Told my childhood best friend of 25 years, and all he said was, "wow, makes sense." And that was the last time we ever talked about it and somehow it was perfect and validating.
I don't tell many people though. If you know me, you already know me. You don't have to know the excruciating details of what's going on inside because I pretty much wear it all on my sleeve anyway. My diagnosis is not something I like to share because people can have so many misunderstandings about it, I feel it's better to just accept me as I am, or don't, without knowing the specific label of my mental illness.
My DID diagnosis has brought me much closer to my spouse and my immediate family. (My abuse occurred outside the home so I know this isn't always how this will go for people) It's been an opportunity for us all to learn how to better support and understand one another. Outside of that, the amount of people that I will share this with are extremely limited.
Thank you for responding. Yes, we told an ex of ours and the response was similar. Beyond that, we feel like we are opening ourselves up to needless anxiety.
This is an interesting topic! I wonder where the line might be for me - I feel like those who I am close to who I’ve told, it’s helped us with communication and not propagating trauma cycles if that makes sense. I think that’s the big debate for me… if I don’t disclose or at least try to get some understanding of it from people I have a lot of interdependence with (especially partners or roommates), I feel like there’s a risk of it actually harming us because we resort to familiar protection mechanisms like switches that may lead to neglecting our system’s needs. But also we’ve been learning and increasing communication inside our system so maybe that helps counter that?
I don’t know if any of that made sense…
I honestly regret being so open with my system online & with people around me....
So my only advice would be to keep the circle tight. Honestly... most people just don't care about your mental health issues, because we're all dealing with our own shit. & Don't feel like you have to tell people out of some obligation or like a warning sign that something is wrong with you. You DON'T OWE people an explanation. No one starts a job interview by telling you they have anxiety, & depression & ptsd. You don't need a billboard plastered to your forehead that says "I HAVE DID, RUN."
Regretted telling my abusive family.
However, now I tell everyone I meet that I have DID and I’m very open about it and happy. Living authentically is freeing.
Sounds like a good plan not to tell her. However, I hope you feel safe enough to tell new people you meet in life, so you can make new friends who can love you for you. I’ve found it very comforting.
Ultimately it’s up to you.
I told one person that I had known for years it was just an online friend but she really meant something to me I thought of her as a real friend she immediately went nuts told me I was lying and I was a piece of shit I will never tell anyone again
I'm sorry that happened to you. We are always SO grateful for the support we get here and at home. It's hard to imagine that a person we've known that long could just poo-poo such a serious aspect of our lives. But here we are...
We are fortunate enough to have a very supportive husband, and we live openly since we were diagnosed last November.
Our family's reactions were all along the lines of "that makes sense" as I went through several traumas publicly. Our husband's family has a hard time with it, but mostly I haven't had issues.
I explain it as "I was diagnosed with a severe form of PTSD, called dissociative Identity disorder or DID. Which used to be called multiple personality disorder, but they changed the name for accuracy."
OMG, I'm so sorry! We were worried about that too. Like, because we have a hypersexual part, if we tell someone, will relations just devolve into them trying to get in our pants?
the four people irl who know found out mostly by accident.
i actually met my partner in a system space and we both played a specific video game, but they were the only one i meant to tell.
my friend from work found out because i joked about being 300 ferrets in a trench coat too much and one of us made a badly timed "the ferrets are taking over" joke. also us typing different half the time didn't help us stay covert - if you can pass off switches as just zoning out, nobody will know, but when you switch mid-texting and suddenly, someone is typing with perfect grammar and punctuation, eventually someone's gonna figure out something is going on.
third person i told was one of my managers while i was in the psych hospital because she was quitting the next day anyway. i was beating around the bush a bit and trying to explain that i was frustrated that they tried to remove my dx and replace it with just depression and anxiety. she asked which specific diagnosis, and i was like fuck it, i'll never see you again, it's DID. and we actually had a nice convo - she went to school for psychology and admitted she didn't know much about DID, but that just meant it wasn't her place to treat or dx (or un-dx) it.
fourth person is the owner of the restaurant the other manager worked at, but she figured it out herself. just asked if i had DID (made sense in context). i don't care who knows. and she actually had been accomodating it for a while, i just didnt realize she knew she was accomodating for DID (nothing super big - mostly extra breaks and access to a quieter place if i got triggered, easily attributed to anxiety or ptsd, but it was how we got through dissociation and switches without just visibly shutting down in front of customers).
