Hello - new

Hi LKinney,

You only have 30 minutes to edit a post and that's it. So don't worry too much about typos.

LKinney wrote:Thank you everyone. This made me feel better, but I'm still really scared...

...I feel like I am insulting people with serious trauma, if that makes sense. We know we were physically abused as a child, and we know we were horribly bullied through most of our school years, but none of it strikes us as that...extreme. We have been on a self harm forum for a very long time and heard so many horrifying stories. We feel like a fraud; we don't think anything we went through was anywhere near that bad...

...How can I have no memory of every having parts? I have no memory of blackouts either. Then again, I have basically no memory of my childhood at all. Is that how? But then how did no one else notice?

...So this is...normal then? I just can't understand how they could have been around since childhood and I didn't know. How are they all showing up?

...I have so many questions, and I am so, so, so lost and confused right now, but I don't want to write a novel, though I could right now...a novel of questions.

...What is SO? I keep seeing that around the board.

It's normal to be scared.

It's really common to feel like one's trauma was wasn't "bad enough," and to be sure that everyone else's was worse. One thing to remember is that trauma is relative to the age at which it happened. Some things may not seem extreme now from an adult's point of view, but for a child they can be overwhelming and cause dissociation. Being physically abused as a child and horribly bullied for years and years sounds pretty bad to me.

No one else notices because from the outside, things look reasonably ok. And yes, it's very common to not know about the parts until later in life. I found out two years ago, and I'm in my 50s. What has changed is your awareness, but your system has been there and has been protecting you for pretty much your whole life.

SO=significant other.

Spend some time reading past posts on the board. Many of us have journey threads where we talk about how we first found out and/or were diagnosed, and how things have been since then. Some of the threads with many pages are journey threads.

You already have a good T, so you're ahead of the game. It's going to be ok.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:You only have 30 minutes to edit a post and that's it. So don't worry too much about typos.

Oooooooh. Thanks. Good to know.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:It's normal to be scared.

That's not something I really ever feel, so it alone is really putting me through a loop. My biggest fear though is loss of agency, and having others controlling my body is basically my worst fear realized...but maybe that's where this fear came from in the first place?

TheGangsAllHere wrote:It's really common to feel like one's trauma was wasn't "bad enough," and to be sure that everyone else's was worse. One thing to remember is that trauma is relative to the age at which it happened. Some things may not seem extreme now from an adult's point of view, but for a child they can be overwhelming and cause dissociation. Being physically abused as a child and horribly bullied for years and years sounds pretty bad to me.

Yeah, but other people have had way more extreme childhood trauma. Okay, again, I know I can't remember and it's not like what I do, or stories my sister tells me are nice, but my dad straight up once said to me, "You didn't have it so bad." And I don't think he was trying to be awful, I think he really thinks that because I am pretty sure he was physically abused and that tells me even his was worse, so...yeah, I feel like I am belittling people with real trauma, like I'm just some big, weak baby because it wasn't that big a deal.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:No one else notices because from the outside, things look reasonably ok.

But how can someone not see this? Okay, to be fair, my T is constantly telling me I am more hyper aware of others and their feelings and pick up on things others never do, but every time she says that, I am floored because it's such COMMON SENSE to me. I could always see my INTENSE mood swings, but I thought that's all they were.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:And yes, it's very common to not know about the parts until later in life. I found out two years ago, and I'm in my 50s.

I am nearly my 40s myself. Nice to know this isn't uncommon, but it still seems so mind blowing. You had no awareness of any of them? Not in any way? Or, like me you had some awareness but...not complete?

Like, for me: even once some of them started to get names, and even after Black Tiger had moments of taking control, where I was actively watching and unable to take control and act, even then I NEVER would have connected the experience to DID (to be clear, I have no dx, but the more I read, the more OSDD seems right). What I read was "kinda" but not really, but then I am sure my view of DID has been coloured by how it's shown in media. I call my "alters" fractures. They seem to hold emotions and memories. I can be overwhelmed by the emotions, but I can't access the memories. Before therapy, I knew of 4 of them. After...well now there's 19 and I can sense more. It seems so completely unfathomable for this to not be something I knew sooner, or that this was always this "bad" and everything was just muted so even what I was aware of was less then than it suddenly is now.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:What has changed is your awareness, but your system has been there and has been protecting you for pretty much your whole life.

I just can't wrap my head around this. This or all the terms and ways of expressing. I feel like I have to take a class just to learn how to talk about all this, when I can't even fathom any of the fractures (my term - what I've used for a long time now). ARG! My head feels like it's going to explode.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:SO=significant other.

Well, I would have thought that, but I swear I saw it in connection to people's alters. Maybe I just completely read it wrong. It's a lot to take in right now.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:Spend some time reading past posts on the board. Many of us have journey threads where we talk about how we first found out and/or were diagnosed, and how things have been since then. Some of the threads with many pages are journey threads.

Thank you for that suggestion. I was just reading for awhile, but it was overwhelming everyone at this stage. We feel less alone and VERY reassured this is normal, but we're all on super overload on all fronts right now. It's causing us MASSIVE headaches that never go away. Everyone is kind of vying for control at once, just making it all worse. Xena is...out front, is that the right term, most of the time right now, and is the only one actively talking to our T. I cancelled on our T instead this week.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:You already have a good T, so you're ahead of the game. It's going to be ok.

I do think I have a good T. She notes she's worked with people with parts, and has others with parts right now. We picked her because she has a lot of experience in all the areas we have issues in and what we originally went in for (we don't want to get into that here).

We all DEEPLY appreciate your reply, and everyone's replies. You're helping us feel less alone, less like freaks (not that we thought people with DID were freaks, we are just very negative to ourselves).

Right now we really want to hear from others. We will try those journey threads you mentioned, but that feels a little overwhelming right at this moment. These smaller replies are good for us now. Thank you.