Strategies for Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder

Posted On March 23, 2024

There are approximately 1-7% of the world population (sometimes figured higher) who have dissociative identity disorder. However, most mental health professionals have either not taken the time to study DID or are trauma-informed.

 

This article will cover strategies to heal in therapy for dissociative identity disorder. Also, this piece will speak a bit about the problem of professionals not treating DID, offering the wrong treatment, or do not believe dissociative identity disorder exists.

 

What is dissociative identity disorder (DID)?

 

 

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a major dissociative disorder on the dissociative scale, outpacing depersonalization and derealization. It forms in childhood before the age of 9 and from severe and repeated child abuse.

 

Although DID has been recognized as a diagnosable disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1980, when it was called multiple personality disorder, many mental health providers still don’t believe it is a proper diagnosis.

 

Later editions of the DSM renamed MPD as dissociative identity disorder since DID does not involve different personalities but distinct parts splintered from the core self. How many alternates a person has depends significantly on the age at which the trauma began and how long the abuse lasted.

 

Living with DID

 

 

Living with dissociative identity disorder is not easy, with its twists and turns. A multiple’s moods are often dependent on who the current alter has control, and if you have many alters, this can be a significant disruption to someone’s life.

 

One moment, you are driving your car to work feeling pretty good, then a trigger causes you to switch, and you later find out you never made it to work and have a speeding fine to pay.

 

Being in a relationship is challenging for both involved because the partner of a multiple will not fully understand the disorder or harbor unrealistic visions of what DID is like. Consider yourself very lucky if you have someone who loves you and puts up with your switching and other problems.

 

Dissociative identity disorder is nothing like in the movies where people who have it have supernatural powers or are dangerous. Most people who have DID are much more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of a violent crime. Also, we are not dangerous to children. Indeed, multiples tend to be overprotective and make loving parents.

 

The Problem with Finding a Safe and Available Therapist to Treat Dissociative Identity Disorder

 

 

Finding a therapist to treat DID is difficult. Some people who are multiples look for up to eleven years before they find help, and others never find a competent therapist to help them level out the switching and regain control of their lives.

 

Even therapists who claim to be trauma-informed have no idea how to treat dissociative identity disorder, and cause more harm than good. There is little to no training given to mental health professionals on the diagnosis and treatment of DID. Providers are left with one of two thought processes: DID does not exist, or DID is not treatable.

 

It is incredibly vital that in the future, we form registries of competent, trauma-informed, and DID-literate therapists, including psychologists and psychiatrists. Perhaps something besides find-a-therapist pages will help people like me with dissociative identity disorder gain the help we need.

 

Psychotherapy as Treatment

 

Unfortunately, there are many pseudo-treatments out there that cause great harm. Things like exorcisms or the use of psychedelic drugs are not the answer and indeed leave people who experience them worse off than when they began.

 

Psychotherapy is the most influential fashion in the treatment of DID. However, many people have had horrendous experiences with therapists who were abusive or didn’t know how to treat DID and claimed they did.

 

Psychotherapy, when done correctly, helps with:

 

• Identifying and working through memories and trauma from the past
• Helping you to gain and maintain personal safety
• Exploring and processing what happened to you as a child
• Help you understand DID and why you dissociate
• Learning how to manage sudden behavior changes and switches
• Developing new ways to manage your emotions
• Developing better relationships
• Eventually, work on integration (the pooling together of the thoughts and behaviors of all the alters)

 

There are many more benefits to psychotherapy, but it can last anywhere from a few months to several years. However, as I have mentioned, a lot of multiples have had bad experiences in therapy, so let’s examine what other treatments are available.

 

What Other Treatments Are Available?

 

 

While one-on-one traditional therapy may not be your cup of tea, there are other ways to treat DID that are emerging. The list of treatment options and their descriptions are not all-inclusive. I am sure there are others that I have never heard of.

 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is a type of psychotherapy that helps change unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the notion that healthy thoughts lead to healthy feelings and behaviors.

 

CBT teaches coping skills for dealing with problems, focusing on how your thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs affect your feelings and actions. The method of CBT is a short-term therapy of about five to twenty sessions.

 

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). DBT is also a form of psychotherapy that helps people to manage their emotions and create positive change in their lives. Dialectical behavioral therapy focuses on emotional and societal aspects of living while learning to make positive changes in life. DBT has four key components: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation.

 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR). EMDR is a technique that helps multiples excel past their trauma. Although this technique may seem at first glance to be incredible, many multiples have used it and become caught up or lost in the emotions and memories of the past.

 

EMDR is given by certified therapists who guide their clients through a series of standardized procedures designed to stimulate bilateral brain activity through side-to-side eye movements. The eye movements and engagement of the bilateral brain are thought to reduce the emotional effect of traumatic memories.

 

Some multiples find this treatment hazardous as they can become caught up in the emotions and memories unleashed, so be cautious.

 

Hypnotherapy. Perhaps the most dangerous of the treatments available for DID is hypnotherapy. During this treatment, a hypnotherapist utilizes verbal cues and repetition to help you enter a trance-like state so you can focus on relaxing but are still aware of your environment. During hypnotherapy, you may look to others as asleep, but your brain activity changes, making you more susceptible to new ideas and suggestions.

 

During a hypnotherapy session, a hypnotherapist uses verbal cues and repetition to help you enter a trance-like state where you’re more focused and relaxed but fully aware of what’s happening. The trance-like state may resemble sleep, but you won’t fall asleep. Instead, your brain activity changes, making you more receptive to new ideas.

 

There are problems with psychotherapy for multiples as we are great hypnotic subjects, making it easier to expedite treatment and diagnosis. After inducing a trance, the therapist can reach the alters in a system more quickly and help them to understand more about time and place. It is critical that hypnotherapy only be used by someone who has specific therapeutic objectives. If they find there is not enough progress, the hypnotherapist must end treatment and reorient their treatment goals.

 

Non-Traditional treatments. While the above therapies have become relatively mainstream, some treatments for dissociative identity disorder are less traditional. Therapies such as art, drama, sand, and movement therapies help some people significantly and lead to excellent outcomes.

 

There is no known cure for DID, but treatment and support are available. Determining the proper treatment for you can take a long time, but significant benefits exist.

 

Ending Our Time Together

 

There is a significant shortage of mental health professionals, and the ones that exist might be too expensive or are ignorant about dissociative identity disorder. This shortage makes getting the treatment one needs very difficult, especially if you live in a rural area.

 

Eleven years of waiting for the correct therapist and diagnosis is far too long to wait when you have a severe condition. If it were a medical problem and the patient waited that long, the family would probably sue. However, because DID is such a little-understood diagnosis among mental health professionals and the awful stigma that surrounds it, most multiples suffer alone.

 

I was fortunate. The first therapist I met was a psychologist who, although she knew nothing about DID, was willing and able to learn. I would not be alive and doing so well today without her guidance. I cannot imagine that I would be alive had I not found someone like my therapist if I had to wait years for treatment.

 

The good news is that DID is treatable. You are not alone, and you are a beautiful, wonderful person. I’ve been through treatment and, after much hard work and more than a few tears, have emerged from the darkness of the trauma I endured as a child into the light of life.

 

I know you can, too.

 

“The advice I’d give to somebody that’s silently struggling is, you don’t have to live that way. You don’t have to struggle in silence. You can be un-silent. You can live well with a mental health condition, as long as you open up to somebody about it because it’s really important you share your experience with people so that you can get the help that you need.” – Demi Lovato.

 

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.” – Fred Rogers.

 

Please consider buying my book, 366: Daily Readings for Those Who Have DID. The book is available on Amazon.com