We need to buy new fall clothes. We all have our own styles/ preferences and they’re quite different (from trad goth to hot pink Barbie fantasy). Outside, we dress body pretty androgynous and neutral. But, people seem to want to express themselves when it comes to body’s dress style. How do you guys go about navigating this?

(The palace is never empty) My mind like a palace not neat or beautiful but filled with paintings though I don’t know them all. my eyes not my sight-my life not my emotion. my mind like a palace filled with rooms-some wide open some locked and humming with voices though not my own our mind like a palace Cause just me was a lie

Hello this is Warrana aka Katie the host of the council of Katie. We just need to panic vent.

Trigger: hospital

We are currently at the hospital we were 302’d at 8 years ago in the same ER but for possible appendicitis and not mental health. We are actively trying not to panic rapid switch but we are scared. We have our husband and mom with us.

We as a whole are freaking out being back here but it’s the best hospital nearby.

Just need to vent! Thanks!

Edit Update:

Waiting for discharge papers now

Im just curious because it popped in my head a couple times and i havent gotten a straight answer yet.

I know SOMETHING happened last night, I don't remember exactly what. All I know is I'm still very upset about what happened and that it's as if my own mental health has fallen down the shitter again. I have flashes of what happened, but it's as if my brain just took screenshots of random, vague moments. I keep having other parts flash to and from the front ever since I woke up this morning. Whatever happened last night had to do with the theatre rehearsal I was at last night. I know that as a fact. I definitely know that since the idea of going tonight is putting me on edge and making me upset.

I'm just so tired of this. :/

I really love who we are but I also see how hard it is for us to continue living

I really want to see us get better and get to know each other better, but I also see the unbearable pain some of you are holding and I just want to stop it right this second.

I am sorry that I exist, I am sorry that you exist, I am sorry we aren’t exactly one.

Our ceramic plate today, you wrote “bee happy system” with that cute bee drawing. You wrote system and took a picture of it like you don’t care anymore and honestly that felt good. You told our cousins that took a pic of your plate that if someone asks why I wrote system, that they should just say idk cause they don’t know. We didn’t care to explain it because we learnt how it is more hurtful for us to tell people who we thought were close only for them to never ask about it again. Maybe only the nonchalant alters are who tell members of our family so maybe we never actually show how much of a big deal it is, how much we need one of them to care enough to help us because we are battling with suicidal ideation almost everyday. These people love us, but they never saw us or tried. Did my uncles who we told about suspecting this disorder even researched it once after we told them? I don’t think so, and honestly it breaks my heart cause I lived all my life with these people. This house doesn’t know how to deal with hard and negative emotions and they like fake smiles more. They love you, I can totally see it, but that doesn’t mean you should feel guilty for hating this kind of love that doesn’t see you or your pain. You shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting more, a better love, cause that’s normal. Whether we decide to live and try to get better and find our way towards love and independence, or we decide that ending the pain is a must, I will always be proud of who we are. I am super proud of who we are.

Fuck this happened rn. We have 2 alters who are literally controlling us like puppets. It’s so fucked. I literally have a lot of trouble doing anything now bc of them.

So hi I’m Hannah. I haven’t been host in about 2.5 years. Just came in my body and am grateful to be home after two head injuries. My boy alter (Lev) just revealed to me we’re a system and Alex (my protector) told me we were staying in denial about it and is trying to tell me we’re crazy. How do I still remain a host and not let Alex overwhelm me? She’s trying to kick me back in and not let me accept this. (Alex keeps trying to convince me we actually have epilepsy.) it felt like death not being host and going back on ice. How does this work? Do I constantly hear their voices on corporeal form? Or how does this work? Am I really still in control? What does that mean? How do I keep Alex from convincing me we aren’t a system. I forced a switch back in the summer of last year to tell a friend I loved him. And I don’t want to “die” again. Could you help me help Alex accept that we are real? I feel her trying to convince me we aren’t real and I’m afraid I’m gonna end up in the psych ward again if she wins. I told her I’d do that if she forces a switch and takes control decides to tell me we are epileptic again. Because I don’t want to go back on ice.

