Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Dissociative Identity Disorder · Acedra
Home
Explore
Psychology
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
212 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:00
(gentle music)
0:05
(somber music)
0:13
- I have dissociative identity disorder, which most people know as multiple personality disorder. My name is Melinda. My students always called me Miss V. - [Interviewer] How old are you? - 12. I have 15 personalities.
0:31
My name is Paula, Cynthia, Joseph, Mariah, Michael, Rose, Jonathan, Secrets, Melinda, Teddy Claire, Freedom, Mumma, Ms. V, Radar, and Mrs. R. I call myself the host. I'm like the CEO. I'm in charge. (glass shatters) (somber music)
0:56
(traffic distantly roaring)
1:04
(gentle music)
1:11
My name is Paula, I'm 46 years old, I'm single, and I'm working on my master's in social work.
1:23
I'm nervous about becoming a target and people saying, oh, you're bogus crap. There's a lot of stigma associated with DID. Some people don't even believe it's real, but I know that my experiences are real. I know my memories are real, and I know that
1:45
this is going to make a difference for someone. (gentle music)
1:55
- I'm going to ask you to just kind of generally walk through how you found out that you have DID. - I just always felt like I was different for whatever reason. - [Colin] So you realized there was something different. - Yeah, yeah. - [Colin] But not real clear on what it was. - Yeah. (somber music) Before I was diagnosed with the DID, I would look in the mirror and I would see things that just didn't look like me. I would see the altars.
2:20
I thought I was hallucinating. Really, it was my altars peeking out through my eyes.
2:27
They would see me through the mirror and it would freak them out
2:32
because there was a point in time where they didn't know we were all in one body.
2:38
I didn't know there was more than one person.
2:43
So, when these kinds of things would happen, it was extremely scary.
2:48
- Were you already aware at that point that not everybody was that way, or did you think everybody was like that? - I just always felt like I was different for whatever reason. - [Colin] So you realized there was something different. - Yeah, I've always had kind of this chatter going on in my head. I just thought it was just my thoughts. Voices telling me, well, you need to do this better, or you need to do that different, and I used to call it an argument going on in my head.
3:14
It wasn't coming from outside of my head. It was always inside of my head, (gentle music)
3:25
Grocery store shopping can be really fun. People want different things.
3:32
Macaroni and cheese. Mariah likes pizza rolls. Lemon, lime, and orange for Jonathan. There's a little bit of debate going on because Mariah wants the Oreo flavor that's got all the crap in it.
3:49
- There's kind of a long list and a short list of symptoms that lead you to really focus in on DID.
3:56
The first one is voices talking inside your head. - Can't we compromise?
4:02
- So it's other people, in quotes, talking to each other, talking to you inside your head. - Mariah won,
4:10
because the last time I got the low-calorie stuff, so I gave in. - The second item is problems with your memory. So a typical story of somebody with DID is it was 10 o'clock in the morning last week on Thursday. All of a sudden, it was four in the afternoon. I was downtown, had no idea how I got there. - I can't find my homework.
4:34
Shoot, what did I do with that? Oh. No, that's not it either.
4:41
(gentle music) This is one of the things that happens. Some of my alters will hide things
4:49
when I'm not really, like, when I'm busy and I'm trying to get things done, they'll move stuff.
5:02
- [Colin] How long have you been aware of periods of missing time? - Elementary school, probably. - What did you notice going on back then? - Always feeling like I wasn't aware of what was going on around me. A lot of times, people would say I did things, but I didn't remember doing them. - Did you get accused of being a liar sometimes? - Yeah, a lot, actually. I just thought I had a bad memory and that I wasn't as smart as everybody else. (somber music)
5:39
I grew up in Wisconsin in a mid-sized community.
5:45
Pretty middle-class, white, pretty boring.
5:52
(film roll whirring) I am one of five children. I'm the second. I have an older brother, then there's me, and then my sister, and then I have two younger brothers, and we're very close in age. We're really kind of sardine'd. - When she was a baby, she was more nervous. She needed more, I would say, one-to-one with me, and with her father. (film roll whirring) - [Paula] I never felt like I ever fit in anywhere, really. I always felt like I had to compete for attention.
6:32
- When we were in elementary school, she had trouble in school, so they held her back. - [Paula] I flunked second grade. I repeated second grade. - I think that's where it all started.
