Understanding the Behaviour of Internal Parts in DID/OSDD
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2024
- In this video from The CTAD Clinic, Dr Mike Lloyd (Clinic Director) discusses a question asked by a subscriber about what might be happening in the behaviour of an internal part (alter) within her husband's DID system. This is most relevant to Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)and Mike looks at how we can start to understand the behaviour in the context of attachment and needs.
This is a technique recommended within therapy settings. #otherspecifieddissociativedisorder #osdd #dissociativeidentitydisorder #did #therapy #attachment
DID is a miraculous coping mechanism that saved my life, yet it is primarily stigmatized and misunderstood. Torture, not abuse, defines my years-long experience; if not for my incredibly courageous parts, I would not have survived. It blows my mind how my toddler and young girls self-created a female Indian Warrior Part, The Robot and Wolf, a twelve-year-old boy who endured The Box isolation, a meditator child who kept calm inside The Coffin, and dozens of other parts who endured unspeakable torture. To them, I credit my sanity and survival.
Thank you Dr. Mike for educating the public and for the support which is greatly needed for those with DID, especially those who for whatever reason cannot get appropriate in person services.
God bless you.
Sorry for what you went through but the way you worded it was kind of hurtful. As though abuse is insignificant compared to torture. Both experiences are excruciating to experience. I hope you can heal.
Yes 👍..as a 48 yr old diagnosed DID.. there has been many confusing moments for my partner's over the years..
One comes to mind .. I used to have a landlady that popped by for chats ..I didn't think anything of it..or really much about it afterwards ...until my partner accused me of being in love with her or something... I was definitely not....he said I would smile alot & agree with stuff & laugh & have great banter & look at her like I was more than friends....I was shocked .. & had to talk about this in therapy... actually I was frightened of her ..& fawning to help the interactions go less stressfully... .. I had no idea .. I really thought nothing of her nor felt anything for her .. my partner said I didn't act that way around anyone but her....until it happened again by chance with a lady in the park ...no reason to behave that way either ..nor fear her... It turns out I had a second grade teacher with similar looks to these women ...who knew ...that's why therapy helps ☺️
Thanks for this, it makes sense when you look back with new information!
I am finding that it is taking years to build internal trust and practical cooperation. Almost on a situational basis, rather than a blanket agreement to do this to make our life better. So much distrust inside and out. So much.
The enormity is all the issues around attachment and seeing how it is a core issue that needs to be observed constantly, makes so much sense. While watching this we were trying to think about our different responses to all sorts of people, and how those responses both good and bad, are all tied into our disorganized attachment issues. This is clearly the biggest reason to find good therapy, (which is a struggle). Thank you as always.
You are most welcome!
I have to say, this brought tears to my eyes as I watched and considered some of the things you were saying. Lots of moments passed through my mind, but likely the thing that impacted me most was having all those things go through my mind, and then hearing you saying that examining these things on your own is really much better done in therapy.
I'm from Canada, our healthcare system is not that different from that of the UK. Mental health is not well supported by the system, and only those with good private insurance benefits or the wealthy can afford to go regularly. Longterm weekly counselling is what was prescribed by the psychiatrist who diagnosed me, in order to eventually move forward. As I'm on disability (my condition causes me symptoms that make holding a job impossible at this time), I cannot afford it, nor is it covered. So I can look forward to being stuck in this for a very long time, perhaps always.
I know that you've spoken many times about accessibility, I hope you and more of your colleagues continue to do so. There are an awful lot of people out there that would benefit from working with the likes of you. Thanks for putting out these videos, they are helpful information to add to the toolbox. Take good care.
