[foghat18]

I always had a sense that there were parts of me, the voices in my head i assumed were common to everyone. I did know about the dissociation, PTSD symptoms but did not really expect this... my T told me about my other parts.

Did you know or did someone else notice?

I am probably going to have a lot of questions in the near future

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by foghat18

I always had a sense that there were parts of me, the voices in my head i assumed were common to everyone. I did know about the dissociation, PTSD symptoms but did not really expect this... my T told me about my other parts.

Did you know or did someone else notice?

I am probably going to have a lot of questions in the near future

I heard voices but thought everyone had voices in their heads because these voices began before I was 5 yrs old. so basically they were there my whole life that I could remember. I didnt know about Dissociation because there was no such word as dissociation back then. the term Dissociation in the mental health field is relatively new here in the USA.

the first time I heard the word was when I was in an English class reading a poem by T.S Elliot and even then I didnt place it in the same category of my hearing voices..in the literary sense it was used with a phrase...dissociation of sensiblity...meaning a person was gone mad, crazy. lost touch with reality.

when my treatment providers found out I heard voices I think I was still a child and the mental health world thought hearing voices was a psychotic symptom, symptom of schizophrenia. so I was medicated with anti psychotic medications. Didnt do nothing for the voices but I did learn people dont hear voices so dont talk about it, dont tell anyone I hear voices..

it wasnt until I entered college and my first psych class required all the students in the class to take a psychiatric evaluation during class and take the them in to a psychiatrist, and enter therapy so that those of us who planned on becoming mental health treatment providers would know what its like to be a consumer of mental health systems. my therapist recognized my switching into alters, that I had a special type of memory problem and referred me to diagnostic evaluations. then the testing psychiatrist told my therapist and I that I had DID.

the way DID affected me was that I had no co consciousness abilities other than hearing voices so I did not know they were alters. they were just voices in my head.. as therapy progressed my therapist and I were able to establish a limited amount of co consciousness.

[yellowted]

i alway knew i was different from other people, but never quite got why untill i became ill and then all the pieces started falling into place, not with alters and the such, but with my feelings and outlooks on things and my morals etc.

[monarch_butterfly]

Like you I've always had my littles in my head. Sometimes they talk (over the years) sometiimes they don't. I thought everybody had people inctheir head until my teen years. But even then never thought of it as a problem as my alters help me. And I am so used to dissociating that is not a big deal.

I lived with a friend with DID for a while and didn't even put it together then!

It all kinda started clicking over a period of weeks after a trigger. Then i brought up the alters with my T because I think some stuff from the past is going to be coming up and my alters are going to come out and she'd need to know.

She accepts my alters but wants to take things slow.. so in the end I'm still the me I was before I knew what DID was. I am learning it is still smart to keep it to myself for the most part. As now I am having some communication issues with some people in my life.