What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
As a person who has recovered from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I can speak to its complexity. The return to health is often slow but the energetic tools outlined above help clients with DID. The main difference is that DID clients’ energies are hidden in little bits throughout their body and energy field. It may help to see DID as a little like a battery-powered car where only one-battery cell is available at any one time. Since many tasks necessitate the use of more than one energy cell at a time, the DID person must constantly scramble to link ordinary things like names to faces, the nuances of everyday conversation and everyday tasks such as grocery shopping.
A main goal in DID is to reestablish communication between the adult (or other person or persons) in charge, sometimes called the “main” personality, and each inner and outer part.
DID is an energy disorder that is a direct result of early, extreme, prolonged abuse that transcended the physical and emotional levels and traumatized or shattered the energetic self, disrupting the energetic body. People do not become DID by accident. People who suffer from DID have experienced abuse that surpassed the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels to affect the psychic energy at the core of their being. This abuse was deliberately, cruelly and consistently meted out by caretakers beginning early in the DID person’s life and often continuing well into adulthood.
Dissociation is a brilliant defense mechanism that allowed the abused child to survive by distancing herself from the abuse. It is important to note that dissociating bits of one’s energetic self is a nonviolent conscious choice. It may be more immediately effective, for example, to join the abuser in choosing a tool of torture and possibly ‘graduate’ from being the victim to helping the abuser choose victims. By dissociating, a child is choosing to encapsulate the painful moments, the least violent choice of the moment.
DID is not genetic, though the ability to dissociate, or separate one’s conscious self from pain or dangerous situations, is inherent in some people. The dissociated energy may present itself as a named personality, such as ‘Kelly’ or ‘Stan,’ or as an emotion such as fear or anger. Many dissociative people have male and female energy parts of various ages as well as animal and object parts, such as dogs, cats, snakes, cars, radios, dolls—the possibilities are limited only by the DID person’s imagination.
Though there has been a stigma in some parts of the mental health field regarding dissociative disorders, mainly due to DID’s complex nature and the high need level of many DID adults, treating DID is not only possible, but very rewarding. The therapist is wise to remember that though a DID client may seem needier than other clients, the difference is that the DID client has waited ten, twenty, thirty or more years for help. The intensity emerges because the needs are finally being addressed, and is a result of ten, twenty, or more bits of the person are all crying out for help at once.
It is helpful for the therapist to remain aware that helping a DID client is similar to treating a roomful of clients, each with his or her own traumatic memories and unfulfilled needs. A DID client may have different energies available on different days. This is especially important if a client arrives agitated or with a totally different opinion than in previous sessions.
In cases such as the one listed above, it is extremely helpful to the client for the therapist to take the client’s words seriously and in the present. Saying things like, “You didn’t think that last week” don’t help because they don’t strengthen the inner communication, they can appear as a criticism or challenge, which can trigger fear or panic, which only causes the affected part to retreat. Becoming frustrated when the therapist’s best efforts do not produce the level of trust that the therapist has become accustomed to may come across to the client as an indication that the therapist cannot be trusted.
