"Others live in my body": I am a person with multiple personalities
Dissociative identity disorder - A rare mental disorder in which several personalities coexist in the body of one person. Billy Milligan, a man with twenty-four subpersonalities, became a peculiar symbol of disorder in the mass consciousness. Based on his biography, Daniel Keyes wrote the novel Multiple Minds of Billy Milligan.
In modern pop culture, this disorder is used as a theme for entertaining and fantastic cinema, but in fact it also exists in real life - at least included in the ICD and DSM. There are about three hundred and fifty case histories with this diagnosis registered in the world. Some experts believe that there are much more cases of dissociative identity disorder, they simply are not always diagnosed. Others are sure that such a disorder does not exist at all, and all known patients were either charlatans or suffered from other disorders.
We talked with Natalia (her name has been changed) - she has suffered from a dissociative identity disorder since childhood, is registered in a psychiatric clinic (the heroine showed us a certificate), and has twelve subpersonalities in addition to the main one. In addition, we asked the psychotherapist Vladimir Snigur to tell us about the features of the disease.
Julia Dudkina
“Someone did that.”
I drag a trailer for me. More precisely, twelve trailers. I do not know how to call them better. Probably the most accurate definition is "other me." They are all very different. For example, among them there is a three-year-old girl Sasha, who loves strawberry "Frutella" and cartoons "My Little Pony". This girl is the most harmless and beautiful thing in me. When she appears, all my family and friends sigh with relief. Sasha can wake up mom at three in the morning and ask for a swing. She can also sit and watch TV for several days in a row. When she cries, she can just give candy, and she will calm down. True, there is a danger - Sasha can eat too much sweet, and then she will feel bad. She has diabetes. Although I do not have it.
When dad first saw Sasha, he did not believe it. He walked around the apartment and was indignant: "Why does my daughter behave like a three-year-old child? She is sixteen years old!" He could not accept that I could have such a strange diagnosis - a dissociative identity disorder. Besides my main personality, others live in my body. Sometimes they sort of take over control and decide what to do, for me. I almost always lived with this, but only recently I learned to more or less establish contact with them and accept them as they are.
In the Soviet and post-Soviet psychiatry did not take dissociative identity disorder seriously and often confused it with other disorders - as a result, the patient received an erroneous diagnosis and could be left without psychiatric observation. Today, more and more experts recognize its existence. At the same time, there are mild forms of disorder in which people can live without help.
From childhood I was an impressionable child with a rich imagination. Played with imaginary friends, made up stories. So do many children, this is nothing special. But then, somewhere in the age of ten or eleven, oddities appeared: episodes began to “fall out” from my life. Not that I didn’t remember at all what was happening at these moments. I remembered some passages. But during these episodes, it seemed to me that I could not influence what was happening - as if I was mesmerized or watched a movie about myself. During such periods, my mother said that I was behaving strangely, as if I had been replaced. Once another “fallout” from reality lasted a week, and during it I cut myself with a razor. I did it when I was washing. Mom walked into the bathroom and saw that I was splashing in the water, which was already red with blood. At the same time, I looked as if nothing special had happened - I just stared blankly at my mother. Now I understand that to say "I" in this case is not entirely correct. It made one of them.
After the story with a razor, I was first taken to a psychotherapist. After talking with me for two weeks, a specialist advised my family to see a psychiatrist - he said that I may need medical help. Then I could not be diagnosed for several years. I visited fifteen doctors. Some said that I had schizophrenia, others claimed that it was an acute psychosis or depression. I drank a lot of drugs - various antidepressants and sedatives. Of course, it caused problems with the stomach and health in general. But the hardest thing was to believe that all this really happens: doctors, pills, diagnoses. It seemed to me that such stories could happen to anyone, but not to me. Mom, too, was difficult to accept. She herself a psychotherapist, and it seemed inconceivable to her that a child with mental features could grow up in her family. She worried that this was her fault - that she had overlooked me as a child, did not pay attention to something important.
