Forced silence caused my DID

Repeated forced silence of the abuse caused my DID. If I could speak, they would not have to.

Thank for sharing.

Thank you, Buffy01. I am probably wrong, but it just felt good to blame my DID on something.

Maybe we could start a thread blaming our DID on all sorts of things!

Actually no. I don't think that's a good idea. It might make things too trivial.
Forced silence about abuse isn't trivial. That's actually a very good reason to have DID.
Needing to keep secrets from our self is a big part of DID.

Amyjay,

I actually liked both of your responses.

There are many reasons for PTSD, so why not many reasons for DID, too? Hmm....

Forced silence about abuse and having to keep secrets from our self resonates with me.

((( safe hugs )))

Thank you @Fuzzybear (((safe hugs)))

I'm sorry you struggled with that, too.

Glad you could figure that out. Hadn't thought of it that way. Helps explain why so many people feel better after telling.

Reading that made me wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't had to keep quiet about it.

What if there had been someone that I could have turned to and they actually did something about it.What if they would have stopped it the first time it happened.

I think that would have changed everything. And I'm sure it would have for you too.

I think part of me got the idea from doing past research on youth in foster care. Rarely would any be screened for childhood DID, though screenings for dissociation are available for some jurisdictions, I'm sure.

If justice was served to youth who were removed from their abusive homes, and if youth in foster care received therapy, then maybe their chances of getting DID decreased (or at least their stages of development were corrected in time to reduce and/or decrease DID, but maybe not dissociation). It's just a thought.

There are many adult survivors of childhood maltreatment who were never in the child welfare/foster care system, which means that we never received justice for the parental crimes committed against us, we never received the treatment we needed or we never received the proper treatment we needed in mental health, we were trapped in a life of continuous traumatic stress, and our development comprised many stages of trauma that infiltrated our growing brains.

When I consider my paternal half-siblings (same father, different mothers), they were all involved in either foster care or adoption. My father was unfit, and so he should have been unfit with my sister and I (but my parents evaded child welfare somehow, didn't get my social security card until I was 2 years old, which the SSA confirmed with me). I wound up growing up with a life of pain, but there were many times my father was good, too. It's so confusing. Still, the majority of my half-siblings have PTSD or other related illnesses, save two who were given up for adoption at birth and wound up being without any mental disorders, which says something AGAINST heredity when it comes to trauma-related disorders being caused by trauma (and without the trauma, no disorders would ever have been present - at least not from childhood). And one of my dad's children who were adopted with his sister (they're twins) was in the Army - no PTSD from service either. I swear, my entire siblings could be studied (I have 16 total in all, plus me and my sister, which makes 18), and I wound up being the most defective. I'm also the only female in my family who ever enlisted in the military, and the only person in my family to enlist in the Marines (everyone else - males only - in my family is either Air Force or Army).

And I'm the only one with DID, with maybe the exception of a half-sibling (my dad's first child), who passed away from unknown causes in her 60s. She spent the most time with our father, apart from my sister and me. She visited us when I was 13 years old, and she seemed to switch personalities, but it was hard to tell. I had only met her once, and we only hung out for a day. If anyone else had multiple personalities, it would have been her.

I just don't understand why I was the only one. My only guess is (a) the silence and (b) the lack of justice that children receive when being removed - albeit traumatically separated - from their home of origin.

To me, in my own personal experiences (not saying this is everyone's experience, but rather my own experiences), "forced silence" includes...