6:43
(somber music) And from there, I don't know what happened. It just seemed like it fell apart. She just got withdrawn, and things kept getting worse and worse. - I believe I was switching and dissociating at that time, and I wasn't doing well in school because I wasn't there. Somebody else was there and someone else was coming out when I was supposed to be learning things. It's hard to learn something when you're not there.
7:12
(somber music)
7:19
I was always depressed. I didn't understand why.
7:24
I'd go to therapy, and my therapist would try to help me, and it just never, nothing ever seemed to work.
7:38
And it was like this big flood gate opened up. There is more than me in here. There's others, and I don't know who they are. I just know they're there. It was such a relief to know that it finally had a name, and then I started learning about what DID was, and it was like, oh my God, this is me. This is exactly me, and my alters were like, okay, they know we're here. Let's have fun. I became more aware of them. I also had to learn how to communicate with them.
8:11
- Is there anybody who wants to come out and say hello, or a couple of people? - They're in there. They're willing to come out and talk. It's just, sometimes, I need to feel comfortable.
8:24
I need to relax a little bit to let it happen.
8:40
(gentle music) - [Colin] Are you doing okay? - Mhm. - Seems like somebody else's here, but I don't know who you are. Is that Mariah?
8:52
And how old are you? - Five. (gentle music)
9:03
- How old was Paula when you came to help her?
9:06
(ominous music) - She was five. - Okay, and so then you came, and you were also five at that time? And how did you help her?
9:20
- I let her go hide, and then the bad things wouldn't happen to her, so they happened to me. (film reel whirring) There was some physical abuse.
9:38
There was a lot of verbal abuse. I was first sexually abused when I was about five years old.
9:47
Things were happening that not even my family members knew about and still don't. (ominous music) Some of the physical and sexual abuse that I experienced was repeated and ongoing, and it's amazing how the imagination can create someone else to take your place. (somber music)
10:14
I like to color and I like to play with my dolls.
10:23
And my stuffed animals. - [Colin] The vast majority of people with DID describe very abusive, chaotic, traumatic childhoods. - [Mariah] I don't color in the lines too good.
10:36
- DID is all about this is too much. That's too much. I can't deal with the whole picture all at once. - Stay! - The thing that makes DID, dissociative identity disorder, different is these different personality states that go in and out, (Mariah giggling) and take turns being in control.
10:54
There's something that happens in the environment that's either frightening, threatening, sad. It's a reminder of something, and then the part that matches the situation pops out, so it's all about being locked in the past, locked in the trauma. (Mariah whooshes)
11:15
- I'm tired.
11:19
Sometimes, I cry a lot. - [Colin] Mhm, what do you cry about? - Different stuff, sad stuff. - [Colin] So, it's sometimes stuff from a long time ago, and sometimes stuff from now? (somber music)
11:37
- I always thought I'd get married, and I was going to have four kids,
11:46
and I was going to have two sets of twins,
11:50
and there was going to be a set of boys and a set of girls, so they'd always have somebody to play with.
11:59
Yeah, that was the dream.
12:05
But...
12:09
Childhood dreams don't always...
12:13
They don't pan out the way you think they're going to. (children shouting) (somber piano music)
12:48
- The experience of switching can be very much like a light bulb going on and off. The person is just going along. Whatever's happening is happening, and all of a sudden, boom, they're gone, and they don't have any warning at all. At other times, the person who's out front can kind of get overwhelmed and decide, I'm out of here, I'm leaving, and there's kind of an act of leaving, and then somebody else takes control.
13:13
(solemn music)
13:32
- [Paula] I'm a 46-year-old person who doesn't always know how to express feelings, and a five-year-old little girl takes over and does it for me.
13:47
- [Mariah] I don't want to be hurt no more.
13:51
- Are you able to check inside and see who would like to come say hello next? (solemn music)
14:11
- My name is Melinda. - [Colin] Oh, you're Melinda? Nice to meet you, and how old are you? - 16. (somber music)
14:24
- What kind of stuff do you do? - I make sure that, when people are being mean,
14:33
that they stop.
14:37
- How do you go about that? Like, get in their faces, or? - Yeah, I kinda yell at people. (somber music)
14:48
This one, I see Melinda, because she's just kind of looking at you, like, I really kind of, I don't know. She just seems angry, and she actually looks like she wants to bite off the photographer's head.
