Multiple Personalities Support Group

I would just come right out and ask him.but in a careful ,gentle loving way.I think you need to let him know that you believe him .Questioning what he says will make him defensive and cause him to pull away from you.Bottom line....he needs to be ready to talk about it and thats if hes even aware of it.Sometimes we are aware and sometimes people are not aware of their alters. You sound like you care about your friend and want to support him,so I think he would want to share some of this with u.I know that I wish I had people in my life that I could talk to about it without being scare of what they would think.Good Luck to you

Some may this is a little sneaky but one of my ex closest friends (long story) did some brilliant things to entice the alter personalities out. By doing these activities my internals felt special as though these thigns were being done just for them. These thigns werent even major things. It did help that this friend had childrne of her own and therefore things that they enjoyed doing. But it was simple things like going to the beach and makign sand casttes, doing art, going to the movies, walking through the shops looking at different shops. These sort of thigns appealked to a varieyt of my internals which meant they made thewmselves known to this friends which then in the end I had to recognise that I had DID.

Like moonstruck said, its important to be gentle and loving and nurturing. Its important that these things you do are made to look like they are part of your every day life so your friend doesnt fele like he is beign set up but that whether he was there or not you would be doing those things.

Anyway it helped for me

I am also a wannabe supporter.

My friend did not know she was DID when first me. We both had been abused as children, although she told me she didn't remember much about it, but was sure it had happened. During another conversation she mentioned she had 'gone away." tfor a while that day. She admitted it happened to her a lot and had been happening since she was little. We chatted about DID. A day or so later I got another IM from her screen name, but it appeared to be from a child. When I asked who I was talking to, the answer was a name I had never heard of. The child, and later some other alters,talked to me a lot, and told me a lot about what had happened to the host. I confirmed some of the non traumatic things with the host and she asked how I knew that kind of thing. I told her, as gently as I could that I thought I have been chatting with some of her other personalities. She had already started counseling and during the evaluation somebody on the staff diagnosed her with a number of disorders, and mentioned that the host might be DID.

I still talk to either the host or some of her ten or so alters a couple of times a day; They have also already had had a few sessions with a psychologist.

Maybe some of the messages you are getting are from one or more of the alters. Three or four of my friends alters are really chatty and think it is wonderful that both the doctor and I let them use their own names and chat with them.

I don't know how you handled the communications from the other email addresses but you might try setting up some IMing with whomever is using that other address. I don't think I would push telling your friend you think he might be DID until you have more evidence, even then, you might want to just suggest he go to a psychologist for an evaluation.

My friends PD told her he thought it would be OK for the alters to IM me. However, the only communication the host has had from any of them was through a few short notes in the host's journal.

So far, my friends doc, by all accounts from both her and the alters, the doc has spent more time listening to the alters than the host.

I posted on this group that I had been contacted by an alter, and wondered if that was "normal". I really didn't get enough responses to make a determination.

Change can come slowly. Good Luck.

hi everyone,

i wanted to say that i really appreciate these responses, and this group, though i don't check it often... i have thought my friend has alters, a couple of whom email me, for the last 2 years... its just based on my intuition, my interaction with my friend, and previous experience with people with DID, tho that was over ten years ago. Sometimes i think i'm crazy for thinking this about him, its my own fabrication or fantasy. but the more i read other people's responses and experiences, the more i think it is probably true.

twice i thought his alters were emailing me. the first time was 2 years ago, when i started to suspect. i received an anonymous posting on a friendship network making predictions about our mutual friends. my friend was the only person i knew who knew all the people in this post, and the predictions were nasty, things my friend as i knew him would never say. for example, he made very blatant references to the HIV positive status of two of our friends in this public space, in a nasty way, something my friend would never do.

i showed him the posting and something in his response made me ask him if he did it, which i hadn't planned to do. he freaked out on me in a way i'd never seen before, and it was the end of our friendship for many months. meanwhile i started writing to the author of that anonymous post (who had a separate profile in the friendship network, complete with hints linking him to my friend), and he sounded exactly like him in the way he wrote and used language, except he said very different things. then after reading more about multiple personalities i wrote my friend a very supportive letter, tho i did not allude to multiplicity in it. and he came back to me.

its not the same as it was before tho. we have still been close and have many mutual friends, but he doesn't allow me into the same sorts of intimacy as before, even hanging out alone, and i am the one who tends to initiate our friendship now. he also seems to switch a lot, and i sometimes think there are parts of him who love me a lot, parts that are indifferent and parts that hate me.

i also have an email address where i offer peer support for queer women. in the last year a woman has been writing me who i think might be him. i won't go into all the reasons why i think so, but our interactions tend to parallel what is going on in my life with my friend. and she has gone through a series of very intense arnd difficult situations at an extremely rapid pace, much more rapid than most people one gives counselling too.

we had a fight about a month ago, and i ended up alluding that i knew about his multiplicity. i tried to do this in the most loving and suppolrtive way i could in the context, which was quite difficult. i haven't heard from him since, and i decided to give him some space, i know i will see him again eventually.

two days after our fight this woman wrote me a mail, saying i had forgotten about her and she was angry with me. i told her i hadn[t forgotten, just hadn't heard from her for a while. then yesterday she was chatting with me. i believe i was chatting to his alter, tho a person unfamiliar with the issues might think i am nuts to think so. she talks about very difficult issues, very challenging to talk about as a counsellor in any situation. and in this case, because i think she is my friend's alter, even more so. but again there were parallels to our own fight, and i tried to say things that were supportive and relevant to both situations.

my question is this: how should one respond to fights with other alters. twice its happened that she is writing me about conflict with another person, and previously that person also started writing to me too. she then accused me of taking that person's side and not hers. it happened again yesterday, she was talking about her 13 year old 'daughter', this daughter's sexuality, and she said she felt like killing her. i was trying to encourage her to love and support her daughter, to be her daughter's friend, and she accused me of taking sides.

i told this woman who writes me, that i was trying to support her too, but i was also trying to be truthful. she said she didn't want to chat with me anymore and stopped.

basically i'm trying to have a supportive relationship with whatever parts of my friend (if my theory is true) choose to communicate with me. but then i'm not sure how to deal with this problem of conflict/ 'taking sides'. any thoughts on this?

i will post this in the friends of DID goup also. thank you for your time and helpfulness.

If he does have DID, he might not be aware of it. If he's not aware of it, he may be defensive about it if you try to tell him he is. But if you can help him to see he might benefit from therapy, he might be thankful later. :)

hey, thanks for your reply.... i've been thinking about that too... i think i just want keep the doors of communication open for a while...

when i lived in north america, 10 years ago, i had a couple friends with DID... at that time they found it difficult to find good therapists, they felt they usually had to educate their therapist, more than vice versa...

now i live in an asian country where there is no strong therapy culture, tho the culture of spirituality is very strong... even around queer issues/ sexuality issues, its quite difficult to find an open minded and accepting therapist... so i wonder about the possibility of finding good therapy, i feel we need to look at other strategies too...

thanks so much for ur posting anyhow....

I can't give you much advice except that you might benefit by talking to my boyfriend.

does he post? :)