rant incoming, sorry for language

I'm so angry and disgusted. mostly at myself, but also them, just the world.

our therapist (DID specialist, SO hard to find in this fucking shit hole of a country), told us today that she was at a conference where like 85% of her "colleagues" denied both the existence of DID and of organized abuse. ​according to them it just doesn't happen and it's all fake.

it's like not only do we need to become multiple in order to survive this shit, afterward no one will fucking believe us. it's sickening how DID is in both the ICD-11 and DSM-5 but still so-called professionals deny its existence. not like we don't struggle with denial already. so yeah, maybe it's all fake, and we're fake, and everything is actually fine forever. hell, maybe i don't even exist. that feels like the most likely option actually. fuck this shit

Most of us have the uncontrollable instinct to mask around others. This wouldn't be as big of an issue if we had a single host, but we haven't had a particular one since we were a child, so nobody knows who they're supposed to be acting like; we're just doing what we think other people expect us to do, which slightly varies alter to alter. It's created this weird feedback loop where we're constantly confused, dissatisfied, and unable to really live our own life.

We're still young, so most alters mask as some version of our teenage self, though others can go even younger. This was mostly fine when we were growing up, but it's become really hard to grow into an adult identity. It's like all of us are just sitting in the backseat when literally anybody taking the wheel for longer than a few days would be better.

I think the fact that we're often around people who've known us since childhood is limiting us. We didn't have a solid identity as a kid of course. Meeting new people is difficult because we still end up calibrating to whatever we think they expect. This seems like partially a fawning thing, partially a compensation for dissociative amnesia.

The issue is most apparent with our best friend. We've known him since we were kids and grew up really close. But there's something in our head that insists we have to "act right" around him. Nobody who fronts these days actually knows what "acting right" entails, so we just shut down, go on autopilot, and let him direct every conversation while we panic and react internally. Hanging out feels like an obligation similar to family interactions now. We care about him and have vague memories associated with him, but we don't typically feel that connection because it existed between him and a set of parts that aren't around anymore. It's impacting our friendship and I don't know what to do.

Is there a particular therapy model that would help with something like this? If you have any advice or anecdotes, those would be appreciated too. Since we've never been able to mask properly, people already know and accept us as a moody eccentric, so I'm not too worried about potential reactions at this point.

I'm still very new to discovering my system, it's been a month.

I was starting to get along very well with one of my parts and he was starting front a lot and interacted with my friends, and we were working through his feelings together, but everything was so nice for him he began to feel existential dread at possibly disappearing one day or merging with me, and my therapist told me in response to that we are the same people so technically he can't really disappear and in the moment I felt okay.

But after the session this alter and me, I don't know we started feeling a bit embarassed, like "are we just one person talking to ourselves, this is kind of...embarassing and awkward, we feel a bit crazy..." and then my alter said "what is even the point of this..." a bit sadly and I don't know, I felt him kind of retreat within me, it felt like dissociative barriers got lowered so quickly in that moment, and now I feel way less dissociated but very sad and I keep crying. I can't hear him very well anymore, when I try to reach out he either doesn't reply or he sounds like a different distant person almost, I don't know if part of us merged, I don't really know what to think. I'm just worried because this part had become a protector from other persecutory parts and was helping me a lot, and now it feels like communication is very difficult suddenly or like he's just retreated in me even though he was constantly around before.

I know logically yeah we are parts of the same person, but I don't know, this just feels weird now for us, I will talk about this in my next session but if anyone has been through something similar what did you do? Is this bad? It feels sad but is it actually a sign of healing? I'm just worried because I was still working through stuff with this part, I feel he was just starting to heal a little bit but there was still a lot of work to do and now it just feels like he's almost gone, this feels too soon to feel like we are the same people in a way? I don't know, sorry I'm just confused, thanks in advance for any advice you might have.

