Help for loved ones of partners with DID

Does anyone know some resources that can help me? Any forums or pages on how a partner or spouse can learn to adapt? I've suspected this for years but my husband was just recently diagnosed with it.

A little bit about him:

Tom was never sexually abused but he was emotionally neglected by his parents who didn't speak to him because he was "strange." They did things like tear up his art work instead of featuring it on the fridge regardless of the fact that his two sisters had their art displayed on the fridge all the time. He has Asperger's and doesn't understand how to interpret body language and so he doesn't understand why people think he is weird. As a child he spent every day after school up in his room with his alters, some of which have faded or split into others. He was also verbally abused. Later when he was 300 pounds he was placed on a starvation diet to get him down to 150 (he's 6 foot tall.) His father called him gay because he enjoys cooking, cleaning, organizing and interior design.

Host: Tom, Ministry student. Christian. Wants to be a preacher. Late twenties.

Alters:
Jim (split into Toby) This alter came out when Tom was living in a basement apartment with nobody to talk to. He did not have a phone, TV, or computer available for six months. This alter can show his anger physically and if in a fight with Toby then a lot of mental chaos ensues.

Toby: Protector, Atheist, Brutal nihilist. (Tom was the subject of a lot of emotional, verbal, and spiritual abuse within church or those who claimed to be Christian.) By far the most active alter; comes out almost every night, especially if Tom is too tired to restrain him and the others are also sleeping. Best way to deal with Toby is for Tom to just go to bed, but Toby balks at the idea and continues swearing and spewing out non-Christian ideas and philosophies, and often uses Tom's knowledge of the bible or experiences with Christians to throw it in Tom's face to get him to leave Christianity. So far it hasn't worked.

Mortimer: Came out about the same time as Jim to restrain Jim from splitting into Toby. He is primarily a peaceful mediator between Toby and Jim, as both of these alters have explosive personalities. He uses force when needed but then feels guilty for hurting his friends.

Tanok: ISH/Gatekeeper Tanok comes from another world than the other three alters called Yma. He is an elf (as in Lord of the Rings style elf, not as in Keebler elf.) This world has been inside Tom since middle school. It is a complex world with three fully thought out languages. This alter mainly comes out when Yma is being typed on the computer but sometimes shows up when Tom is too weak to restrain Toby on his own. Shares some similarities with Mortimer but the two don't know about each other. He is a few thousand years old. He has friends from outside the system.

Vice: More of a fragment than anything else.

Kitty: Meow.

He also hears the people who were the abusers. It's as if he relives everything they say. I can't tell him it's in the past as it's very real even though it was almost two years ago now that he last contacted them.

NiennaLadyOfTears wrote:Does anyone know some resources that can help me? Any forums or pages on how a partner or spouse can learn to adapt? I've suspected this for years but my husband was just recently diagnosed with it.

You already know a lot about his system so most of the personal web pages intended as guides for the SO won't be all that helpful. Ultimately, he is responsible for himself, leaving you to support him in whatever direction he needs to go. So, I suggest you ask your husband to find some material for you that relates well to his own experience of DID. Of the many memoirs about DID that I read, the one by Robert Oxnam came closest to my experience, so that is the one I asked my husband to read. You may also talk to your husband's therapist, if your husband is willing.

The best resource I've found to be is 'The Manual' (I think some people on here would agree!)
It's pretty long, but worth a read

http://www.op.net/~jeffv/so1.htm

I second The Manual, it covers a lot of important information, and is written by the partner of someone with DID.

Also, reading a few autobiographies can't hurt, particularly if you're able to get your partner to find some that he relates to. Otherwise, just keep an open mind while reading, remembering that every person experiences everything, including DID, a little differently to others.

If you've got the time for it, The DID Sourcebook has a lot of useful information in it. It has sections specifically for family and close friends of people with DID. Plus, reading the bits for people with DID will help too.

I'm an SO as well. My boyfriend has DID, and it sounds like you're in a similar situation to mine. I understand the system, but sometimes situations arise that you cannot always control without upsetting another part of the system.

Johann was never sexually abused either. He was emotionally abused and neglected as a child (and continues to be verbally/mentally abused by his mother to this day) and witnessed his father die of an angina attack when he was eight, alone in a motel room with him.

I agree with phoenixrise, I'm currently reading The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook, and it's been pretty helpful thus far. I even convinced my boyfriend's host, Johann, to read some of it while waiting in the waiting room when I was at the dentist last week, and he said that it make comprehensible sense to him as well (though he was begrudgingly reading it).

Toby sounds a bit like Johnny in my opinion. Johnny's an atheist too, (Johann is a Pantheist) though Johnny's philosophy is basically 'If there's a Heaven, which I doubt, they're not going to want me. If there is a Hell, which I also doubt because I already live in hell, they're going to kick me out. If there is a God why the hell did he kill my dad? If there is a God why the hell does everything bad always happen to me?'

Do you know how old your husband's alters are, for starters? You only mention Tanok being a few thousand years old. It helps to know how old an alter is so that you know what maturity level you're dealing with. For example, everyone in my boyfriend's system is a different age, therefore one moment I could have a cute and cuddly little 8 year old in front of me who just wants to be hugged and told everything is okay, and the next I'll be looking at a horny little 12 year old who wants to feel me up inappropriately. The trick is knowing how to talk to and deal with different mentalities.

