I don't know where else I can say this, so I'll say this here. My fiance is so so so supportive of our system, even if its so confusing to him. Even with my male alters, he's great friends with many of them and welcoming of them even though he isnt attracted to men, and he understands when some of us are gay or even lesbian. He doesnt find any of it offputting our only gripes are when some alters are being problematic in our everyday life (e.g. one of them trying to start a fight). My only gripes are that sometimes he forgets that what hurts one of us may not hurt another and vice versa, but those are less gripes and more "a semi-regular accidental occurance that I am more than happy to have if it means i have him". And there are so many of us that he has a hard time keeping track 😅

Even more, I have chronic illnesses that he's seen gradually progress in severity and other mental health conditions rendering me almost unable to function in day to day life. Moreover, i'm a POC so systemically (especially medically), I'm less known. We got together before all of it came out, including the plurality (which *he* found out initially), and he stuck by me throughout it. My previous partners and such have all disliked me in some part due to these conditions (ME/CFS = can't go out much of the time, PTSD = they cant talk about certain things around me, etc).

I genuinely don't know if I could have gotten luckier. What's even rarer is that the whole system feels like they love him to some degree, at least mostly. He feels like a light in an everpresent cloud of darkness where all I feel is achey and sore inside and out....

I just needed to get this off my chest. I hope some of you out there can take this as a sign that it's so so possible to be plural and in a healthy relationship and that there's someone out there (if you want that someone, of course).

Hello, fellow systems. This morning, I (main gatekeeper and co-host) had a conversation with the host's mother. It wasn't about this, but at some point it did become about me. She was struggling to understand my actions and my behavior and passively she pressured me into talking about it. I didn't want to talk about me, but I was a little fed up listening to her expectations in our recovery, her talking without truly knowing what we go through day to day, so I jumped and finally told her that we battle with C-PTSD and a "severe dissociative disorder".

She told me she "gets" the dissociative part (i guess because she notices how we "space out", not because she truly knows about dissociation and how it really affects us) but asked about the trauma part, immediately thinking about sexual trauma... We obviously didn't tell her about the part of the sexual trauma we do remember. I just told her half the truth, that yes, sexual trauma probably happened but we didn't remember. And I opened up about the amnesia part of the disorder and how major it can get, with some examples.

This doesn't feel right. I know, even having told her this, that she doesn't get it. She still told us that she expects us to begin acting like a normal person without trauma. "Little things" like getting up every morning and studying for our uni finals isn't enough for her. We know it comes from a good place, she wants us to socialize, get out of the house if possible every day, etc. AND WE KNOW those are good things for our healing. We hope to be able to do it in the future. But saying this, it fails to acknowledge our current reality, struggles and possibilities.

We have chronic fatigue since we were litlle, related to the C-PTSD. She wants us to "ignore it" and do things regardless, because she in the past during certain years was out of energy and she still did things... CFS isn't something one can "ignore", it's different (even though one can see the similarities) than being absolutely tired during a difficult time in life. She confuses energy with motivation too. Straining oneself with CFS only makes it worse.

And it doesn't feel right for other reasons. Firstly, we don't talk about ourselves with her because we never did. We have a disorganized attachment with our parents, as part of the DID diagnosis criteria. And still, we don't want her to feel bad. I always had to parent my parents, guarding their emotions and raising myself and my brother. And she in the past hasn't coped well to us being in mental health crisis: pulling us out of bed by pulling our hair or when we opened up about our suic*dal ideation, telling us to go do it... (But now our relationship is much better. I'd like to think it has nothing to do with us being less visibly distressed, that it has to do with her being in a better place and not falling into old patterns as much).

I guess this post is sort of asking if any of you had to navigate a similar situation with a parent and if you guys were me would you have more conversations in which you try to explain CPTSD and DID a litlle better, or even disclosing it fully.

Thanks!

Hi I'm the host of our system and things had been going ok in the system until I stopped having sex with my husband (for his own personal reasons). I myself am missing it a lot too but understand why it is important that sex is off the table for now.

