Is there a users-guide to having DID lol

Our first visit to the psychologist isn't till the 2nd week of January, and we have no idea how that will play out. Maybe she'll be helpful but maybe she won't and we'll hve to start all over looking for another?

In the meantime it feels like we could start 20 threads here. Every day there's more questions.

How does sleep/dreaming/nightmares work for DID systems? I've been having dreams that feel not-mine. Nightmares that frighten me that there's parts I haven't met yet who do, or want to do, bad things. Sometimes my dreams feel very switchy, or I wake up feeling switchy afterwards.

Stephanie used to have insomnia where she could not fall asleep. I have insomnia where I fall asleep just fine but wake up after 3 hours or so and can't get back to sleep.

Yesterday I lost all morning to amnesia. I was sad that we didn't get to the grocery store, and R. said that we did go to the grocery store, and sure enough there was food in the fridge. When I think really hard, I could sort of remember buying groceries but it was like it'd happened years ago, or in a dream. All fuzzy and the light was wierd and wrong.

Then when I was journalling that i found a huge entry from the morning that I don't remember writing. But I do remember the event that the entry was talking about. I thought it was too much writing to journal though, too much to write out longhand, so I didn't do it. Except apparently I did.

When these things happen, do the alters in charge think they're the host? Do they pretend to be the host so noone notices?

Is it possible there's times I think I'm me but I'm really someone else? Can parts sort of...not take full control but just take over, like remote-control you so you think you're you but you're doing what they want?

Sorry it's just we're feeling completely overloaded. Still writing in our journal but even that feels stressful. The handwriting changes often, sometimes mid-entry. The book is filling up with stuff we don't remember writing. And it's telling us we're more and more broken every day.

We're meeting a neighbor for tea today and worried about who'll show up.

Tomorrow we're taking a customer out to lunch and we're super worried about that. The customer is expecting to have lunch with Stephanie but stephanie hasn't been heard from in almost 3 weeks. It's almost certainly going to be Violet at lunch and she's impulsive and indescrete at times. She booked the reservation in her name, which of course the customer doesn't know.

We have so many more questions. About how DID forms in the first place. We know there was neglect and abuse in the first 6 months before being adopted. Is 6 months 'enough', esp. if its the first 6 months? Or was there more trauma after adoption? We're afraid to find out, we don't want to know that the adopted parents were flawed or 'bad'. We do know the original host was badly bullied in early childhood, and we remember that noone believed her because the bully was a straight-a student. The host was accused of lying to hurt the rep of the good student. We don't remember anything else though. We don't want to remember anything else.

Sorry for all these questions. Feels like we're in a panic this morning and don't know how to respond. We started this post feeling very Violet and now we're not sure. She's in a panic and the typing just continued on without her. Sorry for all the posts and questions. THank you everyone who's been so helpful.

you sound rushed and stressed.
how about starting with calming down and relaxing a little bit? have a coffee and breathe.
there is time. you dont need to figure it out in a day.
our T makes us relax, focus on self-care, focus on the moment or the current day.
and then, when whatever comes up comes up, we deal with it.
no pulling of loose threads. no exploring of hidden things. no nagging questions.
you want stability first. everything else you will work out eventually.
I feel so old when I say that.

Thank you birdsong87. We were really stressed out and Violet started panicing. She had a really unpleasant nightmare that seemed to set off the whole thing this morning.

We just finished an hour workout, excercise calms Violet and makes her feel stronger. I think it's something she has control over, so it reassures her.

I'm going to have some tea and take it easy.
-R

That would be great: "DID Made Easy"

Don't you wish you could just go out and buy a copy?

It sounds like you've got the right idea, VioletFlux--exercise, tea, not pushing too hard to remember things.

It's good to have openness and curiosity about the way things are inside right now--the way that parts interact and present to the world, but you won't understand everything all at once.

I like what birdsong87 said about not pulling at loose threads or letting questions nag at you. That's great advice! Just dealing with the things that come up on their own is plenty! And sometimes I need to back off from even asking everyone about something that I'm feeling because it's too much for me at that point in time.

The Significant Other's Guide to Dissociative Identity Disorder

MDs

I love the idea of a 'DID made easy" manual. Just imagine......... M said to T on Monday in amongst floods of tears, 'I really thought that this would just be a matter of remembering some stuff and then everything would go back to normal'. Just go easy, take care and as everybody else says don't rush. M is an organiser who is unable to organise at the moment and just wants to know the nuts and bots of putting everything back in order so I understand your frustration. Everybody else has given really good information. All the best to you.

Thanks everyone. We've been trying to keep calm and not push anything too hard today. Not tugging on loose threads.

It's still very overwhelming and frightening at times. Frustrating, sometimes we're fascinated and eager to learn more, other times we're frantic or panicing.

If only I had a dollar for every time I've complained that there should be a DIY DID troubleshooting guide...

All of the above comments, along with: it does settle down. It swings between extremes and fluctuates but bit by bit you begin to see that more. You may have to really get serious about limits and breaks and self-care, even though that feels like yet another thing you have to try and cram in somewhere when there's no room. It all starts to gather a bit more as you do each thing, like scooping up a played deck of cards and shucking them together to fit back in the box.

To be honest I didn't even know how to slow down and have relaxing moments until I concentrated on allowing insiders to have sessions of what they wanted to do, but the more I let them do things like playing with legos or colouring in or making things or whatever the more I learned how to be less focused on getting things done and more on just being in the moment. The kids and more developmentally challenged of us in here are showing me how to do that, and we can share that with others who've never known how to play or do enjoyable things. And those calm moments get shared as others join in for those times and they become healing little pockets of quiet fun among the vast turbulence of the rest it and things start to level out a little more and you can attend to things as they come up.

It's all brimming over and you feel like you're boat is sinking, you're bailing water out frantically and rocking the boat more, but then you realize there's no leak and you're in calm water close to the shallows on some submerged rock and all you have to do is take your time and bail out enough to get yourself more buoyant and you can get to shore.

(Feel free to remind me about this whenever I show up frantic, frustrated and overwhelmed because I still get caught up and forget there's no rushing this...)

Don't forget to breathe.
MG (main host)