Until I was fifteen, no one could say for sure what happened to me. I myself felt differently at the same time. When I was thirteen, my grandfather died and I was very hard going through it. Something strange was happening to me, I could get money out of my dad's wallet or paint the walls at night. Could wake mom to show her a picture. More precisely, it seemed to others that I did it. In fact, they were other individuals. This lasted for about half a year, and I very vaguely remember this time - I know about many events only from stories. Now I understand that at that time I had frequent attacks, so a lot of things fell out of my memory. Thanks to psychotherapy, I coped with the grief and the oddities stopped for a while. Then, at fifteen, for the first time in my life a young man appeared. In love, the first kiss - it was though positive, but stressful. Strange events began to happen again. I myself guessed that something very unusual was going on with me, but I tried not to think about it. Mom also saw that I needed help. But dad thought I was just pretending.
Often the cause dissociative identity disorders become children's psychological trauma - it happens so that only one of the subpersonalities remembers this. A similar mechanism works in post-traumatic amnesia.
Somehow my parents were tired of everything and once again took me to the doctor. It was an unpleasant trip: Dad and I were arguing loudly. Suddenly I opened the door and jumped out onto the road. It was another moment when I did not control myself - one of them acted for me. My shoe slipped off my foot, I tried to run away from my parents, and they set off after them. I remember this day in fragments: here they push me into the car, then darkness goes on. And then I see how my mother helps me wash my broken knees.
Parents are very frightened by this incident, and the next day they again took me to a psychiatrist. In his office, I (and, in fact, they) began to shout that I would kill everyone around, and then myself. The psychiatrist called the orderlies, they tried to calm me down, but I struggled and tried to fight them. It ended up being forcibly hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. By court order, I spent about two months there. The day I was discharged, I remember very well. It was December 5, 2015. The head doctor said to me: "Let's go, have a conversation." We came to his office, and he explained to me that, most likely, I have a dissociative identity disorder. I did not read the book about Billy Milligan and did not know what it was. He said: "You forget what happens to you, in those moments when you are under severe stress, right?" Then he explained to me that I was a very impressionable person and in childhood I was hard to experience some events. Therefore, my personality is divided. The doctor said that it was a defense mechanism - with the help of it, my brain decided to simplify my life. He made it so that the most difficult moments for me seemed to be worried by someone else.
"Let them talk"
I really have heavy memories of my childhood. I had an older brother, and we were seriously fighting with him. There were other stresses. Every time when I explain to people the nature of my disorder, they begin to ask: “What is it that has happened in your life that your psyche responded to that?” It’s as if they don’t understand that I don’t want to once again discuss traumatic events.
My doctor honestly said: he had no patients with such a diagnosis before. Dissociative identity disorder is a very rare occurrence. Most often, even when someone makes such a diagnosis, after a couple of weeks it is removed - it turns out that this is actually another disorder from the group of dissociative or even schizophrenia.
Upon learning that I had a rare disorder, I felt as if I had been sentenced - it seemed that my life was over. For a year and a half, I had very little contact with people, tried, without the need to not leave the house. It seemed to me that people would poke a finger at me, look askance. Besides, I began to be afraid of myself. It didn’t fit in my head that someone who couldn’t manage could live in me.
Dissociation is primitive the defense mechanism inherent in the child's psyche, which fragments our experience: for example, what the child considers good is separate from what he considers bad. With age, this mechanism is replaced by more complex and precise ones. If, for some reason, a person continues to actively use dissociation for many years up to adulthood, separate identities with different qualities and sets of memories can form.
In the first half of 2017, my parents and I decided to try hypnosis. I lay down on the couch, relaxed and under the voice of the psychotherapist entered into a trance state. He continued to talk as if he was digging in my head - he was talking about the most painful things in my life. During the sessions, my subpersonalities seemed to have begun to emerge, they said something, answered the specialist. One day he suggested that I just try to communicate with them, without going into a trance. He asked: "Relax and let them talk." I tried, and we entered into a dialogue. From the side it looked like I was talking to myself. I often do that now. This may scare someone, but my mother is already used to it. Sometimes, when I feel bad, she suggests: "Maybe you will go and discuss your problem with them?" I sit in front of the mirror, and we all speak in turn.
Thanks to hypnosis, I realized that sometimes I can control them and “release” when necessary. If earlier we coexisted with them in some kind of chaos and I did not understand anything, now I began to gradually get acquainted with them, to recognize their features. I realized that each of the subpersonalities are characterized by different actions and behavior.
