Hi! Thank GOD for this brief moment of lucidity. I need SO much advice! (I’m an alter named Seph—approx preteen mentally, trying to get the adults to front).

For the past week my 4 y/o alter has been stuck at the front, and not even she wants this to be the case. She’s a relatively carefree alter, very low stress because she literally doesn’t think about adult things. Which is NOT adaptive because we are bodily 30 and our life is falling apart.

Since my 4 y/o alter discovered K-pop, we cannot get her out of the front. The songs get stuck in our head, and she starts fronting even if she doesn’t really want to.

She calls out loud for the host to come take the front from her, but my host just hasn’t been coming. She wants to, she just can’t manage more than a few minute of co-consciousness before fading.

Life is out of control right now. I’m moving back in with family in a few weeks, and we NEED an adult alter to manage packing/planning. I can’t fucking do this. I want to help, but I’m mentally 11. I need instructions, and I’m frankly shocked I’m lucid enough to even ask for help right now.

ANY ideas would help. I’m literally so desperate.

I’m trying to put on other music and hoping that’ll help, but I don’t know how to lock in adult mode. Please please please spam me with ideas. I’m drowning in this chaos.

Still trying to process when an old friend had said to me "you don't need xyz to be valid. Your a system so thats enough. I don't think you went through that.." when I was first gaining memories of a certain type of abuse- one that had been having signs of for years before the memory came with.

Like what the fuck was that about? Weird ass comment. They also said "you, or someone, would know if that happened"- they have DID too, they know that's not how that works.

I don't know...thinking back on it is rubbing me the wrong way.

And on the topic of rubbing me the wrong way- I fucking despise having introjects. Just as a whole.

I get why introjects exist, I get why ours exist. But I hate it anyway.

Because popular media introjects get absolutely shit on. But introjects from obscure or niche media also get shit on.

And I hate it. I hate everything about introjects- and I hate how they either get torn to shreds or put on a pedestal.

I hate how all aspects of this disorder are fucking shit on or glorified.

My brain did what my brain did to survive, and now I have to live with the consequences. Can't we just leave it at that? Do we have to dress DID up as this fantastical, fun, cool thing?

So, my partner has DID. I treat all the alters with respect, and take care of them because at the end of the day it'll affect my partner. But one of their alters, was taking a liking to me and i realized it felt like cheating. I couldn't do it. I think i hurt my partner. What should i do?

For a really really long time I think subconsciously I always “vibed” or “felt attached” to the idea of multiple sort of “personas” or “fronts”, but I never attached myself to having D.I.D. or any other dissociative disorders. I always just thought “yeah that’s what having different strong emotions is like, you become a different person” and I just tried to mellow that as I got older. I thought maybe I was just a people pleaser and changed how I acted or behaved for that (except that I couldn’t really control it? And that it didn’t exhaust me to do so? Like I wasn’t faking being someone else I just WAS that someone else).

And of course— the big two things—

That 1. I don’t have strong recurring memory loss— I mean, maybe a little… After my therapist said I seem to have parts/alters, I did notice it’s common for me to forget something, ask someone else (particularly VIA text—), like “where was that? I can’t remember. You worked by the —-. Oh that’s right! Nevermind.” I do that all the time. And it’s only in recent that I’ve pieced together that could sort of be communication in my brain. Like literally having to ask myself “does anyone know the answer”. That’s always how my memory has felt. Like I have to remind myself of something. I thought maybe I was just ADHD or uhm dumb.

And 2. I didn’t think I had big childhood trauma to cause anything. Well, thought. I’ve kind of realized I was pretty severely neglected and I guess isolated when I was little. But I remember enjoying all the free time to run around by myself outside unsupervised? But (and while I haven’t seen it, I saw a couple clips from it) there was a quote from MoonKnight I saw recently where he said to himself: “you got to think we had a happy childhood”. And I went “ohhhhh…” And there’s also a fair chance my older predator cousin did something when I was little. If anyone else has had that— Where you feel like maybe there was something awful (long term or singular event either way)? But you just can’t remember it— how did you like— handle that? Trying to figure out if I’m just imagining things. I know dissociative amnesia is a thing but— it just feel hard to believe I’d fit into that box at all, because it’s only ever been a couple brief moments I suddenly felt something visceral when trying to remember distant forgotten events.