This video popped up in such a serendipitous way. I am currently in the upstairs bedroom of my fiance's sister's house, by myself, trying to communicate with my system. Fiance and I flew from a different state to get here, as a surprise for his mother's (early) birthday. I used a little "trick" if you'd like to call it that, where if I'm in a state of duress, I'll ask myself (either out loud if I'm alone, under my breath, or internally), "how old do I feel *right* now?" Gives me a good idea of what alter is in pain. The answer is usually immediate when I ask this, but not right now. I suspect one of my younger child alters wants to go home because this is so foreign + the oxygen levels where we traveled to are very low; the body had been (still is) dizzy upon arrival. Typing that out just now + adding it into what you said about how the need is primal actually made something in my brain click:
I'm short of breath, and the child alters don't like that I am "allowing" this to happen to them... I also have an idea of what the traumatic event was that caused the need for this type of protection. It *is* primal. It's, "I can't breathe very well." That is THE most basic thing... like, ever, other than a need for water or food.
See, this is part of why I appreciate your videos -- this one is an example of how "oh, duh!" the reason/answer is.
Thank you! 😊
Wow!!! The "how old do i feel?" Is a great idea. Thank you for sharing!!
Thank you very much for all your great videos! I am from Germany and was diagnosed with partial DID just 1,5 years ago. Before, I had been treated under a wrong diagnose (Borderline) for more than 5 years and I felt worse and worse by the time though a lot of therapy, also had hospital stays. In the end, I lost my therapist, she cancelled my outpatient treatment from one day to another after 5,5 years, without any explanation, without any kind of adoption, without having any kind of support instead..Because I am suffering under attachment traumata in any ways before, and s.* abuse, as well as I had parents with alcohol abuse, I broke on this decision hardly, finally it leads to an suicid trial.
Afterwards, it became more and more clearly that my therapist got to know some very destrucive internal parts, and she triggered with her shameful behaviour against me very young parts and they "came out". I never have amnesia, so she didn#t recoginze that there was more oder that there were different sort of internal parts as that they were in BPS and so it was "me" who destroyed my therapy by behaving with younger parts She could'nt came along with it...and so she often reacted shameful to me. And sometimes , it was even quite rude. to me. I wasn't able to end therapy, feeling shameful and guilty. Other therapist afterwords told me, that it was no proffessional behaviour of her.
The thing is, I still suffer two years after it under the final therapy, got more PTSD symptoms I had before, more dissociative symptomsI had before, experience more and more clear switching , that means, internal parts, very young ones, come in front when I am alone, and only when I am alone. It is extremely hard to trust again therapists, feels like an inner crying of the young parts, they refused therapists for a long time and are very fearful of therapists.
Maybe, once a time, you could make a video about your experiences about DID/OSDD patients with bad therapy experiences , how to get along with it.
A different topic is the differences between the internal parts in BPS an OSDD . Can you explain here more?
As an OSDD system, we found this helpful.
Excellent!
You don't have to answer if you don't have time. What's the difference between OSDD and DID?
“It's not about rejecting these feelings; it's about bringing them in and understanding them.” This is always the critical point: to understand and work, acknowledge the perceptions of all parts.
Dr. Lloyd, I wonder if you’d speak about jealousy and suspicious parts. My partner and I have similar values, and I trust him explicitly, but I have a woman part (very much like my mother) who lives in fear. She displays it in grossly maladapted suspicion and jealousy. Her behavior toward my love is sometimes horrible, accusing him of things he didn't do, yet when she calms down, she too loves him, and I sense her neediness and insecurity. My partner couldn't be more patient and understanding after things settle, but during episodes, it's contentious.
Do you have recommendations and insight for us? I presume many viewers may benefit, not just me.
Thank you for all you do.
That’s a great idea for some thought!
I know exactly what your talking about.. well i go through the same thing.. n im a bit confused
Thank you so much. I’ve been looking for a video that explains why another alter would want a different relationship than the one I’m currently in.
Glad it was helpful!
Boy oh boy is the doctor correct that this can cause trouble. I had a part who had incredible attachment needs that who would come out in nightlife settings when he became interested in somebody I had met. I ultimately lost a career because of my behavior and it took me decades to rebuild it. The problem is that I had absolutely no memory of what I was doing. It's easy to think that the person who came up to you at a nightclub and became so upset with you for not remembering and stalked off was a bizarre case of mistaken identity and push it to the back of your mind. I'm sure it would have been far better to address this within a therapeutic process. The problem is, I had no idea of what was happening, all I knew is that my life was falling apart and I didn't know why. It was a long, long time before I learned anything about what the real problem was. So many people with dissociative disorders seem to have a sense of their parts from an early or fairly early age, but I had absolutely none. I know this has been addressed in at least one video, but I would like to learn more about why some of us have absolutely no idea that we have parts that actually take control from time to time until so much later in life than others. How do we manage to keep everything so separate for so long? On another front, thanks for sharing the videos of the Muscovy ducks. I particularly enjoyed seeing them come upon the hare on their walk.
