This blog entry completes a series of three on the topic of my experience of becoming aware that I had dissociative identity disorder (DID). You can read the other blog entries here and here.
One issue I wrestled with in the early years of healing from child abuse was how I could have had DID for my entire life without having any symptoms or signs. Once I took a retrospective view of my life, the DID was the missing link to many questions I had always had about my life.
I had the symptom of people knowing me who I did not know. I apparently bonded with a high school sophomore while I was a junior at band camp. I have no memory (other than what I recovered through flashbacks ) of attending band camp at all, although I was always aware that I had attended band camp. I have always remembered this sophomore going out of her way to say hello to me by name and being baffled by who this person was and why she thought she knew me when I did not know her.
I had the symptom of people having strong feelings toward me with no explanation as to why. In my freshman year of college, one student in my dorm HATED me and would harass me by leaving ugly messages on my door. My friends asked me repeatedly why this young woman hated me because – believe me – she was NOT subtle about her intense dislike for me. I had absolutely no idea why she disliked me so badly. I even asked her one time and tried apologizing for however I had offended her, and she was not receptive in the least. She said I knew darn well why she hated me – I truly did not.
In my sophomore year of college, my ex-boyfriend spread rumors that I was pregnant with his baby. Since we had never had intercourse (I believed I was a virgin), I was baffled as to why he would say such a thing and assumed he was just trying to ruin my reputation.
I would visit with my mother and have no recollection of what we had talked about immediately afterward. I would try to remember the annoying things she said to tell my husband, but I simply could not remember. I also thought I had blood sugar issues because I would feel very lightheaded whenever I was around my mother.
My husband would tell me about conversations – sometimes long conversations – that we had that I did not remember. I believed I was talking in my sleep, but he said I seemed awake during these conversations. I had no recollection of those conversations even after his prompting.
Yes, the signs were all there – I just wasn’t ready to deal with them. I was so determined to believe that I was a “normal” person who had not been abused that I found a way to lie to myself and hide an awareness of having DID.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Hi Faith,
I had the same bewilderment about having DID and not realizing it for most of my life until about 6 years ago. I supposed that is part of the reason for DID, or at least as it functioned to help me, that is: to separate trauma from consciousness in order to function. ALthough I think after awhile it didn’t have to be “trauma” just fear to switch.
Anyway, when I looked back I could see the signs. As an adult I had a condition that my dr said was most commonly the result of high promiscuity in my youth. When I told him my husband was the only man I’d ever slept with he looked at me like, “Ok, I’ll keep your secret.” But obviously didn’t believe me. Not too many years later I was at a high school reunion and one of the guys, a good friend, told me how surprised he was that I was the steady, conservative person that I was since I was so wild and known as “easy” in high school. I thought I had always been steady and a “good girl.” But when he said that I just figured my boyfriends had been trying to brag up their prowess. Since I felt I had no right to boundaries, now I realize he was telling the truth.
There are many things like that, when I look over my childhood and even some of my adult life. Although in my adult life after about 22 I do believe I have been faithful to my husband.
It did make the universe seem hugely strange for many years as I began to deal with DID. But now after 5 years of healing work, it feels less like a dream/nightmare and more simply real. I cherish “real.”
Thanks
Ruby
That must have been so disorienting and scary. Glad you are past that part.
Peace,
mia
I found out I had alters quite suddenly when one made herself known to me. I had begun to experience feelings about traumatic events that had happened years ago as a child and my world had turned upside down. Over about two weeks eight distinct and complete identities came forward to me and shared themselves. They were strange and familiar at the same time, if that makes sense. Two years later I would be diagnosed DID. That was 25 years ago. I have not integrated, but there has been progress. Processing and integrating trauma takes as long as it takes. Caring people want to tell me that it doesn’t define me; it’s just something that happened to me. I understand what they are saying but how could it not define me? I don’t have access to the person I was before I was shattered by someone else’s brutality. The biggest obstacle to healing has been my shaky acceptance of who I am today. I can’t look at who I am without also seeing why am who I am, and even after years that is very painful.
Hi. I finally got my computer figured out to be able to post a comment. Was having trouble.
First i want to say a heartfelt thankyou (beyond) to faith. You answered helped immeasuably. I wont forget it.
I figured out that i have *unconsciously* been dealing with this for a long long time. Also. Running from it.
Years of hiding or overexplaining behaviors i had no explaination for or did not recall.