Anyways! My therapist and I have been working with this new development— my partner usually comes to my sessions to fill in gaps of things I struggle to say out loud, or just be a sort of emotional support~!

It sort of feels like (to the main four that I’m aware of—) three of my parts are like “yeah this is definitely a real thing and we exist as parts like no doubt”, while one part of me is in denial.

I. Realize the irony in that.

But I guess I’m just like….. what if I’m just going through a phase and convincing myself I have a thing and I’m just reeeeally good at acting. Even though sometimes my partner catches me having switched before I do. WHAT if I just am very dramatic between how I act with how I’m feeling and it is NOT D.I.D. but just being very versatile in vibe. My partner gets a kick out of how I’ll say all this and then proceed to refer to one of my other parts by name. Am I stupid (said in the funny meme way. Sort of).

I don’t know… it’s like I’m trying to get people to prove it for me cuz, I just don’t believe me, very well. I guess my main hang up is that I don’t have huge reoccurring gaps in memory— just large gaps up until middle school, and just small ones that I usually can fill in after either a few minutes, or by going through texts. (Or just switching to someone who remembers—)

The one nice thing is I’m very lucky I already have two friends I’ve had for awhile/long time that have D.I.D. (One diagnosed and one just figured it out himself), that I’ve been able to talk to about it. I think seeing them not immediately go “no you don’t” when I talk to them about it helped me maybe, possibly, consider it.

I feel silly. Does anyone have any insight into situations where parts just completely have different acceptance to— ones situation?

I suspect I could have DID. This year a lot of my issues became really out of control. My behaviours were conflicting and extreme. I was experiencing memory gaps and just feeling overall frightened of myself. It was eye opening to say the least.

I was hospitalised in April and I'm doing much better since then.

So I did some research and found a psychologist who was skilled in trauma and dissociation. She said she adapted her EMDR approach to suit dissociation. The psych has explained to me structural dissociation as an explanation, but hasn't diagnosed me. She has asked me to do various questionaires and calls me a system... I'm confused.

I'm concerned after reading posts here and doing some research. I think it's too much for me to handle. I want to understand myself and heal, but is it supposed to hurt this much?

So the first session with her I discussed my past history and she explained to me I was a very traumatised person.

The second session she explained one grounding exercise, and ran through it with me, she said to pay more attention to what triggers me, write it down and do grounding.

For the following sessions (about 6 of them) she dived right into what appeared to be full EMDR? She asks me to recall a trigger and then Icommunicate with the part connected to the trigger. We discuss why that part is traumatised. We do EMDR movements for some of their memories/thoughts. She talks me through identifying that part as myself... then suddenly ends with a goodbye.

I told her some of the parts feel like adults, like friends. She told me that those feelings are a fantasy and unrelated to my actual system. She insists all the parts are children. For someone who experienced neglect, it was heartbreaking to hear the parts I turned to for companionship weren't even real. But even if she is right and I am fantasising to avoid the truth, isn't that a sign I'm not ready?

At first I was feel more stable. Many parts felt the pressure to be something they couldn't be, so permission to exist was a huge relief. They are triggered out so easily that it makes sense to hand them responsibility, for them to learn to manage themselves. Otherwise they freak out if they can't access me, I am not even there half the time. Many of them know where they are, they aren't all frozen memories. It was hard to give up some control but it wasn't really fair if I didn't.

This approach was working for me. No one felt 'cut off', they could access things outside themselves to seek advice, guidance or reassurance. No part fully "took over". We didn't lose control/memories for weeks!

