Do we/You(s) have DID?

How many times has the google search pinged this.  How many of us are searching for answers to out struggles online, in the dark.  We are all looking for the same thing.  Many of us have reached into different belief systems, religions, social groups and more.  We are all looking for answers, meaning, proof were live sometimes.  We need to validate our very existence.  Something most people can do on their own at a young age.  However the chronic trauma victim cannot.  As we begin to travel our journey, no matter rtes bids age, we begin to do what most people do as a child and in adolescence.  We question our world.  Beginning as adult children, metaphorically, we engage our word to the limited degree we can.  We probe for reasons we are so different.  Many times really questioning our own agendas and motives.  “Are we really that horrible?!”  How could we have so many struggles it seems, and most others around us go on with their lives quite uneventfully,  in comparison.

If you KNOW, and have accepted that you are many, then you are reading this for other reasons, maybe just additional validation knowing others feel as you do.   We use the term, feel in many places where others would expect to find the word, “know”.  This is because childhood trauma victims, remember the feelings.  Our knowing is in the FEEL of it all.  We were so young we never really developed the understanding of KNOWING anything.  Our very instincts to love our caregivers and trust in them are themselves hurtful.  How can we ever learn to believe in ourselves today, either as young adults or middle aged train wrecks.  This is the reason that so many plural people, have a hard time accepting “us”.  Our coping skill is designed to run un the background, like a passive security program.  Always watching and monitoring in the subconscious.   In the event of a “trigger”. the software takes over, isolating the embedded programming, protecting it from the events about to, or alewaadly in progress in the system.  Think this:  how many of us actually open the protection software on our electronic devices, unless we get a notification or a crash.  Same applies here, if you are unaware of the events happening, you don’t want to know.  Then, as things begin to normalize, we are dumped right back in  to the same sub-routine we were previously engaged in.  Most of “us”, are programmed by our surroundings to believe we are eccentric, forgetful, or just moody and boorish.

As we have read the clinical and cold criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder, like so many other diagnosis, the ticking of the boxes does not even come close to getting the diagnosis right.  At leas t this is OUR opinion, and subject to scrutiny I am sure.  Even the clinical descriptions are so cold I will not quote them here, I am human(s).  What I believe we have lost not only in this diagnosis, but nay of the trauma related and stress related mental health disorders is this:  HUMANITY.  Did everyone get that?  What most of us fail to see, unless your on the patent end, losing our humanity, is killing us all.  The ability for a PERSON, to commit an act of human decency, can cure most things we see here.  All the medications,  Shock therapies, seances, and similar religious based hysterical treatments, cannot replace the act of just being nice.  To make a point tot be brought up again later; There has never been a trauma patient that complained of her caregivers being too nice and kind tot hem.  Why is that?

 

For us, the somewhat predictable hurricane that our lives had become was killing us.  THE body was in the forties now, and tired.  Our health was failing, we were LARGE, and we couldn’t make to through a business meeting without bursting into tears.  Imagine this in a refinery!  We Could not remember most of our life prior to our twenties.  We had snapshots, or “commercials” in our thoughts, but could not piece them all together.  our thoughts were broken and erratic.  We would appear lazy at times, as we were exhausted.  We would forget the most common things, over and over again.  Our caregivers increased the intensity levels of our punishments, making the breakage even more intense.  The circle was formed.  The pattern was learned and repeated.

We would have intense passionate relationships, people would fall so hard and fast for us.  WE were working as a team to feed our insecurities.  This is one reason we are so good in sales.  We are feeding our sense of self worth when we succeed.  So we succeed a lot.  We need the fuel to justify whey were here.  Is this our purpose.  Then we wake up in another crisis, usually self generated by a system, that I have no idea I had, working as fourteen independent people.  Ever seen a McDonalds with fourteen managers working all at once?  Chinese fire drill!  Every day in your head.   Thats DID.  The incessant noise everyones thoughts.  Remember the Mel Gibson movie, where he could here the thoughts fo the females around him?  Try turning the volume up but the people aren’t around poi, they are you.  You cannot escape, you have to listen.  Am I crazy? as you ask yourself for the five hundredth time this hour.  Is this schizophrenia?  Will I spend my days drooling on myself eating green jello?  Who you learn that were not hearing the voices, but feeling them it starts to click.  Maybe we aren’t dying over the cuckoos nest yet, well maybe not!  That is the best way I can describe my first real taste of acceptance.  The fight however was far from over,  within us.

If you find yourselves arguing amongst yourselves, that you DONT have DID, or that you’re all making this up just for attention, as our parents said.  Maybe you think this is all a rouse to get meds?  The fact you continually fight yourselves, that you do not have DID, that your making this up, that your pathetic and need attention, or a date, or whatever so much that your this crazy to make this up.  Maybe they called you borderline, bipolar, schizoaffective, or just moody.  Maybe they put you on every med for ADD, ADHD, Bipolar, and other drugs that weren’t even labeled for anything.  Maybe they just kept writing prescriptions because you kept showing up for help.  Many of us then,  still don’t know why we kept going.  The simple truth is this.  There is not ONE pharmaceutical drug for the treatment of DID.  However there are lots of drug companies wanting to off label their drugs to get more prescriptions written; but that is another article.  The short version, people that have DID, will be the hardest ones to convince they have it.

For those of you that are either sacred, convinced, or think you loved one is plural, you have read this far.  Please know there truly is a controversy,  attached to DID, perhaps more than any other diagnosis.  The argument in the professional community, well actually,is more for those having it that the rest of us.  For those whom have either experienced first hand or otherwise, feeling as incomplete, yet resilient; understand that there approval and understanding is neither required or sought after.  The very fact you are reading this is proof of your spectacular skills and intellect.  Being plural is NOT a label you should be ashamed of.  This is not a disorder that happens from weakness; we are strength and courage personified.  We are one who are many.

When you find yourself googling DID, cPTSD, MPD, in every minute of your spare time.  When people come up to you and you have no idea who they are, but they know you.  Somewhere you know they are familiar, yet completely strange.  When you lose time.  When. you struggle with identity and self daily.  If you find yourself questioning how you have knowledge of things you dod not experience, take inventory.   Y’all . may have something to chat about.  Once you not only accept, but when you ALL BELIEVE, then communication really begins.  You WILL know.