15:04
Paula always got picked on at school and people would say mean things to her,
15:14
and they'd come and they'd spot her out and throw her books on the floor and do just mean things, and so I couldn't stand that, so I would say mean things back. Sometimes my temper gets the best of me.
15:34
(gentle music) Okay, where'd the mixer go?
15:38
What did you do with the mixer? When you piss me off, I'm going to tell you the way it is. (group distantly chattering) - You do have to be careful what you say around her, because one time, she will throw whatever she got at you. The next time, you're going to send her off in a corner, bawling.
15:58
- Sometimes, you have to stand up.
16:02
Paula doesn't do that.
16:04
She's kind of wimpy.
16:09
She's too nice.
16:13
- My immediate reaction when Paula told me about her diagnosis was yeah right whatever. It's hard to believe that somebody could really be
16:24
more than one person than who they are. - [Paula] I need a bigger microwave. - Yeah, you do. But yet, if I sat and looked at her whole life, I would go, well, I guess. If you tell me she was this at this time, I could believe you. - What are you looking? - I was looking for room to take and put the silverware. Somebody who's in the family, they'll notice this person changes a lot. They kind of act as if they're a different person, but it never quite clicks in, oh, this is DID,
16:55
because it just looks like the person is more moody, more changeable, more different than usual.
17:01
There's many people who look at DID and would look at Paula and say, well, she's just acting.
17:07
It's possible. I can't absolutely scientifically prove that she's not, but I don't think it's just for attention, because it's not really fun having DID. There's a tremendous amount of pain, a tremendous amount of self-hatred, self-blame, and conflict. Most of it is very secret. If it was all for attention, then it would be getting recognized and diagnosed all the time, but most people with DID go through the mental health system for years before they're diagnosed.
17:35
(somber music) (family chattering) - Paula isn't just making us up. We're here. We're not trying to get attention.
17:48
We're real.
17:50
- Well, nice to have met you. - Thank you. - So I guess Paula will come back then. - Yeah, I think so.
18:00
(ominous music) - [Colin] The return of Paula. - The return of Paula. - [Colin] Were you tuned into the whole deal there? - Yeah. - How was that for you?
18:11
- I'm always kind of surprised at some of the things that Melinda says about me. - Right - How do you feel about the whole process of getting to know your parts? - Well, they know things about me that I don't know, and sometimes learning about those things has been challenging. There are still things that I don't know that I'm nervous about, because the stuff I've already dealt with has been pretty- - Pretty painful. - Pretty painful, and I'm terrified of what's left. (somber music)
18:51
- [Sketcher] She has her nose turned up. - She's got a little button kinda nose. - Okay. - A few people with DID have it so concrete that they actually see the alter personalities on the outside, kind of like in the movie, "A Beautiful Mind." - So, her eyes are more like that. They're more, and they will be brown, but.
19:10
- [Colin] And this is a very intense internal world that's been created to divide up all the pain and the trauma so that you don't have to deal with it all at once. - [Paula] Cynthia is three years old.
19:23
She's just a quiet little girl.
19:28
She tends to come off as being very sad. - No, his eyebrows, are they full? - [Paula] Joseph is three years old also. He emerged at the same time Cynthia emerged, and she took on more of the physical pain. He took on more of the defensive mechanism, where he would fight back.
19:48
- [Sketcher] Rose is eight. - Yep. Rose is the angry little eight year old. She's very similar to Melinda, but not that intense.
19:59
Michael, he has little boy hair. It's not, I mean, it's not cut real short. It's a little bit longer. - Okay, so the bangs are down. - Yeah, I used to call him "No Name," because when I first met him, he didn't speak, and so a lot of times when he would come out, he would just sit there and he'd have this angry face on.
20:21
- Does Secrets have big almond eyes or anything like that? - Secrets is 13 years old. Her name implies what she does. When I was experiencing the sexual abuses, I was told that if we said anything,
20:39
bad things would happen, so she kept the secrets.
20:44
- Now, Mumma's 22, right? - Yeah.
20:47
Mumma is more of the nurturer. She takes care of the little kids on the inside.
20:54
She also tends to remind me that I need to ask for my comfort needs.
21:04
- Mrs. R. - Mrs. R looks older than she really is. - [Sketcher] So she might have a few more lines. - She has a very stern face. Mrs. R is 42. She is the critic. She likes to judge everything I do. She came to be after I flunked second grade.
