How did you discover your others?

I am new to the discovery of possible others within me. I've been in therapy for a couple months now starting EMDR and have started hearing a few voices. Does I guess always been I mean voice but recently it helped her voices come out a few times and then there's the little girl voice which kind of seems more like a presence rather than a voice. I told my therapist and he was very open to the concept he said it makes perfect sense and told me it was dissociative identity disorder. I told him I didn't have that and he said okay well there's a broad spectrum. I'm just very confused and not totally convinced so I'm just wondering how did you discover you had others and how did you start relating to them.

I learned I had dissociative type alters when i was in college my first year and one of the psych courses requirements for those that intended on pursuing a career in the mental health field, was to undergo psychiatric evaluations and enter treatment based on the psych evaluation, this assignment was to show students what it was like to be in treatment while at the same time receiving the training of being a treatment provider. My testing results showed I had DID.

maybe a little more information will help you....

dissociation is a broad area where it happens in normal, medical and mental health problems. what makes it a disorder is its severity and whether it meets the diagnostic criteria.. every country has its own standard of what is and isnt a mental disorder and what the defining issues are for that mental disorder. you will find links at the bottom of my post. these links are for the DSM 5 (my locations mental disorders and diagnostics) to find out what your location goes by contact your treatment provider.

the fact that you are now starting to hear your voices more clearly that shows great progress, it may not ......feel.....like it. but it shows you have come a long way if your alters are now able to communicate with you. this makes the healing process much shorter and easier then say someone who has no awareness that their alters are there and no co consciousness abilities. now that you can hear your alters you can all work together to help each other to feel better and fix your problems. we have a saying here where I am two heads are better than one. which means things are easier and better if you have more than one person helping out. now that you have your alters talking with you/ you can hear them they will be able to let you know all kinds of things like what trauma's caused you to become DID, what they and you need to better care for you and your alters. even your daily life will improve now that you can hear their voices because you can listen to what they say and get things accomplished.

congrats on your progress and keep up the good work, keep following what ever your treatment provider and you are doing together.

i was a teen when i started to realize they were other parts. as a child, i remember hearing voices and knowing some of them but not knowing anything was 'wrong'. as i got older, things got scarier though, and i wasn't sure what was happening. i had met others online who had DID but wasn't sure i had it as i didn't have the black outs like they did but did clearly have very severe dissociative episodes of varying degrees.

also as a teen, some of the parts introduced themselves to me, some by name. it scared me, but some were nice too. as time went on, i was able to meet a few and get to know things about them. for years, i heard them in my head or a loud noise in my head a lot. i was able to verbally communicate inside with several of them until it stopped due to a lot of things changing in my life.

i also got to know more in dreams. i had known about them in general but was able to learn more about some in dreams. i was not sure if that was real or not, but it turns out that it was. dreams about the other parts are different than regular dreams for me. also, sometimes early in the morning right before i'm fully awake, some talk or come around. it can be unsettling and strange and confusing at times and not make much sense. i can also be aware of hearing them but not knowing what they are saying..or sometimes they have tried talking to me in a dream and then i'll wake up hearing them still trying to talk, but once i'm awake that ability to hear them in that way goes away.

sometimes they can share things image wise or feelings, so those are other ways i get to know things about them. i have also had some of them talk where i can hear the words coming from my mouth but not be in control of saying it. it doesn't happen often though. mine are more hidden, so it has taken a long time (and when they are ready) for them to share things or come around.

another time, one randomly surfaced while out in public and took control over the right side of my body. she tried to move forward to comfort a person in front of us. it was very confusing and disorienting for me.

so for me, there have been a lot of ways they have become known about.

If you open your mouth with a sentence you and hear someone sharing in sync with you kind of like puppet that is tall tail sign. Don't say anything a complete whisper it is behind you with you speaking especially if you recognize it as someone else you once or currently know but is you because there is no current squabble don't mean there won't be . As if you are behind a glass and the external person can't hear do this with yourself the previous sentence whisper it out see if an introject is doing the talking. I didn't make this discovery until some years later so I don't know if this good for a completely dissociated beginner starting out in therapy.

Thank you for everyone's comments so far this is very new to me and scary I can't say I'm really convinced yet. I am trying to be more open and listening better to what is going on inside goes in stages sometimes they started talking it was almost daily then it was very quiet for a while now the main voice coming out again I can't really tell if the little girl was talking to me or if it was just all in my head. That's a strange sentence it is all in my head I know. I'm just really confused and I seem to be dissociating almost constantly in therapy but I am still always aware of everything it's not like I feel myself switching in to somebody else. I don't lose time he always asks me my name and address birthday and such and it's always me. I guess it will just take time to figure this out.

I'm 49....and when we was like 15 or so....we grew up KNOWING we were different. (Hi IQ or awareness I suppose) . We started reading self help books (hypno, auto writing and stuff) in the 80's (no internet yet)... which flowered an interest in psychology. Studied for years then found MPD (no DID yet) which fit the bill. So I said 'Hello....?' and got a few replies...OMFG!!! We swore to secrecy even to ourselves because we were trying to be a normal teen....flail.

