. So now someone who was supposed to care abused knowing about alters and I'm still standing I no longer have that fear of being open. Just because someone knows you have DID, will try to exploit time loss and specifically abuses weaker parts the DID system still works, protects it's self and parts. I put that down to being an adult. The system was created when being a child, children are incredibly vulnerable and have much less knowledge of the world. A grown person with DID is still grown and parts have all kinds of knowledge by adulthood. So tell your SO / best friend that, regardless of how people respond to her she will survive. People are open about their DID, get abused by the person trying to use the DID against them and still survive.

Your SO /friend is very lucky to have you but it doesn't mean they are reliant or that opening up about DID needs to be this safe environment for the person with DID to survive. I'm saying survive not thrive or nurture. You're offering nurture which is very valuable and promotes thriving, that's fantastic. But fear of people knowing isn't so much about survival, it's about shame. Deep deep shame.

Much Luck,

Lilly

I'm not saying that I believe she (or other parts) are reliant on me. I'm just explaining what she, herself, has told me and how she feels. Those are her words, not my own.

I know the gist of what Lilly wrote and I know how I have overall reacted as people go out of my life.

Your partner may feel like that but more likely the reality is that she'll shift, her system will shift if you're not there. I could be wrong, it depends on her and her system.

For me when I'm upset or had a loss I'll be very sad but because my system also works on "upset, stress" is not good for the body so if that goes on long term then those alters that are sad get "shipped" out. And others come which could be temporary or permanent.

When I had an adult trauma Karen died. They let her go to councilling, got her old bf back but nothing was really helping so she died and was kept like snow-white for 3 years. She did disclose all about alters and the system and how although she'd had this immediate trauma she realised this person had caused trauma to her before and it'd been blocked, to this counsellor who then had a nervous breakdown, that's when she died. She reached out (to the wrong person but back then we didn't realize there was any kind of specific help when you have parts), the person had a nervous breakdown so she took it that we're beyond help and died. She was in alot of trouble in her inner world for that, for going snow-white. When she came back I was having dreams (Karen is a witch, lives internally in a witch world where witches come to this world to help. In that worlds view of things all the witches go to different outside people in this world to help them). She was our witch. They can't just send another one and to abandon us for three years was a crime in Karen's world. The system was just pleased to see her back. But I had dreams of being in her world and she was being hunted to be brought to trial. I was with her while she was hunted and eventually myself and Beth (who is a less powerful hedge witch, a healer) convinced her go to the trial. At her trial, which I saw all in a dream, alot of my alters spoke for her. The court cautioned her that they will not punish her for this time but if she does it again they will remove her and I don't know what happens to her. With a recent upset of flashbacks Karen regressed, went internal and counselled herself and now she seems ok so that stops her having internal world problems.

With this pandemic I'm finding different alters are starting to be around. Outside I look the same, am rational that fits with society, doing normal things but inside I'm completely different.

So with your partner and her system its impossible to know the depths of that system and also it may feel like she's reliant on you but take you away and the system will possibly shift to compensate. Before Karen died it felt like I wouldn't get over that adult trauma. She died and I resumed life like nothing happened. People would say "oh you're so amazing" blah blah and I'd think "what" and then "what happened to Karen, just ignore them" and I did and life went on.

DID is a survival disorder. It's created out of a need to survive in some kind of healthy way when you're being raised in unimaginably terrible circumstances. I still don't believe what happened to me, I know it happened, I don't think parts are lying but I don't believe it. There's a difference between "knowing" and "believing" So because it's caused by horrendous start in life it often copes with adult stuff like a stroll in the park.

She is luckily to have you though. I haven't read it but I got the gist that you're supportive and appreciate her alters. Much love and light to you both. Host + it seems like Karen was hanging about, I don't say love and light, I say no parting phrase or luck because that seems universally ok.