Hello one and all,

I have recently been diagnosed with DID along with Ptsd can you guys tell me what you think about DID, do you feel it is real and why or why not? There is alot of controversy about this disorder and I am just looking for feedback so won't be offended regardless of what you believe or disbelieve.
Thanks
TT

I think it is real. I wondered at some points if I had it during the hardest times of working through my trauma. I do not have DID, but did feel I had several me's inside at different ages dealing with the traumas differently depending on the inside me's age. I hope this makes sense, it's the only way I can describe it right now.

So, even though I felt totally fragmented and seperated, using therapy I converged it all by the end.

Hope you get what I'm trying to say.

A few thoughts...

A book to look into is called "First Person Plural," You can read it here:
http://books.google.com/

My Aunt's best friend is a therapist specializing in DID. The conversations were very interesting. My understanding is that it is only known to be caused by rather severe abuse early in life, so I'm not surprised that someone with DID would also be diagnosed with PTSD. The goal in therapy is to eventually integrate the separate identities.

Towards the end of my time with my first therapist, he began to wonder if I had DID. Sometimes he felt like he was talking to me the 23 year old, and sometimes he felt like he was talking to me the 15 year old.

Around that time in my life was when my traumatic memories began to reintegrate. The experience was kind of like the traumatic images and the traumatic feelings were connecting, and suddenly what used to be numb I could now feel in life. Given that, I don't have a difficult time imagining that DID is real.

I guess my question is how dissociated are you? Do different identities have different memories, or are the traumatic memories accessible to you?

Because of the spike in diagnoses of DID after the movie "Sybil," I tend to believe DID does not really exist or is at least vastly over-diagnosed. How can a psychiatric phenomenon go from being virtually non-existent to present in thousands of patients overnight? Sorry if that offends people, but it is just my opinion.

DID wasn't in the DSM until 1980.

"Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was published in 1886, when multiple personalities was more commonly diagnosed.

In 1910, the term Schizophrenia was introduced. From that point on, cases of DID dramatically declined. It is suspected that individuals with DID were being diagnosed as Schizophrenic.

Sybil aired in 1976 and awareness of the phenomenon once again rose, as did the diagnosis of the disorder.

I'm not sure about this at all, but it does seem to me from other forums that A LOT of people in the USA are diagnosed with DID, but I've never come across someone in Australia who has (although the condition does exist). To me it's a very very rare condition yet so many people in the US seem to have it!

If you use the search engine on this forum there is information about DID & PTSD. Infact I think it's in one of the information sections.

To me DID, is having distinct separate identities & being unaware of the others existence. They are quite separate with different personalities, clothing, likes, dislikes, even different speaking voices. But I am no expert!

My understanding is that dissassociation is a big component of PTSD, I know I suffer. I also know that I feel like there is different 'me's' but in no way do I believe I have DID.

Sometimes in therapy when talking about trauma my therapist has pointed out that I use words like "we didn't like that" (instead of I didn't like that) or when I wrote out one of my traumas, I wrote 'she is fighting him off, and I am feeling scared', and there was quite a few written examples of using the word 'she' instead of 'me' or 'we' instead of 'I'.

My T has also described me as being 'split' and she has described 'splitting off' as an effect of trauma but this is not the same as DID.

Personally if I ever got a diagnosis of DID or schizophrenia or cancer or something else significant I'd get a second opinion. And research, research, research...!

Could this be the reason I can not recall any part of my childhood? I actually do not remember anything until around the age of 23.

Herc I have no idea... maybe a specialist can sit down with you to try and answer that.

Herc the amnesia could be part of PTSD, maybe even DID or something else entirely. I really have no clue.

Does it worry that you can't remember anything until 23? If it does, then why not seek out a specialist and get an answer. You deserve treatment & support. You deserve to know why, if you so desire.

The folks at the hospital and all my therapists have talked about this and decided that
I will recall "whatever" when my mind and body are ready to handle it.

I just had never heard of DID before. But I certainly plan on researching this subject.