Important facts about DID
DID is caused by repeated childhood trauma before the child has gained a personal sense of self. Most children gain this sense of self around 6-9 years old. Therefore, DID cannot form after the ages of 6-9.
DID is caused by repeated childhood trauma. Trauma can include physical, mental, emotional, or sexual abuse, invasive medical procedures, repeated natural disasters, severe neglect, and/or war. The trauma must have been repetitive. Without trauma, DID cannot form.
To have DID, amnesia must occur. Amnesia is defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information and/or traumatic events.
If someone does not fit all of the criteria for DID, they’re diagnosed with OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder.) For instance: If someone does not experience amnesia, they do not meet the diagnostic criteria for DID, and will be diagnosed with OSDD.
Fictives (or Fictional Introjects) exist in some systems. Fictives are fictional characters that become alters. They are formed like any other alter, from trauma, either at a young age, or stress happening to someone who ALREADY has DID. They do not develop just from a love of a character, or from wanting that character to be real. They are not the same as imaginary friends, or roleplay characters.
DID is not the same as being kin with someone/something. Being kin with a character means relating to that character. This is not the same as an alter. Some people may believe they are the character that they are kin with, but this is not DID either.
Alters are not roleplay characters. People who roleplay and create characters might feel like their characters have their own personalities, to the point that the character ‘doesn’t listen to them’ about certain things, but this is a fairly normal thing for writers. It is not DID, and they are not alters. EDIT: Roleplay characters, like any other character, can be introjected into the system in some cases, if the person already has DID.
(You can still do whatever you’d like with that character, even if it feels like they would disagree. Knowing how they would feel about certain actions, or feeling like they wouldn’t agree or approve of you doing something when writing what they would do is not the same as an alter. Take it from someone who has both alters and roleplay characters: they are not even remotely the same.)
Alters are made inside the person’s mind. Therefore, alters cannot come from outside someone’s mind. Some alters believe that they came from elsewhere, and even have memories of lives before being an alter, but this is part of DID, and is an illusion. (I have an alter who has memories of a life before becoming an alter. I am not belittling any alters who have these memories or beliefs.)
Alters cannot travel between people. No one can send an alter into someone else’s mind, or send one of their alters out of their own minds. (This is in fact a very dangerous idea that can be used by abusers to further hurt or control people with DID.)
Alters cannot die or be erased. They can be sectioned off so much that they are no longer felt, or put in a hibernation state, but they are not gone. Integrating is an option some systems choose to pursue, but even then, the alter is not gone, they’ve just become part of another alter or the system as a whole.
Alters are parts of a single person that has been kept from being able to gain a full sense of self or identity because of trauma as a child. This does not make the alters fake, and does not mean that the host or core (if there is one) can control them. Alters are not the same person, and do not identify as each other or the host or core. This is the entire point of DID, to not identify as each other in order to compartmentalize traumatic events so the person is able to go on living.
(It’s completely normal and in fact part of the disorder for alters and the core/host to not see themselves as the same person. For all intents and purposes, they are not the same person.)
DID is a serious mental condition caused by trauma. It is not a fad, or a game.
Everyone experiences the symptoms of DID differently. This does not mean that if someone does not meet the DSM criteria for DID, they have it anyway.
DID is not accurately represented in media. If you see a show, book, movie or game that says it’s about DID, or seems to have aspects of DID, assume that it’s wrong, or take it with a grain of salt. (The exceptions being recent case studies, books from people who have DID, and the like. Sybil and other such media is not an accurate representation.)
DID has been around for a very long time, and has been recorded all the way back to the 1500′s. Just because they didn’t have the same terminology or understanding of it that we do today, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
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