What Kind of Trauma Causes Dissociative Identity Disorder #AskATherapist

What Kind of Trauma Causes Dissociative Identity Disorder #AskATherapist

What kind of trauma causes Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, formerly know as Multiple personality Disorder? What is Dissociative Identity Disorder and what does it mean for our mental health? Watch this video to understand what this dissociation means in all areas of your life.

#DissociativeIdentityDisorder
#AskATherapist
#Mended Light

[twinstarssystem]

It's important to note that systems don't typically have originals (if you drop a glass, which shard is the original?) and the host is not always the core. Hosts can and often do change, and many systems even have multiple hosts or no hosts.

[DIDHatchery]

I have DID, and I think doctors might have a fundamental misunderstanding of DID. It’s real to the person because it’s really happening. I have alters that are nothing like me. I have alters that will physically push me from the front, though I’m resisting dissociation. I just wish there was better & more thorough understanding of DID. It’s the Middle Ages for our disorder, & it shouldn’t be. Thanks for the video.

[tanadarko]

I went to therapy for dissociative disorders, brought on by sexual abuse as a child. I often lost spaces of time, and had a kind of secondary ... not quite person who'd take over, but this other self that would scream at me when I was under intense pressure, or would murmur nasty things at me when I felt shame and fear. I just called her The Dark. I just wasn't present in my life. I thought I had a bad memory but really I just wasn't like, here, to remember things.
Eventually with counseling these episodes stopped happening, and The Dark was integrated into my life as part of my personality. It's still there in a way - this kind of terrified protector who wants to keep me from falling in love or trusting men or anything that might hurt me again in the future. Counseling was difficult with it ... Like I had been trained to be silent so thoroughly that when I tried to talk about my experiences (or tried to remember) I'd just stop talking and slip into this silent dissociative state - get kinda light-headed and feel like I was asleep.
Eventually I learned that I could write things down, and bring those into my therapist. It was an odd little loophole to break that secrecy and be seen.

It took me a long time to get there, and a lot of work. But I can remember things fine now, timelines are more clear. I dissociate so rarely that I notice it and take note rather than it being a normal part of my life I didn't used to notice. I was really poor and I'm so thankful that I had a counselor who'd see me for such little money. He saved my life, helped me to save myself.

[Ona]

I used to have DID. Some of my alters were much older than I am. One was motherly 70 year old woman, named Martha, who was nurturing. She enjoyed comforting and interacting with small children and people who were injured or sick. I had an alter who was a 65 year old man, named Tough as Nails Willie. He was tough as nails and he was willing to be completely ruthless when it came to my father. He wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to destroy my father. Martha had been with me, at least since I was 14 years old. I had a 15 year old alter named, Lainy. She is the one who held on to the memory of when my father strangled me. I was very small when he did that. I couldn't have been older than 7 years old. She was dark, sad, suicidal and self harmed a lot. She wanted nothing more than to be dead. She was afraid to do anything that could antagonize a man, including saying no to sex when she didn't want it. When I learned to coordinate with my alters, we were able to encourage her to go to sleep so that she wouldn't be in pain. I didn't want to integrate, but it was the price of healing. I had 13 alters. I love them and I miss thier presence

[MLEbug]

I have DID and I can't tell you how good it is to see someone talking about it in a non-judgemental way. The media has really screwed up the public view on it. Thanks for your support!

[annayo]

I have DID from vicarious trauma. My mother is a CSA survivor, and disclosed to me at age 4 in vivid detial over many years. My presentation feels very unique to me; all the DID (AKA: Multi-Faceted) folks in my sphere have a harder time switching and communicating between alters than I seem to. Just wanted to share.

[jubilantfae]

Thank you for this video Jonathan. As someone diagnosed with DID I can say, so many people only focus on the spitting personality aspect of the disorder and not the incredible painful trauma that comes with it.

[Magus_Union]

To me, DID seems like the biological equivalent of 'creating Operation System (OS) partitions on a hard drive' within the brain for a person. Each partition has its own background code and rules by which its able to run (or in some cases not compatible to run) various programs installed within it. For a person, these "programs" would be social skills, interpersonal rationalization, understanding emotional needs and possibly logical reasoning.

I didn't have a good emotional response to my parents divorce. I physically reacted in an unhealthy and unsanitary way. This was a great source of embarrassment for myself and my family. My father's solution was to yell at me each time these incidents occurred, and berate my inability to keep myself clean & proper. The volume by which he roared was enough to often shake walls and terrify the pets in the house (I was between the ages of 6 - 12 during these incidents). My social circumstances were often impaired as well, and my mother wasn't much help as she was equally neglectful of the family's emotional needs. I finally did 'grow out of' said physical reactions; but it came at the cost of a fragmentation of the self into several illusionary and fantasy personas I craved to be, instead of the weak and shameful person I felt I was. This became a reoccurring, emotional conditioning I experienced, that my 'default' self and in-born persona was too flawed and worthless to be of value or significance to anything or anyone in the world. And if I didn't adopt a stronger personality of an identity that could achieve things in the world, that my existence would amount to nothing for the non-person that I am.

Anyway, just a theory and personal experience as to why I believe DID may function the way it does. Apologizes for oversharing if this violates ToS.

