Disassociate Identity Disorder: An Introduction

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madmikesamerica.com
A Neo-surrealist view of Beauty and the Beast a Classic DID example from: http://neosurrealismart.com/modern-art-prints/?artworks/beauty-and-the-beast-dissociative-identity-disorder.html

Have you ever had that problem where you don’t quite know what you want to eat, so you are stuck trying to decide amongst a handful of choices?

Most of us have. Though when I get it, there is a small twist on the problem. When I go to look for what I would like to eat, I’m drawn in different directions and end up having an argument with myself between two or more dishes. Why? Because I am a multiple.

When I say I am a multiple, I mean that I have DID, Disassociate Identity Disorder. A condition that, until recently, was known by the moniker Multiple Personality Disorder. DID doesn’t seem to form in just anyone and is incredibly rare. It occurs only when the right mind is present and the child bearing that mind goes through extreme levels of abuse.

Disassociation is something that everyone does. We all have times when we go through our lives seemingly on autopilot or not quite sure how we made it from the store to our home. Perhaps we had a lot on our minds and decided to put other functions on ‘cruise’. But in DID, this disassociation goes farther. The young mind starts imagining that it isn’t happening to them, that it is someone else. It goes to the point where the mind actually creates that someone else and a separate consciousness is born.

This doesn’t occur in adults, but in certain young children who go through severe abuse, this may be the only way for their mind to tolerate the conditions that they find themselves in.

And so it was as such for me. I found myself in such an abusive home. For me, trauma was normal. One moment my parents had other people over and were kind and loving. The next, my mother would go out, my father would begin to drink to much and would find himself in a drunken stupor. I would be subjected to both sexual and emotional abuse on a regular basis. I won’t go into details right now for your sake, but I will write about them in time.

Currently there are at least eleven of us. Four are adult males are the adult males, two are are teenage males, four are male younger, one is an adult female and one is a Canis lupus. We function decently well for the most part and generally get along. We range from the chronically depressed to those prone to regression to the amazingly empathic, to the genius level of intelligent, to able to take charge in any crisis to being the most understanding of care givers.

We have been through just about everything and still continue on. We have to hide the fact that we are legion (sorry, I couldn’t help myself there). We might have difficulty functioning when faced certain situations and can face head on the worst crisis. We can educate you just about any subject and are completely clueless socially.

We have no idea how to take the next step in our life or if we can. We have plans for every advancement in life. There are times we want to hide away in our rooms where no one can see or hurt us to leading a group of people out to do something and being the life of the party. We need to get our voice heard.

ED: We are grateful and humbled that this young person reached out and asked us to tell their story.  We shall continue to do so because our world needs to be informed. This article has not been edited.  It was written and submitted by Bran Lee Parker.

About Post Author

Carol Bell

Carol is a graduate of the University of Alabama. Her passion is journalism and it shows. Carol is our unpaid, but very efficient, administrative secretary.
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11 years ago

Your story is fascinating and I suspect your future posts will be as well.

12 years ago

Thank you for the warm welcome. I feel a bit bad as I realized that I misspelled my own condition, it should be Dissociative Identity Disorder, shows what happens when we rely too much on a spell check to make up for our horrible spelling.

It should be interesting to be able to write about this openly.

greenlight
12 years ago

Thank you for shedding some light on this often misunderstood condition, and your willingness to share your story.

Erin N.
12 years ago

What a brave story. DID is extremely rare, especially in its “true” form, or MPD. I look forward to reading more. Thank you, Bran.

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