[martinerous]

I myself haven't been diagnosed with this disorder and I'm not aware of any personality switching or amnesia, and nobody have had told me that sometimes I behave like a different person.

But still I wonder if I have been dangerously close to getting it and if some of my current issues might be caused by this.

I'm an introvert person and therefore taking everything very personally and seriously. So when I was a kid and my parents had loud fights because of my father being an alcohol addict. I felt deep emotional discomfort and conflicting feelings towards my father whom I liked because in general he was a good person and never raised a hand on anyone. I just didn't like the person whom he became when he came home drunk - so weak, with slurred speech, helpless, bad smelling, lying on the floor and cursing himself for getting drunk again. And my mom shouting at him and begging him to stop drinking with his "friends" .... and again... almost every other day.

So, to somehow resolve these emotions I hid in my room and played an adventure story with my toys. In that adventure story I always had an older man, who I imagined to be my "real father" (although he was older and could be an imaginary grandfather). I have never met my actual grandfathers - they both died before I was born and at time I didn't know any real person who could replace my imaginary old man.

The plot of my adventure stories always was about a boy and a father overcoming lots of obstacles, fighting monsters and whatnot to find each other. On one hand, it felt so wrong like betraying my father because I was imagining to have a different father. On the other hand, it provided some warm and fuzzy feeling of protection, even if I knew that it's just a fantasy and I always had to play both the role of the boy and the "father". It was like a very conscious and deliberate splitting myself and pretending to be two persons at the same time, but not splitting enough to actually develop those two parts as completely separate personalities.

I have always had better connection with people who are much older than me. As a kid I often used to spit out some philosophical phrases that amused my relatives. Of course, my siblings laughed at me for being such a "smartass". Who knows, maybe my "old imaginary father" had much deeper influences on me. Or maybe it was just because I was an introvert and liked to reflect upon my own thoughts and emotions.

Anyway, I suspect that if I wouldn't play out my inner emotions and put them into the adventure stories, I might be split into these two personalities and I would have that old man living in my head forever.

Even today, being 38 eight years old, I feel strong emotional connections with people who in some ways remind me of that old man - who are somewhat old fashioned, slightly authoritative but gentle and intelligent. And sometimes when I have a moment of my "introvert melancholic blues", I still internally apply this "roleplay" technique - I return to my childhood memories and imagine how would that old man comfort me and make me feel accepted and protected. Or I imagine myself being that man and having capabilities of dealing with every possible problem I have in my life. That's still just an imagination, and very often I feel very sad that I don't have such a protector in my real life.

And to some degree I blame that for my homosexual kinks because I don't have any sexual attractions to anyone at all except the people who remind me of that old man; but my sexual attractions completely fade out as soon as I find out some differences between the real person and my "imaginary old man". Of course, nobody can be as perfect as an imaginary person, thus I usually end up being asexual.

So, my question to those who have experience and knowledge about Dissociative Disorders: does my story sound any familiar? Was I close to being split?

[L.P.]

Were you close to being split? I dunno. Sorry... not a concrete answer there, huh. Really though, I cannot even pretend to be able to answer that one. I have been dx'd with DID. My understanding of DID is limited, to be sure. But the best I do understand is that for whatever reason, (typically accepted by mental health professionals and all that jazz) young children/toddlers develop this disorder as a coping/survival technique to deal with stress/trauma. Stress sounds like an understatement, but I mean I think that's ultimately what it boils down to. You could be a victim of abuse, a natural disaster survivor, a child traumatized by chemo at the age of two or three... I dunno. It's all based on how that particular child deals and I have no idea why some of us develop DID while others do not. Siblings that grow up in a house could share the same childhood and one gets it, the other does not. So you? I got no clue. Maybe you were, maybe you were close, maybe not.

Does your story sound familiar? Yep. I am a person who lives a lot of life in my own head and I always have. I am prone to daydreaming, making up a fake life/reality, and I have always done this. For me, I think it came down to giving myself a sense of security, or acceptance, or nurturing...whatever I might have been needing at the time. When I was a kid anyway... it was also a great escape from my undesirable reality. Life may have been (bleep) but my own version of reality was a nice place. Now as an adult I still fall back into holing up in my head when shtf. It's part escapism (and when it's that I gotta watch it) and part processing and/or nurturing my own inner child...giving myself now what I never got as a kid. Point being, for me it is less about the DID stuff and more about self soothing and getting what I need or some perspective or some weird way to work through an issue. But hey, so long as it has productive or helpful ends to me, I am at point in life where I do not mind it... unless it starts to interfere with my day to day life living.

But yeah, I will often play out the parts in my head as both adult and child. I have my own imaginary dad. He's a hoot. I like him. The daydream I have now, he adopts me and gets me out of my mom's house after I... I have no idea how to hide things in trigger boxes so I will leave out that detail. But the story is pretty consistently the same with slight variations. But the baseline is always the same... he steps up and does right by me and gets me out of a crap situation. A thing I used to wish my own father would have done but never did. I've been busy giving myself the paternal parenting I never got as a child.

As a kid, I would often develop crushes on my imaginary people. Sometimes I would find someone who reminded me of one of them and my imaginary people would take on their characteristics. I never did go after those kinds of crushes because it felt weird and embarrassing to me, but also because I knew that the reality of them would never add up to the idea of them. While I was a bit aggressive as a younger person, I never did really connect with others or care deeply about them. I would have times where I wondered if I was asexual and just hiding it under shallow relationships I would have to shut other people up when they got to wondering if I was a lesbian or some kind of sexually weird or whatever. *shrugs*

But for me, I think this has less to do with my vague and blurry sexuality, and more of a deep rooted 'knowing' that reality people will mess me up and leave me worse than they found me. I put up walls and keep people out. I know it's dysfunctional and hurts me, but I have this history of people being awful to me so yeah... hurts less to let no one in than it does to put yourself out there, try and then get kicked to the floor. If you start on the floor, no pain when you end up there, you know? I said it was dysfunctional. Heh. I think I am still the only person I trust and I'm not that reliable, so yeah...