Knowing what triggers who to come out also helps. I'm still trying to figure out my boyfriend's system's triggers, but I know some of them. For example, I know that their mom's yelling at them triggers Johnny to tune his defenses all the way up just so that no one in the system gets hurt and he'll yell back at her because Johnny is their first line of defense (protector). If Johnny fails to 'defeat' whatever is in their way, it triggers HIM, the fail-safe protector.

If you ever have any specific questions you can PM or just answer here, whatever, and I'll answer to the best of my ability. I have a pretty good grasp of things, despite my age, haha.

Most of his alters are around his age or a little older. He doesn't have any child alters. He has an animal alter that pops up every so often. I think I have some alters myself.

NiennaLadyOfTears wrote:Most of his alters are around his age or a little older. He doesn't have any child alters.

Johann claimed that all of his alters were the same age, but we started doing the math of when they were created and discovered that in terms of how long they had existed, what memories they held, and where their maturity level resided, and determined that everyone was a different age.

For example, Johann first became aware of the presence of a second 'voice' inside him when the physical body was six, in first grade (he never went to kindergarten). He didn't know what it was, but he was living in a dangerous ghetto neighborhood, and he was one of the only white kids. The other kids wanted to fight him, and Johann would black out for periods of time yet somehow these battles were being fought for him. That second personality protecting him is the one we now know as HIM, the core fragment personality. (HIM claims to be the core, but also claims Chibi to be the core because HIM consciously split from the innocent half of their core to protect it, making them both the same person)
HIM was created when the body was six, that makes him eighteen now.

When the physical body was eight, HIM had gone dormant due to having moved away from the problematic neighborhood, and no longer needing to defend his innocent half. It was only Johann (Chibi). One night his father had an angina attacked and died while Johann was the only one around. From that night on, Chibi (the original Johann) never aged, and had remained eight. HIM put Chibi into a dormant slumber and created a host, Yohann, who would be a cross between Chibi and HIM.

And that's how it was when I met them - just Yohann and HIM. And slowly everyone else who has been there for years without revealing themselves just sort of crawled out of the woodwork, having been created at different ages due to different events in their life, but never revealing themselves to HIM (the 'puppet master' of the system, so to speak) until I pointed them out to him and convinced them to. Everyone is co-conscious now other than a two year old fragment we're still trying to decipher, and two non-accessible fragments.

He has an animal alter that pops up every so often.

Doesn't surprise me that there's another otherkin. HIM claims to be an otherkin sometimes, and human other times. HIM claims to be part fire demon when he's really angry, and part of me doesn't even question that because when he's reaaaaally angry the body's temperature shoots up to really hot and his tone gets really dark and creepy in a way that I can't even describe. I've only seen him fully 'turn fire demon' once before the other four (who were currently accessible) grabbed him and threw him in a safe room until he calmed down.

When HIM goes on an emotional rampage, the whole system goes on overload and temporarily spirals out of control and at times, will shut down (cause the body to black out completely) because of HIM's placement in the system - he's half of the core, and the other half (Chibi) is the only thing that can stop him. If I were you, I would determine why the animal alter exists and make sure it isn't a threat. HIM doesn't intend to be a threat, but when he loses his temper, his sense of right and wrong goes blind due to the purpose he was originally intended for.

I think I have some alters myself.

Alternate personalities or alter-egos? There is a difference there. I know, because I'm diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder for having alter-egos since I was in sixth grade. An alter-ego is a conscious creation by the person themself in order to become someone that they wouldn't normally be in order to handle a specific situation. It's similar to Dissociative Identity Disorder with the difference being that the 'host' can switch whenever they want and they do so by choice. The 'host' is aware of everything going on at all times and can return to being themself whenever they want to.

For example, I dislike going to work even though I love my job. I hate standing at the cash register and having to be like, 'Hi! How are you today? Did you find everything okay?' all perky-like. So MK does it for me, only she has a slightly higher tone than I do (one of my co-workers tells me I sound 'fake happy' and threatened to nickname me 'Mouse') because my regular voice is...just not appropriate for work in my mind's eye. When I go to work, I'm MK, who is the happy and child-like side of me who loves to make people happy. But yet I'm Shawna at the same time. I simply force myself to believe I'm someone else by calling them by a different name, but consciously I am and always will be just Shawna. While the outward personality shifts, the mental state does not.

It's different than someone like my boyfriend, who while they're all conscious of being 'Johann', don't like responding to Johann's name (and on occasion, Johnny has slipped and called himself by his own name in public), and do not all share the same thought process or mentality. For example, Chibi is young, extremely shy, and innocent, Kiddo is an out-going prankster, Johnny is socially awkward and withdrawn and very rebellious (it's also his last name, haha), HIM is antisocial indifferent to almost everything, Ecchi is a more perverted version of Kiddo, and Johann is just the personality that the world generally sees - fun-loving, extroverted, and a bit immature.

I have at least one alter, as explained in my other thread. I likely have three but I know one is definite, Tabby, the cat.

I did have an alter ego when I was younger, who has disappeared.

My husband says it is usually like alter ego for him but he can't control switching at all times, particularly when he's very tired. So I don't know what to say since he does have a diagnosis of DID.