21:28
Radar is different. He's more of a shadowy kind of, I sense his presence. Radar is the radar. He tells me what he thinks of other people. So when I first meet someone, he'll kind of pop out, and he lets me know whether someone is a really good person or a really bad person, but he's always watching and making sure that we're safe.
21:53
(somber music)
21:58
So, I don't know all these parts, but obviously, you do.
22:02
- [Paula] Freedom. - [Colin] How do you like the way she looks?
22:08
- She's pretty.
22:10
- How does she like the drawing, as far as you can tell? - She thinks it's pretty good. - [Colin] Where did her name come? - Most of my alters chose their own names. - [Colin] They consciously did that at some point, and how do you feel about her?
22:25
- [Paula] She scares me. - [Colin] Because? - Because she's the sexual component, and there are things she does that I don't feel comfortable with. (somber music)
22:44
I don't know why she keep sending to that one. I have to go in and check the history and make sure that there's nothing on there that she's been purchasing, movies, porn stuff.
22:58
It's disgusting.
23:02
And checking the history so much isn't as much of a reassurance anymore, 'cause she now knows how to do that,
23:11
to clear the history.
23:14
The meeting men thing, she's agreed not to do, and I'm trusting that she is complying with that. I mean, I haven't had any strange people knocking on my door or anything like that. That has happened in the past. - I don't know what to believe with Paula. She tells me that, one time, that she's never been with a man or whatever, and then she tells me another time that she's slept with three at a time or whatever. - Freedom kind of goes against my values and my morals,
23:46
and she thinks sex is cool, and I'm terrified of it.
23:54
I don't know if there's a part of me that is sexually active because I go away if it happens. I don't, I'm not there.
24:04
I'm not ready to deal with that stuff.
24:08
- [Colin] It actually is literally true that the host personality doesn't remember what the alters are doing. It's not just they're pretending or they're imagining. They actually don't remember. (somber music)
24:24
- That's Teddy Claire.
24:27
- What does Teddy Claire do? - Teddy Claire is kind of the inward anger. She used to do a lot of self-injury.
24:42
This is Teddy Claire's writing. She writes in black letters. Everything is caps. It's kind of like yelling, but Teddy Claire is more of the self punishment, and sometimes I think this is her way of saying, "I hate this. This isn't the way it's supposed to be." So, she yells at the world, but not in a verbal way, in her handwriting. (solemn music)
25:17
This was my suicide plan, and then I had written this down. This is what I was going to do. (siren wailing) I've attempted suicide a couple of times.
25:31
I've ended up in the hospital. I've had my stomach pumped. I've had stitches in my arms. It's not that I wanted to die. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted the suffering to go away. (solemn music)
25:52
The self-injury didn't go away completely, but it slowed, and now it's been almost five years since there was a self-injury incident, so it did make a difference.
26:05
- So it's quite complicated. - Yeah, it's bizarre. I mean, it's hard to describe what I'm experiencing, because other people don't relate to it, and they don't understand it. (somber music)
26:24
It's my collection, and I keep it because it reminds me of where I've been and how far I've come in my recovery journey. This was my first rendition of my own DID.
26:43
This is Secrets' handwriting.
26:46
She doesn't write often, but when she does, this is what it looks like.
26:54
This is Melinda right here.
27:00
Melinda writes with a slant. When I write, Melinda turns the book this way, I've always turned it this way, and so when I write, it doesn't look crooked,
27:14
but for whatever reason, she writes.
27:18
- It's basically universal that the different parts have distinct features. The degree of differentiation varies tremendously. So, any set of features can differ, and it can either be very subtle or very clear. The whole purpose of it is you have to have these different people who are distinctly different so that you don't know or feel the whole picture. (somber music)
27:43
- I think Jonathan wants to talk to him. - Okay, well, that would be nice to say hello. - Yeah, I'll see if he- - See if we can get him forward? - Yeah, yeah.
28:00
(ominous music) - [Colin] Okay, so you're here? - Mhm. - Nice to meet you. (ominous music)
28:10
How do you think about what the relationship is between you and Paula? Do you feel like you're a separate person from her?
28:20
- Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I know I'm in a girl's body, and I don't like that,
28:29
because Paula likes to wear jewelry. She's got earrings in. - Right, but there's not a whole lot you can do about it. - Well, I can take them out if I want to. - But I mean about being in a girl's body. You can't really do much about that. - No. - What is it that you kind of do inside? What do you take care of her? What's your role? - I like to play basketball and I...
