Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Formerly Known as Multiple Personality Disorder

Charlene Collins, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Mar 29, 2007 

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Dissociative identity disorder is a new name for an old illness. The illness is what is commonly called "multiple personality disorder" (MPD). This is a psychological disorder characterized by having one or more  alter personalities (alters). The alters are fragments of the person's inner-self or ego.

Do you know a person with this disorder? I do. A person with Dissociative identity disorder may admit to feeling he/she is sharing his/her body with other people who live inside.

I have a friend who suffers from Dissociative identity disorder. For this article, I am calling her "Mary". I asked her to explain to me what it is like when she dissociates. She said, "When I switch, I am aware that I am switching from myself to a 7 year old little girl".

What stands out to me about Mary is that she is very highly functioning. She has a business and takes care of it. She is a sole proprietor of a printing shop. She takes care of customers and no one knows she has a problem with her identity. I stayed around the shop as customers came and went, and when there was a lull in the flow of customers, she felt safe to let "Janie" come out to play.

Dissociation is a defense mechanism a person manifests to deal with trauma they are not ready to deal with. "Switching" or dissociation is not something that should be ignored. In time the "alter" can overtake the main personality.

Many years ago Mary went away with a man from the Internet. He wasn't who he portrayed himself to be. He was very abusive, and she shared to me that he used her up for all of her finances and threw her away. I don't  know everything that happened to her, but I know some of the awful details. As a friend, I helped her get back on her feet, but something was very different about Mary. She was not the same person she was just a few months earlier.

"I feel like a broken mirror", she said to me one day. Dissociation is so complex that a person can totally function as fragments of the whole being. It is like the alter personalities share and cooperate within the one being.

Mary described her Dissociative disorder to me. She showed me a broken mirror and asked me to look into it. When I did I saw many facets of me. In every jagged piece of the mirror there was an image of me. Then she said to me, "Now imagine that mirror as being able to think. Each piece of the mirror has its own thoughts, feelings and emotions."
Many people who have Dissociative identity disorder tend to be very highly functioning individuals with high stress jobs. They will only 'switch" with people whom they are comfortable.

It made sense to me that Mary's alter, "Janie" only came out tome or a few other people, and that she would retreat back into Mary's mind when a customer came into the shop. No one was ever aware of the switching except me. I've seen her switch into more than one alter before. One is "Janie", who I have just mentioned, and another is "Boo" who is 12. Boo mainly comes out with another of her friends and not so much to me. I am Janie's friend, and another associate of mine is Boo's friend.
I have had to do some reading on this subject to be able to digest how Mary can keep up with so many personas. But as I am beginning to understand, she doesn't "keep up" with them, but they are who they are. Boo has her thoughts, emotions and memories, just as Janie has hers, as well as Marie has hers. All pieces of the broken mirror have their own reflection of who they are.
What are the causes of DID?
Some of the causes of Dissociative identity disorder include:

Overwhelming stress 

Lack of nurturing
"Child abuse What are the signs and symptoms?
Some patients have different symptoms that can resemble neurological, psychiatric, and anxiety disorders. Some of the symptoms include:"

Anxiety
Depression
Panic attacks
Phobias
Time distortions
Eating disorders
Sexual dysfunctions
Episodes of self-harm
Post traumatic stress syndrome

Other symptoms include depersonalization, which refers to a feeling of being removed away from the self. It is a feeling of detachment from the physical and mental self. The person feels more like an observer, as if they are watching a movie unfold before their eyes.

Diagnosis and Treatment
To be diagnosed, the patient is evaluated with a complete physical, lab work and x-rays. If no physical illness is found the patient may be referred to a mental health practitioner. Most patients with DID respond well to treatment. Treatment may involve seeing a psychiatrist, as well as a therapist, and taking prescribed medications. They respond well providing they don't have other underlying psychiatric conditions that are more difficult to treat. The most common approach to treatment is to relieve the symptoms and to help the patient to re-integrate the fragmented personalities into one whole well functioning identity. People with this disorder can and do become well. When the personas merge into one being, the person no longer feels like pieces of a broken mirror. They are free to experience life through his or her intellect without the filters of the other personas.