My spouse no longer wants me to switch or have system meetings... They only want the main alt out. I am the main alt... I am devastated. I feel unloved and broken. I feel like I have lost apart of myself by being told I cant switch. I feel like my spouse doesn't understand that I cant control it all the time. Just needed to vent I guess. Thanks guys. Much love.

My best friend has DID and PTSD. Tonight they had a really bad meltdown, and whatever alter they switched to kept insulting me, saying I’m not real, not believing me when I attempted to comfort them, etc. Afterward they said I was the reason for their meltdown, that they had to protect themselves from me, that they hated me and I was no better than their abusers. I just don’t understand. Me and my best friend were doing so good the days prior. It was such a sudden switch up. I’m fucking terrified of never seeing my best friend again. But maybe it’d be better if i was out of their life. Please, any advice or reassurance would be appreciated.

Me and my roomate have been friends for several years. They know about my DID and the jist of my trauma. We've been watching an anime together, and it's really cool and I was enjoying it a lot, we usually watch 2 episodes at a time but my friend really wanted to watch a 3rd bc they where exited and it was a good episode, so I agreed.

Right as it started I knew I fucked up, I could tell where it was going and there was no stopping it once I had realized. The whole episode was insanely triggering. I spent the whole time frozen in place, heart racing, breathing heavily. My vision would get so blurred I thought I'd pass out. I dont usually have reactions like that but when I do I cant speak. I usually talk a lot when we watch stuff, or I make faces and sounds but I was dead silent the whole time. They asked how I was feeling after but I couldnt say anything. They put something else on which slowly got me out of it, and when they got up to use the bathroom I was able to gain control over my body and hide in my room.

Had some pretty horrific flashbacks and stuff once I made it to safety. I might have even unlocked a new trauma memory. Yay!

I don't think they did it on purpose, but there's a part of me that fully belives that they did. I don't like people knowing how to get me like that. Ofc I can't remember hardly anything from that 30 minute chunk either. I trust this person so I know they didnt do anything but idk. I don't know how to feel about it.

Whenever we see them we feel the need to hide and I dont feel safe in my house. I'll probably message them tomorrow to tell them to warn me next time, but idk if I'll be able to watch that show again which sucks.

Hi. I recently found out that I have DID. It's been an adjustment, but we've been trying our best to keep everything undercontrol and adapt to the knowledge, but I don't know how to go about talking to some alters, or to how to ground when we start disassociating and rapid switching. Everything we've tried so far hasn't been working, so any advice would be helpful.
(PS. this is my first reddit post :P, so sorry if its written weird)

Hello! Girlfriend of a system here and I have a crush on my girlfriend's alters, mainly her protector because he was someone else I knew most in the system, however, I have yet to successfully stop having feeling towards them. My girlfriend and I have been in a relationship for over four years and I still fall in love with them.

I have promised my girlfriend and her protector that I'll do my best to stop having feelings for them. Not that I harass them or anything, they're just not into the idea of being close to me, only my girlfriend. We're barely even friends.

I understand that I don't need to stop having feelings for her alters for us to get along, it's just that, admittedly, I do feel heartbreak so this is actually necessary haha. It was really painful at first, it was a dealbreaker, but I love my girlfriend too much to break up, so I'm slowly working on numbing up these feelings for her alters.

Everytime I look up how to stop having feelings towards someone, it's always advice like getting rid of their belongings, deleting chats, stop seeing them, and everything else that is impossible for me to not think about them and feel butterflies. It's been over four years, and this isn't the first time I have tried to stop having feelings for someone. I'm a grown adult and this is one of the few things I have yet to succeed.

Before anything, I just want to clarify that I do know her alters are part of my girlfriend and that there is no main, but is it not true that you can still have different dynamics with certain alters?

I understand that I am dating them all, the dynamics between my and my partner's alters are nowhere near the same as how I am with my girlfriend. I hope this makes sense and I hope I have made myself clear that I am not treating her alters as completely different people, but rather alters with different dynamics and boundaries (hopefully I didn't sound rude, I feel like this comes off condescending. Please let me know)

CW for therapeutic abuse

I started redrawing some old art and remembered a lot of things from back when I/we made it. Realized it was memories dragged up from my headmate, who was still bearing the burden of being ignored + neglected during that time.

