I am neither a doctor nor a neuroscience researcher. So I'm going to tell you about what I experience and feel in my body as a person with DID.

I have many, many parts.

A part is in fact a part of my personality which has its own way of thinking, its own opinion on what I must do, how to act, who to be ... because it has its own representations of itself, of me, of others and the world.

 

A person without DID if he has to make a decision will think in his head, he will weigh the pros and cons, for example if a friend offers to go to the movies tonight, you will think and thoughts will cross you. You are going to say to yourself "nice we are going to have a good time" then maybe you will think "but I'm tired, maybe it would be better another evening". And depending on your feelings, you will decide if the pleasure of having a good evening is more important to respect than your desire to rest.

For me it's the same thing, I constantly hear discussions, thoughts in my head, voices ... except that they find it difficult to get along, so decision making is more complicated. I have always considered these voices, these injunctions, these expressed needs as belonging to me, belonging to me. I never felt like someone outside my body was talking to me. I always knew intuitively that what I was experiencing was mine, that it was my own inner dialogue.

 

Unlike a normal person, a DID person will have much more complex thoughts than a normal person.

As I explained to you, during the rapes and trauma we suffered, to survive, we had to partition our personality, our identity, our thinking, our thinking ...

 

I grew up in a Catholic community, I was raised with the faith and the values ​​of this religion. So I had to adhere to the precepts of not having sex outside of marriage, to remain a virgin, to believe in God, to respect and love my neighbor, to believe that priests are the representatives of God on earth, to obey his "shepherds" ... and at the same time, I lived another reality,, the guru of this sect raped me, sold me to other men, priests raped me, I was put in cages threatened by Dobermans, I was tied up and tortured, these men beat me if I rebelled and strangled me ...

Without partitioning my mind I would have gone mad! This sect was quite large, we had houses on several continents, during gatherings every summer, hundreds of people moved, everyone admired and adulated the guru. I did not have the opportunity to be believed and heard, protected. So I divided my personality into several fragments to survive.

 

To be diagnosed with DID, according to DSM-5 and CIM-11 (the two internationally recognized textbooks in which mental illnesses are referenced in the field of psychiatry), you must have at least 2 distinct parts, that is to say 2 "very distinct ways of acting and thinking" to make it very simple. Psychologists call these parts apparently normal parts also called ANP and emotional parts also called EP.

 

The ANP (s) are parts that will be present and allow us to act in everyday life when we do not suffer anything. These ANPs have the function of allowing us to act as if everything is going well, as if everything was normal and that nothing had happened, they are amnesiac and completely oblivious to the traumas that we undergo. According to people and ANP, amnesia can be partial or complete, or even transient and recurrent (with periods when memories are partially found, others where they are forgotten again).

 

EPs are the parties that act when we experience trauma, they experience violence and are there to support our survival.

 

As long as there is violence, that we are in regular contact with our aggressors, the ANP and EP do not coexist, we ARE one or the other without realizing anything, everything is done in our brain so that we don't realize what each of these parts is going through.

 

We are not aware that a few minutes before we were raped. When our rapist invites us to follow him promising a "nice surprise", we are happy, impatient, grateful ... And it is only when a sign on his face, this animal, animal look appears that we "switch" , that is to say that one of our EP comes because it recognized the other face of this person, the face of the bad animal which will harm us. Then when everything is over, when our rapist becomes the nice person again we "switch" into a ANP ignorant of his unhealthy side and his wickedness and not being aware of what just happened.

 

These "switches" are a means of survival because after the rapes if I did not become ignorant of what we had just done, the violence which I underwent could have lasted longer or be even more increased. For example, I have one of my parties who tried to defend herself when I was a teenager, she called my rapist a "soft ball", this one was super violent, I was tied up, he beat me up in the back until 'I passed out, raped me. I woke up in his arms, tied, he put me in a shower and as I was completely blown away, he "became nice again", made me sink water on my body and caressed me by calling me his "little darling" ... If I had rebelled again, he would have killed me ...

 

I suffered a lot of trauma, I have several ANP and several EP.