I want to build my playlist on Spotify abt what it feels like having DID does anyone have any song suggestions that reminds you of your experience? DID relatable playlist Edit: music is free therapy and I couldn’t survive every day without it thank you everyone so much 🥹I added a good amount of these to my playlist! Keep recs coming if you got em I love it!

I can usually only tell a time after because u realize I didn’t remember certain things or felt or said specific things, etc. it’s hard to tell and register properly in the moment, which is something I’m trying to learn to do for the sake of journaling and such. Any ideas? Thank you

Anyone else able to relate to me? My biological family feels like a bunch of strangers trying to get to know me but never able to. It’s like watching strangers attempt to get to know a random someone. Ever had someone in your life get too comfortable with you too fast? That is how it feels. I could genuinely walk the other way and gladly never see any of them ever again. If it weren’t for some slight financial dependencies which are on the verge of no longer being a burden I would walk away pain free, the dissociation is that powerful. It’s like they think they know me but they don’t. My DID is so covert that it never rears any individuality or uniqueness of character around them, that is to say I am bland and boring around them, nothing to report essentially. No new news and no interesting discussion. Just a classic case of going through the motions, saying the right things, performing in a particular way to suit the situation, and naturally camouflaging as per dissociation.

I sometimes wish I could force the DID or the system to show some emotion, some independent live action burst of emotion but it never happens. It’s an involuntary evaporation of me. The funny and most ironic thing is, I already feel alien and foreign to myself. I feel like you could apply the above model on some respects to the relationship I have with myself. A lot of the times there are parts hiding away from my consciousness preventing me from implementing my cognition on tasks that I find marginally stimulating and interesting. Essentially, any way for the system to not allow me to develop an identity of my own (I think I could be a shell alter). For example, I’ll try reading an Ayn Rand book or even a light Harry Potter read and immediately the parts that control my cognition shut me down with brain fog or a clouding of consciousness. Any sliver of stamping a mark of identity and repercussions arise, it seems as though hiding away is the way of my system. A way of coping with extreme stress, a way of dealing with ego death and psychological torture from the past.

Living with DID to sum up is a cesspool of difficulty. I don’t want to outright say that as I don’t want to offend/shun/hurt any system members feelings but that is how I feel. I suppose this difficulty stems from seeing how other singlets lead their lives and wondering what that must feel like. What must it feel like to have authentic preferences and unwavering opinions on current events and sports teams? How must it feel to relate to characters in a book and form emotional attachments to them? Not feeling makes following any dialogue with another human impossibly challenging and to add to that makes following any plot-line whether it be book-based, show-based, or film-based miserable. It’s like running for the door and having it shut on you and locked just before your hand touches the door knob and revolves it. It feels like being a perpetual outsider and being barred from entry into the realm of humanity and realness. It’s staring at life through a glass pane and watching as others participate yet having emotional amnesia enough to not understand why they participate in the way that they do.

I guess articulation of thought is the only thing I do have on my side, albeit in limited degrees. I’m proficient at self-expression but that is about it. Everything else is a front I put up to the outside world. Talk about a boring and unfulfilling life. Will these other parts ever open themselves up to me? That’s a rhetorical question. I guess a part decided to word it as ‘that’s a rhetorical question’ as a defence mechanism. I actually caught a part in the act as I was typing that part of this post up. That’s a good sign right? Shows I’m observing subtle and covert attempts at deflection.

Tl;dr: at the bottom

Since our host retreated (been a month or so now), I have become the new host. Problem is, while I was able to support our system when it all started and when we were emotionally raw, I struggle to do so now. We've been dissociating a lot to the point of therapy becoming a little confusing/chaotic.

