Dissociative Identity Disorder and the arrival of the core self

Sorry about the volume, but I have enough difficulty getting speech out and volume is also part of that. Thanks for understanding.

I had 9 in my system at the point of making this video; Polly, Carol, Rose, Da, Marnie, Willie, Addie, Anne and me. I was the last one the team spoke of, the last to be openly named.

I had refused to be a human, saw myself as a ghost. I was the typist, the war correspondent, typing their lives, storing their information, taking none of it personally. I saw them as outside people and because the first splitting was from age 2, didn't think we had a core.

Finally, I began to stir. I began to stress I was not acknowledged as a self within the team. I began to express my own reality and feelings, that I lived in a sensing world, that I disappeared when voices were within range or when people got within a metre of me. I began to express that though Carol had come to speak via songs, jingles and Da could recite TV shows and had an array of accents, I had struggled to speak but finally stopped trying altogether at age 9 when Willie continued to keep trying in spite of being laughed at, mocked, ignored. Then Addie and Anne learned to speak in a whisper.

But I had employed none of their strategies. Instead I felt my speech was ugly, broken and chose a world apart from them, from friends, from any occupation or activity involving speech. I became fingers at a keyboard.

Recently a friend died. She used a letter board for speech and had no functional verbal speech. I was torn because I related to her although only in silence as the other selves spoke. I wondered if I could still try and speak, that if she had my ability to at least articulate that she'd have not given up as I had, she'd have used it to her best ability.

I had barely spoken for more than seconds since I was 9 and now I began to speak for minutes in between silence. I detested my voice, feared the world would never understand how someone as other selves could be so fluent, a captivating public speaker, a singer, a comedian, yet as their core self have such communication disorder.

I remembered how Polly had tried to speak in an interview when we were in our 20s, how I typed interview answers to submitted questions and Polly would then went out with the interviewer to just 'be' in ways I couldn't socially dare because I was too socially phobic.

I remembered how Polly's dysfluency (she's the most dysfluent next to me) was then mocked in the media 'controversy' because by contrast our other selves could burble and chatter and lecture. This secured my fate as silent. If Polly would be mocked, I would never survive.

But in speaking this last week I had the courage to question the phobia I have of the sound of my voice and made a video I sent to my therapist, finally speaking verbally to someone outside of Chris, my husband, who had also rarely heard me speak verbally.

From there I searched to understand how could one self have such a communication disorder the others had got around. And there I saw about stammering. I had had the most minor sound repetitions... only words with double 'l' so had come to avoid such words... but I'd never know about blocking or prolongation as part of stammering (even though my system have a degree in Linguistics!). And there it was, the connection. For some of the means of escaping stammer included whispering, singing, using accents, reading or use of scripts, putting on a characterisation so as to escape the crippling self consciousness of one's own voice. On the same page, the links stammering can have with dyspraxia, with language processing disorder, with Tourette's, all of which were part of my (diagnosed) autism.

And then I understood the ways I had dissociated to survive and in doing so, my other selves had come to use strategies to escape the stammer that imprisoned me.

So this week I came challenge my identification with being a non-speaker and though it was exhausting tried to speak each day when not dissociated. Through this I spoke to another friend who has know all the other selves and knew Polly (who had appeared for a few moments with her now and then) so knew a degree of our dysfluency. Finally, as part of facing this problem I made this video, to speak up, speak out, without shame and say I am the core self, I am Donna.

I am so deeply grateful to all my other selves for all they are, all they've lived, all they've survived and all they have yet to teach me. I welcome them home and hope they can come to trust the core self that shut down and turned away from them for so long. I am sorry.

I would also like to thank the people who helped me get to this point, especially my husband Chris and my therapist who has provided the safe, stable communication space for me to work through my DID to this point - thank you.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• core self
• ptsd trauma
• dissociative identity disorder
• DID
• dissociation
• MPD
• splitting
• alters

[budsaysitscool]

Were you scared when you found out you were a human? I mean, was it hard to grasp that you were born with only one personality and to learn that extreme abuse caused this phenomenon to occur? Were you angry at those responsible for this? I understand that you embrace your selves like a family somewhat, as they have helped you along the way. Please believe me when I tell you you have a beautiful speaking voice. Your voice was the first thing I noticed about you, and I was actually jealous!

[1210donna]

Overwhelmed, shocked, its like something very surreal. I knew the alters were abused but didn't conceive of me having been because my memories were all from around 6mths-1.5yrs. By 2 I was pretty much completely dissociated. My last memory in the body was at 4 in a doorway. I had no idea how I got there and couldn't work out how to move. I have no memories of learning to walk. I remember neglect but the only abuse I remembered from in the body was being thrown through a window @ 6mths old.

[1210donna]

By 12 I realised I WAS a mind, didn't feel I was a person WITH a mind for I felt like a ghost with no body, just a recording facility. And so AS that mind, that 'war correspondent' I knew of the abuse of the alters, but I didn't take it personally at all... they felt like 'other people' and I had no PERSONAL memories of abuse, THEY did. so it was really sad, traumatising, to comprehend how they'd lived, coped, what each had compartmentalised.

[lexxypexxy]

I was watching CSI:Miami last night and the show featured a young woman who was diagnosed with DID. A lot of time these cases always mention a traumatic childhood. I'm fascinated that children are able to create identities, but one thing I still don't quite get is how the "alter" is not aware of the host or vice-versa. Is it possible that the host personality can block out the alters at will?

[1210donna]

@lexxypexxy DID is so diverse that watching one portrayal of it on a TV show really doesn't help much to get to grips with its diversity. The best explanation I saw was of an open plan office with all manner of dividers that compartmentalised office workers in the same office so some could see certain others but could have no idea others were also in there, or think of a maze, you may see down one row but not around a corner and some parts of the maze you may rarely or never stumble upon.

[1210donna]

@lexxypexxy as for 'block out at will', there's nothing conscious about the process. When I was 9 I was made to watch as the dog we were looking after for someone was bashed to death. Then as different parts of me took different parts of this event, I had no idea one had been made to then help bury the dog. Everything from the dogs final moment to its burial was missing for decades. So that's hardly 'at will'. Some things are so sickening, the soul deals with it by compartmentalising

[gotch09]

@1210donna I think I came very close to being like you. I came very close to fracturing into DID but didn't. Some of my memories are still very submerged I think. I hate it when people don't understand that there's not always a easy answer. BTW, at 61 I still have flashbacks.

[budsaysitscool]

Jealous because you have such a sweet, nice voice with a higher pitch and my voice is deep for a woman. I get called "sir" on the phone and in the drive-thru-- which has been embarrassing at times. I can tell this video was hard for you to get through because of the nature of what you were sharing, and it brought tears to my eyes that you don't have more confidence. I am so sorry that you were in the hands of monsters when you were a baby.

[jewel4america]

@clealuira this is not PTSD... I have that and DID... apples and oranges... also, why does the VICTIM not try and confront what's happened to them?? I was raped daily.. beaten, kidnapped, starved and other things... how can you even ask the question ''why''... the question is HOW DO WE FIND ANY HELP TO GET THE ANSWERS.. I didn't know until I was 55 what I had... and I remember a lot of the abuse, but IT'S WHAT I COULD NOT REMEMBER THAT HURT ME THE MOST..

[1210donna]

those with DID in therapy do confront the underlying issues and do have therapies also used for PTSD but DID is more complex.