Thank you for describing DID in a way that makes more sense to those of us who actually live with it. I know that this isn't the experience for all who are diagnosed, but mine was trauma induced. I look at my personality as a mirror, and the prolonged trauma I suffered fractured that mirror. My brain did what it had to do to help me survive the abuse. I don't see it as a mental illness. It was a survival skill. Now that those abusive situations and dangerous people are gone, it's like I have to re-train my brain to function in a more normative way. There are fractures there and much more work to do, but my amazing therapist and loving friends continually remind me that I'm worth that hard work.
@@talacocheta9001 Hi this is all knew to me . I have CPTSD , diagnosed with borderline . I have a nice dose of shame and regret. I have felt there s something missing in my life , that I haven't felt complete or whole. I feel like the panic is so strong . It's so hard to feel understood and not feel the shame . How do we heal this ? How do we feel grounded? I hope your well.
I appreciate your viewpoint of not a disorder, but survival skills that served you well when being traumatized. Now, those survival skills do not serve you well but you are learning healthier ways for your brain and the fractured parts to learn to work help you be your best you. I am trying to understand the healing process more. I commend you on your courage. So glad you have a wonderful therapist and support.❤
They say that people who know multiple languages have somewhat of personality variations associated with it. It usually doesn't cause harm to have that. Obviously you have certain ideas and a time frame, and situations related to a certain language (say you were born in a country but moved to other countries obviously you will have some parts of your identity that you formed during those times related to the language you used or had to learn at that time and whatever significant events that happened then). But since a lot of people know multiple languages and say 99.9% don't have DID, they have no problem seeing all of it as a part of then but we'll integrated. I have some issues with dissociation, coming from my PTSD. To me it's been very worth it to integrate the "post trauma" and "pre-trauma" into one person, I still have dissociative symptoms. But now I intellectually understand that I am the person before the trauma, also the person during the trauma, and the one coping after. Separating those things might be like a coping mechanisms we obviously don't want to have anything to do with emotional pain that just seems to stick around forever. But I know for my own sake that I have to do that, and not treat "new" me as something alien to myself. For my own mental health. I am now really far along the process of healing my PTSD it has been rly a lot of work and over a decade, but it's turning out better and better. It's been blood and tears too stitch myself back together. But it's worth it. Just thought I'd share my experience and also. There's always hope and you can always get much better. Be patient with yourself, your body couldn't survive a whole year with a big infection, but your mind no matter how broken you think it is now, has carried you along for years with a serious mental health issue, managed to keep you surviving and you can still recover from it. Just shows how powerful and resilient you really are. Our minds can cope with much more stuff than your body physically can and sometimes that's why we neglect mental issues. But nothing you invest in your personal growth and healing goes to waste it's always worth it
I have Been diagnosed with DID and all I know is this is an awful existence . Only a few close friends and family know about my diagnosis. I CAN'T relate to Most U tube content creators with it or the sensationalized side of this life I see displayed in shows etc.
That's why it sounds like popular DID youtube channels are grifting. They make DID seem fun and fantastic when my understanding of it is that it's actually almost constant anxiety and depression, thus the dissociation.
@Altoid Bazingá I think a lot of them are trying to educate people and spread awareness of their disorder to help stop stigma against it. Also I guess to show that the reality of living with the disorder is very different to how it’s often portrayed in media. I think it’s easy to say people are ‘glamorising’ their disorders etc by only showing certain parts of their experience but I also understand why the harder and more traumatic parts of their experience aren’t shown online - as these must be very vulnerable and personal moments to share. It’s hard to get the balance right I suppose but I think there are some channels out there doing a good job of it. All just my personal opinion obviously 👍
@Altoid Bazingá yeh I get that...I see that argument a lot to be honest. I personally don’t think just because you’re gaining money means you don’t care or can’t have good intentions though. For example: A councillor gets paid to do their job, doesn’t mean they don’t care about their patients and helping people with their mental health. I’m a home health carer and of course I get paid for the work I do but I definitely care for my clients and do my absolute best for them You’ve gotta think, there’s many mental health and DID channels out there that are really small and therefore cannot be monetised but still post content to educate etc. All the bigger channels started this way too...they just got more attention over time and got to the stage where the content can be monetised. I personally don’t think that invalidates the reasons why they started in the first place though. To have popular content that could be monetised and choose not to...seems a bit odd and martyr-like to me. If you can monetise your content why wouldn’t you? Especially the people who’s mental health issues stop them from being able to work a ‘normal’ job Again, just my opinions x
@Marie I think part of the problem is that what people show sticks in memory far more than what people say. So even if they say the truth of living with the disorder, because they are only showing the easier bits - that’s what sticks with people overall. I don’t know if you have mental health issues personally (and it’s none of my business) but they really can show you at your absolute worst. They can make a controlled person seem out of control, a clever person seem like their heads empty. I have DP/DRD, PTSD and GAD and I’m ok to share that information with people but the moments where I’m going through a flashback or an extreme anxiety episode...most my close friends and family have never seen that. It’s so vulnerable that it’s really hard to share. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to share it online and leave your symptoms open to criticism or people saying your faking etc. So I completely understand why they don’t show the worst aspects! It’s extremely private
@Marie I understand what you’re saying, I can completely see how it can come off as glamourising by only showing the easier aspects of a disorder. From my point of view I guess I don’t see that as glamourising...more like missing half the story out. Like if someone read you a book and missed every third page out, you may still get the overall idea and some relevant information but the detailed storyline would be missing...which could leave you with a very different view of the message that book was trying to convey. So I suppose from that point of view it could be seen as irresponsible because viewers may leave that video without the full story and therefore draw the wrong conclusions from the information shown I do believe these TH-camrs are in a difficult position though. If they showed themselves in the midst of a flashback, or mid panic attack or dissociating for hours at a time I believe they would get just as much criticism. Comments such as: ‘Stop making a display out of mental illness’ or ‘What good does this do other than to frighten people’ or ‘Stop faking symptoms, this is such an obvious act’ etc etc I really do believe they will get criticism either way. They either show too much or too little or the wrong way of showing something...they can’t win really. So I understand why they choose the route that protects themselves the most - showing the easier parts and just talking about the harder aspects of their disorder. I follow 8 different ‘DID channels’ (including the largest/most popular ones on TH-cam) and every one of them mentions and makes clear the reality of their disorder. Some do it on a more regular basis than others but they do all make it very clear that it is a very difficult and complex disorder to live with and would not wish it on anyone - it’s nothing to envy. However I do understand that if you are not a committed, constant viewer like I am and are only cherry picking occasional videos (which is the way most people watch TH-cam) then there are many videos where these facts aren’t mentioned at all. Which could definitely mean someone watching doesn’t grasp the full truth of living with this disorder and thinks it’s ‘all about alters’ which I agree...doesn’t help the stigma
I am a 74 year old female who was diagnosed as a multiple in the early 90s after a MVA. It was this trauma that uncovered abuse during my childhood by both parents and an aunt who became my legal guardian. I would be very interested in discussing my journey with MPD, its causes and effects and how I came to a place where my alters could communicate with each other safely. How I gained control of my life that had turned into a careening bus of children, all of whom wanted to drive. It was indeed a bumpy ride.
I was recently diagnosed with DID. While I suspected it for a long time, I always felt unsure as my symptoms didn't match the DSM completely in regards to amnesia. It's easy to forget that the DSM is very much a work in progress. It's a big dx to accept but it's also refreshing to let someone know what's been going on the past 18/26 years!
With DID, the relationships between personalities in regard to amnesia is a spectrum. There can be complete, partial, some can "look into" the memories of others as well as this being a dynamic thing - for example, you can have total amnesia with another personality and when healing occurs, the memories become gradually more shared. Best of everything.
@@johnsteele6696 The extent or degree of "co-consciousness" also depends a great deal on how far along one is in therapy. It also often depends on how experienced a therapist is in facilitating that which should be the ultimate goal of any treatment.
Does everyone with DID have a history of childhood trauma? Also, do you as the primary personality remember that trauma because isn't the whole point of alters to protect you from the trauma?
@@ladyk.3630 yeah. The whole point of did is that you have had repeated trauma and didn’t have healthy attachment to caregivers so you had nobody to turn to for help. The point is that the host isn’t supposed to know that they have it, let alone have any memory of the trauma, because the host is convinced that they wouldn’t survive if they knew.
I fought with the specialist when he diagnosed me because "I don't disappear". Yea, about that.... I use to see my sides as "moods", but moods don't talk to each other. :) It's not easy to understand to us (my system) I can't imagine being "normal" trying to comprehend it. Thanks for the video.
Do you find yourself having conversations with yourself from old songs? From like your childhood? Or have you ever had someone in your head but couldn't identify them?
I call mine aspects of self.. it helps integrate better rather than keeping them separate.. when I feel like I got it all down tho I get thrown a curve ball in life and it goes back to being all broken up.
I know this is an old video but thank you so much for this. I feel like the focus on DID right now is about the alters, when it should absolutely be on the trauma. I am, at heart, aware that I, and all of the alters, are constructs of an abused child's mind. It's uncomfortable, but true. Framing alters as developed mood states sort of changes how we view ourselves, but in a much more positive way, I think. Knowing that we were created for a real purpose makes me feel much better. Sorry if this is rambling, but thank you again.
This controversy has had a severe negative impact on my life (58 years). I wish science could get it together enough to actually help people in ways that actually help them. Probably won’t happen in my life time. I’ve been diagnosed with DID 2 separate times by 2 different therapists who aren’t specialists and didn’t have any monetary interest. I’ve also been told it’s not real, alters or parts or Identity states or whatever you want to call them, are imaginary playmates and to ignore them. I been told to make a system map and journal to get to know alters. I’ve been told to not let alters journal and that making a system map is counterproductive. My friends and family can’t understand or accept. They try to support, but honestly don’t know how. I often feel like a complete outcast. I also am diagnosed with ptsd, several anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder recurring. Those diagnoses aren’t controversial. I do have a history of childhood trauma, corroborated by family members, but the severity or repeated nature of the trauma is not really quantifiable. It has been incredibly painful having a controversial diagnosis. I wish the scientists who discuss and debate could know this. Get it together, make up your minds and help people!
I understand where you are coming from. I'm 49 and have been diagnosed with it 3 or 4 times. There are a lot of really stupid therapists out there. I told one therapist how a psychiatrist diagnosed me with it. She got really embarrassed and said I hope you don't think I think you have that! But then as time rolled on she said I was dissociating and there were definite shifts and my demeanor would change. My last therapist would only say I had a dissociative disorder. She was throwing around the lingo like switching, protector, system and even once asked if I could "summon" a part to the front. I was thinking what in the hell are you talking about? It really messes with your mind and is harmful. All I can agree on is I have suffered because of bad mental health and I can't help but to think these therapists are to blame!
Crazy to hear that some clinicians give more praise and attention to people who present symptoms of DID. When I tried to find help for my DID, many therapists refused to listen to my experience, and my psychiatrist literally insulted my other parts. I’m sure some therapists do give extra praise and attention to these symptoms, but in my experiences clinicians have treated me with anything from apathy to hostility.
Wow, this was so well done, thank you. I was wrongly diagnosed with DID 25 years ago, when what I actually should have been diagnosed with was CPTSD. Of course, that diagnosis was not yet recognized. I had a childhood history of extreme abuse, and did dissociate for much of my life, but the diagnosis of DID was by only one therapist who turned out to be abusive himself. I cannot thank you enough for this video. I just subscribed to your channel.
Wow, thank YOU Dr. Grande. I have already told several friends about your channel. So refreshing to find accurate information, delivered with compassion.
I was self diagnosing myself with DID because of my severe dissociative amnesia from my childhood. I also have CPTSD as a result of toxic family system.
@@janmclain6301 may I ask how dissociating feel like? I myself don’t know if I got DID got some hints from the things that can cause it but not 100% accurate. I’m going to a therapist in some weeks and want to share ideas what’s different about me. If u read this after 2 to 3 years thank u!
Dear Dr. G a perfect taupe shirt for a difficult topic. It is obvious that you have really devoted yourself to leaving noting to chance. Your research coupled with you ability to explain clearly simply the very difficult is one of the great benefits of your presentations. Thank-you for the clear analysis of what could easily be a very confusing topic. Superbly well done.
I was in complete denial... Until an alter shared what created them- sort of. The memory is incomplete on my end. Still unnerving and upsetting even incomplete - but it did link back to what I recalled from the time. 'Waking up' in a yard, confused and dissociated. But the denial isnt fully gone. DID is so limited information-wise... But what else explains this? Amnesia, 'waking up' despite being like at work a lot and in motion so there is no way I was literally asleep. The personality shifts I have been told of.... Idk. I know the DID youtubers are completely out of bounds. For me, DID is truama-based and parentals are not trusted. (Can never recall the technically term) and while the general idea is the same, they are exaggerated by the TH-camrs of DID. My "personalities" are vaguely me still. Some are optimistic, pessimistic and rationally in between. The amnesia seems to be more fluid however. The "alters" are simply mood states that have been used multiple times and have created a little pocket of expierences themselves now. But when consciousness switches back to the 'normal programming' i cant recall any of it. Kind of like being black out drunk. Your consciousness is not linked so the memories are not there. Idk. My take on it? I really enjoyed the video thank you!
Thank you so much for this very interesting video. I can listen for hours to you Dr. Grande. The way you educate about mental health problems is superb!!?
"We really don't know the truth...we have a lot of evidence that points in different directions." Thank you for admitting that...I respect you for having said that.
I like your conclusion of DID as more of a mood state rather than different personality. I think we see more mood state (DID) clients due to trauma/stress than what I feel are more extreme circumstances were there are separate personalities.
I have severe DID, it was caused by my father, as a very young child I had to disconnect from my emotions to endure very hard situations. I was so practiced at doing this, that as an adult if I’m situation where the emotions are hard/uncomfortable I can disconnect from my emotions…. I can walk away from someone I deeply love and never think of them again…. of course now I’m very aware each time I disconnect from my emotions not wanting to feel them…. My pattern is so ingrained I have to practice on feeling uncomfortable emotions believe me it’s not fun…. but as least I’m aware of what I’m doing
That's not DID? Dissociating isn't something done by choice, it's not disconnection from emotions it's complete loss of self, amnesia, loss of time, location, literally losing your sense of identity when another alter takes over. You don't "practice" this, it happens automatically. Walking away from someone you love or from your feelings because you don't want to feel them is not DID. That's devaluation or avoidance, or splitting. I love when people claim DID and have no clue what it actually is.
I know this video is from a little under 3 years ago, but even now it is helping people understand DID, whether they have it or not. I am not diagnosed, because getting diagnosed not only doesnt matter but is incredibly difficult for a lot of people with the stigma surrounding it as well as the believability... As someone who is learning, and experiencing, and suffering on a daily basis... It is so absolutely refreshing to hear someone expressing the FACTS and INFORMATION in a very direct and unbiased way. Thank you for that.
I'm right there with ya. I didn't accept that I had it or that it should be taken seriously because some of the 1st videos about it I watched consisted of some young eccentric girls who seem to be focused on talking about and recording themselves and their switches more than anything else. I even spoke to them through the comments section and they were soo bizarre even in they're speaking that it upset me and reaffirmed my initial beliefs that I was just trying to find excuses for my own behavior and mental issues which was a mistake and led to me distrusting and breaking up the girl who showed me I had DID in the first place. Fortunately I did eventually look into it more and found some others with the disorder and Drs who were more objective with the subject. When I finally accepted I had DID it was a life change for the better. Getting diagnosed seemed useless considering there isn't a medication or solution. There is value in lifestyle changes, learning more about it and how to rehab yourself psyche. Looking back, I shouldn't have just made ignorant assumptions based on a few teenage girls selfy videos. It only hurts me and made me feel stupid in the long run. So, if anyone sees a comment from me saying that "some people seem to dramatize the condition, well that is why I said it. Good luck Misha. I'm also very grateful we have the resources to educate ourselves and others and I intend to not be ashamed to death.
I really enjoyed this video. I have DID and not afraid to watch a video that shows all sides. I was asked by my GP to go to a therapist. I presented with agoraphobia bc I suffered from severe panic attacks for so long. Anxiety was an everyday all day problem. Also was in a state of Major depression, eating disorder, social anxiety and a fear...TREMENDOUS fear of being poisoned. I had no words, no vocabulary to even begin to tell my new therapist what was going on. I did not know what a therapist did. I had to take the MMPI test. Many questions related to my past. I simply had no answer, which didn't cause me even to question why I couldn't answer these questions. I began therapy once a week. But bc of my deteriation mentally, it turned into twice a week. I do remember telling my therapist that I was hearing a child and sometimes felt like a child...he had an explanation but it was not DID. I could not even look at his face in therapy, especially into his eyes. So, NO pre-existing knowledge of MPD. I was referred to a Psychiatrist for medications. So, many only made me sick...but I also feared medication and now wonder if those were just symptoms of extreme anxiety. Two years into medication-therapy time with the pyschiatrist outvof the blue he said "you have multiple personality disorder...read these books" which he wrote on a prescription pad 'Eve' & 'Sybil'. I was in complete shock. I drove home, which at that time was a 4 hour drive, crying and trying to think where this would come from. At home I called my therapist crying snd in a panic, relaying my experience. He kinda mumbled " I thought of BPD". This was 1991..it wasn't a fashion statement to say you had it...kinda like it is now. (Maybe that's not fair to those who are truly suffering from this). Because my Psychiatrist was such a well respected Psychiatrist and lecturer, my therapist took the diagnosis seriously. (But I didnt know that) He said he'd make a 2 hour appointment to talk this whole thing out. About 4 days later I had an appointment with him. Between that time I began to read EVE...damn that scared the hell out of me.I went to my 2 hour appointment. He didn't tell me what DID was, he simply said how we were going to work together on this....the first hour and half was helping me ti quit hyperventilating lol. Anyway, he started with having me start a journal. Ooooh boy, it didnt take long before my journal a 'person' in it, then another...and I could hear them talking introducing themselves to each other...this went on and on, as U grieved as though I had been told I had cancer. So, here I am, 30 years later, with a huge vocabulary, telling you without a doubt it is trauma that causes it. As I began to get memories I was sicked and horrified. As it turns out. In my life home was not safe and either was the world. This dynamic seemed to go all the way up to the last place I remembered when I entered therapy, 18 years old...hummmm. Love to hear from you...hear your thoughts on my (edited for time) story. Lynn B
Oh. I can't speak for those people but that certainly explains why it took almost 3 years for my therapist to ask if I thought it might explain the hundreds of things I thought were weird, inconvenient, definitely dissociative, occasionally dangerous and sometimes had no recall of. It really does, although I suspect it's more OSDD1 for me. She told me specifically not to read books like sybil or eve and not to watch movies or tv shows about it if I want to learn what it actually is. Stick to the educational information was that she said. The selling point for me was that most people that have dissociative states don't have explicit recall of only things that happened in past dissociative states. Like, specific versions of dissociative kaleidoscope remembers things that happened when previously in that specific dissociative state clearly, but has very poor recall of anything that happened when not in that dissociative state. It's a bit like running your computer from an external hard drive and then unplugging it, and then plugging that same hard drive back in later.
