What Is Dissociative Identity Disorder? | DID AWARENESS DAY

Hello everybody! Welcome back to another video by DissociaDID! You might be thinking - if you're familiar with our channel - "Chloe, you upload on Sundays! What are you doing?" Today's a Tuesday. Well, today is March 5th And March 5th is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) awareness day So, what does it mean to have an awareness day? An awareness day is a day where you raise awareness About an issue, or a subject, or - in this case - a disorder that isn't very well known I have dissociative identity disorder Those of you who are familiar with this channel will know that that is what we have decicated this channel to It's erasing the stigma that surrounds the disorder that we have And educating people about the reality of the psychology behind it and the medical evidence that goes with it. We try to show people, not only the facts behind this disorder, but what it's really like to live with it. What we do everyday is what March 5th is dedicated to. March 5th, dissociative identity disorder awareness day, is a day where we will all be sharing infographics, educational videos, little content cards. Anything you can to spread the word about dissociative identity disorder To make people more aware of it and what the reality of what having DID really is No, we're not like Split And no, none of our alters are the "beast" We're not murderers We're not anymore likely to hurt you than anyone else Dissociative identity disorder is a coping mechanism DID is a disorder that develops during childhood in order to protect that child from repeated childhood trauma It has absolutely nothing which leans itself to wanting to hurt other people The only violent alters that generally come around with DID are persecutor alters Those are alters who have learned to copy the behavior of abusers and turn that inwards in order to keep the system safe, in an odd, convoluted way. They may think, "As long as I'm carrying on the role of the abuser, inwards, on my system, on this body, Then they won't have to hurt us anymore because I'm already doing that job." People with DID are no more likely to be dangerous, or harmful To external people than any other member of the community. If anything, most people with dissociative identity disorder have been abused or hurt, very, very badly in the past Which means they're more likely to fall back into that role of being submissive and abused rather than being an abuser There's lots of media around about DID and a lot of it is harmful to our community and does portray us as monsters, or superheros, or something that is unreal and can't really exist in real life. Or, it's something that's come out of a storybook. And it's "so, so rare" so if anyone portrays symptoms of having a disorder like DID, people think, "Oh, you can't have that. That's too rare." Or, "You're nothing like Split!" That's something we've heard a lot. From other people. But dissociative identity disorder isn't very rare at all. It's actually more common than schizophrenia and about as common as bulimia About 2% of the population of the world has this disorder That racks up to a pretty huge number. So, what really is dissociative identity disorder? Like I said, it forms in childhood When we are born, every single child starts off with an un-integrated personality. We have various states of self, which are responsible for different roles. So, for example, in a baby; "I'm hungry! I want food!" Cry. And then another one might be, "I need to go to the toilet." Another one would be attachment to the primary care giver. Most of these wants and desires are not connected, they are very separate from each other. This child - this baby - hasn't learned enough about the world to be able to connect these things together. Or to know about cause and effect yet. They haven't lived enough life to be able to know how they feel about things. To be able to create opinions or to base what they know is going to come next off of previous experience Because they've had no previous experiences As this child grows older, as all children grow older, they do learn more experiences They learn what they like, what they dislike. They learn to develop opinions on the world, on people. They learn who they can trust, who they can't. They learn about attachments to their primary care givers And they learn about love and affection through them Around the age 7 - 9, all these different parts, fully integrate together to become one fully combined personality. But, if repeated trauma happens before the ages of 7 - 9, and there is not a very healthy attachment to the primary caregiver, amnesic walls can go up between these parts and that means, when it comes to the ages where the personality should integrate, in order to protect themselves from the memories of the trauma that's happened, and the understanding of the trauma that's happened, this child's mind won't be able to fully integrate due to these amnesic walls. These memory blocks, that have gone up to keep them safe. That's how dissociative identity disorder is formed. It can only be formed in childhood, but, now the brain has learned, "Oh, this is how we respond to trauma. This worked, let's keep doing this." So any other kind of trauma that happens, boom, amnesic wall goes