They manifest themselves in different ways. Sometimes it happens that they get into my conversations with people. Outwardly, it looks as if I claim one thing, and after five minutes - quite another. People are surprised - they think that I instantly changed my opinion or simply do not understand what I am saying. In fact, this is one of them.
Often I hear their thoughts. It is not at all like the voices in my head, just the thoughts of my subpersonalities arise in my mind just like my own. Only I know that they are not mine and not similar to mine. It happens like this: I think about something of my own and suddenly something completely unexpected comes to my mind. The type of thoughts, the logic itself, some accents are different. Previously, it was difficult for me to filter information and to understand which of the personalities this or that thought belongs to. In order to learn how to determine whose thoughts are now in my head, I had to understand myself, to understand what my tastes and values were. So in a sense, thanks to them, I knew myself better.
"With Stash, we became allies"
During attacks, my subpersonalities can completely take control of the body. Sometimes, when one of them gets out, I continue to see what is happening for a while. And then as if I fall asleep and completely give them control. If desired, I can not turn off and control their actions, but it requires maximum concentration and is not always obtained. And if it turns out, it takes a lot of energy.
With some of them we found a common language. I learned to “release” them at the right moments, and now they help me to live. For example, I can give them a place if you need to do something that is difficult for me. The first with whom I made contact was Stesha. Her full name is Stephanie, she is a 19-year-old girl, and we have a lot in common with her. But she is more frivolous, flirtatious. She likes dresses and jewelry, shopping. She knows how to please people, to attract attention. She has a softer character than me.
Subpersonalities may possess different skills and knowledge, IQ levels and physical indicators. There are cases when various chronic diseases were diagnosed in subpersonalities. Usually, with such a disorder, individual subpersonalities keep different traits in themselves and perform different functions. Among them may be aggressive advocates, negotiators, caring adults, children's subpersonalities. One or several subpersonalities may have gender identity that does not coincide with the identity of the main person.
Once I felt very bad, I wanted to cut myself. And suddenly, as if she spoke to herself: “Why do this? After all, you have a beautiful body, why do you want to hurt him?” I didn’t understand very well what was happening: as if it was me who spoke, but at the same time it was not me. Then I found out that it was Stesha. Before making friends, we often argued with her. Once, without my knowledge, she repainted in a blonde. I woke up in the morning, looked at myself in the mirror and found that my dark hair had become light. Stesha also likes to buy clothes, jewelry, and can bring ten packages of cosmetics home.
When you try to "kick out" some kind of subpersonality, to gain control over the body, it looks like arm wrestling. This occupation is very exhausting. Gradually, I realized that we do not have to fight with Stash. I began to give in to her: if she wanted to do an unusual make-up, buy something, or talk to someone instead of me — I let her do it. When I began to “release” her periodically, our relations with her improved, we became allies.
The scariest self is a woman named Diana. As a rule, it is she who makes me hurt myself. So she punishes me for what, in her opinion, I'm doing wrong. I think that in fact I myself condemn myself for many things, but I kind of hide this condemnation in Diana. But besides punishment, she is also responsible for protection. If I find myself in a dangerous situation, she can intervene. All my strength and aggression are in her. Once I met a young man who occasionally raised his hand to me. And during one of the quarrels, Diana grabbed him by the throat and pressed him against the wall. I do not know how it happened, physically that guy was bigger and stronger than me. But Diana can something that I can not.
Sometimes I have big attacks, and then for a few days I seem to fall into darkness. I can go to bed and wake up in three days. While I am absent, one of them acts for me. If Stesha gets out, then everything is in order: she deals with my affairs, goes to school, communicates with people. From the side, even friends may not notice that it is she, not me. But there are less pleasant subpersonalities. Once I had a seizure that lasted a month. When I came to, I had a fingal under my eye. The whole family was blacklisted on the phone, so no one could get through to me. There was a terrible mess at home. A friend told me that at that time I drank a lot of alcohol. She wanted to stop me, pick up the bottle, but I tried to smash a glass on her head. This is what happens when Dasha and Dima replace me. They are twins and appear quite rarely. But every time they bring chaos into my life.