My alters however are having a lot of upsetting feelings and deeply missing being abused and still craving sex a lot cause that was all they knew. Masterbation worked well for a while and I thought we were fine.

I have tried telling them the body isn't able to even masterbate atm cause every time someone fronts and tries to do so, it results in us having VERY painful headaches that cause me a lot of pain amongst my other chronic illnesses.

They feel so stuck, hurt, angry and unloved and they all have conflicting wants sexually and hate that I am in a monogamous relationship without feeling the pleasure of sex within the body. One of my misguided protectors is feels so much hatred and anger that she cannot go out and hook up with other women or sexualise herself online to them. She wrote me a note last night expressing a desire to kill me if she can't have sex soon. I can tell she is hurting a lot and I can't make it better for her.

Two of my littles were abused by who they call the 'Nice Man' & 'Mummy' and have a deep attachment with these figures from our past (even though we aren't around those abusers anymore) - the way they coped with the loss was to co-front with the body when I was having sex with my partner and imagine it was their abuser doing it.

Due to the severe headaches they can't masterbate to self-soothe anymore and are becoming distressed and no other self-soothing activities are helping .

Since the body isn't having sex anymore they feel desperately sad and sexually frustrated.

Having all these intense sexual feelings coming through from my alters is making me feel crazy. I love my husband dearly and would never dream of cheating on him. I have made it VERY clear to the system that nobody is allowed to send pics/go on chat forums/dating sites etc

I'm at a loss of what to do except to just dissociate, distract and sleep so that nobody can be conscious to do anything stupid. I'm fairly certain nobody would put my marriage at risk but equally feeling the constant swarm of horniness,longing, anger and sadness is really exhausting and triggering me too.

I just don't know how to get through this. I'd appreciate some support and understanding.

Been plagued by nightmares of the past my entire life. Last night was undoubtedly the worst.

Night time being stuffed into a vehicle sometimes alone and sometimes with others. Only 4yrs old and taken to places and people I don't want to be with. Trying to get away and seek help from others only for them to look at me like I was crazy then return me to the bad people. No escape. All those hands all over.

Currently early morning in the parking lot at work waiting to start my day in a metal factory. Trying to push it down and lock it up tight but the hinges on the door is so weak and worn.

My protective side is malfunctioning so its kinda like flipping through tv channels with all the different thoughts, feelings, and noise. My little is frantic and devastated and hurt. There is no comfort.

Wanted to call in but no one would understand. The headache is so intense and the dizziness.

How will we make it eight hours?

Do any other systems get sick when splitting a new alter? Or the person splitting gets stuck in Co con makes it painful?

We have recently split, i am pretty sure. And i have been sick / headache since. It's very annoying, and quite a hassle. New alters are very hard to take care of unfortunately.

We also get sick when rapid switching as well, and when we're blurry for more than an hour. Was wondering if anyone had any advice. Any advice for how to battle the headaches as we have a hard time taking medication, due to some of the medical trauma we have.

I can't quite understand why some alters in my system are bisexual. I get why some are female, that is a trauma thing and I mostly understand why being female is a logical reaction they took.

So the bisexual thing must be caused by trauma too, because most humans aren't totally straight one day then bisexual the next and then a female/lesbian the next day.

Or are some alters maybe bisexual just because that is how they developed? But does that make sense?

Anyways, this is over my head. It is one more identity thing that DID seems to present to me. I'd love to figure out who I am and not have constant surprises and twists in my life.

I’ve been asked so many times where I’m from (Virgin Islands, Canada, New York) and have been told on multiple occasions that I have an accent (South African, posh, New York). I was born and raised in the US, but as a system, I understand that sometimes alters camouflage and pretend to be the host, for lack of a better word, as a mean not to be seen. I mean, I have an alter “from the Bronx…” This has gone on LONG before my diagnosis.

Would all of this be an instance of camouflaging? Have my alters always been in the back this whole time, camouflaging as not to get caught?

Hey everyone. I'm Ben.