I liked this SIMPLY because you care about your process and know that it's about developmental trauma but I'm also with what another poster here said about thinking a little bit about the problems with this DX, systemically
It was scary for me at first, too. I don't think that it is possible for some one to understand what this is like unless they have experienced it. It is very real and I think that people who don't have the condition should take their que from people who do. It is not some abstract inner child. Before I learned how control my condition, an actual child would high jack my body, throw temper tantrums, binge on sugar and sing along with cartoons. It is more peaceful and enjoyable these days, but it is not so abstract for me. They all have names and preferences that are detailed and distinct from mine. I share a body with a three year old girl who likes pink fuzzy socks and a conservative middle aged make personality that hates pink and has a strong need for male dignity. It is very real.
@Common Sense Isn't Common I wasn't allowed to see mental health professionals, growing up. I was kept isolated by my parents to hide the abuse. I figured out what was happening to me on my own. A psychiatrist confirmed this diagnosis, but I hadn't read any books on the subject. I grew up with out a tv and didn't see any movies on the subject. I was in denial. At first I didn't want to believe that I could have this, because I thought that meant that I was deeply flawed. It turns out that I have this condition because I needed go develop it to survive chronic physical abuse that I couldn't escaped.
Thank you for your honest video. I am a psych student and I'm writing about this disorder for one of my classes. I've experienced all kinds of trauma and dissociation was the exit from reality. I remember consciously telling myself as a kid, "I am not here" over and over again. My brain got the message. I began floating through my world only being jolted back to reality when there was emotional and physical pain. I had to find the best part of myself that could successfully adapt and handle my circumstances. I still struggle to connect with my surroundings. I try to ground myself but sometimes it feels as though there is a part of me pulling me away or blocking me from reality.
I am a systems analyst, programmer, etc.. I was recently diagnoses with DID. I really really appreciate your analysis of the literature, and looking for plausible explanations. I think the need to perceive things as a spectrum is important (not everyone present same symptoms, based on similar traumatic events). In my case., the experiences i had completely pre-date any conception of having DID. Even when i saw DID in the media, i did not associate myself with it. So Therea re experiences in place, that i look at ,that i cannot say were influenced by a practitioner or therapist, or social media. My alters presented themselves to me, before i had any understanding of what DID was. All my research occurred “AFTER” the alters approached me. And my first experience of Alters talking to me, was at 16… some 30 years ago. I don’t think absolute amnesia is required for DID.. many people with DID reporting internal communication between Alters. I think partial amnesia is more reasonable. You as a individual (discrete human) have partial amensia of your experience of reality with regard to all other humans that know you.. SOme have shared experiences, others have independence of experience (thoughts, memory storage, memory recall). The psychosomatic aspects that occur when some alters forward is… impossible for me to fake (I’m on autism spectrum, me faking anything is soooooo obvious and exgerated, I’m a terrible actor). I also have aphantaisa (can’t visualize to save my life). So when i have internal conversations with other alters, it really really really does not feel like myself as I understand it. My alters have names that … god., i would never choose that.. and personalities.. yeah.. not to my taste or style. I think the psychosomatic aspects that surface with regard to some trauma holder alters is what is the lynch pin for me.. the non-linearity of it (they come forward, I can’t think or process normal things, they go., I’m 150 IQ again). There is something going on that is not a deliberate construct. Maybe some aspects of the definition and delineation of what DID is (given i think its a spectrum) might not be right, but in my instance i do not see this as a construct influenced by social contagion/rewards… … In my case, I’m also transgender / non-binary / gender fluid.. and the whole transitioning started for me by (in reflection), one of my alters demand i start wearing skirts, and then taking hormones. I really couldn’t understand it… but as i don’t care what gender i am, i just went with it. - Trauma??? 1 month premature, around a month in a humidicrib around 1976… 24/7 lighting in the hostpial, no human contact, and frequent cuts to sole of feet for blood sample.. plus my entire childhood schooling K to Year 12 with severe social rejection. Trauama seems to b ea thing.
Omgosh! Smh What you shared about this disorder being over dramatized on TV. SO TRUE!!! I mean, it’s so much more basic than people portray in entertainment. And that does make it more difficult for those with DID & their families/friends. I have DID. It took awhile to diagnose it. I had a rough journey & still do at times. I was so very afraid of telling professionals about the man who lived in my head & sometimes overtook me. I knew they’d lock me up forever! When I FINALLY shared this with my psychiatrist he told me it was psychosis & I believed him. Why shouldn’t I trust the professional? He didn’t believe Multiple Personality Disorder (as it was called at that time) was real. He made it clear to me that people do that for attention. I certainly wanted no attention. He put me on antipsychotic medication & for 6 months I got much worse. I can’t express the pain & difficulty in having this disorder. I honestly believe it will remain a controversial discussion until more is understood regarding memory & neurology. Science will catch up, I believe. Organ transplants are teaching us so much about memory. Who knew memory was cellular?! After years of getting nowhere with my symptoms, I started researching on my own. Everything I read & studied brought me to this concept called dissociation which I never heard of. I remember distinctly reading the different dissociative diagnoses & DID being the farthest on the spectrum & said, ‘Thank God I don’t have that!’ Little did I know. . . Things got pretty bad. I could find no therapist that knew how to treat the disorder. I was looking in a college psychology book on my shelf one day & found the 1 & 1/2 pages dedicated to dissociative disorders. I found a spectrum chart & took down the name of the person who made it. Dr. Colin Ross made this & I tracked down his email. He was/is very kind. He sent me information (nothing he has written, which impressed me). The symptoms were fitting. Dr. Ross has worked with me multiple times & I got much better after working through his trauma recovery program. It’s not for the faint of heart. It does take courage to heal. Now, one of the best articles I’ve read by Dr. Ross was about FMS (False Memory Syndrome). It just changed my life as he explains memory & recall. It truly helped me to sort some things out. Having this disorder keeps one riddled with debate. The nature of dissociation being akin to daydreaming & fantasy is really a battle. Think about it. What is fact about my childhood trauma? What is created by my mind about my childhood trauma? Here we see complete opposites at work. But isn’t this the very idea of dissociation? To keep a part of the self believing nothing bad happened while another part needs resolution? It took a long time to really agree with my diagnosis of DID. It was painful. I felt very lost & worried I wouldn’t survive. Now, I had no problem with things being suggested to me by others. I WAS A VICTIM (IN WAYS) TO MY OWN VERY CREATIVE MIND & IT’S SUGGESTIONS. Like I said, there’s a battle between fact & fantasy. I came to the conclusion that what I needed wasn’t by way of recalling & validating traumatic memories. Memory isn’t reliable. That’s not my opinion. Repeated studies show it isn’t. This is why I’m criminal cases eye witnesses are not seen as reliable as they once were. My focus shifted to ‘what are my symptoms & what relief can I find for them?’ My memories as a 4 year old are likely not ‘exact’ as my adult memory has filled in the blanks. The knowledge of a young child is vastly different from that of an adult. Also, I know I was often drugged with LSD. Those memories certainly cannot be trusted. Other traumatic memories have been validated by others so I did experience really bad trauma. My own mother told me how she smothered me as an infant & brought me back to life several times. Bad things happened. I don’t need the details. I simply need closure & resolution to lies I believe about myself & the world & life. THAT is what I look at as I continue healing. CBT helped tremendously. Dr. Ross’ program helped me with the following ‘classes’: CBT DBT How to grieve How to communicate healthily Triggers are our friends Physiology/biology & trauma response Feel your feelings & stay safe I’m sure to many some of that Sounds familiar while others seem odd. I have worked very hard. There are no meds for DID. To integrate takes hard work. I once had 30+ alters & fragments. I only had 3 alters (very distinct, separate personalities) & the rest were smaller fragments usually connected to the alters. I now have 2 alters & 1 fragment. The other alter & fragments have all joined those remaining. I still work with them. We have cooperation. Life is much better! I have always had co-consciousness. Yes, I have amnesia & I am very forgetful. I do believe that amnesia when an alter comes out is known by the rest of the mind on some level. And it was nice to hear that you touched on that. I know this is long but I hope someone benefits from it. I appreciate the information you presented here.
Thank you for this video! I have seen lots of discussion online about this topic but never from a professional view. It’s refreshing to see something backed up with studies and proof even if there is no super clear conclusion from them.
I was raised believing that there was something inherently bad about showing signs of this disorder. I remembered crying so often as a child because I couldn't figure out what happened to me and why I didn't feel the same. I remembered things before a certain age as if they were in a book instead of their memory. None of it made sense for decades. I'm trying to unpack it all and avoided it for years. Understanding my broken as not just some dark sea that has been swallowing me my whole life, but as a cloud that protected me from the thing that happened has been mind blowing.
I relate to that so much! My parents both told me at different times in my life that they felt that they’d gotten a different kid or asked me why I changed. Because of the amnesia I didn’t know why, but saying I was heartbroken to hear things like that would be a massive understatement, because all I wanted to do was go back to being a toddler when my parents knew how to love me. As an adult it’s tough because I still often feel as if I was literally never a young child. Even though I can recall things from childhood, I feel as if I sprang into existence at age twelve and everything before that is stuff that happened to a little kid I know. Very strange. And yeah, finding out about DID has induced incredible anxiety but also been freeing in other ways. It’s a wild world out here lol
Yea in my case it's an unspecified dissociative disorder. States become altered under stress. Negative or traumatic events and emotions bring out the switch.
I know you are right on and I hope they or yourself is being treated for it and how to cope. My theory is that we need to learn a coping mechanism that the brain we reteach or should i say relearn so a person won't go automatically switch or black out and etc. People that has been under mind control has this and the people doing it to them know it usually because they do it to small children and their brains learn or does this automatically to cope with the trauma. Therfore, they will have it from early childhood. Yes other can get it at any age.
Thank you very, very much for your pursuit of accuracy when diagnosing someone with DID. It is a very complicated and misunderstood condition because there are so many variables that present in individuals and even exist in research which lead to misinterpretation. I'm very glad depersonalization and derealization exist as branches of dissociative disorders. And I am in complete agreement that childhood trauma is what kick-starts the need to protect oneself so he/she can continue to function in the real world with some sense of authenticity. I'm not a clinician; I'm a patient, and probably will be one the rest of my life. I've been misdiagnosed with DID. I don't have alters and never have. My depersonalization was very real and active when I was younger, not so much anymore. However, in extremely stressful situations, that removal from reality draws me to it, again as a source of protecting myself from the threat of harm that arises internally. I'm in my late 60s and after 11 years of professional counseling, which went from PTSD to DID, I have a fairly good grasp of what's going on. It took me many, many years to accept the fact that this condition very well may have saved my life and is something I should embrace with gratitude. I do now, and I see it as a blessing. Thank you, too, for all the fine videos you post. You communicate so well these issues that are hard to understand without someone as articulate as you addressing them.
Thank you Dr Grande you've explained it so well. I am learning more of why I act the way I do and always thought the cause was childhood trauma, like when someone stomps on a beautiful flower that's just growing and never got the chance to blossom to it's full potential that's the way I feel.
I want to highlight the area in your argument with the greatest potential for further understanding to help resolve the matter... What symptoms exactly would a practitioner see that would point to DID? Because when a client's presentation is all you have to go on, then you would need to know the indicators. I propose that many practitioners don't know what to look for, or what kind of questions to ask in order to 'see' DID in clients. And furthermore, speaking from experience, they are likely to be 'seeing' mostly one main presenting alter who would look like a fairly cohesive person. I suggest that much more training or insight would be needed to enable professionals to notice possible signs of DID and to then ask appropriate questions which aren't suggestive. Not so long ago I talked with an intern psychologist that I was seeing about this because I understand myself as DID but don't have a formal diagnosis. She said that it's rare and obvious. I propose that it's not so rare and very not obvious. The goal of some (at least) DID systems is to create the impression of a normal functioning person - to "look okay" on the outside. I first started getting treatment for major depression and ED-NOS. Now also have diagnosis of ADHD.
I have a friend with DID. I don't know how the details work, and it's not unlikely that it may be different for different people. I do know that it's tough, and that it's also hard for the people around to understand. The closest thing in my experience is dementia, where there are things (memories and skills etc) in the individual that are not always accessible to him or her, but they can become accessible. Something that is also apparent in my limited experience is a constant underlying stress.
Loss of skills has been a theme in my life. At one point I was an amazing cake artist. Out of the blue I would make a cake that looked like grade school level work. I never could understand. Felt like such. a failure.
Nancy McWilliams describes personalities in her book about psychoanalytic diagnostics and includes "dissociative personality" as a personality with dissociation as a primal defense mechanism. I would like to see DID as a diagnosis gone, and replaced with dissociative personality disorder in various degrees of severity just like any other personality/-disorder. I myself suffer from some kind of dissociative problems and been wrongly diagnosed so many times and had my already weak sense of self totally crushed in the process. I am nothing but a body and confused mind in the now, with slight awareness of a past that might have been difficult... Who knows might just all be in my head lol
Good Afternoon, Dr. Grande. I really appreciated this excerpt and the quantitative and qualitative distinctions. As I listened to your presentation today, I must tell you I am the ideal case study. As a layman, I have invested approximately 25 years "writing the answers down" for the questions that could and would be unfolding in present day as clinicians start to build a "construct" for treatment. The questions you have formulated around the construct are all on point. You have 90 percent of the puzzle pieces. And those pieces are all still separate in your puzzle box over there on the clinician side. If you could have access to a clinical case study and be able to break ground, this is the key that opens the door, so that the puzzle pieces can be put together.
Your dedication to correct information and easy to follow summaries is amazing. I'm certain many followers would love for you to expand on the topic of DID - without mentioning controversy yet again. Maybe theories about; how splitting occurs, how can you lower the barriers of amnesia? Why do child alters not age properly? How do you handle competing beliefs between alters? Do comorbitities such as bipolar affect every alter? How do you work towards fusing alters into a single identity when each identity has different memories/personality/brain function? Can fusion actually happen? I'm losing faith fusion actually exists. Would appreciate. Thank you.
I have a very close friend with DID, and have come to know others with DID through the internet. I think in most cases there is clear evidence of DID in the person's life prior to the start of therapy, such as lost time, "coming to" in foreign places, an apparently very poor memory, unexplained possessions, different handwriting, and so on. It would be nice to see a research paper that attempts to quantify how often such evidence was apparent prior to therapy, as that would help to disprove the iatrogenic model as a major cause of DID.
i think the issue is that coming to in a different place just indicates dissociation and doesn't necessarily show much in regard to the distinct personalities
Yes exactly! I had symptoms dating back to age four, and far from being pushed towards a DID diagnosis, my experiences were often ignored or dismissed by clinicians. It’s very frustrating when people assume that DID is always inspired by therapists. I’d love to see more research done on this stuff, because it is ABSOLUTELY real. It might sound arrogant, but it seems to me that the people who say it’s a sort of social contagion just aren’t looking hard enough or are letting preconceived notions or peer pressure interfere.
Thank you for this video! I think my husband could have it, but I do not want to jump to conclusions, and I don't want him to start thinking he has it until these speculations are clarified with a psychiatrist, as it could do a lot of damage to self-diagnose such a difficult illness.
I know someone with this, neither of us recognized it for over 20 years, until he had to go to therapy. It explains so much. The "lost" keys, wallet. The change in where they slept. Sometimes nice, sometimes really mean. A woman affect occasionally. Forgetting conversations.
In my opinion some of the disagreements or belief or not is more harmful to people with different conditions. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I personally prefer to help others rather than not. Hope this makes sense. Thanks Dr. Grande.
Another great video as usual. If there has been any research done on rates of suicidal idealization and attempts among the different personality disorders, I think that would make for a great video.
Thank you so very, very much for your video! I am so glad that it was in my recommended section. Listening to your thoughts about this, has really helped me with what I am going through, it has helped me feel less alone. I have a good psychiatrist, I am diagnosed with very severe and complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I also have BPD, and some other diagnoses. I have these symptoms that I don't really understand, that I am a passenger to myself, but it isn't like a distinct personality, but a fragment of sorts, that happens when I am stressed, scared. When I ask him about it, he will share with me that it is a kind of dissociation, that he thinks might be a result of the traumas I've been through in my past. But interestingly dissociative symptoms like these he won't diagnose, and I soon realized other doctors are hesitant too. Your video explained and cleared up so much for me. I really appreciate that you made this. All the best to you.
My therapist has recently started teaching me grounding techniques in the belief that I am "dissociating". I went along with it, because she didn't really define what she meant by that term. I'm here trying to learn more about dissociation. The more I hear about it the more skeptical I get. First off, I have no trauma history that I'm aware of. I do avoid confrontation, I have been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder w/ depression in the past, but this dissociation thing. . . . I don't believe that I have any of the amnesia symptoms, nor have I ever blacked out or such. Wife and I watched a couple of different TH-cam's on the subject and just sort of wondered how my therapist came up with this. . . . Therapist has been trained in EMDR and that seems to be an interest area of hers. Seems to me that it's more of the situation where "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? How do you convince someone you're *not* dissociating?
James Schmitt Dissociation is on a spectrum and saying you “dissociate” during a session doesn’t mean the therapist is saying you have DID or are having amnesic episodes. There is depersonalization, derealization, or tendencies to zone when triggered in a session, etc. There are different meanings when using this term. If you go to the ISSTD website, they explain the different types and terms. Everyone has a normal level of dissociation and everyone dissociates, but it does have different meanings when used in psychology.