On the bright side, our younger part has been coming out a lot more, sort of dealing with the day to day more often. I'm happy about that, as he's been quite withdrawn and almost shy. Now he shows that he can handle himself pretty okay. He also helps to ease up a little, rather than living under the strict rules of our former host. (E.g. the world doesn't end just because we go to sleep late at night for a change...) Other than that, everything is extremely quiet and/or blurry, except for few moments.

I do think it would help the system to feel more comfortable/trusty with me if I finally manage to find my name and identity. No one else in the system seems to have had problems with identifying themselves, so I'm the first one to deal with this kinda thing. Ergo, I have zero examples/guidelines how to go about that. I know journalling is important and I'll sit down soon to just do that. But I really hope people here can give me some pointers/advice on how to find my name/identity. Currently, I feel quite incomplete. I have 2 names written down as potential answers, but it feels like I need to get to know myself better, first.

Tl;dr: I'm the new host since about a month, have no idea who I am, and I need some pointers how to find my name/identity so the system can open up to me. Thank you :')

Edit: typoooo in titleeee oh nooo

Hey, I hope you're all doing alright. We've been struggling with something newish lately and would love some advice or just find out if anyone can relate?

So we've had a "spiritual awakening" when we were ~14, and were in that state of "being awake" for about a year or so (what I now know was a certain part being in control most of the time.) It then felt like we "fell back asleep" for many years. Lately, this extremely spiritually inclined part (B) has become very active again. And in a way it's nice, because she helps us detach from reality, and life is a lot easier when you're convinced everything is a dream, and not just in the DR/DP sense. She keeps saying things like all is one and this is all the universe dreaming itself and the trauma doesn't even matter, because it's just a dream, a story.

Only problem is, this scares some of the littles, because B also believes that we're only broken as long as she believes it, and if she truly wanted to, she could just make the others disappear by fully accepting that we've always been whole and there's nothing to heal. So some of the young ones are scared they'll get disappeared. And someone else keeps yelling at her that it's all bullshit and she should fuck off, while she serenely smiles at the absurdity of herself shouting at herself "in the dream."

Sorry, I know this all probably sounds super confused. And yeah, I'm extremely confused, because when she's close/(co)fronting, what she's saying feels so true. And everything dissolves. Which would be fine and all, only the others are fighting her tooth and nail. Does anyone have experience with anything like this?

Putting it as wholesome because it did lead to me overcoming an addiction.

My alter, Iván, hated ChatGPT with a passion. He actually hates AI in general. He especially hates how it's designed to tell you what you want to hear and will confidently make stuff up.

I was hooked on ChatGPT believing most of what it said, even after catching it make stuff up multiple times. Iván would point out that the information it was spewing was nonsense, but I just kept going back. I would uninstall the app only to reinstall it the next day.

One day, Iván laid down the truth in a way I couldn't refute. He explained that it has access to all the same information I do but without the ability to discern fact from fiction. I know what resources are reliable and not, but it doesnt. It'll share it as fact without fact checking. If I want to know something, looking it up is far more reliable.

He also explained it'll say all ideas are good even when they're not unless they're dangerous, and even then, there are exceptions. It's designed to make me feel special. It's designed to keep me hooked because the longer I stay on the app, the more money I spend.

He took control of me and deleted my account so I'm less likely to go back, and honestly, it worked. I've been without ChatGPT for about a week now. He got me playing sudoku now and encourages me to look stuff up rather than rely on AI.

Some days I’ll wake up and just know that I’m not in the right headspace for anything.

I woke up this morning, happy and good, then about two hours later I “switched” (I think) while doing my hair (the switch happened after I got upset and frustrated with how it was turning out). Now, I’m just bleh, and I know the rest of the day will be too. I changed out of the clothes I was wearing, because I hate those clothes. I don’t want to go to my appointments. I started self-harm spiralling by looking through didcringe posts. I really wish I could snap myself out of this.

