The word I like best to describe my flavor of DID is polyfragmented. Polyfragmented is most commonly referred to to mean someone who has a lot of parts and/or splits parts in a complex manner. I believe I exhibit both.
In a more traditional case of DID, it is my understanding that a person has a relatively small number parts that are more well defined. They only have a few compartments of memory, thus allowing them to spend more time in each compartment, so each compartment has more time to develop a distinct way of being. Their switches between these parts seem to be more pronounced since each part is more well defined.
I believe I experience something different. In addition to having several well-developed main parts, I also seem to have many fragments, or much less developed parts. It seems like, for the most part, these parts represent smaller fractions of my life than someone with a more traditional presenting form of DID. I have more parts, along with more fragmentation and less differentiation since each part had less time to develop a distinct identity.
Why do I have so many parts? I believe it’s because the threshold for what constitutes part creation is lower for me than it is for other individuals—things that would be considered traumatic to me may not affect another person as much. I believe this is due to my innate temperament, life experiences, and, perhaps most importantly, because I am autistic. Anecdotally, it seems like there’s a high correlation between those who are polyfragmented and are autistic1.
I’ve also learned that I have many different splitting patterns. One such splitting pattern is that, when I experience something traumatic, I seem to split many parts in a sequential manner, which leads to a lot of parts being created for a single event. I also do not only split parts due to trauma—I seem to create parts to alleviate even mild discomfort from my awareness. This is something I developed over time, as my threshold for what constituted part creation lowered as I grew older and subconsciously realized how useful of a coping mechanism creating parts was. That is, I became increasingly more fragmented the older I became, making me more and more dysfunctional in the real world as I aged2.
Rather than working with one part at a time, I’m working with clusters of parts at any given time3. I do not seem to have a “host”, or primary, personality. Instead, I have one of a few clusters of parts active at any given time, which seem to change from week-to-week and month-to-month in an approximate cyclical pattern. My parts do not have names—they have labels4. I shift and switch5 between these parts at least a few dozen times a day, even without being triggered, because I have parts I need to access as a normal part of every day living6. Since my threshold for creating parts is so low, I believe I am still creating parts in the present-day. My system isn’t neatly organized and structured. It’s chaotic, messy, and unknown.
Now, while this may sound like a difficult way to live—and in many aspects it certainly is—I believe the language used to describe this disorder makes it sound a lot more severe than it feels internally, at least to me. I have had DID my entire life, and I have, for the most part, lived an enjoyable and conventionally successful life despite this. I know no other way of living—this is normal to me. However, because of my system structure, I struggle with many aspects of time and memory7, such as knowing what day, month, or sometimes year it is, remembering what I did yesterday, or even 5 minutes ago, and losing anywhere from minutes to weeks of time due to a trauma trigger. Additionally, my internal awareness of my life is shuffled, so I do not have a linear narrative history of my life or day-to-day activities. This can affect my daily functioning significantly. Only since learning that I have DID and gaining the language to describe my experiences did I know the way I experience the world is different from most others, and could be considered disordered. However, this is my normal, and always has been.
It’s taken me just over a year of therapy to get to the awareness I have today, and I know there’s so much more I’m unaware of. When I take a step back and look at the facts of my situation, I can objectively see that I should be having a difficult time right now. However, I feel emotionally detached and have an overall positive worldview. My body is designed to deal with trauma, and learning about and working with my messy system could be considered just another trauma I’m getting through.
Having polyfragmented DID makes my life very chaotic. I do not know how many parts I have, nor do I think I will ever know. I have to be okay with the unknown and be open minded about the information I learn about my system. I’ve always lived this way—I just wasn’t aware about it until now.
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I came to this conclusion from r/DID and r/OSDD on Reddit ↩︎
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until I stop relying solely on dissociation as a coping mechanism, which I’m actively working on doing in therapy. ↩︎
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Some people call these subsystems. I seem to have many layers of compartmentalization—my parts have their own parts. ↩︎
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One has a nickname, I suppose, because that’s the “mood” I was in when someone else called me that nickname. There are too many different compartmentalized internal states for it to make sense to name them. Plus, naming parts of myself with human names other than my own doesn’t feel comfortable for me. ↩︎
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I use switch to denote a hard, discrete change between parts, which usually occurs when I’m triggered and can be disorienting. I use shift to denote a smooth change between parts, which occurs more often than switching for me and can internally feel like a gear shifting in my brain. ↩︎
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I have many task-based parts, or parts that serve a specific job in my life, which leads to me needing to shift or switch between parts on a very regular basis. ↩︎
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My symptoms include more than just time and memory problems, but those aren’t explicitly due to my system structure, and may be addressed in later posts. ↩︎