It's time to revisit Dissociative Identity Disorder

[@neurotransmissions]

There were so many things that I *didn’t* talk about in this video that are also worth exploring. For example, it’s also worth mentioning that there were only a handful of psychiatrists from the early days of DID (up to the mid 90s) who had had an enormously outsized influence on defining and evangelizing information about the disorder. This has included the Canadian psychiatrist Colin Ross, who was deeply involved in recovering repressed memories of satanic child abuse during the satanic panic, believes he has the paranormal ability to emit energy beams out of his eyes that can control others, and, curiously, seems to be part of the anti-psychiatry movement. He used to be the president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), which is often considered a leader in promoting DID-related research, but has also been ensnared in controversy: its founder was Bennett Braun (the psychiatrist who was discussed in the video), it’s often accused of promoting conspiracy theories (e.g. involving ritual abuse, satanism, mind control, the CIA, QAnon-aligned theories, etc), and it’s often maligned by the DID community at large. Anyway, just an interesting tidbit. Also, while I primarily looked at PTSD and BPD as possible umbrellas for reclassifying DID, there are several other diagnoses that others have posited as explanations for some (but not all) of the symptoms we see in DID. One of them that I found most interesting was Functional Neurological Disorder (which used to be called Conversion Disorder in the DSM). I’m not going to try to write out a wall of text to describe it, but if you’re interested in diving in deeper into this topic, I’d definitely recommend checking that out. I also did not discuss Facticious Disorder, which is also commonly known as Munchausen syndrome. It is possible that some people who claim to have DID actually have Fictitious Disorder and are adopting the symptoms as a way of gaining sympathy and attention. Though Fictitious Disorder is also pretty rare. Third, it’s worth mentioning that the DID community has a wide range of opinions and there are many people who are not fans of DID KZbinrs and TikTokers. The general criticism from these folks is that social media influencers whose accounts primarily focus on their diagnosis are “comoditizing” the disorder for their person benefit. And many worry that, when money or fame are involved, the content becomes more prone to distortion of reality and a “glamorization” of the issues they’re facing.

[@EmperorPenguinXRemas]

Not sure if you read it but the Lynn et al (2022) paper regarding dissociative disorders is pretty interesting. I believe the future will be more towards a transdiagnostic model. The point regarding the criteria is valid though. By contrast, I can say for certain both from personal and scientific perspective that depersonalization-derealization disorder (DDD) is real, but it is not that controversial somehow compared tot DID. In my case a near death experience caused immediate DDD, so that would be evidence for a causal trauma model, although its also plausible to see it as a panic attack,😮 e.g. the Hunter et al. (2004) model. I would also add I have always had sleep problems, fantasyproneness and some sleep issues. So I guess the transdiagnostic factor model seems most accurate to me. Personally would love to work with cases of so called DID.

[@DiamondEyez456]

I adore that you went down this rabbit hole in the video as well as the writing here. Maybe when you want, if you want to of course. You could do another video of the stuff you wrote here. Of course your choice I highly respect. Isn’t it ironic how some mental health professionals (from neuroscientist, neuropsychiatrists, etc etc to therapists) are still debating over DID (old school MPD) some believe it is a disorder and others don’t think it is a disorder. This is where I want to say “mental health professional get you sh*t together” before you slap labels on people… 😑😡 just like how much they missed sooo much and harmed so many minorities (girls & women, POC, Indigenous, LGBQT+ communities) & also they need to either throw the book or update it ASAP b/c they have been slacking for years!!! 😑🤬 I mean we FINALLY got the WHO & UN to wake the heck up on mental healthcare wellness book. Also I truly think we also need to incorporate everywhere for therapeutic practice - true Trauma-Informed focused Therapy. I really appreciate that you went into this so much especially unethical traumatic mental health practices that only added further trauma & suffering from what they already were handling b/c it literally could make one end one’s life. 🙏

[@pollysshore2539]

Also worth noting that several feminists in the sex positive and rational feminist movements pushed back on Herman and many more like her.

[@DiamondEyez456]

I also wanted to say if I may, your compassion care awareness to show both sides of the coin in self diagnosis on TikTok was done so conscientiously. 🙏 I also like how you spoke of your personal experience in the healthcare profession & how you haven’t come across what would be consider DID, I think it is very very very rare even in the most extreme cases you mentioned that you encountered in your practice with patients. I actually like that the spectrum you chose with BPD dissociate amnesia & PTSD dissociative- depersonalization. I get what you mean by it being more like such & potentially more narrowed in therapeutic treatment. 😊 Most say DBT therapy for BPD which I do like yet there is also a subcategory of RO-DBT which tends to be more suited for those with rigid/restrictive behaviors and even eating disorders esp. anorexia. DBT also can be used for multiple mental health behavior challenge yet you can use specific techniques for specific patient dysregulations or harmful behaviors/patterns: example DBT for Autism, DBT for ADHD, DBT for PTSD, DBT for anxiety, etc etc. 😊

[@pollysshore2539]

I would classify most promoters of RM as being anti psych, and that goes double for believers in SRA. There is currently a professor from East London Uni claiming that schizophrenia doesn’t exist. His name is John Read. He claims that most mental illnesses do not actually exist (it’s all a reaction to trauma) and is popular in the anti psych movement. He has been working with a woman named Jacqui Dillon for years. Jacqui is a paranoid schizophrenic with auditory hallucinations that believes she is a victim of SRA and the voices she hears are mind controlling Satanists, demons and multiple personalities created by SRA. She hit the scene at an SRA conference held at the Bowlby Center in 2009, along with some well known 🇬🇧 and 🇺🇸SRA conspiracy therapists who love to prey on schizophrenics that hear voices. She was there to convince the professional crowd that schizophrenia does not exist and that it’s demonic possession. This East London Uni professor wrote a book with Jacqui published in 2013 and his uni honored her, had her speak to students on multiple occasions (promoting SRA conspiracies) and gave her an honorary psych doctorate in 2017. She now calls herself Dr. Dillon while sending people death threats. This has been a common for decades. Con in next post…

[@sabinewatzinger9111]

I am from Austria and was sexually abused by my father. At the end of the 1970s, people here knew neither depersonalization nor derealization and certainly not dissociation. I had never heard of multiple personalities. I feared I was schizophrenic because it was said that schizophrenics have different personalities. I had more problems than I can list here and never received a diagnosis. I was just angry and unwilling. It wasn't until after 2000 that I was diagnosed with DID. This is very rare in our country and trauma therapists usually have no experience with such clients. Now I'm almost 60 and have finally managed to lead a good life - without panic attacks, fears, flahbacks. There is so much I don't know, my life is largely a secret. I've always wanted to decipher this. But it is now clear that this will never happen. Because of my experiences, it is clear to me that DID exists, but I have also met some people for whom I am sure that this diagnosis does not apply to them. But you would rather have this diagnosis than another. I stopped reading books on the topic (except specialist literature) and watching videos. I avoid films like Split anyway. And I prefer to say I have complex PTSD.

[@Obedient-Faith]

I had just commented. a whole year of trauma therapy can't compare with the 3 sessions I've done with a DID therapist. The amount of change in only 3 sessions is incredible. It was like I was trying to process trauma over that first year that didn't even happen to me, but my alters. Stifling them more and pretending they didn't exist could never truly help. in fact that's what i was doing in the first place that was causing the issue!

[@laurenking9524]

Please see a dissociative disorder specialist

[@stevekaylor5606]

@@laurenking9524 'Psychiatry is sincerity, fraud, force and financialization!' - Thomas Szasz

[@nataliestrzok580]

As a therapist who treats individuals with DID, reclassification of the disorder will do more harm than good. Instead of reclassifying the disorder to try and fit it in with another diagnosis (like BPD which displays distinct differences from DID), we need to focus on educating the mental health community about DID, how it presents, and how to treat it. Denying that something exists because we haven’t “seen” it ourselves is close-minded and reductive. There are vast studies that identify the neurological and psychological markers specific to individuals with DID. I am happy to link/share some resources to anyone who is interested.

[@oxcide5888]

reclassifying it under a special type of ptsd/bpd isn't the same as denying it's existence, and could actually help professionals to be better trained to recognize the symptoms/traits by demystifying it's image and putting emphasis on recognising it's comorbidities. i think the video explains it well and is very nuanced in it's approach. Maybe you are too emotionnally involved to recognize it. From what i've seen in the comments a lot of people diagnosed with DID agree with his take on reclassifying it. I don't see why you can't both reclassify it and train professionals to better understand/recognize it. Your opinion kinda sounds like medical conservatism

[@jakobebryant8189]

source?

[@pollysshore2539]

Have you looked into the issues with these studies and the many malpractitioners involved in them?

[@nataliestrzok580]

@@pollysshore2539 I have not come across that, do you have some sources you can share?

[@pollysshore2539]

@@oxcide5888 I do not know if this would help. The FBI warned decades ago that “the believers” (SRA conspiracy therapists) would not stop, and this has been seen time and time again. They have rebranded and managed to corrupt every attempt to clarify or reclassify. They are big on secularization, that is not mentioning Satan in mixed company. They have repeatedly rebranded. You can find more than one paper from the 1980s - 90s on repressed memories of Satanic Ritual Abuse, written by members of the ISSTD, that has been re-published over the last decade after all mention of Satan was removed. It is always eaten up by people who diagnose DID. Every proposed ethical restriction on the diagnosis has been ignored - blatantly broken. Some of the worst abuses (primarily women & children) seen in the field of therapy in many years have been a result of this and 9 times out of 10 the malpractitioners (often ruled by courts) get a slap on the wrist. I’ve spent the bulk of my life advocating against it because it is a real danger to society. Every time it is fashionable again the most corrupt version (recovered memory, multiple personalities, etc..) it is pushed on police, social workers, members of judicial systems and more. It has been happening again since 2011. Every time it results in an explosion of injustices due to an acceptance of spectral evidence (dreams, visions, flashbacks) in courts with no other evidence needed to back it up. Spectral evidence started and drove every witch hunt in history. Banning it is the only way to stop it. Note ethical restrictions allow for cases where alleged recovered memories are uncovered and there is evidence to back it. 10 times out of 10 it’s not due to an actual “recovered memory” but something a person has remembered in part for years but did not understand or was not sure that it actually happened. People advocating to remove reasonable restrictions… like not encouraging patients to believe in alleged recovered memories when no one knows if they are real, not using laundry lists of vague and expansive symptoms (which work as a form of suggestion) to claim that a person has most likely repressed abuse, etc… tend to favor the most conspiratorial and pseudoscientific version of DID. They want total acceptance of spectral evidence. I understand why many patients want reclassification and am glad they do but again… believers corrupt it every time.

[@ChickadeeBoi]

The more I learn about psychiatric history the more I feel like the mild paranoia most of us feel seeking help is more valid and based in reality then purely symptom based as many argue… definitely getting help is good and does help, especially if you happen to have a severe or chronic issue at play. But it’s also pretty understandable to be a bit skeptical when history (and even contemporary news) make clear how many bad faith/unethical actors can be at play in this field.

[@intrusive-th0t]

Psychiatry has been on the wrong side of history for pretty much every social issue you can think of. It should be eliminated as a field and replaced with neurology (for actual brain problems) and social work/counseling for psychosocial issues. It’s dumb that psychiatry attempts to do both without really doing either.

[@mabby5615]

​@@intrusive-th0t absolutely, there is also a whole aspect of society impacting mental health as well. Indigenous people have historically had roles in society specifically for nerodivergent people. We don't have that in our capitalistic and imperialistic society. On top of not meeting basic living conditions causing more and more issues. We have to address all of this at the root causes.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@intrusive-th0t I put over 30 years of my life into trying to get better with the help of psychiatrists. I can't say I disagree with you. There have been a couple of good, helpful ones in that time but it's so rare, especially if you aren't wealthy. I don't know exactly how to fix the problem but in my opinion part of it has the be that we stop letting the people who make money manufacturing and selling pills to be the ones who do the studies on, and write the literature for those pills. All too often I feel like psychiatrists, wittingly or not, are just the sales person for the pharmacutical industry.

[@theofthe2299]

You might like Deleuze

[@zekova]

EXACTLY 💯

[@legallyrequired]

When I was a teenager I was involved in a lot of online communities with people saying they had DID. Mainly people whose alters were all fictional characters. At that time in my life I was having intense mood swings and barely knew if I was asleep or dreaming half the time. I saw all these people around me switching their typing styles and using emoji keys to talk as these different personalities, and I thought to try it. For a good while I was convinced I also had DID due to how extreme my moodswings and personality shifts were. 6 years later I’m sitting with a BPD diagnosis and am on mood stabilizers. I honestly think that at the time speaking through these different personalities helped me sort through my emotions and better cope with them. By naming them I could better recognize how I was feeling and what I was dealing with. It’s hard for me to believe a lot of these younger kids aren’t doing the same thing I was. Dealing with trauma, an undiagnosed personality disorder, and teenage hormones (as well as HRT at the time) really did a number on me. I’ll always regret self DXing myself with DID, it confused me and everyone around me for a long time.

[@biguabechazara4867]

Wow that sounds really understandable and relevant to many young kids. Are you still on HRT? What age did you start them?

[@legallyrequired]

@@biguabechazara4867 I was 15 when I started testosterone, I stopped taking it June last year after getting top surgery because I’m happy with how I look now and the changes my body has gone through. (Multiple doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists were involved in prescribing me HRT since it is very difficult to be approved as a minor, feel like its worth mentioning since some people assume its simple for minors to start HRT)

[@luthientinuviel9942]

My teenage stepchild went through the same thing, almost exactly. They have a lot of trauma related to abandonment (mom left suddenly), and would imagine themselves as different people who would be "better" so mom wouldn't have left. Mostly fictional characters as well. And especially for teenagers who are just a giant ball of hormones forming their own identity, it got them there too. It got so confusing and distressing for them that they ended up in the hospital for ideation. Thankfully, the doctor there helped them unpack some things and see that it was a combination of cognitive distortions keeping them obsessed with somehow undoing the past. I wish they had never watched those TikToks. It just made a complicated situation worse. We are continuing to work through that now and treating the depression and anxiety that fueled the whole situation. I hope that you continue to improve now that you have the right diagnosis. Best wishes.

[@eSporks]

I'm curious, if it helped sort through things and cope, whats the harm?

[@legallyrequired]

@@eSporks If I had continued to believe that I had DID I wouldn’t have gotten proper treatment for the actual issues that I’d been struggling with.

[@elladollery1188]

I've a friend with DID. It took 6m in hospital to gain her diagnosis. I cared for her for 6months and would never have believed but when her personality change, my goodness completely different person. Beliefs, mannerisms, even seemed to look different. Little girl, rebellious teenager and eloquent grown lady. All loveable and dear to myself and many. Without a doubt PTSD plays a part, maybe ptsd can graduate to DID, I don't know. Its not immediately obvious until you've spent a extended long time with the person. Then you witness the denial about things they've done, you see personality switch and rapidly change in trauma situation. You explain what they and haven't done, and feel your own position shift between parent, friend and child in relation to them in different personalities. I've not met anyone else with this diagnosis or anyone who seemed to display similar experiences. But then it took me 3m side by side to witness it or understand what was happening. The mind and soul are amazing, and especially that of my friend. Incredible woman.

[@AmorieH]

I assume the author of this video will never read this, but I find this video problematic for several reasons. I'm 60 years old and was recently diagnosed with OSDD1b after decades of being diagnosed with other things and treatment that never helped (CBT, meds for depression, bipolar, anxiety). I was totally unaware of the whole DID online community until someone shared this video with me. My minor DID/OSDD diagnosis came as a total surprise after I was referred to a right-brain therapy center, but when I studied the symptoms, I felt relieved, and not at all scared as I had been reading No Bad Parts, so the idea of normal multiplicity already made a lot of sense. However, no therapist had *ever* given me a Dissociative Scale questionnaire before, and taking it was the first time that I understood that my experiences were not normal (periods of amnesia, extremely differentiated part personalities, and staring at myself in the mirror because I had trouble squaring what I was seeing with what was reflected back at me). I had no understanding of this disorder other than sensationalist portrayals in the media (and I haven't even watched Sybil); I was using IFS on my own, as I read in cPTSD resources that it was a helpful treatment for PTSD (which I had recently finally been diagnosed with, as had my elderly mother--who by the way is a retired neuroscientist and found EMDR very effective). So I came to therapy talking about my parts, and how I have even had a couple parts take over briefly once I started trying to communicate with them, and my therapist referred me to be screened for dissociation (again, for the first time ever) and here I am. After watching this video, however, I felt alarmed that there are people who think this is a fad or a cultural fabrication, and by this video in particular not only by it's use of sinister music, but by the speaker's point of thinking his never seeing DID supports his argument. My understanding, based on what I've learned from my current therapists and reading the academic literature, is that this is a covert disorder, so your making the point that your lack of direct experience as evidence to reinforce the skeptics feels really irresponsible. My previous, fantastic therapist of 25 years also didn't see my OSDD, probably in part because my ANP was really doing a great job and my system was hidden from even myself until I was introduced to IFS (and was going through some really destabilizing stress). And I just chalked up my amnesia to just having a really shitty memory under stress. After watching this video and reading your afternote, I watched Dr. Ross's lecture that pushes back on the skeptics, and while there are a few points where he could have done a much better job at the end addressing some of the final criticisms, his unpacking of the logical fallacies of the most vociferous skeptics I found convincing--but being a person with a dissociative disorder, I assume I will be deemed biased. But can I really be more biased than someone who has zero experience? Mine is the kind of bias that the author of this video should really consider, because by his own admission, he doesn't appear to have any experience with the disorder. In the end, academics are ultimately held to task if their data isn't ultimately verifiable, but science takes time. So far it looks like DID is become more internationally recognized, not less. And I recently had the extremely startling experience of reading an article about the first adolescent in Korea diagnosed with DID, and it included drawings of his alters--and I was truly shaken when some of his alters had qualities exactly like mine (amputated parts, blades for hands, love and fear being intertwined). That patient and I were raised in different generations, cultures, and had vastly different childhood experiences, and yet our situations point to a universality about the way young brains protect from trauma, and the underlying emotional "parts" all humans share. I don't expect any of this to persuade committed skeptics, but I just felt I had to say something. I feel proud of these young systems on KZbin who are outspoken and sharing their experiences, trying to do something about the stigma. (I remain anonymous because I fear losing my job, and the judgement of the kind of people you see online.) Yes, there are probably fakers out there, but those folks have mental issues too (If there isn't already a "DID Imposter Syndrome," there will soon be I'm sure), and in the end, I imagine trolls will drive them out (and real systems become collateral damage). But the rest of us are grateful that there are finally treatments that are giving us answers and working (IFS and lifespan integration therapy and EMDR). The theory of Structural Dissociation is the only thing that has ever made sense of my life of suffering. And I guess I have to appreciate that someone sent me this video because it introduced me to a whole video network of real, valid OSDD and DID lived-experience resources that I had no idea existed. I feel less alone.