up. If it's needed, a new alter will be created. [Phone rings] And now that the brain has learned that this is how it should be coping, when it comes to trauma or periods of very high stress Throughout life, if more trauma happens, or there is cases of abuse, or very, very, very high stress that the existing system - which means, all the alters in one body - is unable to deal with, the mind will create a new alter with a specific role who is capable of dealing with this new situation The most scientifically accurate and recent theory around dissociative identity disorder is the theory of structural dissociation and that's what I just explained there. Now, as I mentioned, this theory takes into account how personality develops from childhood into adulthood. That means a lot of people's first opinion on how DID forms, and what it really is, is wrong because a lot of people tend to think that there is a person and something awful has happened to them and their mind has been broken and split up and shattered into multiple different pieces and those are their alters but one of those, one of those, is the "real" person, or "original" person who existed before they broke up. There are two reasons why this doesn't make much sense to me but, at the end of the day, I just want to put this out there, whatever you believe, is valid. You can go by the scientific theories, which is what we use because we're much more comfortable with that We like to have this scientific backing behind us and an understanding of how to work well with our system based on what we know about the way the brain has developed in order to cause it to happen. But, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. What matters is, if you do have DID what makes you feel most valid and helps you to cope easiest because you've already got DID, however it happens is however it happened. What matters now is how you make the most of your life with DID. and you can have a very, very positive and successful life with DID People can live very normal lives with it. I know very, very successful people who have DID And because of the stigma around it, a lot of people don't feel comfortable, or are very, very scared to come out and say, "Hey, I have DID!" There's a lot of stigma around this disorder and it really does disrupt people's lives. If you come out and say you have DID, there's a chance sometimes that you won't have a job anymore after that. Or the family or loved ones won't understand or will be afraid that because of the stigmas around DID you're going to hurt them or murder them or that you're dangerous or unpredictable and this isn't true at all. But, as I said, this idea of having one person who is broken up into multiple different people, their alters, and people wanting to pick out who's the "realist" one who's the "original" Chloe - if you're going by my name, for example. If you're imagining it like that, you could imagine the "original" personality as a bowl. If you drop a bowl on the floor and it shatters, into lots and lots of different tiny fragments, How do you pick which one of those fragments is the real, original piece? If you want to know more about the psychology and the science behind dissociative identity disorder, we have a series called 'Debunking DID' where we debunk the stigmas and negative connotations that come with a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder And all of those videos in that series have links to scientific studies, medical journals, and all the research that you could possibly need in the description links below. We do encourage you, of course, to go off and do your own research too but that's our most educational playlist. We also have other playlists and videos that show you what it's like to live with DID and for if you do have DID, advice on getting to know your system being able to work well and be functional with DID How to cope. How to adjust your life to better suit the disorder you have because dissociative identity disorder means your brain works in a very different way to that of other peoples. Not a more dangerous way, and that doesn't make you weird or odd. DID is a very natural thing. Developing dissociative identity disorder is the brains natural way of coping with server and repeated trauma So, on this 5th of March, I would like to encourage you to share all the information you know about dissociative identity disorder Let the world know that we're aren't dangerous. And that we're here and that we exist and that we're real and that that is valid If you would like to, please share this video. Share one of the video's in our playlist Share something today that gets the word out about our disorder and the people who live with it. And for anybody who does have dissociative identity disorder, You're real You're valid And even if you think whatever happened to you wasn't bad enough to cause DID It doesn't matter You're here You're real You're valid And we see you And you can live a very, very happy and successful life with dissociative identity disorder And, we'd like to see you do it. So, if you would like to subscribe the channel, please do, that would absolutely make our day and I hope that you have an absolutely wonderful 5th of March Happy dissociative identity disorder awareness day, guys Lots of love, everybody! Bye! <3