Everybody dissociates sometimes. That feeling when you have a walk and suddenly end up at you door? Or when you go to the kitchen and forget why you came? That's normal. Now, one can dissociate to a pathological level. As an adult child of an alcoholic I used to dissociate from my own emotions to stop feeling them. I still dissociate from my memories, I remember some of my memories as if they were a story I heard, like they belong to someone else. I have no emotional connection with them. But there is no distinct personality they would belong to, because I just dissociate, I do not have DID.
@@aeonarin I don't know if everyone dissociates. I've never had a walk and then just been at the door. The only thing similar I can think of is if I'm really drunk at night and then in the morning don't remember the journey home. I do forget why I walked into a room sometimes but isn't that just forgetting a plan? I still am conscious the whole time.
Had a girlfriend diagnosed with it 30 years ago but never had a really good explanation for it. I suspected something like "simulation" but I am not a psychologist. I thought this was a way for her to disown behavior that she didn't want to acknowledge. TY ♥
I have this condition. I don't think that it was caused by therapy. I was kept isolated from mental health professionals to keep the abuse hidden. My family didn't want me anymore, once they found out that I was this different. It wouldn't have been socially advantageous for me say that I have this condition. My brother told me to go away. My father told me that my brother didn't want to be around me because I was, "so bazaar" . My mother laughed at me, told me that she was afraid of me. She wouldn't stay in the same room with me after that. If I hugged her, she wouldn't hug me back. My parents are the cause of my condition. They did this to me and now they don't want me anymore. I have found, if I am particularly distressed, I can ask another identity to take over for me or at least assist me. What was done to me that made me this way was a tragedy. The fact that I am this was isn't. My alters provide me with a lot of the Things that I went with out, while I was growing up. I can spend long periods of time alone with out feeling lonely and I always feel loved, now. My parents can't take that from me anymore. I can tell that at least three of my 13 personalities were caused by my dad. Two are terrified of him and one absolutely hates him. I can tell that at least one of them is caused by my mother. There is very little that hasn't been done to me or in front of me. Sometimes I have complete amnesia with knowing about it and a friend will tell me about encounters that I don't remember. She said that I turned into another person, but I am told that they aside from not being me, that they act reasonably. I stay myself most of the time, now, but I can trust them to take care of my life, while I am not myself. Once I let them know which actions hurt me and I need to do to protect myself, they have been committed to that goal. All the alternate identities that I share this body with are here for a reason and I wouldn't get rid of or change any of them. Each one is precious and beautiful to me.
Good video. I've thought my mother had PTSD because of my father. This kind of solidifies that idea. She would block out/dissociate from actual occurrences and had absolutely no recall.
We got diagnosed with did this year, after 11 years of psychotherapy that never really seemed to adress the core of the Problem. After only one year of working with it as if it was real, we're no longer suicidal every day and got a lot better overall. At this point I really don't care about objective truth, I'm just grateful we got a diagnosis that finally helped us to move forward
I absolutely love the way you ended this video. What you said about mood states is ultimately how I've felt about DID for a long time. It's almost more like the reccuring altered moods are shattered aspects of personality instead of entire different personalities.
I have a friend that is being treated for DID. I have absolutely no doubt she is truly suffering from this disorder. I have noticed two very distinct "mood states, " not at all like normal changes of moods. Both were somewhat childlike but very different. I have myself suffered from severe trauma and felt Derealization and Depersonalizaton but after several traumatic abuse as teen and adult. She has horrific memories of childhood abuse. She is in therapy with DID specialist now for 1 year. She has identified like 30 distinct alters, some internal as she says, do not show outwardly.She is in so much emotional pain and so fragile due to the awful memories. I cannot even imagine trying to deal with that many. It just seems she is going through hell. But, after numerous serious suicide attempts as young adult she has not made any attempts in past 3 years. Must be progressing. I just try to be supportive, all I know to do. I am having to learn to express boundaries in a constructive way ( I do not have the best recognition of proper boundaries, hence years of abuse) Sometimes I feel just drained seeing her struggle. Anyone with DID have suggestions?
Though I didn't know what was going on, as a child, adolescent and then an adult, I knew there was something different and learned not to tell about it because I instinctively knew it wasn't good to share it. I had to pretend I remembered things I didn't. I became very good at this. It was horrifying when someone I didn't know would come up to me and know things about me INTIMATE AND PRIVATE that I would never tell. There are no words for what impact this had on me. No clinician EVER convinced me. Although silly and overly dramatic, when I saw a movie depicting this, I both became terribly agitated but relieved because I finally understood. I didn't tell. It took a long time to finally tell a clinician. My experience is that over seeing different clinicians, some believed and actually helped. The most destructive were the ones that didn't believe me. I learned to lie which was hard to do. I don't like to lie. Call in "sick" to work or to professors made me feel dirty, but it was necessary. I couldn't look myself in the eyes in a mirror. Too often I didn't recognize myself. I don't like anyone knowing. It's difficult enough without the added feeling of being under a microscope or the fascination of others. I want to be normal, but after over 30 years of clinicians, I know there is no true treatment except anti depressants and help sleeping. I write this now in a public forum in the hope that some understanding of this by others may convince them of the reality of DID so no one like me suffers additionally from denial from the mental health workers. It's not fun. It's painful and the suicidal ideation is exhausting to keep at bay. May others know malingering damages the integrity of myself and others like me. I hope someday there will be a successful treatment found. Most of us hide in the shadows with it.
I knew someone that had localized amnesia dissociation. She dissociated at age 4 and that went on for over 3 decades. Physically she was present but her mind was absent. That is a weird state of mind to be in. She was and wasn't there at the same time. Her emotions, logic, perception, reasoning, and basically her entire thought process was absent. They were locked away within herself. That crossed over into relationships, school, work, or anything she wanted to do. It was quite distressing being in that state of mind too. I didn't know what it was that was holding her back from excelling. She didn't know who she was. She knew her name, age, and family members, some of her autobiographical information too. She knew these things before she dissociated. This occurred over a trauma, not of physical abuse, however, one of mental abuse by her older sisters. From all I've read and studied, I'm not diagnosing anyone, but I have a strong belief that her sisters are narcissists and meet all of the narcissistic criteria I've studied and read over the years. She came out of this state of mind all by herself. She did see a professional over this and he explained to her that she dissociated after hearing her say she left when she was 4 and came back after a very long time. He did let her know that emotions are a big part of being dissociated. She is a normal person today. She has arrived and knows who she is. She did write a book over her experience with this dreadful mental disability. I'd really like to see a segment on localized amnesia dissociation. She had to remember the trauma her sisters brought to her when she was only 4. They are awful too. In every sense of that word.
Really informative video , thank you! My sister recently got diagnosed with DID and started therapy. I can tell for sure that our family environment was highly dysfunctional and threatening, we were both emotionally neglected and our father's rage outbreaks towards everyone were traumatic. We were never allowed to express what we were feeling , we were taught to feel guilt for our emotions. Our parents would never spend time with us, we felt more like objects than children. I don't know what I feel for my parents now. Maybe genetic factors interacting with the dysfunctionality of early family environment cause DID. Can DID be fully cured through therapy? Thank you.
hi there! mental illnesses, especially chronic conditions like diagnosed disorders (adhd, ocd, mdd, gad, etc) are not typically things that are “cured,” the same way that you wouldn’t say you’ve been cured of say, asthma or crohn’s disease. you can go through treatment that puts you in a state of living relatively symptom free, but it’s not something that can be “fixed” in the same way that taking antibiotics treats a bacterial infection. effect treatment for did varies depending on the system’s (group of altered identities all living in the body) needs, but it commonly includes trauma work. some people advocate for the integration of all altered states into one singular personality (often poorly defined as back into the “original” or “true” personality) but it’s incredibly controversial. one of the ways i’ve been taught to conceptualize it is like this: if a glass bowl falls onto the floor into a million pieces, which is the “true” or “original” piece? either way, effective treatment usually involves symptom management and learning to best cope for daily life to best thrive and live :)
Sounds like some higher level Narc-parental, Neg. influences. Wondering if our Mom might've gone Covert?? dealing w/ an ADD + Autistic?, mentally-deficient, ODD, + who might've Traumatiz- ed the other sibs. (??) Surprised to learn, last year, Dad may've been at top of 'Normal' Narcissism Scale! ... Not* the Grandiose, I'd thought, & 1 bro became, & emulates soo well. (Tho neither could walk in his shadow.) And I never liked the guy, esp. And watched the Dangerous Dr. Jekyll, (Covert 1), go "primary psychotic" on me! Tagged by the "Terror Team," injured* & in Shock, the other's Screaming @ me to, GET UP!! x 12-15 ... and, then, GET OUT!! (of some place I had an = right to be & hadn't done anything wrong!) x 12++, & waaay to soon to even Move - Blew the whole circuit, almost instantly! (And Frontal areas already 'tuning out' as battered x ???, some 10'-11', into the INJURY.) At least, I didn't FAWN to Narco- NAZIS! But, any one like them can sure Trigger my @$$! Still. Even after 1 Yr. of EMDR & "Trauma Tx"! And a Covid year on my own. Guess I need to try the Natural ~ Zadiol - for Vets! ~ And some freaking SLEEP, after 3 YEARS, might be Helpful, too. Yeah, Childhood Neglect, emotionally, was a thing back back in the 50s & Trends in Child Rearing. Our Dad's came home from WWII TRAUMATIZED & Heavy, Social Drinkers, always Working. Rarely involved. An Idyllic "Cake Walk" compared to TODAY!
Dr. Grande, these are complex concepts to digest w/o full knowledge of the pathologies referenced. I’m grateful for your breakdown but had to go @ .75 speed 👍😹🙌 very interesting! I learned so much and will look at the literature around DID. 🎉 thanks so much for your objectivity & clearing things up!
I have been a support person for someone with DID for 2 1/2 years. I am not a counselor or therapist. The cause is childhood trauma. I don't know what I believed before I met her. She has multiple alters each with their own version of reality. It terrifies her when they come out because they say and do things that aren't always loving. She feels like she has no control of her life. She feels like she is a burden to me and I feel like we are continuously walking a tightrope with her sanity and with her life. There have been many days I've literally dragged her back from some really dark places. It isn't anything I'd wish on my worst enemy. Trying to get help and legitimate treatment for her is incredibly hard. I ask for information from experts such as yourself and and they run away fast. Thanks for your candid and non-biased submission.
Wow😞 The state of the Mental Healthcare system is atrocious. Being recently diagnosed with CPTSD, among other things, I can tell you the stigma is REAL, and people are needlessly suffering every day. If it's not from the morons that discredit the existence of mental disorders, it's from the so-called professionals that shouldn't be practicing psychiatry or be in the psychology field.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, then schizoaffective disorder.,then borderline, then P.t.s.d, I was finally diagnosed with D.I.D.I have been tortured with drugs and lived in mental hospitals all my life. The practitioners who can't ever seem to make up their minds argue with each other.I am treated with contempt and disbelief needles and restraints.I am shocked by the stupidity I am faced with. The lack of research.The endless questions. However I am in total agreement with you Dr.Grande .A habitual dissociative MOOD disorder would be a much better description. Dr .Grande please look at the brain scans of patients diagnosed with D.I.D .Fascinating.
I think the difference between patient reported amnesia, and the amnesia measured in DID, it's because we can communicate and listen to alters. We might not remember what they did, but they do and sometimes can easily tell us. Other times, that's not so easy (or they'll refuse if it's traumatic), and it's when those difficulties happen that we experience trouble with memories. So, it's not something that reliably happens all the time in order to be measured and replicated, but happens often enough and is pervasive enough to be a major problem in your life. Also, stress makes this communication worse, such as dealing something in daily life. Laboratory questionairies are very safe and controlled environments for most people. We can easily chat with other alters in a medical office, it's much harder in the midst of something stressful.
Hi. Thank you for the well balanced and well crafted analysis on this important topic. I really like your point of DID termed as supernatural in different cultures. I know someone who suffer from it and also have ADD. People these days only like glamour and making money. Hollywood is hugely responsible for using these important disorders of the brain to make money and present movies with lots of loop holes on this. However I agree with your opinion the DID does exist and mostly this disorder occurs in people who look quite normal and can manage basic functions of their lives but inside them they are suffering from volcanoes of pain. Lots of successful historical figures were assumed to have DID. So for people with this disorder there is great hope.
The problem is that I have all of the symptoms and all of these problems, but I recognized it myself therefore I can’t be struggling with this. Every single mental health professional in my life has just disregarded me so.
I was very recently diagnosed. At first I did not understand where it would have come from as a trauma-related disorder, as I believed that I had not experienced "trauma" in my early childhood, or really at all for that matter. To me, trauma was only prolonged physical or sexual abuse. Accepting our experiences as trauma made a huge difference and explained a lot about the way we've lived our collective life thus far.
Very interesting topic. And I think, I share your opinion. I would imagine, that especially sexual abuse would trigger a tendency to disassociate, and that it would take a good therapist, not to reinforce this tendency.
Loved this video, very insightful and informative. I would really appreciate it if some professionals in the field would share their opinions about all those DID-centered channels, but at the same time I do realise that you (and other professionals) would probably consider it unethical (although I feel like if you made a clear disclaimer about it being purely your personal opinion it should be ok), so I understand why people don't really talk about it. But I feel like those channels really shape public opinions/education about DID so it would be useful to know just how typical their experiences are. Especially because all DID channels that I have seen were fairly similar in their experiences: they seem to be able to switch between the alters willingly, all of their alters have very clearly determined different genders/ages/names/roles/etc. So I feel like professional evaluation of those symptoms could be very educational for the viewers; but yeah I realise it's unlikely to happen. Thanks for the video again.
Nobody switches on command. Some multiples with good communication between alters can be co-conscious and sometimes you can use o "positive trigger" (something pleasant to a certain alter) to bring them out to the front. But nobody decides to switch and just does it.
i have seen quite a number of TH-cam vids with people who have DID. and before YT, i would read about it. I don't understand how people can say there is no such thing as DID when there are changes in handwriting or eyesight? you really can't fake handwriting, can you?! i agree totally with your own theoretical thoughts which you summarized at the end, especially after hearing all the various theories you talked about. the iatrogenic theory is something i have heard of before, but it was sort of vague.. thanks much again :}
AP: Of course different styles of handwriting can be faked. Thought Question: What does handwriting have to do with mental illness? Why should "different personalities" have different handwriting styles? They all went to the same school. This is easily a "symptom" that can feed into the fad of DID.
my psychiatrist literally told me to man up and get over it when i was telling her about my did and ptsd symptoms. no longer my psychiatrist obviously.
It's been a while since you wrote this but I have to question whether your misguided psychiatrist was trying to trigger out a protector for proof. Misguided, right, but as a protector it feels like what might have been taking place.
Very informative!!! I have a freind who is dealing with this in a relationship… its a tuff situation for sure!! Wish we knew more but thatnkful for what we do know!
When I told my therapist I thought I might have DID, she told me that was impossible because it didn’t exist. When I sought other help I had to repeat my symptoms many, many times before I was diagnosed. After a period of no response, I was finally diagnosed by all three clinicians I was seeing. I don’t care what it’s called I just need help.
I think the fear people have of DID, including therapists, is based off of the slippery interactions and transference responses occuring that may bring up in the therapist a fear that reality is somehow questioned.
I had DID for years and have, after many years of therapy and meds and self-healing, I have become integrated. I put my step-father in prison for 12 yrs of sexual abuse when I was 19 years old. Dissociating and creating altars was my way of coping. I remember lapses of memory all the way into my childhood. This was a way to protect myself. I can't imagine when I was dissociating that my altars would have come out and talked to a stranger, especially the children in front of a camera. It would not be safe. Most people who met my altars did not know.
Well, I was told by my pcp to see this new therapist that was in the clinic. I went to a church that did not believe in psychology or psychiatry. Just pray it away I guess. I did make an appointment with him. He said I’d have to come in for about 2-3 hours to take a test. I told him that would be impossible for me, bc I couldn’t put myself in a position of being trapped. He said he’d send the test and I could fill it out at home. He said there were no right or wrong answers and to not overthink it. I was 25 at the time. My therapist knew right off by the test that I had large gaps of childhood missing. He NEVER TOLD ME. I knew I had something that nobody else had…but I had no words for it. I knew nothing about nothing. When I did go to his office, while waiting I’d be in a state of panic…but I had no words for this either. Finally I was in his office for like the 3rd visit. He was talking and that THING happened… my therapist asked “what just happened? You just sat straight up?”. I was AMAZED HE NOTICED MY REALLY AWFUL THING. I tried to explain but hadn’t any words. In fact he gave me a paper with faces and words under them, so I could use that when trying to communicate. That’s how far down I was in Self-perception. Between 3 months or so, I remember him telling me “no, that’s child abuse” I refused to accept that I had child abuse. So we’re stuck there. He had me start to journal. I am so glad that I did for over a decade. Soon at home I would hear a child crying in my head and I felt like a child. I told my therapist and he explained that all of us feel that way sometimes. I said NO I FEEL LIKE I WAS THE CHILD. Hum Soon he began to ask easy questions, but not for me. “Tell me about Christmas time in your home?”. Ummmmmmmmmmmmm I can see lights on a tree. “Tell me about how you celebrated your birthdays growing up?”. Ummmmmmmmm I had a cake that my sister sat on. “Oh good, what else do you remember?”. Ummmmmmm that’s it. Starting to see a pattern here. Weird thing is even not being able to answer those questions did not cause any alarm in my thinking. It was what it was, which is all it was. I had been seeing a psychiatrist too. He prescribed the anti anxiety and antidepressants. I went to his office about 3 years into therapy. He gave me prescriptions, then said “here you need to read these 2 books bc you have Multiple personality Disorder…Just as flat as that. I heard what he said but sat stunned. I had a 3 hour drive home in which U cried the whole way. The next morning I called my therapist crying…Dr S said I have MPD 😭😭😭😭 he said he’d book out 2 hours of time so we could talk about it. Well I went and all I did was cryyyyyyy. He agreed with him. I FELT I HAD BEEN GIVEN A DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER. At home I cried for a week. Not very glamorous huh. So our new therapy topic was to try an piece together my past. He had explained that from 17 down I just didn’t seem to know anything. We worked for YEARS trying to piece together my childhood. 30 years later and I still have whole chunks of my past missing. Last week driving into our neighborhood I laughed and said to my grandson “OOOO Look a white van with no windows…serial killer! Hahahaha” we did that anytime we saw a van with no windows. We get out of the car and he says “you know that’s Romans car…remember you talking to him about how proud you were of him. You went in for like half hour to forty five minutes. I had a complete blank star…I searched my mind for that conversation, that amount of time, that day. It still does not exist. That’s the day I had to tell my 18 year old grandson I wasn’t senile I had DID. I’d love for anybody to try an figure this out…believers to non believers…bc I just live in it. I finally came up with an explanation “You don’t know, what you don’t know”.
