Frequently Asked Questions about DID
(and their awnsers)
Isn't DID the same thing as Schizophrenia, having different personalities and all?
NO, Dissociative Identity Disorder is NOT schizophrenia! Most people think that schizophrenia means "split personality", but this is totally wrong. Schizophrenia is a chronic form of psychosis due to a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Schizophrenics do NOT have other personalities and schizophrenia is not caused by trauma but is a genetic disorder.
The schizophrenic person sometimes can sometimes hear voices, but always from the outside.
A person with DID hears voices from the inside, coming from other personalities...
Then what exactly is DID?
DID, formally known as MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder), stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder. It is an identity disorder, because of the existance of more than one personality/ identity within a single body...the process of developping multiple personalities involves frequent dissociation (disconnecting feelings, thoughts and conciousness form the body) that is why the term has been changed from MPD to DID once the psychological background of the multiple was better understood...
I do not understand, could you explane it a little further?
Sure, the medical/psychological definition of DID is this:
"The existance within the individual of two or more distinct personalities, each of which can be dominant at a particular time. The personality that is dominant at any particular time determines the individuals behaviour. Each individual personality is complex and integrated with it's own unique behavior patterns and social relationships"
I would like to add that the person in question often doesn't know that he or she is a multiple (a person with DID) because of the fact that the different personalities (known as "alters", which is short for alter-ego's) are psychologically separated and do not reveal themselves to (all) others...
Oh my dear, here I am trying to explain things and I only make it more complicated
But if more than one personality or "alter" is living inside someone, where did the other personalities come from?
DID is a survival tactic. It is the product of the very creative mind of highly traumatized children to protect themselves from trauma and abuse. These, usually very young, children dissociate (block) trauma... (telling themselves:"This isn't happening to me!") in a situation from where they have no means of physical escape they create a mental escape for themselves... But when they flee into their mind, who takes their place?... That is how the other personalities get born.
They come from the infinate mind or soul of the child to protect it and from there develop into a personality, based upon their experiences and beliefs...
Let me illustrate this with an example:
Julie is a seven year old girl and the constant abuse has brought her to a point where she feels like dying is the only option, she doesn't know what to do, is confused about her feelings, about the overwhelming emotions and about the intense pain, this cannot be happening, this isn't happening... Her father enters her bedroom and as he crawls into her bed Julie's head begins to throb...the room starts spinning...and suddenly Julie finds herself floating above her body...she is floating towards the ceiling and from there she sees her father rape a little girl, the girl looks familiar, even a bit like her, but it cannot be her, for she is up here and this girl is down there.
The girl is crying, she looks so very small from way up here, allmost like a mouse, in fact the crying sounds a bit like the squeeking of a mouse. Then the father gets up and walks out of the bedroom. As Julie floats back into her body she looks at the wet face of the girl in her bed...
"Goodnight Mouse", she whispers and goes to sleep.
Here we see how Julie trades places with Mouse, the alter that takes the pain for Julie, making Julie believe it wasn't her that got raped in the first place. Julie probably will not remember the whole event at all, because another alter, named "the Keeper", takes the memory away from her so she will not have to think of her father raping a little girl called Mouse.
This example illustrates, in a very basic way, (and definately not the only way, for the systems of many multiples are very different and individual) how the system of a multiple can work to protect the original child (Julie) who will get on with her life like nothing ever happened.
But in the process a new child is born, a little girl called Mouse, who has a terrible life, one of pain and suffering (who will probably get help from others later on to share the pain).
And the Keeper is the one that doesn't feel any pain, in fact the Keeper doesn't feel anything, he just sees what happens and takes the memories to a safe place, where they cannot hurt anyone anymore.
This is all very hard to believe, isn't DID just a way to get attention?
It is often thought DID is a sham, a bizarre form of "play-acting" that is is perpatrated by manipulative attention seeking individuals. Well, it is NOT. Most people that have DID (up
to 90%) are not even aware that they are multiple.The disorder is in fact one of hiddeness, for the confusion within the person with DID is often great. Just imagine the shame and confusion when you are often "loosing time", meaning that you have black holes in your memory not being able to remember what you have been doing (for another personality, whose existence you aren't even aware of, has had control over the body). Strange clothes in you closet, constantly finding yourself in strange unfamiliar places, not being able to recall how you got there.
You can imagine how these situations, just a few of the things a multiple has to cope with in every-day life, can make you very insecure and affraid. Taking all of this in consideration the last thing a multiple is likely to do is to claim a lot of attention.
