Dissociative Identity Disorder and how selves form

Presented by Willie, the team's main 'parent' and resident 'psychologist'.

In the book, Nobody Nowhere, I wrote about my original self, Donna and the two that split off from that, Willie at age 2 and Carol at age 4.

Each was autistic in their own way.

Donna had Agnosias; faceblind, meaning deaf, meaning blind, disconnected from body and lived in a sensory world of pattern, theme, feel, a world of textures, sounds, smells, movement, colour, light. Donna sang songs to herself and made noises at the mirror, related to objects. Donna was present from birth to age 2. Immune deficiencies had set in by 6 months.

Willie was the protector, the fight response of Exposure Anxiety and determined to not allow the environment to interact directly with Donna. 'He' was Schizoid and afraid enough of feelings to dissociate from them. Willie was largely silent. Progressively Willie developed OCD by age 9. Willie is the main reader but came to read lists, bullet points and encyclopedic entries.

Carol emerged by age 4 and embodied the flight response of Exposure Anxiety. Always diverting and flighty, she was hypomanic, idiosycratic (at times to the point of Schizotypal), socially oblivious and indiscriminate, echolalic, would have fitted ADHD. Carol is a paper shredder who associates reading with failure and had the strongest experiences of dyslexia.

Da Boy consolidated around age 8-10 as a playmate and brother to my little brother aged 2-3. He was bombastic, hypomanic, fitted ADHD, was daring, physical and spun, jumped, climbed and has most of the vocal tics.




Aunty Donna emerged around age 8-10 as surrogate mother to my little brother in a household where his care was largely left to me. She was shy, avoidant, self effacing, tended to Agoraphobia, food avoidance and Selective Mutism.

Marnie began to emerge around age 10 and was a wild tearaway who'd presented rather bipolar, unpredictable, impulsive. She pushed people down stairs, threw chairs, shoved tables and by 13 was a street kid dealing with substance abuse and sexploitation.

Also on the team but more secondary were Dondola who identified as Italian and began in early childhood but didn't become a self until I lived with Italian's aged 8-10, Dodds who emerged by 12 who was the documenter, and Shirley, who is rural and emerged around age 10-12 as a result of being sent bush when I had breakdowns.

All have aspects of autism 'fruit salad'.

(Core Self in a team of 13 that includes Katrina, Willie, Anne (branch 1), Esby, Marnie (branch 2), Foosh, Ning, Opie, Polly Carol, Da, Rose (branch 3) and Addie.

for more information please visit http://www.donnawilliams.net

Category:

Education

Tags:

• DID and how selves form
• dissociative identity disorder
• did
• mpd
• trauma
• ptsd
• donna williams

[1210donna]

@Waltham1892 WHAT IS A TROLL? quoting Waltham's own words: "I pay a flat fee for internet service. So, I might as well get as much use out of my monthly fee as I can. What I do is let them rave on about what they think they know, and then beat them to death with what the truth is. Then, I hit the block button and engage the next target."

[Tuckercrew]

@1210donna thats sociopathic behavior of him, he's terrible.

[Tuckercrew]

@Waltham1892 I personally know the Dutch expert on DID, she'd laugh at you. Its clear youre a troll, and a sociopath, too.

[Waltham1892]

@1210donna

Excuse me, Schizoid and DID?

I don't like to question another clinician’s judgment, but you have to be kidding me. The diagnosis of either makes the diagnosis of the other impossible.

I think I'd get another opinion.

I also think I'd report the clinician who offered the diagnosis to their licensing authority.

[1210donna]

@Waltham1892 are you in he USA? here in Australia, dx of DID is very uncommon. Hence I think it might be that in a country like the USA you might find a higher number of clients presenting as DID who actually just have BPD. I was dx'd when I was sent by my GP for a review of my medication for mood, anxiety, compulsive disorders. I was shocked when he said I was Schizoid and had DID. I'm an autism consultant, have been since 1996, hence seen a lot of overlapping 'fruit salads'.

[1210donna]

@Waltham1892 and here you describe wonderfully the difference between compartmentalised functions that over time have formed into distinct identities in a person with weak central coherence versus someone geared for compulsive attraction toward new roles, role playing, etc... DID is the former, BPD is the latter, and clearly 53% of DID clients fit both, but many human beings will have some elements of each because it is simply a human phenomena, no more, no less

[1210donna]

@1210donna so this is just an extreme of the normality of all humans, just overdeveloped compartmentalisation of mental functions and eventually the connections between compartments weakens because the person's environment necessessitates survival depends on retaining the lack of 'conclusion', realisation, which of course comes with cohesion... when the core self awakens, thaws, or un-depersonalises, this becomes possible

[Waltham1892]

@1210donna

The brain is a hyper-connected system. There are more synapses than there are stars in the known universe.

Compartmentalization is impossible.

Further, you can not have a personality without the frontal temporals, temporal lobes, and the limbic system. While you can claim X many personalities, you only have one of each of these structures.

I too have met, and treated, several DID's. All were confabulating their symptoms, all were BPD's.

Are you a clinician?

[1210donna]

@Waltham1892 I feel my core self was so depersonalised that it lost all personalisation of the body, emotions and thoughts about experiences... they were stored as if they belonged to someone else... in this sense my core self was dormant- present, recording, but other compartments were responding -if you like functions of the brain that developed into compartments.... the function to divert into work, to take all responsibility/guilt, to laugh everything off, to echo TV characters

[1210donna]

@Waltham1892 I also had skype contact with two who had dual dx of BPD and DID and email contact with another with same dual dx. I ended up finding all three to be highly disturbing, highly imbalancing individuals. I also knew of someone with dual dx whose therapist consulted me and my advice was that the person's BPD issues were FAR overriding the DID issues she may have also had.