Hi all,

TL;DR: the title of this post.

For context, I (29 agender) am a singlet dating the host of a system, and I am madly in love with him. We've been dating for about 4 months, but we'd been friends for years before that, and I've known about his system for a long while. We are long distance (in different countries), and he has children of his own from a previous relationship. We also aren't able to video or voice chat as often as I'd like, because his living situation is honestly terrible, and he's trying to fix that. So we only end up doing so every 2-4 weeks, but still text a decent amount in between.

Something happened recently that's caused him to go dormant for the time being, though I've been assured by the current fronter that it's not a permanent thing, and usually only lasts 2-3 hours. But it's been a few days, and I'm starting to get worried.

To complicate matters, because of the lack of ability to voice chat/video frequently, and knowing that he's not available at all, even to system members, I am feeling incredibly alone. I do have a very strong support network that I can reach out to if/when I need to, but I'm worried about my partner. I don't know how long his dormancy will last, and I don't want to lose him either.

I'm not as familiar with other alters, as my partner is the one who primarily fronts, I'd say about 90% of the time. The system trusts me enough to identify themselves when we do communicate, and they keep me updated where they can.

I don't really know what I'm looking for with this, but if any of you have advice or feedback or something?

What do you wish your partner did for you, or did do, in a situation like this? What happened if the alter who was dating your partner simply stopped existing? How long did people wait?

Sorry it's a bit of a ramble 🖤🖤

Any tips on how to be able to use our phone better? We are loosing friends over not being able to answer phone calls and texts in a timely manner.

Sometimes the anxiety that stems from receiving a text from one of the perpetrators is so high, that we are not able to use the phone to text others.

It’s a long struggle for us, trying to be more available to our friends but not being able to do it consistently due to the anxiety from other messages or calls we get.

Thanks so much for any tip or sympathy

Meimei

Has anyone figured out what parts of their past mistakes were down to being an alter at the time? Or just your own, accountable bollocks?

This happened about a month ago but i haven’t talked about it , well talked about the truth. I was with my ex and we had got into a fight and last thing i remembered was sitting on the couch talking about that i used to have a good hallucination but then he left like everyone else leaves. Then my memory stops. When i come to i’m ducked off behind some trees and my head and leg is killing me. I didn’t understand what was going on as i had no memory of how i even got there. I called my ex and told him i had no idea where i was or how i got there and he asked if i wanted him to come get me but despite being terrified of how i got there i didn’t want him to come pick me up because i had a crazy moment and like it’s my own fault i left and i didn’t think he should play captain save a crazy so i walked home myself. When i got home my leg and head was hurting more intense and i noticed my hips and ribs were hurting. I went to take off my pants and he noticed that one of my butt cheeks was intensely red and asked what happened. I told him i didn’t know. Then we notice the other bruises and i have bruises on my knees, legs and a perfect hand shape bruise on my wrist. I told him what i remembered about coming to and he told me it looks like i was assaulted and i need to go to the ER. I went to the ER and told them that my memory blanked while on the walk cause i didn’t want to tell them the truth and they send me to a mental hospital. They did scans and found out my ribs and hips were bruised , my head was bruised, and my leg muscle was pulled. I also had a rape kit done and i’ve been celibate for several months but when the investigator did her exam she said i was extremely irritated down there. I still haven’t got the rape kit results yet. My ex said before i left i completely stopped acknowledging him and started talking to someone else. He said i kept on repeating that all that was lost will be found on the journey and how we have to go and how we will not be deceived any longer and he kept trying to ask me who i was talking to or where i was going but i wouldn’t even acknowledge that i could see him

It's been an especially stressful period so a few very exhausting switches have been happening the past weeks. After bad things happened three days in a row, I am just done.

How do I recover from this?

