Talk about your experience with friendships/relationships.
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
Talk about your experience with friendships/relationships.
i was the one who brought up this topic in the group. at the point i brought it up, i think i was aiming for something that’s been on my/our mind(s) for a while: making friends who are also multiple, so that younger parts can have friends who are their ages. not really sure how to manage it, particularly because it’s so hard for even me to let the younger parts out when we’re around someone else, and i’m more comfortable with doing that than lots of people i’ve met.
plus, what we all REALLY want is someone local, and it feels like the majority of people in the group are from far enough away that we can’t just make a spontaneous plan to hang out.
but on friends, generally…. i’ve had really good experiences with this. i don’t have a ton of friends, but the ones i have all accept me pretty much for who i am. they aren’t weirded out by me being multiple, and they will hang out and play with younger parts, or with teenagers, or with the adults. they don’t seem upset when i switch, and i don’t feel like i have to hide who i am from them.
it might help that all of my friends knew me for a pretty long time before i was diagnosed, and in my case, there was always a lot of switching going on. so they were used to seeing me playing with toys, or acting like a little kid, or like a moody teenager, or any of that. and they liked me maybe even in part because of all of that, and not in spite of it. but sometimes i would confuse them, because i’d change what seemed to be really strong opinions, or i wouldn’t remember things i’d done or said, or things like that. so when i found out that i was multiple, and told them, it was like “OH! that explains so MUCH!”
it might also help that my group of friends tends to have experience with being in therapy themselves, and we figure that most people are a little crazy, but that doesn’t keep us from being good people to spend time with, or something. and they had the experience of knowing all of me before finding out i was multiple, so they were less upset by the idea that i was multiple, maybe. and they were able to see pretty easily that i was still the same person they knew.
with my partner, it’s sometimes a strain, but we had those strains before i was diagnosed too. i’d been in therapy for quite a while before we met, so at least i knew i had “abuse issues” and let her know some stuff, and read some stories i’d written, so she wasn’t coming into the relationship and getting surprised by someone who seemed ok suddenly going crazy. except, of course, that kind of happened.
in a lot of ways, i think that my relationship with w gave me enough safety that my earlier coping skills (ie, ability to deny how bad things were with me!) fell apart after a while. like, the more i trusted her, the crazier i got, because it was finally safe, and some subconscious part of me recognized that i didn’t have to hold things together quite so well any more.
which kind of sucks for her. i mean, the safer she made me feel, the crazier i got. hopefully, we’ll be able to stick it out until i can get through all of the “crazy” and get back to being a little more stable!