This experience is hard to explain, but I'll do my best, and hope to get some thoughts or perspectives. Maybe even advice on what we're dealing with as a system. Diagnosed back in 2018. This has been a problem since then.

So, in my system, there's this persecutor whose entire role seems to be that she just feels shame and denial about the fact that we have DID to an extreme extent. For eight years, there has been no forward (and even sometimes backward) movement on understanding ourselves at all because of her interference.

It's caused a lot of problems, confusion, frustration, etc. Our therapists have done the best they can to help, but unfortunately, our insurance wouldn't cover a specialist and no one we've worked with so far seems to have a very in depth understanding of this disorder and doesn't know what to do to help us.

I'm a logical guy, but I'm open-minded too. I can understand abstract concepts, but figuring out why we would have an alter that feels that this is their whole purpose is baffling to me, especially since it's really done nothing but stop us from healing and understanding how to function.

The attempts to negotiate, explain our situation ("we have DID but it's not scary, it's helped us survive, we're all here for you, we're in a safe space now" etc.), and understand her pain have been pretty much endless this whole eight years. Nothing doing. She will not listen. Has never once made an attempt to change or see things from our perspective, and has relentlessly persecuted everyone here. No one in my system really knows what to do at this point. We're exhausted of trying to help.

I know it's pretty common in DID to have denial/shame about the diagnosis. But this feels like it's on a whole other level. Like it's what keeps her alive and functioning. Sending out an SOS here. Even just a word of "yep, I've experienced this too" to make us feel like we're less alone would help.

Thank you.

I guess I’m a host. I’m fucking tired. Ever since I found out about our system, it’s been chaos, and I feel like I’m going mad.

I’m close to doing something I truly do NOT want to do. I’m planning to get assessed for treatment again. I was somewhat recently discharged, but this is getting too much again. These parts of me have lives they want to keep, but they’re the same parts working to destroy it.

I need serious help to get them to work together, or to get my head on straight at the very least.

All that being said, wish me luck. I’m worried for my partner in this. I don’t want to scare him, but I don’t want to pretend to be okay in this either.

—

I was able to front long enough to stabilize our system last time, but I’m scared they’re acting out too much for this to be fixed.

Hello- the body is 57, but most of us are much younger than that. Looking in the mirror is so unreal seeing first the sex than the age of the body. Body is in decent shape and doesn’t show it’s age being a little chubby filing in the skin.

Oh the joints though: knees and elbows. Hard labor through life has worn them that walking long distances are disabled. Our system functions congruently quite well self-treated with hiccup’s here and there.

Before internet and DID…Multiple Personality Disorder was not very well researched with very little literature on it that therapy pretty much didn’t exist. We knew we were a multiple and were forced to self-discover and learn ourselves to co-operate.

Has other systems out there matured to older adulthood and how are you doing? Good day.

i know the real answer is “get a therapist”. i’m trying, but don’t have access to one at the moment and not for a minimum of 16 days, so.. i don’t know what to do. i know the point of the disorder is to keep you functioning by not letting you think about upsetting things but it’s like i’ve lost Everything about myself. the few memories i have of literally anything outside of the present moment are foggy at best. i’ve tried grounding techniques but it’s like my whole life has become that thing that’s “oops you thought too hard better dissociate about it”. i can’t pin down anything about myself to help ground an identity when literally just trying to think about what my name is makes everything spin.

Not necessarily a vent, more of a discussion, and open to those who wish to comment / might have similar experiences.

I have struggled with how I am seen, with knowing what my identity is outside of other's perception of me. When many of my parts split, when I was around people who were bad for me, for many years, my parts became the things those people would want, expect, etc. Especially when in relation to "sources" and introjection. Not become literally, more, a strange variation on fawning. These parts are now *only* finding out their proper identities, opinions. life. some have entirely different purposes than thought.

I do not split often. I am away from these people now. Things are good- And now I am so blurry. I had a trauma realization recently, a discussion in therapy. I split for the first time in about a year. I cannot find. a name. or an identity. I do not know what I am. And I feel this is all somehow intertwined.

Haha apologies if this sounds odd. I am trying to figure out what I am doing. How I am .

