Housewife afraid of messing up the status quo

What I am grappling with right now is trying to understand the structure of my daily consciousness. I always knew there were others tucked away somewhere, mostly from the past I never touch. But it turns out that my front, who I tended to think of as a very moody, contradictory and internally unpredictable me is made up of others, and I am kind of this thing through which a lot of that passes and not all of it sticks, and at times what I know changes for no known reason, and I can't control it. Becoming aware of myself, I see now that my memory and knowledge is spotty if I am truly on my own. I am rarely truly on my own, it seems, but there are occasions when the "right" part for a situation is not accessible.

I feel both hopeful and devastated. I would rather I not have this situation, but knowing what it is is a good step. I am also realizing that my long term willful denial (which began when I was 17 and realized on some level I had MPD, I am now 37) contains many ignorant assumptions that have become reflexes for me. I am working to identify and overcome assumptions so I can be more present to what is real for me.

Una+'s thread has been of great help to me.

On a lighter note, I had the wonderful experience today of participating in a spoken conversation with two of my front comrads, one I was aware of (but didn't know what he was), the other I have been learning about lately. They were supporting and strategizing with me on the way to therapy. They were so kind and gentle with me. I felt cared for and respected. They soothed me. I am sometimes able to converse internally with them, I can't articulate why it is so hard considering we share a life in what might be a co-conscious way. I am just very spotty and iffy. Sometimes the only way I can identify or locate myself is "not them." But I do have my own presence.

Lol wow, if I couldn't have internal conversations with my alters I don't know how I'd get through life - they never shut up! I don't mind all the chatter but it's occasionally a bit rude and/or offensive to be said outloud where people can hear it. I talk to them out loud when I'm at home on my own but nowhere else because people here would look at me like I was crazy, maybe call the police and definitely avoid me like the plague which would upset everyone. I hope now that you've opened a line of communication with your alters it gets stronger and stronger. Good communication is key to functioning in my experience.

Nondescript wrote:She said, yes, I have DID. She thought I knew because I am the one who told her about it, and she confirmed that she had observed it herself. She figured I would bring it up when I was ready.

Well! There you go. It appears you are ready.

I imagine you are in shock at learning that you or some part of you already told your T about your DID and this is all news to you. Well, this situation is very typical of DID. It could be that an alter told her, an alter with whom you have an amnesia barrier. Or it could be you told her yourself, then dissocative amnesia blocked the memory. I say blocked, not erased, because often with treatment we can undo the dissociative amnesia and remember stuff again.

So your anxiety about telling your T turned out to be all for nothing, because she already knew. Wah! This kind of experience has happened to me so often that now I try to have scary conversations as soon as possible. That stops all the anxiety about possible reactions.

About that denial. . . . No one ever wants to have problems. I'd much rather have DID than cancer or diabetes or a number of other common health problems. How about you? Is this the scariest problem you have ever had to deal with? For me, discovering I have DID and all that it means has not been the scariest problem in my life, not by a wide margin. Even so, I struggled with denial over and over again for at least a year post diagnosis. You may experience the same.

Given that you have told someone then forgot then told them again, it is possible even likely that you have forgotten about the DID more than once in the past. So you might give your T and one or two other safe people in your life instructions to keep checking on you to see if you still remember. You could even ask them to tell you about it, and warn them to expect you to disbelieve them. Send your amnestic self the help you would want to receive. Perhaps take a photo of yourself holding a card that says "I have DID" or write a letter to yourself, and give this evidence to your safe person to use in case you forget again.

You have taken a very big step here. Well done!

Fishtailed Chimera, interestingly, I've been heavily involved in the past with different meditative and mystical practices, and there is often a focus on "quieting the voices in the head," which I took as meaning that I am just a typical introspective person! The whole being worried about looking crazy... or maybe just being crazy... is a common theme for me, too.

Una+, thank you for the very valuable information about dissociative amnesia and your practical words of support.

I have been worried that every time I forget something in this manner it means that another part of me has been in play, and what you write indicates this is not necessarily true.

It was a letdown in a way that everyone but me knew this big deal thing. (My husband eventually said the same thing, that I had already told him. He doesn't grasp what it means to have DID, though.) I agree, DID is not such a terrible thing, really. Just another thing to work on, and happily something that one can heal from one way or another.

Regarding scary conversations, brings to mind Mark Twain's words: "“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” (Of course, these words could take on a different meaning when thinking of the twisty reality of dissociation and memory.)

You are right that I have forgotten in the past and will probably forget again, and I am taking steps along the lines of what you mentioned. The denial wall is some kind of mental routine that encourages this amnesia. I am trying to use CBT techniques to break it apart.

I apologize for being so verbose. Experience of life and dissociation right now is so intense, and this is not typical for me. There is so much happening.

I have not experienced the sensations of intense dissociation like I have been experiencing in the past week or two, for years. I feel this sense of floating in a void where I don't exist, and I don't know who I am, among the who's that I sense or watch acting. It is a physical experience of dissociation, not just an intellectual not knowing. Literally I am disoriented. I know my body's situation and official story. Yet I feel like a newly hatched chick in some way.

