Intro

Hello

I have decided to join this forum.
We are a system of 10+ alters. We live in the UK with our partner and two wonderful kitties.

I have never interacted online with others like me us before. The body is 29 years old and recently with help of therapist come to accept / realise I am a multiple. Currently we are seeking specialist treatment and formal diagnosis.

For a long time I knew I had some kind of dissociative disorder as we suffer from frequent derealisation/ depersonalisation and have 'episodes', I also knew about one of my littles for a long time but misunderstood the 2 or more alters diagnostic criteria because I didn't realise that I (the host) would also be considered an alter. Of course I now realise there are others as well.

We also have bpd and some of us have other disorders
(MD, OCD, anorexia, BDD, SAD)
I'm hoping to meet get some support and info from this forum in our journey of self discovery and recovery.

Good vibes

~ M (host)

Welcome to the forums! You will find a lot of informations about DID and DID therapy in the ressources thread that I linked in my signature.

My first recommendations would be "Coping with trauma related dissociation" and "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors" but, you do you. Some people prefer to start with "The haunted self" (very theory and research oriented) or to tackle different aspects of trauma theory and therapy.

Congratulations on reaching out! You are badass for doing that! Yoohoo! \o/


[animated gif of the cat Pusheen throwing hearts, dancing and saying "welcome"]

Thank you for your reply and information.

I am tying to get the host to accept us but she will not. She is still quite in denial. I have much more info than her about the system, and spoke to many people online before diagnosis. She will not listen to me tho and only really recognises one little as legitimate.
She also thinks she's main and original person she may be the main but not even the original. She takes credit for things I do and doesn't even realise what I do for her. I tried to protect her so much and she hates me and pretends I don't exist. How can I make her believe that I'm real? I don't even want to be out more that's not my job, I just want her to call me by my name but she won't say any of our names. I know she knows my name because I wrote it in the diary, but the page was torn out.

~ K

Well, K, this can't be deleted or removed, so that may help.

Hello and welcome to the forums. I'm Lilith. I'm part of a system of 24. I do understand some of the pain involved with not being seen. Prior to last year, our main protector Beth and our gatekeeper made sure that we weren't seen so that the then hosts could function.

The only advice I can give is to keep trying to get her to realize there's more of you. She might be afraid. Our current host Vi was terrified of how many there are of us, but she eventually grew comfortable with it.

Good luck!
Lilith.

Thank you Lilith for the response.

Yes perhaps so. I have calmed down a bit.
It's just a conflict. It's hard to know that you are not wanted and have to pretend to be someone else all the time.

~K

In a lot of systems, the host is in denial for many reasons.

First, accepting they have DID means, accepting that they went through heavy trauma and this is just not something they can manage - hence why the system developped in the first place.

Second, there is a lot of stigma around DID and a lot of misinformation too. Pop culture shows DID as something akin to being possessed by evil spirits while in reality, it is more like "being a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces hidden under the rug". You need all the pieces to make a full puzzle. All the pieces are important. All the pieces are precious. Also pop culture, especially in my country, shows DID as being impossible to cure or heal or do anything about to ease the symptoms. Which can make it super scary to realize you have DID. But, nothing is ever so broken that it cannot be fixed. Meaning: there is always a way to fix it, to ease the symptoms, to make things better. ALWAYS.

You hear me, host? THINGS. CAN. AND. WILL. GET. BETTER. It is inevitable. You are doomed to get better. It will be a bumpy road, but you will get better. Baby steps, things will get better.

Third, seeing that they do not "have the full control" can be scary! Especially when they are very very dissociated from the rest of the system. Thing is, in order to "regain control" one needs to communicate with the rest of the system. It helps to get organized all of the alters together, decide over long-term decisions, help each-other, comfort each-other. I remember when I was still very dissociated/fragmented, the first time the host part felt the comfort and support of the other parts, it was... MAGIC. This moment I knew I wanted to keep healing in order to keep feeling this warmth and love. This moment I knew that all of the trouble and conflicts and efforts were worth it.

It is super difficult to fully and deeply understand that "the whole system is me, including the parts I do not remember, including the alters feeling completely alien from me".

It can take time but you will get there. I promise.

Hi I'm Peter I'm 7 and I live wif 6 other peoples in a ladyskin.

I only comes here when it is safe for me to be front. The bigs got work and grown up stuff to do so mostly I stay inside.

Maybe you could let your little come play in the littles thread we like to tell jokes an play word games. The littles thread is for littles only. Littles have got their own bad stuff thread too what is for talking about bad fealins no bigs allowed you got to be 13 or unders.

