Atypically Recovering

Photo: mine

There are few good examples of disassociation in TV or movies, and most of those involve people who are sociopathic and homicidal. Those are the very much exceptions to those who have the more extreme form of disassociation, DID, or dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) which will be the focus of this post. The statistics show that between %0.5 – 3 of the population is impacted by DID- which means you probably know someone with DID. Not all presentations of the disorder are the same, just like the reasons behind DID vary somewhat, mostly by degree. It’s widely accepted that severe and ongoing trauma cause DID.
https://www.mind-diagnostics.org/blog/dissociative-identity-disorder/6-must-know-dissociative-identity-disorder-statistics

To break it down, I’m going to use the example of a bank. The vault is the mind. In a ‘normal’ person (who frequently disassociates on a mundane drive home from work), memory is stored in the main body of the vault. There is nothing to keep the person from remembering things as they occur, as well as being able to recall things at will. For someone with dissociative identity disorder, the mind is more like the safety deposit boxes. They are secure and separated from the rest of the vault by a locked gate of some type, though still part of the entire vault and bank. When abuse or neglect is so severe that a young child can’t process what is happening, the mind breaks into pieces- as many as are needed- to cope with the abuse that has no sign of ending. There is generally no external support system, as most people with DID were traumatized by caregivers. There’s nowhere to go but inside. For a young child, the caretakers and people most often in their life are supposed to provide safety and security. When that is broken down by repeated and severe abuse/neglect, the child goes ‘inside’ to feel safe, creating an ‘alternate’ (or alter) who holds that pain and trauma so the ‘outside’ (or host) personality doesn’t have to remember or deal with the impact of the trauma.

The number of alters isn’t necessarily relative to the severity of the trauma. Each person is a bit different with how their system of alters works, and the biggest thing to remember is that it was a survival mechanism to help the child cope with something it didn’t really understand, and to spread out the trauma so that the mind doesn’t break. Most of the time, the host isn’t aware of the others, and there are varying degrees of awareness of others inside and how they work in the ‘system’ as a whole. The alters are consistent in their behavior, speech, preferences, etc- just like a ‘normal’ person, but with many contained in one body, and the host is clueless about the ones inside until something breaks down the barriers keeping the host unaware of the alters. Memory can be an issue for the host and the alters, depending on the communication between them and the specific purpose for the alter. Over time with therapy, there is a better understanding of both the trauma, and how each alter works, as well as the cooperation between them. The core function is self-preservation and protection- not to strike out at external people.

Most people with DID aren’t obvious. That’s also a survival mechanism. In a world that dislikes things it doesn’t relate to or understand, being ‘outed’ can be a death sentence for various relationships. It’s an invitation to be discredited or have assumptions made that simply aren’t true. The alters can also be exploited (especially younger ones). They can behave in ways that are abhorrent to the host (the one most people know publicly). They can behave in ways that aren’t developmentally in sync with the chronological age of the ‘body’, but not necessarily overtly so. Most have jobs that they are good at (and the employer gets multiple ‘minds’ for the price of one !!). Many have raised healthy kids. On the surface, and with superficial relationships, they are undetectable by design. Some may seem a bit quirky, but nothing that indicates the trauma that they had to survive by any means necessary and available to a young child who has no other ‘out’.

This is very basic information. Do you have any questions about DID ?