[@hannahgilan8504]

100%!

[@patroy2691]

Yep. Me too. Diagnosed around 60. Saw many therapists during my life. But I’m very covert, nothing like the media depictions. Never felt safe enough to allow the parts to show through until in couples work the negative stimulus was strong enough for parts to break through. No treatment could touch my depression, my anxiety, my fears, my regressions. I don’t care what you call the disorder, but the ISSTD treatment guidelines are crucial. Unless treatment addresses the self-loathing and breaks down the barriers among parts, we will continue to suffer. I don’t have BPD, externally I lead a very stable life, certainly learning emotional control is helpful, but it’s like a bandaid, and is just going to make us more covert without addressing the very real feelings and needs of parts trapped in their trauma.

[@violetblythe6912]

You were unaware of the DID community until this video, yet somehow have a significant grasp on lingo that only the online DID community uses? And you are proud of DID creators on KZbin, despite never watching them before because this is the first time you became aware of the DID community? Yeah ok lol. Y'all are such bad liars. edit: Oh, nice edit OP. You conveniently removed the most suspicious terms 😆clownery

[@patroy2691]

@@violetblythe6912 What lingo do you think is specific to the “online DID community” that is not in the normal DID literature, in like, books and academic papers? I’d love to know. Wish to God people who sensationalize this shitty disorder would stop so real people with real suffering don’t get trolled by people who think we are all tweens seeking attention.

[@selkie5]

Thank you so much for this review. I read it before watching the video. I have recently been diagnosed and everything is finally making sense after YEARS of unsuccessful therapy. HOWEVER, the part of me that has done its best to ignore my alters over the years is till quite active: you're a drama queen, you're imagining it, why is there always an internal commentary on what is going on with you? Thank god I read your review, because at this stage in my journey, watching a sceptic video would have sent me right back to square one.

[@jenjenneration]

I had a discussion with my mom about the Dissociation I experience day to day. I experienced abuse from the time I was born until fairly recently. My CPS paperwork is over 400 pages long. I didn't know this was happening until I started living with my boyfriend full time and he pointed it out. I've always had memory problems but I didn't know how severe it was until he pointed it out. Then it got so bad I didn't remember my therapy and called my therapist multiple times apologizing for missing an appointment that I never missed. The traumatic childhood memories I have dont feel like me. It feels like I'm watching the horrifying things i experienced in third person. Now the memories are coming back slowly, piece by piece. Anyways, I told my mother how I was suffering and how the pain and amnesia and overwhelmed sadness that floods over me when my childhood is remembered calls itself Dorian, and she told me he was a cat I had when I was little. I coped with the abuse and neglect when I was very little by pretending I was a cat. Looking back it makes sense, when I hiding from my father locked in a closet under a blanket praying he didn't find me, I was a cat... A cat in a cage. This happened multiple times, the abuse began to be too much to function, and my brain made another part to take all of it. My adopted mother told me I would bizarrely be fine only a few moments after a violent meltdown. I would come to her as if we never fought, 10 or 20 minutes after we had a screaming fight and I would not remember what we'd fought about. When I was 15 my handwriting changed overnight. I actually have that documented in my diaries and it was right after I was left behind on my birthday when the rest of my family went to Mexico for a vacation... I was left behind on my birthday, my biological mother and I have the same birthday, and I called her to wish her a happy birthday. I was grounded for the rest of the summer and saw myself "broken like a horse" thats when my handwriting (specifically the way I draw my E's and A's) changed Years later I started finding things i didn't remember getting, whole days missing and friends telling me I'd said things I didn't remember saying. Now, keeping track of where I've been. Talking to myself, leaving notes for myself and keeping track of things helps my life tremendously. That's when my therapist had a psychiatrist sit in with me (with my permission) and he pointed out 3 separate identity states during that meeting itself. That's when I was formally diagnosed. I didn't want the diagnosis and was in denial for a while. Finding community has helped me accept what's happened and who I am and is helping me process the gravity of the abuse and neglect I underwent under parents who were multiaddicts with alcohol and m3th, as well as psych3d3lics and a hoard of other drugs. (Censoring there so the comment doesn't flagged)

[@dekar1206]

Why is there no discussions on structural dissociation? The traumagenic model used in this video is not up to date.

[@deviousxen]

thank youuuu

[@juliaconnolly2826]

This what I came here to say

[@eli5697]

Thank you very much "the haunted self" has been published almost 20 years ago, I know that not every mental health professional can be an expert on everything but you CANNOT and SHOULD NOT talk about this precise disorder without at least taking a look at the research on structural dissociation models

[@saaramohamed8921]

exaclty

[@dc3561]

There’s a difference between being in a flashback and switching between alters. It’s disturbing that you don’t understand the difference and can’t differentiate identity states and flashbacks.

[@LaNoireDetruit]

Oh, I must've missed that - but yes, that is pretty concerning. I am merely *interested* in neuroscience (as a hobby) and I know what a flashback is and what an alter is o.O

[@Ninsidhe]

This is why I prefer ‘evidence’ that is actually reported by the communities I’m a part of- I don’t take on board information about being Autistic from nonAutistic individuals, I don’t take on information regarding my disabilities from those who don’t comprehend what it’s like to live with them and I’m not interested in the opinions of those who don’t _have_ DID telling me what it is and isn’t like to live with it.

[@LaNoireDetruit]

@@NinsidheABsolutely. This is exactly why diversity (in its true sense) is so important in science, medicine and policy making.

[@christieap]

He's trying to explain how the way other people fill in the gaps of someone's amnesia by reporting them as a "different person" could lead them (or their therapist) to believe they have a different personality buried in their psyche, when it's actually them responding to a flashback. For those skeptical of DID as a diagnosis, this is one of the explanations for how the idea that someone has an alter could form--due to the misunderstanding of trauma symptoms by others (or the person themself, if watching a video of it, now that camera phones are everywhere). I am personally a skeptic of the diagnosis as well, although I am unconvinced that it should be reclassified under BPD (my area and personal experience). Identity issues are also common in CPTSD, which necessarily involves the kind of repeat or chronic trauma associated with DID, and I think that is a better fit. That would mean putting it in the DSM as a stand alone diagnosis however, and it's currently only separate in the ICD.

[@swatinayak3350]

Ll😅

[@AndriodGirlMCR]

I have DID, professionally dg’d by 4 specialists. I actually used to tell my husband that I believed that it wasn’t real. It’s crazy looking back and realizing that I had it as early as 5th grade. I’m a victim of incestual CSA. I also have c-PTSD and BPD. I also have PNES so I have pseudo-seizures. I can’t work because of all of these problems. It’s kinda really bad.

[@ravenkirk3393]

youre not alone, im in more or less the same boat

[@n0thersist3r]

❤

[@sadmermaid]

I'm there with you ❤ sorry to hear it

[@Futurebound_jpg]

Im so sorry your family did that to you and caused you this eternal suffering…

[@lawstsoul]

That sucks, no "kinda" about it.

[@kitwhitfield7169]

So … I have PTSD. It was diagnosed 4 years after the incident, and a lot of those years are lost to me: all I remember is a muddled nightmare. And actually, social media really made the problem worse for me. It wasn’t just the stigma. I thought I had PTSD, because I looked up the symptoms and yes, that was what I had - but I was wary of diagnosing myself because I’m not a medical professional. So one of the influences I experienced was people talking online about the experience of being ‘triggered.’ (Note - I’m not criticising the whole concept of trigger warnings, just a specific misapplication of them.) Now, getting flashbacks is a real thing. It was happening to me, a lot. But it wasn’t the way they were describing. But on social media there was a tendency to … be very dramatic, I guess? Like, ‘triggered’, in these conversations, meant you were on your fainting couch for the rest of the day and couldn’t function at all. And that wasn’t me: I had a baby and I was the primary caregiver, so I simply couldn’t afford to stop functioning, at least externally. I was functioning in a dark haze, but I was changing nappies and fixing meals and faking smiles, because I was loved as a baby and it put an understanding in my mind that failing to do these things wasn’t an option. So I must not have PTSD, right? Getting a diagnosis meant pushing for medical attention, and I didn’t, for years, because the misinformation made me dismiss my own symptoms. When I finally saw someone qualified she diagnosed me on the spot - but my symptoms weren’t like the accepted version on social media, so for years I thought that real PTSD wasn’t what I had. That can be quite dangerous.

[@violettracey]

Thank you so much for sharing this!

[@Ninsidhe]

There’s a wide range of social media information- using social media and TT as a ‘diagnostic’ isn’t a good idea, but that’s not where the majority sit; individuals like The Trauma Geek, Punk Rock Autistic and a whole host of others frequently cite _research_ and use _professional data_ in their writings and videos to help others going through the same minefield. If someone I’m watching is presenting their personal experience as some kind of diagnostic marker then I’m going to go _research_ that myself. I never take someone else’s word for anything if the matter is about my health or experience, hence the jokes about a million open tabs and a mind that works the same. I too had babies to care for and a number of seriously undiagnosed or under diagnosed conditions- it was advocating for my Autistic offspring that eventually led me to realise that I too was Autistic, for example, and eventually- at 58- was diagnosed as level 2. Autistic, ND and mental health social media has been awesome for me, because I do my due diligence and research. I’m sorry that it took you so long to get a diagnosis. Trusting _anyone_ unquestioningly is dangerous, be they ‘professionally’ qualified or on social media. I’m glad that you eventually got the help you needed.

[@swimmerzo]

i wouldn't say just because your experience of being triggered isn't the same as others that those others are spreading misinformation. what about your PTSD is more real than theirs? i have PTSD from repeated CSA as a toddler. when i'm seriously triggered to remember being raped i become limited emotionally and physically by the shock to my system. im sorry you had to push through your misery and dissociate through it instead of giving yourself space to process it. i've been doing that my whole life and it hasn't healed me. it's made me worse. if i have the choice to rest after being badly triggered i will. if thats not your experience, fine. but we didn't elect you president of PTSD so you can only speak for yourself. i'm sorry it took so long to get diagnosed because your experience wasn't the same as the majority. that really sucks. but that doesn't make those people's experiences "misinformation". that too is a very dangerous idea to have. "everyone is faking except for me because i'm different". or maybe everyone experiences things differently and that's okay. the mental health field failed you, not strangers sharing their experience on the internet.

[@laurafergs88]

Like other commenters have said, thank you so much for so clearly articulating your experience and the gaslighting that can occur (both externally and internally). I have CPTSD and autism but am considered very low support needs, so I've experienced a lot of minimisation and dismissal of my felt experience. Reading your description of how you powered through the day-to-day when you were caring for your child really made sense to me. I've only just realised that the way I've perceived people's facial expressions and tone when I've been triggered is -not- real but rather a flashback. And it's liberating but also horrifying to finally see how I've sabotaged and misinterpreted loved ones, friends and strangers' behaviour/beliefs towards me - because how I saw it was completely divorced from reality. I've spent decades like that and haven't fully lived my life because not knowing or understanding why I respond in certain ways meant I didn't know I could make better choices. If we have nuanced and informed understandings of different mental conditions, we can stop repeating the cycles of hurt.

[@clicheguevara5282]

A case for self diagnosis: I suffer from C-PTSD. I'm also autistic. These two disorders not only have a TON of overlap in symptoms, but are very often comorbidities. It's extremely common for undiagnosed autistics to develop C-PTSD by adulthood because we become very adept at "masking" (studying "normal" human behavior and mimicking it to fit in). The fact that we're not being our true selves (and don't even know it) is obviously very traumatic after a few decades. ...not to mention all the isolation, bullying, and feeling of being disconnected or "broken". As a kid, my doctors repeatedly misdiagnosed me, drugged me, and sent me away to homes for "troubled teens" - where I was abused. In my 30s, I noticed that I was suffering from way more than my normal baseline of depression and anxiety. That led me to over a year of researching C-PTSD - which led me to a couple more years of researching Autism Spectrum Disorder 1. After a couple years of this, I diagnosed myself with these two disorders. These two self diagnoses are what allowed me to seek out the proper specialists, get official diagnosis, and start getting better. The "medical professionals" and "official diagnoses" are what got me into this mess in the first place. If I had been properly diagnosed with autism as a kid, I very likely wouldn't have C-PTSD now. Self diagnosis can be dangerous but so can a professional diagnosis. ..and if you're diagnosed correctly, it doesn't really matter who diagnoses you. It's just a minefield either way. Psychology is too new a field to be consistent.

[@mikwolf2236]

Ive been in treatment for DID for years and i think you are really underestimating the level of disruption in personality that happens between alters, the difference may seem subtle from the outside but not only do me and my alters have marked differences in worldview to the point that it causes significant imparement in the way we're able to interact with the world and form relationships, its also so extreme that some alters cant even identify themselves as the same species as me, some lack the ability to understand and speak english, and those symptoms on their own are extreme enough and different enough from the personality disturbances in ptsd and bpd that they need to be addressed in diagnostic criteria

[@lilachrysanthemum7281]

That is very true. I also have DID and the way it presents for me is we have very complicated inner workings. Different species, alters who have alters, very detailed exomemories, VASTLY different identities, entire storylines, just very... imaginative. Even other systems have noted that our system has many "personality types" and amnesia and alters fighting/disagreeing issues. As a child we absolutely were always very imaginative, and we fell into the rabbit hole of deep escapism through reading and playing pretend all day as well as maladaptive daydreaming, roleplaying, writing very fantastical stories from a young age. It's just how we have always been and we absolutely see that part of our personality/that inclination shine through in the way our system presents. I do believe every system is different, as marked by what I said earlier about other systems saying my system is very imaginative/distinct, so theirs might be more subtle/simple comparatively, but yes, I agree to a degree. Definitely considering that a diagnostic criteria of DID is that it causes significant distress and causes social and emotional disturbances/issues, I think that point could have been highlighted a bit more. However, it is already mentioned in the DSM 5 so I think this video is meant to be for an audience who has already read the DSM diagnostic criteria. I completely understand the issues your system faces, I mean I know from my own perspective, not trying to say I completely get it, but we also face a lot of those issues you mentioned, like alters with different language skills, ability to be part of society like talk to people or run errands, verbality skills like being able to speak, etc. We also have a lot of clashes with each other insys and the alters are very dynamic. They can love, hate, abuse, care for, etc for other alters, it really is chaotic so i get that. Definitely, I would not consider DID equal to cptsd or bpd, though I am aware that bpd is commonly comorbid, and cptsd i would consider as a prerequisite for DID, due to DID's traumagenic nature.

[@saaramohamed8921]

I just don't understand ppl or even professionals who confuse DID with smth so different as BPD or schizoprenia? Its a very uneducated take and they don't understand the level of disruption and the inner world at all

[@LaughingVamps]

Something you didn't mention is IFS, which stands for Internal Family Systems. It can be considered a therapy modality, or just as a model of how a person functions. The fundamental idea of IFS is that every human has parts, which can have their own preferences, thought patterns and triggers. Crucially, these parts are not metaphors, they're very real and they affect a person's thoughts, feelings and actions in everyday life. In other words, according to IFS, everyone is a system. Trauma tends to make someone's parts more polarised, and some parts may experience dissociation or use it as a tool to emotionally escape a situation. Protective parts protect a system from the traumatic memories so that it can function normally. In times of dissociation, parts tend to show up more separately. As for me, I certainly don't have DID, but I became aware of my parts a year ago. And yes, that was sparked when a friend told me they'd been diagnosed with DID. This doesn't mean I'm copying their symptoms, simply that I now have the language to express how I feel internally. My parts have learned that they can have their own perspective on things and don't have to agree with my overall perspective and opinions. I feel like I opened a lid in my mind that I can never close again. While this may sound scary, it's actually more liberating than scary, and it's allowing me to finally address and work through my troubled childhood. Feeling plural doesn't need to be sensationalised or stigmatised, it could just be seen as a normal way to function. I think seeing plurality as a normal aspect of life would allow people to speak more freely about their hurt parts and be an opportunity to heal. Or just be a way to express oneself, actually. As long as a person takes responsibility for their actions (a concept called "system responsibility"), I really don't see the harm in expressing one's felt plurality in any way they see fit. Society can be so judgmental.

[@incanthatus8182]

Absolutely 💯 We have DID and we see it like this, just a more "extreme" form of the very normal and everyday experience of having different parts. IFS really made us feel a lot more normal and it would make so much sense to us, that like personality disorders or depression, DID is just a more extreme expression of a normal human experience.

[@piquantement]

I don't think there's any reason to believe "parts" are any more real than color words are. That is, they're labels that can be useful for describing and understanding, but you could label it a number of different ways and not be wrong. There's no "true" division of parts, and somebody who doesn't experience themselves as parts is also not wrong.