"He starts staring at my girlfriends"
Usually, if a big attack is coming, I can feel it in advance. For example, I do not like red lipstick in my life. But sometimes the mood suddenly appears to make up your lips red. This is a reason to guard: something is coming. Sometimes before the attacks, the sensations in the body change: for example, it may seem to me that I am about to touch the ceiling. So, that subpersonality, which is much higher than me, can get out soon. It happens that suddenly my eyesight is very tight - in this case I have glasses at home. I put them on and think: "So, I must get ready." Among them are men. Of course, they are not very comfortable in the female body. Yes, and they give me concern. I have never been interested in girls, but when one of my male subpersonalities wakes up, he starts staring at my girlfriends. I am embarrassed by this. But still I need to learn to coexist with them. So I have men's clothes in my closet and an utyazhka for the chest - in case one of the men's subpersonalities shows up.
Сейчас мне восемнадцать лет, и я учусь в колледже - изучаю фотографию. Честно говоря, учусь я довольно средне - часто пропускаю занятия из-за приступов. Если на паре меня о чём-то спрашивают, а я в это время "отсутствую", ответ даёт кто-то из субличностей. Может получиться полная ерунда. Куратор моего курса знает о моём диагнозе, когда я пропадаю, она навещает меня, мы часто обсуждаем ситуацию. She worries, says: "You need to get a diploma." If everything works out, I have to finish college this year. But I'm not going to be a photographer. I would like to become a make-up artist and work in a theater. But first you need to adapt to life with all the subpersonalities.
To a person with a dissociative identity disorder was able to work and communicate with others, he needs to establish interaction between subpersonalities. Usually this is done with the help of psychotherapy, and especially the skill of hypnosis can help a specialist. Sometimes in the process of treating subpersonality, it is possible to connect, but often they simply learn to effectively divide responsibilities and work together
In recent years, I have learned to more or less control attacks. I can not make them not exist at all. But I can influence who gets out. I have for this life hacking. Suppose I feel that I am becoming irritable, tearing at people and I cannot do anything about it. It means that not very pleasant subpersonality can appear soon. At such moments, I go to the store, buy a box of strawberry "Frutelli" and eat it all up. It is like a gift for Sasha, a three-year-old girl who lives in me. With the help of such a life hacking, I let her out, and she appears instead of the aggressive subpersonality that she originally planned to climb out. Sasha watches cartoons, eats sweets, and then lies down and sleeps for a long time. The attack passes, I lose a day or two from my life, but I don’t give anyone any trouble and behave calmly.
And yet, even though I learned more or less to control the attacks, until last year I could not accept the fact that was happening to me. I did not understand why so many people live in me, drank a lot of alcohol to get away from reality. Alcohol with antidepressants gives a very bad effect, it kills the stomach, liver and psyche. Many times I thought about suicide. When I get suicidal, the presence of subpersonalities increases. They do not want to die and are trying to intervene, to protect me. At such moments I can walk down the street and as if talking to myself - they do not stop and convince me to think again. So the more I thought about death, the more obvious their presence became, and this only made it worse.
"She will choke you with a pillow."
One day in April of 2018, I had a particularly bad day: I quarreled with my relatives, I was scolded while studying because I had missed something. I really wanted to finish everything: I locked myself in the bathroom and ate pills. When I was lying on the floor with foam at the mouth, my mother called me. I picked up the phone, but could not speak. She realized that something was wrong, and called my young man who was sleeping in the next room. He woke up, I was called an ambulance. After that, I lay in intensive care for two days and did not come to my senses. When I woke up and realized what had happened, I became really scared. I decided: it's time to learn to accept myself and my "I." Otherwise, nothing will remain with us.
Now I try not to perceive my diagnosis as some kind of deviation. I tell myself: how well my brain works, once it fits so much. My subpersonalities appeared because I needed them. When they disappear for a long time, I cannot cope with everything alone, I get depressive symptoms. This is how I am arranged: sometimes I need to take a vacation in order for someone to live for me. They take care of me as they can. And now I try to take care of them. Sometimes it seems to me that we have become one family. I wake up in the morning, and I have drawings on the wallpaper. I think: "How cute! The child left me a message." They are me. If I do not accept them, then I do not accept myself. I finally understood this and am learning to live with this understanding.