And there I go again yammering on. Sorry. Short of it. I have no clue, but I relate the best I can from my own head.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by martinerous

I myself haven't been diagnosed with this disorder and I'm not aware of any personality switching or amnesia, and nobody have had told me that sometimes I behave like a different person.

But still I wonder if I have been dangerously close to getting it and if some of my current issues might be caused by this.

I'm an introvert person and therefore taking everything very personally and seriously. So when I was a kid and my parents had loud fights because of my father being an alcohol addict. I felt deep emotional discomfort and conflicting feelings towards my father whom I liked because in general he was a good person and never raised a hand on anyone. I just didn't like the person whom he became when he came home drunk - so weak, with slurred speech, helpless, bad smelling, lying on the floor and cursing himself for getting drunk again. And my mom shouting at him and begging him to stop drinking with his "friends" .... and again... almost every other day.

So, to somehow resolve these emotions I hid in my room and played an adventure story with my toys. In that adventure story I always had an older man, who I imagined to be my "real father" (although he was older and could be an imaginary grandfather). I have never met my actual grandfathers - they both died before I was born and at time I didn't know any real person who could replace my imaginary old man.

The plot of my adventure stories always was about a boy and a father overcoming lots of obstacles, fighting monsters and whatnot to find each other. On one hand, it felt so wrong like betraying my father because I was imagining to have a different father. On the other hand, it provided some warm and fuzzy feeling of protection, even if I knew that it's just a fantasy and I always had to play both the role of the boy and the "father". It was like a very conscious and deliberate splitting myself and pretending to be two persons at the same time, but not splitting enough to actually develop those two parts as completely separate personalities.

I have always had better connection with people who are much older than me. As a kid I often used to spit out some philosophical phrases that amused my relatives. Of course, my siblings laughed at me for being such a "smartass". Who knows, maybe my "old imaginary father" had much deeper influences on me. Or maybe it was just because I was an introvert and liked to reflect upon my own thoughts and emotions.

Anyway, I suspect that if I wouldn't play out my inner emotions and put them into the adventure stories, I might be split into these two personalities and I would have that old man living in my head forever.

Even today, being 38 eight years old, I feel strong emotional connections with people who in some ways remind me of that old man - who are somewhat old fashioned, slightly authoritative but gentle and intelligent. And sometimes when I have a moment of my "introvert melancholic blues", I still internally apply this "roleplay" technique - I return to my childhood memories and imagine how would that old man comfort me and make me feel accepted and protected. Or I imagine myself being that man and having capabilities of dealing with every possible problem I have in my life. That's still just an imagination, and very often I feel very sad that I don't have such a protector in my real life.

And to some degree I blame that for my homosexual kinks because I don't have any sexual attractions to anyone at all except the people who remind me of that old man; but my sexual attractions completely fade out as soon as I find out some differences between the real person and my "imaginary old man". Of course, nobody can be as perfect as an imaginary person, thus I usually end up being asexual.

So, my question to those who have experience and knowledge about Dissociative Disorders: does my story sound any familiar? Was I close to being split?

my -----non professional opinion....... is no.

heres why....

if you google or go to your local library and look up the diagnostics for DID you will see that one of the diagnostics is that the problems can not be because of fantasy playing.

DID isnt something that children "catch or almost get" through going up in their bedrooms and playing with their toys imagining characters, creating interesting stories and plot lines imaginary friends.

it takes many different and complicated things to all add up, and according to the now public available to anyone diagnostics role playing, imagining, fantasy play, playing pretend is not one of them, and hasnt been since 2013.

what I can tell you is that what you described is actually well known therapy technique that my own treatment providers and I have used both when I was a child and as an adult. its called "play therapy" "Role Playing" Just about ever mental health therapy model can and may and sometimes does include what you have done on your own.

my point if playing pretend, imagining characters, imagining adventures, role playing was creating , catching or getting DID it would not be an approved mental health treatments for all kinds of disorders. and it would not be used for people with dissociative disorders.

again this is only my personal opinion not a professional one on psych central due to the disclaimer at the bottom of the page we cant tell you professionally if you were even close to becoming DID.

for that you will need to contact a mental health treatment provider and release your health records and others and go through testing for mental disorders. then they will be able to tell you if you have a dissociative disorder or not.

[martinerous]

Thank you for the valuable insights.

It might be that my intuitive childhood desire to play my emotions out through roleplaying provided the therapeutic effect I needed at that time and it saved me from some more serious issues later on.

Although, similarly to L.P., I must admit that sometimes these fantasies are confusing because they can be escapism or productive processing and the line can be thin.

[dlantern]

If for the DID DX

Only time will tell, basically the main thing is to speak detailly about more of the core issue that splitting provides if needed, usually for forensics. It is about as much as I've learned so far. I'm actually having this probably now, why do you bring me up. I'd say for psychic knowledge because we are doing other things to reach in deeper of our brain. I think what might be happening is obey what you read introjects are mean they are but there is other environmental influences here for us. I think mine are flustered with the hierarchy other priorities, or therapy just being heard also the other things that can happen