Also there is a teans thread somewhere here but it not pinned not like little thread so it may be on page 2 or 3.

Ok I got to go now

Bye

M-

This is Vi. I'll back Lilith up. Over the years we kept notes, but they were destroyed by Beth and Queen. I've found some of them (usually lists of names) and when I went back to research DID after another episode of 'I'm pretty sure I have this' I would find the various links on our old computer already clicked, but have no memory of doing the research.

I was convinced there were only a handful of us. I wouldn't say I was afraid there were more, but I didn't think there were.

I'll also back up Arbremonde. Healing is possible, both individually and collectively. It's terrifying confronting the horrors of the past. Healing can take many forms, but together you are strong enough to manage it. You will get through this. It is a long process, but you will get there.

Take care and be well,
Vi

Thank you so much to everyone who gave such lovely advice.

I'm really touched. It means a lot to me.

First I have no memory of writing that second message form k. The first one we argued about.

But since she's responding to me on here. First, I do not like to use the names because they don't mean anything to me. I'm worried that if I start seeing my 'parts' as separate they'll become more separate. Also, isn't it possible that 'k' just came up with those names to try and feel more in control.

I'm annoyed because I decided that I wasn't going to look into DID online because it would be more confusing, and the representations I don't relate to. So I'm a bit annoyed to find I've been doing it and forgetting/ blacking out.

I know I have a dissociative disorder (depersonalisation/ derealisation) and I know I age regress, it took me a long time to accept my little side but I have now. I dropped out of therapy when therapist suggested I might have DID because I'd heard about some therapists who convince ppl they have it and I was scared of that. Also because he was asking me questions I didn't know the answer to. I don't remember my childhood, and maybe I don't want to.

I pretty much forgot about all this until something happened recently that scared me. I would appreciate any one's insight or opinions into this specifically. I'm not asking for diagnosis I just want to share what's on my mind. Also if it's not aloud to talk about these things let me know but I've added trigger warning so hope that's ok.

Trigger warning - religion

I was spending time with my brother who is Buddhist, and went into this mode of believing everything about buddhism and some other occult stuff and understanding everything about my life through that lense. Then I woke up on the 3rd day surrounded by all these books and prayer beads and stuff and I just thought wtf am I doing! And felt really angry at myself because I'm an atheist. But I did not have amnesia, I remember that it happened although I can't quite work out how. It wasn't just like a phase or trying to fit in, it was more than that I felt like a totally different person.

Then a week before that I was in another city with a friend and another odd thing happened.

Trigger warning - s*xual abuse and r*pe

We were in this bar and talking about some heavy stuff. I can't remember how it came up but he told me he was raped a few years ago and then I told him I was raped when I was 7. Which is true, and I knew about it but I added some details that I didn't know about until I said them. Then we went outside and as the cold air hit me I had a full dissociative episode and kept asking him over and over if I was real. He's a great friend and took me back home and looked after me.

But both these things have really shook me up, and made me think I should not ignore my symptoms. But despite how everyone says I really really don't want to face that that I could have DID. I have been diagnosed with BPD and whenever I mention dissociation to therapists before or identify issues they just say that's part of bpd. But it's not even the diagnosis itself, I wonder if I've managed to ignore something this long maybe I shouldn't just keep on doing that. If something was so traumatic that my mind went to these lengths to keep it from me then maybe I should not ever know them.

Dalgidanchew wrote:Thank you so much to everyone who gave such lovely advice.

I'm really touched. It means a lot to me.

You're welcome. And I'll state this upfront, I'm Vi (short for Violette), and I'm the current host of our system.

Dalgidanchew wrote:First I have no memory of writing that second message form k. The first one we argued about.

But since she's responding to me on here. First, I do not like to use the names because they don't mean anything to me. I'm worried that if I start seeing my 'parts' as separate they'll become more separate. Also, isn't it possible that 'k' just came up with those names to try and feel more in control.

I used to feel the same way about my various 'parts' as well; unfortunately, I've learned over the past year that whether or not I was worried about them being more separate if I acknowledged them, they are separate. As for the names...I don't know why some of the names were chosen. Some of those names date back decades, I've found. You might want to ask 'k' about why those particular names and work with 'k'. I know it's scary. I really do.

Dalgidanchew wrote:I'm annoyed because I decided that I wasn't going to look into DID online because it would be more confusing, and the representations I don't relate to. So I'm a bit annoyed to find I've been doing it and forgetting/ blacking out.