[@camocat2038]

Been diagnosed with UDD by one person, OSDD by another, and DID by a third. The one who diagnosed OSDD said it was partially because DID is so stigmatized. The different between "not feeling like myself" and having separate and fully realized identities is stark and not particularly fun. Especially when we disagree on things. I've had general dissociative episodes such as feeling like I'm real but the world is not and it's just a mural I'm looking at, or feeling like I'm not real and asking for reassurance that I am because I'm willing to believe other people are real. There have also been times where I've felt so stressed that I couldn't catch a breath and in some cases decided to take a nap because if I'm going to suffocate or have a heart attack and die I'd rather not be awake for it. Which verges on funny because it sounds so absurd, but I don't even know why I feel like shit half the time and that is definitely not funny. The identity stuff is like as a kid telling my sibling that I went to a different (non existent) room and talked to a golden man when I was sad or overwhelmed, or sometimes stealing things, or telling my sibling I don't trust them with mannerisms that don't fit my own. None of which I remembered, but if I looked back I could find evidence of it. The difference between that and reenacting flashbacks is that it takes a lot more cognizant choice to change your shirt and start conversations with people that include stuff like specific boundary related ultimatums that are later followed up on. Since realizing I have DID or something like it I've had difficult to arrange but useful conversations with some alters. I'm non-binary and prefer They/Them, but a social alter who is one of the major reasons I/we have any friends is genderfluid and we've had disagreements about whether it's ok for them to tell people that any pronouns is cool when it's not ok for me. We are only "out" as a system to a few people because of things like that. I've had weeks where I don't know what day it is or what needs done without checking my calendar because I wasn't aware enough when other alters were taking care of things. I've missed meetings with my best friend because it wasn't actually me who set up the meeting and the information didn't get properly passed along. I've had to get homework extensions because I got stressed about it to the point of zoning out for an entire day, near unresponsive. It's not all bad, but it is complicated. Trying to convince myself I made it up results in a massive headache literally and figuratively because there is always at least one alter wildly and vocally insulted by the insinuation that they're not real. Now that I'm more aware of my own circumstances I actually dissociate less, at least on a daily basis. I have more agency in my own life. Before, I was always a little out of it and it was easy for days to blend together. Not knowing what was going on was almost normal for me and I made the most of it, but I'm happy that isn't the case most of the time now.

[@wmdkitty]

Wow. Attention-seeking, much?

[@LaNoireDetruit]

Thanks for sharing that. My best friend is in a similar position though not (yet) officially diagnosed. Wishing you all the best & more and more constructive arrangements within

[@jougjimmadome]

​@@wmdkitty Yeah, I'd say you are seeking attention with that reply

[@Roozyj]

@@wmdkitty Dude what

[@Noelciaaa]

"the golden man" is your animus and a normal part of your psyche. I recommend you to read the works of Jung on that.

[@3ntity_exe]

Hi there, someone who was diagnosed professionally with DID in mid '23 here.. My current therapist has been working in her field for over 30 years and I'm her first client to actually have DID.. She told me that she didn't really understand the disorder until I entered her office and told her about my suspicions after having symptoms for over 5 years at that point (I refused to believe it for 4 years, but started really thinking about it early '23).. She has seen my alters and has had conversations with them, fully believing that they exist due to how dramatically different we are; for example, I never make eye contact and fidget quite a lot while an alter of mine can sit still and can easily look people in the eye when talking to them. I honestly feel like more research and discussions need to be done about DID rather than reclassifying it.. It just makes things more complicated as well as devalues the experiences people with DID have and go through on the daily.. I once had a therapist (before the one I have now who I also brought up the possibility of having DID) tell me that she saw why DID is commonly misdiagnosed as BPD due to how dramatically different one of my alters was from me, but said that I showed no other symptoms.. BPD and DID are not the same, nor is PTSD and DID the same.. It's like saying Autism Spectrum Disorder is the same as ADHD or OCD.. They're not the same.. It's been proven and shown that they are distinctly different despite having some symptom similarities. I feel you should have conversations with people who are diagnosed with DID to truly see what it's like.. Maybe reach out to colleagues who have DID patients and hear what they have to say.. All I'm saying is that, just because you've never seen someone or treated someone with a disorder listed in the DSM-5, does NOT mean that it doesn't exist or needs to be reclassified.

[@CosmonautZer0]

imo BPD would be a terrible umbrella for DID. they may be caused by similar factors, but DID doesn't have any of the primary characteristic symptoms of BPD like "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment", "a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation", "reactivity of mood", or "Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger". it would be misleading to psychologists and the public alike in a way i fear would be detrimental for people with either disorder. another poster suggested a "complex dissociative disorders" for DID/OSDD, which is far more accurate and clear, and has the benefit of growing from how people with dissociative disorders talk about them already

[@zamandzeya]

There are 1600 possible combinations of traits that make up bpd, so someone may have bpd without those symptoms

[@CosmonautZer0]

@zamandzeya my point is if you gotta push it that hard to get it to fit, it ain't fitting. the other problem is the treatments don't make sense. dbt is usually what i see ppl with bpd receive and it's very helpful for that but ineffective for did/osdd because it targets very different patterns of thinking. another concern i have with categorizing those disorders under bpd is that it will lead to patients receiving the wrong treatment

[@conan4real]

i also thought it was an absolutely ridiculous idea.. And i think it's kind of strange that he feels able to reclassify DID directly after saying he has NEVER worked with someone who has DID.. it's strange lol. Idk. BPD and DID are such vastly different dx, it really rubbed me the wrong way tbh. I also didn't like how he talked about all of his patients as if not a single one has ever had DID when he acknowledged that it's commonly misdiagnosed. Especially with a speciality in trauma, i feel like the only reason he didn't have any patients with DID is because he doesn't believe in it and didn't want to diagnose it to his patients. it's unfortunately common and i really struggle to think otherwise with what's said in the vid

[@CosmonautZer0]

@@conan4real i feel like anybody who's spent time with a person with bpd and a person with did/osdd would immediately be able to tell they are not the same thing. then again, did is notoriously covert and notoriously poorly understood by the field of psychology, i'd be willing to bet a majority of therapists have worked with people who have it and never noticed. not tryna speculate on motivation or bias, i just think they weren't given the tools to understand what they're looking at.

[@XxYwise]

They're not that different at all. BPD's diagnostic criteria seem like a bit of a grab bag until you realize the unifying theme is dissociation.

[@thecatmom2861]

I have DID and I really 10: appreciate your care and detail on the subject, as well your sharing of first-hand experience. My therapist that diagnosed me with DID has actually changed her specialty from combat trauma and dissociation to childhood trauma and DID/OSDD because I was the first time she had met "such a textbook case of DID" -Kit

[@elizabethkiefer2626]

I get to work with a person with DID and the things I have learned by supporting her are invaluable.

[@blackwidow5228]

Shirley Mason (Sybil), also came out later and said that they had faked everything. Her and the doctors. I'm not entirely sure if she actually believed she had it at one point but I know she admitted to it being a sham. Just her experience. Not saying others are but she claimed they were all faking it for attention. NPR did an interview with her about it.

[@nukaghoula]

a quote from Sybil Exposed, book by Debbie Nathan: At one point, Mason tried to set things straight. She wrote a letter to Wilbur admitting that she had been lying: "I do not really have any multiple personalities," she wrote. "I do not even have a 'double.' ... I am all of them. I have been lying in my pretense of them." Wilbur dismissed the letter as Mason's attempt to avoid going deeper in her therapy. By now, says Nathan, Wilbur was too heavily invested in her patient to let her go

[@jguenther3049]

Despite this, there are those who say her confession was the REAL fake, etc., etc. They seem to desperately want DID "others" to be an actual form of possession, rather than the output of a creative mind seeking recovery from abuse or other trauma.

[@blackwidow5228]

@@jguenther3049 That's sad. I know that some people do actually suffer with this. I feel for those that struggle with it. Cases like Sybils, make it difficult for those who are actually struggling with this to be taken seriously. And the "possession' cases infuriate me!

[@blackwidow5228]

@@nukaghoula What they did was so awful.

[@theemmengard4144]

The Troops for Truddi Chase we’re convinced she tried to go back in the closet because being publicly plural as too much. She encouraged other systems to be brave. But I think it could be Sybil as BPD and seeking attention. It could also be that the Troops and other systems were plural and not seeking attention. I think they were seeing each other through the lens of themselves and their own experiences and not seeing each other accurately. Just because one person faked being plural does not make all plurals fakers.

[@shimmerence]

the framing of this video had me a little uneasy but i appreciate that it was well-researched and factual. personally i think we should aim for some sort of umbrella term that covers DID and OSDD/DDNOS. a lot of people get the more generic “otherwise specified” diagnosis because they don’t fit the criteria for full amneisiac DID. Kind of like how autism used to be “aspergers” or “autism” but is now just called ASD. Like a dissociative identity spectrum disorder.

[@mayanightstar]

omg yes yes yes. I've held this exact opinion for at least a year now and I'm so happy to see other strangers on the internet with a similar sentiment. It needs to be reclassified as a spectrum.

[@rosalindmorley]

THIS❤

[@LoganDark4357]

what about the terms "plurality" or "multiplicity"? those refer to "the state of being multiple/a system/collective/etc" as separate from the actual clinical disorder behind it. it also accounts for non-disordered systems

[@rosalindmorley]

@@LoganDark4357 if it’s for non disordered systems why would it be in the DSM tho? No hate Edit: I just personally don’t like being called plural or multiple ya know

[@LoganDark4357]

@@rosalindmorley what, it's not just for non-disordered systems. plurality is a symptom of the disorder. everyone with DID is plural, but not everyone who is plural has DID (they could have OSDD, DDNOS, or no disorder at all) similar to how everyone with ASD is autistic, but not everyone who is autistic has ASD

[@devonelizabeth]

A personality state in DID doesn’t FEEL like a simple mood, though a mood or thoughts could incite a switch which may or may not be palpable to the sufferer. There’s a VERY distinct lack of agency when an alter fronts or pushes out the front alter. And if possible to remember later there’s a very distinct feeling of no control or of observing without acting… Most people with DID don’t even know they have it, it IS very subtle. This is because the whole nature of the disorder derives from extremely traumatic childhoods in which we still need to act “normal”….that’s why we develop it in the first place….to function despite serious trauma typically that is or feels life threatening. All my alters are female and no consistent accents but for those aware there are definite times that you can hear a change in me. I can usually tell and it’s quite scary because sometimes your alters do things you don’t want to or didn’t even know about. I was severely abused s******* from the time I was in diapers til 10 and it shows.

[@Sammysapphira]

Sure thing bro, you're not special because you have different moods in different circumstances.

[@conan4real]

in a similar situation. 🫂 I'm not sure if i have DID so I've simply been referring to myself as a system. But it doesn't feel like a mood shift, it truly does feel like different people and it's honestly hard to comprehend that it isn't other people sometimes? Their actions feel so disconnected from my own.. my thoughts are not theirs and theirs are not mine, i don't remember anything when they're fronting and I struggle to believe things i said or did when an alter was fronting.. most of mine are non human and non verbal, which is confusing and only adds to the self doubt I have about being a system but.. I'll know the answer one day or another.. it's something I've wondered about myself for years, since before tiktok was made i was abused physically, mentally and neglected by my parents who were only somewhat functioning alcoholics, and s****** abused by my grandpa.. similar time range but it lasted till i was about 14 or 15 and i didn't know it happened til an alter opened up to a friend of ours.. my amnesia is very strong and i only remember awful events from my childhood.. or good days tainted with awful moments. hope the weirdo that replied doesn't ruin your day, don't listen to them, your disorder is real and valid and its so incredibly taxing and hard to live with.. im proud of u for pushing thru everyday

[@devonelizabeth]

@@conan4real you sound like a classic case of DID. It’s a rough road back, but accepting life on life’s terms and doing your best with what’s left is all we can do. And when you get there, I promise there is peace.

[@batintheattic7293]

@@devonelizabeth Bless your wounded souls (you and conan). Hopefully, one day, you'll be able to homogenise your personae (I don't know if that's a good term) when it's reliably safe to do so.

[@andfar97]

I have a diagnosis of DID and I used to experience alters as unwanted or confusing thoughts. They were thoughts that were different to the way I think as an adult man and I felt I was being possessed by thoughts that were not my own. But I now know that they were my alters communicating with me and each other. I think they were created during experiences of abuse in order to stop the full experience from being felt but also used once the abuse had stopped. I think that after the abuse had stopped I had to leave a part of myself behind so I could continue to live and not be overwhelmed by the memories. So the 8 year old part holds the memories of the abuse that I suffered at the age of 8 and the 13 year old part holds the memories of the abuse I suffered at that age - not me (the fronting adult). But behind the fronting adult there are my other younger parts and sometimes they are in pain and want to express themselves. And sometimes something in the environment reminds me/them of the abuse and they are triggered to the surface. And it is then that they take over and I might act in ways that seem out of character. Or I repress these thoughts/feelings and then I feel myself or the world as unreal. Or else the parts are not in agreement as to what is real and what is not and they begin to argue. But recently I have begun to allow these alters to communicate with me and with each other. And I listen to them with empathy and not distain. I don't hate myself or them for being triggered and I don't hate these parts of me that seem different. I now understand that it just my past selves reacting as if still in danger and coming forward to protect my younger abused selves. So now I thank them for all they have done but also reassure them that the danger is in the past and that the adult me is here now and I will protect us all.

[@kaiyodei]

but do you view those two as not you people? not parts. but people that live in your head, as if people living in an apartment building?

[@hailhex]

as someone diagnosed with DID, i think it's really fascinating to see the suggestion of categorizing it as a subtype of another disorder. i don't think i've seen that take before but honestly i think it probably would be more helpful to categorize it as a subtype of PTSD. it is, after all, a disorder that really doesn't appear without trauma, and i think to group it as a subtype of PTSD could help specialists conceptualize it better and also cut down on people romanticizing it. a big problem i think a lot of people with DID have when they're freshly realizing it and/or haven't yet been able to get treatment struggle to focus on the fact that it's rooted in trauma, and instead focus on literally every other aspect. as for BPD, from my lived experience and what i've heard of others' lived experiences, no, DID wouldn't work at all as a subtype of that one. the disruptions in identity with BPD don't really encompass all of how alters in DID present. it's like saying BPD should be a subtype of PTSD because of how common it is for people with BPD to have PTSD as well. and another thing, do people with DID actually have that high a rate of BPD or does it just seem that way due to misdiagnosis from a lack of understanding or a bias on the part of the person giving the diagnosis? at the end of the day though, i think almost everything in the DSM could be folded into another disorder if you really wanted it to. bulimia could be a subtype of binge eating disorder or vice versa, orthorexia could be a subtype of anorexia, BPD could be a subtype of PTSD, NPD and ASPD could have their criteria tweaked to be a single disorder or NPD could be made a subtype of ASPD, etc. so, though i'm not a professional, i don't really think i see the point in bringing up diagnostic similarities between disorders unless there's a 100% perfect overlap.

[@ringofbrass]

I wonder if adding c-ptsd to the DSM, with an a, b, and possibly a combined/something type (kind of like how I think they have done with ADHD) focusing down on the core elements. I'm not extremely informed, so hopefully I made sense. I just find how the way ADHD diagnosis labels have changed since I was diagnosed as a kid and wonder if similar structure wouldn't be a way to make it easier for the professionals to conceptualize things so people with DID could get better support. but who knows people still don't understand ADHD, society needs to really learn a lot, my heart goes out to y'all. i know how much pain it causes to have people tell you to your face your condition isn't real, that should never happen. hopefully people with more knowledge than myself will figure something out.

[@conan4real]

I honestly quite like the idea of DID/OSDD etc being classified under C-PTSD.. idk it just makes sense to me and ties the disorder up with a cute lil bow.. i like having it clearly separate from BPD because i don't like when people conflate the 2 disorders, i feel as though they are extremely different and conflating the 2 only adds to the misdiagnosis that's far too common already. I don't think it should be a subset of normal PTSD however because non-complex PTSD is much more varied and people with acute trauma wouldn't be able to relate at all. Additionally given the Complex nature of C-PTSD i think it fits better, a warped outlook on the world is a hallmark for C-PTSD and, I'm very anecdotally saying, that everyone I've ever heard of with DID has had a warped outlook on the world that's only paralleled by people with complex trauma. It makes sense because DID can only be formed alongside complex trauma, but i still feel as though it isn't brought up much. I once heard someone suggest it being a symptom of C-PTSD, rather then an entirely separate diagnosis and I also liked that idea

[@XxYwise]

C-PTSD and OSDD both are nearly indistinguishable from dissociation-heavy BPD. They are all dissociative trauma responses, at least primarily.

[@clicheguevara5282]

@@XxYwise Interestingly, autism and C-PTSD also have a TON of overlapping symptoms. As an autistic adult with C-PTSD, I had to do years of research and therapy to figure out if I had C-PTSD, autism, or both. (Like many undiagnosed autistic adults, I unfortunately had both) It can be very hard to distinguish between my C-PTSD being triggered and my autism being triggered. ...because they're mostly the same triggers. ...but it was the constant dissociation that led me down that path in the first place. In my mid 30s, I realized that I was dealing with way more than my normal baseline of depression and anxiety, so I started looking for answers. As a kid in the 90s, all my doctors just diagnosed me with BPD, put me on drugs, and sent me away to homes for "troubled teens".

[@ryanolionheart1325]

So I'm pretty sure I have DID but can't recall any trauma but everything says trauma is the cause I wondering if it's to early for me to remember

[@abby361]

i urge anyone seeing this to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of "tiktok just made you think you have __" in the real world. we dont want to let fear of that accusation scare people away from bringing things up to professionals or loved ones. as someone who's life did a full 180 for the good after getting treated for adhd, i was terrified to even bring it up as a possibility for a long time because I had family members talking behind my back saying that "everyone on tiktok thinks they have it". generally though, this was a well made video and i think its super important to continue to question the labels and trends we see esp. regarding mental healt.

[@dc3561]

"I have not seen it in my practice, therefore I do not believe it to be real" is not a reasonable hypothesis

[@Roozyj]

No, but "It's statistically unlikely that I haven't seen this in my practice when I work with so many people who are likely to have it, so maybe it's part of another disorder that I do see in my practice" sounds like a valid way of thinking. Not saying it isn't real, by the way. I'm not a mental health professional and also not suffering from DID myself, so I only know what I hear on the internet. That's too little information to go off of.

[@LaNoireDetruit]

Yeah. It's as scientific as flatearthers. By that logic practically no diagnosis would be real because loads and loads of people have not seen it in their practice.

[@dc3561]

@@Roozyj There are two explanations already displayed in the comments: 1) This therapist is hostile to people with DID and so no person with DID would reveal their DID to this therapist (ie this video is kind of supporting this theory) 2) DID is not valid and it's a perception the patient has that isn't really happening, and thus should be reclassified as something else (which is what this therapist says) He does not consider the first option as he assumes that because he is a therapist, whom specializes in trauma, he is a safe person to talk to about dissociative symptoms, when in reality this whole video is filled with negative connotations, passive aggressive phrasing, and minimizing language.