Thank you all for providing such information, education and important services 💙💞🙏🏻👊👊
Thanks for watching!
A month ago I listened to this video and didn't understand it. Today It came to be easier. Those parts are often "black/white"... but to have an understanding of why some people makes me feel extremely uncomfortable might be of help. It can be they remind me of someone, but also a situation where I have had only helplessness as a choice. And as an adult I realize that I never practised how to relate/reply/defend myself to/against such a person. The therapist has to work me through it....
Thank you for this enlightening video. Very clear and down to earth as always.
I am so glad that through therapy and more awareness, these types of behaviours are much less frequent now. Because they alienate me from people around me and also from 'myself'. It is so uncomfortable to 'wake up' to/after a situation where I behaved or spoke in a way that is just so out of character for me and hard to understand where it came from. For example: I was in a restaurant with someone I worked for/with and I got so angry and frustrated that I made quite a scene and other guests started leaving or confronting me. I am a quiet introvert that is never angry, I am never loud, especially in public. After I got home, I called her and we had a very long conversation on the phone where I took back every last detail of what I had said before and elaborately sympathised about everything going on in her (personal) life. In a way that is not at all like me. Now that I get to know my parts I understand better what happened, what the needs of these parts were and why they felt so strongly towards this person. (Still a bit ashamed about this situation though...)
Sounds like you really worked at this.
My biggest fear is asking a therapist if I have D.I.D. and being accused of faking or automatically dismissed if I'm the first one to consider it. I truly don't know what's wrong with me, I have been diagnosed with anxiety, major depression, and PTSD. But I feel as though these diagnosis don't encompass my symptoms. I suffer a lot from dissociation. The first time I experienced dissociation was during a s.a. in my childhood. Then in highschool I unknowingly began to dissociate by choice. If I was on the bus I would be imagining myself in a different world with my imaginary family or when I was at home I would sit in my room for hours imagining myself in another world talking to a man named Thomas. I am not a very imaginative person, I never enjoyed imaginary games as a child such as dress up or house. I noticed that as an adult I was unable to handle an entire work shift, I would spend hours in my head with my imaginary family as my body worked. I have also experienced feeling like my voice isnt normal, it would sometimes be too deep or be child like. It felt uncomfortable and I didn't know how to turn it off. I hope I can afford therapy soon and get to the bottom of this.
Thankyou so much Dr. Lloyd , your work on trauma is so outstanding 😊
Thank you kindly!
Brilliant!!! Thank you. This makes so much sense.
So grateful for this channel 🙏🏽❤️🩹✝️👣🌄
So helpful, as always, thank you Dr Mike!
Glad it was helpful!
Super helpful video!!!
This is something I have had a hard time expressing lately - thank you SO MUCH for another educational video, the content is supreme tier!
I'll take this to my therapist next week, thank you again!
I'm so glad!
I have an alter named Jaxon who was created (i assume years and years ago before i knew) For the sole purpose of defense from our father and transphobes. Unfortunately because we still live with him (along with our mother and younger brother) healing is a long long way away, but at the very least he’s around to take the brunt of certain scenarios especially with our father. He doesn’t always but he does most of the time. He’s very important for our system
Thank you! Trying to understand the different behaviours and often extreme conflicting emotions is challenging. We recently experienced this in therapy and couldnt understand what was happening. Our t. doesnt always realize whats going on and so we struggle alot to figure things out on our own.