I've started to piece together that the first time my system started researching DID we were physically about 22. We'd research and then forget. Research and then usually Beth would destroy the notes. As time went along, we'd research online and then forget again. It wasn't until we were we were in our late 40's (last year in fact) that we were confronted by a friend and told this was happening. By that point, we were in a fairly safe place and could confront what had happened and what was going on.

At the end of March, our then main host, Bri, thought there were four of us. By June, we knew there were eleven. Aurora, our 24th alter, made herself known a few weeks ago.

I will say this, it is confusing and there's a lot of degrees of how it presents.

Dalgidanchew wrote:I know I have a dissociative disorder (depersonalisation/ derealisation) and I know I age regress, it took me a long time to accept my little side but I have now. I dropped out of therapy when therapist suggested I might have DID because I'd heard about some therapists who convince ppl they have it and I was scared of that. Also because he was asking me questions I didn't know the answer to. I don't remember my childhood, and maybe I don't want to.

I pretty much forgot about all this until something happened recently that scared me. I would appreciate any one's insight or opinions into this specifically. I'm not asking for diagnosis I just want to share what's on my mind. Also if it's not aloud to talk about these things let me know but I've added trigger warning so hope that's ok.

To address the first point you brought up, as I said before our system has a great deal of co-consciousness. I'm the host, so I tend to be aware of everything going on; however, what tipped my friend LR off to the DID was the constant shifts in personality. I'd remember playing a certain game with LR and our other friends, but not what happened in the game or what we all did or talked about. It wasn't until we were researching and came across a post on this forum about 'experience loss' that we started to understand what was going on. We've even started doing different play throughs separately so we don't always reset and mess things up for each other.

And to explain, I usually use 'we' when it has been either a collective issue or I don't know who did what since we share a certain level of memory but I'm locked out of quite a bit and that includes about 90% of our childhood.

With regards to the second episode you mentioned. First of all, we're sorry you had to go through all of that, including again recently. We've had episodes where we didn't know who we were specifically. Until last year, most of us didn't have names. We were just 'Sister', and that explanation is buried somewhere in our journey thread. The most recent was when Aurora surfaced. Our friends actually had to talk her through that. She wrote us a note explaining it. She even asked them who she was. I know what triggered her to come forward now, and we've been cautious about her triggers.

Often times, one of my system will add to details about episodes from our childhood that caused these problems and they know far more than I do about them. They do include sexual assault, but I won't go into that here either. Each of us having our own name and knowing who each other is has helped prevent a lot of the worst episodes. It's brought us an odd sense of stability. But that's how we've been, and it isn't always the same for others.

Dalgidanchew wrote:But both these things have really shook me up, and made me think I should not ignore my symptoms. But despite how everyone says I really really don't want to face that that I could have DID. I have been diagnosed with BPD and whenever I mention dissociation to therapists before or identify issues they just say that's part of bpd.

You shouldn't ignore the symptoms. Thing is, I've seen it explained that PTSD, cPTSD, BPD, OSDD and DID are all part of the same spectrum of dissociative disorders. They all have similar components, but one big factor is the severity and age. DID forms when there's sustained trauma at a young age and usually has a strong component of attachment problems with one's parents. This does not mean that your parents were the primary abusers, btw. In our case, our abusers were outside the core family group, but our parents struggled with us having autism and were often neglectful or misunderstood our needs.

One of our friends, LB, has been diagnosed with BPD, and we've often discussed the similarities, but even she acknowledges that there are huge differences.

That's another thing, structural neurodivergency (anything on the autism spectrum to be honest) can lower the threshold for trauma effects to manifest, and you'll find a lot of autistic people who have DID.

Dalgidanchew wrote:But it's not even the diagnosis itself, I wonder if I've managed to ignore something this long maybe I shouldn't just keep on doing that. If something was so traumatic that my mind went to these lengths to keep it from me then maybe I should not ever know them.

As alluring as that might sound, whatever trauma happened to cause the splits in the first place won't remain buried. You will feel the effects of it no matter what you do to ignore it. What those effects manifest as, I can't even begin to explain as they will be unique to you, but I can assure you that they will happen. They happened to us. We lived almost half a century with those secrets buried and they impacted everything in our lives. They made us vulnerable to other abuses and made us afraid of so much.

When you are ready to confront the traumas, you will know what happened. This may never lead to full fusion or being a single personality, but it will lead to healing. Sometimes healing just starts with acknowledging the others in the system so that they can start to heal as well. It is a long, frustrating and painful process, but it can lead to so much better.

I do hope that this helps. I know this is a lot and I cut out some of what you wrote.

Take care,
Vi