Once a person is diagnosed (usually after a long period of therapy and often misdiagnosis) with DID the acceptance of being more than one within your own body is very hard, but the right diagnosis is the proper starting point towards healing.
Isn't DID an exaggeration of the different parts of our personality, can we not all be considered "multiple"?
We all do have different parts to our personalities, but DID is not just an exaggeration of these parts. We as we might have different moods and thoughts at different times, the alters within a multiple's system are individual beings, each of which having different moods and thoughts of their own. So: NO we are not all multiple:
-Because we do not all have a dissociative disorder.
-Because we do not all suffer from severe and chronic child abuse or trauma.
-Because we do not all have amnesia for what we are doing when a different part of our
personality comes to the fore.
-Because the "raison de etre" of the different sides to our personality is not to hide from
ourselves information or feelings about trauma.
-Beause we all do not develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder once we begin to pay attention to
our different parts.
I have never met a multiple, how many people do have DID?
You think you have never met a multiple, but in fact you cannot tell if someone has DID. Only once you get to know the person a little better certain things might give you a clue, but you do have to know what to look for. The fact that it is not easy to determine weather some-one is a multiple is clearly shown by the often misdiagnosis in the psychiatric world in the case of DID.
And since the person with DID him- or herself doesn't know he or she is multiple, only that strange things often happen to them, they cannot just tell you. Those multiples that do know about what their own multiplicity are not very likely to go and tell just anyone about it.
But returning to the question: how many people do have it... We just cannot be really sure, also because of what I just wrote about the secrecy and the fact that the multiple doesn't know because the whole point of DID is to protect the person, by letting him or her know as little as possible.
Due to the causes of the development of DID we can conclude that the disorder is more common with women than men, because childhood trauma and abuse are more often inflicted upon women. An unknown percentage of the people who have suffered from childhood abuse have been able to resort to dissociation as a means of mental escape from the pain and have developped DID. An estimate in the USA about the prevalence of DID states that it approximates that of 1% of the population. Translated into actual people this would mean at least 2,000,000 cases in the US alone....
If your reaction is: "What, that many...?!" I would like to point out to you that the development of DID is directly linked to child abuse and child abuse is all too common.
How many and what kind of alters are there?
Well, every person with DID is an individual, or rather is several individuals, and the amount of alters differs from person to person. Numbers of alters have ranged from two to hundreds and allthough the average number is around 20 alters people with more than hundred alters are no exeption. The number of alters is usually explained by three factors...
1) The severity of the trauma
2) The chornicity of the trauma
3) The degree of vulnerability of the child
I would personally like to add the childs individuality and personality to this, for different people react differently to situations and tend to cope with things in very divers manners.
As far as the different kinds of alters are concerned you should realize again that everyone is different and this individuality is reflected into the alters. The alters are just as much individuals as we are individuals within a society. But there are a few typical types of alters that tend to be present in the system of every multiple:
-A depressed, depleted host.
-A strong, angry protector.
-A scared, hurt child.
-A helper.
-An embittered internal presecutor who blames all the abuse on the fellow-alters.
Often there are several alters that fit one of the above discriptions, but that doesn't mean that they are the same, they can be very different. However these alters that somwhat alike in behaviour or feelings tend to form a group, so in a case where you find many alters you can find a group of protectors instead of just one...
Is it bad to be a multiple?
No it certainly is not. Being a multiple helps some to stay alive. It allows them to protect themselves and remain sane in the face of severe abuse. It allows them to endure the worst of times and to keep their heart and soul safe from their abusers... so therefore DID is a tool, a very creative and effective tool for survival.
People that are multiple are not crazy, they have just had to create a place to be safe and they have succeeded, but this being multiple sometimes does make you feel crazy and therefore insecure and affraid. This is very understandable and it doesn't make being a multiple bad.
Does it ever go away?
The symptoms of DID wax and wane, but in a period when you are feeling better it does not mean that is has gone away. But DID is treatable, you can become one again, allthough the therapy means you will have to work very hard for a long period of time, DID is treatable!!!
You have to realize though that it doesn't just go away on it's own, you will have to find proper help. This means proper help for you, and not everybody is the same, but it is very wise to try and find a therapist that has experiance with treating DID. Many different kinds of therapy can assist in the healing and the dealling with memories that alters begin to share after keeping them hidden all this time. Do not be affraid to shop around and try what kind of therapy is best for you, but do not give up... help is out there, but it is up to you to find it.
