It’s difficult for me to talk about this stuff, and I’m still really figuring it out, but writing is therapeutic for me and I write with more focus when I think someone’s going to read it. And I thought it would be nice to just… lay everything out. Maybe I won’t post it, who knows.

I was diagnosed with an unspecified dissociative disorder a few months ago, but I really am only beginning to get a handle on what all is going on with me. I’ve been really skeptical of all of this, even when I have pretty clear evidence staring me in the face.

I don’t think of myself as a system, and while I say I don’t have alters, I have had some pretty intense identity alteration experiences that toe the line. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s terrifying. The worst time, I was lying down with my spouse, and they had their hands on my neck (just like, resting there). I’m not really sure how it happened, because the memory starts for me already as being not-me, paralyzed, terrified, with no idea who my spouse was. I was just a girl with some stranger’s hands on my neck. And in that moment, another part of me, who I’d interacted with before and really dislike, started talking to her, telling her that my spouse was safe, that it was ok, there was nothing to be afraid of. I have no idea how long I was frozen there like that, but sooner or later I came back, and I remember both of them remarking on my return. And then I was me again and that was that.

Transitioning definitely felt like two different people switching places. The boy-version of me getting usurped by present-me. We talked it through together ages ago, but back then I was so high all the time that talking to myself wasn’t exactly cause for alarm. (I’m 6 months sober now, thank goodness.)

But all that switchy stuff doesn’t happen often. Most days what I get is like, screaming or crying inside, impulses to hurt myself, judgement, vague nonverbal sentiments, that sort of thing. My therapist wants me to work on communicating with my parts but it’s pretty hard to communicate with something so… blurry.

Often I feel like I wake up when I haven’t been sleeping, if that makes sense. For example, I’ll be in the middle of walking somewhere and suddenly come to and feel completely lost, even on a route I’ve taken a hundred times. Or I’ll suddenly realize that I’m all emotionally worked up even though nothing happened, and I didn’t realize there was anything coming up. And my memory is fucked, although I always blamed that on my stoner phase. 

It’s been getting harder to keep myself collected, calm. I find myself overwhelmed, panicky, cluttered, even at work where I always used to be able to keep myself together. That scares me; I can’t afford to freak out at work. My job depends on me being able to handle high-pressure situations and if people saw me collapsing just trying to read email… but leaving it alone isn’t an option anymore.

I had a huge crisis over the holidays, which is what got me to talk to someone in the first place, which is how I learned I had this dissociation stuff going on. That’s been the biggest motivator to work on it, I need to get ahead of my next breakdown. I know if I don’t that one of these days it’ll get bad enough that there won’t be any more breakdowns to have. And I can’t do that to my family.

I don’t know if I’m really in the right place since I don’t have full-blown DID, but writing that was helpful at least, and some of your wiki articles have been really enlightening. I appreciate having a place to dump all of this.

– Sari