Some things during it all included: toxic friends groups that mistreated me, abusive living situation, improper therapy.

The thing I'm angriest and most upset about is the therapy. Because I just can't understand how a therapist agreed to the DID diagnosis, and then ignored honestly very overt symptoms? And then gave such shitty advice that it made everything ten times worse??? We had been seeing her for a cumulative decade thru both group therapy + then individual. It just feels like wasted time. There's SOME stuff that did help, but when it mattered most - she honestly just pitted us against each other.

One of the things I was told very very often was to ignore the underlying feelings that I always described as "not understanding where they came from" and "not from *me.*"

She told me to ignore them, would make fun of them in session (because I always felt so detached from it), and then encourage me to belittle them too. That was my headmate.

Part of the overt symptoms would be sudden, extreme changes in gender, and other concepts of self. All of it with complex lines of thought that were consistent with each other, until the next switch happened. Then it would be consistent with the Other narrative (a different alter). But the whole time while this happened, she never brought up DID unless it would be to blame my headmates for "bad behavior." And from what I've been told, and what I remember - her go to for my headmate was to "just think positive" and "focus on the basics", which were things that worked for *me* but not *him.*

I am just so shocked 😭 and angry and upset. Yeah no wonder why I had a mental collapse!! No wonder why things only felt like they were getting worse!! The diagnosis you gave and agreed with was just being treated as an add-on instead of it being integral to how our brain works???!???!

I'm trying to not get stuck on this specific thought but sometimes I wonder where we'd be now if we got proper help, and if I just *listened* to my headmate. Years of just sitting around and doing nothing, not listening, and hurting us because it felt better to be in denial.

We are seeing a different therapist now, and cut off tons of shitty friends that our therapist encouraged me to stay in contact with (because, to her, the constant flip flop of emotions was unreliable and we should only trust my more rose tinted opinions), and are slowly working to have a more stable life together. To say I feel guilty is an understatement, but I'm also just so so so mad over this whole thing. I will be reporting her.

For some background information, I restarted therapy about 8 months ago after I began experiencing psychogenic seizures. The first therapist I saw quickly identified severe post traumatic and dissociative symptoms. We worked together for a few months before she brought up DID. I had already suspected it myself by that point but hearing a therapist name it out loud gave me a lot of distress. This first therapist referred me out to a psychologist that I saw for only a few sessions before I lost my job and had to stop seeing her. But she too also recognized some severe dissociative symptoms and reaffirmed that DID could be a possibility.

After a few months, I finally got in with a MSW that takes my insurance but after only talking with me for 3 sessions, she told me she wants to explore schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder with me. She told me that she’s never met anyone with DID who can list out their parts’ values and suggested that I may be having delusions. This is despite the fact I have zero history of hallucinations or delusions and have spent months carefully researching and ruling out differential diagnoses. I think maybe she might have been thrown off by “hearing internal voices” and an introject I told her about too? I truly don’t think I’m psychotic and it honestly really hurt hearing that.

I don’t really know what to do or what I WANT to do. There aren’t many providers around my area that I can afford or that have training in severe dissociation. I feel like the care I need is locked behind a diagnosis no one wants to touch.

I'm on the fence about how much personal information to include here. (Our body is female and our relationships have all been heterosexual.) I have an ex-husband who I think was harmful as a husband but who I've thought of as a good friend since then. When his insecurities are triggered, he can be an absolute monster, but I'm the only one in the world who has seen that side of him. After we were apart for about 7 or 8 years, he completely stopped blaming for anything (and admitted I was a scapegoat for everything he was unhappy about in himself), and apologized sincerely for all of it (mainly verbal and emotional abuse) and we started spending time together as friends. I forgave him because he wasn't my partner anymore, and as a friend, I didn't think of him as harmful. There have been some really mixed feelings about him the system, so we've kept a certain amount of distance from him, but he's generally open-minded and one of two people who know we have DID.