This was an awesome video. Very thorough. I have DID and I definitely experience it as a kind of mode shifting (not really “mood” shifting as much as functions, but also moods at times). I don’t have personalities with different hair styles and stuff. Some parts feel to be certain ages, certain genders, with distinguished voices, and distinguished hand writings, and I feel distinctly like that alter when I am as that alter. Still.I feel like I am just like everyone else except that my parts of who I am just go a little further distinguished? I don’t know. I definitely experience a child side of myself, for example, that just kind of interweaves within my normal or “primary” identity. But I also experience times when this child type, for example, combines with a dissociative state, during which my motor skills slow down and I am often very confused and I have to think extra hard to remember things or where I am or who my boyfriend is when I’m looking at him, etc. And I feel distinctly like I am a child who is not “Sherry.” My voice, demeanor and sense of self changes. I do have names for certain “identities” but they just kind of picked their names (which was probably mostly influenced as I learned about the diagnosis??). Chrissy had a name before then but... I don’t know, it’s very confusing. As someone who definitely warrants my did diagnosis, I OFTEN wonder how much of it I created. Still, my dissociative identity states do feel like separate parts or “persons” and I can’t just switch at will and I havent been able to figure out how to keep myself from switching or how to just bring “myself” back. I definitely have memory problems but I have found that the memories seem to be there across identities it just takes a lot of digging to get at them. There is definite co-consciousness with my identities, and lots of talking amongst them (but does not everyone have talkative “parts” in their brains!? I think it’s similar at least!) I don’t know. I get very very frustrated when therapists have insisted that I experienced childhood trauma that I have blacked out because I have did therefore it’s certain. Therapists have literally said these types of things and I think it lead me to craft my personal story about what must have happened. I don’t think it is probable that I was sexually abused. I think people convinced me that I was and I filled in the gaps with my imagination. I’m not certain, but that’s what my gut feels. Lots of questions as a person with did. I see these real life people describing their did online and I feel like, hm... they really have a lot of descriptive details about each of their alters... I feel like I have 22 alters, but most of them are just like ghosts in my head (not real ghosts). I don’t know. I think I’m very creative and easily may have developed did myself as a way to cope/disconnect from stuff. I recall recognizing what I later learned was derealization when I was about 8 years old. And soon after I started thinking, hey, I feel numb when I do this. So I started intentionally practicing dissociating (derealization and depersonalization) in order to escape uncomfortable stuff such as autistic meltdowns/anxiety/embarrassment etc. Eventually I just found that I couldn’t control it anymore? It’s been running wild ever since!! Chrissy started to develop around age 13 and I named her at age 16 or so. But she was my first distinct alter and she totally could have been a creative manifestation. I don’t know for sure how my did came to be, but I definitely believe, it’s a real thing in my life now.
Sherry Polley Authentic thanks for telling your story! It is helping me understand my mom with DID a little more. It makes sense it would start out as a numbing tool and then take over. Kind of like what drugs can do.
Thanks for sharing your story. I does help me to understand DID better. I can see how it would be easy for a clinician to influence a person struggling with DID, worsening the symptoms. I think you are blessed to be able to see what is going on with you, some people can't see themselves for nothing with just ONE personality. You are great for helping to shed light on this disorder. Thanks again, and best of wishes to you.
I definitely think DID is an incredible coping mechanism for a child to use to get through traumatic events when they can’t rely on their parents to support them. However as an adult in order to fully appreciate and experience life you have to learn how to trust and rely on people and how to be open and transparent. I think the goal is to be able to say “This doesn’t feel like me, but it is me and I appreciate and respect this aspect of myself because it served a purpose to protect me. However I am no longer in danger and it is ok to change and grow because that is what life is about . I am safe and I love myself. I am a tough person who survived 100 % of their bad days.”
Trigger warning: trauma Sexual abuse is not the only trauma a child can experience! Medical trauma, neglect, physical and mental abuse, being lost, near death experience and many, many more. Now if you have DID, the fact that you don't remember the trauma is the point! One of your alters probably does remember and they hold it for you so you don't have to. That's why therapists say you must've had trauma in your childhood.
I’m really interested in the overlap between latrogenic and endogenic. I’ve never heard of “latrogenic” in the community, but I see discourse on endogenic all the time.
I think that both things are true. I have absolutely seen DID manifest. A friend of mine fell asleep, then woke up and then started crawling around on the floor and talking in baby talk for a long time. And she did not remember it later, at all. She had a history of childhood trauma and mental health issues. But she had not been diagnosed with DID. But her boyfriend told me that she was always waking up with pins stuck into her, which she had accidentally put in her bed before sleeping. Clearly, she had put those pins in herself, but did not remember it. That said, I believe that sometimes clinicians have created it. Now, as to those much more developed alternate personalities, that I don't know about.
Dr. Grande, I was diagnosed with MDD at age 20, and early in the disorder (during my first "episode" which lasted nearly 1 year) I had at least 2 dissociative experiences. However I never felt any alternate personality whatsoever. These experiences lasted maybe 20-30 seconds at the most, and I felt like they occurred when my thoughts were overwhelming me and acute extreme stress, a feeling that I had no control over anything. It was like I suddenly didn't know who I was or where I was, and I felt myself actually leaving my physical body a few feet from where I was sitting (I was in a university lecture at the time of the most significant dissociative experience i had during that first episode of MDD). It scared the hell out of me and suddenly I was back into my body and experiencing the mental stress and symptoms again. I was truly worried I was losing myself and my mind. So I talked with the psychotherapist about it at my next appointment. He explained to me that it can occur in MDD cases and if it becomes worse, I need to let him know. It never became longer or worse up until now (25 years later), but it was the single most terrifying event I've ever experienced.
The brain initially dissociated to protect the person who was being abused because they could not fight, freeze, or flee. There is nothing awesome about this disorder and I do not understand why people think it is being faked by those who are suffering. There is stigma in not only society but also among clinicians which is sad for those that need support.
I don’t know if Todd Grande answers any comments/questions. I’m diagnosed- twice in fact. I do not have an awareness, generally speaking, of my amnesia, or of what alters/different personality states are doing or have done- that is reported to me by family members and by clinicians. Or I will find evidence from various activities, like items purchased without my awareness, or finding handwritten journals I had no awareness of writing. So- that is one question- how does that type of symptom fit into your model/conception? Also (because I’ve lived with this diagnosis for many decades)- a subsequent therapist after my initial diagnosis who believed that the alters/personality states were fantasies/imaginary playmates, advised me to ignore them. The goal was to work on decreasing dissociation.This was essentially impossible since I basically had no awareness of when I was dissociating. This therapy really only caused a worsening of amnesia episodes. Todd worries that clients will fake DID please a therapist, but I almost did the opposite, tho not consciously- where I felt like I had to comply with the therapist and kind of fake that I was recovering from DID! I feel the debate/controversy over the decades has truly negatively impacted me quite severely. Not just in how I personally view my diagnosis and disorder, but in finding treatment. Todd, you have advice for clinicians, do you have advice for people living with the disorder?
Moods dont tend to have different person names, while the personalities often do, as well as different ages…but i appreciate your careful consideration of literature presented here.
Totally caused by trauma. As someone with DID ours was caused but physical and emotional abuse and neglect from as early as we can remember til we moved out at 18. Some of us remember some dont. I dont remember the majority of my childhood, jaynie remembers a super happy childhood but only the times we were at my grandparents nothing at home, raya has managed to explain to us but hasnt yet learned to show us but she remembers our home life growing up and being abused and terrified all the time. She holds all the trauma memories because she was there up front and we were not. U dont understand how anyone can have just one inner voice thats just their own it would feel so lonely and weird to not be able to go over plans or get the others thoughts on stuff. Everyone says integrations the end goal for us thats so scary. Like what if someone attacks us? Who would deal with that if Raya wasnt around? What if we have to do public speaking or go to a social event? That's Jaynies thing. I'm the one who goes to work usually what would we do if i disappeared? Being one singular being must be super hard work! Cant imagine having to do all the things by myself all the time with no one to take over when it gets too much.
This was a very informative video. I think that the iatrogenic view is valid for the same reason. I do believe that trauma can start it and then DID becomes more influenced. I am however, curious to see what population in America has DID. If it is mainly diagnosed in the US, expensive to treat, and therefore influenced by clinicians, then I wonder if more White people are diagnosed with it. Then I can almost see why some would thing it's cause is more on the iatrogenic side than the trauma side. I had to watch this for a class but it has peeked my curiosity. Thanks.
Tanishia Dungy but that doesn't mean it's iatrogenic, either. That's an access problem. In communities below the poverty line there is far more abuse and trauma and communities of color are plagued by poverty due to systemic inequality (this is from a book I read on child abuse quite some time ago). I am white and I have a job that pays me well even though it is blue collar, I can afford a specialist but also, there are none in my area that aren't booked solid. Getting a diagnosis just isn't that easy.
Hi Dr Grande, great video! I'm a psychology student, currently doing research in developmental psychopathology but I haven't done much research into the literature of DID, so I found your summary of the literature to be extremely informative. In particular, the idea you proposed about dissociation leading to different mood states makes quite a lot of sense. I was wondering if you could expand your thoughts on this a little further? Most of the knowledge I have on DID has come from individuals with DID talking about their personal experiences, so I do take it with a grain of salt, however all the individuals I have seen speak about their DID (i.e., The Entropy System, Multiplicity and Me, Dissociadid, a personal friend of mine) all report distinct personalities even to the point where they have different names, physical appearances, ages etc. Do you think there is a distinction between this state of the appearance of various mood states and the formation of separate identities, or do you think perhaps a prolonged experience of a particular mood state may lead to this "mood" becoming an "identity"? For example, if a traumatic experienc is frequently occuring throghout childhood and resulting in a particular mood state, do you think the fact that a single mood state has consistently occured could result it in becoming an identity, through whatever means it may be. I'm not entirely sure this makes sense, it's late in Australia at the moment and I wanted to throw some thoughts on this down while I remembered. I think the general concept I'm wanting to hear your thoughts on is do you think perhaps the differentation between these mood states you mentioned and specific identities may be more of a continuum than a specific distinction between the two? Another question I just thought of along the same lines - The individuals with DID I mentioned earlier have said they have had new identities occur across their lifetime, oftenin response to stressful situations. How do you think this could fit in with this suggestion of DID being a disorder of different mood states than necessarily identities (at least in some casses)? Best wishes, Courtney
I know exactly what you're asking, I've thought the same. Did my borderline come about as a natural aggression-reaction to me being traumatized as a toddler, or did it come about by me being 'forced' into a borderline (frustrated, angry, rage, confused) state by my parents' never-ending gas-lighting from childhood to adult. In other words, am I broken or am I actually working perfectly but was trained through conditioning to follow a maladaptive pattern. I used to think the former but the more I uncover about my parents the more I believe the sick case is the latter, I was gaslighted for the purpose of making me crazy in order to keep me their pet schnauzer, unknowing guard dog, confused lab rat and ultimate guinea pig.
I'm not a psychological research student but I do have a research degree and have consumed the same content as you so as a disclaimer please don't invalidate my perspective based on credentials alone :3 I watch a lot of those channels as well and I find DID absolutely fascinating! With DID cases it's just my perspective that you have to separate the brain's coping mechanism (DID) from the various mental illnesses that the individual parts can suffer from, as well as separate "moods" and needs. With varying individual mental illnesses, it can be incredibly difficult to pinpoint things. So, dismissing the perspective of the perceived parts or the host simply based off DID alone is kind of damaging to the overall functionality and recovery of the system in general (I believe). That being said, I personally don't think all the different parts of a system maintain or stem from solid "moods" aside from parts that are exclusively meant for that function. But all of them do stem from needs. For instance, many systems have a sexual part that is meant to handle sexual encounters. From the YT DID community, it seems most of them are fully fleshed individuals with perceived backgrounds but fully-realized beliefs, values, likes, preferences, etc. Many are even dysmorphic to the bodies gender. Often times parts also have very conflicting views on subjects to the point of being complete strangers. Another reason I don't really think they all start as moods is because parts can break off with different levels of functionality, capability, and awareness. They can also become "aware" at any time after breaking off. For instance, in Jeremy's channel one of their parts came into the body/3D consciousness for the first time on live stream :O (on accident of course, not forced) But it was incredibly intense to say the least. She was literally ripped from her sub-con reality (where she thought she was an individual with a completely different body) and placed into someone else's. So yeah it was fascinating. Jeremy is not the original part of that system but own's that channel and the fact that he is exploring the nature of his own existence was enough for me. It is so hard to make solid scientific claims about DID because there are so many variables involved that cannot be consistently examined. But I have noticed that all the systems here on TH-cam are finding some level of recovery in receiving understanding, validation, and support, rather than scrutiny and dismissal. Some have even had their prosecutor parts integrate, which may not look like a victory to some but since it had to be a conscious decision on the prosecutor's part, it was a step towards healing and recovery. I think erasure language is damaging in the mental health field in general and differentiating DID and individual mental illnesses is important to understanding the condition.
Courtney Allen I don’t see why just because they are speaking from personal experience (which I actually see as far more valuable) rather than spouting things they’ve read in a textbook, they’re words should be treated with a grain of salt? If you truly cared about helping people with this disorder instead of just studying them and scrutinising their behaviour for your own fascination then you would take what they have to say about they’re own disorder and use it to further your understanding instead of dismissing it just because they don’t have a degree in something that they live every day! If anything they are far more qualified to talk on it than you, although I can tell that from the way you presented your uneducated theories on moods that seemed to resemble what is typically a symptom in BPD which can be co-morbid with DID but is a completely separate disorder and in fact in a complete other category.
Wow - great question. i'd like to look into this further myself. Great luck with your studies and career. you sound like a person with much empathy, which is what is needed to be a therapist and, maybe, a researcher, too :}
I think there's a therapist that scares the crap out of me from Canada that is doing JUST that. His videos are all over TH-cam and he wrote a ton if books. There are malpractice cases against him as well.
Dr. Todd Grande, my DID is based on trauma. I get amnesia when I switch but I regain my memory through flashbacks. And since my alter does not display a destructive set of symptoms, such as suicidal behavior, and self harm I feel it's unnecessary to get treatment and guidance from a mental health clinician.
i believe DID is best researched from the function of the nervous system, instead of a mental health issue. Also, how "primary personality" was used suggests there is one, DID is theorized to be the non -integration of the separate personality states we all start out with.
As someone who has been seeking the cause of my mental differences for 50 years, I would like to add my two cents worth. I've been misdiagnosed with various other labels for a long time. When they finally settled on "Major Depressive Disorder" and that was that, I still wanted to know why the depression was happening at all. There must be a cause. So I continued my quest. Through a considerable number of videos on various topics, I have diagnosed myself with the information available at this time. Yes, I have "Major Depressive Disorder". I am also obviously autistic. Funny how none of my therapists even mentioned that. And yes, I have "Dissociative Identity Disorder". The actual psychiatrist I saw years ago witnessed a frantic little girl come out one day, and as far as I know, never mentioned it to anyone. Since then, I've identified at least eight distinct people who reside within my skin. I am quite disappointed in the diagnosis department of this particular "science". I am completely flabbergasted that any professional in this field might question whether this disorder exists. If they say that it does not, I will automatically disregard their opinion, because it's obvious they are ill-equipt to comment on this topic.
My daughter is a psychopath who destroyed mine and her brothers life. It took a long time to get him away from CPS because of her lies. She now claims she has DID because she was abused. She was never anything even remotely close to abused.
Can you please approach DIDNOS as a topic? I feel as if I can’t find almost any videos detailing how this is different from both multiple personalities and DID... I dissociate 24/7 but do not have any alters and am struggling to find resources... I appreciate what you do, thanks for educating
Parts and alters experience and express the same mood verticals in vastly different ways. As communication between parts gets better, there is a sharing of attitudes between parts, a cross pollination, debate, teaching..... and the mood landscape for each can look entirely different over time.
Thank you for describing DID in a way that makes more sense to those of us who actually live with it. I know that this isn't the experience for all who are diagnosed, but mine was trauma induced. I look at my personality as a mirror, and the prolonged trauma I suffered fractured that mirror. My brain did what it had to do to help me survive the abuse. I don't see it as a mental illness. It was a survival skill. Now that those abusive situations and dangerous people are gone, it's like I have to re-train my brain to function in a more normative way. There are fractures there and much more work to do, but my amazing therapist and loving friends continually remind me that I'm worth that hard work.
i'm so glad you have such great help. the trauma experienced by people like you is incomprehensible to most of us. much good healing :}
Talacocheta this is such a thoughtful and kind response. I’ll be researching more about all of this for my continued healing. Thank you!!
@@talacocheta9001 Hi this is all knew to me . I have CPTSD , diagnosed with borderline . I have a nice dose of shame and regret.
I have felt there s something missing in my life , that I haven't felt complete or whole.
I feel like the panic is so strong . It's so hard to feel understood and not feel the shame .
How do we heal this ?
How do we feel grounded?
I hope your well.
I appreciate your viewpoint of not a disorder, but survival skills that served you well when being traumatized. Now, those survival skills do not serve you well but you are learning healthier ways for your brain and the fractured parts to learn to work help you be your best you. I am trying to understand the healing process more. I commend you on your courage. So glad you have a wonderful therapist and support.❤
They say that people who know multiple languages have somewhat of personality variations associated with it.
It usually doesn't cause harm to have that. Obviously you have certain ideas and a time frame, and situations related to a certain language (say you were born in a country but moved to other countries obviously you will have some parts of your identity that you formed during those times related to the language you used or had to learn at that time and whatever significant events that happened then).
But since a lot of people know multiple languages and say 99.9% don't have DID, they have no problem seeing all of it as a part of then but we'll integrated.
I have some issues with dissociation, coming from my PTSD. To me it's been very worth it to integrate the "post trauma" and "pre-trauma" into one person, I still have dissociative symptoms. But now I intellectually understand that I am the person before the trauma, also the person during the trauma, and the one coping after.
Separating those things might be like a coping mechanisms we obviously don't want to have anything to do with emotional pain that just seems to stick around forever.
