On my blog entry entitled Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and “Hearing Voices”, a reader posted the following comment:
I know I have these inner voices yet I don’t know if they are attached to actual parts per say-with names and history. I was wondering, (without being intrusive) if your personal work began with just the voices and then finding out more later?? I do believe that my voices have been with me for a very long time on and off but I choose not to recognize them on some level. ~ Kim
Kim actually posted three comments to the blog entry, and the underlying message I am getting is the question of whether people with DID know that they have it. The answer in most cases (before therapy and diagnosis) is no.
The whole point of DID is to compartmentalize the spirit so that some parts hold the pain, memories, and emotions while other parts have the ability to appear completely normal to the outside word. My host personality was a very cheerful one. I was always smiling. Happy children are not viewed as possibly being abused, so creating a happy and upbeat host personality to be “me” whenever the abuse wasn’t happening was an effective way of hiding my secrets.
I had no awareness of having alter parts or losing time. In retrospect (after entering into therapy), I came to recognize that I had huge holes in my memory. However, my multiple system was brilliant in hiding this fact from my host personality.
I first suspected that I had an alter part about a year before the flashbacks started. As I would lie in my bed at night trying to sleep, I would feel someone “step into my face.” It felt like my facial features were changing, and I could feel a separateness from myself and that other part. I have a very hard time describing the feeling. The best way I can explain it is to think about blowing bubbles, and two bubbles share the space that should be filled by one. That is kind of what it felt like.
I had always been drawn to stories about DID (Truddi Chase, Sybil, Eve White, etc.), so I had an idea about what was going on. However, it made no sense because I believed that I had never suffered abuse. The truth of the matter is that my host personality had been safely hidden inside whenever the abuse happened, so that part of my spirit truly had not experienced the abuse. However, the host personality was only a tiny sliver of who I am.
I just assumed that this was more evidence of me being “crazy” and tried to block it out. Then, a year later, my mother/abuser went into my then-two-year-old son’s room during the night, and that is when all h@#$ broke loose in my life. (I do not believe that she harmed my son, thank goodness.) A part that I later learned was named Irate took over and let me (the host personality) stay “out” in a co-conscious way. I felt like I had been shoved over to the side of my head. My mind was racing with the fear that my mother had sexually abused my child. I was flooded with a ton of emotions that made absolutely no sense because they were not “my” emotions, and the thoughts were not “my” thoughts.
This blog entry is getting long, so I will continue with the story tomorrow.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
thanks Faith, keep going, this sounds so familiar and now that I have been diagnosed with DID things from my past make more sense.
I still cannot remember all the abuse, in fact I only remember a small amount of it. In your experience, is it the flashbacks that tell you about the abuse? or did you actually remember it in the same way you might remember a past event, kind of like “oh yeah, I remember now, it was…..”? I’m not sure if this question makes sense, hope it does.
barbi
Hi, Barbi.
All of my recovered memories came in flashbacks. They were vivid. I generally recover memories at night. By the morning, they exist in my head like any other memory. However, when I first recover them (have the flashback), it feels like I am reliving the event.
Most of my flashbacks were visual, but I have also experienced them through sounds, smells, taste, etc. Sometimes it is the release of a pent-up emotion. All are flashbacks — just experienced in different ways.
What has been bizarre is recovering memories from early adulthood. Most of my memories from childhood have huge holes. In adulthood, I had a pretty consistent memory. However, sometimes people would act and react to me in ways that made no sense in adulthood. Recovering the memories explained the missing pieces.
Take care,
- Faith
Faith, I would definitely have to agree with you. I never really thought about it. But, I had a passing memory of way back when in bed and having these conversations in my head and being terrified by them. It wasn’t long after that the severe barriers broke down and everything flooded. I really don’t remember back then, but I think parts just came out in droves. Life quickly became crazy and all the order fell completely apart. I think Kim’s statement is really valid. It’s about what we pay attention to. I see this all the time. I know things happen in the present, but if I’m more compartmentalized, it will just go by and I’ll not even register it.
Great post. As always.
Paul
It’s interesting. I think my younger sister is about at a place where she might realize she has DID. Or she might not. She has always known she loses time, but she admits that she knows she has blocked most of her childhood just the other day. However, she is able to talk about certain people and places without full knowledge of what happened while I, who has more access to memories, will use all my energy to push the memories away and act like I am not on the verge of panic.
To her the memories are still in the nightmares, the alien terror, and the obsession over time and searching for the missing pieces. But she has no idea where the lost time goes.
I figure it is best if I let her work it out on her own time-line. She is young and in a supportive and safe environment. She will have much more support than I did. It is hard to know what to do with siblings.
