On my post Contrasting My DID Integration Experience with Sybil’s, a reader left the following comment:
Please keep writing the personal experience stuff – it is so much more useful and informative from someone who as been there. – Emily
This week, I will focus on more of the “personal experience stuff” that relates to my history with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Feel free to post comments or to email me with specific question you have or topics that you would like for me to cover.
Many years ago, I read Truddi Chase’s book, When Rabbit Howls. I remember noting that the book mentioned several times that Truddi could not use a watch. Whenever she tried to wear a watch, it did funky things like speed up or slow down, so she had to get by without a watch.
My sister has always had the same problem. She tends to carry a pocket watch or a watch that clips onto her purse because watch batteries die on her very quickly.
I used to not have a similar issue, but that changed when I started focusing on healing from my history of child abuse. I had one watch that I had used for many years. The watchband broke, so I decided to buy myself a new watch. I had the same problems that Truddi Chase reported. Sometimes the watch would run slow. Other times the watch would run fast. However, the one thing that the watch would not do was keep accurate time.
I exchanged the watch for a different one, and the same thing happened. By this point, I figured out that I was the problem and not the watch. One watch salesman verified that some people have stronger magnetism that affects the ability of a watch to work. I wound up buying a new band and going back to my old watch, which continues to work just fine.
My sister has always had freakish-level magnetism. In fact, she used to do bar tricks with it. She would ask for a knife and a pile of paperclips. After holding the knife in her hands for a few moments, it would magnetize enough to pick up not only a paperclip but an entire chain of paperclips. I do not know many people who can do this.
I do not know the scientific explanation for all of this. Perhaps all of the brain energy involved in repressing memories results in a higher state of magnetism than most people experience?? All I know is that I have experienced the phenomenon firsthand and watched my sister do her bar tricks, even with knives that other people gave her, so she could not have done something to the knife in advance.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
I don’t even recall the last time I owned a watch. I tried all kinds, wind up, battery powered, digital, self-propelled (it’s almost like wind-up, without the winding stem) and NOT one of them worked for longer than a couple of days on my arm.
I am noticing the same thing with my computer clock, now that I work on the computer for long hours. The time was always wrong my computer at work. I would always reset it. The time is off on my computer at home.
I never thought to connect it to my abuse…or that magnetism might be a result of the abuse.
This isn’t exactly the same… but I thought it interesting. When I started trying to explain “leaving” (what became labeled as “Swithing”) then the only way I could describe “me” is that it was like a huge magnet to the right of my body pulled “me” off to the side and then this “other” came out.
When I finally found an image to describe what occurs to me, then my T. explained switching.
I think your observation about the watch/computer is on tract with something that eventually could be qualified within a scientific realm. The fMRI-or “”functional Magnetic resonance imaging” of the brain has been able to detect mental activity of “parts” or perhaps the equivalent of surviving abuse.
I like your analogy of a magnetic pull. Yes, that is kind of like my experience. It sounds nicer than being “shoved aside,” which is how I explained it. :0)
I would love to hear about any studies of magnetism that links to trauma survivors. What I wrote about was just my personal observation.
– Faith
I can’t wear a watch either…the battery operated ones won’t run and the wind up ones spin out of control. I can’t wear hearing aids either…just get this buzzing sound.
I found the reference to MRI interesting…I had an MRI of the brain and the neurologist noticed increased activity that he couldn’t or didn’t feel comfortable explaining. I had read about a study done with nuns and prayer, checking for increased activity in what they called the God spot. The nuns would concentrate of prayer during the MRI. They saw changes. For me, I was scared of the MRI…too much noise and too closed in, felt like we were in a coffin…so I sent in one of my other parts. I saw the MRI, it lit up like a Christmas tree.
This is a very interesting fact; Trudi Chase found that watches would malfunction, yes, but also, electrical apliances such as radios or tape players or video cameras would not work around her- this is a phenomemon some people with D.I.D. experience. The intricate way in which the brain works, and has been trained to work since infancy, actually affects electronic items. It’s not magnetism per se. I’m not sure that I have D.I.D. to the extent that Truddi does, yet I find often that light globes will blow when I touch the switch and occasionally computer will behave weirdly, and electrical items if plugged in can just blow or frizz out and cease working. It doesn’t happen 100 percent of the time, but it’s real. Truddi must have been sedated, or meditated or undergone significant healing to appear on Oprah.