But I know for my own sake that I have to do that, and not treat "new" me as something alien to myself. For my own mental health. I am now really far along the process of healing my PTSD it has been rly a lot of work and over a decade, but it's turning out better and better. It's been blood and tears too stitch myself back together. But it's worth it.
Just thought I'd share my experience and also. There's always hope and you can always get much better.
Be patient with yourself, your body couldn't survive a whole year with a big infection, but your mind no matter how broken you think it is now, has carried you along for years with a serious mental health issue, managed to keep you surviving and you can still recover from it. Just shows how powerful and resilient you really are.
Our minds can cope with much more stuff than your body physically can and sometimes that's why we neglect mental issues.
But nothing you invest in your personal growth and healing goes to waste it's always worth it
I have Been diagnosed with DID and all I know is this is an awful existence . Only a few close friends and family know about my diagnosis. I CAN'T relate to Most U tube content creators with it or the sensationalized side of this life I see displayed in shows etc.
That's why it sounds like popular DID youtube channels are grifting. They make DID seem fun and fantastic when my understanding of it is that it's actually almost constant anxiety and depression, thus the dissociation.
@Altoid Bazingá I think a lot of them are trying to educate people and spread awareness of their disorder to help stop stigma against it. Also I guess to show that the reality of living with the disorder is very different to how it’s often portrayed in media.
I think it’s easy to say people are ‘glamorising’ their disorders etc by only showing certain parts of their experience but I also understand why the harder and more traumatic parts of their experience aren’t shown online - as these must be very vulnerable and personal moments to share.
It’s hard to get the balance right I suppose but I think there are some channels out there doing a good job of it. All just my personal opinion obviously 👍
@Altoid Bazingá yeh I get that...I see that argument a lot to be honest.
I personally don’t think just because you’re gaining money means you don’t care or can’t have good intentions though.
For example: A councillor gets paid to do their job, doesn’t mean they don’t care about their patients and helping people with their mental health. I’m a home health carer and of course I get paid for the work I do but I definitely care for my clients and do my absolute best for them
You’ve gotta think, there’s many mental health and DID channels out there that are really small and therefore cannot be monetised but still post content to educate etc. All the bigger channels started this way too...they just got more attention over time and got to the stage where the content can be monetised. I personally don’t think that invalidates the reasons why they started in the first place though.
To have popular content that could be monetised and choose not to...seems a bit odd and martyr-like to me. If you can monetise your content why wouldn’t you? Especially the people who’s mental health issues stop them from being able to work a ‘normal’ job
Again, just my opinions x
@Marie I think part of the problem is that what people show sticks in memory far more than what people say. So even if they say the truth of living with the disorder, because they are only showing the easier bits - that’s what sticks with people overall.
I don’t know if you have mental health issues personally (and it’s none of my business) but they really can show you at your absolute worst. They can make a controlled person seem out of control, a clever person seem like their heads empty.
I have DP/DRD, PTSD and GAD and I’m ok to share that information with people but the moments where I’m going through a flashback or an extreme anxiety episode...most my close friends and family have never seen that. It’s so vulnerable that it’s really hard to share. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to share it online and leave your symptoms open to criticism or people saying your faking etc. So I completely understand why they don’t show the worst aspects! It’s extremely private
@Marie I understand what you’re saying, I can completely see how it can come off as glamourising by only showing the easier aspects of a disorder.
From my point of view I guess I don’t see that as glamourising...more like missing half the story out. Like if someone read you a book and missed every third page out, you may still get the overall idea and some relevant information but the detailed storyline would be missing...which could leave you with a very different view of the message that book was trying to convey.
So I suppose from that point of view it could be seen as irresponsible because viewers may leave that video without the full story and therefore draw the wrong conclusions from the information shown
I do believe these TH-camrs are in a difficult position though. If they showed themselves in the midst of a flashback, or mid panic attack or dissociating for hours at a time I believe they would get just as much criticism. Comments such as:
‘Stop making a display out of mental illness’ or
‘What good does this do other than to frighten people’ or
‘Stop faking symptoms, this is such an obvious act’ etc etc
I really do believe they will get criticism either way. They either show too much or too little or the wrong way of showing something...they can’t win really. So I understand why they choose the route that protects themselves the most - showing the easier parts and just talking about the harder aspects of their disorder.
I follow 8 different ‘DID channels’ (including the largest/most popular ones on TH-cam) and every one of them mentions and makes clear the reality of their disorder. Some do it on a more regular basis than others but they do all make it very clear that it is a very difficult and complex disorder to live with and would not wish it on anyone - it’s nothing to envy.
However I do understand that if you are not a committed, constant viewer like I am and are only cherry picking occasional videos (which is the way most people watch TH-cam) then there are many videos where these facts aren’t mentioned at all. Which could definitely mean someone watching doesn’t grasp the full truth of living with this disorder and thinks it’s ‘all about alters’ which I agree...doesn’t help the stigma
I am a 74 year old female who was diagnosed as a multiple in the early 90s after a MVA. It was this trauma that uncovered abuse during my childhood by both parents and an aunt who became my legal guardian. I would be very interested in discussing my journey with MPD, its causes and effects and how I came to a place where my alters could communicate with each other safely. How I gained control of my life that had turned into a careening bus of children, all of whom wanted to drive. It was indeed a bumpy ride.
I was recently diagnosed with DID. While I suspected it for a long time, I always felt unsure as my symptoms didn't match the DSM completely in regards to amnesia. It's easy to forget that the DSM is very much a work in progress. It's a big dx to accept but it's also refreshing to let someone know what's been going on the past 18/26 years!
With DID, the relationships between personalities in regard to amnesia is a spectrum. There can be complete, partial, some can "look into" the memories of others as well as this being a dynamic thing - for example, you can have total amnesia with another personality and when healing occurs, the memories become gradually more shared. Best of everything.
@@johnsteele6696 The extent or degree of "co-consciousness" also depends a great deal on how far along one is in therapy.
It also often depends on how experienced a therapist is in facilitating that which should be the ultimate goal of any treatment.
Does everyone with DID have a history of childhood trauma? Also, do you as the primary personality remember that trauma because isn't the whole point of alters to protect you from the trauma?
@@ladyk.3630 yeah. The whole point of did is that you have had repeated trauma and didn’t have healthy attachment to caregivers so you had nobody to turn to for help. The point is that the host isn’t supposed to know that they have it, let alone have any memory of the trauma, because the host is convinced that they wouldn’t survive if they knew.
@internetfad I got a question how does disotiating (sorry I spelled it wrong) feel?
I fought with the specialist when he diagnosed me because "I don't disappear". Yea, about that.... I use to see my sides as "moods", but moods don't talk to each other. :) It's not easy to understand to us (my system) I can't imagine being "normal" trying to comprehend it. Thanks for the video.
Do you find yourself having conversations with yourself from old songs? From like your childhood? Or have you ever had someone in your head but couldn't identify them?
@Mike Bosisto wtf that’s actually so cool.
same, it's all "moods" I thought.
Sounds like it could be OSDD-1a or OSDD-1b.
I call mine aspects of self.. it helps integrate better rather than keeping them separate.. when I feel like I got it all down tho I get thrown a curve ball in life and it goes back to being all broken up.
a well informed and balanced approach to a controversial topic?
what are you, a unicorn?
There is ligature from the 80’s with the same insight. Just have to be willing to read the books and papers.
Hehe, I love this xD
That was my thought. This was a really well-done video I think.
Best comment I've seen on the internet in quite some time. 🤣
Dr. Grande IS definitely a UNICORN!!!
I know this is an old video but thank you so much for this. I feel like the focus on DID right now is about the alters, when it should absolutely be on the trauma. I am, at heart, aware that I, and all of the alters, are constructs of an abused child's mind. It's uncomfortable, but true. Framing alters as developed mood states sort of changes how we view ourselves, but in a much more positive way, I think. Knowing that we were created for a real purpose makes me feel much better. Sorry if this is rambling, but thank you again.
"developed mood states" this is what I'm trying to tell my therapist but didn't know how.
This controversy has had a severe negative impact on my life (58 years). I wish science could get it together enough to actually help people in ways that actually help them. Probably won’t happen in my life time.
I’ve been diagnosed with DID 2 separate times by 2 different therapists who aren’t specialists and didn’t have any monetary interest.
I’ve also been told it’s not real, alters or parts or Identity states or whatever you want to call them, are imaginary playmates and to ignore them. I been told to make a system map and journal to get to know alters. I’ve been told to not let alters journal and that making a system map is counterproductive.
My friends and family can’t understand or accept. They try to support, but honestly don’t know how. I often feel like a complete outcast.
I also am diagnosed with ptsd, several anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder recurring. Those diagnoses aren’t controversial.
I do have a history of childhood trauma, corroborated by family members, but the severity or repeated nature of the trauma is not really quantifiable.
It has been incredibly painful having a controversial diagnosis.
I wish the scientists who discuss and debate could know this. Get it together, make up your minds and help people!
DID is VERY real and in NO way imaginary.
I totally agree. It must be nice for those whom discussion of this topic is purely theoretical/academic.
They seem to ignore your point and tell ppl to go get therapy 😒
I understand where you are coming from. I'm 49 and have been diagnosed with it 3 or 4 times. There are a lot of really stupid therapists out there. I told one therapist how a psychiatrist diagnosed me with it. She got really embarrassed and said I hope you don't think I think you have that! But then as time rolled on she said I was dissociating and there were definite shifts and my demeanor would change. My last therapist would only say I had a dissociative disorder. She was throwing around the lingo like switching, protector, system and even once asked if I could "summon" a part to the front. I was thinking what in the hell are you talking about? It really messes with your mind and is harmful. All I can agree on is I have suffered because of bad mental health and I can't help but to think these therapists are to blame!
The problem is, there is no methodology for studying DID in the same way clinicians study organic disorders.
I love that you mentioned all aspects, even money as a motivator to continue with one school of thought/treatment. Thank you!
You can tell a person really knows what they're talking about when they cite their sources in college essay format in the description of their video
Citations are mandatory in any empirical study. It's not just some annoying rule they invented to make it rough for kids in post-secondary school.
The pains and migraines suck, also terrible memory amnesia dissociation and insomnia and lethargy :( anxiety
Crazy to hear that some clinicians give more praise and attention to people who present symptoms of DID. When I tried to find help for my DID, many therapists refused to listen to my experience, and my psychiatrist literally insulted my other parts. I’m sure some therapists do give extra praise and attention to these symptoms, but in my experiences clinicians have treated me with anything from apathy to hostility.
Wow, this was so well done, thank you. I was wrongly diagnosed with DID 25 years ago, when what I actually should have been diagnosed with was CPTSD. Of course, that diagnosis was not yet recognized. I had a childhood history of extreme abuse, and did dissociate for much of my life, but the diagnosis of DID was by only one therapist who turned out to be abusive himself. I cannot thank you enough for this video. I just subscribed to your channel.
Thank you so much!
Wow, thank YOU Dr. Grande. I have already told several friends about your channel. So refreshing to find accurate information, delivered with compassion.
When I was at Shepphard Pratt they explained that DID is on the PTSD spectrum and that it is a way for children with severe trauma to cope.
I was self diagnosing myself with DID because of my severe dissociative amnesia from my childhood. I also have CPTSD as a result of toxic family system.
@@janmclain6301 may I ask how dissociating feel like? I myself don’t know if I got DID got some hints from the things that can cause it but not 100% accurate. I’m going to a therapist in some weeks and want to share ideas what’s different about me. If u read this after 2 to 3 years thank u!
Dear Dr. G a perfect taupe shirt for a difficult topic. It is obvious that you have really devoted yourself to leaving noting to chance. Your research coupled with you ability to explain clearly simply the very difficult is one of the great benefits of your presentations. Thank-you for the clear analysis of what could easily be a very confusing topic. Superbly well done.
I was in complete denial... Until an alter shared what created them- sort of. The memory is incomplete on my end. Still unnerving and upsetting even incomplete - but it did link back to what I recalled from the time. 'Waking up' in a yard, confused and dissociated.
But the denial isnt fully gone. DID is so limited information-wise... But what else explains this? Amnesia, 'waking up' despite being like at work a lot and in motion so there is no way I was literally asleep. The personality shifts I have been told of.... Idk.
I know the DID youtubers are completely out of bounds. For me, DID is truama-based and parentals are not trusted. (Can never recall the technically term) and while the general idea is the same, they are exaggerated by the TH-camrs of DID. My "personalities" are vaguely me still. Some are optimistic, pessimistic and rationally in between. The amnesia seems to be more fluid however. The "alters" are simply mood states that have been used multiple times and have created a little pocket of expierences themselves now. But when consciousness switches back to the 'normal programming' i cant recall any of it. Kind of like being black out drunk. Your consciousness is not linked so the memories are not there. Idk. My take on it? I really enjoyed the video thank you!
Thank you so much for this very interesting video. I can listen for hours to you Dr. Grande. The way you educate about mental health problems is superb!!?
@@chocolatewheelchair indeed ☺
"We really don't know the truth...we have a lot of evidence that points in different directions." Thank you for admitting that...I respect you for having said that.
I like your conclusion of DID as more of a mood state rather than different personality. I think we see more mood state (DID) clients due to trauma/stress than what I feel are more extreme circumstances were there are separate personalities.
I have severe DID, it was caused by my father, as a very young child I had to disconnect from my emotions to endure very hard situations. I was so practiced at doing this, that as an adult if I’m situation where the emotions are hard/uncomfortable I can disconnect from my emotions…. I can walk away from someone I deeply love and never think of them again…. of course now I’m very aware each time I disconnect from my emotions not wanting to feel them…. My pattern is so ingrained I have to practice on feeling uncomfortable emotions believe me it’s not fun…. but as least I’m aware of what I’m doing
That's not DID? Dissociating isn't something done by choice, it's not disconnection from emotions it's complete loss of self, amnesia, loss of time, location, literally losing your sense of identity when another alter takes over. You don't "practice" this, it happens automatically. Walking away from someone you love or from your feelings because you don't want to feel them is not DID. That's devaluation or avoidance, or splitting. I love when people claim DID and have no clue what it actually is.
I know this video is from a little under 3 years ago, but even now it is helping people understand DID, whether they have it or not. I am not diagnosed, because getting diagnosed not only doesnt matter but is incredibly difficult for a lot of people with the stigma surrounding it as well as the believability... As someone who is learning, and experiencing, and suffering on a daily basis... It is so absolutely refreshing to hear someone expressing the FACTS and INFORMATION in a very direct and unbiased way. Thank you for that.
I'm right there with ya. I didn't accept that I had it or that it should be taken seriously because some of the 1st videos about it I watched consisted of some young eccentric girls who seem to be focused on talking about and recording themselves and their switches more than anything else. I even spoke to them through the comments section and they were soo bizarre even in they're speaking that it upset me and reaffirmed my initial beliefs that I was just trying to find excuses for my own behavior and mental issues which was a mistake and led to me distrusting and breaking up the girl who showed me I had DID in the first place.
Fortunately I did eventually look into it more and found some others with the disorder and Drs who were more objective with the subject. When I finally accepted I had DID it was a life change for the better. Getting diagnosed seemed useless considering there isn't a medication or solution. There is value in lifestyle changes, learning more about it and how to rehab yourself psyche.
Looking back, I shouldn't have just made ignorant assumptions based on a few teenage girls selfy videos. It only hurts me and made me feel stupid in the long run.
So, if anyone sees a comment from me saying that "some people seem to dramatize the condition, well that is why I said it.
Good luck Misha. I'm also very grateful we have the resources to educate ourselves and others and I intend to not be ashamed to death.
I really enjoyed this video.
I have DID and not afraid to watch a video that shows all sides.
I was asked by my GP to go to a therapist. I presented with agoraphobia bc I suffered from severe panic attacks for so long. Anxiety was an everyday all day problem. Also was in a state of Major depression, eating disorder, social anxiety and a fear...TREMENDOUS fear of being poisoned. I had no words, no vocabulary to even begin to tell my new therapist what was going on. I did not know what a therapist did. I had to take the MMPI test. Many questions related to my past. I simply had no answer, which didn't cause me even to question why I couldn't answer these questions. I began therapy once a week. But bc of my deteriation mentally, it turned into twice a week. I do remember telling my therapist that I was hearing a child and sometimes felt like a child...he had an explanation but it was not DID.
I could not even look at his face in therapy, especially into his eyes. So, NO pre-existing knowledge of MPD. I was referred to a Psychiatrist for medications. So, many only made me sick...but I also feared medication and now wonder if those were just symptoms of extreme anxiety. Two years into medication-therapy time with the pyschiatrist outvof the blue he said "you have multiple personality disorder...read these books" which he wrote on a prescription pad 'Eve' & 'Sybil'. I was in complete shock. I drove home, which at that time was a 4 hour drive, crying and trying to think where this would come from. At home I called my therapist crying snd in a panic, relaying my experience. He kinda mumbled " I thought of BPD". This was 1991..it wasn't a fashion statement to say you had it...kinda like it is now. (Maybe that's not fair to those who are truly suffering from this). Because my Psychiatrist was such a well respected Psychiatrist and lecturer, my therapist took the diagnosis seriously. (But I didnt know that) He said he'd make a 2 hour appointment to talk this whole thing out. About 4 days later I had an appointment with him. Between that time I began to read EVE...damn that scared the hell out of me.I went to my 2 hour appointment. He didn't tell me what DID was, he simply said how we were going to work together on this....the first hour and half was helping me ti quit hyperventilating lol.
Anyway, he started with having me start a journal. Ooooh boy, it didnt take long before my journal a 'person' in it, then another...and I could hear them talking introducing themselves to each other...this went on and on, as U grieved as though I had been told I had cancer.
So, here I am, 30 years later, with a huge vocabulary, telling you without a doubt it is trauma that causes it. As I began to get memories I was sicked and horrified. As it turns out. In my life home was not safe and either was the world. This dynamic seemed to go all the way up to the last place I remembered when I entered therapy, 18 years old...hummmm.
Love to hear from you...hear your thoughts on my (edited for time) story. Lynn B
@Adrienne Gurge I get what you're trying to say... but I see that a little like saying that psychiatrists cause schizophrenia or OCD.
Oh. I can't speak for those people but that certainly explains why it took almost 3 years for my therapist to ask if I thought it might explain the hundreds of things I thought were weird, inconvenient, definitely dissociative, occasionally dangerous and sometimes had no recall of. It really does, although I suspect it's more OSDD1 for me.