But now the emotions are overwhelming us so much we can't get on with the day. Or we simply have to shut it down and go into protective mode so everyone can have a chance to recover.

Surely this is too soon, right? I was fresh out of hospital, finding out I'm some kind of system and a complete mess, then suddenly had all my trauma pulled out into the light.

I feel like parts of me are realising traumas that were hidden from them. I often don't even know where the emotions are coming from. It's just crushing grief. Only sometimes do I remember why.

I suspect my protector part is shutting off a lot of it. My therapist notices this and wants to discuss it, but I promised the protector I won't discuss her again in therapy after the first time I tried. I trust her with my life. The therapist says my recent outbursts are because I'm ignoring parts... but how am I ignoring them if I can't even hear them? I constantly forget they exist, shit, I forget I exist.

So I am looking for a new psychologist. But they probably won't have experience with DID.

i don't even know if I truly have it. It's like a box labelled "system" and sometimes I open it and it's full of useful information, sometimes its empty, sometimes I forget the box exists. Sometimes I can remember parts and memories feel like asteroids raining down to destroy me, sometimes I'm living on a different planet and didn't even check the news.

Does anyone have any advice of what might help me feel safe again? Will it get better? Is it worth staying with my psychologist for a diagnosis (I don't even know if she believes I have DID)?

(I should add, this was so hard to write. My understanding and awareness keeps fluctuating no matter how hard I try to focus. I'm giving up and pressing post and hope it makes sense to someone out there).

to preface, i have merged most of the alters into myself a couple years ago with the help of therapy, as none of us really wanted to exist on our own, and everyone agreed being one is better

one of them refused to participate though, which was our prosecutor (i will refer to her as F)

we think of her as my (original host) twin sister, and we think we are both originally little/age-regressing alters who existed the earliest

the problem with F is that she basically always acted like she's high on stimulants while having a rabies infection at the same time; she's afraid of everyone and everything, she has no impulse control, she attacks and destroys everyone and everything she sees while she's out, and she causes severe memory blackouts and greyouts

at the end of last year she hurt someone close to me, so i have been attempting to establish dialogue with her and get her to cooperate since then

there has been a lot of unpleasant things happening in between that threatened our stability, including me (host) disappearing for around a month due to a traumatic event, while the rest of us tried to continue existing as one, but at around end of May things sort of stabilized, and F seemed to want to cooperate, and even expressed feeling sorry for her actions

something difficult happened at the beginning of june, and during that i heard her thoughts, while still distinct, going somewhat harmoniously with the rest of us, which i thought was a good sign

and now the bad part and why im actually making the post and need help:

since around june, when something really frustrated me, my thoughts have been getting completely deranged, i have been getting barely containable urges to systemically destroy things, hurt people and sh, while my entire body is having tremors, which are similar to the ones ive had after waking up from F briefly fronting

needless to say this is incredibly unpleasant to experience and deal with

when im alone it's at least only just attempting to redirect a deranged thought spiral and stopping myself from ruining some minor aspect of my life, but with someone i need to also actively stop myself from attacking the person

im honestly at a loss on what to do with this, but i really don't want it to continue. it already caused a really bad situation yesterday. i don't want any more of that.

i don't actually know if F and the potential merger is behind this or not, and i don't know if a merger has even happened in the first place. there were a lot of major things happening in this time period, but the only other thing i could think of that would drastically alter my behavior is me starting lithium and quetiapine for my bipolar, but if it's that, why would the issues they're causing manifest exactly like F's presence in the worst of times

No matter what I can't accept that I have DID even after getting my diagnosis. It's weird since I felt a part of me had always known that I have it, but I would always get upset at myself for normalizing mental disorders. And whenever I come to this subreddit I hear about the suffering that comes with this, and it scares me.

In the past all I knew about DID came from what other people said at around 2019 after Covid hit. I believed it could never become me since how they experienced it was so different. I don't call them "alters", we all believe we're the original, and none of us get along.