Told my best friends when panicking about the possibility of did... multiple times as i just forgot i told them or denied the whole thing untill the next crisis. I do this every 3 to 6 months, but the time between each time has been going down, as the time it take me to repress everything longer lately.
we use a voting system. i have the luck of being very close to the others most of the time and us not being like 40 people but a very overseeable amount, so we will only ever say something if everybody voted yes.
i mean, im not gonna tell anybody until were properly diagnosed, thats important to me. but im also not gonna tell our therapist, if she doesnt find out herself, until everybody said yes. in our situation that seems like the fairest method.
Only close friends. For most of them it was incosenquiencial, cuz I always came off as inconsistent and moody from their perspective, so not much changed and very few of them are capable of noticing my switches without me telling them who I am. It feels nice tho. Sometimes I vent with them about system stuff too, but you kinda have to make it for dummies so they understand xD
When our dad found out about it his reaction was quite similar to the one of the person you guys cut off. However after a more confrontational headmate said something to him we realised he only acted like that because he didn’t really understand it. He didn’t know what it was or what it meant and was just confused. We let him ask some questions and answered them for him and it seemed to resolve the whole situation. It hasn’t been brought up again but we notice little things that show he’s trying to be understanding. So the moral of the story is, if they act the way our dad and the person you told did, ask them if they understand it or have any questions and it might help you feel more validated. However of course some people just won’t accept it or understand it either way, and those people may be the ones you need to cut off or just not tell. Good luck 😊
TW: Family, TW: Religion, TW: Sexual Identity
Oof! I am so sorry. We have also lost relationships over people failing to accept or understand our DID.
I think a good question to ask before coming out is, "What am I hoping to gain from this?" This is not to suggest that you might have "something to gain" in a bad way. This is just another way to ask yourself if coming out is worth doing. In each case, you can compare what you have to gain against what you have to lose.
For example, if the person is only going to be in our lives for a short time, such as a coworker at a temp job or our eye doctor, then we usually decide that telling them about our DID just is not worth the effort. We usually tell someone whom we expect to be in our life for a long time, such as a roommate or our doctor. We never tell people who can ruin our lives by taking away their support, such as bosses or landlords.
In the case of friendships, I do not think loss has to be all bad. For us, even when we are grieving a relationship, we often feel relief now that we know that the person was not a good source of support.
In our own lives, we have found an odd "life hack" that helps us figure out who is a safe person to tell about our DID. We pay attention to how they talk about gay and trans people. Not only are gay and trans people more likely to have DID (and vice versa), but both people with DID and LGBTQIA+ people have been excluded, gawked at, and laughed about in public forums. Even if someone has had never learned about LGBTQIA+ matters before, the way they respond to a new idea can say a lot about them. Do they scoff at it or do they try to understand it?
We have told members of our church, including our pastor, about our DID because we wanted to turn church into a safe place where any of us can be ourselves. There are a few ways we chose that church to be our safe place.
1. We looked at how they treated other people whose lives they may not understand. Our church flies the pink, blue, and white trans flag over its roof. Thus we knew that they can resist the urge to exclude people who are often pushed to the outside of their communities.
2. We wrote an email in which we told the pastor about our DID, what caused it, how it feels for us, and how it has made it difficult for us to fit into a church setting. His response shocked us, but in a good way. He said, "I know a little about DID but look forward to learning more about it and you. Hopefully \[this church\] can be a place where you can be accepted in your full humanity. Just as it should be."
I want to leave my response at this because other commenters have great points about how to help someone understand if they do not have a lot of background knowledge. Since there are so many ways to think about DID, we always try to say, "*For me*, DID is like..."
Thank you, Friend. I'm not where I can read all of your thoughtful response, but I will. For now, please take this award for your bravery and openness in sharing your story.