Hi Dr Mike! My system has a 14 y/o foster kid (in the outside world, not internally) who we told about being a DID system before they even moved in. They haven’t asked many questions about it and the host has been the only one to really interact with them. They spend most of their time in their room alone still (they moved in 3 months ago). Our two teenage alters want to get to know them but aren’t sure how to start that interaction. Any advice on how to introduce specific alters to family who are already aware of DID, especially teens/kids?
I did a video a while ago about talking to family, this is a bit different. Patience usually is the best way to go!
Thank you for another amazing video.
Is it my/our fault that we can’t get a handle on this?
That the attachment needs get SO big the reactions are massive and are that of a child.
We have enough of an agreement with one part that they can’t act their things with outside people (it took years) but their private behaviour is still not liked by the rest of us.
So we aren’t weak because we haven’t been able to work with the other things because we haven’t got a therapist currently?
We’ve/I’ve been beating myself up for over a year.
The attachment of childhood can be raw and powerful, and then undiluted by dissociation plays out in the adult world.
Good video ❤
I appreciate your videos so much!
I was wondering, do you have any advice on how to handle 2 extremely polarized parts (in osdd)? I feel like I’m constantly stuck in the middle of a tug of war. I’m not trying to push them away anymore but I still just end up feeling pushed and pulled between them. It seems like small triggers can easily cause overwhelm if it leads to parts being polarized on how to meet the need or deal with the situation.
I see. Someone else watched this. I'm glad youtube recommended this to me to watch again :b
Okay, yeah... That was a powerful video. Thank you for explaining!
We found this very interesting and it definitely makes sense of some experiences we've had.
We do have a question, hopefully you can answer in a future video, what are some ways of dealing with anxiety over sleeping, eating, or other activities of daily living? We've tried talking inside and otherwise communicating that we are safe, but still struggle, especially with sleep. None of the therapists we've seen have been able to help us with this issue. Any advice?
I'd like to know as well
So helpful
I have a daughter-in-law who is 25 years younger than me and she brings out such attachment feelings in me. I also have a 13 year old granddaughter who also makes me switch or gives me switching headache when I know she is around. I feel like I'm on a merri-go-round. It's disconcerting. Thanks for the video.
Even before I realized I was different which is fairly recent (2008), I always and still do, regard the warnings as significant. I have very little memory of my life. I have been unable to find a therapist who is trained in trauma or dissociation to replace the woman who originally diagnosed me w/cptsd. Therefore I rely on what I used to consider to be nothing more than intuition...particularly when someone is too interested or nice straight out of the gate. I appreciate your advice about talking to parts. Everything you've talked about in your recent videos explains so much. That said I don't understand how to address them. I've always had so much noise in my head that from a young age I developed the habit of speaking my immediate thoughts out loud so I could focus. Trying now to engage "parts"? in conversation is uncomfortable and feels odd. Should I expect a respnse?
Could you possibly talk about the difference between Posessive and Non-Posessive switches?
I feel like I always intuitively understand why parts act a certain way, but still have trouble with rejecting all the parts who are traumatized or angry because of the emotions and suppressed memories that resurface with them.
q, and i apologise in advance for the verbosity: as an individual with brocas aphasia/phasal mutism/CPTSD/ASD [lol], a big breakthrough 'tool' for me the past couple months has been leaning into the hyper-localised somatic pain of my migraines as an indicator something is 'up'. i don't use the language of switching/alters/inner-communication for personal reasons, but with that in mind--traditional environmental grounding techniques have NEVER worked for me & have at times aggravated my DPDR fight/flight*. do you have any suggestions or ideas for kinaesthetic cues to 'ease' that internal alignment process when there isn't a clear "direction" for figuring out what my body needs from me? essentially, ideas on how to help 'close' the open biofeedback loop of internal communication w/o needing to rely on one's environment or an internal monologue.
or, a different way to rephrase-do you have any suggestions on grounding/self-centering techniques involving movement/self-touch to better feel out that "need" during a DPDR hyperarousal state that don't rely on self-talk, speech production, etc. i use my personal sign language a lot [and "dance"/my personal 'butoh', lol] but i haven't been able to figure out a way to make those tools compatible with keeping myself "in time" yet. hope this all tracks with you--haven't found the language yet to put this exact 'need' to words yet, but i think you may be able to understand what i'm trying to communicate.