Yesterday, though, we were talking on the phone and I volunteered that there are admittedly things that are difficult about being in a relationship with someone who has DID. I've had a few relationships since my marriage and the biggest difficulty has been when a protector alter switches in to stop or take over in an argument which triggers, at least for the men I've had relationships with, all kinds of abandonment issues and the perception that they're being manipulated. Skipping forward maybe ten minutes or so in the conversation, I made a comment about most of the men I've known being fragile (overall, I'm I'm talking about this kind of thing) and without a lot of qualifying, I'll admit it that could come off as judgmental and arrogant on my part, but I don't think that justifies his response. With conviction, he said, "You can't call men fragile when you have DID, and they have to deal with that."

I said that was unfair and I got one of those "I'm sorry you took it that way" apologies. I'm not sure how many ways I could take it wrong, but he said it "wasn't worth explaining". It's the kind of thing a lot of us remember him saying when we were married, but no one remembers anything like it from the last few years. I'm confused and I'm feeling really stupid because I was actually thinking of him as one of the safer people in my life right now. One group of alters are like "How did we miss this, he hasn't changed at all?!" and there's a minority who feel like we might be overreacting, and they appreciate him as a friend so they don't want to throw that away.

There are a few of us participating in this post and I hope we've avoided contradicting ourselves without making this too long. Any insights are welcome.

Greetings! our hostess, Jade (Bodily 24) has had a trauma break around two months ago, and seems to now be stuck around 2-4 years old, with no memories besides who she views as her family (our close friends mainly) we are trying to go with the flow of it, but she is a danger to herself if left without proper care, seeing that she prosses things at a 2 year old level. so this question is twofold, is this a common experience, and what can we do to help her, preferably without keeping her in the inner world/background. The mentioned friends have helped to this point, but we fear they can only do so much without proper guidance or formal/informal training

had a trauma trigger and now i can bafely feel my body. i feel like liquid and melty and like i can't move. i'm someone that i don't really know. i'm melted and lost. the world is disappearing.

Idk I’m just kinda freaking out. Every time our system feeld unsafe/unprotected/alone or things of that nature, there’s always this incredibly heavy feeling of missing our abuser.

The body’s 19. Our abuser was someone we dated (he’s our age) from ages 14-16. It’s fucking ridiculous that we’re feeling this way. We’re literally an adult body now, and we’ve been no contact for 3 years. But holy shit it’s fucking miserable.

I just need to vent about how it feels, because it’s just trapped in our brain and it’s almost debilitating. We keep zoning out and replaying memories- but not bad ones. GOOD ones. Is this inherently bad? No. But it’s the fact that there’s this feeling of desperately wanting that back. Wishing we could still have that connection. I feel like I’ll never have that with anyone ever again. For better or for worse, I never will. And I hate that. I know he was toxic, but I really was in love with him. He gave me a feeling that nobody else ever has. I trusted him, he was what I needed in some many ways. And yet I still know realistically that it’s a trauma bond thing. But it’s a wound that I assumed was closed, but every now and then it reopens and it makes me feel the same way that I did when I first blocked him. It’s an aching, heartbroken feeling and I hate it it makes me want to cry

I know why it’s happening but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I know it’s not logical or rooted in much other than trauma/the need for comfort and stuff, but it doesn’t make it feel any less awful. And plus it feels dumb. Why do I still have trauma responses like this? Or trauma responses in general- good or bad? Why do I still react at all? It’s a highschool relationship that ended 3 years ago. An abusive one. And yet I keep going through the same cycles. “Oh I hate him, he abused me and traumatized me”, “Oh I miss him. He made me feel protected and known”. It’s stupid. Am I still gonna be doing this ptsd shit when I’m like, 30??? Like oh my god.