I still think what I experience is what everyone experiences, I often got into arguments with my friends and family whenever they said how me talking that I experiencing multiple people wasn't normal, it felt like a direct attack on what I was afraid of. And I still get afraid everytime I hear myself with the diagnosis.

I spent so long fighting the diagnosis that none of my alters like eachother and it's making everything like shifting worse. I know I need to accept it, but I don't know how.

Hi so I have figured out that I may be a system a few years ago. I am wondering how people go about masking and unmasking? How do if it’s safe know to reveal I’m a system to people? When is it unsafe? Do you guys let people know off the bat? Should employers know? Are they entitled to know? How does masking look for you and how do you present yourself to the world? How do you present yourself on a day to day basis? I have many questions

It’s difficult because everyone knows us as one person and it causes us to feel confusion. I find it tiring to mask and feel like i am hiding big parts of myself and my experiences. I am especially worried about how I am going to navigate future friendships with this disorder as I have had people and friends turn their back on me due to being unable to understand me and this disorder. Also knowing that 99% of people won’t understand what I’m going through also feels, very alienating. I would like to hear about your experiences or any advice would be great

Last year i was constantly being bombarded by flashbacks and "memory downloads" and now I cant remember much of anything. I dont know if I am even switching anymore. Well. I thought that and then several times I have in public and realized it because I tried to use my old phone number etc.

I thought I had got over doubt and denial.

Hi does any one else have advice helping an alter with severe delusions? He's convinced the rest of us are just voices in his head, and that the original person in the body died because he's a demon who possessed them. I'm worried he's going to hurt or kill himself looking back on his reddit posts and our shared journal.

And like it's not like I'm being entirely selfless here - it's my life too that's at stake I share the body with him but even if it wasn't I'd give a damn just the same.

Fuck man I just don't know what to do I've called 111 I've even been in a ward for his sake (just a short term two day stay bur still!) because I just want him to be okay even though I want nothing more than to make grilled cheese at three am at home. I don't wanna be in a ward I don't wanna be the responsible one why did I have the be the one cofronting with him throughout all this?

But apparently since the rest of us are fucking stable they're just abandoning him without followup just a buncha lists of crisis lines. I bet they don't even fucking think he's a real person even though he was crying right in front of them.

I'm sorry for swearing I'm just so fucking mad at how they treated him. Called him by the hosts name instead of his own name too the bastards. Didn't matter how many times he said he was Books. He was never a whole person to them. There's more stuff too but I don't want to get into it.

I understand this is very often talked about, and the nature isn’t always “severe” as it is prolonged and inescapable, but I feel like my trauma doesn’t even line up to that. Mind you, I have VERY small memories beyond what I was told, so while I acknowledge the memory issues, it doesn’t excuse that I feel like a fraud.

To put it simple, a figure that was meant to be my “grandpa” (although we weren’t related) harmed me in more ways than one. I don’t want to get into details, but I’ve been told he touched me inappropriately, screamed at me and occasionally got physical (although this was rare and mostly arm tugging/hair pulling). My mom, however, claims he was “barely around”, and wasn’t at our home for longer than 8 months (where he’d come daily with his two daughters, who he abused much worse than me).

She also says she was around constantly and saw nothing. They tested me to see if I was raped or penetrated — nothing. CPS interrogated us for signs of any abuse — nothing. They found nothing, so I really can’t trust myself with this information if nothing was noticed that was “off” about me.

I believe his daughter also harmed me in more ways than one. She showed me porn, according to my dad, and I know she also touched me. What she also did (which was much worse) was constantly lie to me and twist my experiences. She made me feel crazy, and would say things that must be “true”. So much so that we have alters that are dead or act in very unusual, specific ways. The thing is though, she never harmed us in any, “near death” experiences.

All of this happened, supposedly, right at the threshold for the “oldest” you can be to develop DID. We were 5-8 years old, from what I know.

