DID Struggling with Symptoms

Hi I’m new to the forum. I was recently diagnosed with DID this May. Is anyone else experience alters using your mouth to speak out of? I have quite a few alters and some of their voices sound nothing like mine. I’m paranoid about going places because I’m afraid it may happen in public and then I’ll be embarrassed. I have other troubling symptoms excruciating headaches, dizziness, rapid switching, feeling like someone else is looking through my eyes, dreams of being locked away in castles or rooms, forgetfulness, times where I don’t feel real and I can’t tell if I’m alive or not, excessive maladaptive daydreaming, talking in my sleep and the list goes on. I’m still really confused and questioning if I’m making all this up in my mind if it’s just one grand delusion. Is anyone else going through this I feel so alone?

sunflower001 wrote:Is anyone else experience alters using your mouth to speak out of?

It used to happen a lot to me, but as I stabilized, we are more and more able to blend into a more cohesive presentation and it shows less. When we blend, we-as-an-I feel more in controll of what we-as-an-I do, than it used to feel when we were less cohesive. Before, we-as-an-I could have one part observing what is happening and another part controlling the body, and it felt so weird and out of control. Now that we-as-an-I can better blend, the feeling of being out of control is disappearing.

sunflower001 wrote:I have quite a few alters and some of their voices sound nothing like mine. I’m paranoid about going places because I’m afraid it may happen in public and then I’ll be embarrassed.

I used to be in this situation too. But then I realized that people were just assuming I had a sore throat or something like that and got used to my voice's fluctuations. I also hid it behind the "autistic people like me can have trouble controlling their voice when they get emotional because of stress, happiness, or anything really" and the other people just went "oh okay" and shrugged it off. Most people do not imagine it can be DID.

sunflower001 wrote:I have other troubling symptoms excruciating headaches, dizziness, rapid switching, feeling like someone else is looking through my eyes, dreams of being locked away in castles or rooms, forgetfulness, times where I don’t feel real and I can’t tell if I’m alive or not, excessive maladaptive daydreaming, talking in my sleep and the list goes on. I’m still really confused and questioning if I’m making all this up in my mind if it’s just one grand delusion. Is anyone else going through this I feel so alone?

Been there, done that, got all the Tshirts. Typical dissociative symptoms, nothing to overly worry about. In the meaning that, "it's normal in DID" and "it is not made-up". Of course it is annoying to deal with all of that and of course it is a good idea to have therapy tools to ease it all up! But it is "DID normal". In my experience, stress tends to increase all of this, and lowering stress tends to ease it up.

You will also find ressources in the ressources thread linked into my signature. You will find exercises to manage and cope with all these symptoms and more, in the book "Coping with trauma related dissociation". "Healing the fragmented selves..." is also very good and easy to read. Others tend to be more research or therapist oriented. They are interesting to read but might not be a good first read especially if you need tools to manage the annoying symptoms.

Welcome to the forums!

sunflower001 wrote:Hi I’m new to the forum. I was recently diagnosed with DID this May. Is anyone else experience alters using your mouth to speak out of? I have quite a few alters and some of their voices sound nothing like mine. I’m paranoid about going places because I’m afraid it may happen in public and then I’ll be embarrassed.

I thought I'd add to what Arbremonde said. The only time we've had someone notice the differences in speech patterns was like the time we met the one person who knew we are trans and that is because they actually have experience with someone who has DID. They have another friend who has DID and learned all about it. So, my friend just picked up on the signs. Most of the time, people just dismiss the differences. It's amazing how easily people dismiss things and because people have a view of what DID is that is very different from the reality, most don't leap to that conclusion unless they know better.

Internally, all of us have different voices. Most of us don't front during social interactions, so the differences in accent don't show up.

sunflower001 wrote:I’m still really confused and questioning if I’m making all this up in my mind if it’s just one grand delusion. Is anyone else going through this I feel so alone?

I thought I'd address this point specifically. It's been eight months now since we accepted that we are, well, 'we'. Over the course of that time, there are still episodes of 'I'm making this up'. At one point, we told our friend about those feelings and she just said 'well, stop doing it then'. We had to admit to not being able to.

I know that this is scary, confusing, and strange, but you are not alone. Having a community to talk to has been a huge help.

