Dissociative Identity Disorder or D.I.D. is a dissociative trauma disorder affecting people who have survived long term repeated trauma in their childhood. This causes the survivor to experience more than one identity within a single body. 

Alters: 

These alternate personalities are commonly known as ‘alters’. Alters are basically different personalities living in one body since they can have a range of ages, different genders, names, different attitudes, preferences and even their perception of their appearance. At various times, to protect the ‘original person, an alter takes over the person’s body to protect them. A collection of alters is called a system and a single system can have any between two or even hundreds of alters in a body. Some systems have an inner world or inner room in the mind. This is were alters manifest as themselves and interact with other alters when they are not controlling the body. 

The change between alters controlling the body is called switching. Switches can be consensual, forced or triggered. There are many indicators that, a switch is about to occur, one is memory or time loss. So if someone is about to switch, they will get the feeling like time is beginning to jump. The person might feel “spacey”, depersonalised or have blurred vision. Switches can last for seconds, minutes, hours or even a day. 

Symptoms: 

Dissociation is the main, and most common symptom of D.I.D.. This is when one’s mental process and thoughts are disconnecting. An example of dissociation is, after a day at work, you remember getting into your car but then you don’t remember the journey home after getting out of your car. 

Other symptoms according to the NHS: 

·       feeling disconnected from yourself and the world around you 

·       forgetting about certain time periods, events and personal information 

·       feeling uncertain about who you are 

·       having multiple distinct identities 

·       feeling little or no physical pain 

Jess’s Story: 

Probably one of the more recognisable people with D.I.D. is Jess from England. Jess has four alters living in her mind. There was a BBC documentary about when she discovered she had D.I.D. and growing up with it by having actors portraying her alters. In 2013, Jess was interviewed about it on ITV’s This Morning with her fiance, now husband. 

Jess’s alters are: 23 year old Jamie, his husband Ed who’s 25, their son Ollie who’s 10 and Jake who’s a 20 year old American. The first sign Jess knew she had D.I.D. was when she was six where she remembered playing with a young boy called Jake, later she learned that Jake was living in her head. 

In school the alters were more apparent. Some days Jess would go to school with an American accent and would have the same traits as the imaginary boy. She realised this after seeing a video of a school performance and recognising the similarities. At the age of 9, Jess began to suffer from panic attacks then at 12, flashbacks of her childhood trauma began, along with night terrors, and the panic attacks worsened. Until she was diagnosed at 16, Jess would have blackouts and would prefer to be called different names and would wear mainly male clothes. For a long time, Jess was confused with her gender and sexuality. Today she understands that all of her alters are male, and while she is straight, Jamie is bisexual and Ed is gay. Jess and her alters run a YouTube channel, called MultiplicityAndMe, where they create more awareness of this disorder by removing the stigma that has been attached to it for so long. 

Misconceptions: 

As previously mentioned, Dissociative Identity Disorder has a serial killer stigma attached to it. It’s wrongly thought that people with this disorder are dangerous or murderers. People with D.I.D. are no more dangerous than anyone else in the general public. As people with D.I.D. suffered from trauma and violence, it’s far more common for them to be on the receiving end of violence or abuse. 

Another common misconception is that the disorder isn’t real, and people are just “attention-seeking”. There is a lot of research that debunks this. People with the disorder can even have different abilities than their alters. An alter can be left-handed when the body is right-handed or the alter needs to wear glasses while the person doesn't or even know how to play an instrument the person knows nothing about. Another common misconception is that D.I.D. can be treated. There is no way to treat this disorder but medications can be helpful to calm symptoms like PTSD, anxiety, depression and insomnia. 

Note to readers: 

I apologise if I do get anything wrong or have offended anyone. D.I.D. is a complex condition, that I wanted to bring attention to. I have researched many sources of information to write this article, and hope I’ve presented the information factually. If there are any errors or additions please email hello@idare.blog. 

Support or other information: 

• mind.org.uk 
• survivorsnetwork.org.uk 
• MultiplicityAndMe on YouTube 
• DissociaDID on YouTube 
• ‘I spent a day with MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES’ by AnthonyPadilla on YouTube.