She told me specifically not to read books like sybil or eve and not to watch movies or tv shows about it if I want to learn what it actually is. Stick to the educational information was that she said.
The selling point for me was that most people that have dissociative states don't have explicit recall of only things that happened in past dissociative states. Like, specific versions of dissociative kaleidoscope remembers things that happened when previously in that specific dissociative state clearly, but has very poor recall of anything that happened when not in that dissociative state. It's a bit like running your computer from an external hard drive and then unplugging it, and then plugging that same hard drive back in later.
I liked this SIMPLY because you care about your process and know that it's about developmental trauma but I'm also with what another poster here said about thinking a little bit about the problems with this DX, systemically
It was scary for me at first, too. I don't think that it is possible for some one to understand what this is like unless they have experienced it. It is very real and I think that people who don't have the condition should take their que from people who do. It is not some abstract inner child. Before I learned how control my condition, an actual child would high jack my body, throw temper tantrums, binge on sugar and sing along with cartoons. It is more peaceful and enjoyable these days, but it is not so abstract for me. They all have names and preferences that are detailed and distinct from mine. I share a body with a three year old girl who likes pink fuzzy socks and a conservative middle aged make personality that hates pink and has a strong need for male dignity. It is very real.
@Common Sense Isn't Common I wasn't allowed to see mental health professionals, growing up. I was kept isolated by my parents to hide the abuse. I figured out what was happening to me on my own. A psychiatrist confirmed this diagnosis, but I hadn't read any books on the subject. I grew up with out a tv and didn't see any movies on the subject. I was in denial. At first I didn't want to believe that I could have this, because I thought that meant that I was deeply flawed. It turns out that I have this condition because I needed go develop it to survive chronic physical abuse that I couldn't escaped.
Thank you for your honest video. I am a psych student and I'm writing about this disorder for one of my classes. I've experienced all kinds of trauma and dissociation was the exit from reality. I remember consciously telling myself as a kid, "I am not here" over and over again. My brain got the message. I began floating through my world only being jolted back to reality when there was emotional and physical pain. I had to find the best part of myself that could successfully adapt and handle my circumstances. I still struggle to connect with my surroundings. I try to ground myself but sometimes it feels as though there is a part of me pulling me away or blocking me from reality.
Stress---> dissociation---> mood states... Wow, click! Thank You, Dr. Grande.
I am a systems analyst, programmer, etc.. I was recently diagnoses with DID. I really really appreciate your analysis of the literature, and looking for plausible explanations. I think the need to perceive things as a spectrum is important (not everyone present same symptoms, based on similar traumatic events). In my case., the experiences i had completely pre-date any conception of having DID. Even when i saw DID in the media, i did not associate myself with it. So Therea re experiences in place, that i look at ,that i cannot say were influenced by a practitioner or therapist, or social media. My alters presented themselves to me, before i had any understanding of what DID was. All my research occurred “AFTER” the alters approached me. And my first experience of Alters talking to me, was at 16… some 30 years ago. I don’t think absolute amnesia is required for DID.. many people with DID reporting internal communication between Alters. I think partial amnesia is more reasonable. You as a individual (discrete human) have partial amensia of your experience of reality with regard to all other humans that know you.. SOme have shared experiences, others have independence of experience (thoughts, memory storage, memory recall). The psychosomatic aspects that occur when some alters forward is… impossible for me to fake (I’m on autism spectrum, me faking anything is soooooo obvious and exgerated, I’m a terrible actor). I also have aphantaisa (can’t visualize to save my life). So when i have internal conversations with other alters, it really really really does not feel like myself as I understand it. My alters have names that … god., i would never choose that.. and personalities.. yeah.. not to my taste or style. I think the psychosomatic aspects that surface with regard to some trauma holder alters is what is the lynch pin for me.. the non-linearity of it (they come forward, I can’t think or process normal things, they go., I’m 150 IQ again). There is something going on that is not a deliberate construct. Maybe some aspects of the definition and delineation of what DID is (given i think its a spectrum) might not be right, but in my instance i do not see this as a construct influenced by social contagion/rewards… … In my case, I’m also transgender / non-binary / gender fluid.. and the whole transitioning started for me by (in reflection), one of my alters demand i start wearing skirts, and then taking hormones. I really couldn’t understand it… but as i don’t care what gender i am, i just went with it. - Trauma??? 1 month premature, around a month in a humidicrib around 1976… 24/7 lighting in the hostpial, no human contact, and frequent cuts to sole of feet for blood sample.. plus my entire childhood schooling K to Year 12 with severe social rejection. Trauama seems to b ea thing.
Omgosh! Smh What you shared about this disorder being over dramatized on TV. SO TRUE!!! I mean, it’s so much more basic than people portray in entertainment. And that does make it more difficult for those with DID & their families/friends.
I have DID. It took awhile to diagnose it. I had a rough journey & still do at times. I was so very afraid of telling professionals about the man who lived in my head & sometimes overtook me. I knew they’d lock me up
forever!
When I FINALLY shared this with my psychiatrist he told me it was psychosis & I believed him. Why shouldn’t I trust the professional? He didn’t believe Multiple Personality Disorder (as it was called at that time) was real. He made it clear to me that people do that for attention. I certainly wanted no attention. He put me on antipsychotic medication & for 6 months I got much worse.
I can’t express the pain & difficulty in having this disorder. I honestly believe it will remain a controversial discussion until more is understood regarding memory & neurology. Science will catch up, I believe. Organ transplants are teaching us so much about memory. Who knew memory was cellular?!
After years of getting nowhere with my symptoms, I started researching on my own. Everything I read & studied brought me to this concept called dissociation which I never heard of. I remember distinctly reading the different dissociative diagnoses & DID being the farthest on the spectrum & said, ‘Thank God I don’t have that!’ Little did I know. . .
Things got pretty bad. I could find no therapist that knew how to treat the disorder. I was looking in a college psychology book on my shelf one day & found the 1 & 1/2 pages dedicated to dissociative disorders. I found a spectrum chart & took down the name of the person who made it. Dr. Colin Ross made this & I tracked down his email. He was/is very kind. He sent me information (nothing he has written, which impressed me). The symptoms were fitting. Dr. Ross has worked with me multiple times & I got much better after working through his trauma recovery program. It’s not for the faint of heart. It does take courage to heal.
Now, one of the best articles I’ve read by Dr. Ross was about FMS (False Memory Syndrome). It just changed my life as he explains memory & recall. It truly helped me to sort some things out.
Having this disorder keeps one riddled with debate. The nature of dissociation being akin to daydreaming & fantasy is really a battle. Think about it. What is fact about my childhood trauma? What is created by my mind about my childhood trauma? Here we see complete opposites at work.
But isn’t this the very idea of dissociation? To keep a part of the self believing nothing bad happened while another part needs resolution?
It took a long time to really agree with my diagnosis of DID. It was painful. I felt very lost & worried I wouldn’t survive.
Now, I had no problem with things being suggested to me by others. I WAS A VICTIM (IN WAYS) TO MY OWN VERY CREATIVE MIND & IT’S SUGGESTIONS.
Like I said, there’s a battle between fact & fantasy. I came to the conclusion that what I needed wasn’t by way of recalling & validating traumatic memories. Memory isn’t reliable. That’s not my opinion. Repeated studies show it isn’t. This is why I’m criminal cases eye witnesses are not seen as reliable as they once were. My focus shifted to ‘what are my symptoms & what relief can I find for them?’ My memories as a 4 year old are likely not ‘exact’ as my adult memory has filled in the blanks. The knowledge of a young child is vastly different from that of an adult. Also, I know I was often drugged with LSD.
Those memories certainly cannot be trusted. Other traumatic memories have been validated by others so I did experience really bad trauma. My own mother told me how she smothered me as an infant & brought me back to life several times. Bad things happened. I don’t need the details. I simply need closure & resolution to lies I believe about myself & the world & life. THAT is what I look at as I continue healing.
CBT helped tremendously. Dr. Ross’ program helped me with the following ‘classes’:
CBT
DBT
How to grieve
How to communicate healthily
Triggers are our friends
Physiology/biology & trauma response
Feel your feelings & stay safe
I’m sure to many some of that
Sounds familiar while others seem odd. I have worked very hard. There are no meds for DID. To integrate takes hard work. I once had 30+ alters & fragments. I only had 3 alters (very distinct, separate personalities) & the rest were smaller fragments usually connected to the alters. I now have 2 alters & 1 fragment. The other alter & fragments have all joined those remaining. I still work with them. We have cooperation. Life is much better!
I have always had co-consciousness. Yes, I have amnesia & I am very forgetful. I do believe that amnesia when an alter comes out is known by the rest of the mind on some level. And it was nice to hear that you touched on that.
I know this is long but I hope someone benefits from it. I appreciate the information you presented here.
Thank you for this video! I have seen lots of discussion online about this topic but never from a professional view. It’s refreshing to see something backed up with studies and proof even if there is no super clear conclusion from them.
You are quite welcome!
I was raised believing that there was something inherently bad about showing signs of this disorder. I remembered crying so often as a child because I couldn't figure out what happened to me and why I didn't feel the same. I remembered things before a certain age as if they were in a book instead of their memory. None of it made sense for decades. I'm trying to unpack it all and avoided it for years. Understanding my broken as not just some dark sea that has been swallowing me my whole life, but as a cloud that protected me from the thing that happened has been mind blowing.
I relate to that so much! My parents both told me at different times in my life that they felt that they’d gotten a different kid or asked me why I changed. Because of the amnesia I didn’t know why, but saying I was heartbroken to hear things like that would be a massive understatement, because all I wanted to do was go back to being a toddler when my parents knew how to love me. As an adult it’s tough because I still often feel as if I was literally never a young child. Even though I can recall things from childhood, I feel as if I sprang into existence at age twelve and everything before that is stuff that happened to a little kid I know. Very strange. And yeah, finding out about DID has induced incredible anxiety but also been freeing in other ways. It’s a wild world out here lol
Yea in my case it's an unspecified dissociative disorder. States become altered under stress. Negative or traumatic events and emotions bring out the switch.
I know you are right on and I hope they or yourself is being treated for it and how to cope. My theory is that we need to learn a coping mechanism that the brain we reteach or should i say relearn so a person won't go automatically switch or black out and etc. People that has been under mind control has this and the people doing it to them know it usually because they do it to small children and their brains learn or does this automatically to cope with the trauma. Therfore, they will have it from early childhood. Yes other can get it at any age.
Thank you very, very much for your pursuit of accuracy when diagnosing someone with DID. It is a very complicated and misunderstood condition because there are so many variables that present in individuals and even exist in research which lead to misinterpretation. I'm very glad depersonalization and derealization exist as branches of dissociative disorders. And I am in complete agreement that childhood trauma is what kick-starts the need to protect oneself so he/she can continue to function in the real world with some sense of authenticity. I'm not a clinician; I'm a patient, and probably will be one the rest of my life. I've been misdiagnosed with DID. I don't have alters and never have. My depersonalization was very real and active when I was younger, not so much anymore. However, in extremely stressful situations, that removal from reality draws me to it, again as a source of protecting myself from the threat of harm that arises internally. I'm in my late 60s and after 11 years of professional counseling, which went from PTSD to DID, I have a fairly good grasp of what's going on. It took me many, many years to accept the fact that this condition very well may have saved my life and is something I should embrace with gratitude. I do now, and I see it as a blessing. Thank you, too, for all the fine videos you post. You communicate so well these issues that are hard to understand without someone as articulate as you addressing them.
this is a great video that discussed the controversy surrounding DID. Thank you so much Dr. Grande!
Thank you so much for uploading this video and helping to bring more information to the public about people, like us, who have DID. 🙌🏻
Thank you Dr Grande you've explained it so well. I am learning more of why I act the way I do and always thought the cause was childhood trauma, like when someone stomps on a beautiful flower that's just growing and never got the chance to blossom to it's full potential that's the way I feel.
I want to highlight the area in your argument with the greatest potential for further understanding to help resolve the matter... What symptoms exactly would a practitioner see that would point to DID? Because when a client's presentation is all you have to go on, then you would need to know the indicators. I propose that many practitioners don't know what to look for, or what kind of questions to ask in order to 'see' DID in clients. And furthermore, speaking from experience, they are likely to be 'seeing' mostly one main presenting alter who would look like a fairly cohesive person. I suggest that much more training or insight would be needed to enable professionals to notice possible signs of DID and to then ask appropriate questions which aren't suggestive.
Not so long ago I talked with an intern psychologist that I was seeing about this because I understand myself as DID but don't have a formal diagnosis. She said that it's rare and obvious. I propose that it's not so rare and very not obvious. The goal of some (at least) DID systems is to create the impression of a normal functioning person - to "look okay" on the outside. I first started getting treatment for major depression and ED-NOS. Now also have diagnosis of ADHD.
I have a friend with DID. I don't know how the details work, and it's not unlikely that it may be different for different people. I do know that it's tough, and that it's also hard for the people around to understand. The closest thing in my experience is dementia, where there are things (memories and skills etc) in the individual that are not always accessible to him or her, but they can become accessible.
Something that is also apparent in my limited experience is a constant underlying stress.
Loss of skills has been a theme in my life. At one point I was an amazing cake artist. Out of the blue I would make a cake that looked like grade school level work. I never could understand. Felt like such. a failure.
Nancy McWilliams describes personalities in her book about psychoanalytic diagnostics and includes "dissociative personality" as a personality with dissociation as a primal defense mechanism. I would like to see DID as a diagnosis gone, and replaced with dissociative personality disorder in various degrees of severity just like any other personality/-disorder.
I myself suffer from some kind of dissociative problems and been wrongly diagnosed so many times and had my already weak sense of self totally crushed in the process. I am nothing but a body and confused mind in the now, with slight awareness of a past that might have been difficult... Who knows might just all be in my head lol
:)))
😞 “confused mind in the now” wow I hate that I relate .. just wanna leave
Good Afternoon, Dr. Grande.
I really appreciated this excerpt and the quantitative and qualitative distinctions.
As I listened to your presentation today, I must tell you I am the ideal case study.
As a layman, I have invested approximately 25 years "writing the answers down" for the questions that could and would be unfolding in present day as clinicians start to build a "construct" for treatment.
The questions you have formulated around the construct are all on point. You have 90 percent of the puzzle pieces. And those pieces are all still separate in your puzzle box over there on the clinician side.
If you could have access to a clinical case study and be able to break ground, this is the key that opens the door, so that the puzzle pieces can be put together.
Your dedication to correct information and easy to follow summaries is amazing. I'm certain many followers would love for you to expand on the topic of DID - without mentioning controversy yet again. Maybe theories about; how splitting occurs, how can you lower the barriers of amnesia? Why do child alters not age properly? How do you handle competing beliefs between alters? Do comorbitities such as bipolar affect every alter? How do you work towards fusing alters into a single identity when each identity has different memories/personality/brain function? Can fusion actually happen? I'm losing faith fusion actually exists. Would appreciate. Thank you.
I have a very close friend with DID, and have come to know others with DID through the internet. I think in most cases there is clear evidence of DID in the person's life prior to the start of therapy, such as lost time, "coming to" in foreign places, an apparently very poor memory, unexplained possessions, different handwriting, and so on. It would be nice to see a research paper that attempts to quantify how often such evidence was apparent prior to therapy, as that would help to disprove the iatrogenic model as a major cause of DID.
i think the issue is that coming to in a different place just indicates dissociation and doesn't necessarily show much in regard to the distinct personalities
Yes exactly! I had symptoms dating back to age four, and far from being pushed towards a DID diagnosis, my experiences were often ignored or dismissed by clinicians. It’s very frustrating when people assume that DID is always inspired by therapists. I’d love to see more research done on this stuff, because it is ABSOLUTELY real. It might sound arrogant, but it seems to me that the people who say it’s a sort of social contagion just aren’t looking hard enough or are letting preconceived notions or peer pressure interfere.
Thank you for this video! I think my husband could have it, but I do not want to jump to conclusions, and I don't want him to start thinking he has it until these speculations are clarified with a psychiatrist, as it could do a lot of damage to self-diagnose such a difficult illness.
Dr. Grande's videos make me want to pursue formal education in psychology!!!!!! Thank you, Dr. Grande.
I know someone with this, neither of us recognized it for over 20 years, until he had to go to therapy.
It explains so much. The "lost" keys, wallet. The change in where they slept. Sometimes nice, sometimes really mean.
A woman affect occasionally.
Forgetting conversations.
In my opinion some of the disagreements or belief or not is more harmful to people with different conditions. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I personally prefer to help others rather than not. Hope this makes sense. Thanks Dr. Grande.
Love Dr. Grande. Keep pushing out quality scientific analysis!
Thank you so much!
Another great video as usual. If there has been any research done on rates of suicidal idealization and attempts among the different personality disorders, I think that would make for a great video.
Thank you so very, very much for your video! I am so glad that it was in my recommended section. Listening to your thoughts about this, has really helped me with what I am going through, it has helped me feel less alone. I have a good psychiatrist, I am diagnosed with very severe and complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I also have BPD, and some other diagnoses. I have these symptoms that I don't really understand, that I am a passenger to myself, but it isn't like a distinct personality, but a fragment of sorts, that happens when I am stressed, scared. When I ask him about it, he will share with me that it is a kind of dissociation, that he thinks might be a result of the traumas I've been through in my past. But interestingly dissociative symptoms like these he won't diagnose, and I soon realized other doctors are hesitant too. Your video explained and cleared up so much for me. I really appreciate that you made this. All the best to you.
My therapist has recently started teaching me grounding techniques in the belief that I am "dissociating". I went along with it, because she didn't really define what she meant by that term. I'm here trying to learn more about dissociation. The more I hear about it the more skeptical I get. First off, I have no trauma history that I'm aware of. I do avoid confrontation, I have been diagnosed with general anxiety disorder w/ depression in the past, but this dissociation thing. . . . I don't believe that I have any of the amnesia symptoms, nor have I ever blacked out or such. Wife and I watched a couple of different TH-cam's on the subject and just sort of wondered how my therapist came up with this. . . . Therapist has been trained in EMDR and that seems to be an interest area of hers. Seems to me that it's more of the situation where "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? How do you convince someone you're *not* dissociating?
James Schmitt Dissociation is on a spectrum and saying you “dissociate” during a session doesn’t mean the therapist is saying you have DID or are having amnesic episodes. There is depersonalization, derealization, or tendencies to zone when triggered in a session, etc. There are different meanings when using this term. If you go to the ISSTD website, they explain the different types and terms. Everyone has a normal level of dissociation and everyone dissociates, but it does have different meanings when used in psychology.
