Dissociative Identity Disorder: Living with Multiple Identities

How common do you consider gingers to be? Well, gingers encompass 1- 2% of the world population, meaning that 70 to 140 million people around the world have red hair. People who suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, follow these same statistics. However, they are much more stigmatized and unknown. But, what is DID?

may be much more prone to abuse as their sense of self is limited by the constant changing of identities. The transitions from one identity to another are often triggered by psychosocial stress or by something that might excite a particular feeling in one particular personality. For example, a person who has a little girl as one of her personalities, also called alters, when seeing a showy toy might turn into that little girl.

How do alters come to exist? Usually, a primary identity carries the individual's given name and is passive, dependent, guilty, and depressed as this is the person who underwent the trauma that produced the condition. DID isn’t genetic, instead, it arises from severe physical and sexual abuse during childhood. From this moment on, a person may be unable to integrate various aspects of identity, memory, and consciousness into a single multidimensional self, producing versions of one’s self to cope with different situations. Alters can be classified into ANPs, EPs, and MPs. ANPs are ‘apparently normal parts’, parts that don’t hold trauma and aren’t formed because of trauma. These can lead a normal life. EPs are ‘emotional parts’, those who hold trauma or were formed because of it to protect the body from further suffering. MPs, mixed parts, are alters that are somewhere between ANPs and EPs. However, these are only present in polyfragmented systems (the ones that hold more than 100 alters or have altered alters). DID is a complex condition that should be furthered studied and understood. I hope you check out these youtube channels from people who have DID to get a closer look into what it is like living with it.

By Sofía Prada, 10thA

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The Rings System

According to Psychology Today, DID “is a rare condition in which two or more distinct identities, or personality states, are present in—and alternately take control of—an individual.”. A person with this condition can suddenly change their perception of themselves, meaning that their perceived gender, age or name changes. An individual can have more than 100 identities inside their mind, and each one of these has its own memory. Let’s say I’m Sofia but something triggers me and my identity changes to Laura. While being Laura, I won’t be able to recall anything I did as Sofia, making me feel lost in whatever space or situation I am in. This is called ‘dissociative fugue’ and it poses danger to people suffering from this condition. Contrary to depictions of the media and popular opinion, DID isn’t a particular threat to society. Instead, these individuals