What Causes DID Is Hard To Grasp

My T has told me many times and I have also read in books and online that DID is caused by severe and prolonged trauma experienced in childhood.I know that and I understand that.I know that it takes alot to cause it, I know that it takes severe abuse and that those that have it have been through some extremely horribe stuff as kids.

Sometimes though it's just hard to grasp and accept that I went through severe and prolonged trauma.That it happened to me.That I am one of those people like what you hear about or read about on the news or on Facebook.You know how you read or hear one of those sickining stories of child abuse and neglect and it makes you feel sick and feel so bad for the kid and think how horrible the parents are?

It's just hard to grasp that any of those stories could have been mine,that it happened to me too.I mean I know it happened but it's just so huge to comprehend sometimes.It's just bizarre to think about sometimes because from the outside I'm sure my family looked like the perfect upper middle class family.

Anyone else feel the same?

yes I used to feel the same way but that changed over time as more and more memories were recovered, more and more stability happened. my treatment provider explained to me that sometimes the nature of a mental disorder is to block out the extremeness of the trauma, the traumatic events, this leads to sometimes being diagnosed with a mental disorder but feeling like a persons situation isnt as bad as another persons. with me, I stayed away from reading about other peoples trauma's and whether they were extreme in my definition of extreme. what really mattered was what their own treatment providers and they felt was extreme.

example what happened to me, might not be considered extreme by someone else and vice versa but what mattered is that in ....me .... it was extreme considering my culture and life style and history.

my suggestion is not to worry about whether you measure up to the extremes that you are finding in books and on the internet. go according to what your own treatment provider says is what extreme trauma is defined in you.

totally understand.

I understand and find myself in a similar place.

It's ok. That's what I say to myself. Just keep going. Sort it out. Take things as they come. Deal with them as they come. One at a time.

It will be ok.

yeah. even though stuff i do remember doesn't seem 'that bad,' but i know there are other things that i don't fully consciously remember and just have bits and pieces of. but when i think back to the overall life i had growing up, a lot of scary, bad, unfair, horrible things did happen whether it was actual trauma i went through at the hands of a person, things i stumbled upon that was just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or re-traumatization/triggers and how people acted towards me (though some was types of abusive behavior) because original traumas were not dealt with properly, etc.

i also did have a lot of normal, fun, and okay times, so it wasn't all bad. it just is all confusing. sometimes, i am amazed at all i have gone through because it just seems like it's so crazy that it's hard to fully believe what i do know for sure.

i didn't have as horrendous things happen as some did either, so that is also partly why i sometimes have a hard time believing it was bad enough to cause the splits it has caused.

I went through the same problem with all the abuse, in many diffrent forms. To anyone on the outside all seemed like a great family. But it was hell for me. I still see a t as I have been for years and still have problems. Hang in there, I know how cruel life can be but it does get better!

It isn't always caused by severe and prolonged trauma. It can be caused by particular types of trauma at a particular stage of development. That is, a trauma that interrupts the integration of the personality (such as a trauma that causes an unresolvable conflict with primary caregivers) at the developmental phase where the separate aspects of personality development are integrating. Typically the traumas are abuse related. But it is becoming more and more understood that the trauma doesn't have to be extreme or prolonged over many years as was once thought.
It's like fetal alcohol syndrome: It used to be believed that children with FAS were born to mothers who were heavy alcohol users throughout pregnancy. But now they know that FAS is caused by ANY amount of alcohol that the mother drinks at a very particular stage of pregnancy (it is something like the 21st or 28th day, but I can't recall which). So, a heavy drinker may drink every single other day of her pregnancy and have a child who does not have FAS, and another woman who has only ONE glass of wine on that particular crucial day may have a child who suffers the life long disability of FAS.
Same thing with DID - at that crucial integrative phase of personality development, a trauma that causes unresolvable conflict within the child - whether that be extreme sexual trauma or in attachment with the primary caregivers or something else - may cause DID.
Others believe DID is only caused by extreme trauma. Current research is discovering that is not the case.

Thank you! Those words tell me much and make sense in the place I'm at.

Is DID seamless and fluid? Is it real that you don't always realize there was a shift until after the fact?

I know what I went through as a kid was extreme prolonged abuse.I know it was very disturbing disgusting and horrible.I don't compare it to other peoples abuse I don't wonder if it was bad or extreme because I already know it was.I don't wonder if it was as bad as anyone else's .Worrying if it measures up is not something I ever think about.My story is so bad I wouldn't share it with anyone but my therapist because it is so disturbing.That's not what I am trying to say here.