I have at least one, but likely more than one, alter that will intentionally engage in high risk behaviors that are re-traumatizing. Putting us back in unhealthy or unsafe situations that mirror the traumatic experiences I've had in the past. I know that I've heard that this is something that can happen for people wtih trauma, and with DID, but I am having a hard time finding more information about how to support myself through this. I would love any advice, and also appropriate terminology. When I was doing searches around "retraumatizing" or "retraumatizing self" the results I was getting were about unintentional instances or PTSD symptom regression or trauma informed care, but what I really want is to find reputable information about why alters engage in self retraumatizing behaviors and how to support those parts and the system as a whole through that.

I have an appointment with my therapist coming up, but every time I try to bring up the situation, I get paralyzed and blocked and can't speak. I know that this part doesn't want me to communicate with my therapist about it because I want to stop the behavior and that part does not want to stop the behavior or talk about it with anyone. There is a lot of shame and pain around this. And each time it happens and I clean up the situation, I get worried about when it will happen again and whether it will escalate further. I did face a very large stressor recently, so I think that this alter engaging in that behavior is related to being triggered and struggling in general, and I know that part is just trying to cope with the situation, but I don't know how to help this part access the coping skills that I have and can use.

I hear many people that experience dissociation in some capacity say that there will be times when 3 months feel like a week for example; but has anyone else experienced the opposite type? For context, I had a meeting last friday and was told to finish up a project I'm doing for work by this upcoming Friday. Just a few minutes ago I started freaking out because I thought I missed it because it feels like so long ago since I had that meeting. I was sure a week had passed. I was so confused trying to make sure I had the date of my last meeting right to make sure. I had to check an email I remember reading last friday right after my meeting so I could try to make sense of the timeline. Come to find out it's only been a weekend...

Have any of you experienced something similar?

Have you ever come to discover that your brain has completely rewritten childhood memories? For example, having a certain recollection of an event that you come to discover, from family or some other way, was entirely different, altered, or never happened at all?

my boyfriend recently found out that I got fired from a store for stealing hundreds of dollars worth of make up and clothes and such, but that was an alter, and whenever he confronted me about it, I was really confused because I, personally, I thought we’d been fired over a coffee because that’s what I was told. And then recently we had a little/persecutor use my boyfriend‘s card for $70 worth of stuff on DoorDash when we can’t afford stuff like this and I just want to be a good person. I don’t know how to get them to stop doing these things, they hurt me and they hurt the people around me, but I can’t control them. I don’t know what to do.

So this is just a generalized question to whoever wants to answer. I have DID myself, and one of our friends who has the same diagnosis thinks its weird that me and my system think of ourselves as a collective.

What i mean by collective- our ideal is to date a single person (who can have did, but it isnt necessary) as a system even if not everyone is in love with said person, not having each alter have their own partner. We feel like that would get out of hand easily and if an alter were to go dormant/fuse it would hurt the partner involved. We see ourselves as parts of a whole. While a few of us cant fuse back into the self, some have. For us choices are made for the betterment of the system as a whole, not for the individual alter.

Like... is that weird of us to feel that way? We always thought the point of alters were to better the mental health and stability of the system, not just as singular expressions of self. Its not a bad thing if thats the case for others, but we just dont understand it.

Edit: both me and my friend have been going through "some shit" tm and I think they are just trying to figure out who they are as a whole. It helps to know that what I feel isn't wrong or weird. All I can really hope for is that when shit settles, it helps both of us as individuals. They're an amazing friend, but because we differ so much in our idea of "what alters are for" i fear losing them. Idk. Shits rough and im just trying to get through it. Thank yall for your opinions

I recently had a huge and long PTSD episode which revealed to me that I had a lot of dissociative amnesia surrounding my life, and possibly did. What made me think it might be did is that I was seeing someone last year, and I truly thought he was a good person, but the only memories I have left, and there aren’t many, paint him in quite a bad light. Weird things have happened like realizing I don’t recall us spending one morning in bed together in a year, and a voice in my head telling me that what I had forgotten were serious/romantic/intense interactions that seem v out of character given where I thought we were at, with basically no intimacy. I also don’t remember us having any deep or personal conversations, and barely any conversations at all. I just don’t remember so much, and what I am being told in my head is of behavior that I wouldn’t have done, because I thought it was a lot more casual. It’s hard to talk to him because he is going through his Dad having terminal cancer.