10 Tips For Living With Dissociative Identiny Disorder

10 Tips For Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Posted on March 22, 2009 by servngu

~By: Jess Mei
Here are some tips on reducing the headache of living with dissociative identity disorder (DID). There really are no hard and fast rules for ‘dealing’ with it unfortunately, since what worked well yesterday might not today and what works for one personality, might not work for the others. So, knowing all that – here are 10 general tips for living with DID on a daily basis. The number one thing to remember with all this is – Be Flexible.
1. If you drive, get yourself a GPS (global positioning system)
Depending on how fragmented you are, which of the alters drive, and what’s going on inside the ‘system’ (is it chaotic? calm? is everyone mostly working together?) sometimes, the body ends up across town – or worse halfway across the state (or further) before you realize it. Here’s how it goes – one minute you’re standing in your kitchen cooking dinner or talking to your significant other; *blink your eyes* and the next minute you’re behind the wheel of your car without a CLUE as to where you are going, why you’re there, or how to get back. Program the GPS for home first thing. Just last week this [psychogenic fugue] happened to me, and I ended up near the Canadian border!
2. Put up an internal whiteboard or keep an external notebook.
One of the most important things you can do to try to keep some sort conscious continuity between your parts is to make it mandatory that all of you keep notes in some central notebook or internal whiteboard. Because we tend to lose time due to personalities switching, it is vital that detailed notes are kept. Some people are able to keep an internal ‘whiteboard’ where the alters write notes of important things they’ve done or committed to (doctor’s appointments, dates, exams); others keep an external notebook that everyone writes in. I’ve been able to make both available though the whiteboard gets neglected.

3. Let people around you know how to call out your more cooperative personalities – just in case.
Sometimes when the system is in chaos or is having a panic attack, it is helpful that someone around you that you trust is able to call out a calming personality – one that will get things under control for the system. But only do this if you’re comfortable and trust the person; otherwise, the ‘shout out’ won’t do any good. In fact, it might trigger a protector [potentially violent alter].

4. Secure your funds.
Understand that there are more than just you spending your money and wanting to spend your money. So, if you have bills to pay, pay them first as soon as you have money. Better yet – have the bills on autopay or try to pre-pay them so that you don’t have as much debt. That way – the bills get paid whether you remember or not. Make sure that your financial responsibilities and living requirements are taken care of straight away, so that if someone spends your money, it won’t effect your lifestyle. Try to never have your ATM card on you and see if you can set up a two-signature check writing arrangement with your bank. Just going into knowing that there is a big chance that someone will drain your bank account by purchasing things you personally don’t need or want, but they may take a fancy to.
5. Have a place for important papers or unexpected documents (traffic tickets, IRS notices, etc.) and make sure that everyone in the system knows to have a look at that place when they are out.
This falls in line with trying to keep as close to a continuous consciousness as possible. Not all alters are considerate or care to cooperate with the others; Some are extremely reckless, in fact. Make sure you keep all your documents in one place; here’s a real life example of why. Imagine you’re in your car and for whatever reason, you get pulled over and find out you have outstanding tickets and a warrant. That would annoy even the most gentlest of people. Something similar to this happened to me. So, make sure you keep your papers in the one place – no matter how horrible (I’ve had some alters hide documents from the rest of us). This is a tough tip to adhere to as you’ll have to get the others to agree and not hide stuff. Be willing to be a mediator.
6. Keep an emergency contact phone number (next of kin) in your purse, wallet, and/or cellphone.
Even people without DID should have this information handy. For those of us with DID though, it is also important that we have the contact information of our psychiatrist and/or therapist or treatment facility.

7. Set up a safety network for yourself in case of a panic attack or similar emergency. It is so important to have a support team when you have DID.
Your team might include your significant other, understanding friends, your therapist, even your child. It is also important for me to say that it isn’t always necessary that any of these people know that you have DID, either. People that care about you will assist you anyway they can and most times – without asking a lot of questions. Seek out those people you can trust and build your safety network from there.

8. Keep all prescription drugs secure and keep a journal of when you take them.
Unfortunately, there are alters who are suicidal and who hate the body in general and hate all the other personalities as well. At some point, these alters do come out and sometimes harm the body either by putting it in dangerous situations, by self-mutilating, or attempted drug overdose. So, it is best to keep the drugs in a location that these alters don’t know about. It is also a very good idea to keep a log of when you take your medication. Otherwise, if an alter comes out and doesn’t know you’ve already taken your required dose, that alter may take another dose as well.
9. Become a good actor/actress.
Learn how to ‘play it off’ when someone comes up to you that you’ve never met and acts as if you two are good friends. These people may be strangers to you, but could be best friends with one of your alters. You simply do not know because you did not have co-consciousness during the interaction with that person. So, become a good actor and/or actress when this occurs. Use your judgment with this one – I mean – you know a creeper when you see one, right? There’s a difference. Just be careful.

10. Be prepared to have your child alters come out at Toys -R-Us and other places.
If you have child alters, be kind to them and have some things for them to play with around the house. I learned this the hard way when while at Toys-R-Us, one of my child alters came out, grabbed a toy and went running down the aisle with it – footloose and fancy free (at least that is what I was told later). Mind you – I’m a 42 year old woman. I don’t have stuffed animals. I don’t even have board games – yet there was the body running and playing. So, now I have a few toys at home and I have ‘the talk’ with my child alters before I go out to the mail or to the grocery store as I got really tired of finding sweet cereal and toys in the shopping cart at checkout time.