Struggling with diagnosis

I'm seeing a very good trauma therapist (moved from 'regular' therapy when told I have cptsd and ptsd - didn't realize I was 'traumatized though I am pushing 50) and we've been working on the 'stabilization period' for 8 months. She uses no diagnosis words with me, none of the therapy buzz words, and made hubs and I start couples therapy, working on safety, etc. I finally put her on the spot and said "I don't have DID do I?" and she said it's not what people think it is, hollywood and therapists have done a disservice to this diagnosis. I was floored.

So then of course I start trying to timeline to put this together , but there are holes I can't fill- ask two of my very balanced normal kids who actually agree with her, of course hubs does. I thought everyone's mind worked how mine does. I am very compartmentalized and horrible memory and adapt to pretty much any situation and have many differing opinions in my head. I dissociate a lot, stress really brings it out and I get stuck in what I call "the soup".

Not going to go through my abuse experiences in this world but suffice it to say home life with bipolar narcissist father was not steady or safe. Then he was gone and had abusive stepfather - but at least that was just hitting lol. I grew up in fear and violence.

My mother reminded me of a couple of different things and as I am still wrestling with this dx I am wondering if these early childhood things are red flags to this disorder:

I can shut down pain. When I was five I split my head open and had to go to er to get stiches. I was so still and quiet, they were terrified something was wrong. I have always been able to go away from physical pain. I can go away from most anything.

I taught my self to not be ticklish. I was very young and decided to not be ticklish so nobody would tickle me anymore. I can do this with about anything.

I was "trained" to not cry or show fear and to "always be ready" - basically like a mini soldier from pretty much birth. I could shut myself down and not respond from a very young age.

One day as a preteen I woke up and decided I was not shy anymore and completely changed entirely. This is the earliest I can remember this kind of change.

Most things and oddities of my I have explained away, moods (my"moods" have their own opinions lol), health, changed my mind, everyone has differing opinions inside, stress, etc. But as this disorder allegedly begins before age 6 - do these early signs indicate that my therapist might be right???

tldr: Are early childhood symptoms above a red flag for this disorder? Still wrestling with having whole selves in me versus pieces, adpatible selves and moods.

I would not say "red flag" but rather "symptoms". And yep your symptoms are consistent with DID or other disorder with a high level of dissociation.

No panic here, you have been through life for 50 years at this point without any "alters are stealing my life" shenanigans, it's not going to happen in the future.

What CAN happen in the future is to lower the dissociative walls, get to know better your "moods" and their thoughts/opinions, work all together to get better, recover memories (bad ones but good ones too!)

I linked the ressources thread into my signature if you want to have a look at different DID ressources. There are also many people who keep a diary/journal of some sort on the forum, so others can have a look at different therapy processes and how we manage our symptoms, heal trauma etc. It's a bumpy road but it gets better eventually. Mine is, obviously, linked in my signature too. It's one heck of a ride but it does get better.

Your therapist is walking on eggs around you because for some people, becoming aware that their level of trauma and dissociation is called "DID" can be a very huge shock, especially with all the bad rep and disinformation around the condition. There is a lot of ideas that DID is very different from other stuff but it is ""just"" cPTDS level over 9000. Your descriptions of your symptoms are exactly what DID is. Some people have more "pseudo hallucinations" when their parts/compartments/alters communicate together (voices, seeing them in their head...) but some don't have this and step around the compartment walls by talking aloud, writing to themselves, etc. It's not different from when you write down your to-do's and take notes and keep a diary, except for the amount of stuff you need to take notes about. But it gets better with time and the memory becomes less fragmented and more like a unified database with time and therapy.

So, don't worry, having this label for your symptoms does NOT mean it's going to be like in the movie "Split" or whatever. It means that you have a keyword to look for ressources, peer-support etc. Nothing more nothing less.

Welcome aboard!

Hello and welcome to the forums. I'm Vi. I wanted to add a few things to maybe make things a little less scary.

Not all systems swap out hosts, but rather they have alters who 'take on' a particular emotion. Between our autism and the need to control our anger, we have an alter named Valyria who holds a lot of our anger. It isn't that I (or any of the other 23) can't get angry, but Val holds that emotion.

Also, not all of our alters come out, and some may never do more than 'whisper' advice and observations. That can happen too. Sometimes a person with DID will never switch out, but their alters still exist. Of us, maybe twenty-five come out front at all, and only six of us front with any regularity.

Physically, we're not that much younger than you, and we didn't learn about our DID until a year and a half ago. Over all, we have worked on finding a balance and slowly breaking down barriers between each alter, but we know that there is a long road to go.