[@hilol825]

@dc3561 There's also the fact that he may brush off certain signs of the disorder because "it doesn't exist" and therefore misdiagnose people. DID is quite common, with a prevalence in the population of 1-3%.

[@fuzzynavel71]

It's literally a black swan fallacy. Add on top of that the fact that most people diagnosed with DID spend like a decade in therapy before diagnosis and the tendency for systems to remain covert out of self preservation.

[@tobydandelion]

"How dare these youths try to understand their minds!" I love the empathy in this video, what a great channel this is. Also the point about those who do actually have the condition having an easier time finding resources due to this trendiness, that's also why I think all the self diagnosis on tiktok for ASD is actually a net good, as well. (This is coming from a doctor diagnosed HSN Autistic btw) I think a lot of those kiddos need to take a step back and learn about the disabled community as a whole and need to stop throwing higher support needs folks under the bus, but still, it's a net good to have more access to this language.

[@GwyndolinOwO]

i agree. are there bad aspects of this? Of course. But I'd rather have kids aware of these kinds of things rather then never hearing about it ever. There's also a lot of reasons a younger person can't get a diagnosis, it doesn't make self diagnosis a good idea but sometimes the only way to at least try to understand what might be going on. One argument I've seen here and there is that self diagnosed people will make people with professionally diagnosed ASD look bad. Misinformation comes from so many places, not just young kids on the internet. And to be fair even people diagnosed by a doctor can get information wrong. A 13 year old with ASD on the internet isn't going to understand every little in and out of autism. I was diagnosed super young and as a teen i can tell you i didn't even understand my own autism completely much less the nuance of everyone else's ASD lmao.

[@RagoonX]

Hey :) I am someone diagnosed with DID, and I definitely have a couple of things to say here as I’ve seen some others as well! Edit: I say the borderline is a mood disorder by mistake later on, it is not. It is in fact a personality disorder as the name of it would say. I apologize for the misspeaking in that regard! First of all I do appreciate this video in the sense that it brings a more unbiased look at what DID is and brings more of a speculative look at it, rather than trying to make it seem like it’s more “crazy” than it actually is (as seen in multiple media representations). One of the major things I’d like to touch on, both from my personal experience and from my research are the ideas of it being traumatogenic versus not as well as the idea of a core personality. One thing that is very prevalent when you look at cases of *professionally diagnosed* DID is the presence of ptsd from childhood. This also plays into the point I’ll talk about after this one. Obviously there’s a lot of miss information out there and people can be convinced they have something that they don’t. Some people will believe they have DID but not childhood trauma, only later to find out that they did. It seems from research that there is much more evidence that the traumatogenic model is much more accurate. And this aligns with my experience as well as the experience of the friends that I have who also have this disorder. I think the most important research to note and the prevailing theory of DID is the structural theory of dissociation. Which (as you briefly touched base on) explains how DID can only form in children in a somewhat specific age range. This being the ages where identity/personality states (as you mentioned) haven’t fully cohesively fused into one. You then introduce extreme elements of dissociation due to ptsd which (as you stated) separate these states into individual identities. I think it’s very important to state that it’s due to the dissociation and the barriers this dissociation causes is where DID is developed. Each person is different and many people will have varying levels of ways they cope with trauma. For someone like me my brain used the dissociation to make those traumatic memories be “a different persons experience” as you stated in the video, where another persons brain may cope a different way despite being in the same exact situation. There is a lot more nuance to it, and I probably am not explaining it super great. But I believe this to be an extremely big distinction in showing why DID isn’t something that should be taken lightly or dismissed. The next part of this is the idea of a core personality. This is simply something that is an outdated idea and can actually be somewhat harmful in terms of treatment. As you said, people with DID are still one person, just with fragmented personality states. We, for example, currently have 6 alters (I prefer headmates as to not dehumanize myself in a sense) in our system that we’re aware of. The is no original one personality as our personality states never cohesively fused together, but were instead separated due to the dissociative barriers previously mentioned. A good analogy I think shows this is like a piece of paper. This piece of paper is one whole sheet but has been ripped into multiple pieces, you can fit them together but they aren’t going to be that whole sheet. The idea is that you can put these pieces back but they won’t truly be fused together. Which can explain why alters can “fuse” but also “split” as well. For our brains we developed in a way that never used the standard “everything is one piece” and instead there’s always been multiple pieces. So once our brains move past the developmental stage in childhood you can’t go to one other fusion state or the other, hence why you can’t develop DID later in life. You can discover it but you can’t develop it. Again I’m definitely not explaining this 100% but hopefully this gets the general idea across. Then on to the other topic, which is the classification of DID. I do definitely believe that DID deserves its own classification. But where it belongs I believe can be subjective. On one hand it is clearly a type of full dissociative disorder as that is what causes the majority of the symptoms involved (reference back to the last paragraph). But on the other hand it is MOST DEFINITELY a trauma based disorder (as all dissociative disorders are). I’ve seen many of my friends with DID and even professionals say that DID is basically just one of the most intense manifestations of ptsd. I see a therapist at a clinic with multiple people who specialize in trauma and have all worked with multiple patients diagnosed with DND, and they seem to agree as well. And frankly I wouldn’t really argue with that. In fact I would argue that childhood ptsd is a bare requirement for someone to develop DID, and all of my friends diagnosed with it have both as a diagnosis. I do however see some issues comparing it to borderline, as it definitely does have overlaps but many other symptoms are not related in any way. There’s also some similar symptoms that have specific differences that lead the majority of the people of talked to to say it’s not related to borderline as with DID the main symptoms of “multiple personality” is a dissociative affect whereas borderline can be the cause of the dissociative symptoms itself. Borderline is for sure more of a mood disorder where each mood seems very different, but not necessarily having their own individuality. I do think the idea of classifying DID as potentially being an extreme subset of ptsd is not a bad idea given this information. As I said, it seems to me that ptsd should be included as pretty much a requirement to having DID, so this then becomes much more fitting. I want to also finish this by saying there’s a lot more that goes into all of this than is stated in the video (as is admitted of course! ☺️) and than I have stated. I am not a professional. BUT I do have DID and have done a lot of research to try to understand what it is I’m experiencing. It took me years of thinking I had other disorders to finally get to this point, misdiagnoses and also misinformation. Like I said, I did the time to do my research and ended up getting a professional diagnosis rather than just self diagnosis. The current model may not be perfect (and never will be) but it does describe what I experience the most accurately when compared to other diagnosis. This is a disorder that causes a lot of stress in not only my life, but many others as well. It makes it very difficult to live everyday life. So any good expose to it is always welcome! Thank you again for this video and for always being so good about these sensitive subjects!!! ☺️

[@d6mafia13]

Borderline isn't a mood disorder. It's a personality disorder. Very big difference. One can be successfully treated with medication. One cannot. Personality disorders form in young childhood and cannot really be treated except for intense therapy which from what I've seen, rarely works. Mood disorders like bipolar and depression can be treated with medication and therapy and people can often make huge strides when they find the correct combinations.

[@RagoonX]

@@d6mafia13 sorry! I mispoke! I meant to say personality disorder! Thank you for correcting me! ☺️

[@kittycodding4183]

I wish more people understood that the most common symptoms of DID are dissociation and PTSD symptoms like hallucinations. I thought I was schizophrenic and developing early dementia. DID never occurred to me. It's actually not common for parts to know about each other, yet that's the main symptom that gets spread around by people who don't understand it.

[@rainbowgrimart]

I was clinically diagnosed with DID and post-diagnosis, I've had so many experiences from loved ones and myself that convince me that it's real and it's always been here. Friends telling me things "oh, that makes a LOT of things make sense with you" based on their history with me, seeing my drawings of "alters" and telling me "This doesn't look like you, but somehow I know I've met this person through you" - having notebooks where my handwriting has completely changed depending on "who" is writing from entry to entry or even moment to moment - in an alarming degree, consistently, in a way none of my "normal" friends can't even begin to imagine trying to achieve. It blows their mind when they see it. Even before diagnosis, my friends would sometimes change how they regarded me based on what I "looked" like to them at the moment and I just thought it was a funny thing. I have distinct personalities, but I also have a very covert case, which is why it was such a fun experience for both me and my friends as we sit and talk about this stuff together early in my diagnosis. As you can probably tell, I was and am really fortunate to have an extremely supportive social network now and thanks to that I was able to develop a very wholesome and easy relationship with my system and my system with our support networks. Anyway, this new visibility trend has felt like such a double edged sword for me... On one hand, it's kind of nice to feel seen? To know that people are learning more about it and such? But it also feels... icky sometimes. 'Cuz it's not really reducing stigma, but more like it's changing it. Whether the kids on tiktok are faking or not, it doesn't change how a lot of people are treating them and therefore treating people who are clinically diagnosed. Okay, we're not all murderers anymore, that's good. But now we're all faking it for attention and embarrassing ourselves. Even if a comment deriding DID isn't targeting me specifically, it still hurts me on a personal level. If I didn't have the support system that I have, I know this could cause me so much more distress than it already does. I try to repeat to myself that my loved ones don't think of me like this, but some days are harder to convince myself than others. It makes me shut down a lot again even after my period of trying to open up more and be more comfortable in who and what I am. Making me rebuild walls that I started to take down because I'm afraid of crossing some invisible line that will make people stop believing me and start treating me like I was one of "those" the whole time. And it hurts to think about how much harm this must be causing those of us with DID that don't or never did have a good support system, who never had an opportunity to try breaking down walls for themselves. And all of this after the lifetime of pain that we have to endure to develop a condition like this in the first place? That despair and hopelessness must be crushing and my heart breaks for all of us being hurt by that. I don't know what to do about all these issues dredging up by this. I'm just back in therapy now and hoping I can get through it and hoping everyone else with it is able to access care and support that they need too. I don't know what else we really can do.

[@owls381]

When I was in the stage of being diagnosed with schizophrenia, I told my friends about it, and multiple said “oh wow, that would make so much sense.” And I was like “what??? What do you mean?!” They’d always just accepted me for me, but it was so eerie how these traits/symptoms of mine just clicked for them when I said that 😅 I’m so glad you’ve got such a supportive circle around and inside of you ❤

[@Obedient-Faith]

I thought I would never find a therapist for DID but my therapist at the time expressed she couldn't work with me but she did share an office with someone who could. I was neither influenced by my therapist or media. I took a backseat to my alter and was terrified but then started having flashbacks and also realized that the voices and the crying suddenly feeling like a little girl (age regression type stuff) and the male voices . I started having memories of all the times my alters tried to tell me about themselves throughout my life. This all happened after a revictimization. I have borderline tendencies with some of my alters but not all . Your models would not be useful in my case. After a year of trauma therapy I made no progress and got worse. After 3 sessions with a DID therapist my terrifying behaviors have chilled out and stopped. It makes a difference. Allowing my alters room to be and voice their experience has changed my life.

[@ruthvermeulen2098]

The adhd on TikTok is really annoying. I used to be allowed an extra 30 minutes during an exam and 2 short breaks to step outside of the exam for a second. (Ofc with a teacher who checked that I didn’t cheat by looking something up or going on my phone). That really really helped me, not only could I finish everything but the stress before the exam was so much better. Knowing you can get a breath of fresh air during an exam is a game changer for me. But now they don’t do it anymore for adhd because ‘everyone’ has it. Now I often just finish asap so I can get out of the room even though I haven’t finished everything. 4 hours in an aula with 300 people drives me nuts even thinking about it. I’m officially diagnosed and in my tests you could even see that after 20 minutes I’ve essentially lost all of my concentration it basically then goes 2 min concentration and 6 minutes nothing. After 40 minutes it’s even worse. But with a short break I get my concentration span a bit back. I think bringing awareness trough social media can be a good thing in many ways but it also is a really bad thing. I can imagine that some students in my college might quit their education more easily now since a lot of students really used their extra 30 min and their short break. I also take medication during the exam period now because it’s not possible for me to stay concentrated for such a long time without a short break. Even though I could manage without medication before they took away the ‘adhd privileges’.

[@therideneverends1697]

Its good to take the medication anyways sometimes even if you dont totally *need* it, long term study's are increasingly showing there's neurological benefits in those with ADHD that can improve underlying conditions and reduce risk of brain disease to that of baseline, where ADHD individuals usually show a higher risk if unmedicated

[@CloakedMortal]

DID diagnosed here. I had a few thoughts while watching your video. 1. Thank you for doing a pretty good job at sharing insight into what DID is, example symptoms and problems people run into, and the history! 2. My therapist has used the "chocolate bar analogy" to explain to me that there is no "core part". Essentially, if one drops a chocolate bar on the floor and it breaks into pieces, one cannot find the original piece, as it is now in multiple pieces. 3. I am not sure I agree with you on the reclassification. Primarily because current therapeutic treatments for DID (like EMDR, brain spotting, etc.) must be carefully and knowledgeably modified so not to flood the nervous system or cause retraumatization. Additionally, having parts (alters) adds significant complexities and complications for client and therapist, alike. If DID was to be reclassified under another diagnosis, would practitioners receive the amount of specialized training and experience it takes to work with multiple parts in a session, learn how to recognize covert switches, and modify each treatment modality for each part? I worry that if DID was connected to another diagnosis, it would actually get less attention and lessen the productivity and impact of current therapeutic practices. I can, however, see your point of increasing specificity. 4. Yes, dissociative episodes are scary. It isn't being in the middle of them (usually) that is scary, but the aftermath of them. For me, it is being told something that happened and it feeling impossible as I don't remember it; it is not something I would normally ever do. That being said, not being in control of one's body is terrifying. 5. If you would like to talk to someone with DID, I would love to chat. Although, I have only been diagnosed for a year so still have much to learn. I am thankful for an incredible team of therapists, psychiatrists, and case workers who have helped me get to this point! Cheers!

[@billiepotts1541]

the subtle form is absolutely real. I don’t have it, but I know that when I dissociate, certain memories are linked together, and I’ll end up with one pile and NOT another, depending on how badly it’s going. So I’d imagine that full blown DID is much much worse. Like I am a whole desert, and instead of a cohesive pile of sand with one peak, I have multiple piles-they’re all me, especially since they are close together, but it can get foggy and I’ll get stuck on one.

[@drana150]

I would look into OSDD if I were you ! It's an adjacent dissociative disorder without as stringent requirements (to my understanding) -- Asher

[@intrusive-th0t]

You have BPD with dissociation (depersonalization)

[@laser6170]

@@intrusive-th0tyou do not know their life and cannot diagnose that

[@intrusive-th0t]

@@laser6170 psychiatry isn’t a real science so it’s not like a psychiatric diagnosis would be much more meaningful than my own assessment 🤷‍♀️

[@ourantoastclub]

​@intrusive-th0t I diagnose you with "stupid"

[@chsovi7164]

I have DID (diagnosed by 2 different psychs and I am 25) and I find the common misconceptions people have, especially with the whole tiktok stuff makes it hard to talk about. I just tell people I have CPTSD most of the time, it's not like people can easily tell the difference lol. I think something interesting to note is that amnesia is way different to how people without DID seem to think of it. Like imagine you woke up and you don't remember what you did yesterday. You would not realise that unless you tried to remember what happened yesterday, and even then you're probably only trying to remember what you did at a certain time yesterday or something so the full extent is not immediately obvious. It's really not obvious and it's not like you just woke up in the middle of nowhere the vast majority of the time, especially when that level of amnesia has been your normal for your whole life. It only really gets alarming when it's something that you obviously should remember like your name/phone number As for the part about not really seeing DID as distinct from C/PTSD and BPD, I think you should look more into the model of structural dissociation. The distinction between identity states in DID and those in C/PTSD and BPD is that DID has ANPs in addition to the EPs that are present in those disorders. ANPs have much more personality distinction that allows them to properly function independently, rather than just serving to compartmentalise trauma. For eg I have an alter who split after my dad died whose entire personality was just built entirely around perfectionism and academics because I guess that's how my brain decided to cope with the situation. The skills that alter learnt in that time (was studying maths and physics at uni) are compartmentalised and can't be accessed by the other alters because we weren't around. So now he's just the designated math/academic alter. It's very different to a flashback (EP).

[@3-Rex]

Hi! We're diagnosed with DID and just wanted to post a comment regarding your thoughts on re-classifying DID. Personal bias considered, we think that reclassifying the disorder would be very invalidating for our lived experience. To suggest that DID is merely a subtype of another disorder doesn’t consider that the evidence you provide in practice is anecdotal. While you specialize in trauma, a suspecting system might not feel inclined to seek out help from you or your clinic due to personal/social safety concerns. Systems are often victims of stigma, which includes the professional/clinical setting. As a result, often systems will find professional support from clinics that specialize in dissociation. So while trauma is or can be a major influence in the development of DID, to suggest it should be reclassed due to lack of experience in the office is in our opinion not a strong enough argument. In general, more focus on education on dissociation and relevant disorders connected to dissociation such as DID will help more with properly identifying those with dissociative identity experiences. From our own anecdotal experiences interacting with fellow systems, we are often misdiagnosed dismissed in professional practice, and wanting to reclassify it only furthers the negative conversation surrounding DID.

[@kairichardson285]

As someone diagnosed with DID, I really appreciate the way you approached this topic. I personally believe this disorder could be classified under PTSD or as an extreme type of it. In my own experince all of the specialists weve seen put an emphasis on our PTSD diagnosis as a teenager. It feels like because of the comorbidity between PTSD and DID it could very easily be classified as a substype. In my personal treatment, trying to alleviate symptoms of PTSD is the focus. As someone with a close friend who is diagnosed with BPD, I can confidently say that I see the similarities but also the very stark differences. Yes we both dissociate, yes we both seemingly switch externally but the differences are a lot more internal. Ive met people in my adult life who I apparently dated in school and seen proof of jobs i have no recolection of ever going to. My friend does not experince that. People who have time blindness around driving or day to day dissociation, do not get approached by stangers who call them a different name but know intimate details. I do believe there are some systems who may not have DID but something else entirely. I also believe that the disorder goes under diagnosed because of the lack of research and informed mental health workers as well as the covert presentation. I have been in consistant therapy for almost 9 years now. I was only diagnosed about a year ago and reconfirmed a few months ago. It is very difficult to find resources and care. I believe we need a lot more research and understanding of this disorder but from my personal experince it is very real and disorienting.