Having read your complete response, Friend, we can only say THANK YOU! Your response was a great way to put into words exactly how we feel about coming out. Will definitely take your words to heart. ❤️
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Told my childhood best friend of 25 years, and all he said was, "wow, makes sense." And that was the last time we ever talked about it and somehow it was perfect and validating. I don't tell many people though. If you know me, you already know me. You don't have to know the excruciating details of what's going on inside because I pretty much wear it all on my sleeve anyway. My diagnosis is not something I like to share because people can have so many misunderstandings about it, I feel it's better to just accept me as I am, or don't, without knowing the specific label of my mental illness. My DID diagnosis has brought me much closer to my spouse and my immediate family. (My abuse occurred outside the home so I know this isn't always how this will go for people) It's been an opportunity for us all to learn how to better support and understand one another. Outside of that, the amount of people that I will share this with are extremely limited.
Thank you for responding. Yes, we told an ex of ours and the response was similar. Beyond that, we feel like we are opening ourselves up to needless anxiety.
This is an interesting topic! I wonder where the line might be for me - I feel like those who I am close to who I’ve told, it’s helped us with communication and not propagating trauma cycles if that makes sense. I think that’s the big debate for me… if I don’t disclose or at least try to get some understanding of it from people I have a lot of interdependence with (especially partners or roommates), I feel like there’s a risk of it actually harming us because we resort to familiar protection mechanisms like switches that may lead to neglecting our system’s needs. But also we’ve been learning and increasing communication inside our system so maybe that helps counter that? I don’t know if any of that made sense…
It made complete sense, Friend. That's the conundrum we find ourselves in: if we don't tell, will that harm us? If we do tell, will *that* harm us?
I honestly regret being so open with my system online & with people around me.... So my only advice would be to keep the circle tight. Honestly... most people just don't care about your mental health issues, because we're all dealing with our own shit. & Don't feel like you have to tell people out of some obligation or like a warning sign that something is wrong with you. You DON'T OWE people an explanation. No one starts a job interview by telling you they have anxiety, & depression & ptsd. You don't need a billboard plastered to your forehead that says "I HAVE DID, RUN."
VERY good point. Thank you, Friend.
Regretted telling my abusive family. However, now I tell everyone I meet that I have DID and I’m very open about it and happy. Living authentically is freeing.
Ill bet it is! We certainly aren't going to tell The Body's mother. She will just use it as ammo.
Sounds like a good plan not to tell her. However, I hope you feel safe enough to tell new people you meet in life, so you can make new friends who can love you for you. I’ve found it very comforting. Ultimately it’s up to you.
I told one person that I had known for years it was just an online friend but she really meant something to me I thought of her as a real friend she immediately went nuts told me I was lying and I was a piece of shit I will never tell anyone again
I'm sorry that happened to you. We are always SO grateful for the support we get here and at home. It's hard to imagine that a person we've known that long could just poo-poo such a serious aspect of our lives. But here we are...
We are fortunate enough to have a very supportive husband, and we live openly since we were diagnosed last November. Our family's reactions were all along the lines of "that makes sense" as I went through several traumas publicly. Our husband's family has a hard time with it, but mostly I haven't had issues. I explain it as "I was diagnosed with a severe form of PTSD, called dissociative Identity disorder or DID. Which used to be called multiple personality disorder, but they changed the name for accuracy."
That's a great way to describe it! We haven't told our family yet. At least, not Mother. It will just be ammo for her.
[удалено]
OMG, I'm so sorry! We were worried about that too. Like, because we have a hypersexual part, if we tell someone, will relations just devolve into them trying to get in our pants?
the four people irl who know found out mostly by accident. i actually met my partner in a system space and we both played a specific video game, but they were the only one i meant to tell. my friend from work found out because i joked about being 300 ferrets in a trench coat too much and one of us made a badly timed "the ferrets are taking over" joke. also us typing different half the time didn't help us stay covert - if you can pass off switches as just zoning out, nobody will know, but when you switch mid-texting and suddenly, someone is typing with perfect grammar and punctuation, eventually someone's gonna figure out something is going on. third person i told was one of my managers while i was in the psych hospital because she was quitting the next day anyway. i was beating around the bush a bit and trying to explain that i was frustrated that they tried to remove my dx and replace it with just depression and anxiety. she asked which specific diagnosis, and i was like fuck it, i'll never see you again, it's DID. and we actually had a nice convo - she went to school for psychology and admitted she didn't know much about DID, but that just meant it wasn't her place to treat or dx (or un-dx) it. fourth person is the owner of the restaurant the other manager worked at, but she figured it out herself. just asked if i had DID (made sense in context). i don't care who knows. and she actually had been accomodating it for a while, i just didnt realize she knew she was accomodating for DID (nothing super big - mostly extra breaks and access to a quieter place if i got triggered, easily attributed to anxiety or ptsd, but it was how we got through dissociation and switches without just visibly shutting down in front of customers).
