Dissociative Identity Disorder: Working Out the Behaviour of Alters
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- Опубліковано 30 лис 2022
- In this video from The CTAD Clinic, Dr Mike Lloyd (Clinic Director) discusses a question often asked by subscribers (and people in general!), that is, 'why does my alter do this?'. It is often very difficult for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder to try and understand why an alter may be behaving in a particular way. Mike offers a framework for developing this understanding by asking the right questions and decoding the principles of the behaviour, linking past to present. This is a technique recommended within therapy settings.
#dissociativeidentitydisorder #did
#otherspecifieddissociativedisorder #osdd
#therapy
I really appreciate that you stress the value of the clinical setting, but offer solutions for those whose circumstances don't currently allow it.
Thank you, we know it isn’t available for many.
Very true and I also appreciate it. Thank you Sad Doggo for noticing. That's very kind.
Interesting video, we agree that up to now every alter in our system has always had an understandable and logical reason for what they do. Our strongest alters now were once our most destructive alters.
“Best done with a therapist”
I’ve spent 30 years dealing with my dissociation- nobody helped or understood me, it took me 17 years to even recognize that I was 2 people, it took me another 10 years to discover that “dissociation” is the right description of my mental health issues, and 5 more years of not knowing what to do except keep researching and pushing forward on my own with no validation or support.
Why would I trust a therapist to meddle with my plural mind as if it was safer than my own meddling that I conducted on my own in desperation? Yes it was horrid to go through this alone, but what is truly horrid is knowing I’m fully aware I dissociate and am entirely unaware of how to deal with my plural life in a healthy and successful way....
I just want to be able to live my plural life and not have it ruin my life to be so different than other people.
I really like that you mention that the ideal is to channel alters’ behavior in advantageous ways. Our current therapist (who’s not trained in DID/OSDD, but just a regular trauma therapist) just sees all of us as inherently bad because we’re not the “core” that she’s been trying to find (we won’t tell her who the core is because we don’t want her to try to oust the rest of us). She doesn’t understand how much progress we’ve made by ourselves.We’ve done so much work among ourselves to understand why we all behave the way we do and use everyone’s individual behaviors to the system’s holistic benefit. All our therapist sees is that we’re still plural, and she assumes that that’s the problem. I really wish she were more like you and could see that functional multiplicity can work really well if everyone cooperates and uses their individual character traits for the good of the system.
Thank you for this... I feel so nervous and scared watching these videos but they are reassuring.
Thank you SO much for the content you provide here. Your videos were pivotal in me getting my diagnosis a few weeks ago. I stumbled upon parts work accidentally which eventually lead me to DID and OSDD. The more I learn, the more my brain goes “this is it! This is us!” It’s so relieving to hear someone explain what’s going on in my head in a way I’ve never been able to word before.
That is absolutely what we try and achieve for people, glad it helped!
This was so helpful for me to understand that some alters are stuck in that time and still reacting the same way. So helpful! Thank you.
You are welcome!
Would you be willing to talk about issues on the road to healthy functioning that often come up specifically for DID/ OSDD1/ partial DID systems who have experienced organized group abuse (e.g.: children trafficked for sex or labor). We find for ourselves that our system seems to have layers and may function differently on the different layers. We are lucky to be in therapy, but your videos still provide needed understanding and support.
Dear Dr Mike, thank you so much for this video. In therapy I have begun trying to listen and hear my parts. I really like the idea of using behaviour to investigate as a detective, what the needs might be and then looking to find adaptive ways to meet those needs. A lot of food for thought that will assist me in my journey. I am so very grateful for the work you and your team are doing!
You are very welcome, Jane, thank you for the positive message!
I'm glad I watch your videos more than one time because i have been able to hear things I didn't hear before. It works for me, so just throwing it out there.
Thank you dr Mike! This is helpful, makes sense. You always break things down to more manageable proportions and steps. Which makes it less overwhelming. And it is a comfort to know that there is logic underlying, even if some behaviour or feeling seems totally random or irrational. Looking forward to your series on this topic.
Thank you!
Thank you so much... We applied your advices and got answers we hardly believed before watching this video. It hurts, but one of our traumaholders is more lighthearted now
I am so pleased for you!
Thank you so much for de-mystifying some of the process for those of us struggling with DID. The videos on this channel have been so helpful!
This is so valuable 💜 Thank you for sharing something that so few people have access to.
You are welcome!
Don't you just love him and this channel? He has a way of understanding that most Don't.
Dr. Mike, your videos just keep getting better and better. Thank you.
Ha ha, thank you!