So, welcome to the forums,
Take care,
Vi.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I'm so glad I found this forum. I feel like this is a safe place to share things with people who can relate to them. I feel less alone.

sunflower001 wrote:Hi I’m new to the forum. I was recently diagnosed with DID this May. Is anyone else experience alters using your mouth to speak out of? I have quite a few alters and some of their voices sound nothing like mine. I’m paranoid about going places because I’m afraid it may happen in public and then I’ll be embarrassed. I have other troubling symptoms excruciating headaches, dizziness, rapid switching, feeling like someone else is looking through my eyes, dreams of being locked away in castles or rooms, forgetfulness, times where I don’t feel real and I can’t tell if I’m alive or not, excessive maladaptive daydreaming, talking in my sleep and the list goes on. I’m still really confused and questioning if I’m making all this up in my mind if it’s just one grand delusion. Is anyone else going through this I feel so alone?

This is interesting...many years ago when I Kit was diagnosed with autism meltdown and saw a psychologist, she was interested in my voice.

I just thought it was because we had a speech impediment and struggled to control pitch and intonation, I wore hearing aids to block external sound so consequently hearing back my own speech was muffled. The Psych wanted to record my voice during the session Now I wonder if she picked up on the 'different voices' long before I was aware there were others???

I also have the ability to have intensely immersive daydreaming. Even more so when another alter (Bobby) blends with me as they also have the same intensity of this ability. Though we don't consider it maladaptive as we both enjoy it and fully aware of what parts is 'fantasy' and what parts are 'real others' now. Though for most of my life I couldn't tell the difference.

Other alters within our system don't have this ability

-- Sat Oct 08, 2022 9:38 am --

ArbreMonde wrote:

When we blend, we-as-an-I feel more in controll of what we-as-an-I do, than it used to feel when we were less cohesive. Before, we-as-an-I could have one part observing what is happening and another part controlling the body, and it felt so weird and out of control. Now that we-as-an-I can better blend, the feeling of being out of control is disappearing.

so 'Morwan' is not one alter who is your 'social self' if you like - who deals with the outside world and who other people see's as 'the personailty of the legal name''?

TheTriForce wrote: so 'Morwan' is not one alter who is your 'social self' if you like - who deals with the outside world and who other people see's as 'the personailty of the legal name''?

Morwan is not our legal name (yet? we'll see if we like it enough on the long run to change) and is not an alter per se. It is, who we are becoming as a whole. And in the same time it is "me" and "I" but I also contain others "me" and "I".

I guess that we can say, the system started as full-on DID without "core self" and now we are putting together this "Morwan core self" as a common project. And I really like this name. Especially when my boyfriend calls me by this name.

Before "Morwan" started being created, we just switched to take care of the outside. Zami was present most of the time, being the hypervigilent one, but others also switched or were co-present. Now we are working towards becoming Morwan all of us together and we like it. (Or maybe Morwan started around the "seed" of The Mirror and we just went, that's as good as any other place to start, let's build on this.)

Things are still confused for me but, well, who has DID and absolutely no confusion at all? The only thing I am sure of is that it feels good being "Morwan" and working towards healing trauma and building inner safety and stuff. So I'm just following this inner compass of whatever feels good, double-check with outside persons to make sure it is healthy, and let's go, on y va, en avant Guingamp*.

__
* "on y va" literally means "let's go"
"en avant Guingamp" literally means "go Guingamp's footbal club" and is used as a familiar way of cheering on people

sunflower001 wrote:Thank you everyone for your replies. I'm so glad I found this forum. I feel like this is a safe place to share things with people who can relate to them. I feel less alone.

It is helpful to have so many other systems to talk to. I've run into a few elsewhere as well that I've talked to, including two friends who told me that the have DID as well. I've known these friends for, in one case, more than twenty years. The other, I've known for about two years. Having friends who know and accept has been a huge boost too.

On the other conversation...

The alter who has our legal name wanted to be host when we finally started saying 'yes, we have DID'. She then got overwhelmed and abused the 'emergency trigger' so she didn't have to deal with things. She then retreated into her room and comes out occasionally.

It's been a weird process getting used to having individual names, btw. But some of us had them for a long time, and some didn't. Most of the time, our friends just call us Theta since that's been our nickname for a long time.

ArbreMonde wrote:
Morwan is not our legal name (yet? we'll see if we like it enough on the long run to change) and is not an alter per se. It is, who we are becoming as a whole. And in the same time it is "me" and "I" but I also contain others "me" and "I".

