Someone is scared of us DID

Has anyone had anyone say direct to them, that they are scared of them because of your personalities - that you may switch and hurt them?

I have support workers in each week to help me with things like cooking, cleaning, food shopping etc. A few months ago I met a new one. I never quite felt comfortable around her, she asked a lot of questions about us and our disorder, how we are, our past etc. So we thought she was interested and opened up to her a lot about us, and we told her some things we hadn't even told out therapist - some things we didn't feel comfortable, and some things were just because we worked on other things which came up first.

So the other day this support worker comes into our flat. We say today we want to go food shopping, walk into the kitchen to start making a list and she goes oh. Then starts getting anxious and you will all understand when i say - having a go at us (although i'm not sure thats exactly what she did). She said she feels uncomfortable around us, she doesn't want to be in a car with us - whether she drives or we drive. She doesn't want to be in the kitchen with us either. And when she said that I realised that when we'd gone into the kitchen to do things like wash up or clean cupboards, she'd walked away to play on her phone, I thought she was lazy. She said that they at her company are not trained in "me", and to get the training they would have to sit down with me to understand things. She said that the company isn't right for me, she can't understand how the other support workers (I had for 9 months, they gradually left one by one as they were fed up with the company), ever worked with me and can't understand why noone else has raised concerns about me. All this time she was standing up behind a chair - any of you who are scared of confrontation will know exactly what i was feeling as i was sitting on the sofa trying to stay calm but she was upsetting us more and more and more.

She said that soon after meeting us, we had a tic (torettes) and we seemed not to notice it. And ever since she's never felt comfortable around us. She said she was worried that we would suddenly switch and hurt her - I'm guessing she thought that the tic was us discussing hurting her. I'm just so angry that she strung us along for this long, asked us in depth questions which we didn't really want to talk about, and caused us to switch or get upset afterwards because she had triggered some memories and talked about things we should only be talking about with our therapist. Everyone external kept saying to us give her a chance as she's new to you, and when you get along things will go well.

We should have trusted our instinct that she wasn't right for us. We let her into our world. But worst of all - she had a go at us, and told us that she feels uncomfortable around us. Has anyone else ever had that before? We're used to people not understanding it and having to supress them (or tell them to get out of our lives because we can't be ourselves). But we've never had anyone like this before. And now we want to shut down, not talk to anyone and just go inside into our safe world. After she left we cried a lot and the rest of our thoughts are too triggering to write here.

I'm so sorry you went through that.

I had one support worker who was very nervous about us, she kept stating she wanted to meet peter that she wasn't sure about if it was all in our head cause she never saw a switch, then later on she would (jokingly) complain that peter would come out for the other support workers but not for her and she wanted an excuse to play football for half an hour. That really upset peter because he always works hard when the support workers come round. The next day she was on Mo was hanging around in the background and the support worker started griping again. Now I have a wig, it's prety realistic long copper hair. It is held on with a catch at the nape of the neck. All Mo did was undo the catch and turn our back to her. The wig fell off.
"oh my god what have you done. your hair fell off. o my god your a crazy person o my god why did you shave your head o my god."
Mo- " you didn't expect a 7 year old boy to want long hair did you? Peter has his own wig. It's kept in the cuboard next to his football. You did just ask him to play didn't you?"

She went as white as a sheet and I put my wig back on, cooked diner in silence, when it was finished she asked me not to "let them out again"

She quit not long after. Apparently when she raised her objections about having to support me the other girls who support me on rota all said they had met everyone in the system and she was being unreasonable.

So yeh there are people out there who refuse to let go of their preconceptions. The movie industry doesn't help.

Hope you recover from this soon.

Grace

I was about to say something regarding the movie industry and other media but you said it first! ♥

Multiples are always protrayed as being dangerous to others while in reality, we pose more danger to ourselves if we have trouble sharing everyday life memories!

It really makes me angry at the workers who discriminate against you, and it makes me sad for you that you have to suffer through them... :'(

It is one of the many reasons we do not dare to tell the T or any social service, that we are a system. Well, the main one, to be honest.

Sending sparkling hearts your way!



♥ Lust ♥

We know the feeling, and we're so sorry for anyone who have to face this. When you've never done anything wrong, and it's just about other's preconceptions, it's totally unfair... specially when it's from people who are supposed to help you.

My mom did that. We still live with her as we're at the university and can't afford our own place for now, and when we were really into working about cooperation, dealing with high anxiety etc. we had times when pretending to be me could be hard for the others. She started to make comments, so I told her about the system, hoping it would make it easier for everyone.
She seemed to understand a bit, asked questions from time to time, but she always had the "I dissociate away" look on her face when we answered, so we kept pretending. She asked very personal questions once or twice, and we answered as honestly as we could, hoping it would help her to be less unstable around us. But as she was dissociating, she often didn't remember our answers, and asked the same questions again and again.
It was three years ago.

Four months ago, Daem finally managed to have her answer to his questions, in order to understand what is going on in her head, why she is so afraid of us. She admitted that having us being multiple remind her of my father, because he said more than once that he had two personalities, a good one and a bad one. I tried to explain to her that it has nothing to do with DID, it's because he's a psychopath with no sense of self, but now we understand that all the time spend answering to her questions was totally vain.

It hurts. It makes some of us angry and sad, because yeah, it's unfair. Specially when you know the boys have also helped her with a tone of things, including taking care of our little brother, or helping to write the letters she had to send to judges, lawyers, etc.

Grace - hehehe well done. One of my other support workers had kept asking me to introduce everyone, they all refused to come out and say hi until one day one of them told her to get out, so for you Mo to do that is amazing and well done

Lust - omg sparkling hearts - we looooooove sparkly things - how do you do it? (our kids are asking). We agree with both of you about the media. A friend today said she thought that this support worker may have looked up about DID or seen things in films/ media and got scared from that.

Nice to know that others understand - and I think from now on we are going to withdraw a lot from other people and have to pretend that we are single like Dwelt said. You think you are doing the right thing by giving them more information but it can freak them out more.

Think I've learnt a very hard lesson. But on the good side, a nice friend is phoned up the social worker team and whilst mine wasn't there to talk to, the lady she did said she was very concerned and it's a safeguarding issue so sounds like things may change, quite how i'm not sure but i'm relieved

debetoile wrote:Lust - omg sparkling hearts - we looooooove sparkly things - how do you do it? (our kids are asking).

♥ Well, I went on Google Pictures, searched for "sparkle heart", with picture size "tiny" and selected the one I liked best. I opened the picture, copied-pasted the direct link to it, and added it using the "IMG" button (the one next to "URL") and voilà! ~ ♥


♥ Lust ♥

Hi,

We pretty much don't tell anyone except our T about being multiple. We're all worried people would act like that and mess everything up.

Sorry that happened to everybody.

Iain

Perhaps reframe this. She is scared by thoughts she has that originate elsewhere, in her personality makeup (an anxiety disorder perhaps) or books or movies or her past experience with other people. Nothing to do with you.

And nothing you should have to put up with. Ask that she be re-assigned. It is not your job to ease her mind or teach her about DID.