[@Sophia-cd2ci]

I was diagnoses with DID a few years ago, and my psychologist explained it to me essentially as 'here is a scale of dissociation. there is general dissociation on one end, PTSD and CPTSD in the middle bits, and DID on the other end'. The focus of treatment has always been pretty focused on PTSD & anxiety/panic stuff with 'internal communication' work being the only real DID exclusive work. I completely agree that it could (maybe should) be classified as under PTSD in a similar way that CPTSD is (I know CPTSD isn't in current DSM). When I want someone to understand what I am struggling with, I say PTSD rather than DID because that more effectively communicates the most difficult bits, the things I want them to understand and the things I would really appreciate help with. I may then elaborate on PTSD to explain that I can have huge difficulty with memory or with not knowing when or where I am, and I find that this brief summary gets my experience across faster & more effectively than saying DID. The image most people have of DID is the fantastical multiple personalities idea of it, which is not what I am trying to communicate when I am informing people of what is going on/asking for help.

[@WishMish15]

This is really interesting! A couple months ago I met someone online who identified as a system with DID. They played a game online that I did, and occasionally they'd disappear for weeks and then come back saying their alter didn't play the game or even know the password so they stopped playing while that alter was fronting. I tried to delve into the world of it to try to understand more about the disorder, learning all the terms and looking up videos of people with the disorder talking about it. Its an interesting disorder because it feels more than any other disorder to be the least..believable? to the outside looking in. It sounds absurd to someone without DID to think of having multiple people in one brain when thats not something you've ever experienced. I feel like with a lot of disorders, people can see a few of the symptoms and be like "Yeah I've experienced a part of that in a small way even if i don't have the disorder". But with DID it's completely unlike how a brain without DID functions entirely. I know as a teenager myself I thought it was a "cool" disorder because of how it was portrayed in media like a glorified acting challenge. Which is probably why I lean more into skepticism when I see people claiming to have DID because I see how much attention it garners. Regardless of that though, Im so hesitant to judge DID as a fake disorder because people who experience it ARE experiencing something difficult in their brain because of trauma. So I'd never want to invalidate someone else's experience just because I can't relate to it.

[@System_Spark]

Wait, you don’t have small differences in what aspects of your personality flow depending on who you’re around or what situation you’re in? Your behavior and actions at work are no different than when you’re with friends or family?

[@WishMish15]

That's specifically what DID isnt though. It's not just having changes in your personality depending on situation, its becoming a different person to the point of not even having the same skillsets or memories as other personalities. @@System_Spark

[@System_Spark]

@@WishMish15 “yea I’ve experienced that in a small way even though I don’t have the disorder.” This is what you said you couldn’t do with DID, so I presented the small, normal experience that, when brought to the extreme, resembles DID. Alters are *not* different people, they are different identity states in a broader singular personality, they are parts of one whole. The skillset differences are a *possibility* and nowhere near a universal experience. Gaps in memories are experienced differently even between alters of the same system, nearly everyone in the world will experience some form of gaps in memory, which is why the criteria states that the memory gaps in DID cannot be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. Of course what I was describing isn’t DID, I’m not here to diagnose anyone, I can’t. I’m giving small ways for people to relate because *many* psychiatric disorders are ordinary experiences turned up to 11.

[@foggyshades8338]

"I feel like with a lot of disorders, people can see a few of the symptoms and be like "Yeah I've experienced a part of that in a small way even if i don't have the disorder". But with DID it's completely unlike how a brain without DID functions entirely." I think I can respond to that. The average person can/does experience dissociated identities! It's not as alien as you might think. I'll try my best to explain how I see it. Intense emotions like anger, lust, confusion, or sadness, and/or the effects of drugs can cause people to become "not themselves" temporarily. This is well known. Think of life threatening situations, for example, where one's "fighting spirit" might show up and put up a fight in a scenario where your "normal self" would have become paralyzed with fear. That's a dissociated self! BUT - Since it is (thankfully) so rare for this to happen to most people, these "alternate selves" never get to the point of developing into a "fully-fledged" identity, and remain as simple instinctual, mostly unconscious, responses. The thing is it usually takes some really intense situations to trigger that kind of reaction, MEANWHILE, for those with DID these alternate selves have already been "baked" into our consciousness (due to prolonged childhood trauma repeatedly triggering such dissociated responses, you see), so that dissociation happens a lot more often and a lot more easily, in a way that we cannot control, and often enough that these alternate 'selves' get to become autonomous identities in the back of your head that can show up to "possess" you whenever they please or feel the need to.

[@michatc9525]

I think it's interesting how you said " it feels more than any other disorder to be the least..believable? to the outside looking in" and Yeah I've experienced a part of that in a small way even if i don't have the disorder". Because I have found that when disorders start to become severe, people without it don't believe it anymore. Everybody has experience the "anxiety" feeling, but when a person with an anxiert disorder can't get out of the house anymore, it becomes "well, just leave the house!" People understand depression as "being sad all the time", but when it becomes as serious as not being able to shower for days, or it turns into a hoarding issue, it becomes "these people are just lazy pigs". Just go to a comment section of people cleaning out hoarder's homes. The thing is, those problems I mentioned are usually hidden. They're very common, but people don't see it. DID isn't hidden like this. It's something that you can see first hand by interacting with the person. It very directly interferes with your relationship to the person. I feel like if people could see the depths of disorders they would belive it was fake too, because they cannot comprehend their brain working in a way that doesn't allow them to pick up a piece of food left on the ground, or feeling like the government is out to assasinate you. They only know how their own brain works, and lack the empathy to see how someone's doesn't work the same. If you combine the other prejudices DID faces, like it being "interesting" and "cinematic", being seen as a "gloryfied acting challenge" with not being able to understand how this person's brain could possibly work the way they're seeing, I feel makes it "especially" non-belieavable.

[@thewilycoyote1213]

Fellow MHP here, enjoy the channel and appreciate your consistently nuanced takes. This one in particular impressed me in how you approached the topic with earnestness and compassion, and I generally agree with your opinion on re-classification being more helpful in the long run. As someone with primarily adolescent clients, there's another angle I've noticed to the resurgence of DID being talked about on social media (alongside many other discussions around mental health): the pathologization of developmentally appropriate experiences. For example, someone experiencing identity moratorium during the course of their exploration of identity could falsely attribute these different sides of themselves as alters and come to believe that, rather than someone coming into their own sense of self, this transitory state *is* who they are, thereby disrupting identity achievement. That ties into the trend I've noticed with self-diagnosis in particular leaning more prescriptive than descriptive, which can result in a worse prognosis. I wish I had a good solution or direction to go with it all, but I don't think there's any closing the Pandora's Box that is social media anytime soon. Thanks again for your efforts to bring a little more thoughtfulness to it.

[@hkandm4s23]

Absolutely agree. I've even seen some therapists posting content that really pathologizes normal experiences. Viewing all this leads people to question their own resilience. In particular I recently saw therapist doing a skit where a mom leaves her child with an aunt despite the child wanting to spend time with her..... she then breaks the 4th wall acting as mom stating the mom expected her to raise herself despite this leading to lifelong fear of abandonment.....I mean. What? Not only is a parent working and leaving a child with a trusted family member not anything close to abandonment, parents who view this from an mhp will feel guilty for perfectly normal behavior and worry they are causing lifelong fear of abandonment in their child. I'm not currently practicing at the moment - I'm taking a break to raise my toddlers to school age before going back under supervision since I moved and lost my hours- but I feel like I'll be reentering therapy into a whole new world considering what I've seen lately.

[@d6mafia13]

I couldn't agree more and I've been talking about this for ages! I'm not a MHP but I've self studied psychology and other relevant fields for half my life as it's a passion of mine but could never see myself doing it professionally, and the way I've seen things change in a relatively short period of time is mind-blowing. I totally get wanting to understand why you are the way you are and why you make the choices you do but to pathologize every single thought and action is concerning. I sometimes catch myself wondering who is to blame for this? Is it social media? Is it MHP? Is it just our culture? Is it a little bit of all of them? I'm definitely glad that mental health is more talked about and accepted but at the same time, we've gone too far in the opposite direction where people have turned it into a joke and won't take those actually struggling seriously. It's really a double edged sword. I wish we could find the happy medium.

[@dismurrart6648]

​@@hkandm4s23 ooof. Stuff like what that mhp did is so common on social media and is exactly why, even though I passionately want to help people with my same struggles, I know I shouldn't work too close with anything that has hurt me. I've suspected for a while that the reason a lot of these types end up on social media is because they aren't self aware. They think they know it all and that people need to hear THEIR voice. That's very obviously not every map online, maybe not even most. I think it's a good chunk of the ones who act like the person you described though.

[@pollysshore2539]

@@hkandm4s23This was an issue during the Satanic Panic years. See The Courage to Heal along with several other self help books written by people prompting DID - Satanic Ritual Abuse (the first editions of courage to heal did have stories of SRA). Most were not written by therapists but all contained lengthy lists of “symptoms” of repressed memories and alters. They were all critiqued because they were vague & expansive, could be symptoms for multiple diagnoses and/or could be a completely normal occurrence. Most developed these lists after therapists did the same. A prime example is ISSTD member Catherine Gould. She was a child psychiatrist that claimed nightmares after 4 years old was a symptom along with writing backwards (dyslexia). She called this “the devils alphabet”. Being too clean, being messy, wetting the bed, vomiting, telling fart jokes, making fart noises with your mouth…. All symptoms of DID and Satanic Ritual Abuse. She was far from the only person that had expansive lists but her list was given to the parents of day care children in most Satanic Panic daycare cases. It was noted that the lists acted as a form of suggestion.

[@pollysshore2539]

One of the largest challenges for the last several decades is the fact that most proposed alternative terminology - classifications comes from members of the ISSTD who believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse. Satanic Ritual Abuse was rebranded as ritual abuse, extreme abuse, organized abuse, etc. Recovered memory was rebranded as dissociative amnesia, complex trauma, etc… The symptoms lists have continued to expand despite multiple warnings about ethical issues. I recently came across a KZbinr with a 26 page symptom list. She sells seminars about infertility. Of course there are the valid questions about severe trauma and everything in about to say comes with standard caveats about age/being too young to remember or comprehend, being unconscious, incapacitated… We know that traumatic memories tend to be more lucid and detailed. Years down the road people are not going to remember the exact date/time but they will remember what happened/the nitty gritty. We know many people that experienced years of horrors/trauma during the holocaust remember it. We know that people who lived with years of domestic violence remember it. We know that victims of attempted murder remember it. We know people caught in mass shootings remember it. We know people that experienced years of physical, emotional abuse and neglect remember it. What is the major difference that makes people reportedly forget SA? Most often the claims involve several years of SA that took place during sentient ages. Example… 8 to 16. What is the major difference aside from the act of intercourse? How does this interact with a majority of women reportedly experiencing this and how do religious and patriarchal beliefs factor in?

[@emh.1178]

I've been diagnosed with PTSD with dissociative features. I have memory issues with blackouts and was "exorcised" as a kid, and I totally agree with you on reclassification helping with stigmatization. Doctors and therapists can get reaaal weird if you claim to have DID versus PTSD, in a really unhelpful way. They treat you way more human when it's PTSD. Good video, thank you:)

[@notfounderrornotfound]

A doctor laughed at me when I mentioned suspecting PTSD.

[@ardentambivalance]

What Bennett Braun and Elva Poznanski did to Patricia Burgus and her sons was genuinely evil. For over 3 years her sons were kept institutionalized. I disliked that you just sort of glossed over this aspect. There is a reason why she was given $10.6 million.

[@ssatva]

I didn't know about this, and got a strong sense of it from the points that were outlined, and that impression matched what I found looking into it--so perhaps it's more evocative for a newcomer than one familiar with the story? As he went over it, my jaw dropped, and I had to rush off and look it up, what I was hearing was so appalling. This story could make a video subject of it's own and could be hard to further justice to in this context, I suspect (again assuming others got the same shocking picture that I did). But absolutely this is a nightmare, an abuse of a scale and intimacy it's hard to contemplate.

[@azuredystopia3751]

OK so make your own video.

[@raneemacintosh6842]

Sounds like it would become a tumor on this video and extend its duration to over an hour - when I saw her case I found it interesting enough that I immediately had another window open looking for a video specifically about it. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[@toby_9438]

Like many others have stated in the comments, the theory of structural dissociation has helped in the understanding of DID. - There is no way DID can be classified as a subtype of BPD. Just no. Again read the theory. - The fact that this is a disorder formed through childhood trauma, of course there is a very high overlap with PTSD. Additionally, PTSD can happen later in life, DID can't, and again, the theory shows that the development cannot happen after childhood. PTSD does not have multiple ANP parts. Yes, the basis of pushing and dissociating away from trauma is similar in both, but the development is so different that you cannot claim they are essentially the same disorder. Also to point out, technically DID is not multiple people in the same body, but you are entirely missing the point of the disorder. We had to believe it happened to someone else to survive. We had to be completely oblivious to the abuse and trauma to survive. While a major recovery goal for many people with DID is to accept and process their trauma, it can take years for that to happen. It can take years to accept that you are all parts of one whole. These states have developed individually, not fully, but individually. And it is blatantly dismissive to just say that DID can be a subtype of BPD or PTSD.

[@phil1522]

Well said ❤

[@Мария-п4т5ю]

I am technically diagnosed with DID but it’s not as severe as it’s usually presented. Still, I fit the criteria, hence, the diagnosis. However, as a clinical psychologist myself, I would also like to reclassify it into a subtype of (c)ptsd because that’s the key thing. Yes, my mind chose dissociation as its primary defense mechanism but it’s just one facet.

[@charlottewolfe9524]

This is in part the only honest video on it I've found, for the first half. As someone quiet and not a clout chasing individual that has d.i.d I'd like to point out there are some of us out here quietly just trying to cope. I would spectate that most people making quirky videos aren't genuine, but that much should be evident. I'm scared as hell, that is the truth behind d.i.d. I'm always chatching up and struggling to function. I also just really wish I could be whole again. The scepticism caused by clout chasing morons on KZbin has made it so much harder to get medical support.

[@sorashiunin5287]

Listening to this has given me a better perspective on the history of DID. I was someone who "self diagnosed" myself with DID, but I never called it that. I just said I think I'm a system and left it at that. As I've gotten older and my life has changed the "alters" have seemingly faded away. I'm formally diagnosed with BPD and I do sometimes think I coped with moodswings from BPD with thinking I'm a system. And then sometimes I have extreme memory loss and don't know how i got somewhere lol. I've brought up the possibility to therapists and other professionals and all are hesitant to even consider it. I've been going through neurological hell seeing if it's actually seizures and always coming back with nothing. I'm not sure if it's because I'm becoming more incontrol of myself and more aware of myself, but I've noticed things I would have associated with DID becoming less and less. I'm not sure if I was unintentionally faking it or what was happening, but I feel a lot more stable now. Maybe it was DID or maybe it was just BPD masking as it. Who knows atp.

[@XxYwise]

The mood swings from BPD are a system, just not a clearly delineated one.

[@Daisy-Doo]

I really hate the notion that some using DID for fame and attention means that we should even consider it isnt real or that the diagnosis should be eliminated. As someone who was more recently in life diagnosed who doesnt want it at all, this would imo be very harmful. I dont glamorize it, I dont even want it. The whole journey dealing with it has been extremely frightening and difficult for me. The popularity of it on social media by people who want to glamorize and profit from it have stigmatized it even more than it already is, and seeing professionals questioning it and "calling out" online people for "faking" only adds to that and makes it harder than ever for people living with it to be understood and heard and treated kindly and fairly. I hope we can move past this fad online and get the stigma erased. But I fear it never will be.

[@violett874]

I really dislike the line of thinking of "Rare condition is rare. I have not seen rare condition despite being super special, therefore I don't believe in rare condition being valid." Really lends credence to the belief that doctors seriously struggle with believing any zebras exist and are not just horses painted as zebras just to personally mess with them😒 Edit: I'd also be very careful throwing it under borderline personality disorder, which is infamously thrown on female s**ual abuse survivors, basically just giving them a giant "difficult patient" label. Funny how it's often the female-dominant diagnoses that keep getting invalidated and dismissed🤔

[@XxYwise]

Like narcissism?

[@cynamun467]

I've seen it in a family member with PTSD (actually C-PTSD). About 2 years into therapy, she started having "blackout" periods up to 24 hours, often found herself in another room, went shopping without memory of it, and had periods where she moved differently and had unusual behavior. It lasted about 3 months after which she gained some control over it. For years afterward, she has had extended periods of spacing out but no personality changes. No therapist suggested any of this and she was reluctant to talk about it. These symptoms are real and her case fits your plan.

[@ErebosGR]

Have you heard of "reality shifting"? It's a newer fad among teens that emerged during the lockdowns, and it reminded me of DID. So far I've heard psychiatrists describe it as a form of excessive daydreaming, but it sounds more like self-hypnotism and dissociation, as a way to cope with lockdown isolation. Is it concerning that the people who practice "reality shifting" actually believe that they are accessing the multiverse/alternate realities/fictional worlds or will they "grow out of it"?

[@blackswan1983]

I'm 40 and still working on undoing the damage my inner worlds created. They served a purpose at the time like it must do for these kids. I suspect they'll have lifelong struggles.