I have feelings of recognition associated with some states/alters when I see their actions. My perspective keeps flopping around: sometimes I am acting, sometimes I am watching the one I thought was myself acting, sometimes I am watching others acting and feeling this struggle to discern where there boundaries are in relation to mine. And I'm being more able to notice missed time while I'm in this state. It feels somehow promising, though sometimes scary, not miserable. I have been kind of fixed and miserable for a long time.

One of the things that is happening while I am watching is that my denial wall tries to come down to stop this process. When that happens, I return to my self (which seems very empty and kind of worn out, though it is one of two, I assume, most primary identities) and lose most of my awareness and even start to forget what is happening.

I am not sure what I need to do "about" this experience. In addition, there are other strange things happening, many somatic symptoms that haven't been around for ages. As the closest part to the one the above experience is happening to, I can't say I have much more insight into what the purpose is. More awareness, not being in denial, is positive.

Now that I am more free of a certain denial and am evidently stronger than the other alter, I feel more responsibility. It's not clear whether I should try to stop this from happening. In reality, I have no idea how I would stop it. I step in involuntarily (mostly?) when s/he seems overwhelmed by the experience. Something has happened to shake things up, and I don't know what it is. I am concerned that my symptomatic friend is feeling so fragile that perhaps its judgment is not the best. And the strong dissociation is so strong that many in front are pulled into its orbit in some ways. It is hard to understand all the levels on which things are occurring.

Note: SO, one who is not so interested but who read this, said this is happening because the other part gained awareness of DID again. But how did that happen? (Gotta go, baby crying. Will edit later for brevity if possible.)

Verbose is good. The more you write, the better understanding we have of what you are experiencing.

I can relate totally to what you are experiencing, and so can many others here, because we have Been There, Done That. You (collectively) are waking up. Again. Parts are scared and activated. This is causing you to experience a lot of severe dissociative symptoms. The "floating in a void" symptom is a type of depersonalization, which is a specific set of dissociative symptoms. Anyone can dissociate under stress and when they do typically they have a sensation of being outside themselves, observing, for example the familiar "floating near the ceiling". People with DID can have this same out of body experience but often we have a special variant of it: we have an experience of going somewhere "inside".

You can be going into your inner void yourself (due to switching), or you may be "tuning in" to the subjective experience of another part of you, an "insider", who is there in the void and is awake and aware (perhaps for the first time) of being in a void. Some people with DID have a richly detailed, very personalized inner world but the default seems to be that void. My own inner world when I first entered it was a void, and it contained a number of prisoners in solitary confinement in total sensory isolation. With help from therapy I am freeing them all, one by one. As this may already be very triggering for you I won't go into further detail.

To help your husband understand what DID is about, including the subjective experience that you are having and the course of healing ahead of you, I highly recommend a novel by Matt Ruff: Set This House in Order.

Una+,
Thank you once again for your informative and normalizing post. It really helped me feel less alienated from what is happening. I also read it to my husband, and it helped him understand.

My husband is struggling to get this. He seems to think that this a condition where I think my moods are different people, and that to get better, I have to just recognize them as moods. I asked him to tell me if he thought I switched. I laughed, and he said if I was laughing (after having been serious), I must be someone else. I myself am pretty confused, and I don't want to say anything untrue, but I'm pretty sure that even though I am a serious person, I am not someone else every time I laugh! I realize this way of getting feedback is not going to work anyway, because if he tells someone else they are someone else, they will disagree, because they are themselves all the time. He would have to notice me being different, wait till "I" come back and then tell me.

Whenever my husband makes sweeping and unnuanced statements about me having this, even when he is trying to be supportive, I feel hopeless, invisible, and offended. Maybe I should not talk to him about it until I am in a better position to explain.

I wish I could just get better really fast and not have to explain. More crazy stuff happened to me today. Some of it is kind of interesting, but beside the point of healing. I have been healing from my messed up childhood for 20 years, and I feel like I am still at the beginning of a very long road. So be it. Where else can I go, but forward?

My therapist suggested that I try not to think about any of this too much, just focus on daily living and my responsibilities. It is hard to be so disciplined when this whole big world has opened up. And the world is me.

I know the feeling and I know it's super scary and you can get totally sucked into worrying about it and let it consume you but you know you shouldn't so that's the first part done AND you're aware of it happening. You can handle this, a little bit at a time and maybe your hubby will understand more as time goes on. At least he's trying to be supportive?

Nondescript wrote:My husband is struggling to get this. He seems to think that this a condition where I think my moods are different people, and that to get better, I have to just recognize them as moods. I asked him to tell me if he thought I switched. I laughed, and he said if I was laughing (after having been serious), I must be someone else.