Watching this video for the information w a positive anticipation. Then the temporal area tightened into a familiar sort of long throb and my shoulders upper back slump vs sit up straight. I recognize her and she is difficult so I'm defending the front I guess you'd say. She must protest the curious, she doesn't think it's a good idea. I'm just learning, not doing anything, we are safe. Okay? THank you for watching out for us. You believe everyone and there's so few telling the truth. I watch.
Oh my gosh thank you so much for this perfectly timed video. I found myself nodding along and saying yes, yes yes to so much of this as it makes a lot of sense of our behaviour of late. Over these last few weeks, we are going through lots of changes with getting a brand new psychologist, and a new court-appointed victim support social worker as the old one is doing further study and also about to get another day-to-day social worker after having the same one for two years. With all these changes I have seen my Alters behaviour be all over the place and affect us all adversely. Watching this video has made a massive lot of sense to what is happening with everyone. I will take this to therapy. I hope you do more of these videos as this is massively helpful 🙏
So glad it helped!
do you have any videos about advice for people who sometimes run into extremely long periods where they can't stop dissociating no matter what they do and can't switch into any alter either and are stuck between all their alters in a dissociative fog making routine tasks almost impossible?
I am so very grateful for the discovery of your clinic/channel. Lives are being changed.
I’ve been in the mental health field for decades and this is the first solid information I’ve received on DID related topics. Through your channel I’ve been led to study and learn an immense amount.
My question is: what is the best way to discuss DID related conditions (including scars from years of self harm…which children sometimes see) with the children of clients? I’ve worked extensively in child and family mental health, but I keep getting stuck trying to determine what is appropriate for sharing with children of varying ages regarding parental struggles. Any help would be most welcome.
Thanks for the lovely feedback! Not sure there is much difference discussing this from other conditions
Thank you! We look forward to more videos in this series - it's very helpful. :)
You are most welcome!
Thank you so much, amazing information. We've had a new part join us just this week and she's already given answers to half of this list before even watching this, so we are very excited to see that we are on the right track. 🙏💜
Glad to hear it!
Thank you for helping systems better understand ourselves. I am recently diagnosed and this has been so confusing and hard to navigate through. Last night I had a bad crying spell that lasted hours and called out from work today but this video was very helpful in making me not feel so lost and defeated.
Another very helpful video, thank you.
Thank you Dr Michael, we like these short videos.
This is an important video Dr Mike thanks for the ipload.
One thing ive been doing and it's worked is I got a. Very attractive composition notebook. I titled it my "check ins" I go to each alter and say hello etc and ask if there's anything she/he needs. They tell me. Sometimes they need me to work on myself so they won't feel ((o k, dd my alter will say why she's here and when did she develop? I write down the questions and answers. Some will tell me what I need to do to help myself. So far talking with them on paper with colored markers has provided much more insight than I expected.
Sounds good!
Thank you, my ex mother of my 2 daughters has this disorder ..I've emotionally disconnected. I had too, but my daughters will be hurt by her. So I'll take your advice and try to explain it to her. There's no help for her. I'm left on my own.
Great video! Thank you 💜
Great video. Thanks!
This is very helpful, thank you.
Thanks Dr Mike / CTAD - very helpful 💙💞👊🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
You are most welcome!
Thank you Dr. Lloyd. Your videos are very useful & helpful. Keep up the great work. It is helping us, and I'm sure helping many.
You are very welcome!
Thanks! This was helpful as I just made a log for tracking this kind of thing this week, but you had some ideas for questions that I hadn’t thought of, so I added them to my log!
Yay I'm first! We love your videos. Thank you so much for all you do!
You win, thank you for being the first!
We worked through this for our core daily/emotional parts many years ago using the book got parts by ATW. It was very helpful and was the start of mapping our system. It’s a bit harder for poly fragmentation though, now I tend to do this on the fly as a part comes up because I can’t keep track of them all!
Very VERY helpful and would love more vids on this topic..thank you
Thank you, too!
Thank you!! This is super helpful!!!
You are welcome!
I would say that this technique would be useful where there's any kind of erratic behaviour that stems from trauma, not necessarily DID. I don't think I have DID anyway, yet I see it as something useful for dealing with emotional flashback and all sorts of maladaptive behaviour. Unless I'm wrong and my mind is more split than I realise.
Thank you.
It would be great if you did a mini series on ( working out the behaviors of alters).My loved one lives in an adult group home. He wants to be able to come home. It has taken years for the alters to come out with what happened years ago, because he had memory loss. As memories return, music helps him cope. But sometimes he cries, sometimes anger. How do I get him to realize I didn't know these things happened until after the fact.
Some terrible things happened to my son in a behavior hospital years ago. Can trauma this bad be eventually be overcome?
Thank you
I hoped you would like this, largely your idea!