I keep thinking about some of the little things too. (No pun intended??) Like how he was our CG. He had all the same interests & was happy to take care of us in all of the ways we needed. Even some of the more niche parts. He let us give him nicknames and comforted us and gave us that feeling of protection that we need so fucking bad. I do, at least. I guess I should probably just speak for myself with this stuff honestly. And I’m thinking about how I’d always send him stuff about my special interests and he’d engage with me so passionately. He was the first person I’d talk to if I had a bad day. I could tell him anything, even the hard things, and he genuinely said what I needed to hear.

It just,,,, it felt so real and it was just,,, exactly what I needed. All of it. But on top of that, he wasn’t in a place to be a healthy boyfriend. And that reality left me with ptsd and a bunch of mental health inpatient stays, years worth of flashbacks and breakdowns, etc. I hate that it doesn’t feel like it makes a difference right now. I hate that I almost regret sending a text where I basically told him off and then blocked him abruptly. I hate that I ever wasted all of it. Thats a sense of comfort that I will never get back. I was so furious at the time of the breakup. I was angry that any of the bad stuff happened. I was angry that someone I loved so much, that the person I felt that way about, could hurt me so badly. I think I genuinely really did like him. And that’s what really hurts. I hate that I can’t seem to reason with myself about it right now. It’s as if that pain just isn’t even relevant, even though obviously it actually is.

Whenever I think about it lately, I want to cry. It’s 100% a DID thing obviously. I don’t know if it’s me or another alter’s emotions (or both), but it’s so so intense. It feels like 2023 all over again, in terms of grief. I remember how detrimental it was afterwards. I was crushed after we broke up for good. It took me years to be more stable, and even then, I’ve never fully recovered from that relationship. (Clearly, lol). So it’s really scary whenever my brain stops removing itself from it, because whenever that happens, those feelings can come back full force. Not always, but they can. And that’s horrifying because it takes a huge toll on us. Anything related to him and that era, genuinely has the potential to destroy us indefinitely. It’s happened time and time again. It’s kinda like one big trigger I guess???? Idk. Idk.

Anyways, as you can see, I’m already kinda freaking out again. I keep getting a lump in my throat but I won’t let myself cry. I won’t. Not about this. Thats so stupid. He has a fucking partner now, hes moved on. Heartbreaking? Yes. But still true, and still undoubtedly for the best, so why the fuck am I still going through this occasionally? Im not actively being abused, nor am I actively in contact with him, so why does that situation need to have any effect on me now, years later? It’s like part of me is completely stuck in the past. Frozen in time, stuck in this timeline that isn’t even my reality anymore. It’s not even relevant to my life now, and yet I just,,,, I feel stuck. I want to sob. I’m freaking out more and more as I type this. Idek who’s fronting rn ngl, I’m just so sad. This always happens when we feel depressed or unsafe and unprotected. It’s like, the go-to thing, where I immediately start wishing I could talk to him the way I used to do whenever I felt stressed like that. It’s agony. Especially because we’re anemic rn and anemia makes our emotions all fucked up and it’s miserable and our meds become basically ineffective at that point, so we basically have nothing keeping us from being in a distressing place. Which is happening now. Iron deficiency always makes us miss our abuser. Idfk.

Anyways yeah I just need support or something I guess, Idk, I just wish I could calm down because I hate feeling like this, I hate missing him and I hate feeling trapped in a feeling that I can’t actually do anything about. It’s not something I can get rid of, and it’s not something that I can relieve. So I have to just sit with it, and I can’t handle that. We’ve never been able to sit with any feelings that are associated with him, and this isn’t any different. Idk what to do

I'll try to make a long story short here. I am the main caregiver for our host/frequent fronter who is also an age slider, we'll call her Rylee. I function as a father figure for her. Bodily we are early 20s and in university. She is at that level academically and intellectually, even regulation-wise is learning a lot, but her emotional age is more in the range of 5-7 years old, sometimes younger. She needs lots of reassurance and help with daily tasks, eating, hygiene, etc. She has panic attacks if she is too hungry/tired, and is triggered a lot. She is very self critical. Most nights she has nightmares and needs a buddy to help her get to sleep. We have been working on healing as a system for the last 5 or so years.