I ended up triggering myself really badly recently by doing something I thought would be enjoyable, but I couldn't handle it. I knew it could have been a bad idea, but I did it anyways because I thought it wouldn't affect me. But it did, worse than I thought it would, and now I'm struggling to not blame myself for it. It's difficult too when some other members of my system are blaming me for triggering us. Others are more compassionate but it's hard when there's so many negative inner voices whose emotions I can feel. And I'm upset that I triggered them, too. I feel like they hold worse trauma than I do, that they remember more, and that they're more affected. Like I'm just naïve and don't know what kind of horrors I'm tampering with, and one day I'll go too far and the floodgates of trauma will spill open.

I'm trying to remember that with having this disorder and being as traumatized as I am, triggers are bound to happen. The dissociation makes me forget how bad some of my triggers are, which is why I engage in triggering activities without concern and don't know how bad it is until I do it. It's going to be harder to convince others in here of that, since I'm in control most of the time. I feel a sense of responsibility to protect the others from triggers since they sometimes feel it worse than me, but being host, I'm usually oblivious to the worst of it. It's going to be hard but I want to foster inner and self compassion for all of us, and hopefully we'll all understand each other and the nature of our trauma without the need to blame one another or ourselves.

like for example in the headspace they may appear too tall for a child, or they might be a little too coherent and mature to resemble a child's mind, but they still have trouble with things such as consenting to various adult activities or emotional regulation and may identify more closely with a younger mental age.

if so, what really makes a little, "little?"

Hi! I’m a new alter and I have been out non stop since forming. I want to talk to our partner to introduce myself fully - but our partner, who is very lovely, is a bit awkward with meeting us, which has caused us to feel anxiety if we aren’t host. She has known we have it for years now and I want to be called by my name. We have past trauma too about people finding out. Any advice? I’d like to talk to her about it tonight since I’m not sure when the host is coming back / he isn’t dormant but seems to be invested in the inside right now. He is co conscious sometimes to kinda manage me but that’s all - Sally ❤️

i had one for a few years up until three months ago. she was so helpful, she guided me through so much and the amount of healing she helped me achieve was astounding.

Since she dropped me as a client, it just feels like I've been backsliding. I've been dissociating so much more recently. I have some communication still but it feels like I'm running on loops a lot of the time. My OCD is getting worse too, I can tell.

First the turmoil of losing a therapist in the middle of a crisis, it's a grief I've not yet processed. Then of course there's the fact my current therapists really don't have much experience treating DID. It's just so tiring.

Hi.... Me again, I showed Johanna (host atm) this forum and my post where I was looking for help and she didn't seem to take it seriously. Her response was "how am I aggressive?" But told me she wasn't mad at me when I explained it. Silika also "dismantled" and "destroyed" some other person here, I don't know what she ment about that. But I'm really sorry if she did that and that isn't ok since this should be a save space. I'm sorry that I showed her this sub if she did something like that.

The problem is that she and her alter Samantha told me repeatedly (both when they are in front atm) "help me" and "I can't anymore" when they have an emotional breakdown. I also told her today that the only help for her is a therapy but her answer to that is that she doesn't need help what so ever. I think she says that cause she is frightened of therapists and to combat the need says that she doesn't need help in the first place. I told her all that as well and am now waiting for a response....

I'm just frustrated that she says "help me" and then when I present the help, "I don't need help".

Normally I wouldn't discuss something so personal online but I'm completely out of options and don't know what to do or how to handle the situation. I'm pretty Shure she will read this post as well but frankly I don't really care. I posted this for me and really could need some advice please...

In short, I wonder if anyone has emotions that you struggle/have struggled to reach? And if so, have you found any way to help you reach those emotions?

The reason I ended up with a DID diagnosis is because I roughly a year ago started to work through my childhood (not the best idea) and struggled to process the trauma that I've tried to ignore most of my adult life. I've enough evidence that I cognitively know that it was traumatic and to feel like I have a right to be angry and like it might be cathartic to get angry. But whenever I'm anywhere close to getting angry about it is it like some part of me is pulling the emergency breaks, which is just frustrating. Hence, I wonder if others recognize that struggle, for anger or for some other emotion, and have found some way to handle it?