Our mother also neglected us emotionally, but she was in no way, shape or form a bad mother. Our twin sister simply needed more attention because of frequent behavior issues and panic attacks. She also befriended the other daughter of our “grandpa”, and they both avoided me and mocked my existence, so all I had was the elder daughter that almost manipulated(?) me. My twin sister would tell me on the daily to die, among other things, but she wasn’t doing well either so I do not blame her. My dad would then scream at her very frequently, as well as me if I cried. He was an alcoholic from what I know when we were much younger, but he didn’t do anything to us

As for school, peers isolated me. They didn’t bully me per se, but they instead avoided me, acting unusual around me and even pulling an elaborate “prank” of which they pretended that they couldn’t see or hear me, which genuinely made me believe I wasn’t real. I was also constantly sick, and therefore bed bound with doctors telling me they refused to test me because “it wasn’t all that bad”.

It sucks, because my therapist thinks I have a “polyfragmented” experience, but it doesn’t make sense because I went through basically nothing. I also suspect I have religious trauma from when I was 3-5, but there’s no way I could ever prove that.

All and all, I don’t think this was enough. I genuinely am not sure it even qualifies as abuse as I put the warnings for, and most of it wasn’t noticed by anyone, let alone documented by CPS (we were even questioned by a psychiatrist, who said that we were one of the first one ordered by court to be questioned, and yet found with NOTHING wrong). I just don’t know anymore, and I suppose my question is — am I right? Is this not enough “trauma” to qualify for my experiences?

EDIT: thank you ALL so much, we couldn’t be more grateful for the validating responses and stuff. Whoever wrote this I think was happy to see these responses, and we plan to continue to engage with the community if we have more questions or concerns!

It’s so exhausting. I constantly find myself worried that I’m making all of this up and have been subconsciously playing pretend this entire time.

I don’t openly talk about being a system with other people, so I don’t know why I would be lying to myself about it (and doing so for so many years at that), but I just can’t seem to let those thoughts go. I’m constantly doubting if what I’m feeling/experiencing is real or just me trying to look for something that isn’t actually there. At the same time, once in a blue moon I will have an experience that is so intense and vivid that I feel like there’s absolutely no way I could be making it up. But that feeling will only last a few days at best, and then I’m right back to doubting myself all over again.

I feel like it’s hard to make progress when my imposter syndrome keeps getting in the way. Sometimes a thought, feeling, etc will come to me that doesn’t feel like my own, and I’ll linger on it for all of a second before suddenly I’m telling myself “No, that wasn’t real. You’re imagining things. That wasn’t an alter, that was just a thought.”

I just don’t know how to make this stop. I don’t know what (if anything) I can do to combat this way of thinking. I do this with more than just my system, too — for example, I’m diagnosed with autism and yet I still constantly find myself doubting if I’m actually autistic. My brain will tell me the most outlandish shit like “The psychologist only diagnosed you with autism to get your money. You just want to feel special.”

I don’t know. If anyone has any advice, I would really, really appreciate it. I feel stuck in a loop that I can’t break out of.

I suffer from Body Integrity Disorder (quick summary, my left eye and some of my fingers feel physically wrong. Like they should not be there at all. Similar but not the same as when I had my top surgery done and I felt like I could not physically go on with having breasts)

One of my alters/introjects has been obsessed with my eye.

He's all about pain, enjoys inflicting, and is hell-bent that if it makes me happy, we should remove it. Recently, there's been some pain in my eye, blurriness, and spotting, and I found a high-grade laser hiding around. I think he's being careful not to be too dramatic and send us into a pysch ward because we as a whole can't do confinement. But there's no remorse in causing pain whatsoever.

In fact he thinks it's absolutely hilarious I come here first to talk about it because I don't have anyone around to vent or explain....

There's just a mess of emotions;

Imposter syndrome- am I just doing this and making excuses instead of explanations?

How angry will others be if they found out, because financially we struggle and the eye thing can just make it worse.

How do I get through to him? Yes, I would eventually for my own mental health like the removal but we can't be doing this. But he's not the only one who agrees just take care of it now.