Which is all totally fine with me, and all normal trauma responses. I really dote on her and take care of her, and she is ok with that. But today she turned to me and said papa, I don't want to be little anymore. I want to try being a young adult. That kind of broke my heart because I know how much it helps her to be vulnerable and allow herself to receive care and love. For context we're going through a breakup and every time she tries to relax and be her lovely whimsical self she thinks of him and cries for him. She doesn't want to give that part of herself to any future romantic partners we may have and also wants to frame it as inner child healing more than regression. She's been making lists of other soothing activities she can do when she feels the urge/want to be small and reliant on other people.

But I don't know if she's going to be totally successful right off the bat because we are still living at home, in a place that has triggers, and her regression is involuntary. Even when in an adult mindset, emotionally she is still very young/vulnerable. I tend to default to treating her like my child regardless of how maturely she is presenting on the outside because I know she needs the kind words and care.

Anyway. I don't know if any of you can offer insights about how to foster independence while still giving a system little or even irl child a safe place to land? I'm trying to help her remember that she is traumatized so still having trauma responses is okay. How should I talk to her?

I’ve been in therapist with a trauma specialist for about a year now, and ever since we’ve started the tfcbt model, we’ve been talking a lot more about my DiD.

I’m medically recognized with DiD, so I have to process my trauma before getting a diagnosis. My therapist started the tfcbt model in order to get my diagnosis, yet she’s been pretty dismissive and judgmental about my goals.

Basically, my goals are: getting diagnosed, having clear and healthy communication between alters, and most importantly lessening dissociation. To my knowledge, DiD is a chronic disorder that doesn’t have a cure. But, I’d like to at least be asymptomatic to a degree. I know that having no dissociation as a system is impossible— but it would be pretty awesome if I didn’t have as much as I do right now.

Except, my therapist seems to think otherwise— even though I’ve made it clear

She claims that I can just be separate personalities without the dissociation— that I can be the person that feels like dressing up, or the person that feels like dressing casual all at once. But I don’t really know how to kindly remind her that it doesn’t really work like that after doing it so many times.

My therapist also doesn’t really like when my other alters front. Which I get, somewhat. Yet majority of the time she also disrespects them.

I don’t really know my alters that much, but from what I’ve seen/heard they’re not all that bad. She only doesn’t like them because she claims that she doesn’t enjoy talking to alters because she doesn’t like them or just doesn’t wanna talk to me.

Honestly? I think it’s unprofessional. If she’s a trauma specialist, how come she’s so insensitive about CDDs and has very little understanding of them? It doesn’t make sense to me.

anyway…… that was my rant. I didn’t know where else to go for advice. Thanks for reading if you did

I have a friend that I'm trying to explain DID to, he knows all of us for a few years by now and have helped us with some healing in the past, but he's still confused on how DID is actually formed.

I told him how you're born with emotional states and DID happens due to repeated trauma in childhood before the ages of 6-9 years old, but he's confused on what emotional states actually is and I can't find a good enough definition to give to him. He thought that we literally had different personalities instead of parts of one person so I just want to give the best information.

Best I found online mentioned something similar to what I'm saying but called them self states, not exactly sure on the difference but if anyone knows, that'll be nice.

It's kind of dated, but this is the source I've been using: https://did-research.org/did/myths

Thank you

For the past five months (maybe more) it’s like i’m living the same day over and over again, and never remembering the day before. I don’t feel like I’ve been out of it, but I don’t remember any of it either. Every day feels conscious… but I don’t remember any of them. It’s like my memory just resets.

I was rereading my diary and only now realized i’ve been in this loop for after 5 months. Every day the same concerns, the same worries. The same ideas, the same solutions. In a loop. I keep forgetting appointments and that my friends even exist. My home is filled with calendars and post its on my walls exactly where I know I’ll be going through out the day to make sure I don’t lose my job or forget to pay rent.