So, I know I have D.I.D, now that it's been explained and diagnosis etc but, I've only ever heard the alts like once or twice, as in properly communicated, other times ifs more an emotional change, or uncontrollable urges to do things ill be paying dearly for the next day, or I'll offend someone close, and then there's the times I'm wondering about, what if I'm making all this shit up and ifs making sense because I need it too, like when people hit a search engine for a sore throat and end up thinking they need a face transplant. Could this all just be bullshit? Or another alt who just doesn't wanna believe it, I've also read on here alts are created by the mind to protect you from what your child mind can't make sense of or deal with, because sometimes I also have no idea what to do with myself because I feel I've served my purpose and should be dead by now, anyone else get this kind of self doubt? Like what if we are just full of it

I open my mouth and there is no sound only a liquid void. I sent a message to my contacts that I need help. Now I think they hate me / don’t know me and that I’m just a spammer. I used my native language, and it was hard. I said I have some sort of dissociative disorder and need help finding a therapist (I can’t do it myself bc I keep forgetting, disconnecting and sabotaging all the knowledge I consumed to heal myself). I don’t believe someone will help. I probably came across as infantile and helpless, not fitting my body’s age. I also don’t understand why the system allows me to ask for help today, it feels a bit suspicious.

I realized I don’t have friends. Friendship is paired with consistency. My consistency is non existent. I feel lonely, angry at the disorder and as though my life is over. I have 0 support, except for the occasional kind comments here. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any point in my words when I’ll just disconnect from them and forget them. I already do.

How’s your loneliness today? Do you have support you need? I hope so.

Have a good day and thank you for reading. I’ll be happy even with an emoji.

Hi everyone, I just want to start this off by saying I'm very new to the DID community so I want to apologise if I use the incorrect terminology. (I'm still learning) So my boyfriend is undiagnosed but very certain has DID. He has himself (what I have seen to be called the host?) and one other alter. My boyfriend has only just started to accept and look into DID himself so we are both learning and understanding it all at the same time. I am dating him and the alter. The host is a very loving, caring and protective person (especially when it comes to me). However, the alter is also protective but a lot more dominant (especially in the bedroom). We have had multiple conversations about consent and made sure everything is okay with everyone. My boyfriend is still struggling about the alter "hurting me" though. I have tried to explain to him that everything is with consent and I'm not actually being hurt. But does anyone have any advice on how I can ease his worries. Many thanks!

Idk-- Im writing this bc some days I think abt when I first discovered my system...I didn't have this issue? Or maybe I just didn't recognize I was struggling with it. I know its apart of this disorder, and idk where or how to draw an appropriate, constructive line of remembering the reasons and expressing the right emotions.

Im just really struggling with seeing some of my alters as myself in the present moment right now, and it feels...weird, bc I know they are. I know you guys are me, and dissociation in this disorder makes you feel like "not me."

But rn many of you scare the shit out of me. I try and help and you push me away. It's hard looking at your large grotesque bodies with the right mindset sometimes-- You're running circles around me like im a toy, you recognize what I tell you, but you choose not to care, and its exhausting. Your so manipulative, you sit there and feed me the gestures like you care, but its just so you can drop the ball later on me to reveal it was all a show. The noises you create make my head hurt and sometimes those horrible expressions you create...make me feel sick. Everytime I see some of you I freeze up because you know im afraid of you and you like that, and that makes the fear worse.

And I know im more so afraid of the emotions you hold, the feelings you harbor, everything I pushed away when I was a child, telling myself I was okay. I know im absolutely shit at emotinal regulation, and its why I ate my pain when I was a kid. But when I watch you tower over me, when you pin me down and speak your words in my ear, when your behaviors border on psychotic, it makes me twitch. I understand why you look and embody everything that I'm afraid of, but its all just so...horrible. There's too many of yall, and sometimes im just so tired of trying to rationalize with power-hungry, chaos-driven, egotistical creatures, and I have to look you in your horrific, bloodthirsty eyes and tell myself that THAT is who I am...

In all this I love you...bc loving you is loving me💝. But right now...right now I don't see me, in you, and I don't see you, in me, and it hurts like hell and I can't stress enough that I love you all. But part of me is losing my mind trying to keep up with all of you, because if I dont keep up you will destroy me mentally bc thats what you want and I don't know why......

