The Truth About DID (It’s Not Split-Personalities or Serial Killers)
A Q&A with Leyna Vincent.
I recently talked with Leyna Vincent about the myths and reality of living with dissociative identity disorder. It’s a subject rarely discussed. Here is a brief intro:
We are a DID (dissociative identity disorder) system of 74 alters. We live in a male body, but have many female alters. We are married, live in Midwest America, and are Christian. I, Leyna, am an alter in this system, and enjoy educating about DID.
You can find their amazing Substack here
1. How would you describe what it’s actually like to live with Dissociative Identity Disorder, beyond what people see in movies?
There are a lot of ways in which most movies about DID are extremely inaccurate, probably too many to list here. But what a lot of it boils down to is this: most movies about DID show an extremely exaggerated, over-dramatized version of the condition. Things like alters being serial killers, or a DID system having a completely different wardrobe for each alter, or each alter having an extremely noticeable difference in accent, demeanor, and so forth, are not nearly as common as movies would have you believe.
The reality is this: DID is built for hiding. The entire purpose of diverging alters is to hide the effects of trauma, both from ourselves and others, so that we can continue to function in daily life despite being traumatized repeatedly and severely. So, with that in mind, the type of extremely noticeable switches that are shown in most movies would be counterproductive to that purpose. These types of noticeable or “overt” systems do exist, but they are only about 5-6% of all DID systems, with the other 94-95% being “covert”, or not easy for outsiders to notice the differences between alters.
This is part of the reason why DID is so often misdiagnosed, because most mental health professionals aren’t trained in how to notice the more subtle signs. For these reasons, also, the lives of DID systems would appear to be a lot more “boring” than most movies depict them to be. However, the real differences lie more in the internal world of our mind, where all our alters coexist and must find ways to get along with each other, share our one body and life, and heal from our various traumas. The struggles of living with DID, therefore, are usually a lot more internal, although those internal struggles can affect our ability to function in the external world.
2. What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about DID, especially when they confuse it with schizophrenia?
There are two major reasons, I think, as to why DID and schizophrenia are often confused for being the same thing. The first is that the Latin roots of the word schizophrenia literally translate to “split mind,” which many people mistakenly think refers to a split of identity. But rather, (as far as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong!) the term refers to the mind of a schizophrenic person being split from an objective awareness of external reality, and/or the split between a person’s logical and emotional cognitive processes. These definitions are quite a bit different from the type of “split mind” that a person with DID experiences, which is more of a split of our sense of identity.
The second is the fact that both disorders can have symptoms that people would refer to as “hearing voices.” However, the specific way that phrase is defined, similar to “split mind,” is completely different between the two conditions. With schizophrenia, the “voices” are auditory hallucinations and are usually experienced as coming from outside the person’s body. They can seem very real and appear to have a strong influence on the person’s actions, but they are not literal, separate identities that can take over the person’s body. By contrast, the “voices” that a DID person hears are usually experienced as internal voices, similar to one’s own thoughts, but not seeming like their own voice. This is because they are actually the voices of other alters, or self-states, that have their own separate sense of identity and agency.
3. How do your different parts or alters show up in daily life, and how do you experience memory, identity, or time when switching occurs?
Initially, when we first began to discover that we were multiple, it was a very scary and confusing experience. Most of the time, we didn’t have any control over when we switched. However, with time and a great deal of therapy, we eventually learned to cooperate and work together as a team. Now, we can choose to collaborate, helping each other by utilizing our various talents and specialties as individual strengths.
As far as memory, amnesia that goes beyond normal forgetfulness is one of the diagnostic criteria of DID. However, many people mistakenly believe that blackouts, or missing time, are the only ways that amnesia shows up in a DID system. There are actually several other ways that dissociative amnesia happens, including:
“Fuzzy” memories – We can remember what happened when another alter is out, but the memory is vague and fuzzy, and we can’t remember all the details.
Retroactive amnesia – Our brain “covers up” the missing memories by assuming that we were doing whatever we normally do at that time of day (eating breakfast, working, whatever), and we only notice the amnesia when we try to specifically recall exactly what we were doing.
Emotional amnesia – We remember what happened when another alter was out, but we don’t have an emotional connection to that memory, because it happened to “someone else.”
Internal world amnesia – We don’t remember what we were doing in the internal world of our mind before we emerged into the physical body.
In our system, we don’t have a lot of the blackouts that are traditionally associated with DID, but we do have a lot of these other types of amnesia.
4. Can you explain the role trauma plays in DID and how it contributes to the development of different identities?
DID is caused by early childhood trauma, in most cases, severe and repeated trauma. What happens is that when the child is being subjected to a traumatic event that they cannot escape physically, they escape by retreating into their own mind through dissociation, and another identity is created to be present for this abuse. Over time, this becomes the child’s default method to cope with trauma, or even stress, and more alters are diverged. These alters become specialized, each handling different aspects of their shared life, in order to protect the system from getting overwhelmed. This specialization contributes to each alter developing their own unique identity and personality, because each alter experiences different parts of their life.
5. What do you wish mental health professionals or the general public understood better about DID?
There are so many things that are misunderstood about DID, but if I could break it down to just one thing each for mental health professionals and the general public:
Mental health professionals – DID is real, and it’s not as rare as you think. Unfortunately, due to certain groups of mental health professionals who made it their mission to discredit DID, there are still a lot of therapists who refuse to accept that it is a valid diagnosis (despite the fact that it’s been in the DSM for decades). They think that either we are making it up to get attention, or that our therapists are convincing us that we have DID to further their own careers. Other mental health professionals do believe it exists, but mistakenly think it’s extremely rare. I’ve heard that most schools of psychology teach students that it’s so rare that they’re probably never going to see it in their practice, so they don’t need to learn very much about it. But that’s outdated information. The latest studies have shown that the prevalence rate of DID is about 1.5%, which comes out to 1 in 75 people, which is really not that rare.
General public – DID systems are just people who have a more complex identity than most, and we are just trying to live our lives and cope with the trauma in our past, just like anyone else. We are not homicidal monsters, nor are we superheroes. Due to Hollywood’s extremely exaggerated portrayals of us, the general public has a lot of ideas about us, both good and bad, that are simply not true. That’s a big part of why I’ve been writing about my/our DID online, to educate about the differences between what Hollywood says we are, and what we actually are. I also want to help writers who want to write more accurate, less stigmatizing fiction about DID, because I believe the best way to fight the stigmatizing stories is by telling better stories.
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Thank you for this! I’m married to a person with this diagnosis. I will definitely be subscribing. Really good info glad to see someone writing about d.i.d.
Thank you so very much for this information ℹ️.
My ex-husband’s best friend was an amazing human and one of the few men I’d have said I loved like a brother.
On Christmas Eve, 2004, four months and one week after his Godson was born, we laid him to rest and it was the hardest goodbye for my husband and myself.
I don’t know 🤷♀️ the whys and wherefores of what caused his DID, his unexpected and tragic passing, but for his family, the loss of four sons by their own wishes does make me wonder, almost 21 years later, knowing a little more than I did back then.
The stigmas attached to mental health, including DID, schizophrenia, depression (‘can’t you just get over it’), Bipolar et al, is still alive and well, even with so many people sharing and educating.
Social media can be a powerful tool but it’s a double edged sword ⚔️ and the amount of stress, anxiety, bullying, mismanagement, miscommunication and trauma (aka 🐂 💩) that can happen is can be devastating for individuals and their families.
From someone who’s experienced trauma since birth and is extremely sensitive and learning to lead with more logic and tamp down the emotional overload.
♥️
Sorry for the mini essay.