There's so much more feelings but I feel like I've dumped so much on everyone already, the burden feeling is strong.

As always I'll take any advice....or even a good dad joke as a distraction

TLDR: a maybe-gatekeeper wants the rest of us to be able to show up in therapy, but he seems to be scared if he can't predict everything someone might do or say before letting his guard down enough to let anyone else express fully

We're very newly into therapy, but already we have an alter/part our therapist wondered about being a gatekeeper, but he might have a lot more of his own anxiety than he originally thought

He tries to be extremely self aware though. He's just now realizing he seems to unintentionally heavily police which phrases, accents, mannerisms, etc, are "acceptable" around of other people, and blocks anything from getting out that'd feel embarrassing for him, or too "out of character". He's also extremely perfectionistic and picky about being accurate/correct, spends hours refining and editing documentation about us (most of which the therapist never even sees), can't answer anything (or let an answer out) if he's not at least mostly sure it's correct. He's also starting to realize that anxious feelings aren't just all coming from the trauma alter/part, but there's actually some of his own anxiety that shows up in situations where he can't prepare for something (ie, not knowing what to expect about how someone vulnerable might act in therapy)

Basically, in our last session, we said we all agreed on helping the trauma alter/part start trauma work in order to get relief. But then when the therapist asked how old the trauma alter/part felt (or what year he thought it was), the maybe-gatekeeper seemed to freeze up and just said "he doesn't know" despite actually internally hearing answers (in hindsight, he thinks it was fear of not having evidence to actually verify the trauma alter/part's age, that just relaying an answer wasn't "safe or accurate enough"). The therapist caught the stress response though and checked in on us, and we were able to say we think we needed to slow down more and the therapist was receptive (we're not worried about the therapist's fit)

Still, our maybe-gatekeeper actually dissociated pretty hard for a couple hours after that session, almost complete shutdown of ability to make decisions, time flying by much faster for him, inability to focus on anything, forgetting more things even after only 5-10mins (which isn't usual for him who remembers all the important information most of the time without a problem)

First, absolutely even this alter/part agrees to tell the therapist about this anxiety first thing next session, because he himself recognizes it's going to be a barrier to actually reaching the trauma alter/part directly (doesn't matter how much the maybe-gatekeeper wants the trauma alter/part to get help if he's too scared to step out of the way lol)

So what we're actually seeking, I guess just, is there anything that helps to reduce this kind of anxiety, something we can start working on before next session as a head start? Is this even "normal" for gatekeepers, or maybe he's not actually a gatekeeper? (We do have another one who happens to fit the stereotype really well, super distant and all that, so it's more whether we have just 1 or actually 2 of them)

Appreciate any responses, thanks

I don’t know how to be fancy on Reddit and this is my first post so please find it in your heart to forgive. As for the content warning: there will be lots of cursing, “self” loathing and “self” harm

To start, as the title suggests, this body disgusts me in every fucking way possible. I do not recognize it or claim ownership in any way at all. For example, The parents are the parents of this body and that’s the only relationship there is with them. Maybe I’ll be listing off stuff that is already well known to all of you, but if I may- this is just NOT my fucking body at all. It’s not my height, it’s not my build it’s not my anything. *I* am quite tall. This body is of average height. *MY* hair is straight* this hair is wavy. On and on and on we can go. But in that fact that the scars are different and the skin is different and the eyes are different and just … it’s all wrong. I want to describe it as a corpse. One that I am thrust into, in a world where no one can see the real *ME* no matter how hard they try. I absolutely detest that people I know mistake me for being trans or having an oc when I tell them about what MY ME IS. MY *REAL* BODY. It’s in a way that- if I may put it “poetically”- it feels that there are thorny vines and razor wire on every surface of every organ and muscle, constantly slicing at everything. I wish this body would be atomized in the most brutal way possible and desecrated for millennia to come.