Everybody dissociates sometimes. That feeling when you have a walk and suddenly end up at you door? Or when you go to the kitchen and forget why you came? That's normal. Now, one can dissociate to a pathological level. As an adult child of an alcoholic I used to dissociate from my own emotions to stop feeling them. I still dissociate from my memories, I remember some of my memories as if they were a story I heard, like they belong to someone else. I have no emotional connection with them. But there is no distinct personality they would belong to, because I just dissociate, I do not have DID.
JS: Find another therapist who isn't driving an agenda.
@@aeonarin I don't know if everyone dissociates. I've never had a walk and then just been at the door. The only thing similar I can think of is if I'm really drunk at night and then in the morning don't remember the journey home. I do forget why I walked into a room sometimes but isn't that just forgetting a plan? I still am conscious the whole time.
Had a girlfriend diagnosed with it 30 years ago but never had a really good explanation for it. I suspected something like "simulation" but I am not a psychologist. I thought this was a way for her to disown behavior that she didn't want to acknowledge.
TY ♥
Thank you for a rational and reasoned discussion of this controversial topic.
I have this condition. I don't think that it was caused by therapy. I was kept isolated from mental health professionals to keep the abuse hidden. My family didn't want me anymore, once they found out that I was this different. It wouldn't have been socially advantageous for me say that I have this condition. My brother told me to go away. My father told me that my brother didn't want to be around me because I was, "so bazaar" . My mother laughed at me, told me that she was afraid of me. She wouldn't stay in the same room with me after that. If I hugged her, she wouldn't hug me back. My parents are the cause of my condition. They did this to me and now they don't want me anymore.
I have found, if I am particularly distressed, I can ask another identity to take over for me or at least assist me. What was done to me that made me this way was a tragedy. The fact that I am this was isn't. My alters provide me with a lot of the Things that I went with out, while I was growing up. I can spend long periods of time alone with out feeling lonely and I always feel loved, now. My parents can't take that from me anymore. I can tell that at least three of my 13 personalities were caused by my dad. Two are terrified of him and one absolutely hates him. I can tell that at least one of them is caused by my mother. There is very little that hasn't been done to me or in front of me.
Sometimes I have complete amnesia with knowing about it and a friend will tell me about encounters that I don't remember. She said that I turned into another person, but I am told that they aside from not being me, that they act reasonably. I stay myself most of the time, now, but I can trust them to take care of my life, while I am not myself. Once I let them know which actions hurt me and I need to do to protect myself, they have been committed to that goal. All the alternate identities that I share this body with are here for a reason and I wouldn't get rid of or change any of them. Each one is precious and beautiful to me.
Good video. I've thought my mother had PTSD because of my father. This kind of solidifies that idea. She would block out/dissociate from actual occurrences and had absolutely no recall.
We got diagnosed with did this year, after 11 years of psychotherapy that never really seemed to adress the core of the Problem. After only one year of working with it as if it was real, we're no longer suicidal every day and got a lot better overall. At this point I really don't care about objective truth, I'm just grateful we got a diagnosis that finally helped us to move forward
I absolutely love the way you ended this video. What you said about mood states is ultimately how I've felt about DID for a long time. It's almost more like the reccuring altered moods are shattered aspects of personality instead of entire different personalities.
I have a friend that is being treated for DID. I have absolutely no doubt she is truly suffering from this disorder. I have noticed two very distinct "mood states, " not at all like normal changes of moods. Both were somewhat childlike but very different. I have myself suffered from severe trauma and felt Derealization and Depersonalizaton but after several traumatic abuse as teen and adult. She has horrific memories of childhood abuse. She is in therapy with DID specialist now for 1 year. She has identified like 30 distinct alters, some internal as she says, do not show outwardly.She is in so much emotional pain and so fragile due to the awful memories. I cannot even imagine trying to deal with that many. It just seems she is going through hell. But, after numerous serious suicide attempts as young adult she has not made any attempts in past 3 years. Must be progressing. I just try to be supportive, all I know to do. I am having to learn to express boundaries in a constructive way ( I do not have the best recognition of proper boundaries, hence years of abuse) Sometimes I feel just drained seeing her struggle. Anyone with DID have suggestions?
Complex trauma causes DID. Lift the statute of limitations that protects the child abusers.
Though I didn't know what was going on, as a child, adolescent and then an adult, I knew there was something different and learned not to tell about it because I instinctively knew it wasn't good to share it.
I had to pretend I remembered things I didn't. I became very good at this. It was horrifying when someone I didn't know would come up to me and know things about me INTIMATE AND PRIVATE that I would never tell. There are no words for what impact this had on me.
No clinician EVER convinced me.
Although silly and overly dramatic, when I saw a movie depicting this, I both became terribly agitated but relieved because I finally understood. I didn't tell.
It took a long time to finally tell a clinician. My experience is that over seeing different clinicians, some believed and actually helped. The most destructive were the ones that didn't believe me.
I learned to lie which was hard to do. I don't like to lie. Call in "sick" to work or to professors made me feel dirty, but it was necessary.
I couldn't look myself in the eyes in a mirror. Too often I didn't recognize myself.
I don't like anyone knowing. It's difficult enough without the added feeling of being under a microscope or the fascination of others. I want to be normal, but after over 30 years of clinicians, I know there is no true treatment except anti depressants and help sleeping.
I write this now in a public forum in the hope that some understanding of this by others may convince them of the reality of DID so no one like me suffers additionally from denial from the mental health workers.
It's not fun. It's painful and the suicidal ideation is exhausting to keep at bay.
May others know malingering damages the integrity of myself and others like me. I hope someday there will be a successful treatment found.
Most of us hide in the shadows with it.
I am so glad you made this. I have been working on a story involving DID and this has really positively changed how to approach it.
I knew someone that had localized amnesia dissociation. She dissociated at age 4 and that went on for over 3 decades. Physically she was present but her mind was absent. That is a weird state of mind to be in. She was and wasn't there at the same time. Her emotions, logic, perception, reasoning, and basically her entire thought process was absent. They were locked away within herself. That crossed over into relationships, school, work, or anything she wanted to do. It was quite distressing being in that state of mind too. I didn't know what it was that was holding her back from excelling. She didn't know who she was. She knew her name, age, and family members, some of her autobiographical information too. She knew these things before she dissociated. This occurred over a trauma, not of physical abuse, however, one of mental abuse by her older sisters. From all I've read and studied, I'm not diagnosing anyone, but I have a strong belief that her sisters are narcissists and meet all of the narcissistic criteria I've studied and read over the years. She came out of this state of mind all by herself. She did see a professional over this and he explained to her that she dissociated after hearing her say she left when she was 4 and came back after a very long time. He did let her know that emotions are a big part of being dissociated. She is a normal person today. She has arrived and knows who she is. She did write a book over her experience with this dreadful mental disability. I'd really like to see a segment on localized amnesia dissociation. She had to remember the trauma her sisters brought to her when she was only 4. They are awful too. In every sense of that word.
Really informative video , thank you! My sister recently got diagnosed with DID and started therapy. I can tell for sure that our family environment was highly dysfunctional and threatening, we were both emotionally neglected and our father's rage outbreaks towards everyone were traumatic. We were never allowed to express what we were feeling , we were taught to feel guilt for our emotions. Our parents would never spend time with us, we felt more like objects than children. I don't know what I feel for my parents now. Maybe genetic factors interacting with the dysfunctionality of early family environment cause DID.
Can DID be fully cured through therapy? Thank you.
hi there! mental illnesses, especially chronic conditions like diagnosed disorders (adhd, ocd, mdd, gad, etc) are not typically things that are “cured,” the same way that you wouldn’t say you’ve been cured of say, asthma or crohn’s disease. you can go through treatment that puts you in a state of living relatively symptom free, but it’s not something that can be “fixed” in the same way that taking antibiotics treats a bacterial infection. effect treatment for did varies depending on the system’s (group of altered identities all living in the body) needs, but it commonly includes trauma work. some people advocate for the integration of all altered states into one singular personality (often poorly defined as back into the “original” or “true” personality) but it’s incredibly controversial. one of the ways i’ve been taught to conceptualize it is like this: if a glass bowl falls onto the floor into a million pieces, which is the “true” or “original” piece? either way, effective treatment usually involves symptom management and learning to best cope for daily life to best thrive and live :)
I wonder the same thing
Sounds like some higher level Narc-parental, Neg. influences. Wondering if our Mom might've gone Covert?? dealing w/ an ADD + Autistic?, mentally-deficient, ODD, + who might've Traumatiz- ed the other sibs. (??)
Surprised to learn, last year, Dad may've been at top of 'Normal' Narcissism Scale! ... Not* the Grandiose, I'd thought, & 1 bro became, & emulates soo well. (Tho neither could walk in his shadow.) And I never liked the guy, esp.
And watched the Dangerous Dr. Jekyll, (Covert 1), go "primary psychotic" on me!
Tagged by the "Terror Team," injured* & in Shock, the other's Screaming @ me to, GET UP!! x 12-15 ... and, then, GET OUT!! (of some place I had an = right to be & hadn't done anything wrong!) x 12++, & waaay to soon to even Move - Blew the whole circuit, almost instantly!
(And Frontal areas already 'tuning out' as battered x ???, some 10'-11', into the INJURY.)
At least, I didn't FAWN to Narco- NAZIS! But, any one like them can sure Trigger my @$$! Still.
Even after 1 Yr. of EMDR & "Trauma Tx"! And a Covid year on my own.
Guess I need to try the Natural ~ Zadiol - for Vets! ~ And some freaking SLEEP, after 3 YEARS, might be Helpful, too.
Yeah, Childhood Neglect, emotionally, was a thing back back in the 50s & Trends in Child Rearing. Our Dad's came home from WWII TRAUMATIZED & Heavy, Social Drinkers, always Working. Rarely involved.
An Idyllic "Cake Walk" compared to TODAY!
What do you mean by "cured"?
You fill in the gaps from my sadly lacking grad school-which shall remained unnamed.
Dr. Grande, these are complex concepts to digest w/o full knowledge of the pathologies referenced. I’m grateful for your breakdown but had to go @ .75 speed 👍😹🙌 very interesting! I learned so much and will look at the literature around DID. 🎉
thanks so much for your objectivity & clearing things up!
I have been a support person for someone with DID for 2 1/2 years. I am not a counselor or therapist. The cause is childhood trauma. I don't know what I believed before I met her. She has multiple alters each with their own version of reality. It terrifies her when they come out because they say and do things that aren't always loving. She feels like she has no control of her life. She feels like she is a burden to me and I feel like we are continuously walking a tightrope with her sanity and with her life. There have been many days I've literally dragged her back from some really dark places. It isn't anything I'd wish on my worst enemy. Trying to get help and legitimate treatment for her is incredibly hard. I ask for information from experts such as yourself and and they run away fast. Thanks for your candid and non-biased submission.
Wow😞 The state of the Mental Healthcare system is atrocious. Being recently diagnosed with CPTSD, among other things, I can tell you the stigma is REAL, and people are needlessly suffering every day. If it's not from the morons that discredit the existence of mental disorders, it's from the so-called professionals that shouldn't be practicing psychiatry or be in the psychology field.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, then schizoaffective disorder.,then borderline, then P.t.s.d, I was finally diagnosed with D.I.D.I have been tortured with drugs and lived in mental hospitals all my life. The practitioners who can't ever seem to make up their minds argue with each
other.I am treated with contempt and disbelief needles and restraints.I am shocked by the stupidity I am faced with. The lack of research.The endless questions. However I am in total agreement with you Dr.Grande .A habitual dissociative MOOD disorder would be a much better description. Dr .Grande please look at the brain scans of patients diagnosed with D.I.D .Fascinating.
I think the difference between patient reported amnesia, and the amnesia measured in DID, it's because we can communicate and listen to alters. We might not remember what they did, but they do and sometimes can easily tell us. Other times, that's not so easy (or they'll refuse if it's traumatic), and it's when those difficulties happen that we experience trouble with memories. So, it's not something that reliably happens all the time in order to be measured and replicated, but happens often enough and is pervasive enough to be a major problem in your life.
Also, stress makes this communication worse, such as dealing something in daily life. Laboratory questionairies are very safe and controlled environments for most people. We can easily chat with other alters in a medical office, it's much harder in the midst of something stressful.
Hi. Thank you for the well balanced and well crafted analysis on this important topic. I really like your point of DID termed as supernatural in different cultures. I know someone who suffer from it and also have ADD. People these days only like glamour and making money. Hollywood is hugely responsible for using these important disorders of the brain to make money and present movies with lots of loop holes on this. However I agree with your opinion the DID does exist and mostly this disorder occurs in people who look quite normal and can manage basic functions of their lives but inside them they are suffering from volcanoes of pain. Lots of successful historical figures were assumed to have DID. So for people with this disorder there is great hope.
The problem is that I have all of the symptoms and all of these problems, but I recognized it myself therefore I can’t be struggling with this. Every single mental health professional in my life has just disregarded me so.
I was very recently diagnosed. At first I did not understand where it would have come from as a trauma-related disorder, as I believed that I had not experienced "trauma" in my early childhood, or really at all for that matter. To me, trauma was only prolonged physical or sexual abuse. Accepting our experiences as trauma made a huge difference and explained a lot about the way we've lived our collective life thus far.
Very interesting topic. And I think, I share your opinion. I would imagine, that especially sexual abuse would trigger a tendency to disassociate, and that it would take a good therapist, not to reinforce this tendency.
Reinforce? You act like if you.stopped giving me buiskits I will instantly be whole. Insulting. Don't become. a mental health professional please.
Loved this video, very insightful and informative.
I would really appreciate it if some professionals in the field would share their opinions about all those DID-centered channels, but at the same time I do realise that you (and other professionals) would probably consider it unethical (although I feel like if you made a clear disclaimer about it being purely your personal opinion it should be ok), so I understand why people don't really talk about it. But I feel like those channels really shape public opinions/education about DID so it would be useful to know just how typical their experiences are. Especially because all DID channels that I have seen were fairly similar in their experiences: they seem to be able to switch between the alters willingly, all of their alters have very clearly determined different genders/ages/names/roles/etc. So I feel like professional evaluation of those symptoms could be very educational for the viewers; but yeah I realise it's unlikely to happen.
Thanks for the video again.
You are quite welcome!
Nobody switches on command. Some multiples with good communication between alters can be co-conscious and sometimes you can use o "positive trigger" (something pleasant to a certain alter) to bring them out to the front. But nobody decides to switch and just does it.
i have seen quite a number of TH-cam vids with people who have DID. and before YT, i would read about it. I don't understand how people can say there is no such thing as DID when there are changes in handwriting or eyesight? you really can't fake handwriting, can you?! i agree totally with your own theoretical thoughts which you summarized at the end, especially after hearing all the various theories you talked about. the iatrogenic theory is something i have heard of before, but it was sort of vague.. thanks much again :}
AP: Of course different styles of handwriting can be faked. Thought Question: What does handwriting have to do with mental illness? Why should "different personalities" have different handwriting styles? They all went to the same school. This is easily a "symptom" that can feed into the fad of DID.
@@KB4QAA The handwriting isn't related to which school you went to.
my psychiatrist literally told me to man up and get over it when i was telling her about my did and ptsd symptoms. no longer my psychiatrist obviously.
That psychiatrist should lose it licence
It's been a while since you wrote this but I have to question whether your misguided psychiatrist was trying to trigger out a protector for proof.
Misguided, right, but as a protector it feels like what might have been taking place.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! This is 60€, please!
Very informative!!! I have a freind who is dealing with this in a relationship… its a tuff situation for sure!! Wish we knew more but thatnkful for what we do know!
When I told my therapist I thought I might have DID, she told me that was impossible because it didn’t exist. When I sought other help I had to repeat my symptoms many, many times before I was diagnosed. After a period of no response, I was finally diagnosed by all three clinicians I was seeing. I don’t care what it’s called I just need help.
I think the fear people have of DID, including therapists, is based off of the slippery interactions and transference responses occuring that may bring up in the therapist a fear that reality is somehow questioned.
Thank you for including the bibliography in the description. Much appreciated!😊
In my case it overlapped with bi polar disorder. And it was medication that became my savior eventually.
This was fascinating and answered the question of why is there a controversy for this diagnosis
I had DID for years and have, after many years of therapy and meds and self-healing, I have become integrated. I put my step-father in prison for 12 yrs of sexual abuse when I was 19 years old. Dissociating and creating altars was my way of coping. I remember lapses of memory all the way into my childhood. This was a way to protect myself. I can't imagine when I was dissociating that my altars would have come out and talked to a stranger, especially the children in front of a camera. It would not be safe. Most people who met my altars did not know.
Well, I was told by my pcp to see this new therapist that was in the clinic. I went to a church that did not believe in psychology or psychiatry. Just pray it away I guess.
I did make an appointment with him. He said I’d have to come in for about 2-3 hours to take a test. I told him that would be impossible for me, bc I couldn’t put myself in a position of being trapped. He said he’d send the test and I could fill it out at home. He said there were no right or wrong answers and to not overthink it. I was 25 at the time. My therapist knew right off by the test that I had large gaps of childhood missing. He NEVER TOLD ME. I knew I had something that nobody else had…but I had no words for it. I knew nothing about nothing. When I did go to his office, while waiting I’d be in a state of panic…but I had no words for this either. Finally I was in his office for like the 3rd visit. He was talking and that THING happened… my therapist asked “what just happened? You just sat straight up?”. I was AMAZED HE NOTICED MY REALLY AWFUL THING. I tried to explain but hadn’t any words. In fact he gave me a paper with faces and words under them, so I could use that when trying to communicate. That’s how far down I was in Self-perception. Between 3 months or so, I remember him telling me “no, that’s child abuse” I refused to accept that I had child abuse. So we’re stuck there.
He had me start to journal. I am so glad that I did for over a decade.
Soon at home I would hear a child crying in my head and I felt like a child. I told my therapist and he explained that all of us feel that way sometimes. I said NO I FEEL LIKE I WAS THE CHILD. Hum
Soon he began to ask easy questions, but not for me. “Tell me about Christmas time in your home?”. Ummmmmmmmmmmmm I can see lights on a tree. “Tell me about how you celebrated your birthdays growing up?”. Ummmmmmmmm I had a cake that my sister sat on. “Oh good, what else do you remember?”. Ummmmmmm that’s it. Starting to see a pattern here. Weird thing is even not being able to answer those questions did not cause any alarm in my thinking. It was what it was, which is all it was.
