DID Awareness Day 2024
Written By Lyn Barrett
March 5th is DID Awareness Day!
If you have dissociative identity disorder (DID), you don’t need to become aware of what you live with every day, but you might need validation, understanding, and compassion for your long journey toward health.
If you are a loved one, you have an inside track on understanding DID but, unless you get inside our skin, you still need to increase your awareness so you can support your loved one with DID and support yourself on this arduous journey.
If you are a therapist or other sort of mental health provider, you may need to unlearn what you’ve learned in the past to have room to ingest the vast body of knowledge research has unearthed in the last thirty years.
To celebrate DID Awareness Day, I’ve listed some verifiable facts to raise your awareness, so you can raise the awareness of others:
Prevalence: Research tells us that between 1-3% of people worldwide have diagnosed or undiagnosed DID due to chronic childhood trauma. That means if you go to church and there’re 100 people in the sanctuary, then between 1 and 3 people sitting around you have either diagnosed or undiagnosed DID. Or, if you’re a student and sit in a lecture hall of 100, between 1 and 3 people sitting around you have either diagnosed or undiagnosed DID. Get the picture? It’s not rare.
Dissociation: DID is the brain’s magnificent way to protect a child from one reality so they can live and thrive in another reality. Dissociation happens to everyone in times of boredom, repetition, or trauma. Obviously boredom and repetition are benign and allow our minds to separate from our bodies to stay engaged when the present environment is — well — boring. On the other hand, dissociation is protective during trauma and muffles its immediate impact. While rape victims and soldiers in war may experience dissociation to protect themselves from their harsh realities, only children have the capacity to split off parts of their minds to hold different experiences and emotions.
A Natural Response: DID is not a bizarre, exotic condition; in fact, it’s relatively common and a natural response under the circumstances. Consider a child totally dependent on the person who harms them. In order to continue to trust that person — which they need to do in order to survive — they hide what is necessary from their core consciousness in order to survive.
The Hidden Disorder: Sometimes DID is called the “hidden disorder” because its very purpose to hide the trauma from the child and those around the child. The trauma is hidden from the child so the child can function. It’s hidden from those around the child for many reasons: the abuser may threaten the child/child parts and/or control the child/child parts, the abuser may take great pains to hide evidence of abuse, the child/child parts may carry bucket loads of shame and be convinced the abuse is their fault, the community around the child may be prone to disbelieve the child/child parts, and the child/child parts may disbelieve themselves.
Functional vs. Dysfunctional: DID is functional for a child experiencing chronic trauma. It allows the child to survive. As the child grows into adolescence and adulthood, it becomes dysfunctional as the brain’s carefully constructed compartments and the body’s cargo of non-narrative memory hinder the adult’s functioning. As an adult, someone with DID may experience periods of amnesia, periods of feeling unreal, multiple identities, multiple voices, shame, confusion, depression, suicidal ideation, and more. Alongside these painful sensations, the person with DID may also experience periods of lucidity, creativity, and competence — all a function of different parts or personalities taking control. Rather than lessening the disorientation, these seesaws of emotions, behaviors, and characteristics serve to increase disorientation.
Diagnosis: People with DID are often in the “system” for 7-10 years before they get an accurate diagnosis, which may suggest the prevalence of DID is greater than research can currently verify. It may be difficult to get an accurate diagnosis because 1) many therapists and practitioners know little about DID and shy away from the diagnosis, 2) people with DID carry the hidden disorder which means we don’t easily release information that might give the secret away, and 3) people with DID often don’t believe they have DID themselves.
Treatment: Nonetheless, an accurate diagnosis is the beginning of freedom as the person with DID can begin to get appropriate treatment that focuses on seven major areas: working with parts, memory, and identity; working with shame, trust, and relationship issues; managing triggers and feeling feelings; grieving our lost childhood and the impact the abuse has on our present circumstances; learning about trauma; seeking justice; and building a future (potentially pain-free) and finding peace. We work with our alters, difficult though they may be at times, and give thanks for their very presence. We work on relationships so we can learn to trust appropriately, set boundaries whenever needed, and give and receive love. We learn to navigate our triggers and feel our authentic feelings. We grieve what we’ve lost and will never have. We learn about our brain and how it works in response to past and present trauma. We look for justice where we can find it, often in surrogate people and situations. We work diligently to create a life that is worthy of who we are and who we will become.