But by all means, I love you, and this post is a reminder if I decide to spiral again. 💫

Hey, I'm titch, we have bpd as well us our lovely self's, well it seems like it's only me, I am angry and can't control the jealousy, I have a person he is everything but I'm finding it difficult when he wants new friends, I know he won't leave, well actually I think this new friend will take him. But it's causing problems with the hosts friendship with him. She gets mad but I can't help it, she has told me if I can't control it she will have to cut ties with him as its not fair on him to make him feel like rubbish because of our issues, she doesn't say its all me but I know it is. How do I control it, I've tried backing off not saying what's on my mind but I can't it explodes and I tell him he is mine. Man I mess everything up all the time. I don't want to cause problems and I know it's not healthy and it's making us as group worse. Please help.

So I've discovered that one of the only things that make things quiet for me is tobacco, and obviously it isnt the healthiest (nor cheapest) coping method, was wondering if anyone in here had any other better methods

My question is a simple one. The youngest alter I have hid away all kinds of needed things, keys, ear bud case, EAR BUDS, the little "stays" in my shirts, and the big thing... the freaking scissors. He calls it hide and find because we can't exactly seek, and he does it on purpose. We have FOUR pairs of scissors, and I thought my husband was losing them all the time. Has anyone dealt with this and how did you get them to stop.

My family knows about my did diagnose and my closest online friend, but how do i tell everyone else and explain it? its the first time i've genuinely had friends and unfortunately they have started figuring something out lol not on the right track but yeah It's starting to effect a few friendships and outings because a few of us agree on a outing but someone else already booked a appointment for that Time ect so i'm bailing a lot on outings what's starting to annoy people We are a bit miss matched atm as we havnt had a host for a solid month and its mainly a former host and a child alter running the system we do have weekly therapy for this stuff as well but there is so many more important issues i thought this would be a place to reach out and see if anyone else has similar experiences Thank you

TW: brief mention of SA

I had a really strange dream and I’m really not sure what to take away from it. I was wondering if you guys had any insight on whether I should take any part of it to mean anything.

A bunch of alters introduced themselves. One of which I already know of but felt kind of different in his personality than I experience him when I’m awake. Although come to think about it he could present that way to others who are not privy at all to his internal state. He was just relatively calm in the dream but I guess I’ve only experienced him in extreme stress situations. I call him The Joker, not (consciously) based on Batman but because of his prevailing attitude, but in the dream he was wearing The Riddler PJs (another Batman villain). He told me there were about 300 of them which I kind of find hard to believe and in the dream it made me cry hearing that though I’m not exactly sure why. I met another he introduced as Dale a “special memory holder” whom he said was raped. Other alters who introduced themselves were ones called Octor Two (which I just realised could be a small child’s pronunciation of doctor) and The General though I didn’t really understand much about them. I vaguely remember that a few of the ones I met had rainbow hair for some reason. Other than that at one point it seemed like the characters from Winnie the Pooh were also alters which in a strange way makes some sense because that’s certainly not something I remember thinking about nowadays but could easily be in the depths of my mind as I did have some exposure to them as a kid and stuffed animals that come to life and are friends with a lonely little boy sounds like exactly the kind of thing a traumatised child might internalise. Throughout the dream I kept asking for proof which they ‘provided’ in the form of showing up as hallucinations in continuation dreams where I thought I woke up and was no longer lucid.

What do you think?

I'm very much just starting this journey and have not "met" my others. I know they are there, they just talk through me right now. Except the last few nights as I'm falling asleep I've been woken up/ scared shitess by a scream/ voice saying something and once followed by a name in my head. Has anyone been introduced like this?

My therapist asked in today's session if any of my parts will be willing to talk to her. I have been in therapy for about 2 years, I have trust in my therapist and have deep appreciation for her. But it's recent (2 months, after a heavily triggering event) that we discovered I have DID, I had previously been diagnosed with other disorders and have been doing trauma therapy for a while up until this point.

