There seems to be a dominant representation of DID in online discourse. Mostly, it seems as though people represent themselves as having a handful of well-defined parts, each with distinct names, ages, and characteristics. Perhaps because I am polyfragmented, I experience something very different, and do not relate to the vast majority of the experiences that other people present themselves as having online. Last month, I posted to the DID subreddit to see if anyone related to my experiences:
I’m wondering if anyone relates to my experiences, as I have not seen this representation of DID anywhere in the literature/online.
I have polyfragmented DID, with low identity alteration, day-to-day amnesia, and lots of switching (10-100+ times a day).
The last several years of my life have been a blur. However, I have been logging data about myself for the past ~2 years, and I have now accumulated enough to notice patterns. From this, it seems like my parts exhibit cyclical behavior. It seems like I have one part as my dominant part for anywhere from several hours to a few weeks. During this time, other task-based and trauma-holding parts seem to “come out” of that dominant part as needed. Eventually, a new dominant part takes over, and lasts a chunk of time before a different one takes over. After I have cycled through all of these dominant parts, they repeat in a similar order, with a period lasting ~3-5 months. Occasionally, new parts are added to this cycle. I have not yet gained enough internal awareness to know which “part of the cycle” I am in in a given moment, but if I look back at my data, it’s clear that I have cyclical patterns across several different data points.
Does anyone here exhibit anything similar to this? Do you know of others that experience this system structure? Do you have any tips for the recovery process?
With this awareness, my life makes a whole lot more sense. I spend much of my time confused and out of date about where I am in life, as many of my parts are unaware of large aspects of my life. Because my dominant parts switch so readily, I’m repeatedly having to re-update myself about my life circumstances (if I’m even aware enough about my current life to do so!), and since these parts only repeat every few months, each part of me feels like they are losing large chunks of time. Life is so chaotic right now. I am in therapy 2x a week and am slowly making, and subsequently losing, progress. Any advice is appreciated.
You can view the original Reddit post here. I received a lot of comments on this post, with many people relating to my experiences and sharing their own.
I feel like this is a very uncomfortable and unknown form of DID to have. My sense of self changes so rapidly, and internally things are very chaotic. It’s hard to definitively describe what I’m experiencing, as things change quickly enough that I often forget what I previously discovered. The only way I am able to confirm that this is actually what I am going through is because I have compiled enough data about myself to determine that I have clear cyclical patterns (see Learning about my system with data). Internally, things were too chaotic for me to discover this pattern independently, but now that I know that this is how I work I can confirm the pattern fits with my internal experiences as well.
It’s reassuring to know that other people are going through similar experiences to me. At least one person said they experienced this at earlier stages of their recovery and their system is more stable now. I’ve been in therapy for just over 1.5 years, and I believe this system pattern began in late 2019 due to the stress caused by my PhD qualifying exams. Before taking my qualifying exams, I had two main handwritings that would show up in my academic notes, and were stable for at least the previous 5 years. After my qualifying exams, which went horribly and could be considered traumatic for me, I gradually gained more and more different handwritings as more parts were being created and added to the cycle. Now, I have an uncountable number of distinct handwritings that I switch between seemingly cyclically.
It seems like, depending on which part of the cycle I am in, I have very different understandings of my life. I talk about this in How DID affects my work. I can go for weeks where I am hyperfocused on work and advancing in my research, followed by weeks where I am mostly unaware that I am even a graduate student who is supposed to be working. I am trying hard to break this cycle, but it seems to be going strong. There have been several occasions where I believed I was able to stop my cycle (for example, see Waking up to the present), but I always end up losing my awareness and advancing in the cycle. I hope someday soon my system will stabilize more so I can live the life I want to live and remain grounded to the reality of the present.