Welcome to our domain!!
Hello and welcome,
If you have found our site then the chances are you or somebody you know has DID (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). We hope that by reading our stories it will help people to understand a little more. We hope it will help to show that we are just regular people with our owns views, likes, dislikes etc, The only difference being that we share a single body
Here in the UK DID is not recognised by many professionals as we have
discovered the hard way. Far too many people treat us as though we do
not exist, that the self is simply being a "problem", "DID cannot be
possible","It doesn't make sense"," there has to be a medical condition
causing the 'missing time' Go along to the GP and get some pills and
everything will be fine. Yes we've heard it all !
If only those professionals spent a little less time clock watching and
more time listening and observing they would realise that we do
actually exist, that we are individuals despite sharing the same
body. Instead the simplest option is to write the self off as being
problematic, hostile and forgetful.
We
hope that by creating this website it will give us a safe place to
share our thoughts, our stories, our feelings, our triumphs and our
disasters. We also hope that it will give more people the courage to
speak out and be counted. Each one of us who speaks out and admits to
our fractured minds brings us a little closer to being accepted. A
little closer to Dissociative Identity Disorder being recognised.
We would like to thank our wonderful counsellor Anne for listening to
us, for hearing us and above all for accepting us. We do not give her
an easy time yet she remains committed to us and has never turned her
back on us. This is a learning curve for us all but most especially for
Anne because prior to meeting us she had little or no experience of DID
yet she has always been willing to learn what she can in order to help
us.Our thanks also go to MIlena who gave us the courage to speak out
and to Jakki for accepting us and filling in when Anne is unavailable.
One thing I would like to add here is that althought DID is classed as
a "disorder", something that one "suffers" with, we do not feel that it
is a suffering. We feel priviliged to be DID and although it does
cause problems we would not be without our inner "family". Life isn't
always easy, it never has been and as with all families we have our
disagreements. The only difference with our family is that as we share
one body, we cannot escape each other with ease.
Within our family there are many and although we are all a part of the
same family we do not necessarily know each other. Don't get me wrong
some of us are aware of everyone inside, we just simply do not
communicate with them or them with us.I suppose the easiest way to
describe it is for you to imagine several groups consisting of x
amount of members.Not everybody in each group would know the names and
details of every other person in each of the other groups.
Our first "group" who gathered the courage to speak out as themselves
were nicknamed "apollo" as in Apollo 13.Yes you've guessed it, there
are 13 members in that group. They were closely followed by the
"renegades" and since then more of us have ventured out. The following
may help to explain in more detail. This was written by cali in
response to a question from our counsellor.
". i will try to explain it more clearly.Please imagine there are several rooms side by side and within those rooms are a certain amount of people and lets say for example that you are in room 1. Does that mean that you automatically know everybody else in the other rooms? Does that mean that you know who everybody is? where they came from? what they do? How many there are? Highly unlikely i would say.
That is how it is with us.Simply because we are all part of the same being does not necessarily mean that we are aware of each other.. i have rarely ventured out since reaching the grand old age of 14 because there was no need for me to.The others were doing a good enough job of keeping people away and they didnt need me to reinforce the golden rule of trusting nobody.That has all changed recently because they were foolish enough to be taken in by various people, and trusting people weakens the system severely.
Up until the middle of last year the so called "renegades" had gone into hiding ie caitlin,alana,abby,leah and niesha but because of certain problems arising which turned the self to suicidal thoughts again they "renegades" gained the strength to re emerge.Are you following this?
Some of us know everything,some know nothing,and some of us have limited awareness.As i said in my previous letter some hold only a specific memory or event whilst others hold great lengths of memory.
The names? My name was lacking however i recently changed it to cali just as shanta changed her name from peacemaker. Some of us make our own decisions over what our names shall be,others are more unfortunate and through one reason or another are unable to do this.lily was named by some of the older ones because she is so pale and fragile just as lilies are. Before this her name was simply it.
i have to go now as time has run out for me.There are chores to be done and i for one do not do chores.
i hope this has helped somewhat in your quest to understand"
cali
Cali's example of several rooms actually describes our 'inner' world. I suppose the most obvious questions that people will ask are ~ where do we go when we are not 'out' in the body and why are we not all aware of everything that is going on outside. For us the answer is simple but those people who do not understand may liken it to something out the "X Files".
There may be many of us but we all have our own 'private' place within. It is almost a corridor effect with many 'doors' leading off. Deep inside is a place that we call "The Shadows", this is not a nice place and one usually goes there if there has been a problem. Recently Tash did something that we disagreed with and she was sent to the shadows as a form of punishment. Those inners contemplating suicide are usually banished to the shadows until such time they work through their feelings .Each inners private place is personal to them and nobody else enters their space.
The 'stronger' personalities have 'rooms' closer to the forefront whereas those who are nameless are ensconced deep inside. This is why not every inner is aware of each other. I suppose you could view it as a miniature city.
When we are inside our own space, we become detached from the outside world and become invisible to the others within. I suppose the easiest way to explain is by likening it to the infamous Harry Potters' Invisibility cloak" ~ although we are still present, nobody can actually see us.
Myself
and Caitlin are the only two within our family who know everything. We
saw everything that happened. We watched from a distance but did not
have any emotional attachment to anything that occurred.I do not
possess the ability to process feelings and emotions. I do not feel
anger, shame, fear, happiness or any of the other emotional attributes
which an average person will deal with on a daily basis. I am devoid of
emotions.
Caitlin only possesses "negative" emotional qualities and when she
presents to those people who neither understand or accept our
existence, the self is simply labelled as being "hostile and uncaring".
Other questions you may ask are ~ how is it that only two of us know everything and how was it possible for us to take all the information in?
Out of our family only myself, caitlin and the host child have to ability to 'watch from a distance'. It's quite difficult to explain to someone who doesn't actually understand but we are able to detach ourselves from the body and quite literally watch from a distance. Very much like these television programmes one watches where a body 'dies' and the spirit of the body watches from above. How it is possible i don't know but this is what happens to us.
I believe it is quite a common occurrence for survivors of abuse, when relating their stories they will often say that it was as though it was happening to somebody else and not themselves. Almost as though they were witnesses to the 'crime' rather than being a part of it.
We have remained silent for many years. The self refused to acknowledge our presence and held the very real fear that she was actually suffering from some form of Dementia.Due to this fear she remained silent about the voices within, the time loss, the unexplained occurrences.We too remained silent for fear of being locked away in some institution. Now it is time for us to speak out and to be acknowledged. We are real and we do exist!!
The first part of our story may appear to be written by a third party, it is actually written by us. This will further illustrate the fact that although we are all part of one being, we are individuals in our own rights and seperate from the host child.
On this website we shall share our life stories, and we hope that after reading them people will begin to understand exactly why and how we were created.We would once again like to thank you for visiting our site and we hope you will be kind enough to sign our guest book. All comments will be gladly appreciated.
This site is an ongoing project and new material will be added regularly.
Kind Regards
Verity
We
do understand how difficult it is for those who live as 'singletons' to
fully understand our lives and we know how difficult it must be for them
to know how to respond to us. Seriously though folks, we are just a
bunch of normal people
who through no fault of our own happen to share just one body. When we are
'out' we do not have several heads nor do we suddenly grow horns, but
what we do have are our own thoughts on life, our own fears, our own
worries and these are all seperate from the self
We hope this website will help to make people understand what it is like to be us. A single body but minds of many
sincerely
caitlin
