ask anything about DID

revives this thread to make A Complain
I always get really uncomfortable and kinda angry when I see people who say they're DID systems refer to themselves as 'we' in everything and anything. like all the damn time just. "we like this, we think that, we did this today."
why does this bother me?? well, first off, if you feel like a cohesive unit, you probably don't have DID, you have something closer to OSDD if you have anything at all. but secondly....there's a major struggle for individuality for me and some of the others here because of the whole DID thing. like, when I first found out I had DID, I freaked the fuck out about "is it really my life? is this really my body? can I claim ownership of anything? am I really me, or am I just one piece of a whole and therefore not individual and don't matter in any way?" and it was....crazy upsetting. and the others struggle with that a lot of the time too, especially because they have to pretend to be me a lot of the time, and that can involve misgendering for some of them, and always being called by the wrong name, and never getting to express their own opinions or wear what they want to wear and....it's hard for all of us! so we do our best to keep ourselves separate. very, very rarely do any of us refer to ourselves as 'we' because that makes us feel like....just a cog in a machine, rather than a unique personality, even if we know we are really a unique personality that just happens to share a body with others. like, I'm referring to us as 'we' right now, because this is a feeling that basically all of us share--but the rest of the time? there's no 'we think this, we like that, we did this', because we don't all think the same thing, we don't all like the same stuff, and unless we were all cofronting at the same exact time (which would be like. impossible) then only one or maybe two of us did that thing, and it feels disingenuous and uncomfortable to refer to ourselves as 'we' all the time about everything. there's such a big struggle for each of us to feel like our own person, and it's....hard. it's even hard for me, and I thought I was the only person here for the longest fucking time--it's even more difficult for the others, who've only ever been part of a system and have always known they're not the only ones in here. it just makes you feel like you don't matter as an individual, like no one appreciates you for you, and no one wants to know you personally. and it makes me wonder, a lot of the time, if I can really call anything mine, or even consider myself an individual. it's....really fucking hard to deal with. and it just bothers me so much to see people who claim to be systems constantly referring to themselves as 'we', especially when the very few other actual-DID systems I know also struggle with individuality and such and would never refer to themselves as 'we' unless the situation really called for it. so yeah. idk. it bugs the hell outta me.

 

do you want hugs? i'm here to offer hugs. that sounds horribly annoying though, I'm sorry :(

 

hugs are good. I would like hugs.
it is...really annoying. and also vaguely invalidating at times? sometimes I see it and I go "maybe I should be more like that with my systemmates. maybe if we're not like that we're not a real system." just because....that behavior is so widespread among people who say they have DID and it just. makes me wonder if we should be like that. ....and then I really think about it and I go "oh gods no that would be horrible." but it still sucks for those like. ten minutes.

 

to be fair, you have to take what some people say is DID with a grain of salt at best, I think. but, hey, to each their own, their behavior is no reflection on your own. maybe they are systems that always co-front with one another, or that are always aware of each other and what whoever is fronting is thinking/doing/feeling? who knows, but the way you feel about it is as perfectly valid as the way those other people may, and you're no less of a system for not liking it!

[lots of hugs]

 

true. it just sort of bothers me because it feels like....I don't know, a lot of doctors and even people on Tumblr seem to expect systems to present in one, uniform way, and there are even blogs that run around harassing systems they deem 'fake', and idk, I'm just sort of terrified of that happening, and so when I feel like we might be invalid or not doing the system thing 'right', I kiiiiiiiiiiiinda freak out. and it's not really fair of me, I suppose, to be mad at other possible systems for doing the 'we' thing, but it just. is kind of hard not to? blaaaaaaaah.
although if they know what whoever is fronting is thinking/feeling, I'd be inclined to suspect OSDD, not DID. knowing what whoever's fronting is doing is 100% possible with DID, though, so that's a definite thing that could be happening. and I imagine some systems are small enough that they can always be co-fronting, so that's also a possible thing.
even so I just. can't get over my reaction that's just sort of 'noooooooooooooooooo, no' :/
but thank for hugs c:

 

hey, that's okay! i hope i didn't make you feel like I was saying that your reaction to it was somehow invalid or that it shouldn't bother you, only trying to offer ways to look at it that might help! if you're scared of getting harassed, just, if it happens, block and move on - you have your diagnosis and your experiences and they have no right to say whether or not it's valid, cause they don't know you and their experience is in no way universal. :D

 

oh, no, you didn't make me feel that way at all!! it's just another thing I think about sometimes. and...logically I know if I got harassed about this, it would just be one or two blogs and I could just block them and move on but. idk. I have this incessant fear of them then continuing to talk about me behind my back and turning various random people or even people I know against me :/ I know it's not logical, but I just....feel it anyway. sighs. but thank you for the kind words c:

 

hey, i get that paranoia all the damn time too, you're not alone haha. so i getcha. i hope ur doing okay rn though <3

 

Witnessed. That sounds like it sucks. For what it's worth, I do think of you as yourself and your alters as separate people who happen to have come from your brain and live in your body.
...I can't find a way to word that that doesn't sound like I'm asking for a pat on the back. I just want you to know that there are people who Get It (or try to.)