The most difficult case - when subpersonalities are not aware of the existence of the others, and each considers itself to be the only one. Intermediate options are much more common when they maintain relationships. In general, this is similar to a family of people of different ages, temperaments, and even gender, who need to interact in order to survive.
We agreed to keep records with the subpersonalities with which I have contact - to sit down at the computer in the evening and write a couple of sentences about where we were today and what we did. So you can not get lost in reality. True, sometimes it still turns out that I fall out of life and out of the educational process. There is knowledge that only I possess, and things that only I can do.
Because of my diagnosis, I lost many friends. Not everyone is just with a person who periodically begins to behave very unexpectedly, to refute everything he said before, to treat others in a different way. But I was lucky: I have close people who support me and are ready to be friends, no matter what. One of my close friends, when she heard my story, giggled, and then said: "You know, and I have always dreamed of meeting a person who has such features." She began to ask me about everything, even went once with me to a psychiatrist. She became interested, not scary. This is the main thing.
Recently, I told in one of the social networks about my diagnosis. I live in a small town, and many began to discuss me. They approached the young man whom I met at that time and said: “She is sick, she will choke you with a pillow”. Many accuse me of just pretending. If they knew, I wish that all this was really just an invention. So I can say: "I played you, there are no subpersonalities." I would not give up on a stable psyche and stress resistance.
Many more people, after watching films and having read books about dissociative identity disorder, began to make diagnoses for themselves. They say: "Oh, and I sometimes forget some things! Maybe I have a multiple personality?" I want to hit them with something. Or say: "Fools, rejoice that you do not know what it is."
In general, the way this diagnosis is portrayed in popular culture is sometimes frustrating. After the movie "Split" I wanted not to leave the house. The hero is drawn by some kind of beast, monster. After such a movie, people begin to think that mental disorders are dangerous, and it’s better not to get close to people like me. But I know that I am an ordinary person. I want to live a normal life. I heard that Billy Milligan died in a mental hospital alone. I don't want to be the same with me. I want to be happy. I also want to stop feeling guilty about what is happening to me. I can drop out of life, I can sleep almost a day after attacks. Recently I overslept a family trip to the cinema for my mother's birthday. I woke up and saw that they had called me many times. People needed me, but they could not contact me. I understood it and burst into tears.
"I was lucky - he believes in my diagnosis"
The more stress I experience, the more often I get seizures. At the beginning of the year, I had a remission that lasted for several weeks - during this time none of my subpersonalities never got out. But then something happened in my personal life, I was dismayed, and everything became bad again. I once again went to a psychiatric hospital, and now I go to a psychotherapist every other day. After much torment, I finally got lucky with a specialist - he believes in my diagnosis. Usually, when I turn to another psychotherapist, he tries to prove to me that I do not have a dissociative disorder. I have to convince him, to rush with some help, just so that he would believe me and agreed to help.
Some admit my diagnosis, but refuse to work with me because they have not encountered such cases and do not know how to behave. We have to look for another psychotherapist again and prove and explain something to him. At the same time, I feel like some kind of circus monkey. I'm sick of it.
My current psychotherapist is one of the best specialists in the city. He does not question my diagnosis and says that I can learn to live a normal life with this disorder. For this I need to fully accept the existence of my "I" and make contact with them all. He says: "You will build your life the way you want. But for this you need to stop being afraid." He also says that all people have some kind of diagnosis, just some people know theirs and others don’t. So I was lucky - I even know that with me.
I would like to meet a person who has the same diagnosis. With someone older than me. I would ask him: "How do you live, how do you cope?" One of the doctors I visited, told me that few people with this disorder live to the age of twenty-two years. They say it's too hard, people do not cope. I first believed him, upset. But now I think: why should I listen to someone? All people have an alter ego, just mine - that's it, very bright. I want to cope and learn to live with it. I want to tell people about myself, so that they know that people like me exist. We are not dangerous, we are normal people. Not monkeys in the circus and not monsters from the movie.
Illustrations: Dasha Chertanova
