Dissociation is highly common- people do it everyday. Everyone tends to distance themselves from memories or situations and circumstances...distracting themselves from stress. What makes individuals like us unique is having experienced trauma so significant that our brains literally created individuals to endure that trauma and the memories thereof.

it seems like there certainly are aspects of it easily seen everywhere. I live a pretty isolated life as far as having people close enough to me to notice changes in personality that are not huge, and our system knows not to put on a show. Then, our society is more and more isolationist, so the symptoms of others, not just me, seem like they would be easy to miss. Yeah, could be a lot of this.

I've read everything I can get my hands on about DID & many of them have said that it is more common than people realize.

I just cant imagine living without this because it's always been there so maybe I'm seeing signs in other people that are really not like that to them. Yes I can tell if people show signs of fragmentation pretty easy, but usually that's the only thing they have going on.
Not like with us where we hide so many things that only little glimpses of our stuff shows to most people. Those times that I told people who seemed familiar with dissociation about alters, losing time, inner worlds, etc., they couldn't even imagine. They also couldn't directly see that this was going on in here.
In family it's more common because that could be an ongoing pattern maybe you took it from them because they set the example. My mom, I greatly suspect her of having DID. I suspect she took it from her dad, and I basically know that I took it from her. I am here to break the cycle.

My experience with DID is that the mental health field does not believe in it. Even when they see the "switch" they think one is faking. This is why I think that more people probably have it, but not diagnosed.

I don't think everyone who has trauma can get DID. According to what I read a person needs to be highly hypnotize-able. People who are not--might get another mental disorder because they cannot escape the abuse.

interesting about the hypnotism. I didn't know there was a connection.

We know in our case we all were unaware that we had DID until our host's husband figured us out and it was even a shock to us that we had DID not too mentioned our host whom due to the abuse we suffered barely lived any of her life.It was always one of us taking the reins( living with her in the background)when any stress triggered her and this only changed when we all started to recover from our past she finally emerged fully and didn't know what was going on.She didn't remeber her husband or children or most of her life because we had lived most of it for her. Has anyone else had this experience? This is also one of the reasons why we believe DID is more common than people believe it to be

I definitely believe there are many people that are dissociative that just are not dx. or not dx correctly IMO. (dx with bipolar, adhd, borderline, schitzophrenia, etc)

We totally agree Insidetherainbow. We were wrongly diagnosed with ADHD as a child and we know of at least six people(friends and family members) that have been diagnosed with schizophrenia that clearly show all the symptoms of having DID. They all had been abused as children also.It is a shame that the psychiatric community seems to want to turn a bling eye to this disorder when it is totally treatable. It seems they would rather diagnose someone with Schizophrenia or Bi Polar and drug them up to keep the drug companies cashing in instead of getting down to the root of the problem.

Hi Wheezie,

These are some of the same ideas I've held for a while now. I read in one book on trauma that it's now believed as many as 1% of Americans may have DID. That said, I believe DID is on a scale rather than all-or-nothing (some of us are co-conscious, while others completely lose time), so the differing symptoms can throw off even the most open-minded psychologists.

You and Prism are right that many mental health people would rather fit a person into a "comfortable" diagnosis rather than consider one that will be slippery and difficult to work with. I also think that they're too quick to medicate symptoms rather than helping people actually work through issues and truly heal.

I've been lucky to find a therapist who specializes in DID, and I highly recommend taking the time to search for one if you don't have one already. It makes a world of difference when you can just go in and say, "My little girl did this last week," and then work through that, rather than worryingabout how the therapist will react.

I do believe I've seen signs of DID in two coworkers, and since they're young, open-minded folks who were already seeing therapists for personal reasons, I was able to mention it to them. Whether it turns out to be there or not, at least they have a direction to look in... I hated all the years of having no answers for my reactions to things.

We agree Wistala but we think the incidence of DID is far greater than 1% of our population.As we said in our case we didn't know we had DID and it was a shock to us but as soon as we were found out by our husband all of these others alter's started to emerge and with them came more and more memories.We lived our host's life while she stayed in the background or completely in the dark and when we started to heal from the abuse we suffered she emerged and she didn't even know what was going on in her life because we had lived it for her.We think that this is how alot of people are that have been abused in their childhood.Their alters live their lives with their core personalities being in the background.So this is why we believe DID is far more common than people think it to be. We know ourselves that our entire host family has DID and we also believe many of our husbands family has it too.

I am not DID (at least I don't think I am) but I have a half dozen friends and my SO who are. I agree there could be a lot more DID folk than professionals might believe or want to believe. I also believe there may be many more people who are sexually abused as children than most people want to believe.

For instance, I have very little recall of my early childhood. I do remember hearing my mother tell others I had an invisible playmate, but, I think all children have them. Do I have an alter? I really have no idea.

I know there is a test for DID, but I don't know how routinely it is given, and I don't know how else DID is discovered.

In all cases except one I was the first person to ever talk directly to the alters. In five cases, I got to know the hosts because they were also recovering from childhood sexual abuse. In all cases, a young child alter was the first to talk directly to me and allow me to know its name and address it directly rather than in the alters role of acting as the host. The kids seem to trust me, then the older alters follow suit.

I then have been the person to suggest to the host that there was an alter or alters.

The news came as a major shock to the host who thought of themselves as 'normal'. They all had what I call "Swiss Cheese" memory, but thought everyone did.

None remembered much of their childhood. None of the hosts believed they had an alter or alters initially. I think in all cases, an alter told me something which the host knew about, but which the host would never have told me. I used that data to convince the host an alter had told me.

In one case it was the last name of the father of a friend. That man had been the hosts first abuser. In another case it was the color of the abusers hair, in yet another it was the color of an abusers car.

I am curious, how did others learn they were DID, since few alters have direct contact with the host? Are any of the alters who are using this board part of a host who does not yet know they are a host?

From my limited experience it seems there is a wide varience from host to host and a wide varience from alter to alter within each host. I think this board may be the only place on the planet in which alters converse with other alters.

We will tell you our experience and how we discovered we have DID Crusty.Although it sounds like to us you do have it.Do you go numb before or during sex?That's how we discovered we have DID.In talking with our husband and being honest about sex with him.We were with him for 13 years and everytime we had sex(nearly everyday)we were numb because of the abuse we suffered in childhood.The shame and guilt forced upon us by our abusers made us hate our body and sex and until our husband revealed this to us we were completely numb to sex entirely.Everyone needs to know that your body will react in a normal way to sex even though your mind hates what is happening to it.This was a breakthrough moment for us and now we are finally starting to enjoy sex.Everyone also needs to know that DID is progressive and that longer people go without getting help for their trauma the worse DID gets.We believe DID is the cause for alot of murders,rapes and child abuse because we have seen proof of it in our own family.And we believe if every child was screened for DID and treated for it if they had it there would be alot less murders,rapes and child abuse in this world maybe even none.Think about it how many time have you seen an interview with a person who raped or murdered someone and they don't remember doing what they did?They blacked out in anger or rage.We believe DID and their angry alters is what caused them to do what they did.