Lately when I'm really dissociative, I think of a random alter, whoever pops into my head, and imagine that I'm them. It's a really powerful grounding tool.

I think it's because I'm subconsciously fighting to maintain full consciousness or control of the front. And trying to actively shut out other alters, even if they're just kind of lingering around, is making me dissociate harder.

If I just acknowledge their presence, and let them come forward even briefly, it actually helps me stay grounded and they don't even take over.

hi everyone, i’ve been in therapy on and off for about 10 years. started when i was around 15 and now im 24. i was diagnosed with DID in the summer of 2022 and have been seeing a steady therapist since 2021. we recently started trying to see her twice a week when she has availability to really dive into EMDR and my trauma so i can “get better” or whatever that means i guess.
anyway that’s my background, i was wondering how long everyone has been in therapy for, and if you think you’ll be in therapy long term/forever, even after trauma processing.
thanks!

I typically don’t disclose my DID to people, but I have disclosed it to two friends. One of these friends I trust very deeply, enough that other parts sometimes come out when we’re hanging out, or message the friend. I have never in my life overtly switched in front of a friend, or introduced myself as a different part. But there have been several times when parts have wanted to introduce themselves and “get to know” my friend.

Is it a terrible idea to let this happen? I try desperately not to let visible signs of this disorder show, but I also really trust this person. But I also would never want to make them uncomfortable.

I don’t really know what to do. I want to stay close to my friend and not ruin things, but I also feel like it’s going to just kinda happen one day, because I can’t control myself.

Hello. I'm in a relationship with my partner for about 1.5 years. Officially I know about her DID since about two weeks after we initially met. It was love on first sight. After a few months she mentioned why she has so many nightly panic attacks and flashbacks - I do everything in a way no other partner or perpetrator ever did, I'm always calm and loving, caring. I listen and I spend time with quite some of them, playing games, going for walks, just talking. That's completely new for them and creates an unsafe terrain.

The past few weeks we had a small break as we both noticed older patterns snuck their way in. So we had some distance. We connected after about three weeks and it felt great, for the both of us. She said she feels all my love. We manage to actively use other ways instead of falling back into these old patterns.

I'm neither her therapist not her coach. I can listen, and sometimes I offer my thoughts or raise questions.

Some of them try to spite me, so she can be alone again. I don't want to leave them like this.

She is scared. She opened up about her not being sure who she is. What's her real self. What's real at all. Whose emotions and experiences are real.

A few hours ago she told me everything's becoming alien. She's experienced in all those strategies, has decades of therapy, yet again her nervous system is reacting in this way - ending the relationship, cutting ties to me, just being alone.

What can I do? I know she doesn't want to end it, it's her n.-system again (It's not the first time they announced it's over), I don't want to feed this believe nor that I wouldn't care.

hi all, never posted here before and rarely talk about my DID, so bear with me. i've known about my DID for over a decade, but it's been wildly inconsistent; at times, symptoms are so obvious and disorienting that i look like the dramatised stereotype, and other times, it's completely invisible and i forget i even have it. however, certain songs trigger certain alters, no matter what. it's like a lock & key. i sometimes find myself unable to switch when necessary without encouraging it via music; needing to switch can sometimes feel like i have to play this song to relax, almost like the urge to cough. once i do, the switch is smooth from there, and over within 30 seconds. but this can happen even when i have no reason whatsoever to switch: song A always pulls out alter A, song B always pulls out alter B, and so on. each of my alters have carefully curated playlists for this reason, and are not allowed to listen to someone else's without explicit permission from the gatekeeper. it's weird, right?

i'm not the most shocked, since music is what my system was built around in the first place. i used music as an escape, certain songs to step into the identity i needed to be in that moment, and true identities formed around that conditioning.

wondering if anyone here has a similar experience, with the functions of system being almost exclusively controlled by music, or maybe another means of sensory input?