[@imdoneplus]

I started having issues around 5th grade and couldn’t get a handle on it until I was 35. I don’t have a diagnosis, I don’t want a diagnosis. It wasn’t until people started telling me about things I did, corroborated by other people, that it started concerning me. I had not only no memory of them, but also didn’t feel like were in line with any of my behavior. Before that point I had always felt like these two distinct states had a brief period of “bleed,” where I briefly could remember things the alter did, before and after the change. When you’re sudden waking up in a different state, with your knuckles black and blue, and your hand swollen it’s a problem. Even years later I would wake up covered in bruises, cuts on my hands, new things in my possession, and I wouldn’t know what had happened. I worked really hard and reintegrating these different states, with a “rip it up and start again” approach, and that’s been my life since 2017. I rarely mention it, I don’t like talking about it, it makes me feel far more vulnerable than I’d like to. It feels really weird when someone I’d tried to hide it from is somehow aware of it, that makes me feel really odd. My best friend is the greatest guy on earth, so I’ve never wanted him to ever come into contact with that mess, and yet recently when I said, “well that whole mess was Mark’s fault” he immediately assumed I was talking about an alter. How? Why? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I hope it’s just because it seems possible to him, not because he’s witnessed it. Anyway, I’m not a fan. While I appreciate the protection this altered state offered, I don’t think of the whole thing fondly, so when I think about the TikTok kids, I just about lose it. I live in fear of losing control again and I struggle with dissociation daily. Because of this I under represent it to mental health providers, just so if I do go off the rails then someone notices. Hopefully I don’t need to think about it. Anyway, great video, thank you for all your hard work.

[@ambereyedbabygirl]

I completely understand this, and im very happy KNOWING what my "disorder" is, But it is just a part of me and i Actually would prefer not to have a diagnosis on paper due to the fact that i have abusive people in my life who would try to take advantage of my mental health in order for their own gain.

[@imdoneplus]

@@ambereyedbabygirl exactly. If you have DID then you’re “like actually crazy” and people are going to use it against you. It was brutal for me to reintegrate two halves into a whole, but even like a year ago I had someone threatening me and talking about how it wasn’t real, I was just faking and they had been naive. So not only do you have to worry about people trying to take your freedom or choices away from you, but you also may end up with people who you do allow to know about it to say they don’t take you seriously, while threatening to tell everyone else about it. Whatever the case, I hope you feel seen, because I feel seen by you replying to my comment.

[@MortaliaObscurum]

I've never really seen a therapist until around 2019. I told one of them about my DID symptoms and they claimed I have psychosis. The only symptom that fit me was disorganized thought/behavior. I saw a different therapist and they said I have PTSD which makes a lot of sense, and explains the disorganized thought/behavior symptom. The same therapist said they wouldn't be surprised if I have DID because of all that I went through and other symptoms I explained to them. Which also makes sense, and explains a lot about my own personal experiences. Denying DID exists and recategorizing it would just cause more harm and confusion because it's a distinct dissociaitive disorder with medical backing, and would change the current research for the disorder to be elsewhere to confirm the recategorization. There's brain scans of a person with DID when they were two different alters that shows different sections of the brain being active. Highlighting that it's not just mental but physical due to the trauma. Trauma and such can alter our bodies in physical ways, not just mental. That's why dopamine, serotonin, etc. can be at different levels after a traumatic/stressful experience and why there is specific medication for conditions like depression to help bring the levels back to a more normal state. Such as stomach problems, body aches/pains, migraines, etc. can be caused by a persons mental health the same as physical health.

[@gaylordrobinson1199]

You do have psychosis. DID isn’t real.

[@hazeld8016]

I have parts and I'm hoping in the newest edition of the DSM that they restructure the category of dissociative disorders and merge OSDD and DID into Complex Dissociative Disorder, or something similar, because thats really what it is

[@jameshughes3014]

I've got it too and I really feel like the word complex should be in there somewhere. It's a mess of a thing, and the pop culture understanding of it leaves so much out. It's not just the separate identities.

[@Ninsidhe]

CDD makes way more sense than lumping it into BPD, although I don’t actually experience my DID as a ‘disorder’ anymore now that I’m older and have learned how truly deranged the dominant culture actually is. I’m the way I am, it was being forced into someone else’s mould that was causing a lot of my harm.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@NinsidheIt's like that old quote, It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. I'm glad to hear you're accepting yourself, it can be tough when you're different.

[@mayanightstar]

YES "Complex Dissociative Disorder" with subcategories based on level of amnesia is something I would totally get behind! I have OSDD and friends with DID and how much out alters share memories is pretty much the only difference in our experience of plurality (well and also some of them have a crazy vivid inner world and my system has nothing) (an inclination towards introjection, system size/polyfragmentation, and temp-fusion/blurriness would also be useful sub categories I think)

[@Ninsidhe]

@@jameshughes3014 yup, added to all the OTHER things that were going on but also undiagnosed, including being Autistic, ND, having learning disabilities despite being profoundly gifted and so-called high IQ- I live my life now with the deep awareness that I’m surrounded by the asylum and I just need a nice quiet place in the forest away from all those who think their sickness is ‘normal’- like the parable of the Sufi mystic, the poisoned water and all the unsane who were so convinced _they_ were the healthy ones….

[@gyounce1]

I don't have DID, or at least not that I know of, but I am really scared of the possibility that I might. I've denied it for a long time because my experiences were different than what I assumed I knew about DID. However, the more and more I learn about it, the more I am starting to be convinced. I want to see a psychiatrist about it, mostly because I want to confirm that I don't actually have it. But, I'm hesitant to do so because I'm worried that I could instead be diagnosed. For a long time, I didn't even believe DID or Multiple Personalities existed and that it was all faked or exaggerated, but when I come to see what it really is, I fear that I'm afflicted by it. I don't want people thinking I'm crazy or taking advantage of me, like, "you just don't remember doing the thing I'm accusing you of (which happens a lot)". All of the criteria listed in the beginning, I experience sometimes daily. I write songs and diary entries (of which I make a record of every day) that I certainly don't recall doing, and aren't even written in the way that I write, with different vocabulary and even the use of slang words (I do NOT use slangs!). I even leave comments or send texts that I'm certain I didn't send. The memory loss aside, because that can be anything, the biggest one that frightened me from the list was the one regarding the personalities themselves. I've always taken comfort in the fact that my "fractures" or "moods", as I refer to them, are just "parts of myself that were other possibilities that all came to life" is how I've described them for so long. I thought that since all of them were all me, then I couldn't have DID because we aren't different people, because that's how I thought it had to be. We have different skills and tastes, but never anything extreme (like, sometimes "I" love sweets, but I can't stand sweets and only like to eat savory or salty foods; or sometimes "my" favorite music is Jpop, but I'm a solid metalhead), but we are still just versions of me. Another difference that I thought I had was total blackout. I thought that folk with DID had to experience total blackouts whenever they were switching, but there are often times when I'm partially present, like on autopilot, and I can observe what's happening, but not interact, like a movie. To hide these issues I have, I just tell everyone that my opinions and my skills depend on my mood. It makes me seem fickle, unbalanced, and indecisive, but it's better than claiming I'm multiple people. I don't know, this video made my stomach ache. Maybe I should see someone. I'll probably keep it secret if I do end up with a DID diagnosis, though. I don't need two disorders.

[@lindsaysheffield]

Very interesting that you got to the “could be explained by other disorders” - up to that point I was thinking “well that’s me when my meds are wrong.” Having been under psychiatric care nearly 20 years (since I was 19), I feel like my symptoms have largely stayed the same but the dx is constantly changing - there’s so much overlap. ASD, bipolar type 2 rapid cycling w/psychotic features, dissociative disorder/psychogenic seizures, PTSD, major depression, ARFID/OSFED…it all just depends on who is evaluating me and what’s the most distressing issue at the time. Add being medically complex to that as well, and it gets even more complicated! I like that my current team just focused on treating symptoms and improving quality of life, not fitting into a nice diagnostic box. And there’s definitely *something* psychological going on with people who claim to DID…

[@ph4y33]

Saaaaaame ive been DX with most of these too plus some. But symptoms have been consistant but the dx never is. Learned fall of last year PMDD explains a lot of it 🙄 I think reclassifying my DID as a subclass of cPTSD honestly makes way more sense then the 5 different things ive been told about it. Im so glad you have a good team now 😁💕

[@kittyvlekkie]

DID system here, i'm just afraid of how this video is trying to dismiss DID

[@jameshughes3014]

Thank you for this, it's great to see level headed people discussing this topic, but I do have some thoughts I feel are important. I was diagnosed decades ago, but the doc who first diagnosed it retired. Not before telling me however, that I shouldn't tell other doctors about it. He was right, they were not helpful. For most of my life, it's just been about trying, and failing, to find help, because most doctors wouldn't even talk about it or admit it exists. I feel like, finally, we're moving past that denial, and into a place where we can do more research, better understand what it is, how it works, and ways to help people. When I hear people blather on about 'is it real, is it made up', after all these years, all i can think is...shut up and get on with actually figuring out how to help people. Seeing people take it seriously gives me hope that more doctors and researchers might do the same, and this next generation of people who have it will actually be able to get help, because the reality is that it's a confusing, terrifying, annoying, isolating condition and people who have it could really use a bit of help. Our current understanding of DID might not be fully accurate, but after all these years, finally seeing a therapist trained to treat it, that framework has helped me find some stability and peace from what was unmanageable chaos. I don't think it should be recategorized. Instead, I think it should be finally given the proper research it deserves. But if it needs a new name, a new term, that'd be fine. Personally , I don't feel like it fits with BPD. There's just too many defining characteristics of BPD that don't fit. It does share a lot with PTSD, but only in the same way that a bruise and a broken bone are kind of the same thing. Sure , they were both caused by getting smacked by something.. but the results, and the treatments are gonna be very different. The reason I feel it needs it's own diagnosis is that it comes with unique challenges. My 'ability' to isolate things internally into their own identities isn't something I can turn off. Which means I can go to doctors all day long, and they'll never be able to detect what's going on with me, often I can't even see it. I know it's there, and i can tell the docs it's there, but I can't access it. The other identities have to do that. But, ignored or not, the anxiety is still a huge problem. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away and it's still crippling. The issue is that the anxiety and thoughts causing it are isolated in their own identity. That identity has to be active to work through it. And those identities surface situationally. In other words, they come out when the situation demands it. They just aren't going to pop out when we're in a doctors office. As a result, it goes untreated. It's sooo frustrating. one of the things that happens is that docs will lock in and focus on what's happening with me, this identity, because it's all they see. That means that 90 percent of me get ignored, and i don't end up getting the help I need. I worry that if it's clumped in with PTSD or BPD , many of the practitioners out there wont even have a clue how to treat it and they'll just assume you can handle it the same way you do those two disorders which , is not true.

[@jameshughes3014]

​@@alephnulII'm with you on the feeling that there's not gonna be a lot of help in our lifetimes. I just hope that researchers get on the ball, for the sake of the next generation. I simply feel like, or fear that the effect of folding it into another label is a way of brushing it under the rug. But a new term for it might be really helpful.

[@Rose-dd6bj]

Good video but fairly out of date with "core theory" which is largely seen as weong as opposed to the theory of structural dissociation.

[@acidangel162]

Hi! I'm one of the few people who have a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. I thoroughly enjoyed your video. Yours is the best I've seen. It is not that strange that there are people with many people inside them. What's way more magical is how we consist of 100 billion neurons and yet feel like one. It is an illusion created by our brain. It would make sense that this mechanism would be broken for some people. And it would make sense that in some cases it would be beneficial. People who could withstand their childhood trauma and not break down too much would be able to live long enough to reproduce. What I disagree with you is the classification. Dissociative identity disorder is not a subclass of bordeline personality disorder. Just because there is a lot of comorbidity doesn't mean it's the same thing. There is about the same rate of comorbidity with autism and adhd but they are distinct disorders. Borderline personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder share the same cause - massive childhood trauma. Dissociation is a symptom of borderline personality disorder but not the other way around. Different people react differently to the same kind of trauma. Maybe some people are predispositioned to insulate some parts of their minds when they face too much adversity in childhood. Maybe for some people this illusion of oneness isn't that strong and can be broken more easily. Or maybe they have stronger inhibitions that can even block different parts of the brain from communicating with one another. I am not too far on the dissociative identity disorder spectrum. I can remember what happened to the others but they feel like stories someone else has told me. The emotional connection with the memories is there only when I am that person. I also don't mind the word "I". I don't use words like "system". Others can if they find those concepts helpful. I just redefined the word "I". Everyone else calls themselves I even though they are made of billions of neurons. They are also many but don't realize it. Different parts of the brain make choices together but you never hear this chatter. Oh yeah. I personally don't have borderline personality disorder but I do have adhd and autism. Those affect my day to day life far more than dissociative identity disorder. This might sound weird but until I was 20 I thought everyone else had multiple personalities too. I didn't think I was special. Only at the age of 20 I found out it's an actual disorder. I'm 41 now and I was diagnosed 18 years ago. To be honest I'm a little insulted by the idea of reclassification. I know plenty of people with borderline personality disorder and wouldn't want to be identified with that bunch. If dissociative identity disorder was reclassified as a subset of borderline personality disorder there would be the weird case of people belonging to a subset of borderline personality disorder without the symptoms of borderline personality disorder. In the end these classifications are just words we made up to find some order in mental disorders. Reclassification would not change the disorder one bit. It would just change which box we put it in.

[@rambysophistry1220]

I mean, I am pretty sure the biggest problem here is "society might not take people with DID seriously if there are people faking DID." the thing is, the problem here is different from the one people seem to see. Society should take mental health seriously and consider it as important, if not more important, then physical health, and thus shouldn't be invalidating people just on the grounds of some people faking a disorder. The issue isn't people faking DID. The problem is society not taking mental health seriously, and until we fix the former problem, the latter situation will continue to exist. We need to make it a social taboo to invalidate people. We need to make it socially unacceptable to pick on people with mental health problems, and then we can actually get to the work of treatment, since until then, people with mental health problems are just gonna try and pretend to be 'normal', which is just gonna make their mental health even worse,

[@johnwinchester6934]

Why has DID become a thing all the sudden since 2016 and tiktok? Why weren't there millions of cases of this "illness" in 1980 or the 2000s?

[@Vivacious_Chaos]

[Frankie & Alice] Movie, I rarely ever see this film suggested about DID. It's a drama documentary about a black woman with this condition and depicts it quite accurately compared to other forms of media out there. Okay, now my thoughts, I think DID should be an extensive symptom of trauma. I have it and fit the bill with extensive trauma history involving SA/CSA for well over ten years. The separate states I experience are completely related to abuse. It's worsened by stress and if a new trauma occurs. It isn't fun, quirky, cute, or fashionable. Modernity and social media have truly transformed this condition. I also think iatrogenic DID is a serious issue as well. There are people who are subjected to believe they have it, but after careful assessment, it seems highly unlikely. But they are still in pain and must receive help/support. There are many issues with BPD. Claiming someone has a disordes personality leads to a lot of the same issues as the old lable of DID as MPD caused. It's also used a catch-all and often harms survivors of trauma. People aren't able to get help because professionals openly express their distaste for those with it. I was even taught during my Bachelors in psyche to run far away from anyone with BPD. There are several books that describe people with BPD as abusive, dangerous, and so on. I appreciate your well thought out and thorough video regarding this topic. I think the lables you described at the end of your video are decent compromises. However, I do feel that pathologizing normal human behavior has led to more harm than it has helped people. But that is outside the scope of this discussion. Overall, I find it very refreshing to have this sort of content available on KZbin. I'm glad I can support the work you do and look forward to joining you and other content creators on Nebula. Thank you 💜

[@MiraBoo]

27:02 - 27:13 Wouldn’t susceptibility give credence to DID? I understand the problem susceptibility has when it comes to implanting false memories and causing trauma; however, I would suspect that those who are less susceptible to influence would not be as capable of entering an alternate state of mind when dissociating. In other words, it’s a coping mechanism that is easier for more susceptible people to access. Edit to add: I agree that adding subcategories to other diagnoses could potentially be very beneficial; however, I do not think it is necessary to remove DID as a diagnosis. DID can remain its own category (and be better taught/studied) while conditions like BPD and PTSD are updated to include dissociative subcategories.

[@neurotransmissions]

Yeah, that's a good point. Suggestibility could possibility be a feature of DID rather than indicative of the iatrogenic model. It just makes it more difficult to parse.

[@ambereyedbabygirl]

Also it is completely ridiculous in my opinion for people to all out say that people who use substances to self medicate cannot have DID Due to the fact that many people use substances to cope with their trauma and the effects that the amnesia and confusion within their own mind and body causes them.

[@dvidsilva]

I realized there was something different when the blackout personality had access to different memories than sober me, also no correlation between the personalities takeover and consumption of substances. The problem started showing up like that and getting worse after some medication that I eventually stopped taking and now I’m using K and IFS, assuming is trauma induced, and doing better and integrating different ones and reducing anxiety. Would say is possible that the diagnosis is also popular because systemic issues cause frequent trauma and dissociative episodes and then is easy to start adopting behavior from a diagnosis the person believes to have.

[@ThePathOfLeastResistanc]

That’s my theory

[@intrusive-th0t]

Have you ever seen a neurologist or had bloodwork done to account for physiological causes?

[@dvidsilva]

@@intrusive-th0t kinda, nothing found there that I remember. trauma is most likely a cause, I grew up in a war zone.