*historically speaking, "pores open & feel on fire", adrenaline rush, "thinking/counting in numbers" w/ aphasia=introducing an aspect of self-judgement/failure, etc, "fighting" my DPDR's break in object recognition=addt'l trigger, etc etc.
BTW--i left a bit of a "preface" comment in a separate video on this channel last night & in feeling out my gut on that, your clinical/professional perspective of your channel makes it feel like a 'safe' resource for me to listen/learn from in this next phase of my longtime therapy work. one of the primary reasons i've avoided content about mental health, dissociation, CPTSD, etc etc for years is b/c that can inadvertently be incredibly triggering [if good natured] *of* my DPDR symptoms/somatic trauma reactivation. so...thank you for the work you do & the 'chill professionalism' w/ which you do it (:
Hi Dr. Mike. Thanks. Have question. Have you seen DID/OSDD in parents as well their children ??? A curiosity ? My family full of trauma and been working on dx issue for me - so hard to find a trusting person to be safe with. Sometimes wonder about my siblings and their potential at being such (my parents(deceased) as well). Thanks 💙👊
Reason asking is I’ve had a major trigger happen followed by many a physical ailments followed by inability to work and disability. Been trying to review and understand. Not in therapy currently. Unable to really access emotions. 💙💞👊👊
Totally unrelated, but I have a question… If we’re coconscious & we switch to another alter, is that still considered dissociating? Or is it only dissociating if we lose time. Thanks.
Yes, that would be considered dissociation, regardless of amnesia.
Even though solving problems related to trauma is difficult due to memory barriers / dissociation, do you still think alters can improve in their self-understanding / functioning with self-analysis (ie journalling or reflection)?
this might be out of scope but you briefly mentioned when things are not dissociated and the trauma is 'open' - do you have any videos about dealing with that stage of things? when healed enough to be able to start avoiding dissociation? but still having big experiences from the past popping up and interfering with responses in the present? it feels weird to start experiencing 'continuity' also...
Do you think alters can merge or often mirror individuals who have qualities the system needs or desires to learn?
Surely it helps to understand why an emotion is there but it doesnt change it. I can change my reaction but it still costs too much energy to feel it and to change the reaction every time. And in the long run it really messes up your intuition because you can only make decisions based on logic, never based on emotion. I have OSDD 1b and Im doing a therapy based on depth-psychology for a year now and Im starting to wonder if there will ever be more in that therapy than just talking about why an emotion is there cause it doesnt help me. To be honest theres nothing really new to me in the first place because I dont have amnesia.
I've had several relationships where they ghosted, discarded and then hoovered which is classic behavior of a narcissist, but is it possible that one of the parts of them likes you and another part hates you.
When the part that hates you presets, they discard, but when the part that presents that likes you, they hoover.
Do you think narcissistts could have DID in some cases?
Realistically, anyone with the ‘right’ history could have DID. Narcissism comes from childhood, so the likelihood of having both would be reasonable.
Kia Ora may you please help me with therapists in New Zealand thank you
You sound more rushed/stressed than usual. Triggering to our system, so we'll come back to this video some other time.
We hope you're okay, we picked up on it too and had to pause as it was a lil unexpected to us. Looking forward to coming back to this video when we're in a better place though as our internal parts can be very secretive and won't offer information that can be very necessary or important. We would love a better understanding of them so thank you for the upload again good sir and wishing everyone and anyone who may see this well.
Thanks for the feedback, not stressed, perhaps rushed!
Can symbiotic trauma lead to pDID or DID?
maybe. Emdr
I recently heard of a concept of "co-fronting"? Is that legit? Do y'all have any actual recorded recognition of such?
He responded to another comment about cofronting saying that it is still a form of dissociation. So it's probably acknowledged as real.
Can you train therapists? I cannot find one therapist that even knows intense trauma, ritual abuse, dissociation, amnesia, did.
We do offer training, but not for individual therapists, it is more general conference level training.