So we worked anon till we were 48 when our vow desolved... lived in chaos for a year...but r now stabilizing through acceptance.

In short. How are you doing sweety?

Hey Zoie,

It's a super hard journey to learn about yourself, especially when it comes to dealing with dissociative disorders. EMDR was definitely a big trigger for me in my teens that led me to some awareness and that was roughly when I occasionally heard voices or felt a presence from inside.

At one point in my teen years, I dated someone with DID. Through them, I recognized a few signs of DID and eventually it was pointed out to me. I was going through a lot then and was in and out of therapy and social workers nonstop and after the EMDR I definitely knew something was up, but then I choose to ignore it and tried to be normal for years.

I just kept telling myself that DID is silly and not real and did everything I could to distance myself from the others and whenever I had blackouts I would just pretend like they didn't happen.

I kept that up for years until everything fell apart. From there I started being honest because I hit rock bottom and got directed to specialists who help figure out the diagnoses of DID. It's been more than a year since that process started, and not unlike you, I often don't feel convinced of it and it doesn't feel real to me as much as I'm trying to learn to accept it.

Just take in new information slowly and take it one day at a time with an open mind. Good luck!

I started seeing a psychologist late last year and she told me I have did a few months ago. I am struggling with all of it. I see and experience things that make me think it is right and then I freak out and think it is all a lie. I don't know what to do with this.

Thanks again for the replies. They all help. I am glad to see I am not the only one in spending time in denial. Maybe the reason I am not more aware or accepting is that I am an only child. I have never married and spend most of my time alone and in my head. Always have. So I am always talking to myself. Maybe I just don't know the difference between my thoughts and those of the others. I have been trying to reach my little girl voice lately and I thought maybe she was talking to me today saying that Daddy hurt her. I said I know and am sorry but Daddy is dead and can't hurt us anymore. It then seemed like she was sad that he was dead. I didn't know how to react because I hated him and am glad he is dead. Then I think maybe I was just making up the whole conversation in my head and forcing the words. I have never been more confused in my life. I just wish I could close up Pandora's box and go back to my old naive miserable life before all of these skeletons and memories started coming out of the woodwork. I also guess I would accept it more if they talked to me more and I was sure it was not just all made up in my head. There have been things that have been said to me that I cannot explain, things that I know I would never say but not enough to convince me yet. Thanks again all for sharing.

Thanks again for the replies. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one having an issue with denial. I will remain open to the possibility and continue to learn more. I guess what makes it hard for me is that I was an only child and have never married so I've lived my entire life in my head. It's hard for me to recognize voices from my own thoughts. There are still some thing's the voices have said that would not be my thoughts but as of yet not enough to convince me. I have never been more confused in my life.

Most of us has achieved acceptance.....like it's not real (duh), but we still have nonbelievers and Others on the fence.....so don't be surprised if you are catching waves from Others.

I first became aware of alters when I was in couples counseling and the t thought there might be some deeper stuff going on. He opened the door and the first one rushed in. It still took several years for me to be diagnosed with DID. That was in 2011. I still have times where I don't think I really have DID. This despite being in therapy the whole time, at one point 5 sessions per week, now down to "only" 3 most weeks.

For me, accepting the diagnosis was not as important as learning about the parts and what situations they usually handled. There definitely is a continuum; most people can identify with having an inner child. Or will say that their heart wants one thing while their head wants another or things like that.

It is confusing. And for me, knowing the different parts and hearing their differing opinions on things is very anxiety producing. There is no way to keep them all happy! And I want to take care of them all.

mainly issues at school.
I was being shut out by teachers and other members of staff for stuff i'd apparently done

well I didn't do any of it, and it set me on the right track

High school was a mess for me as well. People kept telling me things I've done/said and I'd have no recollection of it. I'd also often just blink and find myself just somewhere else entirely.

I didn't know anything about DID or alters at the time, but later on it was a pretty big clue.

For most of my life I had what I called noise in my head. I could not hold on to the exact thoughts so I just labeled it as noise.

Sometimes thoughts would just pop into my head. I would shake my head and think where did that come from?

I knew I was not normal even in my teenage years. You have to have sane, sensitive and loving people in your life in order to get an early diagnosis. The dysfunctional family promotes the mental illness. They generally are emotionally ill people who have their own mental problems. So most of us do not have a clue until we get away from those family members. I did not know until I was 36. Even then I did not know my alters and had no communication with them.

There still is minimal co-consciousness. Sometime between 1992 and 1999 some of the amnesiac barriers started to break down and I recovered some memories of my behavior in these other personalities. It was scary but it proved that if the people in my life had communicated with me sanely I would have been diagnosed in my teens or twenties.

I am 62 so now there is little hope of me knowing my alters.