[dass]

How do people know what is a normal human experience? How did you come to know that you were suffering from DID? Did a doctor tell you or was it by someone else?

[Skeezyks]

Hello dass: I don't know the answers to your questions. However I noticed this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks! May the time you spend here be of benefit.

[flockpride]

Originally Posted by dass

How do people know what is a normal human experience? How did you come to know that you were suffering from DID? Did a doctor tell you or was it by someone else?

This is a really interesting question. I think 'normal' is a moving target.

I learned through a diagnostic process with a licensed therapist. After she explained things, I could look back and some puzzling stuff made sense finally. In retrospect I could see that I have DID. If she hadn't told me, and I encountered the notion online, I would not have suspected. My walls are pretty thorough.

Therapy is the process by which I/we are learning how things are arranged on the inside. I think that process is helping me know I have DID/MPD.

Hope this helps you.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by dass

How do people know what is a normal human experience? How did you come to know that you were suffering from DID? Did a doctor tell you or was it by someone else?

here in the USA most people do not know they have more than one personality as in diagnostics and disorder label. some do know things like knowing since very early childhood they have had voices or others in their heads talking and such but because DID (your term multiple personalities) begins in very early childhood everything that comes with it is just normal to that person.

here in the USA a person .....usually.... finds out that they have DID through their treatment providers after going through a standard psychiatric evaluation for other things like depression or PTSD...

some people do ....suspect.... or self diagnose with DID (your term multiple personalities) by reading and researching online or someone in their life has self diagnosed their friend or family member..... but that does not mean a person actually has it. here in the USA we have many mental disorders, and physical health problems and normal situations that may seem or have the same symptoms as DID.

it is very dangerous to self diagnose, I do not recommend it to any one whether its a friend, family or stranger...

example I know someone who died of a curable, operable problem simply because they self diagnosed by reading online and asking others in an online support group what they had.

I know many people who have self diagnosed and then their researching interferes with the actual diagnostic evaluations to the point where they ended up either not getting right diagnosis or ending up on medications they did not need which caused life threatening situations...

that is why my standard posting always includes if anyone feels they may have any mental problems to contact a treatment provider who can do actual diagnostic evaluations that rule out or in all the many problems that are similar to what you may feel you have.

that said for my own diagnosis I was a college student in a psych class for becoming a mental health treatment provider. one of the requirements of the class was to do a psych eval for all known mental disorders in the DSM (the diagnostic manual that lists all the american recognized mental disorders and the diagnostic criteria that people have to fit in order to be diagnosed with that mental disorder. american treatment providers use this for diagnosing mental disorders, we are now on the 5th addition standards and diagnostics here in america.)

when all the mental and physical health assessments were done my psychiatrist told both my therapist and I, that I had DID, what it meant and what treatment plans were best for me. its been years since then and now all my alters are integrated/ merged back together with me to form one whole person again.

Originally Posted by amandalouise

here in the USA most people do not know they have more than one personality as in diagnostics and disorder label. some do know things like knowing since very early childhood they have had voices or others in their heads talking and such but because DID (your term multiple personalities) begins in very early childhood everything that comes with it is just normal to that person.

That's exactly how it was for me,it was just normal for me.And I always knew there were insiders except I didn't know it wasn't that way for everyone else,they had always been there my entire life so I never knew anything different,didn't know it was anything out of the ordinary.

I started therapy for help with stress and life issues and was shocked to end up being diagnosed with DID.I seriously had no clue.

I just always knew I was different and something was wrong with me, by age six i felt weird and different. by age ten i was drawing pictures of the people i saw in my head. but it wasnt until i was in college that i realiZed what it was, i was diagnosed by a psychiatrist after that.

[Luce]

Our hosty person back then always knew she was 'broken' as in life just didn't work, but she didn't really have an insight into what was wrong, she didn't really even recognize that her experience was fragmented. She just knew she was broken and she didn't know how to make life work. Like, at all.
And we always knew that as soon as we were able to we would get ourselves back to therapy, which we had as a child in the foster care system but it was then taken away when we were returned to the family.
So it wasn't until therapy as an adult when the therapist told her about us that our hosty person became aware of the dissociative splits. And then it all made a lot of sense. It fit the experience.

