DID and Age

by Allegra

[Posted on PsychForums.]

How old was your body when you found out you had DID?

We realized we were multiple in the summer of 1996, when the body was 34. We'd met other multiples online in a forum for SA survivors. After meeting other multiples, our first wave of insiders presented themselves within.

How old was your body when you were diagnosed with DID?

No formal dx, but when we entered therapy in the fall of 1998, we began our first appointment by stating to our T: "I'm a high-functioning multiple." This T put a DID dx on our paperwork; our current T only includes MDD, GAD, and PTSD. (In New York State, MDD entitles a person to unlimited T visits.)

Once you found out you had DID, were you able to work out at what age you started experiencing switches?

We believe that for us, being multiple in itself automatically dictates switches, as we have no "default" self. For us, switching is akin to a conversation between two or more outside people.

We believe that our system members first began individuating in utero. We come from at least three generations of dysfunctional family, and our grandmother was abusive toward our mother. Our mother somatized everything, and she married at 21 to get out of the house. On our parents' first anniversary, she was 8.5 months pregnant with us.

Add to the mix that our mother was also an undiagnosed multiple, and she was our primary role model. So not only did her somatized trauma cause us to begin individuating in utero, but her behavior was perversely "normal" to us, and it led us to cope with our own trauma in dysfunctional ways.