what kinds of hallucinations are common in DID

hi,

i've read that people with DID can have hallucinations, mostly hearing internal voices.

I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I have heard voices externally..as if someone else is in the room, but most of the voices i hear are internal. There are two different kinds of internal voices i hear. Some of them sound as if they come from a speaker that has been implanted inside my ear. The others come in the same form that one's own thoughts do, only they are not my thoughts--they are the voices of other people and i have no control over them. Usually, when i am hearing the internal voices, i get feelings of being possessed along with them, or some other kind of strange bodily feeling. It's not always people talking either. The other night, i woke up and started hearing a woman screaming and moaning inside my head. It lasted for about 5 minutes.

I also have visual hallucinations, many of these are also internal--what i mean is, i have strange visions/images inside my head. Mostly when i am in a dark room. I will see faces of monstrous/demon lookinhg people, or gaping wounds with blood, or a bunch of other weird things that i cant even describe. These aren't the same as the way one sees their own thoughts. It's kind've like the way i hear some of my voices-like a speaker has been implanted in my ear, only with the visions, it's like someone has implanted a tv screen inside my eyes...if that makes any sense.

I also have external visuals. I'll see shadows and bugs crawling on the walls. And i see things moving, like they are pulsing,changing shape, swaying, etc.

So anyways, im just curious to know what types of hallucinations people with DID can have and what forms they come in. Can they be external? or always internal?

thanks

-Becka

Becka,

Before I was integrated I used to have small halluciations that would briefly flash through my mind. Some were extefrrnal and some internal. I used to hear voices too...but it was usually internally. The times it became external were quite frightening to me.

Also, the hallucinations and voices skyrockted depending on how depressed I was. And it still is very much the same today. I have depression with psychotic symptoms. About a year ago my p doc asked me if I would like to try a very low dose of abilify (15 mgm's)
It worked wonders for me I am happy to say.

Perhaps it is part of another condition coexisting with DID. A friend of ours with DID is also bipolar, and she has had some hallucinations such as you describe, and takes seroquel and lithium.

Personally, I have not had any hallucination except for a couple that were induced by reactions to some meds. I havent heard any external voices before, only those inside, that are much like thoughts (just not mine). Sometimes I do get flashes of images in my mind, especially at night when trying to sleep, but what they are? who knows?

Dr's have tried me on all sorts of meds, antidepressants, antipsychotics etc, and none of them helped in any way. They either did nothing, or I reacted badly to a lot of them and couldn't take them.

So, whether hallucinations etc are part of DID in some way, or are part of another coexisting condition, I can't say for sure, but I would think it is more likely to be a coexisting condition, possibly in conjuction with DID perhaps.

Our 2c

Lahl

i too see the pulsing and changing shape of things. i was told it is a form of derealization, not necessarily a hallucination. not that that made me feel better about it.

i was diagnosed with DID 5 years ago and to the best of my knowledge I have never had an hallucination. I don't think hallucinations are a part of DID.

Emily,
I tend to agree with you. I think my hallucinations were more related to depression.

Kathy

I once heard a woman scream as if she were in the room with me and my therapist said that it was someone inside screaming. The flashbacks, when I was back in the moment of the abuse, along with the spells, sensations of that moment, were like hallucinations I guess. I also have an illness that requires a lot of medications and those medications cause hallicinations sometimes, so I'm not sure if did/hallucinations go together or if, in my case, they are separate. I would say the smelling smells that aren't there and occassionally hearing sounds that aren't there are a part of the flashbacks. At least in my case.

In 1984 I was misdiagnosed with having schizophrenia, paranoid type, sub acute (just dug up my old records this minute to explain exactly what they had diagnosed me with). This misdiagnose the doctors gave me was probably due to a couple reasons: I hid my actual real events from the doctors and told them about my dreams, hallucinations and voices instead. For some reason I was very protective and secret of what I knew (some of the trauma experiences that I knew about at the time), so I told them about my unrealities instead in the hopes that they would understand what was wrong with me that way. I didn't work as planned though because they never were able to diagnose what I actually had, and that is DID.

The voices I heard happened different ways.
I had internal voices and I had external voices. The external voices were like as though there were people standing around nearby and talking. Sometimes these external voices would whisper in my ear as though it was telling me something in secret. The external voices would also come inside of me at times and talk either inside of my head or somewhere else inside of my body.
The internal voices, I will define as being confined inside of me. On rare occasions I also heard other voices as like they were (hard to explain here) foreigners who were using my mind for their own personal communications.
As a child when I first began having DID symptoms I had verbal arguments with these voices, and I actually began beating myself up physically due to it. But after mediating with these voices we became best of friends. True friends to be exact.
Many times in life I woke up out of a sleep after hearing my internal voices talking with each other.

Visual hallucinations I had were awesome!
Some were like a 3-D hologram, and small in appearance.
Others were like animated charactors which I would see in visions. They would occur either while being asleep or in a stupe conscious state (or they just simply came about).
Others were so real looking. These real looking ones were usually actual people who I saw differently. Sometimes they did appear by themselves though.
I also saw shadow figures. These shadow figures were actually people standing near me. The other shadows I saw were either my physical self shadow or shadows that I would see out of the corner of my eye.
I also saw earthly and even nonhuman creatures at times and even other things like blood and other material objects.

Another thing I experienced was when people were talking to me. I would hear them say words and sentences which they were actually not speaking.

Funny thing about dissociation. You never remember that you dissociated until later.

This was my first posting at this forum. I hope I was helpful.

JCK

It was helpful and reminded me a lot of myself/selves. I've progressed so far that I sometimes forget what it was like before I knew who the voices were.
Thank you.
Raeyne