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Does anyone have experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder, specifically dating?
I've started to date a lovely woman, and she's now allowed me to know that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder. I've done my best to read and watch information about the 'disorder' but I was wondering if anyone has had any experiences that might they're willing to share.
I know that everyone is different, and there's no set way anyone who has it acts or behaves.
DID gets a ton of stigma because it's not a particularly well understood phenomena and a lot of medical professionals and people in general have a strong negative perception of someone having multiple identities. I think a more relaxed perspective, viewing identities more as aspects of a persona in the same fashion that someone is say, different at work than they are in person, is a better framework to begin to understand what DID might be. People will vary quite a bit, so please keep in mind that I'm talking in broad strokes here and from a perspective of trying to help you to understand rather than one of 'authority' or experience. In modern queer culture there's been a bit of surge of younger folks having what they call alters or existing as a system, which to outsiders may look very similar to DID. I can't speak on behalf for these individuals and their experience of their bodies and minds, but there may be some shared experiences among these two groups of folks.
If you're interested in pursuing a relationship with someone who has multiple identities inhabiting a singular body, a few considerations you should make are the following:
In short, you need to have a lot of conversations with this person in order to date them. The kinds of conversations you need to have are going to be ones you're not familiar with. You'll need to lean on them to help define what's important knowledge for you to have, and as of such a base level of trust will need to be built. If you're interested in dating them, I would suggest peeking into online communities that exist for people who are systems or those who have DID to better understand how they interact with the world.
This is exactly what I was hoping to find by asking. Thank you very much!
I dated a woman with "borderline personality disorder" a few years ago. I would never date anyone with a diagnosed mental health disorder again, especially one that requires medication. We both ended up literally getting sick from the stress. It was a load dealing with my own problems, her problems, and her problems interacting with my problems.
Go ahead and keep dating this person.
If things change such that the relationship doesn't make you happier, consider ending it. The point of being in a relationship is that it makes your life better.
I'm sorry to hear that. BPD is exceptionally exhausting for many individuals because of the extremely strong emotional reactions people with this condition can have, especially with regards to important folks in their life. BPD and DID are miles apart, however, and both are quite different from other "diagnosed mental health disorders". Anxiety disorders, ADHD, and Depression are all examples of fairly commonly diagnosed mental health disorders and I would encourage you to expand your thinking on this issue. Exerting caution against anyone who seems like they may not be ready for a relationship is definitely a good protective mechanism to prevent yourself from too much of an emotional burden, too much stress, or otherwise an unhealthy relationship, but many mental health issues can be under control and otherwise not negatively effect a relationship.
It is one thing if I am already bonded to a person. I am still friends with that woman years later. However, if I just started dating someone that is a different story. I will thank them for being upfront, wish them luck with dating, and move on.
I already went the "expanded thinking" route. It literally took me a few years to get over the stress induced physical illnesses I got from trying to make it work.
On the other hand, my girlfriend is bipolar, but she’s medicated and keeps up on her mental health. I don’t think you should automatically dismiss people with mental health issues, but definitely make sure you pay attention to how they handle their mental health. Nobody should be responsible for another person’s mental health issues.
I will say if somebody had a nasty experience with it in the past it could have been traumatizing enough to make them a bad fit for anyone that hits those same triggers again. It’s fine to know yourself and your limits.
Something that’s helped me in the past is if I can have sessions with that person’s therapist around the subject of that person. It lets me ask what things I can do to help them, whether it’s mitigation or coping. It also lets me expose my personality and quirks so when that person goes to their therapist for stuff regarding me, that therapist has a more informed opinion about who I am. However, I do have to maintain my own separate therapist for my stuff or it’ll create that obvious conflict of interest.
Bipolar and BPD are two very different disorders. BPD is borderline personality disorder. You might have already known that, but I've seen people legitimately make that mistake in the past, and it's an easy one to make.
I think their discussion of their girlfriend's bipolar disorder was more in response to the "I would never date anyone with a diagnosed mental health disorder again, especially one that requires medication" bit. The difference between BPD and bipolar is a factor imo -- different mental health disorders can be very different, and some are more easily managed with medication than others. Having one big catch-all is grouping a lot of very different things in the same category.