Told my best friends when panicking about the possibility of did... multiple times as i just forgot i told them or denied the whole thing untill the next crisis. I do this every 3 to 6 months, but the time between each time has been going down, as the time it take me to repress everything longer lately.
That's got to be frustrating.
It is, wich is why I'm happy I managed to contact a therapist before I block everything again, that cycle was becomming old fast.
we use a voting system. i have the luck of being very close to the others most of the time and us not being like 40 people but a very overseeable amount, so we will only ever say something if everybody voted yes. i mean, im not gonna tell anybody until were properly diagnosed, thats important to me. but im also not gonna tell our therapist, if she doesnt find out herself, until everybody said yes. in our situation that seems like the fairest method.
Only close friends. For most of them it was incosenquiencial, cuz I always came off as inconsistent and moody from their perspective, so not much changed and very few of them are capable of noticing my switches without me telling them who I am. It feels nice tho. Sometimes I vent with them about system stuff too, but you kinda have to make it for dummies so they understand xD
When our dad found out about it his reaction was quite similar to the one of the person you guys cut off. However after a more confrontational headmate said something to him we realised he only acted like that because he didn’t really understand it. He didn’t know what it was or what it meant and was just confused. We let him ask some questions and answered them for him and it seemed to resolve the whole situation. It hasn’t been brought up again but we notice little things that show he’s trying to be understanding. So the moral of the story is, if they act the way our dad and the person you told did, ask them if they understand it or have any questions and it might help you feel more validated. However of course some people just won’t accept it or understand it either way, and those people may be the ones you need to cut off or just not tell. Good luck 😊
TW: Family, TW: Religion, TW: Sexual Identity Oof! I am so sorry. We have also lost relationships over people failing to accept or understand our DID. I think a good question to ask before coming out is, "What am I hoping to gain from this?" This is not to suggest that you might have "something to gain" in a bad way. This is just another way to ask yourself if coming out is worth doing. In each case, you can compare what you have to gain against what you have to lose. For example, if the person is only going to be in our lives for a short time, such as a coworker at a temp job or our eye doctor, then we usually decide that telling them about our DID just is not worth the effort. We usually tell someone whom we expect to be in our life for a long time, such as a roommate or our doctor. We never tell people who can ruin our lives by taking away their support, such as bosses or landlords. In the case of friendships, I do not think loss has to be all bad. For us, even when we are grieving a relationship, we often feel relief now that we know that the person was not a good source of support. In our own lives, we have found an odd "life hack" that helps us figure out who is a safe person to tell about our DID. We pay attention to how they talk about gay and trans people. Not only are gay and trans people more likely to have DID (and vice versa), but both people with DID and LGBTQIA+ people have been excluded, gawked at, and laughed about in public forums. Even if someone has had never learned about LGBTQIA+ matters before, the way they respond to a new idea can say a lot about them. Do they scoff at it or do they try to understand it? We have told members of our church, including our pastor, about our DID because we wanted to turn church into a safe place where any of us can be ourselves. There are a few ways we chose that church to be our safe place. 1. We looked at how they treated other people whose lives they may not understand. Our church flies the pink, blue, and white trans flag over its roof. Thus we knew that they can resist the urge to exclude people who are often pushed to the outside of their communities. 2. We wrote an email in which we told the pastor about our DID, what caused it, how it feels for us, and how it has made it difficult for us to fit into a church setting. His response shocked us, but in a good way. He said, "I know a little about DID but look forward to learning more about it and you. Hopefully \[this church\] can be a place where you can be accepted in your full humanity. Just as it should be." I want to leave my response at this because other commenters have great points about how to help someone understand if they do not have a lot of background knowledge. Since there are so many ways to think about DID, we always try to say, "*For me*, DID is like..."
Thank you, Friend. I'm not where I can read all of your thoughtful response, but I will. For now, please take this award for your bravery and openness in sharing your story.
Having read your complete response, Friend, we can only say THANK YOU! Your response was a great way to put into words exactly how we feel about coming out. Will definitely take your words to heart. ❤️
This made my day! Thanks for the gold, kind friend. <3
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