It’s funny. With so much missing time one would wonder how someone with DID doesn’t realize it. Really its not that hard. The brain is really good at filling in the missing pieces when denial is at stake.
Hi Cera,
I found this website and read what you have said about your sister.
I can give you some truth and answers about what your sister is going through. There was one word that you used and it caugth my eye, this is why I am commenting. I am going through similar things as your sister. I have some truth and I would like to share it with you if possible. Renae
[...] That They Have It?, learning that you have DID, living with DID, suspecting DID See my last post, Do People with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) Know That They Have It? for the first part of the [...]
Cera,
You said it. We don’t recognize the time loss because we don’t WANT to recognize it.
Take care,
- Faith
Dear Faith, I was just running throught this blog and am hearing about lost time which I have heard of many times before and never really understood what it meant in terms of someones experiences with it. Is it……
Is it 1.) Not remembering what you did yesterday or the day before or the day before who you were with, etc. or it being like a shadowy memory that the memory can be triggered if a friend reminds you sometimes, sometimes not.
Or is part of it haveing to:
2.) I write everyting down on my calendar, keep lists and journal to form a sense of order and compensate for severe memory problems or maybe losing time(not sure) and completely not knowing that I am? I would lose all sense of order and then I would really crack-up. I even write on my calendar what I did that day, when my bills are due, appt.’s etc. IF not I would be completely in the deepest dark. IF someone like Mother asks what I have been doing all week I can refer to the calendar. what is happeing that day or what transpired in the last week. Otherwise I’d be running around in circles having no grip of time, place, events, people etc. I would just stupidly say, “Duuuuh….”.
This is only for the week. As far as memory retrevial for things in the recent past, my adulthood, things are really sketchy there too! My brother would say,” Remember when we went to LA and went ice skating?’…I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings even thought I didn’t remember and just say, “Oh yeah..”
As far as my childhood that is like a black out of sorts. Yet I am comforted to know that it is part of the disorder.
Does it go something like this in your own experience?? Or is what you can make out of what I am describing have more to do with memory problems than loosing time.
Any thoughts?
Blessings,
Katie
well shit – your writing, and especially this post, resonates way too strongly with me. Others have suggested I look further into DID, but I just shove the suggestions aside. Maybe I need another look.
Hi
I was aware there were others (alters) when I was around 14 years old. I think most people (like me) with DID know they lose time and hear voices but assume everyone else does too.
You really get a sense of the spilt in personality from an early age when things like time outs or other punishment happen for “something you didn’t do.” Young children have no way of explaning this to adults and it just continues.
Parts have a way of making themselves know. Younger parts would stick out there tongue at me in the mirror and it would scare me. To them it was funny.
I do have repressed memories (before 4) but the theory of a therapist creating alters is definatly not true in my case.
Often people with DID will deny having it because of the stigma and shame of having an unbelievable condition.
The noise they hear that sounds like static or screaming will eventually become clearer and acceptance happens.
Just my thoughts…
Shelly
I could remember almost all of the abuse my dad did to me, except when he did it at night when I was sleeping. I think I never hear voices, but I did lose time when I experienced the worst violence (I think so, because I didn’t remember what happened, I just know the effect, I always said, “What is this? what did dad do to me?”)
During reading this blog, I have a question. Do you all have a witness? Did someone see what the abuser did to you? Did he/she help you?
In my case, I always think that my mom knew/knows, but she kept silent and never did anything to protect me. This thought makes me starting to hate her. Beside mom, nobody witnessed, he always did it in the house.
I think I should read The Myth of Sanity.
Hi, vergesslichkeit.
I highly recommend reading “The Myth of Sanity.”
My younger sister witnessed and was a victim of many of the same abuses. We were also forced to do things to each others. While I hate that she endured the same abuses, it really helped having the validation that this “out there” stuff really did happen.
My father knew about some of the abuse but did not stop enough of it. I have had to deal with my ambivalent feelings toward him.
- Faith
I had terrible nightmares, some recurring for years and year. I lost time and felt very guilty when I could not explain where I’d been or what I’d been doing. I thought there was something wrong with me – and there was – but I did not think it was something I wanted the world to know about. I had very catastrophic thoughts about what people would “think” if they knew about the lost time and nightmares.
I first heard the word dissociation from a therapist in 2007. I heard it as “dis- association” and had no idea what it meant. He said the word to me because I had switched right in front of him, for half a session. When I switched back he said that word and asked me if I ecer lost time.
I remembver my face flushing and a sick feeling in my stomach. He knew. It was terrifying to me.