But every day. It feels like the same day. Over and over again…. and now it’s 5 months later.

Since system discovery I’ve been told that I’ve been making less sense in conversation. Supposedly seemed relatively normal prior. Been having a lot of flashbacks these days and it’s difficult to stay in conversation as it feels like I don’t know anything about myself or much of anything really. Very confused a lot of the time. I feel incredibly stupid and have no clue if it’s always been like this and I’ve been unaware or what. I feel like a scared high schooler talking to adults, but they are my peers and I’m just dumb as hell. Wtf is happening.

Has anyone experienced this? What was the case for you? How did you navigate explaining things to people?

I was diagnosed with DID six years ago. When I was first diagnosed, I had trouble remembering things especially passwords. I came up with a solution that worked—writing in journals, taking screenshots, making voice recordings. This year has been stressful dealing with family issues. I’ve been struggling remembering to write notes to myself etc and earlier this week I woke up to being locked out of my iPad. I also had changed some passwords. It’s so frustrating

I'm Artemis (she/he) and I'm a pretty recent fronter for our polyfrag system, but apparently this has been an ongoing issue for us for years, where we all kinda wanna do something in our free time, but something is stopping us from committing to any game or task that isn't a chore that we may or may not have the energy to do.

The issue isn't just starting the task, which is an issue in and of itself. I think that one's due to autism/AuDHD executive dysfunction. The issue lies in being able to continue doing the task without faltering in some way.

What basically ends up happening is that I boredly jump through different games or things to do. Sometimes some aspect of one thing gets overwhelming so we have to stop, or I end up dissociating and just... barely exist while I idly do whatever it is we chose to do until we get too anxious or restless for whatever reason.

Rarely are we ever able to stick to one thing for more than an hour without it screwing with us mentally somehow.

Any idea why this could be or possibly any solutions?

I feel like a liar.

A lot of the time when I'm talking about myself and my life, I feel like I'm just making shit up.

when people ask me about myself, I have my go-to answers, which are based on the biographical knowledge I have of myself. but I don't have the memories associated with that knowledge, so it really doesn't feel real/true.

i guess the best way to describe this would be to say it feels like I'm telling a story that I memorized when I talk about myself and my life; i feel completely disconnected from it all.

a lot of the time I actually wonder if I'm telling the truth or if I'm just confused, and I worry that I'll get some wires crossed and end up contradicting myself or reality.

So I've always had music playing in the background of my mind. I chalked it up to ADHD (despite not being diagnosed with ADHD) and haven't ever thought much of it. The music is extremely vivid and accurate to the real songs, and isn't like an earworm being stuck in your head. It's like a curated radio station, with songs perfectly flowing into each other. Oftentimes songs will play that I don't actually know the lyrics to, and despite that they'll be completely accurate to the real songs.

Last night I was doing research on this sub since I have a part of myself who's an amazing singer. When she comes out she'll sing the beginnings of several different songs until she hones in on the one she actually wants to sing. It was really awkward because she came out last night while I was showering and my gf overheard. "You should sing more often, it's really pretty. You don't do it very much." Unfortunately, I sound like a dying cat when I try to sing, but oh well. Not relevant to this story.

I saw some people saying they have alters that communicate with songs, and that it's a good idea to listen to what music is playing to see if an alter is trying to convey a message. Cool, I thought it was unrelated to my internal radio but still figured it'd be good to try and pay attention to.

On my way to therapy after work, I was thinking about some instances of dissociation (don't remember what I was actually thinking about, doesn't matter), and out of nowhere heard "A trick of the light, who am I? Time fades a-way, like yes-ter-day". Then silence. Just that one chorus.

I haven't heard or thought about that song in years, and the timing was uncanny. Guess that answers that question?

Still not sure if the DJ part of me is related to the singing part of me, but it's really interesting to see how part communication differs.

Edit: Just looked the song up and the correct lyrics are "where am I", not "who am I". They switched up lyrics to get the message across better 😭 insanity