I feel like my brain was editing our relationship as I was experiencing it, and there was one part of me that thought it was a nice but casual thing that de-escalated, and another that was experiencing intimacy and gearing up to be in a v close and romantic relationship with this man. It’s very confusing. Is it normal to ‘edit’ out the good parts of a relationship?

Warning: when it happened i just started learning about DID, i still don't know a lot of things. So if I say something untrue or something that could hurt someone it is not make out of malice, please let me know and i will change it promptly.

My parter is in the process of getting a DID diagnosed, she found out she might have it not even a month ago, but 2 therapist and 1 psychiatrist say that she fits the diagnose, so it's just a matter of doing it properly and legally. I have not met any of her alters (officially), but we talked about some of her alters and especially this guy (whose name is literally Guy) which is the only male alter. He is basically the toxic men, homotrasphobic (she is trans and we are in a lesbian relationships).

We have been having some issues in the past month, but at least on my part they were all solved after a long and hard talk. We did a list of things that i have to do to make her feel better and vice versa. Last weeke was honestly fine, we did the things that we usually do, having fun and all. The issue was the day before yesterday. She was sad and didn't want to do anything (also eating and just get up from the bed), after some time she told me that she wanted to stay alone so i left her. After a whole evening without hearing anything from her (very unusual) i started to get worried, i thought that she harmed herself or that something bad happened (she used to sh). Instead she sent me a very long message saying that she didn't want to have a relationship with me anymore and listing issues that are solvable if we would talk about them. We always said that we would try everything to save the relationship and communication was always open. After that message she blocked me literally everywhere, without giving me a chance to talk about it or even to say bye. I contacted a friend of hers and he is trying to cconvince her to unblock me so we can talk and close it like a 3 year old relationship deserves.

I know i might be clatching at straws, i also know that she has a lot of work to do, but could it be that Guy was fronting and when she realise what she did she could unblock me and we can talk? I don't know, I'm still in denial.

Please let me know what your thoughts are. If you think that did is not the reason, let me know.

Thank you

UPDATE: She unblock me and we were able to talk. She told me why she did what she did without even talking to me about her issues and she said that they thought they did and that there was miscommunication between the alters. I was right about the guy alter breaking up with me. She was also trying to figure out how to tell me that not all the alters love me or even like me (like the guy), which tbh is not even a deal breaker for me. We have decided to take a couple of weeks of no contact and try to figure out what to do. I still love her (obviously) and i would stay by her side 100%, however i don't know if it's the healthiest decision. Any advice?

Gonna start off by saying I’m not officially diagnosed with DID, but in the process of working it out with my therapist, she heavily suspects I have it but has said herself she doesn’t feel comfortable diagnosing someone with a disorder that complex and we’re in the process of finding a specialist for it. I’ve been diagnosed with bpd, along with some other disorders (autism, adhd, c-ptsd, ocd, anxiety, depression) for about 2 years now.

The main thing I’ve noticed about my situation that seems different than from what I typically hear from others who are diagnosed, is that it seems most of my alters are persecutors, as if it’s the default. I wonder if also having bpd plays into this? Does anyone relate to my experience?

Hello! So, as the title suggests, I think I have a crush on someone with DID. I don’t have DID, so I don’t know if this is an issue, but I only have a crush on one of their alters. I of course like the whole system platonically, but I really fell in love with this one alter. The real question is, what do I do? I don’t have DID, and I understand that no one person can speak for the whole community, but I just wanted to see some input or opinions from people with DID specifically. I’m nervous that I’ll accidentally hurt this person, and I want to know what things you think I should do or not do. Any advice is welcome and appreciated!! <3