@@thectadclinic i did, it was very helpful, I'm humbled and honored that you took my idea to heart and that you did this to help me and those that deal with what I have had to experience. Thank you thank you thank you and may Yahweh bless you abundantly for your work and for your kind and sincere heart
This is really helpful, we always wonder why we it's so hard to go to sleep. We know the part that dows this, we tried explaining sleep is necessary, we tried promises of almost any kind, but we asked why he does that, but he's really sorry will not do it again. Until the next day. But this approach makes sense and new to us. We already got clues during the video, though not totally clear. All of us are tired cause of too little sleep, except for one. We also tried going to the trauma a few times, but that doesn't work, it's just upsetting and will certainly not help us get more sleep. But we'll figure it out, thanx so much!
You are welcome!
Disordered sleep is one of those things in which the physiological effects of insomnia and neurological hyperarousal can take over and begin to drive the sleep problem. This means that fixing the psychological issue cannot solve the problem any longer. It becomes an issue where effective treatment will be both physical and psychological.
@@Cathy-xi8cb i'll focus on the alter who causes the problem, i have handled sleep problems for many years and have too many bad experiences with medicine to solve a problem i know i can handle already.
Oh my gosh! Thank you so much! Perfect timing as this is confusing to me (us).. I can easily understand the child parts…But these alters that are adults and can cause havoc… , why do they develop if there is no danger now? And do you ever find an internal adult part wanting to form alliance with other alters against others or the self? Thank you so much for all you do to help us out here try to make some sense of our systems .
Good question
Maybe they don't see things in timeliness like you do. They are still in the abuse not I'm the now.
What I believe is going on (intuitively) is that our brains when we are young dissociate which as we all know becomes DID. And it is understood that once our brains develop this ability to protect us it continues to do this or rather have this skill in adulthood.
But when we are children, our brains only 'know' ourselves as children. But as we age, our brains know us to be this or that age so to speak.
So our brain is in a sense mimicking our cronological (body) age and creating alters that reflect that age.
As for alters that appear older than our body say, maybe the alter that the brain creates relates to an older person? As adults we are exposed to more people and our brains may identify with those in our surroundings?
It's a very interesting function of the brain (I include mind in that equasion) to be able to do this. It makes sense to me that the older we become, the older our brain identifies as?
Would love your thoughts? 🙂
How can I tell if a pattern is an alter or just old mind patterns, bad habits or personality traits that I’m now aware of?
We can’t seem to stay present through this video. 🤔
I hope you get this figured out and can watch it all!
@@thectadclinic We hope so to. Thank you.
My advocate and I have pretty much determined what event spawned each alter and are working on understanding why. It has taken 4 yrs for my alters to learn and trust him and to feel safe in speaking and sharing their thoughts or experiences. My alters have never felt safe in a therapeutic way, as for 40 yrs I , sparrow, have been in and out of therapy and each clinical setting turned out to be a nightmare. In the United States, it is extremely hard to find a therapist that actually believes that DID is real and not just a PTSD event…you Dr. Mike, are the exception and I appreciate your videos so much. Thank you for believing in us.
This video couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m a newly questioning system. An alter is doing his best to protect the system but he gets way too intense and emotionally distant when he does. I know why, but if he could like lighten up, that’d be great???
Hi Mike,
I really enjoy your videos as they provide so much insight into DID/OSDD, thank you so much for your work. I would like to ask the question how near to a "full scale" person alters can develop (if they develop at all). Personal background: a while ago I was approached by a female who was interested in me in a somewhat rather peculiar way. Later I found out that she was part of a system and not even the host personality. According to her, the system was in therapy for years and apparently has reached the final stage, having integrated to just five parts including the host. Seeking a relationship was allegedly done with consent of the rest of the system which appeared rather odd to me. Anyway, at the time I felt unfit to engage in this kind of thing. But I always asked myself the question if such a setup could have worked out. Or would it be somehow inappropriate, too confusing and complicated and ultimately leading nowhere? What's your opinion? Kind regards...
Thanks for the question, but we can’t offer individual advice!
I understand and respect that. But I wouldn't have taken an answer as advice as the situation described happened years in the past...Thanks and regards...
Thank you.
This may seem like a silly question: how does one know -or find out- if the ‘younger ones’ aren’t just one’s ‘inner child/children’? (Not DID/OSDD parts/alters) 14:42
Also,I see a lot of inner family system work being shown in UA-cam videos- it seems very similar to working with parts/alters etc but with those who are not necessarily considered having DID/OSDD…
Can the ‘inner family’ ,in this respect, be confused with DID/OSDD?
I’m really struggling to work myself/selves out.
Hope you understand what I mean.
Thank you again.
