January 2024

Transgenerational food insecurity

On this site, I have frequently mentioned that I have cyclical patterns of internal experience and subsequent behavior due to my presentation of DID. It took me quite a while to realize this as I had not seen this presentation documented anywhere in the academic literature, although I now know that other people with polyfragmented DID also experience this phenomenon. Once I realized this was how I operate, my understanding of my internal experience grew substantially as it provided a framework for which I could apply my experiences to.

cycle DID food intergenerational narrative trauma

6 minutes

October 2023

How am I doing?

This is as much of a question for you as it is for me1. How am I doing? Really, I feel fine. Good, even. And that is the problem. It’s hard for me to conceive that I am having any difficulties in my life right now, or that I could be considered “mentally ill”. And for large swaths of time, depending on which part of the cycle I am in, I’m genuinely not aware that my external life is actually falling apart.

academia cycle DID narrative

4 minutes

September 2023

Do other people experience DID in the same way as me?

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:

cycle DID narrative polyfragmented reddit symptoms

5 minutes

August 2023

Learning about my system with data

Life is moving very rapidly right now. I wrote the previous post (Waking up to the present) six weeks ago, shortly after I had split a new cluster of parts. Then, three weeks ago, I split a whole new cluster of parts. Both six weeks ago and three weeks ago I had very distinct changes in my behavioral patterns and how I operate. I have two very distinct “jumps” in my continuity of memory both three and six weeks ago.

conceptualization cycle data DID polyfragmented symptoms

5 minutes

May 2023

How DID affects my work

When I began therapy for DID in January 2022, I had no idea how much my life had already spiraled out of control. Over the course of several years, I had gone from being a high-achieving student at the top of my class to being effectively unable to work because I was so triggered by the world around me. However, because of my severe internal compartmentalization, I was unaware of my dysfunction—I had no idea anything abnormal was happening, and, for the most part, thought I was still the successful student I previously was.

academia cycle DID handwriting narrative polyfragmented symptoms

6 minutes