I have a very split reaction, reading this. Part of me finds your husband's try cute and endearing. He is trying. Part of me finds it frustrating and kind of offensive: patronizing, arrogant, naive. It is a minimizing, denialist point of view that is not uncommon. I have disclosed my condition to a lot of people and a few have offered this as a tidy explanation that they seemed to imagine would solve my problem in an instant if I were smart enough to take it. Integrating my reactions, my thought is this: your husband, lacking objective experience of your dissociated identities, has thought up a handy rule that vaguely fits something he has observed (moods), and he is trying to apply his rule to you. Does it fit? Not in your experience. Don't worry, he will have new thoughts as he gains more knowledge and experience.

If a novel doesn't appeal, how about a TV series on DVD? There is United States of Tara.

Some multiples have mostly switching with amnesia; if it happens at home it is soon readily apparent to the spouse. Others, including you and me, have mostly passive influence symptoms.

Like your husband, my husband has not seen overt switching with amnesia (this is rare for me) so when I was first diagnosed he was a bit lost. However, over the years I had reported to him some incidents of lost time and hearing voices and feeling my body taken over by someone else. The diagnosis fit all of that so he was prepared to accept it, as apparently your husband is too. But my husband was not well equipped to understand it. The Matt Ruff novel, and a few selected episodes of United States of Tara, helped my husband better understand my subjective experience and why it was such a problem for me. Eventually he did observe me having a dissociative amnesia about an important event we shared. It made a huge impression. My forgetting that was not normal!

Once my alter in love with another man started to come out front and tell my husband over and over that she loved/wanted the other man, he got plenty of data. She just obviously was not me! I love the other man too, but my affect when talking about him is distinctly different and far more mature. This alter was a little girl, experiencing a very primal longing that lacked any nuance.

You sound a lot like me, in a big hurry to get this current problem over and done with. Please do try to slow down. It is widely said that in treatment of DID going slow tends to get results faster. Going slow produces fewer false starts and mishaps.

Fishtailed Chimera You are right. I can be thankful he is trying. And this little ordeal is not the biggest thing I've ever been through. So I need to just carry on. btw I think I read in another thread that you are in the midst of wedding planning? Congratulations!

Una+
Such excellent insights for me! Thanks for affirming that my husband's reaction is normal, if frustrating. And for affirming my own mixed reaction. I think he just doesn't want to deal with it, just wants life to go back to normal. But maybe he'd watch that Tara show. I heard of it but avoid all things mp related very carefully. (Not lately. After this happened, I read a bunch of stuff on treatment.)

I am trying to understand passive influence. Here are some examples of things that have been happening lately.

1. All of the sudden I decided to a attend an event of a kind that I normally would never consider--in fact I find it contrary to my values--and I attended it. While I was there, I had my first experience of my inner realm and the "people" in it in years. (This is part of what started this whole thing, even though it took place a couple of months ago and this obvious crisis recently began.) I starting having all these ideas that really don't interest me, which led me to do different things from what I normally do.

2. This morning I woke up in one of my "bad moods," a typical morning mood but I have a couple of these similar miserable ones. In this "mood," I have a chip on my shoulder. I hate my life and am a total curmudgeon. I barely talk and find children and spouse deeply annoying and often want to run away. While I am in the mood this morning, I "wake up" to the fact that this "mood" is dominant. I start to hear its thoughts and am aware they are distinct from my own. I feeI aware of its characteristic use of body and start to talk to it (mentally). I hear its thoughts deny that I am talking to it or that I am separate from it in any way, because this is all BS. Then it talks to me and tells me to shut up and leave it alone. But I don't want this mood near my kids because it is so grumpy and negative and not a good mother, so I am trying to work my way out. Finally, I am able to speak "through" the mood to my kids and gradually it disappears and I work my way out. But as opposed to it just not being there, the way a normal mood would disappear, it is still kind of a distant voice or presence that intermittently returns to comment through me. I am chagrined when "I" do that. It's all kind of fluid and not too dramatic. Is this passive influence? This aspect of myself is a frequent visitor. But I would normally just say it's a mood that I struggle to overcome. When it is deeply entrenched, I kind of go away completely or merge with it completely, or, I'm not really sure. It occurs to me that maybe moods don't have thoughts? But maybe this is a mood. I'm not sure.

3. Yesterday I started getting a download into my body and brain all these very, very real and intense sensations and sense memories of a certain time in my life. Not of traumatic things or unpleasant things, but of the feelings and bodily reflections of places and being in that time. So strong. Things foreign to me now but familiar once this started happening. And urges that are not typical for me now but used to be typical, along with memories and thoughts that I haven't had since that period. Then, I was compelled to use a skill I didn't know for sure I'd ever had, from that phase of life. I felt "like someone else." And I looked different to myself (but that happens to me often.) While all this was happening I felt myself swimming in a kind of pool of darkness and memory/sensations.

4. I kept remembering pictures taken of me from that period in my life, and matching the expressions with certain selves, and feeling this big Aha, like they were there then, too.

In none of these experiences would anyone who knows me well think I am a different person. I am "deep" and steady on the outside. But are these kinds of experiences what is meant by passive influence?