@ Deborah Anne . Yes ! What is going on here, in terms of different methodologies for "investigating" the self - the inner structure of what a person is ? The overlap of different "systems of detection" can be exceptionally problematic... Onioned layers of exploration in the journey towards "Self"-knowledge; frameworks colliding, and jostling with one another...
Excellent question you have posed...
We understand but idk if we totally ready for this
Thank you tho
Thank you!
I experienced someone coming out in highschool. I was in a parade. :O
I'm trying to get a useful message out of this, but I don't think I've figured things out well enough for that. I still don't know who my alters are. I can tell some of them apart, especially the kids stand out, and sometimes I can notice a switch happening. Mostly though, I don't know who's been in front before and when. It's really frustrating, becuase if I don't know who anyone is, how will I find out what any of us are srtuggling with or how to work through it?
It can be difficult like that, hopefully there are good people around you who can learn to ‘spot the difference’.
Is there a list anywhere, for DID specialists? Almost no one, even if they say they know all about it, don't. And those aspects they don't, are really important. You seem to be the only person who has got this understanding of DID. Right now, I've been put with a 'therapist' who knows nothing of DID, she doesn't even have her license yet. This is California state medical program. She's the third I've been put with without a license. She canceled our second appointment. I'm seeking help because I have self destructive situations coming up and I have no idea what to do. I can totally understand why 70% of DID persons end it. I'm a strong person and I'm failing after 20 years of trying to heal this, with wrong advice, harmful testing, and horrendous situations you would not believe. How do we get help?
Oh and now it's popular and people who know nothing, pass themselves off as experts, making videos with false information.
You seem to be the only person who understands this. Keep doing videos please. And thank you for what your are doing.
Thank you for tackling such nuanced and complex topics! Your work is powerful and making a difference!
How do you approach intellectually inquiring about something traumatically caused, while avoiding emotions, when the sources of trauma are themselves based on overwhelming feelings such as Fear, Rage, Sorrow, Helplessness, Etc?
Is disassociation not a cerebral/intellectual escape from fully experiencing/processing somatic experiences?
Are you suggesting this intellectual approach simply for starting by yourself? I’d be very surprised if you were overall encouraging continued suppression/repression of emotions permanently.
Perhaps you trying to ensure that emotional exploration/expression is in a safe environment so that these traumas aren’t relived in unhealthy ways?
Thanks for your clarification of this not being trauma work, although it is an essential step to healing. I am very curious to understand how rationale or underlying logic isn’t based off emotion. You use a physical example of hunger, but isn’t that ultimately an emotion- fear for survival? Or perhaps neglect/abandonment? What about traumas that are not purely physical?
Thank you again for all you do, it is truly changing lives for the better!
This is simply asking basic questions, not asking about trauma. Emotions are to be contained, not suppressed.
Are alters the same as parts? How do you identify parts?
We have two alters who are very angry. One is suicidal and the other likes to cut. It's very hard to get through to them.
But our main question is why do we have to relive memories? We went through it once at a young age obviously but why do we have to relive them again and sometimes more than once or twice? Especially with body memories?
I'm not a clinician... but perhaps, your core is trying to heal? Like coming up for air? So the memories float up for exposure or are fronting for attention? So my question is, when the come up, are you able to do anything to being healing to that person who had those experiences? Sending love.
Maybe it's what the comment above me said or maybe it's to retraumatize you to reinforce and ingrain the system deeper into your mind, so to speak. My system, for example, resists being dismantled because it believes I'm still in need of "protection". It will even try desperately to actually recreate the situation again and then act accordingly as if "see, we are necessary "
How do you help littles with their trauma?
Comfort them on the inside.
I know it's not a quick fix but I've found going slow is best. I've had many sessions building trust with my therapist and hearing from the ones in charge. Now those parts are feeling more comfortable they are starting to let the younger ones come forward in therapy and say what they need. Trust the process and know that as all parts start to learn new skills and awareness of eachother they will in turn start to help the other parts that are stuck.
This wasn't possible with a past therapist and only worked when we found one who worked by keeping every session in the window of tolerance.
Also, making lots of time for "doing nothing" and simply doing nourishing and caring things for myself that younger parts would enjoy. Baths, watching fun films, drawing and naps. TwiNote app has also been great to help communication between parts
Nah..@5:00 in you're not being confusing. Actually it makes a lot of sense
3:59 - 4:10
5:16 - 5:28
What if it’s not you that has alters, but your reality does.
Isn't this called an abreaction? I think it seems like it would be obvious but it isn't. I was terrified earlier. I felt like a child. I simply didn't have any rational thoughts just fear. It took someone else to say isn't this how you felt around your father? And right there the fear stopped. And I'm 64.
Thank you for noticing. Your hearts mean a lot to me. I need to think about who those hearts mean alot to and why I'm crying. Time to write.
🤮🤕🤮