[suemyles]

I am a multiple and grateful for this straight forward, kind talk. It is an antidote to the sensationalism of Hollywood. Thank you

[tisi]

There is no "Ass" in Dissociative Identity Disorder oder Dissociation 😉
(You kept saying "Dis-as-sociation"🤓✌🏼)

[KristinaSlack]

Thank you for this explanation. It was well put and, I feel, very respectful. It seems there's a growing interest in DID these days and it kind of upsets me. In fact, I have read whole threads about people who intentionally "create systems" for some reason. I understand these people are searching for something, for any number of reasons, but this... this is like saying you're intentionally trying to give yourself heart disease. I really don't understand people.

I was diagnosed with what was at that time called MPD when I was 15 and I had never even heard of it before that. It wasn't something people really talked about. I had just started going to group therapy, in secret, with a friend of mine who knew about certain types of abuse that had been happening in my home for a very long time. The woman who ran the group noticed me dissociating but didn't say anything until the day one of my alters caused a scene. I had no idea afterward that anything at all had happened. It's so weird to know you're doing things and don't know it. There were so many instances, but the brain is very very good at hiding it, at protecting itself. Especially when it still needs to be protected.

It took me a long time to heal. I still have a really bad memory and I've just had to come to terms with that. I'm not integrated, but I'm... glued together. I like it that way. I think however our brains are is how we learn to function. I feel like DID is my super power. Everyone else's brain is (in my mind) just a big mass off tangled yarn they're always picking through to find thoughts and emotions; does that make sense? Mine are in certain spaces and I had to learn all my emotions later in life, so everything is a lot more compartmentalized. I mean, my emotions are still messy, because I don't quite understand how to use them properly unless I call on a certain alter more, but at least I know where to go for that emotion. Or certain talents or needs or stuff.

I had to work really hard to get through the trauma and heartache that came with all of this. DID develops because of a perfect storm that happens to someone and it's just not something you'd ask for. You use what you get and turn it into a strength, of course, but I really wish... I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, I hope this helps some people understand DID a little better. :)

[Alyzvettema]

I have DID and everyone ive ever tried to explain it too only cares about is the splitting part.. like dude.. i dont want this. I didnt want the trauma that made it. It’s fucking horrible

[milocat]

As an adult, I've experienced a dissociative state where I felt like I had two distinct personalities, one of which was supplanting the other (my actual personality.) It was in response to emotional abuse. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. It is a horrible feeling: a kind of death. You feel like the other personality is killing you from within. You're being taken over by an impostor. Full-on DID must be terrifying for the person living it. :(

[ShadowYaz]

I'm not sure if he mentioned this but, it is currently understood that DID can only be acquired during childhood. As the mind develops it fuses together all the "modes" you have as a child. By the time you're 8-9 your personality has fused into one and there's no ctrl+z for that. It's permanent. But with DID, some of the "modes" can't integrate and start developing alongside the host and once the brain starts relying on "splitting" to cope, there's no ctrl+z for that either. So... DID is caused by curb-stomping a child's mind so hard it shatters.

[Maerahn]

Came here from your Gollum video. 😁
As I said there, I was clinically diagnosed with PTSD and OSDD in my early twenties following a mental breakdown which put me in a psychiatric unit for eleven months. My OSDD diagnosis includes OSDD-1 (which is a kind of less-delineated version of DID.) I'm now fifty, and I've had to undergo quite a bit of therapy over the years to get to the place I'm at now with my 'team.' Most of it was building enough trust between us to share more information with each other (so we're not doing and saying stuff 'behind each others' backs' that could come back to bite one of us in the ass later because we don't know what the heck's gone on.) We communiate with each other much better these days - although I don't think we'll ever fully resolve the herbal tea issue. 😋
I wish Hollywood could be more sensitive about its portrayal of identity disorders though. Gollum is the most compassionate and accurate one I've seen - the rest are mostly garbage, because they can't seem to get past using it for their 'Serial Killer With a Twist!' trope. I have a special hatred for M. Night Shamalayan in that sense - his portrayals of mental illness in general are disgustingly harmful, but I will NEVER forgive him for the atrocity that was 'Split.'

[FREAKOFNATURE-mboo]

I've always been fascinated by DID, so I'm glad you posted this!

[Wungolioth]

When I was 4, I experienced almost total memory loss, I can remember the day I woke up and it being, for all practical purposes, the first day of my life. I've been told that I had a high fever and they gave me a spinal tap to ensure I didn't have spinal meningitis. It may have been caused by the fever or trauma from the spinal tap, but it was never determined. I know I either remembered my family, or I was comfortable enough not to question it at my age, but anything else I was a blank. For most of my life I never really questioned it, but I remember in my childhood feeling very disconnected a lot of the time, like I was watching a movie about someone else through my own eyes. As an adult, it was one of those things you tell people as in interesting fact about you, but nothing more, but it was only more recently I wondered if they'd ever done studies on the effects of memory loss on children, and what kind of trauma that might cause, or personality disorders. I know my parents did take me in to get an EKG on my brain, which I believe is the least they could do, but little else, certainly not therapy. If you have any kind of information on the effects of memory loss on children, I'd really like to look into this more.

[siristhesalamander]

I don't have any experiences realted to DID, but it definitely feels good to get a better understanding of it! Thanks for sharing!

[C-SD]

I very much appreciate you making this video. Particularly because I know that you are respectful and listen to those of us dealing with this. Would love to see longer videos.

[lasagnad]

Would you consider making a video on how to find a good therapist or generally actual help for people with DID, please?
Thank you for the video and I hope you have a wonderful day :)