Yeah, I was just clarifying because I've seen people with bipolar or close to people with bipolar take offense over statements made very specifically about people with BPD in the past, not realizing that the other party was fairly objectively describing a completely different disorder with a confusingly similar abbreviation.
In this case the "avoid all diagnosed mental illnesses" thing was definitely too broad. That could go as far as avoiding someone because they fell into a funk after their parents died several years ago and went on antidepressants for a while.
Yeah I was focusing on the grouping all people with mental health issues into the same "don't date" bucket, but I notice that replying to people who misunderstand my comments in some way ends up in a big unproductive comment chain.
thank you for experience
Well, I'm not judging, just throwing it out there:
In the evidence based medical world, general consensus is that DID is overblown, mostly iatrogenic or self hypnosis.
(Source: I'm a medical professionnal (not psychiatric branch but we had a few general primers, and I spoke with some psychiatric specialist friend))
My personnal interpretation of this (no psychiatrist will ever say something this candidly): Everyone behaves and feels different according to some situation (a.i. triggers) but people "with" DID watched split one too many time, interacted with the online DID community enough to be invested in it and spoke with a psychologist who was excited to have an interesting patient.
Obviously, we don't know everything and might be wrong, and since you like this person you definitly shouldn't just accuse her of faking it. She is most likely not faking it volontarily. But do keep some awareness of this in your mind if she tries to use it as an excuse to push for things you're not comfortable with, such as abusive switching of behavior on a dime when you don't do everything her way, or justifying polyamory if you're not into that...
Again, I don't know her, I don't know you, I do know general consensus of EBM, and you did just ask random people on the internet for advice...
If you're actually a medical professional, I would highly suggest you expand your thinking. This kind of mindset that the patient is "faking it" (voluntarily or not) or should not be believed has lead to an absurd amount of gatekeeping (and in many cases gaslighting) in medicine. Things that I can name off the top of my head that have had significant issues in medicine because the patient is not considered an expert of what they are experiencing include the following:
I want to stress that this is not an exhaustive list or medical gatekeeping and gaslighting and that there is a persistent issue with medical professionals rightfully thinking of themselves as experts in medicine but incorrectly applying that in a way which discounts the patient's experience. For the record, I am also a medical professional and while my current practice no longer involves direct patient care, I am aware that I have likely contributed to some of the following above. Just like it is essential for us to combat unconscious bias, we must also combat unintended gaslighting and gatekeeping, and in areas which affect very few individuals and individuals who are ostracized by society for their behavior we need to be extremely careful about discounting the patient's narrative.
I've personally found that taking a step back and considering whether my belief in the patients condition will affect how I treat them. What steps would I take if I thought they were "faking it" vs. not? If there is a difference in terms of whether I send them on to another specialist, to be imaged, whether I give them medication, etc. I need to consider what the potential harm is if I am wrong in either direction. If they are to be trusted about their condition and are reaching out for help, I need to be sure that they get it. If they are lying about their symptoms, does me believing them cause the patient harm? I would be more cautious in the latter if I, for example, believed the patient to be at risk of addiction, I would need to ensure that I did my due diligence to asses this risk and weigh it against the risk of not providing them medicine. If the person is considering killing themselves on account of the pain, for example, it would not be ethical of me to deny them medicine even if I suspected they were at risk of being addicted - instead, I should provide appropriate safeguards to check up on the patient to minimize the risk of addiction.
One final note which depends greatly upon where you practice medicine, is that as always we need to be aware of any potential legal risks. As licensed professionals we need to practice in a method which allows us to renew our licenses and to adhere to whatever codes and legal requirements are provided. Sometimes we cannot practice medicine in a way that is best for our patients because we open ourselves up to legal ramifications or risks. In these situations I like to have a frank and direct conversation with the patient about what I can and cannot recommend per these guidelines so that they can seek alternative routes for care or contact people who can affect legislation.
I agree with what you've said, if you'd accepted a paraphrased restating of:
Mental health is a touchy, fraught, stigma-laden subject. It is something to be extremely careful about, and psychogenic illnesses are real illnesses.
Your checklist sounds like a good way of mitigating possible problems of excess credulity, but I haven't seen what I'd consider the context of the controversy of DID so I wanted to add that.
