Building friendships with "normals"

I've been beyond blessed to have a wonderful friend who knows and accepts and really delights in all of us that make me. She has built friendships with several of them. Yesterday one of the little ones told me he misses her. We've leaned on her quite a bit and she's the only one who basically knows everything and has proven herself truly safe. Only thing is she's going to get married soon and she just can't be available for those long talks like she used to with everything going on in her life. At least one of us is really sad because all her talk about being in love brings up some deep loneliness. While some of us are hopeful about the idea of looking for another friend, one of the protectors is against the idea. Maybe that's why we're here, to talk to people who understand. Anyway, I'm interested to hear your experiences with building positive friendships. How do you go about discovering if someone can be trusted? What are your better friendships like?

hey.

first off, I think it's great you have that friend!. I'm sure she'll be back really quickly, I know you're all going to miss her

secondly, I think it's great you came on this forum, to talk to people that understand and can help you with questions you may have, or just to be their for you. you can post when ever you like, someone will always be here to respond

with regards to positive friendships, what's always worked for me is making friends with other people with the same issues

i'd say that most (if not all), of our friends have mental illness

it's hard enough trying to explain something like anxiety or bipolar to someone, but DID?. mention DID and people think you're absolutely crazy

i'm lucky enough to know other ssystems (I think I know at least 2), as well as understanding what you're going through, you can really talk to them and have good conversations

most of the time when we've tried to make friends with someone without mental health issues, it's ended in disaster, usually because we're just worlds apart.

stigma is getting no better, sadly

posting to this thread again

hope you are okay?

Yeah. I had a good talk with my friend. Actually my alter Bunny spilled the beans to her about how me and my alter Blue have been feeling. I feel better since that. And I am going to look for another person to talk to. I have another friend who already knows that I have parts. Yellow, the social protector, wasn't too happy about me telling that to my second friend months ago, but that person has proven to be very understanding since she has her own CPTSD issues. I think I can get Yellow to allow some sharing, which would be great.

you can talk to me anytime too.

will be nice to get to know you

let me tell you a story.... back in 2011 NY legalized same sex marriage. my partner and I have been looking forwards to this day for a very long time. We called our friends and family and said "we're getting married this weekend".

I had/ have this very needy friend, and I mean extremely needy. She had abandonment issues in her life, and latched on to friends to the extreme and if a friend did not call her back right away, email right away, text right away or showed any signs of not having time for them or what have you, threats of suicide, going away, never speaking to you again you name it complete with adding guilt tripping. This person used to purposely only has one friend in their life at a time that she feels safe with. At that moment that one friend was me. Now there I was telling this person Im getting married.

I could just smell the brain smoke through the phone....she's leaving me, she doesnt have time for me, we cant have our long talks anymore, no more going places together...

This friend worked herself into a panic and the wedding hadnt even happened yet. We were still on the initial phone call of my letting her know I was getting married. at that moment I could not worry about this woman's suicide threats, self injury threats, panic mode and perceived fears of being all alone and that I would not have the time for her.

I put it very bluntly... Im sorry but Im not buying your threats of suicide, threats of self harm, threats of going away, threats of never speaking to me again. Those are all your own choices to make and you will have to deal with the fall out from your own choices. You want to live your life guilt tripping your friends thats up to you. ....Or.... you can help me plan my wedding, Everyone that wants to be part of helping my love and I get married are meeting at 6 pm at Denny's, casual dress and dont worry about the check its on us.

When my love and I got to Denny's there she was. I pulled her aside and said "are you ready?" she smiled said "you bet".

we all had a great evening together. This friend soon learned my getting married did not mean I would not have time for her, that my getting married did not mean she had to give me up as a friend she could confide in, depend upon, My getting married did not mean our long conversations had to end.

She learned that by my getting married not only did she have me for a friend, but she also had the love of my life as a friend. She learned that I still had all the time in the world for her, there was enough love in my heart for both my wife and time and love for her. she learned that by being my friend she was always invited to my dinner parties, playing cards and board games get together's, birthday parties, pool parties, you name it just like before and then some because now we didn't just celebrate one birthday a year (mine) we now had two (mine and my wife's)... there were plenty of opportunities for late night talks for hours....

my point is.... just because someone else is making a life changing decision like getting married does not mean they have no time for you any more, it doesnt mean that your's and their friendship is over. it just means what it is your friend is in love and marrying this person that they love.

suggestion maybe you can ask your friend if there is anything you can do to help with the wedding and reception plans, this way you can spend some time with them and help out at the same time and maybe even make some more friends that are in this persons life besides you. this way too you and this friend can talk about what happens after the wedding in regards to your friendship and long conversations. Maybe you can spend some time with the love of this friends live to get to know them too.

I've never really been that interested in having friends. That's probably worth an analysis, but we'll leave that for another day. I mention it though because I think it's germane to how I haven't had nearly as much difficulty in getting along with what you've described as 'normals'.

I have DID. I make no apologies for it. I don't tense up or get embarrassed when I explain it to someone. I don't use the fact that I have DID to make excuses. When I share my dx with people, I explain it as if I was explaining that I have brown hair. I really don't care what anyone thinks about it - fact is, if they had my childhood, they'd have DID too - if they survived.