[@baasparkopenings851]

So I'm not diagnosed with DID, and I'm unsure if I qualify for the diagnosis - however, I do have distinct alters and amnesia, I just don't know if they're related enough to be a diagnosis. And that's what I wanted to draw attention to - I believe that a lot of these problems with DID and alleged misdiagnosis on social media (I believe it's a problem that reaches far beyond TikTok) would be helped significantly by the normalization of Plurality / Multiplicity. "Plurality" in this context refers to being a part of a system and having alters, but it explains presentations and origins that fall beyond the scope of DID as well. For example, everyone with DID is plural (although some don't consider themselves part of the community and that should be respected), but not everyone with plurality has DID. Plurality also includes some religious and spiritual practices, again if people choose to identify that way, and can even include gender presentations and sexualities. It's a very flexible label, and maybe that's why it hasn't caught on, but it's been super helpful for me in navigating and unpacking my own trauma and mental illness. I almost certainly have PTSD, and PTSD does intersect with my alters. I have alters who hold specific traumatic memories and I have alters who can't stand being in certain situations due to past trauma. I've spent hours arguing with my alters about how to handle abusive situations. In particular I had an alter who was desperately trying to wake me up to the abusive tendencies of an ex-friend, while others in my system (including myself) tried to shut him down because he was labeled as an instigator upon forming and we didn't realize how right he was. However, the typical treatment of DID that you mentioned - reinstating all identities back into one - would be HORRIBLE for me. My alters help me balance stress, keep me company when I'm lonely, express aspects of "my" (the brain's) identity that I don't identify with but they do, and make me laugh. My distinct personalities are not marked by discomfort or distress - I like being this way. The kind of treatment that would work for me would be torturous for a person with DID who doesn't want to be multiple / plural, and vice versa. That's why I think it's important to keep DID-centric treatment around - because some people do benefit from it. However, it's also important to spread correct information about DID on the internet. Many of these kids might have another dissociative disorder or just be plural/trying to figure out their identity safely, and it's important to give them the space to do so without encouraging them to label themselves as something they aren't. The beauty of the word "plurality" for me is that it means whatever you want it to be, whatever your presentation is - you don't have to worry about what's "typical" in DID, you don't have to worry about whether your dissociation is "severe enough", because it's enough to just be who you are. It isn't a disorder, and while self-love is important for people with DID too, there's no inherent disorder in plurality. There's no such thing as romanticizing plurality because it's not an inherent disorder. I hope psychiatry can start doing more research on plurality soon. I personally haven't been able to talk to my therapist about my plurality, and it stings when I'm having in-system conflicts. Unfortunately I know from first-hand experience that my therapist would have...a poor reaction to my plurality. The ex-friend I mentioned had OSDD, and when I told my therapist about it (as it was relevant to the breakup) she immediately jumped to thinking they were faking it, but then said "well, you did say they have trauma before, so they could actually have it...". This was after shaming me for my completely justifiable reaction of "hey, don't go out while you have covid?" at the beginning of the pandemic. She's helped a lot with my anxiety and depression but that session was a huge blow to my trust in her and I'm still working on finding a new therapist. Sometimes patients might not want to share something as intimate and usually poorly-understood as DID/OSDD or suspicions of such with their therapist, so that's worth keeping in mind with your anecdotal experience. It's also usually diagnosed in adults like you said, so there's many reasons why you may not have seen it much. Still, even for a lot of people with DID, PTSD treatment is what helps them the most, moreso than reintegration into one identity. It's a complex situation that I definitely don't have the answers for.

[@aichouwa8221]

I'm someone with DID (recognized by a therapist but not diagnosed because diagnosis can cause loss of certain rights and autonomy, I don't want a diagnosis and support self-diagnosis) and I have mixed thoughts on this video. It feels like you're thinking out loud and gives very mixed messages. So I'll just focus on parts that stuck out to me: - The idea of a personality is, in general, extremely vague. Personalities are not always consistent and people change over time. Some systems prefer the "split/parts/alters" language like you say, but many don't. In my system I definitely have alters who I know are split from me, but I have others who are as defined as I- the host- am. I prefer to regard them as much of a person as I am, because they have as much "personhood" (whatever that encompasses) as myself. The conflation of "identities" and "personality states" was very confusing, because I see "identity" and "personality" as closer definitions. It comes down to personal opinion and semantics. - There's a massive focus on integration into "one" personality, with you saying "Therapies on fusing into one whole do seem to work". Maybe from the therapist's perspective, sure. Being in the community, I've seen more systems say their therapist insist the only treatment is integration, so they pretend to agree. Therapists hold power and if they disagree it can be very harmful, and systems are often great at pretending to be one person for their own safety. Integration is not something my system seeks- what's worked best for us has been learning to communicate and work together, and that's the best for a ton of other systems too. My system formed to help me and handle trauma, they have a purpose for me. - Small note, but Moon Knight was considered by the general plural community as pretty positive rep. It can be a little cartoony, but it's not for shock value, comedy or horror and I found it relateable, and nice to see a show where plurality isn't the joke/for fearmongering, and it showing positive inter-system communication. - "These individuals often keep to themselves, and prioritize their self-preservation and safety... at least until tiktok" You started having a good conversation about systems confidently presenting themselves online to reduce stigma but then say "it's entertainment, not reality". There's an aspect there- systems will show more positive parts of their lives than struggles. Everyone does. But like you said, there's the "clinically examined" behavior and stuff therapists will never see unless they're in their daily lives. A lot of us share a diagnosis but have very different ways of acting. I think there's a TON more nuance to DID/OSDD/plurality which makes the DSM's broad diagnosis too difficult. Personally I have PTSD in addition, and I find a lot of my PTSD symptoms (particularly amnesia) account for my diagnosis more than DID itself, but I'm iffy on the reclassification when the alters are a core part of that. But more nuance would be nice. Either way, I'm glad it's becoming more publicly known and less stigmatized, because a lot of us don't WANT to be covert and kept to ourselves, I want to be able to be open about my system too. Your implication that a system who is less covert and more outspoken about their experiences is more likely faking is dangerous and makes us feel like you'd rather systems be silent. - "Switching most often happens in response to stress and triggers of trauma, not on command"- This ties into a big thing you're overlooking: functional systems. It's clear from your focus on integration, you don't think they exist and the only healed system is an integrated one. Amnesia barriers and inter-system issues can often be worked through with trauma work, systems can learn to cooperate, and switching often becomes easier. This was the case with mine, and now we have switches not only based on anxiety, but also triggers (also very common), and then with consent. It took a while to work to that point. Which ties into you saying only people with all 5 symptoms don't have DID- often times systems who had the diagnosis heal and grow out of it, but they still have headmates. There's a big movement on plurality, not just DID/OSDD, because it's too narrow (I recommend looking into Power to the Plurals), which includes a lot more nuance than you bring to the conversation. - It's confusing that you say there's too much DID rep online so it's fake, but also you nor your coworkers met anyone with DID so it's fake. Is it too many or not enough people for you? As a system, I wouldn't come out to my therapist until I am 100% sure they're safe to tell, but I'm open on the internet- they can't institutionalize me. With your focus on integration, probably overlooking nuances in symptoms, and focus on how people might be faking, I wouldn't be surprised if systems did not feel comfortable. - I appreciated you pointing out trauma isn't a requirement of it, and it's just theorized. As a trauma-formed system I do think most systems come from this, but I'm not going to say all. The mind is too complex (which makes likeliness of nuance even greater). I also appreciated you warning against fakeclaiming, but it came at the end of a lot of focus on faking- which IS rare, a handful of redditors proves nothing. I think the conversation about faking could have been replaced a lot with the conversation on how little is publically known until now. I first started thinking I was a system in my Psych class when my teacher taught us about it in a "that sounds like me" situation. I think more people are getting that from seeing people online than "lol that looks fun". Being a system is hard and even online you get CONSTANT harrassment. Not many fakers find that fun for long, so I don't think focusing on them should be nearly as hot of a topic as it is. I do think you need to research WAY more into it, not just the medicalized by-the-book aspects, but from actual plural people, who should really have the most say in how it's classified. I'd love for it to be less stigmatized like how you say, so people can get diagnosed by understanding therapists and not risk their wellbeing with this label. You bring up some good topics, but most of this was disappointing and focused on the wrong issues. I hope you listen to those in the community, not just your peers.

[@keepsakecube]

So you’ve never diagnosed someone with DID but you also don’t wholly believe in DID. Maybe your bias has made clients hide that info from you. Or you’ve overlooked symptoms of it because of your bias. It’s real and my friend has it, I don’t care what you want to call it, they are a fractured system working on healing themself, and I’ve helped several of their alters when they were going through a stressful time in their life. One of the alters is a good friend of mine and others barely recognize me. You can’t fake that.

[@keepsakecube]

@@LiEnby lmao yeah like. In one breath saying you don’t believe in it and in the other saying you’ve never met someone with it. No fucking duh. I know when I was picking out a therapist I went for one that specialized in my disorders. I’ve been burned too many times by ones that didn’t understand what I was going through.

[@Sofia-kr9fb]

I think people who wrongly assume they have DID are probably those who have a personality disorder, just not did. One that comes to mind is BPD. Another personality disorder that makes you suffer from a scattered, detached sense of self, not just regard to themselves but their perceptions of the identity of others like their friends and family too. Its also common that they are quick to start identifying with labels that can help them feel a consistent sense of self. (ups commented this before finishing the video)

[@punitadatta]

I just think it means all other alters don't want to front. So the host is left alone until they disintergrate over time or an event happens which gives the other alters a reason to front. Which is pretty unlikely as this world sucks.

[@htsyep]

Please no, not the term "system". It's so detached from the real goal, which is helping the patient find its own identity. I'm a diagnosed patient with DID, PTSD and Major Depression myself, and trust me I'm TIRED of these "systems" on TikTok spreading misinformation and faking something so delicate. It's insulting. Please don't use that term.

[@sunnyday6465]

I'm sorry to see the sensationalism of this condition. For myself it was caused by severe childhood trauma. All this trauma had ended by the time I was 5 or 6. I grew up fairly normal, having buried and forgotten what had happened (many things). It was not until severe trauma happened in my late 40s that it all surfaced. The western world has a poor understanding here. Somehow the psyche can get shattered, the nervous system so disrupted that these survival mechanisms kick in. I think of these different personalities as ego structures. Most people without severe trauma in childhood develop just one. In my case after a period of years after everything surfaced I integrated. I would add that a part of ones psyche that has been shattered can also leave the person and attach to another person or object. I healed without therapy. I would reccomend people be very careful if choosing a therapist. They can make you worse. For sure PTSD is part of it, however when 'switching' some ego structures or personalities can relieve the stress!! I think the term Dissociative identity disorder is fine, better than multiple personality disorder as when someone wants to intergrate the DID term is more helpful.

[@Josh-oj9mm]

I just automatically assume they're fake if its from tiktok, there are more healthy spaces on youtube and reddit

[@kiynchin]

maybe the reason you think you haven't treated anyone with DID is that you don't seem to treat the perspective of the people experiencing plurality as worthy of consideration. So many times in this video you make arguments by presenting "both sides" of an issue with with more than two sides. And the missing parts are usually the ones that plural folk mostly agree with.

[@emiechou1787]

I was just diagnosed with DID by my therapist. I knew nothing about this disorder. I have one of the best therapist and I asked him why I had 2 monologues in my head with personalities. He's met them and you are correct. It took me 4 years to even tell my therapist about what I was going through. We keep it to ourselves for many reasons. My first alter came when I was in 6th grade and I never felt alone after that. I loved your video. I had a very traumatic childhood but never gave myself an excuse. I thought it was normal. And a part of me grew so use to my alter being there that I grew up thinking everyone went through it.

[@eric6cartman9]

a lot of these sound like whats happening with the borderline conversation. like it fits an aesthetic ppl strive for. I just wish ppl understood its not a good feeling having three doctors come into ur room and explain how ur personality is disordered and they don't actually know how to fix it. it doesn't make it easier to live with and for the first couple of years I really let it hold me back in my career and education. its obviously different with DID but can't speak to that as I don't personally suffer from it myself. I truly do believe there is a small percentage of ppl who truly do suffer from DID I feel for them as they are overshadowed by the children seeking attention.

[@conan4real]

funny u call them "children seeking attention" when literally every single person with DID is deeply and innately traumatized, and [anecdotally] have probably been called that exact same thing whenever they showed signs of being mentally ill or having DID. calling someone attention seeking bc they think they're mentally ill is a lil questionable lol

[@violett874]

​@@conan4real Yeah can we stop dismissing kids who are clearly struggling with their mental health and likely have 0 agency to do anything about it besides literal cries for help. It's giving "you didn't actually want to unalive yourself, you just wanted attention." Like yes, they wanted medical attention, why is your solution to mock and ignore them??

[@XxYwise]

​@@violett874 if they are malingering, that needs to be addressed.

[@user-wi3yx3gy2o]

Saying PTSD and DID overlap is not amazing. DID is subsumed by PTSD, definitionally, according to the longstanding model of DID as a disorder of traumagenic dissociation.

[@greendaybmt]

I have friends who self diagnosed themselves with DID, and I meet this with skepticism. I feel so guilty for feeling that way. As someone diagnosed with BPD and suicidal depression at the age of 12, I've seen the very real and scary moments mental illness has to offer. No amount of community changed the fact that personal relationships and my entire life became a whirlwind of hospitals, therapy sessions that didn't work out, medication that didn't work, and a lifetime of insomnia and side effects of the medication that DOES work. Heck, I'm glad they feel comfy in their label and have friends who share their experiences, or claim to. But. I know, as someone with BPD, I lied a lot for attention. A LOT. There are still lies that I find myself wanting to say today that I made up for attention 10 years ago. This is due to trauma and simply wanting to be accepted and loved, even if the person who could potentially be loved wasn't actually me. I take accountability for the very fake and mentally unwell person I was. I wasn't myself, but at the same time, I was. I wish people would understand that it's ok to have BPD too. Maybe it doesn't sound as exiting, or I never got to name the person who pretended to get a kidney transplant, but it was me. I am still one person. My mind goes in different directions, and I still find myself wanting to please people if it means changing my values and opinions or say something I don't believe. I think we need to connect over the fact we are all human, rather than separating ourselves into niche little boxes to victimize ourselves. I did this, and continue to! I won't pretend I don't. But I want to be able to see a future where we simply get the help we need without the need to make it our entire lifestyle. While typing this, I am afraid of the backlash, but at the same time, I thought maybe my experience as someone with a clinical diagnosis (who also didn't properly take my meds until last year because my mind told me I had to be "normal") would be valuable to somebody.

[@d6mafia13]

I think it was super brave of you to write about this and I definitely agree. I don't believe in the concept of DID. Atleast not in the way it people make it out to be. I've had extreme mental health problems my whole life and have been in and out of hospitals with the absolute worst of the worst. I mean people that are beyond sick and have no idea what's going on and I've never met anyone that I legitimately believed had DID. I've definitely come across some super sad situations with paranoid schizophrenic patients that also have other disorders also and they are literally in a completely different world from minute to minute sometimes but I will just never believe these people that have these elaborate stories when they are supposed to not remember anything and they'll have like 100s of alters and most of them are non human and it's just ridiculous. I mean they definitely have some sort of psychological problem going on for needing attention so bad. Maybe some sort of personality disorder like borderline and they lie to get the attention they crave. There were definitely times when I was a kid and I was hurting so bad from all my trauma and I lied for attention too so I guess I get it but it gets a little ridiculous when it's full grown adults with access to medical care parading around on the internet for all to see. Sorry this is the first comment I've seen where some had even an ounce of skepticism and I had to chime in to agree because every other comment is someone that supposedly has DID like a diagnosis like that would even be that common for them all to gather here with a day of posting. Just madness.

[@PrplPoppySystem]

​@@d6mafia13it's something called algorithm that brought us all here. Including you. Not diagnosing, just saying. I've been professionally diagnosed by multiple professionals and a psychiatrist. The child lived such abuse that by the age of 4 there was already Alters in the System, including one who attempted to unalive the body. The body was 4 years old. None of us identify with the body. We are different in every way conceivable, including size, from the body. So imagine, if you will, being a 6'4" body builder gay man in his 30's in the meat suit of a 5' nuthin unfit & flabby old woman how has kids who are reaching their 30's... "My" hands and everything about "my body" is wrong... It's the wrong size, wrong shape, the body's skull is thinner than mine! Never mind the gender disphoria about the private parts... Just the whole musculoskeletal aspect of the body is... WRONG! And then there's the women who are all built different from 20 something shapely 5'6" to osteoporosistic 80 something year old 4'10" babushka... Not to mention the non-human Alters or those under 20... And my voice! Can't sing worth a lick, but I've got a deep voice... And someone sings Soprano! But our voices are all wrong too. And we're just talking body shape. If I'm not fully aware of what's going on (waking up, depersonalized, dissociaed, not actively thinking...) and I cross"my" arms, touch "my" forehead, put "my" hands on "my" waist, I freak out! What the hell happened to my whatever part of the body I'm touching!? And then I remember... Oh yeah... It's the same for all of us. There's one of us who doesn't have a head & just spins in their room their so traumatized! We are an overt System in part because our primary abuser created a situation where the primary prosecutor (protector & persecutor) was triggered forward and the System Crisis Management Team had to fight him so that he didn't ruin a kid's party, and just before we went from a full house to an empty nest. The biggest reason we are overt though is because those who abused the child and the System desperately want our silence, and we won't give it to them. We won't talk about our trauma specifically, but the mere fact that we exist speaks volumes to the evil that was done to us, AND it gives voice to so many others - some still children. Their experiences may not be ours, but it only takes one to say: "This is our experience. This is what outsiders would say to/about us. This is what we know. If any of it rings true to you, go talk to professionals. Only they can truly help you sort out what's going on with YOU." And someone goes get help. Someone realizes a child might need help... You can doubt all you want, it doesn't mean that Dissociative Disorder Systems don't exist, we're still here! No matter how the professionals decide to dissect and rebrand this disorder.

[@eposhyresinlution4926]

I’m so glad you brought up PTSD in this conversation. I have complex PTSD and have been diagnosed with nothing else. I have big huge memory holes but these are in the past and I haven’t dissociated in a very long time. I went through EMDR therapy and it changed me, in a good way. I most certainly had a different personality when in the grips of serious panic attacks (which I do not recall and have to depend on the recounts of others). But what I believe now is that who I am today is who I have always been. I think the personality changes were due to my brain being under so much stress that it went into autopilot, presenting whatever I needed at the time to deal with the situation at hand. That being said, I will find it interesting to see what happens when I am in a stressful situation in the future. I know that trauma can cause physiological changes to the brain and that, currently, it is believed that there is no cure for PTSD. That being said, I also like to believe that the mind is utterly resilient and capable of much more than we scientifically can know. I go on about my days now choosing to believe that we can heal and that I have. I am forever grateful to my therapist who chose to chase that belief with me.

[@cheetopuffs4535]

received a DID diagnosis (among other things!) when i was 19 (i'm 27 now and indeed still experiencing the same symptoms), and i think classifying it as a sub-type of PTSD makes the most sense and would help a lot. the alters are just 1 part of it, but the vast majority of symptoms experienced day to day are PTSD and dissociation in general.