Prevention: For whatever reason, the world doesn’t want to believe that people abuse children. Data shows that one in four girls and one in five boys experience sexual abuse as children. Denial of DID is enmeshed with denial of chronic child abuse, trauma, control, and manipulation. The more we deny, the more abusers will continue to abuse. I’ve written before about creating firewall communities that send the message that we won’t tolerate the abuse of our children. If you do not have DID but want to become involved in stopping child abuse, consider building a firewall community.
Coping Strategy: Last, but not least, people with DID don’t consider this disorder a disorder. Instead, we understand it as a brilliant coping strategy that saved our lives in the past and can endow us with creative energy in the present and future.
Unlike the years when I was coping with my diagnosis, decompensation, and reconstruction, today there are many resources for people with DID and I’ll post some links below.
As we celebrate DID Awareness Day, I encourage you to raise someone else’s awareness by forwarding this email. You choose: a friend, a family member, a mental health provider, a politician, anyone who needs their awareness raised. Help erase the stigma. Replace misinformation with research-based information. Claim yourself for who you are. Be the best you can be. You are enough. This too shall pass. Life is a journey. Love yourself ❤️.
Resources
https://did-research.org
https://www.aninfinitemind.org
https://www.isst-d.org
https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/did
https://multipliedbyone.org/did-resources/
https://www.discussingdissociation.com/2023/03/did-awareness-day-2023-experiencing-dissociative-identity-disorder-in-real-life/
https://www.lynbarrett.com
http://www.dissociativewriters.com
Art Credit: Memoir by Nives Palmic / Art Majeur
An Infinite Mind Speaker Series: Memoir 101
On March 10, Lyn will be leading a Sunday Speaker Series called Memoir 101 for Dissociative Writers. “Everyone has a story. Those of us with dissociative disorders often find our stories have missing pieces or lost narratives. At some point during our healing journeys, we may wish to write our stories into wholeness in memoir form …” This session is for those who want a head start before taking our Memoir 101 class in the Fall, for those who have already taken the class but want a refresher, and for those who are just beginning to think about memoir. The cost of the class is $10. Click here for more information and to register.
Focused Writing Group Begins on April 1!
The Board of Dissociative Writers is excited to announce a new weekly workshop called Focused Writing beginning Monday, April 1st, 12 noon Eastern (11 am Central, 10 am Mountain, 9 am Pacific). Focused Writing will be exactly what it says: between 90-120 minutes of writing on Zoom with your peers. We’ll work on our own projects for 20-25 minutes stretches punctuated by short check-in breaks, then write for 20-25 minutes more, and so on. (There will be no breakout groups, sharing of writing or feedback. Just focused writing among friends!) This is a great way to hold ourselves accountable to ourselves and our group. Writing done in Focused Writing may be an extension of a prompt you began in Writing-in-Place or work you want to submit to Traditional. Or, you may just want to use the time to write poetry, memoir, or a project of your own making. If you have questions, email Lyn here. Look for the link on the Groupeasy Calendar. We hope to see you there!
March Events
(To access these workshops and meetings, please go to the Groupeasy Calendar, click on the Event/Date, then click on the Zoom link.)
Tuesday, March 5, 1:00 pm Eastern: Writing-in-Place Workshop (Kim)
Wednesday, March 6, 8:00 pm Eastern: Evening Writing-in-Place (Surita)
Monday, March 11, 6:30 pm Eastern: DW Business Meeting (Lyn)
Tuesday, March 12, 1:00 pm Eastern: Traditional Writing Workshop (Sharri)
Tuesday, March 19, 1:00 pm Eastern: Writing-in-Place Workshop (Kim)
Wednesday, March 20, 8:00 pm Eastern: Evening Writing-in-Place (Surita)
Thursday, March 21, 6:00 pm Eastern: Social Hangout (JJ)
Tuesday, March 26, 1:00 pm Eastern: Traditional Writing Workshop (Sharri)
🕊️
I have come to believe with fervent passion that the focus on multiple personalities is missing the point.
Dissociative identity disorder is not rare; it is not unique; it is not special.
It is just a logical set of symptoms to some terrible trauma.
It is a normal way to react to very abnormal childhood treatment.
In fact, I only have it because I am normal.
If I had not reacted normally to chronic trauma and disrupted attachment, I would not have developed it.
~ Carolyn Spring
Lyn