I had been seeing a psychiatrist too. He prescribed the anti anxiety and antidepressants. I went to his office about 3 years into therapy. He gave me prescriptions, then said “here you need to read these 2 books bc you have Multiple personality Disorder…Just as flat as that. I heard what he said but sat stunned. I had a 3 hour drive home in which U cried the whole way. The next morning I called my therapist crying…Dr S said I have MPD 😭😭😭😭 he said he’d book out 2 hours of time so we could talk about it. Well I went and all I did was cryyyyyyy. He agreed with him. I FELT I HAD BEEN GIVEN A DIAGNOSIS OF CANCER. At home I cried for a week.
Not very glamorous huh. So our new therapy topic was to try an piece together my past. He had explained that from 17 down I just didn’t seem to know anything. We worked for YEARS trying to piece together my childhood. 30 years later and I still have whole chunks of my past missing.
Last week driving into our neighborhood I laughed and said to my grandson “OOOO Look a white van with no windows…serial killer! Hahahaha” we did that anytime we saw a van with no windows. We get out of the car and he says “you know that’s Romans car…remember you talking to him about how proud you were of him. You went in for like half hour to forty five minutes. I had a complete blank star…I searched my mind for that conversation, that amount of time, that day. It still does not exist. That’s the day I had to tell my 18 year old grandson I wasn’t senile I had DID.
I’d love for anybody to try an figure this out…believers to non believers…bc I just live in it.
I finally came up with an explanation “You don’t know, what you don’t know”.
Thank you very much. Very informative
This was an awesome video. Very thorough. I have DID and I definitely experience it as a kind of mode shifting (not really “mood” shifting as much as functions, but also moods at times). I don’t have personalities with different hair styles and stuff. Some parts feel to be certain ages, certain genders, with distinguished voices, and distinguished hand writings, and I feel distinctly like that alter when I am as that alter. Still.I feel like I am just like everyone else except that my parts of who I am just go a little further distinguished? I don’t know. I definitely experience a child side of myself, for example, that just kind of interweaves within my normal or “primary” identity. But I also experience times when this child type, for example, combines with a dissociative state, during which my motor skills slow down and I am often very confused and I have to think extra hard to remember things or where I am or who my boyfriend is when I’m looking at him, etc. And I feel distinctly like I am a child who is not “Sherry.” My voice, demeanor and sense of self changes. I do have names for certain “identities” but they just kind of picked their names (which was probably mostly influenced as I learned about the diagnosis??). Chrissy had a name before then but... I don’t know, it’s very confusing. As someone who definitely warrants my did diagnosis, I OFTEN wonder how much of it I created. Still, my dissociative identity states do feel like separate parts or “persons” and I can’t just switch at will and I havent been able to figure out how to keep myself from switching or how to just bring “myself” back. I definitely have memory problems but I have found that the memories seem to be there across identities it just takes a lot of digging to get at them. There is definite co-consciousness with my identities, and lots of talking amongst them (but does not everyone have talkative “parts” in their brains!? I think it’s similar at least!) I don’t know. I get very very frustrated when therapists have insisted that I experienced childhood trauma that I have blacked out because I have did therefore it’s certain. Therapists have literally said these types of things and I think it lead me to craft my personal story about what must have happened. I don’t think it is probable that I was sexually abused. I think people convinced me that I was and I filled in the gaps with my imagination. I’m not certain, but that’s what my gut feels. Lots of questions as a person with did. I see these real life people describing their did online and I feel like, hm... they really have a lot of descriptive details about each of their alters... I feel like I have 22 alters, but most of them are just like ghosts in my head (not real ghosts). I don’t know. I think I’m very creative and easily may have developed did myself as a way to cope/disconnect from stuff. I recall recognizing what I later learned was derealization when I was about 8 years old. And soon after I started thinking, hey, I feel numb when I do this. So I started intentionally practicing dissociating (derealization and depersonalization) in order to escape uncomfortable stuff such as autistic meltdowns/anxiety/embarrassment etc. Eventually I just found that I couldn’t control it anymore? It’s been running wild ever since!! Chrissy started to develop around age 13 and I named her at age 16 or so. But she was my first distinct alter and she totally could have been a creative manifestation. I don’t know for sure how my did came to be, but I definitely believe, it’s a real thing in my life now.
Sherry Polley Authentic thanks for telling your story! It is helping me understand my mom with DID a little more. It makes sense it would start out as a numbing tool and then take over. Kind of like what drugs can do.
Thanks for sharing your story. I does help me to understand DID better. I can see how it would be easy for a clinician to influence a person struggling with DID, worsening the symptoms. I think you are blessed to be able to see what is going on with you, some people can't see themselves for nothing with just ONE personality. You are great for helping to shed light on this disorder. Thanks again, and best of wishes to you.
I definitely think DID is an incredible coping mechanism for a child to use to get through traumatic events when they can’t rely on their parents to support them. However as an adult in order to fully appreciate and experience life you have to learn how to trust and rely on people and how to be open and transparent. I think the goal is to be able to say “This doesn’t feel like me, but it is me and I appreciate and respect this aspect of myself because it served a purpose to protect me. However I am no longer in danger and it is ok to change and grow because that is what life is about . I am safe and I love myself. I am a tough person who survived 100 % of their bad days.”
Trigger warning: trauma
Sexual abuse is not the only trauma a child can experience! Medical trauma, neglect, physical and mental abuse, being lost, near death experience and many, many more.
Now if you have DID, the fact that you don't remember the trauma is the point! One of your alters probably does remember and they hold it for you so you don't have to. That's why therapists say you must've had trauma in your childhood.
I’m really interested in the overlap between latrogenic and endogenic. I’ve never heard of “latrogenic” in the community, but I see discourse on endogenic all the time.
I think that both things are true. I have absolutely seen DID manifest. A friend of mine fell asleep, then woke up and then started crawling around on the floor and talking in baby talk for a long time. And she did not remember it later, at all. She had a history of childhood trauma and mental health issues. But she had not been diagnosed with DID. But her boyfriend told me that she was always waking up with pins stuck into her, which she had accidentally put in her bed before sleeping. Clearly, she had put those pins in herself, but did not remember it.
That said, I believe that sometimes clinicians have created it.
Now, as to those much more developed alternate personalities, that I don't know about.
Dr. Grande, I was diagnosed with MDD at age 20, and early in the disorder (during my first "episode" which lasted nearly 1 year) I had at least 2 dissociative experiences. However I never felt any alternate personality whatsoever. These experiences lasted maybe 20-30 seconds at the most, and I felt like they occurred when my thoughts were overwhelming me and acute extreme stress, a feeling that I had no control over anything. It was like I suddenly didn't know who I was or where I was, and I felt myself actually leaving my physical body a few feet from where I was sitting (I was in a university lecture at the time of the most significant dissociative experience i had during that first episode of MDD). It scared the hell out of me and suddenly I was back into my body and experiencing the mental stress and symptoms again. I was truly worried I was losing myself and my mind. So I talked with the psychotherapist about it at my next appointment. He explained to me that it can occur in MDD cases and if it becomes worse, I need to let him know. It never became longer or worse up until now (25 years later), but it was the single most terrifying event I've ever experienced.
The brain initially dissociated to protect the person who was being abused because they could not fight, freeze, or flee.
There is nothing awesome about this disorder and I do not understand why people think it is being faked by those who are suffering. There is stigma in not only society but also among clinicians which is sad for those that need support.
I don’t know if Todd Grande answers any comments/questions. I’m diagnosed- twice in fact. I do not have an awareness, generally speaking, of my amnesia, or of what alters/different personality states are doing or have done- that is reported to me by family members and by clinicians. Or I will find evidence from various activities, like items purchased without my awareness, or finding handwritten journals I had no awareness of writing.
So- that is one question- how does that type of symptom fit into your model/conception?
Also (because I’ve lived with this diagnosis for many decades)- a subsequent therapist after my initial diagnosis who believed that the alters/personality states were fantasies/imaginary playmates, advised me to ignore them. The goal was to work on decreasing dissociation.This was essentially impossible since I basically had no awareness of when I was dissociating. This therapy really only caused a worsening of amnesia episodes.
Todd worries that clients will fake DID please a therapist, but I almost did the opposite, tho not consciously- where I felt like I had to comply with the therapist and kind of fake that I was recovering from DID!
I feel the debate/controversy over the decades has truly negatively impacted me quite severely. Not just in how I personally view my diagnosis and disorder, but in finding treatment. Todd, you have advice for clinicians, do you have advice for people living with the disorder?
I work in a psychiatric Hospital.
I witnessed a woman change into Rita Hayworth.
Moods dont tend to have different person names, while the personalities often do, as well as different ages…but i appreciate your careful consideration of literature presented here.
Totally caused by trauma. As someone with DID ours was caused but physical and emotional abuse and neglect from as early as we can remember til we moved out at 18. Some of us remember some dont. I dont remember the majority of my childhood, jaynie remembers a super happy childhood but only the times we were at my grandparents nothing at home, raya has managed to explain to us but hasnt yet learned to show us but she remembers our home life growing up and being abused and terrified all the time. She holds all the trauma memories because she was there up front and we were not. U dont understand how anyone can have just one inner voice thats just their own it would feel so lonely and weird to not be able to go over plans or get the others thoughts on stuff. Everyone says integrations the end goal for us thats so scary. Like what if someone attacks us? Who would deal with that if Raya wasnt around? What if we have to do public speaking or go to a social event? That's Jaynies thing. I'm the one who goes to work usually what would we do if i disappeared? Being one singular being must be super hard work! Cant imagine having to do all the things by myself all the time with no one to take over when it gets too much.
In the one case with which I am extremely familiar, it cannot be iatrogenic. This does not mean that it is not iatrogenic in some cases.
This was a very informative video. I think that the iatrogenic view is valid for the same reason. I do believe that trauma can start it and then DID becomes more influenced. I am however, curious to see what population in America has DID. If it is mainly diagnosed in the US, expensive to treat, and therefore influenced by clinicians, then I wonder if more White people are diagnosed with it. Then I can almost see why some would thing it's cause is more on the iatrogenic side than the trauma side. I had to watch this for a class but it has peeked my curiosity. Thanks.
Tanishia Dungy but that doesn't mean it's iatrogenic, either. That's an access problem. In communities below the poverty line there is far more abuse and trauma and communities of color are plagued by poverty due to systemic inequality (this is from a book I read on child abuse quite some time ago).
I am white and I have a job that pays me well even though it is blue collar, I can afford a specialist but also, there are none in my area that aren't booked solid. Getting a diagnosis just isn't that easy.
Hi Dr Grande, great video! I'm a psychology student, currently doing research in developmental psychopathology but I haven't done much research into the literature of DID, so I found your summary of the literature to be extremely informative. In particular, the idea you proposed about dissociation leading to different mood states makes quite a lot of sense. I was wondering if you could expand your thoughts on this a little further? Most of the knowledge I have on DID has come from individuals with DID talking about their personal experiences, so I do take it with a grain of salt, however all the individuals I have seen speak about their DID (i.e., The Entropy System, Multiplicity and Me, Dissociadid, a personal friend of mine) all report distinct personalities even to the point where they have different names, physical appearances, ages etc. Do you think there is a distinction between this state of the appearance of various mood states and the formation of separate identities, or do you think perhaps a prolonged experience of a particular mood state may lead to this "mood" becoming an "identity"? For example, if a traumatic experienc is frequently occuring throghout childhood and resulting in a particular mood state, do you think the fact that a single mood state has consistently occured could result it in becoming an identity, through whatever means it may be. I'm not entirely sure this makes sense, it's late in Australia at the moment and I wanted to throw some thoughts on this down while I remembered. I think the general concept I'm wanting to hear your thoughts on is do you think perhaps the differentation between these mood states you mentioned and specific identities may be more of a continuum than a specific distinction between the two?
Another question I just thought of along the same lines - The individuals with DID I mentioned earlier have said they have had new identities occur across their lifetime, oftenin response to stressful situations. How do you think this could fit in with this suggestion of DID being a disorder of different mood states than necessarily identities (at least in some casses)?
Best wishes,
Courtney
Keep up the good work,you’re on the right track 🌈💪🏽👏🏽💐
I know exactly what you're asking, I've thought the same. Did my borderline come about as a natural aggression-reaction to me being traumatized as a toddler, or did it come about by me being 'forced' into a borderline (frustrated, angry, rage, confused) state by my parents' never-ending gas-lighting from childhood to adult. In other words, am I broken or am I actually working perfectly but was trained through conditioning to follow a maladaptive pattern. I used to think the former but the more I uncover about my parents the more I believe the sick case is the latter, I was gaslighted for the purpose of making me crazy in order to keep me their pet schnauzer, unknowing guard dog, confused lab rat and ultimate guinea pig.
I'm not a psychological research student but I do have a research degree and have consumed the same content as you so as a disclaimer please don't invalidate my perspective based on credentials alone :3
I watch a lot of those channels as well and I find DID absolutely fascinating! With DID cases it's just my perspective that you have to separate the brain's coping mechanism (DID) from the various mental illnesses that the individual parts can suffer from, as well as separate "moods" and needs. With varying individual mental illnesses, it can be incredibly difficult to pinpoint things. So, dismissing the perspective of the perceived parts or the host simply based off DID alone is kind of damaging to the overall functionality and recovery of the system in general (I believe).
That being said, I personally don't think all the different parts of a system maintain or stem from solid "moods" aside from parts that are exclusively meant for that function. But all of them do stem from needs. For instance, many systems have a sexual part that is meant to handle sexual encounters. From the YT DID community, it seems most of them are fully fleshed individuals with perceived backgrounds but fully-realized beliefs, values, likes, preferences, etc. Many are even dysmorphic to the bodies gender. Often times parts also have very conflicting views on subjects to the point of being complete strangers.
Another reason I don't really think they all start as moods is because parts can break off with different levels of functionality, capability, and awareness. They can also become "aware" at any time after breaking off. For instance, in Jeremy's channel one of their parts came into the body/3D consciousness for the first time on live stream :O (on accident of course, not forced) But it was incredibly intense to say the least. She was literally ripped from her sub-con reality (where she thought she was an individual with a completely different body) and placed into someone else's. So yeah it was fascinating. Jeremy is not the original part of that system but own's that channel and the fact that he is exploring the nature of his own existence was enough for me.
It is so hard to make solid scientific claims about DID because there are so many variables involved that cannot be consistently examined. But I have noticed that all the systems here on TH-cam are finding some level of recovery in receiving understanding, validation, and support, rather than scrutiny and dismissal. Some have even had their prosecutor parts integrate, which may not look like a victory to some but since it had to be a conscious decision on the prosecutor's part, it was a step towards healing and recovery. I think erasure language is damaging in the mental health field in general and differentiating DID and individual mental illnesses is important to understanding the condition.
Courtney Allen I don’t see why just because they are speaking from personal experience (which I actually see as far more valuable) rather than spouting things they’ve read in a textbook, they’re words should be treated with a grain of salt? If you truly cared about helping people with this disorder instead of just studying them and scrutinising their behaviour for your own fascination then you would take what they have to say about they’re own disorder and use it to further your understanding instead of dismissing it just because they don’t have a degree in something that they live every day! If anything they are far more qualified to talk on it than you, although I can tell that from the way you presented your uneducated theories on moods that seemed to resemble what is typically a symptom in BPD which can be co-morbid with DID but is a completely separate disorder and in fact in a complete other category.
Wow - great question. i'd like to look into this further myself. Great luck with your studies and career. you sound like a person with much empathy, which is what is needed to be a therapist and, maybe, a researcher, too :}
Good to see the sources you are quoting are fairly recent. The older the data, the more at odds it often is with current understanding :))
I honestly think that DID can be caused by both trauma and the suggestive symptoms from therapists.
I think there's a therapist that scares the crap out of me from Canada that is doing JUST that. His videos are all over TH-cam and he wrote a ton if books. There are malpractice cases against him as well.
@Molly Mew no, he is a guy.
@Molly Mew Colin A Ross. He has also practiced in Texas US
Dr. Todd Grande, my DID is based on trauma. I get amnesia when I switch but I regain my memory through flashbacks. And since my alter does not display a destructive set of symptoms, such as suicidal behavior, and self harm I feel it's unnecessary to get treatment and guidance from a mental health clinician.
i believe DID is best researched from the function of the nervous system, instead of a mental health issue. Also, how "primary personality" was used suggests there is one, DID is theorized to be the non -integration of the separate personality states we all start out with.
I was shocked by 1% rate in population. That is a lot of people, much more than what is generally spread in common sense as a "really rare disorder".
As someone who has been seeking the cause of my mental differences for 50 years, I would like to add my two cents worth. I've been misdiagnosed with various other labels for a long time. When they finally settled on "Major Depressive Disorder" and that was that, I still wanted to know why the depression was happening at all. There must be a cause. So I continued my quest.
Through a considerable number of videos on various topics, I have diagnosed myself with the information available at this time. Yes, I have "Major Depressive Disorder". I am also obviously autistic. Funny how none of my therapists even mentioned that.
And yes, I have "Dissociative Identity Disorder". The actual psychiatrist I saw years ago witnessed a frantic little girl come out one day, and as far as I know, never mentioned it to anyone. Since then, I've identified at least eight distinct people who reside within my skin. I am quite disappointed in the diagnosis department of this particular "science".
I am completely flabbergasted that any professional in this field might question whether this disorder exists. If they say that it does not, I will automatically disregard their opinion, because it's obvious they are ill-equipt to comment on this topic.
My daughter is a psychopath who destroyed mine and her brothers life. It took a long time to get him away from CPS because of her lies. She now claims she has DID because she was abused. She was never anything even remotely close to abused.
That all sounds totally made up - Asher
I have a dissociative identity disorder
So I am thankful to have you talking about this I have bipolar disorder to
Can you please approach DIDNOS as a topic? I feel as if I can’t find almost any videos detailing how this is different from both multiple personalities and DID... I dissociate 24/7 but do not have any alters and am struggling to find resources... I appreciate what you do, thanks for educating
Parts and alters experience and express the same mood verticals in vastly different ways. As communication between parts gets better, there is a sharing of attitudes between parts, a cross pollination, debate, teaching..... and the mood landscape for each can look entirely different over time.