My therapist has no experience with DID patients and in my country there's very few DID specialists or even knowledge, but she is doing research and trying to help me through schema therapy. She tried to get me to relax and clear my mind first with breathing exercises and then she asked me to describe one recent scenario where I relapsed on my eating disorder. I honestly thought there was no way any parts would come out but one did, I'll call her A. This part is pretty much a sociopath, she is not evil but she has no regard for others and is pretty chaotic.

My therapist was shaking by the end of the session. Naively she didn't think of the possibility that if she brought forward any part, that part might not want to go back in, at some point my therapist asked "me" to front back and A to go back but A did not want to go back and wanted to leave the clinic, my therapist had to beg A and convince her to not to leave, eventually A stopped resisting and I fronted again.

This was a first for both of us, and my therapist was shocked at how different my appearance seemed, mannerisms, tone of voice, speech. Up until this point I thought I was very covert lol. I don't know what to think other that today's session could have turned pretty dangerous, my alter is not violent but she can be problematic.

Any other similar experiences of alter fronting in therapy? How did your therapist managed the situation?

TW: CSA, manipulation, victim blaming

I'm trying to help one of the littles understand that we're safe and the things he told us were lies, but it's like she's having a hard time believing (or maybe comprehending?) that. She's a toddler, and developmentally seems to understand the world at about a toddler level.

I don't want to go into details, but essentially our main perpetrator told us around that age that he was abusing us because we were a ">!bad girl!<." As an adult we know he was manipulating us so we wouldn't tell anyone, but as a toddler, we did believe him.

Every time we make a mistake around somebody else (or that somebody else becomes aware of, or somebody even thinks we made a mistake even if actually they were the ones mistaken), this little gets absolutely terrified. In her mind, there's a cause and effect: if somebody knows or thinks we made a mistake, then that person will see us as a ">!bad girl!<," and if they see us that way, then they will assault us.

We've tried to explain that he just made that up so he could abuse us/so we wouldn't tell, but she doesn't quite seem to understand. We've tried reassuring her that we're safe and various strategies to help her feel safe/know and remember we're safe, but the minute we make a mistake, any semblance of safety we were able to help her feel all goes out the window. We try reassuring her in those situations, but she becomes inconsolable and isn't able to believe us that we really are safe; it takes hours if not days for her to actually feel any semblance of safety again.

Does anyone have ideas for phrasing or strategies I can try to help her more effectively?

i hope this isn't confusing and that i am not using the term introject wrongly

we only got diagnosed with DID this year, and i only realized i am one of multiple alters fairly late this year.

the way i act, dress, and visualize myself in my head is - apparently - pretty much the exact same way a character we created as a teenager looks, dresses and acts. i have been feeling uncomfortable with that, because other alters have known - or guessed - things about me based on this character that were correct, and it is making me feel very uncomfortable. i feel exposed, in a weird way.

one of the other alters told my partner that she uses this character to daydream about violent and emotionally abusive scenarios to cope with her own traumatic experiences, but she doesnt feel comfortable doing so anymore after my partner told her that i, as an alter, exist.

i also share a name with this character - i didnt realize this for some while and i personally also do not have any memories of this character, but a lot of the others do.

i considered changing my name but it took me a long time to come up with a name that my other alters and my partner could use to refer to me, and i genuinely feel comfortable with this name since i started using it.

i guess what i want to know, are there any ways i can separate myself from this character we created? i do not think i am him, neither do i think i am exactly like him, but the comparison is still making me uncomfortable and just feeling weird. if anyone has any advice, i would appreciate it

Hi, my host isn't doing very well right now, and is emotionally dysregulated, and I don't know what to do, and it's bleeding into me, and I need help. I don't know what to do. Everything feels big and bad a scary and I just want it to stop.

We are writing to you in hopes that you can give support to our host. She has been diagnosed with complex PTSD and also BPD but none of these felt like they adequately explained her symptoms. She began to suspect our existence recently, and a kind Redditor from this subreddit messaged her to give support. She also got a locked diary to begin to attempt to communicate with us. She has just started therapy for the first time really in her 34 years of age, and her therapist said something that made her realize she dissociates quite often. She has also been listening to the audiobook No Bad Parts and just started reading The Stranger In The Mirror by Marlene Steinburg who created the SCID-D.

