Dissociative Identities Quotes

“Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.”
― Suzette Boon, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“Also, look for “floating alters.” These are not deliberately created parts of the system, but alters that were accidentally split off at the same time as others.”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“One aspect of DID is the PTSD suffered by some of the alters. PTSD is similar to Panic Attacks in that once turned on, the anxiety is fed into a vicious cycle.”
― David Yeung

“Switches among identities occur in response to changes in emotional state or to environmental demands, resulting in another identity emerging to assume control. Because different identities have different roles, experiences, emotions, memories, and beliefs, the therapist is constantly contending with their competing points of view. Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other.

Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision”
― James A. Chu

“Among DID individuals, the sharing of conscious awareness between alters exists in varying degrees. I have seen cases where there has appeared to be no amnestic barriers between individual alters, where the host and alters appeared to be fully cognizant of each other. On the other hand, I have seen cases where the host was absolutely unaware of any alters despite clear evidence of their presence. In those cases, while the host was not aware of the alters, there were alters with an awareness of the host as well as having some limited awareness of at least a few other alters. So, according to my experience, there is a spectrum of shared consciousness in DID patients. From a therapeutic point of view, while treatment of patients without amnestic barriers differs in some ways from treatment of those with such barriers, the fundamental goal of therapy is the same: to support the healing of the early childhood trauma that gave rise to the dissociation and its attendant alters.

Good DID therapy involves promoting co­-consciousness. With co-­consciousness, it is possible to begin teaching the patient’s system the value of cooperation among the alters. Enjoin them to emulate the spirit of a champion football team, with each member utilizing their full potential and working together to achieve a common goal.

Returning to the patients that seemed to lack amnestic barriers, it is important to understand that such co-consciousness did not mean that the host and alters were well-­coordinated or living in harmony. If they were all in harmony, there would be no “dis­ease.” There would be little likelihood of a need or even desire for psychiatric intervention. It is when there is conflict between the host and/or among alters that treatment is needed.”
― David Yeung

“Due to previous lack of systematic assessment of dissociative symptoms, many subjects experience the SCID-D as their first opportunity to describe their symptoms in their own words to a receptive listener.”
― Marlene Steinberg, Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV Dissociative Disorders

“The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself or herself as having separate alternate identities that have relative psychological autonomy from one another. At various times, these subjective identities may take executive control of the person’s body and behavior and/or influence his or her experience and behavior from “within.” Taken together, all of the alternate identities make up the identity or personality of the human being with DID.

- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p7”
― James A. Chu

“Prior to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder had been referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. The renaming of this diagnosis has caused quite a bit of confusion among professionals and those who live with DID. Because dissociation describes the process by which DID begins to develop, rather than the actual outcome of this process (the formation of various personalities), this new term may be a bit unclear.

We know that the diagnosis is DID and that DID is what people say we have. We’d just like to point out that words sometimes do not describe what we live with. For people like us, DID is just a step on the way to where we live—a place with many of us inside! We just want people who have little ones and bigger ones living inside to know that the title Dissociative Identity Disorder sounds like something other than how we see ourselves—we think it is about us having different personalities.

Regardless of the term, it is clear that, in general, the different personalities develop as a reaction to severe trauma. When the person dissociates, they leave their body to get away from the pain or trauma.
When this defense is not strong enough to protect the person, different personalities emerge to handle the experience. These personalities allow the child to survive: when the child is being harmed or experiencing traumatic episodes, the other personalities take the pain and/ or watch the bad things. This allows these children to return to their body after the bad things have happened without any awareness of what has occurred. They do this to create different ways to make sense of the harm inflicted upon them; it is their survival mechanism.”
― Karen Marshall, Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Neurobiological differences have been demonstrated between dissociative identities within patients with DID and between patients with DID and controls. Given the current evidence, DID as a diagnostic entity cannot be explained as a phenomenon created by iatrogenic
influences, suggestibility, malingering, or social role-taking. On the contrary, DID is an empirically robust chronic psychiatric disorder based on neurobiological, cognitive, and interpersonal non-integration as a response to unbearable stress. While current evidence is sufficient to firmly establish this etiological stance, given the wide opportunities for innovative research, the disorder is still understudied.”
― Vedat Sar

“My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Types of Alters

Most people who have DID have at least several different personalities. Each personality is typically referred to as an alter or alternate personality. Alters may vary in terms of age, gender, and sexual orientation, much in the same way that members of a family differ. Each of these personalities will be distinct from one another and may have differing interests, talents, abilities, and functions. And as different as these personalities are from one another, there are some common types of alters found within individuals with DID.”
― Tracy Alderman, Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

“Many alters can be “stuck in the past” and still think it is 1968 or 1987 or some other year when they were still physically a child and the abusers were in charge of them.”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“There were two main reasons that the name of this condition was changed from multiple was changed from multiple personality disorder to DID in the DSM-IV. The first was that the older term emphasized the concept of various personalities (as though different people inhabited the same body), whereas the current view is that DID patients experience a failure in the integration of aspects of their personality into a complex and multifaceted integrated identity.

The International Society for the Study of Dissociation (1997) states it this way: "The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself/herself as having separate parts of the mind that function with some autonomy. The patient is not a collection of separate people sharing the same body." ͏”
― Etzel Cardena, Handbook of Psychology, Clinical Psychology

“Another reason for the name change is that the term personality refers to characteristic pattern of thoughts, feelings, moods, and behaviors of the whole individual. The fact that patients with DID consistently switch between different identities, behavior styles, and so on is a feature of the individual's overall personality. Our phrasing changes in diagnostic criteria clarified that although alters may be personalized by the individual, they are not to be considered as having an objective, independent existence.”
― Etzel Cardena, Handbook of Psychology, Clinical Psychology

“It needs to be emphasized, however, that the ability of fantasy to achieve a sense of reality is not an indication that the traumatic abuses
recalled by patients with multiple personality disorder are fabricated or made-up. What is important to recognize is that the fantasy elaborations that are connected with dissociated states in these patients are efforts at restitution and represent attempts at mastering traumatic experiences through the use of imaginative solutions. This paper is examining the use of fantasy as it participates in the formation of the clinical picture of multiple personality disorder and is not intending to cast doubt on its traumatic origin.”
― Walter C. Young

“I have some very interesting results from the tests we performed; results that I, quite frankly, didn’t expect.” The doctor removed his glasses and looked directly at my mother. “It appears that your son has dissociative identity disorder.” Seeing her blank expression he added, “It used to be known as multiple personality disorder.”
― John Mondragon, The Clash Inside Me