[ruh roh]

It came out in therapy, after years of mis-diagnoses and medications and then finding a therapist who saw what was going on. There had been something that happened--I was in a triggered state and said something that led her to ask a question and one of us answered and it was my first awareness of him or anyone inside. That's how it all started to be known and, later, identified.

We always knew....but denied it for decades even though it kept being what it does. To us....we see it bright as day....and it explains our entire lifetime.

I mean I want to be the only one....but it's obvious- we are aware of the switching....we are just smart that way. Like several years of psych studies helped.

[L.P.]

Different people in my system will have different ways to answer this one. For some of us it was the first therapist to mention dissociative disorders, and for others it was the second one to mention it to us. Some of us always knew they were something but did not know exactly what, others knew they shared a body with others but lacked the vocabulary to say yeah this is DID.

Most of us had ways to explain away the things that were happening to us... the way we experienced life. We were absent minded, had imaginary fiends, heard ghosts (or a jinn), did too many drugs, had schizophrenia (I actually preferred that dx), other people lied when the said they did not think/live like us and we were normal... only we had the balls to own it and other people did not, blah blah blah... For a lot of us, as parts of our system got on board with accepting DID as a reality, it was like someone gave us a pair of glasses and for the first time ever we realized that we really could not see without them, but never knew because blurred vision was all we ever had known.

Veda

I also liked....because the Others told me so....so I believed them.

[Lost_in_the_woods]

HI dass
Welcome to PC!
In regards to your query:
You don't know. Until you know. What I mean is each person and each part figures it out, describes it, and comes to accept it in their own way and own time. Then once you accept it. Then it almost like you always knew.
How most get diagnosed?..Trial and error diagnoses medications and treatments and nothing fully fits or works then something shifts changes grows becomes presents either in front of therapist or Dr..or reported or sometimes recorded (don't wanna talk about it!)
Sorry sidetracked anyways..we've already been dxd with everything else under the sun and been on almost every med ever made and been in treatment since childhood..everything else ruled out or incomplete all other explanations exhausted. Most do not get dxd with DID until pretty much it's the only dx left in the book! *lol*..at least that's what the process of diagnosis was kinda like for us..
Hope you find your time here at PC to be helpful and coforting
Be Well and Keep Writing!
-LITW

[Michael W. Harris]

Originally Posted by Luce

Our hosty person back then always knew she was 'broken' as in life just didn't work, but she didn't really have an insight into what was wrong, she didn't really even recognize that her experience was fragmented. She just knew she was broken and she didn't know how to make life work. Like, at all.
And we always knew that as soon as we were able to we would get ourselves back to therapy, which we had as a child in the foster care system but it was then taken away when we were returned to the family.
So it wasn't until therapy as an adult when the therapist told her about us that our hosty person became aware of the dissociative splits. And then it all made a lot of sense. It fit the experience.

This describes my experience exactly, except that I have not gotten a dissociative diagnosis. I have gotten many other diagnoses since 1992 but not dissociative disorder.

[finding_my_way]

i didn't know growing up but knew when i was in my early teens after reading things/talking with others online who had similar experiences with and without a diagnosis of it. i didn't think i had DID just because of not blacking out between switches, but i heard voices in my head and knew some of the others and had them talk to me and share their names. i was able to piece together things about each of them over many years. i experience them as other parts of me, their own person, which is different from me.

i knew it wasn't 'normal' because my functioning was different than most people i knew, and i knew that most people didn't experience separate people like that in their head or randomly blurt things out they weren't thinking, didn't have have a messed up sense of time and forgot things, didn't have inconsistent and contradicting ways of thinking/feeling, etc. that didn't match up with situations, and had more of a sense of who they were.

i just knew even before seeing a professional and being diagnosed.