I couldn’t say anything to him at the time. I didn’t affirm or deny. I went home and sent him an email asking him why he had asked me that. I heard nothing from him for a few days. WHen I finally did, he didn’t really answer the question.
In my next session he told me what he’d seen… a shift in my eyes from alert to vacant. A chang in body position. A deep breath and then a smile and calm affect.
This happened when he brought up a time in my childhood I could not remember. I had been close to tears before the switch, then suddenly I was calm and smiling and said something like, “What were we talking about?”
It scared me when he told me this. I didn’t doubt it but I didn’t want to know it either.
No… I had no idea I was DID. I did not even know what it was. I had kept myself completely safe from such knowledge, avoiding books and movies that touched on the subject and completely walling myself off to anything that might have triggered my own knowing.
great post.
I recently found out I have DID. And I am somewhat scared to find out why.
Dear Faith,
For almost 3 years now, I have had the feeling of being taken over. Like you had explained about laying there and your face just changing, I feel this all the time.
At the end of this past year, I discovered the show “United States of Tara” on Showtime, and yes, I do realize that the show is sort of a comedy, but some truth lies behind it.. After watching it, I became hooked on the show and I felt a connection with what was happening in the show.
I’m so confused whether or not I have it, I do hear voices in my head and at times feel as if I’m forgeting little things that had happened. I also have been told that at times, I act total different or doing things that are not expected from me.
I’m too scared to tell my parents about it, because I don’t want to be looked at or made fun of like a freak. The only person that I have told about any of this is my little sister, who has seen my “Alters” in action.
Does D.I.D. always result from something traumatic? because as far as I know, (which could be very little, I guess?), Nothing bad has happened to me.
Just wondering if you could help me sort somethings out…
Mason.
Hi, Mason.
Yes, the only way to develop DID is to endure severe and ongoing trauma at a young age (typically by age 6). I did not have ANY memories of trauma, either, when I started feeling alter parts “step into my face.”
- Faith
Well my only problem is, I don’t believe to have anything bad happen to me? So I don’t know what is going on…
Hi, Mason.
I am not trying to tell you whether you have DID or not because I cannot diagnose you. I just want to point out that a person with DID (from the perspective of the “host personality”), typically does not have any awareness of the trauma.
That’s the whole point of DID. It enables a person to distance himself from the trauma and interact with the world as if the trauma had not occurred. However, because the trauma did happen, all of the pain, memories, and emotions are lying beneath the surface and influence every aspect of your life even though you have no conscious memory of the trauma.
- Faith
I have inner voices that converse with each other and with myself, yet I do not know if they are actual alters or just me going crazy. Was diagnosed as having DID about 10 years ago but it was never documented, there is no record indicating I have this. Lately I have been having flashbacks of my childhood, which was traumatising, bits and pieces of it are shown to me and it is scary.
Hi, Susan.
Do you have a therapist? If you don’t, I strongly suggest you find one who is qualified in working with adult survivors of severe child abuse. I found the book “Safe Passage to Healing” to be particularly helpful for understanding DID:
Another great resource for any child abuse survivor is the “Survivor to Thriver” manual:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/survivor-to-thriver-manual/588019
- Faith
Dear Faith,
Hi my name is Dee Dee and I believe I’ve had dissociative identity disorder since childhood. I was molested at age 6 and then at age 17. I didn’t know that I was abused as a little boy until I was abused again at 17, this abuse triggered that memory from my childhood. I thought it was just my head at first but then my mom past in 2003 which at that point I was 18. I held this from her and never got to tell her and became depressed. I moved in with an aunt and after that I had a strange dream. I was walking down the street with people behind me and on the other side of the street was another me with people behind him. My people said, “We like Dee Dee better than David”. His people said “We like David better Dee Dee. I woke up thinking to myself, “What the hell was that and who is David and why did he look exactly like me”?! I didn’t understand it at first at all. After I graduated from highschool in 2004 at age 19 I got my first job at McDonalds. I had another strange situation happen where I had went to bed one night getting ready for work and the next day I just ended up at work. I had no memory of getting myself up or getting ready for work. I just went to bed the night before and lost time between then and getting up and woke up already at work not remembering getting myself there at all. After family and friends started to tell me I’d act different or wouldn’t come around. I just brushed it off. I’m 26 now and between then and now I’ve researched my symptoms and was led to dissociative identity disorder. I want to know from a person like you who was diagnosed with D.I.D does this sound like a case of D.I.D or could my symptoms be from something else?
Hi, Dee Dee.
I am not a therapist and cannot diagnose anyone. Let’s just say that I see red flags for possible DID. I recommend finding a qualified therapist with experience working with people who have suffered from severe abuse.
- Faith