Sybil arguably (re)mainstreamed DID, with the related movies and six million copies sold. It's been a while since I looked at the details of that and I'm not an expert, but it was sketchy:
In turn, that fed in to the repressed memory movement-->Satanic Panic, which did an immense amount of harm. People served life sentences in jail, communities destroyed, and real abuse made worse.
My earliest memories involve real domestic violence that led to a long, bitter divorce. As part of that, and with one foot grounded in reality, I was told things (or had them implied) by a parent that were really damaging that took decades to come to terms with them probably not having had happened.
My aunt has a friend who is into New Age-y stuff who does things like past life regression therapy. She believes her family was in a cult, tortured her, and sexually abused her. Likely real trauma, but made worse.
Separate from how to interact with a person claiming to have DID are discussions of whether there is evidence supporting it and what impact it has on a societal level. Even if there's a lot of leakage.
EMDR might only be a purple hat therapy. It's important for medical professionals to be able to discuss that, even if they shouldn't mention it to a patient interested in or having success with it.
There's a cultural component to schizophrenia, with (iirc) cultures with "trickster spirits" having a much easier time than someone brought up believing in demon dogs. The reports of abductions lining up with movies of Demon Haunted World, or spikes in exorcisms with related beatings and smotherings.
Do exorcisms/possessions actually exist? No. Is it going to help telling a deeply Catholic person dealing with trauma? Probably not-- they'll dig in, avoid therapy, feel shamed/disbelieved, etc. So you're left with the nebulous impact that unchecked belief has on society, like the aunt's friend convincing another to try past life regression, or the spread of anti-vaxx beliefs.
It'll probably reassure you that my practice (genetic) also doesn't involve seing patients directly so my possible shortcoming won't impact anyone much.
Yes I have noticed that doubting the patient's narrative is a frequent source of error, often dramatic for the patient. Yet what can we do appart from regularly reexamining our position while keeping in mind that it is dangerous if wrong. I did mention "we don't know everything and could be wrong" (which granted, i could just be paying lip service without actually entertaining the idea, but that isn't the case here... please don't doubt my narrative)
Just "believe everything the patient says" is terrible advice. Especially in psychiatry.
Also, notice I never said people with DID were faking it consciously. I would never claim that, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend the way the patient makes sense of his experience is actually happening.
If a patient comes saying "I have gastric ulcer", we'll still check the ECG.
And for many other fringe opinion, you'll have to agree that doctors are totally right and patient are totally wrong (Homeopathy, vaccine...). Yes it isn't fail proof, but I'd rather trust in medical consensus than random patient. And that doesn't mean I'd stop helping them!
So all in all, I think we mostly agree here (at least I pretty much agree with what you said). I appreciate you taking the time to warn me about possible failure mode of my thinking, but I think you may have misundersood my position, and how strongly I hold it. I merrely wanted to provide an honest estimate of what the usual psychiatrist thinks unofficially about DID without watering it down with too much carefull nuances.
So the little I know about DID is that it is strongly associated with childhood extreme trauma. So you might find yourself dealing with PTSD and anxiety. Like any disability, there will be some challenges. It sounds like you think it might be worth it to move the relationship forward. Good for you for being tolerant, but if you find yourself facing deal breakers from her in the future, respect your own needs as well as hers. Good luck.
appreciate it thank you
An alternate point of view is that DID is a symptom of certain treatments (particularly hypnosis)
https://did-research.org/controversy/iatrogenic
I wouldn't trust any memories of UFO abductions, past lives, or trauma that came as a result of hypnosis. It's related to this controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%27s_seduction_theory
which is still controversial in some circles today.
For sure. I am aware of the controversy. However mental health is not my field and I was trying to be supportive to OP with regard to his relationship.
I lurk medical and psychology related subreddits and have seen the topic of DID come up now and then. Usually it's to discuss whether or not it's even a "real" thing. The most common opinions I tend to see are "it's real, but very, very rare" and "it's not real, and there's some other disorder (like PTSD or BPD) that better explains the symptoms that people diagnosed with DID have." I know nothing about DID myself, but I'll provide some links to reddit threads (that-- full disclosure-- I haven't entirely read myself) that seem to have relevant discussion. I feel certain I've seen more threads on the topic than I posted here, but I seem to be having trouble finding them.
Here are some links:
From r/psychiatry
From r/medicine
From r/AcademicPsychology
Appreciate it