Hello please help me

Hi
I have just begun to realise that I may very well have DID and as a result my counsellor told me in a very severe way that he can no longer help me. There I was a few hours ago in a traumatised state not knowing who I am and he tells me that. He says he may be able to find a psychologist for me and I ended up comforting HIM!! I am very strong you see.
I will have to begin some sort of healing on my own because I have no one to turn to, no one who can begin to understand how I am feeling and how terrifying this is to me.
It only started to happen in the last 2 weeks and I keep thinking perhaps I am ok, the truth is I dont know what I am.
I am a female and a part of me feels like a man, I expect to look in the mirror and see a man looking back. When I feel like a man and wear female clothes I feel like a transvestite. When I buy something for myself the man takes it back to the shop - I feel like a child, a teenager, an old woman and thats for starters. Each has their own way of looking at the world and dealing with it. I dont seem to lose time but I am constantly losing things in the house, it takes ages to find things. Somedays I tidy up , other days I cant face it - I am exhausted. I dont think I have split off totally inside me - but its pretty close to it. Getting dressed is a nightmare and being angry is so very difficult - when I am angry I am either a teenager or a man who is capable of destroying everything I like. That part of me destroyed 2 of my cds the other day - BUT I was aware of it. I cant get my head around all of this - can I still be DID if I dont hear voices or lose time or if I am aware of what I am doing when these others "take over"
Is anyone else like me out there?
Each part of me has been me at some time in my life and they have had to go underground so I could cope with life and each time I have had a breakdown which has been many times I seem to have re invented myself and that is what I think I am dealing with - the fall out.

Hi Christina. I saw your post and want to assure you that you have come to the right place for help. I can relate totally to your story. I am so sorry your therapist was overwhelmed and turned to you for comfort. I have had that experience too. Safe hugs.

Hello Christina,

First of all i am sorry to hear you had to go through this with your therapist. This is by no means a professional way to handle you even if he is completely clueless about what he should do with you. You should definitely find another therapist, preferably someone specialized in trauma therapy or dissociative disorders.

None here can diagnose you of course, but I can tell you my experience on the points you mentioned. I am diagnosed with DDNOS-1, because I don't lose that much time and I am often co-conscientious when an alter is out. It sometimes feels like I am locked up inside my head and I can vaguely hear myself talk or see myself move but I have no control on what "i" am doing at that moment. I also sometimes do or say things and then have the memory of them return to me gradually with a time lag (could be seconds or minutes but could also be days). So whether you can have parts or alters without losing big chunks of time, the answer is yes. Bear in mind though that losing time is a very subjective thing, you may be losing time without being aware of that. Anyway, that is something you can devise mechanisms for to try to track.

I also have parts of different ages, corresponding to one or more periods in my life. For some i more or less know the reason of splitting (i know what happened then), for others i have no idea why they are there and sometimes i even don't know what they are talking about (because i have no memory of the age they represent). I totally recognize this "reinventing" yourself thing. You face a trauma and you block it and then unconsciously creat a new self that will carry on, or split a part of your current self and block it away.

As for me, i do hear voices in my head. They are sometimes real voices, like hearing somebody talk to you. Other times, however, they are more like intrusive thoughts. The only difference is that i can converse with these intrusive thoughts, and that they sometimes give flashbacks of stuff that happened in the past.

So in short, i do recognize at least some of the things you described! . It is however essential that you get yourself a good therapist, who can help you figure out what it is and then coop with it (whatever its name is). Good luck!!

Thankyou martina and Una
The problem is that it could take months before my now ex counsellor can find a psychologist for me and like a lot of people I cannot afford to pay one privately. So I will have to find a way through this myself. I have just been reading a bit on fragmented personality so i will look into that first. Thankfully God gave me a good brain. Since I have only recently realised that I act in different ways I may discover more bits to me.
I have just today realised that I rehearse what to say to people constantly in my head - I live in my head a lot of the time. These other parts of me have only just begun to appear ever since I stopped doing this. So I have been keeping them safe inside me, its weird to me yet.
Thankyou for your posts

I want to offer some hope. I don't have a dissociation therapist. I do have help and it continues to be useful. I just don't mention that I'm multiple. This is because I only have access to free therapy and no choice of therapist. Everything going wrong, resulting in a total breakdown of communication between me and the therapist isn't a risk I can take.

With regards to your personal posessions, you may need a bigger wardrobe! Next time you buy a pretty dress, try telling anyone who may be listening (in your head) that you're buying it for you and they don't have to wear it. Maybe then it won't get taken back to the shop. Can you ask the others if they could not destroy your CDs but instead just turn the machine off. I guess if you find it turned off the respectful thing would be to not instantly press play again? Depends who is listening maybe. X

I can relate to all of this so much! Especially not always feeling the right gender - especially with makeup and clothes. Red nail polish feels so wrong, unless I feel totally female (which isn't always).

I'm not diagnosed, but my previous therapist didn't have a lot of experience in this area. She thought I might have BPD, but my "fragments" are very emotion-driven, so I've been looking to see if DID or something related to it might be a better fit.

I'm very interested in hearing what you find out, and about any resources you come across. I'm watching this thread, and open to bring friends here if you are.

Good luck! <3

I know how you must feel. I have DID. I started seeing a psychologist over four years ago and I repeatedly asked him if he was sure I didn't have it because I knew there were two others with me all the time. He said, No! He said it was just my life divided into time periods. I asked my psychiatrist as well with the same result. He decided that he was going to start seeing just children and I would need to find a new therapist. I prayed and asked God to lead me to the right one. Well, within three weeks my new therapist told me I had PTSD and DID. I was actually relieved; I knew something more was going on and things finally made sense. For four long years I wondered what was wrong with me. Finding out I have DID explains I am different but my altars and I can work together to be productive and happy. I know you must feel alone and afraid. I just started calling and consulting with therapists until I felt comfortable. Believe it or not, I didn't mention the DID because my other therapist had convinced me I didn't have DID, but you can ask when you call. Don't give up.

1949joyce wrote:Well, within three weeks my new therapist told me I had PTSD and DID. I was actually relieved; I knew something more was going on and things finally made sense.

Just so.

When I finally met someone who recognized my signs and symptoms of DID for what they were, and shared this recognition with me, the relief and feeling of homecoming was indescribable. Finally, I did not feel so much like an alien foundling who was just pretending to be human.