Hello Again.

When I was in therapy, as a survivor of trauma and workign through DID, I came to write my own theory of what was going on with me. I would like to share this with you. Take or leave whatever is useful/not useful accordingly. .

I never know from reading posts on this site what brought a particular DID person into therapy. It would seem to me that what happened to bring a person into therapy is also key to how therapy progresses as far as DID goes. There has to be some central facet or driving force that wants to get this fixed.

I came to beleive that when one part of a person couldnt stand anymore what was happening to her that part would show up at a doc's office. In trouble, but not really understadning what was going on with her. Over time more and more would ebcome clear as the original patient came to react to her envrionment and other parts would present themselves.

When I was in therapy actively trying to figure out where my life had gone there were also a few things I used as tools.

First off, I think in pictures and my memory is held in pictures, snapshots of the moment. Also, I dont know how common this is, but I am able to go back into these snapshots and walk around in the time and place framed by the snapshot memory.

Missing so many years left me feeling disconnected to what should ahve been my own life. I went back to my parents house and went through photo albums looking for clues to where I was and what was going on with me during the times for whcih I had no memory. (years were missing) Photos sometimes provided me with connections. These photos would trigger associated feelings and memories connected to the photo. In time I could go abck to the photo and go back into the moment and expereince what it was that was so difficult so traumatic for me in the first place. Piece by peice I was able to do this.

I also found myself 'looking for things that were mine' in vintage clothese and shoes and such. A lot of years were gone and when I found a perfume I recognised an association brought time back with it, for example. There were also perfumes my mother wore that conencted me right abck into feelings and these feelings were very bad and terrible and were also associated with expereinces I had shunted away from my present awareness.

I guess when I read your posts they make more sense to me than some others because what you describe is more familiar to me. It seems to be DID as I knew it and hopefully, some of the same tools I used might work for you.

There is a quote I read by a psychiatriac neurologist Antonio de Silva I think is his name. It explains to me how DID is real in a very elemental way. The quote is about memory and how our memory makes us who we are, how all our expereinces shape us and end up defining us.

When I read that I realzied its significance in understadning DID. Without memory, in the absence of being able to remember our own expereinces we cant grow into ourselves. when expreince and memory and personal hisotry is held behind separate sets of eyes through which the DID person is aware of and sees the world, there is an inability to live life integrated in one sense of self.

The alters/functions/ others of DID each have theri own expereinces and memory and personal history. while DID has saved the traumatized child at its center it has kept us from growing up and into our one self. Bringing all of this out into the light of acceptance and understanding is the work of therapy. Accepting as our own, in therapy and over time, the expereinces and feelings of our other functions( at the point of their original creation in reaction to a terrible trauma) is the key to having one self and one sense of awareness of self.