To make a long story short, she just realized and accepted fully she has DID and is in shock right now and we are asking if you could send some kind words to her in this difficult time. Thank you.

-system

TL;DR: how do you deal with nightmares? especially of trauma you don't really remember too well?? my sleep schedule is messed up and it's affecting me

I already made a post about this in a CSA survivor sub but I decided to make another one here. No need to check that one, I'll say everything here.

So I don't really remember any CSA. it's something I heavily suspect due to having tons of textbook signs as a kid and even now as an adult, even a couple of my last therapists have suspected it... One of those things of my childhood were frequently CSA nightmares. As a very young child and for years, I'd dream of >!being gang raped by a hoard of gnomes!< and then at around 12 I dreamt of >!my father raping me!<. But now it's happening in adulthood and I don't know what to do.

For a while now I keep having dreams that in some way or another involve CSA, be it graphic nightmares (like the one described in the original post, where there's an actual assault) or even just a mention of it. Per example, last night, I was having a regular dream until a little girl turned to a man and said something along the lines of >!"you rape me constantly"!< (I don't recall the exact words or who either of them were). And then I woke up right away. This has really been disturbing my sleep schedule, especially with university. I wake up in the middle of the night every single day, always at different times. Some times I don't recall having had any of these dreams, but others I don't. I either don't remember dreaming at all or I remember a dream involving CSA.

I don't even wake up in much distress like one would expect. At most, I feel uneasy and sick to my stomach. But I do my best not to think about it and try to fall back asleep, which is a very hard task. I usually sleep like a rock and a lot. I think hypersomnia could describe me. I sleep like 10 hours a day at minimum if not awaken by something, still feel sleepy during the day and might actually nap. So this has been really affecting me because I don't function that well with less than 9 hours of sleep on consecutive days. And I can't even catch up on sleep on the weekends because it keeps happening and I can't fall back asleep!

I keep telling myself it's my fault I keep having these dreams. Be it because I ruminate over what could've happened to me or because (NSFW) >!I can only get off if I imagine I'm being victimized. I need to imagine myself as a child being assaulted to actually get aroused and orgasm.!< so I feel like I'm bringing this to the front of my mind... But also, I've always been like this, or at least for a few years that I can remember, so why is it only happening now?! Nothing really changed that I can think of.

I don't usually struggle with nightmares of trauma, so I'm really thrown for a loop here :[

Is this because I’m always so disassociated? My dreams last night felt more real than what I’m experiencing right now. In the dream I felt alive, present. Now I feel hollow and exhausted. This has been going on for years. What do

I don't want this to be happening. I can't even really write about it or even think about it.

I have Valium, though I probably wont be able to get prescribed it again. But right now, it's the only thing keeping me together.

I don't know why it causes me immense panic and borderline paranoia. It feels like my mind was being manipulated without me even realizing in the moment. How can I be sure I'm talking about one thing, only to realize after the fact that I wasn't even close to talking about what I thought I was?

This just can't be real. I was diagnosed with DID years ago, but then I forgot about it. I feel fucking deformed and like I'm losing my mind.

We've known about the system for 2 years and a few months now, and we found out we don't really split easily, rather forming alters instead. And no matter if we split or form alters, it's always one at a time

We recently got a hyperfixation back from three years ago and have discovered at least 2 fictives from it, and we think there might be one or two more, and this is making us think we are making it all up. Sure, 2021 (when we were hyperfixated on that media) was one of the worst years of our lives, but having more than 2 fictives from that media?? And discovering them only after hyperfixating back on it??

We're also not in the best time of our lives rn either, specially bc we are blurry very often and things at home are quite tense, but that doesn't feel like a valid reason..............