Hope you are well and hope that makes it a little less scary.
Vi

Thank you for the responses! This is all quite terrifying to me - I don't like the "mental illness" type of label on this, it seems to me it's not an illness in that external factors caused this. It feels far more like an evolution and adaptability due to other peoples illnesses
This is how my mind has always worked, there was no "before" so I assumed everyone's mind did this to some degree. Due to my extreme circumstances I just thought I was a little extra. I have always felt that sometimes my brain gets "hijacked" and I get stuck 'in the soup'. And stress or fear or extreme situations there are parts of me that take over. I didn't quite realize until working with this therapist and talking with my family (again, managed to raise very normal untraumatized children!!! very proud of this) that I tend to give different answers to the same question, I remember different things at different times, I don't have 'favorite' things as I'm very changeable, it's hard to make plans too far out because I don't know what I will be that day - but usually if I don't stress about it, whatever I need to be is there... One child said I was "fickle", one thought I had bipolar, one a long time ago said that I would "check out" - I was like when? I'm always there for everything and he said yeah but you CHECK OUT - I did not know he could see it... not sure on the others takes yet. Spouse is kind of a narcissist so I don't trust a lot of what he says.
I'm quite afraid of opening this door -- meeting myselves, encouraging this at all as I've pretty much white knuckled my way though life desperately trying to be normal (with some epic breaks in there). I don't want a louder head!!! But it sounds like with treatment confusion and dissociation decrease and I can have more a cohesive awareness and life -- which would be amazing.

vagabondbeauty wrote:Thank you for the responses! This is all quite terrifying to me - I don't like the "mental illness" type of label on this, it seems to me it's not an illness in that external factors caused this. It feels far more like an evolution and adaptability due to other peoples illnesses

Trauma is the mental equivalent of a broken leg, but since it's a wound of the mind it's classified as "mental issue" rather than "body issue". Also, "mental illness" does not mean "crazy" It means "something that happens in the brain that makes the person unwell". Stress, depression, burnout, trauma, autism, ADHD... are NOT "crazy" but they happen in the brain therefore, mental condition.

vagabondbeauty wrote:This is how my mind has always worked, there was no "before" so I assumed everyone's mind did this to some degree.

We all did this. I always thought everybody was autistic, dissociated, ADHD... and that I was a failure for not compensating enough. Turns out I was wrong. I got brain conditions making me play the game life on hard mode.

vagabondbeauty wrote:managed to raise very normal untraumatized children!!! very proud of this

You can be!!!! Congratulations!!!! It's super difficult to NOT pass down the dissociation to your children since they tend to mirror their parents' reactions. You did very well!!!

vagabondbeauty wrote:Spouse is kind of a narcissist so I don't trust a lot of what he says.

Well, I'm just going to highlight this. Do with it what you want whenever you are ready.

vagabondbeauty wrote:I'm quite afraid of opening this door -- meeting myselves, encouraging this at all as I've pretty much white knuckled my way though life desperately trying to be normal (with some epic breaks in there). I don't want a louder head!!! But it sounds like with treatment confusion and dissociation decrease and I can have more a cohesive awareness and life -- which would be amazing.

It IS confusing at the begining because you start to see the things you ignored before. So the first step is "things seem to get worse... because you become aware of how bad the situation is". Once you have an awareness of the things, you can start to get better.

Everybody gets better at their own pace. Myself I started becoming really aware of my dissociation (as in, not forgetting right away about it) circa 2019 and even if the first year roughly things became very loud in my head, it all calmed down quickly when all my parts managed to find a common ground for therapy and self-care. Things have become quieter and quieter since then and now, my head is no louder than any autistic and ADHD brain. Maybe quieter because I have more grounding skills which helps to quiet the mind.

vagabondbeauty wrote:Thank you for the responses! This is all quite terrifying to me - I don't like the "mental illness" type of label on this, it seems to me it's not an illness in that external factors caused this. It feels far more like an evolution and adaptability due to other peoples illnesses ,,,
I'm quite afraid of opening this door -- meeting myselves, encouraging this at all as I've pretty much white knuckled my way though life desperately trying to be normal (with some epic breaks in there). I don't want a louder head!!! But it sounds like with treatment confusion and dissociation decrease and I can have more a cohesive awareness and life -- which would be amazing.

It is alright to be afraid, and this is scary. It's like unlocking a door that's been shut for a very long time. But you are at the point where you are ready to confront your past and that is good. As Arbremonde said, things will get worse for a while before they get better.

DID is a way of coping with extreme childhood traumas, and those traumas can be all sorts of things that made a child unable to cope with the real world. One thing that we heard recently that has stuck is that 'alters are created by the mind of a child', so just remember that when you start meeting your other Selves as they can take all sorts of forms.

Another thing to keep in mind is that all systems are different. We came into this process with a certain level of co-consciousness already in place because there were always two of us acting as hosts and another two swapping out routinely. But others don't know about each other at any level and they may have whole swaths of their life just go blank. (We still have blank spots. It just depends on who holds what memories).

And you should be very proud of raising well adjusted children. It really is hard not to pass on your own traumas.

Take care,
Vi

Hello and welcome.

We have some who can shut out pain and emotion better than others can. Certainly they could much more efficiently in the past ... a more recent stroke though has had quite a big emotional impact on most of our system though, so we're not as efficient at that as we used to be.

you mention soldiers, our father used to be in the army and was quite strict. He often used the phrase 'who gave you permission to do that'...I think that's why we had many that only came out in secret...because if he didn't know they existed, they didn't need 'his permission' to exist or do anything..and having 'imaginary friends' (as they were considered back then) was 'not normal'.

Jay