[@CombinedProductions0]

As a person who has DID, I know that my therapist (who is very experienced in this field) is actively working to educate other therapists and doctors about how to know it's DID. I was not rushed into the diagnosis - my therapist spent quite a long time ruling out other, more common possibilities one by one. I didn't end up getting an official diagnosis for three years because of the rigor we applied. My symptoms don't fall cleanly into any other diagnosis, so that's where we are. I still doubt myself and wish it weren't true. I'm struggling with it. But there's no use looking away from it, and I've been improving one day at a time. It's a complicated and stigmatized topic, and I sincerely hope understanding of it can improve so that people like me can be helped. There are a number of people in my life that can identify which alter is in front purely based on subtle cues like speech patterns or mannerisms. I'm to the point in treatment where I can at least have a general sense of what my alters have been up to, but I still lose lots of details and won't remember them even with prompting unless the right alter is available to ask. And it kind of scares me how bad my memory can be. I went into work one day and introduced myself to a new coworker... just to learn I'd been working actively with him for a month already. Am willing to comment more or take questions, will try to keep an eye on this comment block.

[@chesterrobinson7141]

As someone who has DID a lot of why the definition of DID is so vague is because it is highly complex but it is not the only diagnosis of its type like osdd other specified disosiative disorder that has multiple sub types that come with different presentations and treatment. Also final functions of altars is not the only treatment that can be offered, with my DID my system is highly complex and it would be almost impossible due to how many alters I have(out of privacy I will not say how may). I was first given a diagnosis of ptsd when I was in early high-school and I have several other co-morbid mental health conditions, I am not an expert, and I can only speak about my personal experience.

[@alexanderleuchte5132]

The BPD overlap are the attention seeking "fake" cases of DID, the PTSD overlap is the CPTSD basis on which severe Dissociation happens in the first place. Besides it might be closer to the truth that there is actually only one "Disordered Personality" with emphasis on certain aspects. Assumed DiD / OSDD describe a real psychological phenomenon it only makes sense as ultimate technique to keep a pretend normality, to appear to be normal despite severe trauma going on, so any overt presentatiomn would per definition be a failed or collapsing form of such a mental arrangement

[@a-man2246]

I feel the suspect treatment modalities such as hypnosis should have been discussed more thoroughly. You completely glossed over the entire aspect of False Memory Syndrome, its associations with DID, and how the so-called "memory wars" affected the way research psychologists look at DID

[@jameshughes3014]

For me, the way the mental health industry reacted to that whole fiasco is the important bit. I feel like it prolonged the stigma surrounding DID for decades, and slowed research.

[@kittyvlekkie]

you should read up on structural dissociation, don't let medical ego hold yourself back from being up to date on the medical field of DID

[@fleabitz1474]

I was dragged into the post-Sybil, post-Billy Milligan MPD craze in the 80's and have stories I could tell.

[@amyfu2047]

I was diagnosed in 2012 with DID. I was in denial over it for another couple of years. I didn’t want to believe I was that “broken”. I kept saying well maybe it’s Schizophrenia or bla bla bla. I accepted it in 2015 when I was suddenly in front again but I was lying on the floor in my therapist’s office with a blanket wrapped over me and my thumb in my mouth. A 3 year old part had been out. I knew I hadn’t put myself on the floor and I definitely didn’t start sucking my thumb 😂 so maybe there was some truth to my diagnosis. Of course I didn’t think it through logically like that. I had a breakdown because it freaked me out so much. Thankfully my therapist was amazing and stood by me and helped me figure it all out. Now I and my remaining alters work as a team. I rarely “lose time” anymore and I love my life. There are ups and downs but overall I wouldn’t change anything about how we live day to day.

[@Kratargon]

The way I see things, the whole point of a diagnosis is to provide a model of behavior patterns that can describe your life experience and form a predictive basis for future actions. If modeling your behavior as a system is an effective tool for understanding yourself, then it makes a sense to use it. I do think that there’s something to be said for metacognition’s ability to cause mental change. This has been demonstrated time and time again, particularly in therapeutic or self-help contexts. Believing in something can actually enact changes as we change the ways we behave to better align with our self-image. In this way, exposure to and identification with the identity of being ‘a system’ can in turn entrench it as effective future model. It’s complicated.

[@asshrimpleasthat799]

I faked DID when I was a teenager some 16 years ago. I had a lot of bad things happening at home and felt very isolated, and I wanted sympathy and attention. I was encouraged by burgeoning online communities of other young people doing the same thing to the point where I started to believe it myself. Though some language has changed the current DID scene is extremely familiar to me in many ways, but the traction it seems to be getting with medical professionals who should not be so credulous is deeply concerning to me. This should not be encouraged and it will go nowhere good for these kids, living a lie is dangerous psychologically and will rot you from within

[@saltclaws]

The logic of "I have never seen it nor has anyone I know, so it doesn't exist" is a bad one. There are so many medical conditions that are rare and next to no doctor might see in their life time of practice, but statically it's possible that they could have just based on the population in their area. In the same vein, the reason why googling symptoms generally doesn't work out is because there's so much overlap between ailments/conditions. So using high overlap as a reason to make something a subtype of something else isn't quite it either. It probably just points out that there isn't enough understanding why things tend to be co-morbid.

[@teerific3991]

I’m going to wrap this up.. yes it’s real, yes it’s probably being over diagnosed or more realistically people are diagnosing themselves!!! I’ve seen this horrible condition turn into a fad and my heart aches for the people who really suffer with it. My prayers are with them 🙏❤️❤️from AK

[@rolfanderson3925]

43:45 Hold on, BPD is no more common than DID? Did I hear that right? That’s complete cap, BPD diagnoses exponentially outnumber DID ones.

[@neurotransmissions]

If the population statistics are to be believed, the 12-month prevalence of both BPD and DID is stated to be about 1.5% of the population.

[@rolfanderson3925]

@@neurotransmissions From what I’ve seen it’s more likely 5-6% of the population has BPD, but those are estimates. Wow that is shocking, if true, that only ~1.5% have BPD and ~1.5% have DID. Anecdotally I’ve met many BPD sufferers but 0 DID sufferers and I used to volunteer at a substance abuse facility in a major US city. I do agree with your conclusions though. I’ve been saying for years that DID and CPTSD are just flavors of BPD. The symptoms for both are subsets of BPD, it just makes sense.

[@rolfanderson3925]

@@neurotransmissions Thanks for the response man, I love your videos.

[@jameshughes3014]

@@rolfanderson3925 that's not a surprise. I've got DID, even in the doctor's office it's nearly invisible, that's sort of the whole point. Still, I'd be surprised to find out that it's as much as 1%. In all my life I've met four people who 'think' they have it, and only one other who actually does.

[@rolfanderson3925]

@@jameshughes3014 Wasn’t a doctors office. More than half the people were on commitments or stays of commitment. Saw some crazy shit there, but never a DID sufferer. 3/4 of the women there had borderline.

[@theJellyjoker]

Have you professional doctors ever considered that the constant renaming of things could confuse people and discourage the seeking of treatment?

[@dracodragon105]

In terms of tiktok, I feel like it's partly because people don't have a good term for what they actually have. Tulpas are one such thing that's not DID that share similar effects. Tulpas not being a condition, but something/someone intentionally induced for personal or religious purposes. Some monks would create a mental version of their god so they could feel more in contact and be held to their discipline more, to be able to ask them for advice. I still don't have a good word for whatever my extra people are, but I know it's not did because it takes active effort for my headmates to front and infact enabled us to continue doing my job after I was left shellshocked after a near accident, they could drive for a bit while I the host recovered. For many on tiktok, I feel like this is also their case. Something that is causing extra people in them that's not them, but doesn't have everything necessary to count as did. They just don't have a better word for it and that's the closest one to their symptoms.

[@thecolorjune]

Mmm yes, I think this is closer to how it is for me. I have struggled with dissociation in the form of depersonalization and derealization, and at my worst I’ve have intense shifts in identity and personality and even insisted I be called a different name, but I never lost memories or had amnesia. I just felt safer being someone else and it happened. Once I was in recovery from that time in my life, I reached a point where my identity reverted. This has happened a couple times in my life. A few times I would even feel like I had headmates that I could talk to and switch between, but it was a very active process.

[@mayanightstar]

The community I'm in just pushes for the term "plural." Without pathologizing it as a medical disorder. But systems you describe might use the term "tulpagenic" or "endogenic" to describe their origin (in contrast to traumagenic). And someone might say "but it IS a disorder" and it's just when switches or PTSD systems are disruptive or uncontrollable that it becomes a disorder.

[@dracodragon105]

@@mayanightstar oh I know about plurality, its more the specific kinds of mental beings have different names, ie trauma sharding can describe how one came to be, but how they take shape and what they can/cant do are specific but also fall into groups of common features.

[@Altereddandelion]

I have been diagnosed with DID by multiple professionals and trauma / dissociative specialists. I was diagnosed with EUPD for 7 years before we realized its DID. I dont fulfill the criteria for EUPD anymore. Ofcourse I have cPTSD, but it is also possible for me to heal from the ptsd and still experience dissociated parts. This is why I disagree with you on your point of changing the diagnosis. Yes around 70% of DID patients also fill the EUPD criteria, but there is the 30% that do not. This is why it should be a standalone diagnosis. PTSD is high comorbidity with DID due to the nature of DID development, if you agree with the traumatogenic model. But as mentioned, you can heal from your PTSD and still keep dissociated parts. Ofcourse some integration/fusion would happen in the process due to the nature of it, that those parts are "no longer needed" but not always. I all in all really appreciate this video, but I do believe that you have met patients that would fulfill the DID criteria its just that neither you nor the patient is aware. Ive been in the psych system here in Norway for 11 years, it took 20+ clinicians completely overlooking my dissociative symptoms until one saw them, wrote it down in my journal report and suddenly every clinician ive seen since recognizes it in me. It has always been there, just wasnt noticed. I also had no idea what DID was before diagnosis, so I lacked the vocabulary to communicate accurately with my therapists. Whats important to remember is that I do not remember what I dont remember unless asked about it. Did not notice the giant gaps in my memory before I at an inpatient said I struggle with showering, they asked me how it feels to shower and I have literally no idea. I can not recall a single time ive showered, because theres always been a part of me that takes over and does it for me. In my mind I have never noticed this and just filled in the gap in my head with [SHOWER]. Same with childhood knowledge like childhood home, where i went to school etc. Did not realize i didnt know, until probed.

[@nataliecwine]

It’s so bizarre that you mentioned the daycare worker that got sent to prison in the 80s because I was just listening to a podcast about it RIGHT before I watched this video. Freaky.

[@matthewb5364]

Nearly ten years ago I had a friend who introduced me to her alters. We didn't really know the terms for them, so we calles them Personalities. She had about 7. Her story was very similar to what you outlined as the Traumatogenic model. I don't think she ever posted on any social media about it. (I knew her "secret depression account" where she even posted self harm scars) The conversational boogeyman of the day among parents of teens was Whisper, that anonymous confessions app.

[@mayanightstar]

I really really do not agree that DID should be wrapped up with some other diagnosis. What DID involves that nothing other has is the experience of alters but IMPORTANTLY that alters can communicate and build relationships with each other. And building healthy relationships and better communication should be the goal of treatment (NOT INTEGRATION) which is why it's so important to acknowledge inter-system relationships (this is something I really like about Moon Knight btw) I do think it should be reclassified in some other way though that puts levels of amnesia on more of a spectrum. It's def gotta change SOMEHOW but the people who decide on this need to be actual plural folks please source: I'm plural

[@emmacatte]

What an amazing video up until the part where he says "its not real because I haven't seen it" I too like to be a medical peofessiobal who denies well documented and published diagnosis based on the sole factor that I havent seen it. Not to mention how covert it can be and how having a bias towards not believing in it leads to misdiagnosis.

[@ayva-marie9181]

Brrroooo, my phone knows whats going on in my head. My brother just came back from the mental hospital after an attempt to end his life. I talked with him and he told me there are 4 voices in his head and I let him talk but I couldnt really understand so I said I was going to look into this again so I can understand him more. I alway knew something wasnt right with him but I always thought it was due to his people pleasing habit that he never got the chance to think for himself. I want to know what to say to him when he talks about them again.

[@PrplPoppySystem]

As a person with DID, this is what I recommend: compassion, calm, presence, and curiosity... Oh, and most importantly... Don't tell other Alters what another Alter has revealed to you. There is a reason a person has Dissociative System, it's to protect the System: mind, body, and everyone in it! Find the 8 C's & 5 P's of IFS. You don't need to read anything else on it to help your brother, unless he and his therapist decide to use that modality of treatment. Just memorize that first part. His "boat is going to be rocking the high waves" and not in a good way, so whatever good you can give him from the 8 C's & 5 P's will do him and the others a lot of good. There are no bad parts, but there are immature parts who don't understand certain things and they can be particularly hurtful. Example: we are currently dealing with an Alter who is very angry and who doesn't care who gets hurt in the process, or about System Rules (which we recommend to your brother to try to organize a few basic ones & build on them as things change). Our Alter is very much an eye for an eye thinker, so if they're hurting, others must hurt to... And the more people who hurt the better.🤦‍♀️😬🙄 They are an "Adult Alter," they just have that way of thinking. They don't appreciate Ghandi's saying: "An eye for an eye and everyone is blind!" Badly quoted, but you get the idea. He may also experience PTSD style flashbacks that will either completely trigger someone forward to take front, or at the very least get his System activated. Think the difference between an open raw nerve just being irritated, and an open raw nerve being proded with a hot poker. Learn as much as you can from reliable sources. We recommend: @TheCTADClinic (they might not have "the" in their YT page name...), and DID Research dot org (not sure if it's a - or a _ in their URL...) Oh! And along the same lines as don't tell things from one Alter too another, don't reveal Alters to another. Unless and until your brother specifically idenfies an Alter, don't say "I was talking to your Alter John Doe and..." Same goes for the others. They may not know each other or of each other yet. Try to keep a journal to keep track of who is who, but keep it at work, or somewhere your brother NEVER goes. Don't be surprised if other Alters show up, and don't be surprised if they are fictional characters or creatures he grew up watching on TV or a story he really liked when he was growing up. The child lives in a magical understanding of the world, and the brain will take whatever reference material it can to create a "persona" that it feels that the child needs to survive the trauma it's enduring... And one thing to ask the Alters, without pressure, is "What are some of your first memories?" It can help situate about how old your brother was when they came into his System (not always because if they had a dormant period, it can be hard to pinpoint, but generally...) Last thing: You have known these Alters all along. They just masked "as" your brother. As best they could, they tried to hide their existence from those who could put the System in danger of being discovered. Dissociative Systems are the best at hide & go seek, hiding in plain sight and in the everyday language. "So & so is in their mood today!" (When it's loud in the head) "I have headache that just won't quit." "I forget why I did this/came here/bought that/my head if it wasn't screwed on tight!" "I'm not & cold on... (insert whatever example here, for us it's PB or bananas depending who you ask, but can be a movie, tv show, band...) Depends on the mood I'm in..." So have fun finally meeting the "people" you never knew you knew. And be grateful for them. They help your brother survive all these years.😊

[@kristinschaoticlife]

Trauma induced DID. I have an entire family living in my head trying to heal. We can’t wake up the little girl that hides in the closet. I think she started it. I think she’s the missing piece to the puzzle to tie us all together. To become one. I still hide in the closet to this day feeling like I’m fighting for my existence when my emotional flashbacks become extreme. I’m so confused who I am. I have severe trauma throughout my entire 41 years of life. I lived in severe dissociation and was incredibly brainwashed. I’m waking up. I hear them. They’re always telling me what to do. Then when one takes over I’m gone. But each version is someone I created to feel safe. They had to exist or I wouldn’t be here. I have no control. I watch from 3rd person trapped. I can’t speak up for them. Hell, I hardly know or understand their stories because my brain is so disconnected from my reality. They’re all dying to be healed. Either that… or my lifetime of emotional neglect, isolation, sexual, physical, psychological abuse… made me crazy. Which is it?

[@maggiedacatt]

You look like someone I know, but now that you’ve said the pre-serum Captain America thing, I can’t unsee it.

[@Starnet234]

We aren't diagnosed with DID, in fact, we aren't diagnosed with anything but GAD. We suspect we have autism, as well as potentially ADHD, and prefer not to say that we might have DID or OSDD-1B. Our current working theory is that plurality, or the experience of being multiple people or identities within one body, is a neurodivergence in of itself. DID is its own unique disorder, and for people who are suffering from it due to traumatic experiences, it should be separated from PTSD and BPD, and this new neurodivergent diagnosis. If we were to define DID, it would be experiencing multiple different identity states with dissociative amnesia barriers between parts, fragmented as a coping mechanism to process trauma. That, we believe, should be the characteristics required for Dissociative Identity Disorder, or basically what you mentioned, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociative Identity Type. We don't know much about BPD, so we're unsure of how we would go about relating the current DID diagnosis into it. So, about this neurodivergence; I'm currently not in the place to be able to provide an accurate description of what this diagnosis would be, however a simple explanation would be experiencing more than one identity state within one body. It could have multiple types, like dissociative amnesia type, or partial dissociative amnesia type, among others. A name for this disorder could be Multiple Identity Disorder, or MID for short. This is just our theory and stance on the matter however. In our research (which consists of a few DES-2 tests taken by our friends at school), we have found that an alarming amount of people have multiple distinct states of identity. With this taken into consideration, it would be a good idea to have this suggested new diagnosis available to more people more easily, as it would stop a lot of fake-claiming and end the stigma around systems formed without trauma or through other disorders like autism. We'd love to see your thoughts on systems formed due to other disorders like autism or even intentionally created systems. Not sure how to end this, but these are our thoughts.

[@dcstudiosiphone3029]

As someone with a mother with DID, I am incredibly saddened and disappointed with this video. Yes, it is caused by childhood trauma. Videos like this, questioning the validity of its existence, make it harder for survivors to get help to process their traumas and to get help navigating said recovery with DID. It’s only a disorder when it’s not helpful, and once the parts do process their traumas and begin on a path of “functional multiplicity”, they can be quite wonderful! But hey, if making videos like this, discrediting the existence of a coping mechanism to survive abuse, and making it harder for people to get help, is what pays the bills…

[@michatc9525]

This video didn't question the validity of it's existence? He literally says in the end of the video "people diagnosed with DID are experiencing symptoms of DID." This video is more about whether or not the way we classify is correct, and the complicated hystory leading to how it is classified and portrayed nowadays.

[@livingsocks]

Not all people with DID want to be "unified" into one "cohesive whole".