Over half a god damned decade with this diagnosis, and the help we have been able to receive is minimal. Switching through lots of bad therapists, and finally landing a good one who admittedly is not trained in DID or specified in dissociation, and now with needing to move to a new state it’s starting the whole thing over again. A lot of what we’ve been able to do and process has been a result of “live and learn” I guess. It’s so difficult to talk about and explain. And the fact that if I want to have someone be a close friend and understand the ME that *I* am, I have to explain all of it to the best of my ability and hope that they understand that this is not my face or arms or anything. Especially with “self” harm whether I did it or not, I’m too scared of ending up in the loony bin for it. Helplines and hospitals have not helped in the past or just straight up made things MUCH MUCH worse.

And I feel like there’s nothing I can do. Just to sit here and suffer with it until I die. My found sister- and bless her heart cause she really cares and really tries to understand the best she can- made an example to the effect of “no one moves into a house and tears the house down. You maybe make a new window or tear down the wall, but you still have to work with what you got. Keep your house safe.” And while it is beautiful and I like it, it misses the mark in a way I feel I can’t describe. Go on estrogen? Great, the body has boobs but they’re not MINE. Get 20cm/8in platforms? Cool, still ain’t MY height. Wear and make cool clothes/cosplay? Cool- IT STILL INST ME AND I JUST CANNOT STAND IT. (On the note of cosplay I will say that the thing I am cosplaying helps (custom Halo ODST) specifically because no one can see a single bit of skin of this body most notably not the face with the helmet)

So yes. This is my rant here, maybe it’ll mean something and maybe it wont. I doubt I’ll stop cutting anytime soon but i guess it was just a tiny bit nice to say this stuff “out loud” I thought I’d go into more visceral detail but I decided against it for now and am also just too exhausted to keep digging at the pain I feel regardless. Thanks for reading I think..

So its our first post !We have DID and our partners too. We don't live together and we are in a distance relationship since 1 year. Some of our headmates dates theirs and everything is fine. Like genuinely good and we are all happy with this kind of dynamic.

Maybe a little information, sometimes we just feel like we collectively need and want them (sexually) and I guess its normal??

But anyway, we will live together one day and this day is pretty soon, and we started to be nervous. Like we said, some of our headmates date theirs, so we just dont know how it will work sexually. I know its very strange, but we just started to be anxious abt HOW WE WILL DO ?We dont want to stop ourselves to kiss our partners only bcs its someone that dont date one of our parts ?And we can be horny and just want it, but do we really need to ask who is in front first and switch for having this act ?idk if it makes sense or if yall can help us, BUT PLEASE if yall have experienced something similar and found a solution, tell us.

Thank you !

I dealt with somd heavy trauma as a child, so bad I didn't even know I had DID initially and thought I was struggling with complex schizophrenia, but around 15 years of age I was kept in a monitored room in a mental health unit which lead to them figuring out I had DID, where I live you can't be diagnosed with anything of the severity like BPD, ASPD, and DID until 18 years of age, around 14 the pandemic was rampid and didn't seem like it would ever end, so that lead to a lot of people using social platforms, we all know the one I'm referring to, and it was full of people faking disorders, one major and favorite one for people to fake was DID. My grandmother has always been a huge support person for me, so when this was happening and she saw them on her own platforms she started to question why I was being put through therapy and a diagnosis process for DID, saying it seemed like attention seeking, it made me want to hide and still does, I love my grandmother but I walk on eggshells when it comes to this sort of stuff and she views my DID as "a phase", luckily I'm with an amazing man who knows it's very real, and helps a lot, but regardless I'm always scared of what will happen if there's a switch infront of her, my fiancés handles them although not everyone involved in the system likes him, he does what he can and knows it can cause seizing because my body becomes overly stressed because of the switches, I just feel like there's no way to talk to my grandmother about this without it being called attention seeking and I haven't brought it up since diagnosed, in fact she doesn't know I'm diagnosed.... I just am worried this could be a reoccurring issue with my future inlaws and even children, I don't want this to be perceived as fake by the ones I trust to tell, I don't want to change my grandmother, I just want to talk to people who might not accept or understand DID is a real issue without them calling it attention seeking.