So, I go to work...unless Sonseearae shows up, in which case she works. I'm in management and so I have a staff that works directly for us - they'll greet whoever shows up and they take direction from whichever one of us shows up. I'll stop off at the local Walmart on the way home to pick up prescriptions or the days groceries. The cashiers and pharmacy staff have met both of us (there are more but they don't make public appearances often) and treat us equally. Our local Starbucks knows who is who by the drink we order and puts the corresponding name on the tag. In fact, the employees get recognition for knowing 100 customers by name and their regular order and the last employee to receive that recognition did so by fulfilling customer number 99 and 100 with us.

I assume making friends would be easy using the same 'no apologies' kind of attitude. We are friendly, we don't make a big deal out of it, and no one else does either.

it can be difficult with friends. i told one who used to live with me that i had parts. she never knew that since they never talked to her during those months. we also became a bit closer after she moved out, so it was kind of safer from a distance type thing like most things it seems.

recently, a part got upset and thought she didn't like us anymore because of not wanting to go somewhere we invited her and then not really saying much via texts. i tried to tell the part that it isn't that she doesn't like us, she has her own reasons for not wanting to go and that she is busy with school and other things in her life so can't text back right away. but that part continued to be upset and in other situations felt like they/us were inferior and no one cares about us.

i don't really know how to have friends in general because as i've gotten older and more has come up with the others, it doesn't feel so easy or safe. there seem to always be triggers or upsets of some kind, and navigating friendships on top of social anxiety and having the others and all that goes with it just makes it so so complicated. there is this fear of scaring a person, them using things against us, us being afraid of them, etc. so many dynamics to things.

That is really cool. I admire your openness with the people in your life, and I think that allowing people to know you and your parts is the one thing that can work against the stigma and misinformation that goes around in public circles about all kinds of conditions.

I wish I could do that. We aren't ready for that kind of disclosure, but I really hope some of the people in my life could get to know at least a few of my parts. I like them, and I think they have much to offer. Bunny, for instance is a sweet and beautiful soul. She loves and cares for others so genuinely, and is a great encourager. Sire is cool. Blue is sassy, frank, and fun to talk to. I don't like feeling that my friends don't know me very well at all, but that is really the story of my life. My T warned me to be very careful sharing my dx with people because she believes that there are some significant childhood issues involved, and a rejection or misunderstanding would really destabilize us in ways I might not be able to account for, so I'm taking her advice. I'll talk to her about sharing before I do and I also need some help communicating with Yellow about it. Her staunch protection is the biggest reason why most everyone who knows us perceives us as "normal," (whatever that means ). She puts on some serious body pains when we try to talk to anyone but T and my best friend about us.

A divorce mom in our life doesn't need close friends. I think the friends we have are from undue influence from the system of alters. It is okay to be relational but knowing we have a busy life it is very tough with a chaotic system it can be really taxing on us. I have had very few if any close friendships. I think the point was made to how would to share to friends their role in the keeper of knowledge in our system was mostly important and also how you can have accountable with them. I would say friends are the need for one could get to our littles and maybe feeling overwhelmed around people. My family dynamics started us dissocating with social trauma via a religious house meeeting the more serious abuse came later with the creation of our first alter at 5 years old. The school interactions could have wanted us and later with friends not people jealous for whatever reason.

I think a friend getting married will bring up lonliness issues what you have to do if get to the root of it talk about it until it doesn't trigger whomever has a dependence to the friend. Does this little have a friend inside to share to? If one day there is no choice the little might start to like married life and say I don't want our friend to break up our marriage in the little way with the adults. Like a daughter that is dating we are all married some day it might get that way. It would be millions revelations before the system gets that type of perspective.

I'm not saying that is recommended because it would cause it not to allow for break up possible or making it really tough. If you can balance all the traits that would be really great

We talked to our T yesterday and she thinks this 2nd friend (M) really does sound trustworthy and I should go ahead with talking to her about us. Yellow usually doesn't talk to me, and I wanted to talk about this friend issue so bad I just started talking at her, hoping she would listen. I told her I know how she feels about sharing dx with people and I really want to be respectful of her feelings, but in order to do that I need to actually talk to her (and I said please talk to me and not bring up those stabby feelings instead!) I told her all my reasons why I think we should have another friend, how M has proven herself trustworthy, etc, all while having no reply whatsoever. Days later to my surprise she started talking to me after I had a meeting with the littles. She was totally listening and was okay with it as long as we got T's opinion first and that Yellow talked to M herself about us. She wants s to express the importance of not talking about us with anyone else and to see how she handles the conversation. I'm thrilled! This will be interesting for sure. Just to be clear, M knows we have parts (funny phrase there) and a bit about we came about/how DID works. And I don't plan to spring Yellow on her without an introduction.

I disclosed too much about my mental illness to a friend and it turned out disastrously! She seemed trustworthy, truly caring, and I thought it was safe to tell her what I was experiencing. Yet when things got hairy, she couldn't deal with it and bailed on me, finding a reason to blame me for the whole thing! It was an awful experience that still hurts when I think about it, going on 14 years ago. I loved her like a mom and thought she loved me too. But when I was hospitalized and feeling SUI, she started looking for ways to get out of the picture. She wasn't worried about my well being, she just didn't want to be blamed for it if something happened.

My advice is be VERY CAUTIOUS who you trust with your personal mental health issues. I never talk about dissociative parts with anybody but my t now. I only talk about mental health issues with my husband or people I know who have had their own mental health struggles. They are better able to understand and not get judgmental. Even with them, I don't get into details, just general stuff. I don't want to get burned again. I already had trust issues, and what my friend did almost destroyed me.

I really don't know what to say but I'm happy with that you can and should go for it.

After the right opportunity comes up I'll post how it goes.