What I am trying to say is it's just hard to grasp that I went through all of that yet I am here and I survived it and I am high functioning.I live a pretty normal life,I have kids and pets and live in a house and from the outside nobody would ever even guess that I went through what I did.Just the same as when I was a kid we probably looked like the perfect family,it's the same now.

So it's just hard to grasp that it did happen to me.That I am one of those people.It just seems too enormous to accept.Too enormous to even believe almost.

I don't know if I am explaining myself right or not.I know all my memories are real and I know all those things happened but I guess I just think wow how am I ok?

not sure who you were asking this too but thought I would answer. for some yes and others no for me yes because I had limited co consciousness I did not realize I was switching until after the fact and most times not even then.

I understand. I think about things i know happen to me and i think woah is that even real but i know its real cuz lots of us got remember from livin it then to when i think about what we only got bits and pieces of for remember that makes me go woah even more cuz i dont even wanna think about that. Lots of times it seems to crazy to be real for real like a messed up movie but we live it and i dont know how but we did.

One time we had apicture in our garage in the house we live in now and that picture was in the dining room of my house when i was a real for real kid. That picture had a old time little girl havin a tea party with a dog and a cat and that little girl was all dressed up fancy and the picture was in this old timey fancy gold frame and it was a antique and my mom said it cost a lot of money that picture and frame. They was real old and fancy. I hated that picture so much because that little girl and that dog and cat was mockin me cuz even though we had a pretty fancy dining room we never ate no food at tht table not one time when i was a real for real kid and everyday i had to see that picture that fancy girl mocked me and it was a bad joke how she got tea and cookies in a room every day when i got no food at all. I hate fancy things cuz all they are is pretty lies hidin ugly truths.

Sorry that was grouchy. But i hate that picture so much. Im glad one of us burned it up and we dont got it in that garage no more.

NiKKi

I totally feel the same. I really have a hard time trying to understand it all.

i understand this too. it is really amazing to think of the things we have survived and that we even did to begin with. sometimes, i have times where things are so okay/good that i actually can forget for a bit that anything did happen...but then when i do..it is difficult.

but that is the way dissociation works to begin with...to separate us from the bad/difficult things so we can function and be okay and have 'normal' times, etc. it's also survival mode at times, though time can separate us from stuff too even without the dissociation aspect.

it also just shows us how strong we really are even if we have/had times were aren't/weren't.

I wanted to say thank you again Luce for putting this here. It really says a lot to me about my denial of what's going on right now for me. Trying to understand and sort it out.

If it's ok, may I ask where I could find more information about this? It opens a door for speculation for me, and I would like to follow it.

Hey TR, here's a book that might be of interest to you. You can either purchase it or simply use the Lookinsideme feature. The first chapter might be helpful.
However, make sure that you stay grounded at all times while reading anything like this. If you start to feel any dissociative symptoms try and do the self-care thing of moving away and doing something grounding. I have had a lot of previous therapy for dissociation and am at a different place than you, so although it might be easy for me to read things like this it could actually be retraumatizing for another person.
So go gently, okay?
https://www.amazon.com/Coping-Trauma...s=kathy+steele

Thank you!!

My parents were hard working Americans who simply had no parenting skills. Or, I should say someone had put some very bad ideas in their heads about parenting toddlers. My parents did not mean to traumatize me. They just did not know any better.

I guess that is both the joy and the curse of DID, right? Because you are actually not 'okay'. You have DID. You may appear to be okay to the casual observer. But there is the whole not okay side that is hidden from everyone, even yourself - there is the pain, raw and unprocessed, that keeps you broken at your core.
DID is a blessing, and a 'handicap'. We are 'okay'.
But at the same time we are so very, very, not.

I know that I had a traumatic event- lack of parent/child bond for sure...we were never a hugging family...a hands off kind. I feel that this set up my head for dissociation...I'm very prone to dissociate. From child to late teens, both my parents were beating terrorists which caused plenty of fragments and c-ptsd.

I can feel a switch coming on and during in which then everything changes...and the previous plus memories disappears and the next picks up the present. Switches can go unnoticed, or even triggered....like trying to remember a work thing...eventually the worker will present to reveal the work thing....or not.

Thank you Luce, for sharing this book with me!

I got on Amazon and looked it up. It is written in much the same way as "The Body Keeps The Score" word and language wise. I dove into the sneak peek and it made so much sense!!

I loved the preface, where it talked about the person with the wheelbarrow full of frogs. It spoke so much truth and, oddly enough, gave me a sense of peace that it makes sense.

Thank you!