How do you befriend someone with DID?
Like you befriend people without it:
- respect for their boundaries
- leading with empathy
- connecting based on common interests
We’re not that much different from other people.
Something that is unique to people with DID, though, is what you might consider saying but would be better off not — because saying anything from this list would do more than offending someone with DID.
I recognize patterns in behavior. Not sure if this is only because of autism or if it’s also related to childhood trauma. Probably both.
When someone displays even one behavior associated with people I find untrustworthy, my brain goes on high alert.
Doubting this instinct and ignoring it is always in vain.
This is my list, based on my experience. Other people with DID might have completely different things on their lists. Neither is more/less valid than the other.
“So you have multiple personalities?”
No.
Dissociative identity disorder is about distinct identities. Personalities have nothing to do with it.
Identity and personality are often used interchangeably, but they’re not interchangeable terms. They mean completely different things.
“Who am I talking to now?”
I don’t know?? Why does it matter/what is the importance??
Some alters do only chat to certain people when they’re present. Like, I have a friend I only chat with when that alter is present. When the alter isn’t present, I have little to no desire to speak to that friend.
I know it’s weird and probably doesn’t make sense, as someone who may be a friend of someone with DID. You might even want to be friends with all the alters in a system!
But having DID isn’t The Breakfast Club. You’re not in the headspace with us, forced to get along on a daily basis. You’re an option.
Not everyone is going to click with each other.
Asking someone with DID who is fronting at any given moment can be more dissociating.
It’s like when you’re reading a book or watching a movie and the fourth wall is broken. You’re reminded you’re reading or watching the story — that you’re not experiencing the story through mirror neurons.
“Who’s the real you?”
No one; also: me.
I have been asked this a few times, mainly by relatives with whom I’m now estranged.
Perhaps it stems from this concept of DID being that someone’s identity is “broken” up into parts. In reality, DID is the result of those parts not integrating into one.
Every child’s identity starts out in parts, you see.
“Aren’t you dangerous?”
I’m not any more dangerous than someone without DID.
“So you have an evil alter ego?”
No.
Hollywood created society’s perspective of “evil” alters.
From my experience, people are mistaking persecutor alters for evil alters.
“Is that like an angel and devil sitting on your shoulders?”
Uh, no.
It’s nothing like that.
“Everyone pretends to be someone else in different situations.”
Sure.
But people who have a “work personality” and the like have some awareness they’re not being themselves. They may even deal with cognitive dissonance over it.
Each identity often has a specific role, more so than differing personalities.
“DID is rare. You have to be faking it.”
Fewer people have “golden blood” than they have DID in the world.
DID isn’t the only dissociative disorder with alters, either. Other specified dissociative disorders (OSDD) include alters and maybe even fragmented ones.
I meet far fewer people with DID than I do with OSDD.
Also, it’s worth mentioning social media algorithms show you more of what you interact with, even if you hate it. So interacting with DID content is going to show you more of it.
That’s what creates a frequency illusion.
Learn how to prevent your biases from invalidating someone else’s reality. The dissociative brain already does that enough.
“But you don’t SEEM like a different person.”
From my experience, singlets often notice something is “off” or “not adding up” about someone with DID.
They can’t name it, though. DID never crosses their minds — not seriously, anyway.
They may say, “She’s so psycho,” or, “It’s like she has multiple personalities!” but not in the serious context they think they’re using.
Because ultimately, they don’t apply to words the literal meanings. So these terms are used passively.
Once they do have the terminology — like DID — they go on the offensive, finding reasons it can’t be that actual terminology.
I find singlets struggle to comprehend the distinctive identities within DID as much as they believe they’re capable. In my experience, few singlets have been able to fathom DID.
Even without all this psychoanalyzing there’s another problem: People tend to see other people the way they want other people to be, not as they are.
So when the curtain’s pulled and I share more intimately about who I am with someone who is used to perceiving the masked version of me in the light they wish I stood, they pathologize the unmasked version of me.
They perceive it as “wrong”.
All this to say:
How dare you? You don’t know me well enough to even realize. All this time, you’ve seen me as one identity and not multiple.
“You know you’re NOT multiple people, right?”
Yes, obviously.
People with DID don’t “believe” they’re “multiple people”.
Their brains operate as though they are multiple identities. Hence “dissociative identity disorder”.
Multiple personality disorder was renamed to DID in 1991 because the symptoms fit the rename better than the original term.
We don’t call autism “childhood schizophrenia” anymore — diagnoses change the more we understand them.
“Are you in therapy/seeking treatment?”
None of your business.
“Do you plan on fusing/integrating/becoming a whole person?”
Also none of your business.
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