 

I have ANPs that are used for work, ANPs that specialize in my role as a mom because I have 2 children, I have intellectual ANPs that are there when I study or learn, ANPs that are there for the social bond with my friends and acquaintances, ANPs for when I work ...

 

I have EPs, some are very small, they are 2, 3, 4, 5 years old. One of my EPs, the first time she came to tell what she had experienced, showed it with fluff. Some of my EPs are teenagers.

 

My EPs live as always having the age they were when the first trauma in which they were created. When a very small part, 2 or 3 years old, I am completely disoriented, I have the impression of being giant, I have the whirlwind and I look at the length of my arms and my legs which seem disproportionate to me, everything around me seems strange, the size of the furniture, my height ... When I look at myself in a mirror, I don't recognize myself, the one I see is completely foreign to me!

 

Since I was diagnosed with DID, my "switches" between parties, whether ANP or EP, have gone much more smoothly. I am much more aware of these "switches" and I have much less amnesia, from one "switch" to another I keep the memory between parts of what happened and what I have said and done during this "switch".

 

I also manage much more to identify and understand what triggered the arrival of this "switch". There are what are called "triggers".

 

All my parts are permanently present, they listen, observe and depending on my environment it will be one or the other of my ANP or EP that will act in the foreground.

 

My ANP and EP have an experience, a sum of experience and knowledge which will be the fruit of my actions and reactions in everyday life. Just like a normal person without DID. A normal person if he has never ridden a horse for example will be a little anxious the first time he does it, but if he has already done it and has had a big fall, he will react in another way.

 

We are the sum of our experiences and learnings. For a DID person it is the same except that our actions and reactions are much more complex, much more elaborate and much more contrary and contradictory. It is as if in one body were gathered several completely different people, having completely different experiences and experiences, knowledge.

 

Certain parts are only present when they have to deal with sadistic and bad people, their vision of the world and of life is necessarily impacted and restricted. Other parties see only the "good" moments, only the "nice" side of people by completely obscuring human complexity, their vision is also impacted and they may not detect the dangers since they are ignorant of the bad side of some people. These two groups of parties are in constant struggle inside me to assert their point of view, their experience of life and of the human being. I am able at times to have blind confidence in someone, putting myself in danger, completely ignoring the warning signs that I must protect myself. I am then in the grip of an interior showdown on what I must do. Sometimes I made it to safety too late ...

 

Before understanding that I had a DID, before succeeding in dialoguing and becoming aware of my different parts, my vision of the world and my actions were very "all black or all white". I classified people into categories: good and bad. Except that human beings are much more complex! Everyone does good deeds and has "flaws", actions that can harm others. For me, it was incomprehensible! I suffered a lot and I was very lost in deciding who I could trust. Now, I manage to protect myself better and less "switch" against the complexity of human beings. I manage to react better and have a more adapted reaction in my everyday life. I manage to better integrate the fact that every human being does not do good or that bad and to adapt my relationship of friendship or intimacy, my expectations for this person.

 

As I write this text, I feel a lot of conflict and anger inside of me. The ANPs and the EPs of which I speak to you are in fact the "base" to know to understand a person with a dissociation. Let's say that anyone with a dissociation, who has suffered a trauma will have a ANP and EP. A person who has experienced a terrorist attack as there was in Paris will have a normal ANP that will live their everyday life and if they are not helped to overcome the trauma will have a EP that will carry the trauma experienced. This EP can then resurface if the person hears firecrackers in the street, this person will then redo his survival actions: running, lying on the ground, yelling, being paralyzed ... as if he was shot again. Firecrackers represent the "trigger", his EP will resurface without any control of the ANP and the person will be unable to analyze the situation, to understand that he is not in danger. She will relive the trauma identically and the memories of the trauma will resurface as if she relive them identically.

 

For me it is the same. Except that I have a lot more "triggers" since my entire childhood suffered trauma. What bothers me about this definition of ANP and EP is that it is very simplistic, very simplistic! I have parts that do not fall into these two categories. I have parts "controls and observers" which have the function of blocking or selecting a part to put in front for me to act. These parts are present in my present, my daily life and know what is happening there and at the same time they know all my parts and are neither phobic nor amnesic of my trauma. In addition, I also have EPs who did not get stuck in the age of trauma they experienced and who knew how to grow and adapt, develop skills that I use in my adult life. Those are not EPs as defined by shrinks in the strict sense, who have a very limited function and range of actions and skills.