1. Keeping the secret (due to repeated threats)
2. Inability to show emotion (due to repeate threats)
3. Punished if emotion is shown
4. Treated differently by each parent (confusion)
5. Treated differently from siblings (confusion)
6. Treated different at different times by the same parent (confusion)
7. The parent is inconsistent with emotions and abuse patterns, thus making their patterns of relating unpredictable
8. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to feel trapped, helpless, smothered, and imprisoned
9. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to give in to the parent's needs, thus negating one's own needs, and therefore siding with the parent
10. The forced silence of both speech and emotion keeps the child isolated, infantilized, and segregated from others
11. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to self-blame
12. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the child to internalize suppressed emotions and thoughts while, at the same time, externalizing behaviors that a fragmented self helps with, all unconsciously, and maybe with the help of imaginary friends, which have been retained for longer than normative stages of development because the abuse occurred early on
13. The forced silence of both speech and emotion becomes the host's problem, but not the problem of some alternate personalities that emerge from the same fantasy areas that imaginary friends were retained from (when I was 3 years old, I remember my imaginary friend named Michelle; she remained with me throughout my life, and today I believe her to be an alter)
14. The forced silence of both speech and emotion causes the alternate personalities to speak to themselves inside an inner world, and causes some other alternate personalities to express emotion, while at the same time, some alternate personalities are experiencing the abuse on the outside - without emotion or speech, and while some alternate personalities are mimicking the internalized abuses of the parent, and while some alternate personalities are protecting the system from being known to the host or to anyone on the outside and even some alternate personalties on the inside
15. Only years later, when the host and the alters have exhausted the host's brain from losing time, making up for lost time, and handling many triggers unknown to the host, the alters reveal themselves a little bit at a time; their silence and emotions can no longer be contained; the host begins to feel emotions that seem to come from nowhere or only adulthood traumas; and the system becomes overloaded again and again

The silence of speech and emotion continues in treatment, which brings out the alters again and again, but more covertly as time goes on because they get used to the craftiness of the therapists.

The host gets confused again and again, doubting her own diagnosis.

We all work together after learning some tools and being believed, but only for a short time because people still want to silence our speech and/or our emotions. The silencing of our speech and our emotions is what keeps us dissociated, triggered, and traumatized.

Well, they now know that being able to process traumatic events helps immensely. They now know that giving adequate support to a person / child who has experienced a significant trauma as soon as possible after the event prevents trauma disorders from developing.
Trauma informed care and education is a wonderful thing for the our (collective) children's futures.

It is now known to be related to genetics as well. If a person has the "strong" or "weak" version of a particular gene can largely determine their response to different experiences, including trauma.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amyjay It is now known to be related to genetics as well. If a person has the "strong" or "weak" version of a particular gene can largely determine their response to different experiences, including trauma.

Epigenetics?

No, just whether one has a long gene or a short gene on a particular genetic strand. For example, the impact of trauma on someone who has a "strong" (long) version of the gene would be much less than the same trauma on an individual who has the "weak" (short) version of the gene.
Or someone who experiences trauma "k" and has the weakened version of a gene that cause depression will with 95% likelihood develop depression, whereas someone who experiences trauma "k" but has the stronger version of the same gene may never develop depression (unless they have the weakened version of other depression-causing genes).

Whatever... it is becoming increasingly clear that we are a product of neither nature nor nurture, but an inextricable combination of the way our particular environments and experiences - physical AND psychological - interact with our unique combination of genes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amyjay No, just whether one has a long gene or a short gene on a particular genetic strand. For example, the impact of trauma on someone who has a "strong" (long) version of the gene would be much less than the same trauma on an individual who has the "weak" (short) version of the gene. Or someone who experiences trauma "k" and has the weakened version of a gene that cause depression will with 95% likelihood develop depression, whereas someone who experiences trauma "k" but has the stronger version of the same gene may never develop depression (unless they have the weakened version of other depression-causing genes). Whatever... it is becoming increasingly clear that we are a product of neither nature nor nurture, but an inextricable combination of the way our particular environments and experiences - physical AND psychological - interact with our unique combination of genes.

I got weak, short genes. Probably a small hippocampus, and a really messed up limbic system. My amygdala is out of whack. My autobiographical memory is compromised. Oh, my. My superego is still okay though, as is my executive functioning - to a point. My id and ego, however, are in a playground by themselves. This is my brain on DID. LOL, but seriously.

I wasn't trying to negate your truth or your experiences in any way @Lilly2 .I was just making a generalization I guess.Since DID is caused by severe,prolonged abuse I think if there would have been someone to turn to the first time it happened and it's stopped then DID wouldn't develop. There's usually not abuse of a child that doesn't involve some sort of forced silence and essentially that is what causes it because the abuse continues.

My point just being that without that repeated abuse DID wouldn't develop in the first place.

I will be glad to hear from the next safe person television aunt family friend trauma alter themselves. Although I heard it wasn't advisable probably is going for discovery...……..PDoc almost to my masters in counseling.