Talk about how your internal parts/people relate to or view external people of the same age (or any age).  For example: “I have teenage parts and they don’t seem at all like ‘real’ teenagers I see/know”, or “It seems like having younger parts allows me to interact really well with kids.”Â
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
well, i brought this one up. it’s something i struggle with–i’ll be on the train or something, and then a bunch of teenagers gets on, and i get SOOOOOO annoyed with them. they just BUG me so much.
and it’s like i hear a voice saying, “see? you’re just making this up. if you were *really* a teenager, then you’d be more like these other teenagers you see, and you’d be happy to see them.”
but i’ve been remembering how, when i was physically a teenager… most other teenagers bugged the crap out of me. i mean, they were so obnoxious and were interested in things that bored me to tears.
and also, sometimes i’ll see a teenager that i really *would* like to be friends with, except for how it’s totally creepy for an adult to go approach a teenager they don’t know to be friends. so i don’t do it.
i don’t know. it’s just kind of something i struggle with.
Overall I’ve been amazed over and over again that others who have interacted with me when I’m shifted, tell me how real it is. Ok – how real THEY (my aliens/people) are. People who knew I had DID for an extended period, and even who I lived with for a time – never really ‘got it’ – until they met one my people. This DID thing seems to have to be experienced by others before they can ever REALLY get it.
And then I would get caught because then these outside people were more convinced of my condition than me! I’d get a little mad and say something like “well you supposedly just interacted with them! I didn’t! I barely know what happened! Are you sure I’m not just making this up?” They then nod and basically say, “not in a million years could you possibly *try* to do this”.
And in another instance – An outside 4 year old who didn’t like adults too much, seemed to be able to approach me with no problem – one time when I was shifted into one of my 4 year olds! According to my friends who were there to see this, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. This little girl clearly *knew* that I was ‘little’ too – and instinctively responded that way to me. ……whoa……
yeah. when people who know me can comment on differences between parts that are consistent, and that *i was not aware of*, then it seems like, well, maybe, probably, i couldn’t make this up.
or when people who know more about child development than i do say that the things we different parts do are actually developmentally appropriate for our ages… and if i didn’t have that information beforehand, then how could i fake it?
for me, though, there was also the issue of having people in my life recognize that things i had normalized, so they also mentally explained them away for years, are actually different parts… because in my system, lots of us have been in and out throughout my life. so it’s not like i got diagnosed, and all of a sudden parts were showing up. it’s more, i got diagnosed, and all of a sudden my weird behaviors made sense.
my partner talks about how it turns out that what seemed like one person who was SHOCKINGLY inconsistent actually turns out to be quite a few people who are remarkably consistent in their behavior. it’s just, when i was switching and didn’t know who was who, there would be this confusing pile of differences. of course, it would be easier on everyone if we *looked* different when there was a switch! (of course, then it would be harder on us teenagers, because we couldn’t pass for adults so easily any more!)
Ohhhhhhhhh. Totally agree with all of this. Everybody else seemed to interact with the shifts. Kids all knew my kids and playtime was righteous and people were always asking how we did this or that or knew to do this or that to reach a kid who was having a challenge or something. My response was always “do what? What are you talking about?” My nephew and niece just love to tell stories on what we (the mini-me’s) do when they are out. Not funny but totally age appropriate for the mini-me that was out at the time. Siblings KNOW without question and just totally immerse themselves in triggering parts they enjoy and then they take great delight in telling this person what they have just done later. Certain parts work with different siblings differently and siblings know exactly which part will fix something or take care of the problems in the family or whatever. Life partner knew there were shifts but they were always “just me” they said. We think they got used to us and forgetting things and different styles of behavior or clothing or expression. The diagnosis of DID made sense to everyone but me. Once it was diagnosed (after long time battles in accepting it), the mini-me’s just thought the therapist person was this wonderful little emancipator and they were just as free to express whatever, whenever they wanted and that was totally off the charts horrifying to us older-bots. We went through this stage of complete anger at everyone else knowing or seeing and we didn’t know, had no clue and wanted no part thereof. We have since learned to be a little better at sensing all parts and triggers and things just so we know what we are about at any given moment. Does NOT work all the time but everyone inside means a lot to one another, so we try to work through those things and keep ourselves, especially the mini-me’s out of environments where it is not appropriate for them to “be”. A lot of re-learning and no, there is no way any person can fake DID or make it up at all. We can’t imagine why anyone would even want to do that. It’s hard to live with, hard to cope with and sometimes hard to understand, but it’s us and we’re going to make the best of us.