Looking back. I *know* i knew i had other parts of me leaving me to wonder who is “me”. ( today i am struggling with that. Who is me?).. . But i KNOW i knew it at 11. I saw my own self. . Not me tho being sexually used enjoying pain. Wanting more. And that person i watched was angry. Not me. I *knew* this.
After that occurred. .I remembered it. I was in junior high. I read anything and everything that i coukd find to try to explain to myself why i felt crazy. What had happened. There was noone to ask.
I felt crazy. I had pretty much always known that otgers did NOT think or act in various mannerisms or behaviors and/ or not remember things people would sY i had said or done. Or simply find myself in the midst of some situation i was not in. .Had no recollection of.
This. This. Is so scary.
I told noone. I denied. Lied. Pretended. Survived. Didnt (luckily) ever really mess up bad and not remember what i did. Bad at least to where it could hurt another. Just me.
In therapy in my 20s i never hinted at it to my t. I was as far from dealing as i could be.
I think that it has now been two years since i started with hearing more increase “noise” in my head. What i called a zoo of trampling animals fighting for space and to tell. .Speak.
Frightening. Floods of memories tgreatened to take me under. I think. .Looking back. , i was not doing very well.
I recovered so many incomprehensible memories. Flashbacks. Feelings. Dread. The ever present feeling i must be crazy. Then the Hell memories that took me to a place in my spirit that seemed to make me want to not exist. But exist i did. Not believing or understanding any of it. And i would lay down to sleep rest. .And the dizzyness would be unlike any other ive known.
One day i had i suppose. .A moment of clarity. .That if i just stopped fighting my noise in my mind. . Stop trying to push it out. Shut it up. So
so. . I *listened* and as i listened the dizzy stopped. And it was not is not like actual voices now. But conversations none the less. Thoughts from different ones. I wanted to run as this happened. As i accepted. I do not want this. It is mine though. Is it me. .All of me? Or who am i? As one person commented “i never got to know who i was before.”.
My therapist is being amazing. She knows how scared i am. She is tgere. My dearest friend is there. Walking this with me. Writing on here and ISurvive is somehow *harder* now. I used to have so many words.now my words and sentences are messssssy in my head. I get “corrected” about a thought or information i want to say. It absolutely mind crazymaking.
Outside noise at work. .Cowirkees are making me so very anxious. Worse than ever. I have so much trouble “staying” in one behavior. .Self. .that the coworkers know. I go in and out at work and home. Is this because i *realize* it now?
I am rambing i know. My thoughts do that. I do not know how to do any of this and feel sane. I feel a mess. My head thoughts are messy unorganized. I feel overwhelmed and so utterly exhausted.
It gets easier i hope.?
One good thing. The nightmares have eased some. Not entirely. Though i still do not feel i am sleeping. Resting.
Thanks for listening.
Thankyou, faith.
Thanks Faith. It helps me to read other’s experiences, and see that I am indeed DID; something that was hard for me to accept until recently. I have many of those small fragment/parts that can’t really be called a personality and they confused me with what I call their “single prime directive”. Plus, at an early age I developed what I have recently learned is called co-consciousness. I have suffered a great deal of shame and confusion over the times when I would feel myself become a bystander and watch myself say and do things that I knew were going to bring me trouble, but be unable to do anything about it. It’s like being tied up and helplessly yelling “NO, NO, NO!” at someone who is about to hurt themselves, and they just can’t hear you. (Except I also have one that knows darn well I’m yelling No and has in the past gone ahead with it anyway in order to hurt me!) Anyway, it seems that most of the time therapists and doctors just don’t pick up on DID unless there is a big lost time issue, and I’ve had very little of that and what I did have I was totally unaware of. After 7 therapists treating me for PTSD, I finally found one who figured it out. He said realized the fact after he got to know me and he noticed that he was never sure which Brighid was walking in the door and so he had me take the appropriate tests. (Also I would cover the same trauma’s over and over again, from different perspectives, because, as I know now, more than one part wanted to be heard.) Now when I look back on my life everything makes so much sense to me, and that’s a healing thing in itself. I, too, knew about MPD but I thought that because of the issue of lost time and waking up in a new city, etc., that I couldn’t possibly have it. Yet the constant arguing in my head, and the experience of having people hate me that I’d only ever been kind and friendly to, or so I thought, could not be ignored. (There were big lapses in my memory) Life’s been hard because of these things, and the frightened parts of me finally won by isolating “us”. I have just had a huge victory in therapy with this fear and isolation thing, by comforting a little shamed girl and another fragment, and it’s amazing. It’s wonderful to know that this can be fixed! It may take a long time, but I’m so happy about it.