I didn't think it was your 'real name' as such but just a name you had chosen for on here to represent one alter who dealt with 'social/public life stuff'

ArbreMonde wrote:I guess that we can say, the system started as full-on DID without "core self" and now we are putting together this "Morwan core self" as a common project.

We have always felt there was a 'core self' within us and still do despite getting torn to shreds on here by people who insist a 'core self' is not possible. Maybe the one we believe is 'the core' is in fact a collection of parts already working together? We never had knowledge of DID before coming on here but that doesn't mean (considering we were already in our 40's by then) that our system couldn't have come up with this solution itself to improve functioning???

For 'me'....the name 'Kit' that 'I' use on here represents the 'real world nickname used by family now' and who I see as 'the real me' ..who 'I' am most of the time when home alone.

'Yuna' represents who we feel we have to be in public/dealing with people to be seen as 'normal' and 'not autistic' so she tends to be out when we've had appointments to attend /people to deal with. It's easier for her to pull this off in public because she was previously 'Teen S' with no understanding she had autism at the time anyway and was also the 'social mask' that had to attend school. Though she tires quickly since the stroke and gets overwhelmed by the pain and Tinnitus levels on top of the energy 'socialisation' takes.

I believe the constant pain/tinnitus levels keeps us in a dissociated state when they are bad so we constantly switch so everyone gets a break from it at some point. I think if we could get rid of the Tinnitus and get the pain under control we would return to being able to blend and function 'as one' as we used to when younger.

I'm lucky to live in a place where people don't know me. Or the ones who do, I don't talk to them much or I told them I have anxiety, so they probably assume anything different is related to that, which sometimes it also can be.

I have had many times alters will say things. They push me backwards or it happens really fast. I can't control what is said. I can only watch and listen. It can be annoying at times and embarrass me. It doesn't help if I am anxious because that can cause dissociation in general which can also cause someone to be able to more easily do that.

I have social anxiety disorder which also can overlap with dissociation and DID stuff, so it can be a lot to deal with and try to maintain internal boundaries in social situations as well as try to keep ourselves safe feeling even if we aren't in any danger from external people.

Before I knew what was happening, I didn't know if I had a form of psychosis or something. Once I knew, it started making more sense, and things calmed down the more time that went on (years).

Purplesky wrote:I'm lucky to live in a place where people don't know me. Or the ones who do, I don't talk to them much or I told them I have anxiety, so they probably assume anything different is related to that, which sometimes it also can be.

I have had many times alters will say things. They push me backwards or it happens really fast. I can't control what is said. I can only watch and listen. It can be annoying at times and embarrass me. It doesn't help if I am anxious because that can cause dissociation in general which can also cause someone to be able to more easily do that.

I have social anxiety disorder which also can overlap with dissociation and DID stuff, so it can be a lot to deal with and try to maintain internal boundaries in social situations as well as try to keep ourselves safe feeling even if we aren't in any danger from external people.

Before I knew what was happening, I didn't know if I had a form of psychosis or something. Once I knew, it started making more sense, and things calmed down the more time that went on (years).

\We have worried about psychosis too but I think we didn't understand that we had autism and what that meant about not being able to understand things from other people's viewpoint due to genuine disability not because we simply didn't care about anyone as we often worry excessively about the tiniest things and live in a near constant state of anxiety that we're doing something wrong and everyone hates us cos we're not 'normal' etc


** Maybe triggering**

We had a negative experience once with a local residents son who was schizophrenic at the time and tried to break into our house when host and young sibling were home alone. It triggered out an alter that scared many of us (Inc the younger sibling) but was necessary to protect him and us from this boy who was aggressive and threatening towards us and would have seriously injured our sibling who was only about 6-7yrs old at the time. Host was older than sibling but still younger and smaller than the boy attacking.

TW over

Consequently 'mental illness' and the fear we had it too and may get locked up also became a dominating phobia which made the entire system remain covert throughout life. We were relieved to get an autism diagnosis because we knew it meant no medication or psych ward but also knew there was much we didn't say that may have possibly revealed the DID many years ago!...on the other hand it could have been misdx as Schizophrenia instead and us ending up in a worse situation!.

Our home has become our prison too kind of, (especially recently since the increased issues with mobility & chronic fatigue) but at least its a 'safer prison' than actual prison or a psych ward full of violent schizophrenics! ..or a so-called 'care home/unit' where staff take advantage!