Anyone have a more subtle DID?

For most of us, most of the time, our DID is subtle, not florid or overt. See this thread:

Kluft's (2005) "dissociative surface"

Hi there. I feel like my DID is subtle. I usually don't notice I switch until I say or do something that seems out of character for myself. As for the meds, they can work but you have the right to say no. I have Narcolepsy and my doc wants me to take anti-depressants for that but I refused. DID varies from person to person and some people will have symptoms that others do not. There is no set form of symptoms for DID in terms of intensity.

My parts do not have separate names. And we all know what each other is doing, there are no real blackouts so to speak where one part takes over and the rest of us don't know. In fact we can usually feel each other click into place as the part that is present at any given time. But things are hazy and I also have very few childhood memories.

There is no right way to be DID. THere is just your way for you.

Despite having a very DID-looking signature (now that I think about it), my DID was way too subtle most of my life for me to pick up on. From all we know as a system there was very little switching or lost time after age 12. I was and still am heavily influenced so that I can recognize major "mood" changes but it still feels like me. Maybe I'm just used to these and maybe they're switches but there's no fogginess for me. The descriptions of DID just never matched my experience, not until a few years ago when I had eliminated every other possibility for my depressions and everyone started waking up from hibernation.

Each of us having our own name seems to be some rule in our system. But given our number of alters, if this weren't the rule, we'd have to name everyone something just to keep track. Some of the littles want everyone to have their own color in our list so we do.

My thinking on DID and therapy is that there are parts of you who are suffering and will always suffer without help. Even if they are quiet or sleeping, they will be triggered from time to time and you will experience reverberations of their pain until they are rescued. These may be dissociated parts but they're not alien beings, they're you.

You can provide some of that help by educating yourself about DID and welcoming other parts as you come to know them. But nothing can replace working with an experienced therapist who is compatible with you. Even the best surgeons in the world don't perform major operations on themselves. DID is a major mental disorder which is fortunately quite treatable.

We really can learn to face, accept and move beyond our childhoods, no matter what happened and no matter who did what to us. You owe it to yourselves to seek help because you all deserve to live a life that is real, one with much less pain and/or numbness.

For me the real horror of covert DID is that even when I (the usual host) am feeling wonderful the ones inside are suffering. And I have contributed to their suffering by suppressing them for decades, even denying they exist. Now that I know they exist, how can I live with myself if I turn away from them?

Michaelelis fear not, youre not alone.

I suffer from micro amnesia remembering where I put things or what I was going to do.(to help with this just tell yourself to pay extra attention and someone will remind you)
I get passive influenced a lot so I feel the "need" to say something do something or express a feeling before I "forget it" and it passes.
I never realised it wasn't normal for you to want different things and act consistently different whilst in "moods" (once again you're not alone)
My did is very covert, I usually only realise it's happened until after passive influence ends. I currently can only differentiate the voices by what they say and tone as all my alters are variations of me and sound a lot like me. (One way to tackle this lil issue is positive self talk or "ish" if you feel like you'll go into a situation where you'll be triggered then tell yourself before that it needs to be a positive thing because person ____ wants to achieve ____ by doing this. )
I've always used language like "that wasn't me, I don't feel that way anymore"
I suffer from a lot of physical symptoms that I've noticed coincided with "switches" or passive influence
I've been battling to name my parts, each part does have a name but they're derogatory names give by my family when they witnessed moods so I don't like using those. I tend to use variations of my own name now if needs be. (So don't worry about names I've learnt not to!)

overt did representations makes it harder for people like us who suffer from the same issues but experience them as versions of us, because you cannot seperate them with a name so feelings tend to flood your confusions more and leaves you more uncertain.
I feel like me whenever I'm in these moods, but the me feels different after and says it's not me .. So who's actually me?



*sorry for the random thought but I also want to add that does anyone feel that being the host you can experience emotional dullness so when you're being influenced by an alter their feelings will feel extremely intense like your whole being is dedicated to fulfilling these needs.

-- Sun Jul 30, 2017 9:04 pm --

Michaelelis fear not, youre not alone.

I suffer from micro amnesia remembering where I put things or what I was going to do.(to help with this just tell yourself to pay extra attention and someone will remind you)
I get passive influenced a lot so I feel the "need" to say something do something or express a feeling before I "forget it" and it passes.
I never realised it wasn't normal for you to want different things and act consistently different whilst in "moods" (once again you're not alone)
My did is very covert, I usually only realise it's happened until after passive influence ends. I currently can only differentiate the voices by what they say and tone as all my alters are variations of me and sound a lot like me. (One way to tackle this lil issue is positive self talk or "ish" if you feel like you'll go into a situation where you'll be triggered then tell yourself before that it needs to be a positive thing because person ____ wants to achieve ____ by doing this. )
I've always used language like "that wasn't me, I don't feel that way anymore"
I suffer from a lot of physical symptoms that I've noticed coincided with "switches" or passive influence
I've been battling to name my parts, each part does have a name but they're derogatory names give by my family when they witnessed moods so I don't like using those. I tend to use variations of my own name now if needs be. (So don't worry about names I've learnt not to!)

overt did representations makes it harder for people like us who suffer from the same issues but experience them as versions of us, because you cannot seperate them with a name so feelings tend to flood your confusions more and leaves you more uncertain.
I feel like me whenever I'm in these moods, but the me feels different after and says it's not me .. So who's actually me?



*sorry for the random thought but I also want to add that does anyone feel that being the host you can experience emotional dullness so when you're being influenced by an alter their feelings will feel extremely intense like your whole being is dedicated to fulfilling these needs.

Just read this - I was diagnosed with schizoid personality and depression when I was diagnosed.

My understanding of the thing was that, basically in the case of schizoid personality disorder, I had dissociated my emotions. What I found was that caused me some problems, as I had a lot of social issues understanding other people and motivational issues, etc. So the treatment of depression/DID basically would improve that unlike the treatment for schizoid personality (as that does not exist).
So this was totally the experience of one of our alters.

We found that, in the course of learning about DID, we did find more DID symptoms - or rather that some other alters were aware of them that we were not. In my mind, things got smoothed over so that I did not know about the symptoms that existed and if I did, I lost those memories. But we do not have those macro symptoms of DID much either.

It is possible to heal from DID, but the question is whether one wants to. It takes a while, but typically what people find is that improvement in and of itself can be helpful. We have not integrated and do not intend to, but we did improve co-consciousness.

Medications are not typically prescribed for DID, and I am not aware of any for it. Drugs are often prescribed for other symptoms (e.g., depression, nightmares, etc.).
But my understanding is that they may not help in the case of dissociative disorders. So that's something to be aware of.

yungpicasso wrote: *sorry for the random thought but I also want to add that does anyone feel that being the host you can experience emotional dullness so when you're being influenced by an alter their feelings will feel extremely intense like your whole being is dedicated to fulfilling these needs.

Great idea! Host is all like - That's me!

We've always been good at hiding and I guess that means we have subtle DID. But it used to be that Host acted like we didn't exist or were awful or making him crazy!!!! All that denial and avoidance made our DID pretty subtle on the outside but inside it was a mess. The BIG change these days is that Host acknowledges us. He's part of the team now and knows we're trying to help (at least most of us). He doesn't think we're evil anymore and doesn't shame us. He LISTENS to us (most of the time) and when we need something at least he acts like it might be important. We're still SUPER hidden but it's a WAY better kind of subtle DID. It doesn't hurt so much. (We're not doing this perfectly but we have days where we get it right).

Iain