How to Heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Children who suffer from ongoing and severe trauma in early childhood sometimes develop Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). DID is a coping mechanism that enables a young child to survive severe trauma by compartmentalizing her experiences and resulting emotions. The child does this by telling herself that the one experiencing the trauma is "not me," which results in the child feeling detached from the painful experiences. This enables the child to go about her day-to-day life as if she was not being traumatized on a regular basis. While DID is a highly effective coping tool while the child is being traumatized, it is maladaptive when the child grows into an adult who is living a life of safety. Here is how to heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Strong desire to heal
• Patience
• Courage

1. Recognize that you have DID. Most people who suffer from DID are not aware that they have the disorder until another person (typically a therapist) diagnoses them with it. However, they might experience "lost time" for which they cannot account, and they might have a very limited memory of their childhood. While it is distressing to face the fact that you have DID, rest assured that developing the disorder shows many good qualities about yourself, such as your intelligence, creativity and very strong desire to survive.
2. Encourage communication among your alter parts. Some people with DID can do this internally. They will experience having "loud thoughts" that feel like they are originating elsewhere. If you cannot do this internally, then buy a notebook for this purpose. Write a message on the first page encouraging your parts to write down their thoughts and feelings, and check the notebook regularly for messages from your alter parts.
3. Get to know each part. Alter parts can be of various ages or gender. Many people with DID have alter parts that are animals, such as wolves or snakes. An alter part can even be an inanimate object. Observe the role that each part played in protecting your inner child. All of the parts worked to together to protect the inner child from being broken by the abuse.
4. Accept that each alter part is a part of you. All of your parts originated from one spirit that shattered in order to survive. No matter how foreign each part feels, it is a part of your spirit. As you heal, the parts will merge back together, or integrate, into one whole spirit. Think of your spirit as a cold lake and the alter parts as chunks of ice floating in the lake. As you melt each chunk of ice with self-love, it will melt back into the lake, which is where it has always belonged.
5. Send loving messages to each part. Each alter part split away from the core of your spirit because you rejected it. You did not want to experience a traumatic event, so you split off part of your spirit and told yourself that the experience was happening to someone that was "not me." Thank each part for the role it played in protecting your inner child. Even parts that you might view as "bad" are simply wounded parts of yourself who need to be loved.
6. Invite each alter part to join the core. Tell each part that you love him and accept him exactly as he is. Let each part know that, when he integrates, he will no longer be alone in his pain because the core will absorb the bad feelings.
7. Process the new memories and emotions. In order to integrate, you will need to face and process the memories and resulting emotions from each traumatic event that separated the parts. Doing so becomes easier as you integrate because you can view that one experience against the backdrop of a lifetime of experiences instead of in isolation.

Tips & Warnings

• For most people with DID, not every alter part is a true, three-dimensional part. Most people with DID also have personality fragments, which are one-dimensional. They generally hold one emotion, one memory or one piece of a particularly traumatic memory. Integrating a personality fragment is generally easier than integrating a personality.
• Develop positive coping tools to help you process your emotions. Until you do, you are likely to continue splitting off the pain into more alter parts.
• Finding a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people who have suffered from similar abuses is an important part of healing from child abuse. Your therapist can provide you with additional tools to heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder.
• The reason you split in the first place is because you suffered nearly unbearable abuse. Healing from the abuse is extremely painful. Do not attempt to heal from DID until you find a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people who have been severely abused.
• Some alter parts might be self-destructive. Take measures to ensure that you do not give in to their urges to self-harm or commit suicide.