 

it doesn't sound like you're asking for a pat on the back, honestly. it's actually....really reassuring to hear someone gets it, and thinks of us as different people, because honestly part of my issue with this is just that....I've had people not consider us separate people. like one of my exes, back when I was first learning about DID and had just learned I had it, I tried to tell her about it and she basically went "but you're all the same person in the end" and it was. really, really not what I wanted to hear. and I tried to explain that that wasn't the case and she just would not listen. so idk, it's really good to know that there are people who get it, or try to, instead of just writing us off as 'one cohesive person with no differences between any of us'.

 

Thanks for writing out all you have. It's interesting to see a system so different from the one I grew up with. My mom was diagnosed with MPD back when it was still MPD and not DID. She's been more or less integrated for most of my life, with a resplinter after I nearly died, and that's when we found out that the core had thought she was dead since around 1996 or so because of my mom's concussion post car-crash. So it's been the core, the personality she shaped to be the perfect mother, and a handful of child alters over the past ten-ish years.
When I was around five or so I confronted my mom with "I look at you sometimes and you are not my mommy" and she replied "do you think I'm going to tell you that you're wrong?"
In theory the rule was no switching in front of me, but there's only so much control to be had over that, and I was way more intuitive than I had any right to be. I think everybody in the system currently that she's aware of is co-conscious by and large, but there are still occasional gaps. Especially if current child alter is holding the reins.

 

Dang. Was that scary, or did it become normal/okay?

 

I believe she brought me in to her therapist with her for a session or three to make sure I was okay. I'm 23 years removed from it now, and while at the time I looked at her with very big eyes and nodded yes, I think for the most part it became normal/okay. She was mostly beyond what my dad refers to as "the 31 flavors phase" by the time I was born. So I think bringing me to therapy and letting me talk through everything with a professional who was familiar with treating kids and also familiar with my mom's case in particular and how to sort of talk about it without cluing me in to any of the traumas was key to making it normal/okay? Nowadays it's just the way my mom is, and we check in every so often because it can be a little mindbending dealing with Usual!Mom vs Core!Mom who is currently stuck around 25 emotionally/developmentally so I've outgrown my own mom, and then there's the whole being part of raising child!moms and @_@

So normal, as always, is relative when brainweird is involved, but I think we've got a pretty balanced normal.

 

Yeah, that was a very, very relative usage of "normal" :P I guess all I really meant by it was "not traumatic."

How easy is/was it for you to tell who's fronting, and how could you tell?

 

When I was small, I have no clue.
These days it's pretty easy to tell because there's only three of them and the youngest pitches up and is five. Core!Mom curses a lot more than mom does usually, and has a MUCH shorter temper as she doesn't have the luxury of 30 odd years in therapy and all the coping mechanisms that came with unless she looks at "the walls of the mind" and ruminates on them herself or listens to Usual!Mom. My mom jokes that she brings arguing with yourself to a whole new level.
So sometimes if I'm already agitated I won't notice she's switched to Core!Mom who fronts when our arguments get Too Intense and claws come out and then I'm like. Oh. Duh. We are arguing like we did when I was 16 not because we have lost all progress but because the progress doesn't exist yet, how's about I disengage for a moment and shooshpap for a moment and see what communication errors I need to troubleshoot bc Core!Mom doesn't yet register the difference between "I am Panicked" and "I am attacking you Angrily".

 

what does Core mean here? i havent heard the word used in relation to DID before and i cant figure the meaning from context

 

from what i understand, 'core' usually means something like 'the personality the body was born with.' and core is not always synonymous with 'main.' sometimes a core will be 'stuck' at a very young age and a personality not-born-with-the-body will just kind of take the reins and go from there and protect the soft core and become the (primary) personality associated with the body. or like what happened with fractalLettuce's mom, the main thinks the core actually, literally died, and the body's still here, so somebody's gotta do something. <- lack of reading comprehension, sorry

i probably got at least something wrong, please correct me if so.

 

I'm using what words my mom uses. In this case the Core is the personality from which the trauma memory alters are bubbled from. The one who (in theory) should hold all the memories after integration, but doesn't because of the Concussion Complication.

YEAH!! pixels has a very good gist!!

In mom's case things get a little weird because the main took over because the core never came back and was like w e l p. Mom just thought she'd integrated further. And then 10 years later turns out VERY NOT.

 

thanks for explaining!!

 

Man, your mom has had one hell of a life. Did her core personality just sort of sleep through those ten missing years like Rumplestiltskin and wake up thinking G. W. Bush was still President?