 

Research into DID and brain function is so in its infancy! To understand what I was going through, I looked for books, studies that talked about it. Most are written in English, which requires a lot of concentration and sometimes I don't understand everything that is written. People doubt the existence of DID, it would be necessary that all these studies and these books be translated so that we can distribute them in France!

 

Neuroscience studies exist. But nothing is done in France, I would have liked to participate!

 

When my parts switch in my body, I feel things. I feel in my eyes at the level of my eyeballs a movement, I feel that they come to take their place, as if other eyes came and took the place.

 

In my days, I have physical manifestations of my "switches", I feel my heart racing when I'm reactivated by a trigger, I feel my body trembling, I have cold sweats, I feel panic who invades me. I feel my body that "freezes" and my heart that suddenly calms down, my brain that gets confused and I am no longer able to move, speak, act ...

 

When my parts share sensory memories, I feel pain in my back, my arms, my wrists ... all the places where I was hit, grabbed, forced ...

 

All these manifestations should be able to be studied, analyzed scientifically. Why do French researchers not study them instead of saying "it's invented". Those who say that we simulate, why don't they come to study us? They would see that what I feel is my daily life, I "switch" constantly, all day and even when I am alone at home without witnesses. Can we simulate at this point? Are the "fabulators" capable of doing this all the time, all their life, with so many symptoms?

 

I have a part that falls asleep when I am too much in conflict internally. When I spend time with my mother, I sleep, practically night and day. I am unable to get up, I am constantly exhausted and all I can do is sleep. Because internally I have a lot of conflicts. Some of my parts love my mother, others are very angry that she did not protect and help me and want her, I need her to take care of my daughters, in the summer she lets you breathe and takes care of your little daughters who adore him ... How can we reconcile all these points of view? I haven't found it yet, so I'm going with my daughters, my daughters are having a good time, and I'm sleeping so as not to create conflicts and get angry with my mother ...

 

Each of my parts has a good reason to exist, a good reason to act and make me act the way it does . You should always keep this in mind!

 

Forcing us to act against the needs of our parties will only make us panic and accentuate our symptoms of stress. It won't help us if you force us to act (leaving a violent man, for example). We have implemented survival strategies, only by listening to the reasons and reasoning of our parties, by talking with each of them that you can help us. In patience, understanding, gentleness , benevolence ... Do not forget that we have behind us a whole life of betrayals, abandonment and neglect . We have learned to trust no one because we have been betrayed many times. Be present, listen to us and discuss with us ... little by little we will succeed in modifying our actions. By raping us, we have removed all existence, all control over our being, do not do the same to us! Let us learn, at our own pace to regain our existence ... And do not doubt our suffering, our internal battles, our survival strategies ... We had to survive the worst without the help and aid of anyone. If you are here now, this is a chance for us, be a benevolent and trustworthy friend, who does not judge and does not issue ultimatums or conditions.

 

Doctor Muriel Salmona explains very well what happens when we are in "security" (see her website: memoiretraumatique.org). By leaving an abusive partner, being in "security", our traumatic memory explodes, we are assailed by the sensations and memories of the trauma experienced. It's a real torture! By neurobiological safeguard mechanism, we seek to flee these feelings and memories. It is for this reason that many women return to their violent spouse or fall into drugs or alcohol ... It is a short-term way to escape the traumatic escalation, to get anesthetized ...

 

I have parts very believing in God, and parts which want nothing to do with any religion, and are there in hatred and visceral rejection. I have huge internal struggles over this point of view. Some of my parties loved and admired, respected the two priests who raped me, and others who experienced their violence and their rapes. When I think of them, I feel these two completely contradictory points of view and it is very difficult for me to decide. Are they good or bad? Do I have the right to feel love, appreciation for them or should I hate them? How to manage to integrate that a person can be one and the other?

 

Even being now an adult, I still find it hard to conceptualize it ...