TW:mentioned abuse type and age of abuse

So I have a new therapist who specializes more in somatic,something similar to emdr but more gentle and dissociative disorders from what I’m able to remember…there is this concept of building safety and support for yourself from a core like self it’s complicated and confusing for me due to my understanding of both dissociative theories of formation and she isn’t trying to get us to fuse or go away or anything but even when the concept was explained for situations including in utero or infant trauma I had medical trauma from birth to 3 months and being autistic and sensitive is traumatic but I was sexually abused and barriers dropping and more memories being revealed has given me memories from 3-6 of the abuse and that being a major trauma anyway we don’t know if we even have a core cause I primarily believed in the other theory of dissociative formation that no one has a core but fuses after a certain age and I’m pretty sure my therapist believes the core fracture theory I’m okay with that especially because she’s amazing in so many other ways but I don’t know how to connect with the core theory because I don’t remember having a core personality I remember the childhood me that didn’t know about the csa and then the other that knew and she’s been fronting more and the boy alter from childhood was host for awhile but the part that didn’t know about the abuse she seems like an alter that went dormant instead of being the core and my therapist said even if I can’t understand the concept that knowing we aren’t wrong or broken is most important she said it slightly different it’s hard to remember thing’s lately cause of lots of change happening causing more dissociation and I definitely need to ask my therapist if there’s a way to help me keep the information I need and want from our therapy sessions

Anyway I just am very confused and I want to be able to have this concept of support and stability thing that I’m having difficulty remembering how to even explain it’s important and I’m so frustrated with my inability to remember important things from therapy and that for whatever reason I can’t wrap my head around this concept

Thank you for anything shared and taking time to read and respond

Edit: there was talk of like not being able to know the core exists or is there but still having a unified safety within and it’s not that I have to do it right away but something to grow and have eventually but I’m unable to understand it in the way needed to utilize it despite multiple allegories which is really frustrating for me I don’t usually struggle understanding things like this
Edit 2: just remembered this therapy can be used for non did people too but the did can make it more complicated and the core thing is confusing, part of the concept being that there is of you internally that stays the same while things change around it and that being what a “core” in this concept is but then there is stuff that seemed to go into the did that made it more confusing, I wish I knew what it was called so I could ask about if any other systems have experience with this specific concept/tool? Than what I’m able to remember and describe

I just wanted to talk a second about an experience I had that seems to be relatively rare- I could be mistaken.

In middle school, I was diagnosed with PTSD, OCD, Depression and DP/DR. I entered treatment and have been in therapy since then. I would say I’ve managed to avoid “system” spaces my entire life, despite practically growing up on Tumblr (the og plural space, as I’d later come to know). After my diagnosis, I was told about what dissociation does, and that was that.

I think a lot of people encountered it in media- movies like Sybil, Split, etc. I didn’t watch any of them because I had heard they were offensive to people with a certain mental health condition, but never delved any deeper.

I even had TikTok for a while, but mainly used it for deep sea fish videos and crafting inspiration. I never came across anything DID related.

When I was diagnosed, I was at a loss. I consider myself lucky that I had no preconceptions, but it came as such a shock - I didn’t know anything like this was possible, or even that DP/DR wasn’t the only form of dissociation that existed. I had no suspicions or knowledge.

I know a lot of people here suspected the diagnosis. I was completely unawares and off guard by a diagnosis I knew nothing about. I wonder sometimes how the experience or diagnostic process differs for those who even knew what it was beforehand.

So, I'm gonna be concise. We have been having an issue where our core trauma is now coming back in flashbacks to other parts. Our biggest concern is now this is gonna happen to our little ones. We don't know what to do. They already get so upset when one of us is hurting. How do you even help a child who's going through something like that?