How comfortable are you with your DID? Do you hide this reality from the world? Do you share it with everyone? Talk about your feelings with regard to hiding or exposing your DID to others.
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
i’ve been thinking a lot about the issue of being “closeted” with DID. less about coming out or not coming out, but more about the amount of energy i invest in keeping it secret.
yeah, there are some cases where it is probably not safe to have people know. but in my own life, there are a lot of places where it’s either that i don’t know how to bring up the subject without it becoming a bigger issue than it is, or where i’m nervous in spite of having good reasons to believe that the people i tell would respond in ways that would be fine.
i guess some of it comes from the way that i feel so much more comfortable in the places where i’m not having to work so hard to keep being multiple a secret. with a lot of my friends, it’s not that we talk all that often about me being multiple. but it’s ok for pretty much any part to show up, and i can talk about things like the united states of tara without worrying whether they’ll find out i’m multiple.
i guess it’s like being a lesbian–i’m *much* more comfortable when i’m not trying to hide that. it means i can talk about my partner, or go out with her, and it’s just not an issue. but in cases where we’re worried about people’s reactions, then we have to try to hide that we’re a couple, or that we’re lesbians. and that really is hard sometimes, and doesn’t feel like we can relax or just be ourselves. (the plural here is me and w 🙂 )
at least in the situations where i’m confident either that people would respond well, or that there’s nothing they could do that would be harmful if they didn’t, i really wish i felt more comfortable just saying i’m multiple. i think my life would be better if i weren’t spending so much energy trying to keep it hidden when i don’t need to.