Yeah denial era is back

we are trying to use journals, sticky notes, apps but i think most of the time a lot of our alters are too dissociated to realize that these things are there and we are trying to use them.

our partner knows we have DID and is really supportive, should i perhaps ask her to help remind the others to try to communicate? i dont want her to feel burdened with that or the other alters to feel like they are being parented because that is not my intention, but i know that some of them easily feel like that if they are being told to do something.

is my frustration justified? i just want us to work together, but i feel like me and another alter are doing most of the work and organizing our system and figuring out ways to communicate. we rarely have any internal communication and only specific alters seem able to actually talk to each other.

we just got back in therapy too, but the therapist isnt specialized in DID. she did offer to help us get in contact with a more specialized therapist she knows though.

i'm sorry if this sounds like rambling. we have been switching a lot and i barely remember the last month, i'm just trying to get a grip on my life again

It makes sense that as an untreated trans child, that I developed DID. That living as male for 40 years was 40 years of constant dissociation.

Without DID, could never have survived those 40 years. Now, I understand the trauma of being trans in our transphobic society will never end.

We as a system must survive.

heya! we’re still pretty new to the concept of our own disorder but wanted to seek help from others going through/having gone through similar experiences!

our host’s name is Azrial and recently we’ve been seeing a lot less of him:( he’s been co-fronting or not fronting at all for a few months now and we were concerned but haven’t thought much of it until he started to completely vanish a few times. myself and a few others are worried he might disappear and not come back, is there anything we can do to prevent that?

he co-fronts maybe once every few weeks when we’re listening to loud music and he just likes to disassociate until he vanishes again. we’re really concerned for him and don’t want anything bad to happen to him or for him to go dormant, is there anything we can do??

We have a little in our system who is 5. She has told us that she wants our partner to make rules for her. She is wanting him to set her a bedtime, tell her what she is allowed to spend money on, things of that nature.

Our system has rules and routines for her, but she wants him specifically to be setting rules for her I think wanting more validation from him.

Any suggestions for other ways that our partner can help our little feel more validated? Neither him or I feel comfortable with him setting rules for her, but she’s lacking something and we want to help her.

Edited to add: our partner and our little spend time together doing fun things and he tries to support her emotionally, but we’re wondering about ways that our partner can appropriately provide her with more structure.

So tell us. Really. How was your day?

Emoji code of non verbal supports: (your welcome to send in edition to a regular comment, or as a stand alone comment!)

Stay strong “💪”

Emotional support “🧁”

Lurking, but listening/ I hear you“🫧”

Hi, first time posting on Reddit ever- sorry if I'm doing anything wrong. I just have really no one to share this with. I honestly don't know where to start this, and the post may be long, so bear with me. We had a consistent host for as long as I can remember, and we called her Bella/Belial interchangeably, as she was fine with both. She was almost always in the background, co-fronting, commenting on stuff, taking notes. Recently something happened, I'm not really sure what, and she "split" in two, so she became just Bella and I became Belial. I don't know the right terminology, sorry. In the short time I've been here, I thought of her as my sister, maybe even as my twin. Some weeks after this happened, she just stopped being here? I don't feel her, I can't contact her, she doesn't talk to anyone, it's like she's not there. I'm just left heartbroken, I feel like I lost my sister, even though I know she isn't one. But I'm left alone to deal with all of this. I don't know why she left, but I feel like she knew she was going to leave, because she taught me about the things she usually did as a host. So I guess I'm the new host now. So, any tips to deal with grief about an alter leaving?... I don't know what to do with myself and I can't talk about it to anybody as I don't currently have a therapist.

EDIT: Thanks for answers yall. I really don't know what happened, because our life is very mundane, we don't go out, we don't talk to anyone much, literally nothing happens. No conflict between alters either, at least to my knowledge. Every time I try to figure out what happens I just feel a sensation I could only describe as grief. I just don't know why I feel it as I logically understand she wasn't and isn't my sister, and yet I feel like I physically lost a part of me. I also don't have a way to really be able to communicate with others, we usually just "talk" through leaving messages to each other... I guess the most logical step would be to go through the grief process as if she was my real sister. It just feels weird.