29:00
- Are you better at basketball than Paula is? - Yes.
29:04
(somber music) (basketball thumping)
29:14
Well, it's not really all that big a deal.
29:18
You stand on the free throw line with your back to the hoop, and you gotta make sure you're lined up the right way,
29:29
and then you just go like that, but you gotta make sure that you don't turn to look to see if you made the shot, 'cause then the ball goes the other way.
29:42
- The most common reason for a female to have a male part is boys don't get abused. Boys are tough. Boys can take care of the situation. So if I'm a boy, then that didn't happen to me, and I can be a tough guy and take care of business.
30:00
- Some people say that I'm not real.
30:04
Ugh bad! This one doctor guy, we were at a hospital and he said Paula was making me up,
30:15
and that she just pretends to be me, because if she just pretends to be me, that I, I, I'm not...
30:26
I don't know, then I'm not real, but I don't know, I don't know.
30:35
Sometimes, she doesn't want us to be real.
30:40
- One thing we're going to do is show you on the camera,
30:44
'cause this is like a monitor, and so we can see. So Paula thought that you might enjoy seeing you. Can you see that? So, like, if you put your hand up like that. Well, that's a lot of hands here.
30:58
What do you see when you look at the monitor?
31:02
(ominous music) Do you see a 12-year-old male person there?
31:10
- Sometimes. Sometimes, I see Paula. - Grown-up Paula? So, is it mostly Paula you're seeing right now, and a little bit you? - A little bit of me, a little bit of her. - [Colin] So which is more scary, to see her or to see you? - To see her.
31:26
- Why is that? - I just don't like being in a girl's body. - Right, so if you see her, it kind of brings it home. It's a little hard to deny. Do you want to look at it anymore, or is that enough? All right, okay, thanks for doing that. Anything you want to say before you go though? - Just thanks for talking to me. - Oh, you're most welcome. Thank you for coming and talking to us and letting people in the world take a look at you.
31:51
So, see you later.
31:58
(ominous music)
32:02
So you were watching all that? - Yeah. - When you were in the background watching, could you see the image on the monitor, shifting back and forth from you to him? - Mhm. It's just, yeah, it's a scary thing,
32:18
because it's freaky. Because you know that you're not physically changing, but you see things that are different between, and it's scary. It's like there's two people, and you know you're the only one in the room, and it can be very frightening. - Do you know who else is coming next? - I think Miss V wants to talk to you. - Miss V, right? - Yeah, sometimes they call her Teacher, and sometimes, they call her Miss V. - [Colin] Okay, well, she's welcome to come say hello. - Okay. (ominous music)
32:58
- [Colin] So, is it better to just call you Miss V or Teacher, or does it matter? - My students always called me Miss V. - Oh, okay, so. - [Colin] So that's back in the teaching days. - Yes. (somber music)
33:13
- What's your understanding of how you came into existence? - I came when she started teaching. - So she was in her twenties at that point? - Yes. I remember her saying, um, "I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I need help. I need help. I need help." She needed someone else to take over. - And then how long did you teach for?
33:37
- Approximately six years.
33:41
- Paula's changed a lot over the last several years. When I first met her, she was a mess. She was very distraught.
33:57
I've tried to provide support.
34:05
(bright music) We're going to the Wisconsin Dells, where I am going to be participating in a conference for consumers of mental health services.
34:22
Every time I do a presentation, I usually start extremely nervous. Okay, what we're doing here today is... (heartbeat thumping) We're going to provide you with a support group model
34:39
that incorporates trauma into,
34:44
it's basically a trauma-specific support group model. My stomach is like bubbling, and I can feel my heart rate rise, and there's all this self-doubt. What am I doing? I can't do this. What I need to do today is
35:05
we have enough books for one per site. I start to hear her saying, "Breathe, breathe, slow it down, take it easy." You know, you're not standing up here in front of the entire room in your underwear.
35:22
You know, it's okay. So we talk about the past, but we relate it to what's happening today. Okay, and we keep things in the present. My role is to make sure that she is able to maintain a professional demeanor. So, if you want to, we're going to take about 10... - I know Paula didn't get any sleep last night, and looked like she did not want to be here,
35:52
and who I just saw in there was the exact opposite. Very open, very warm, very charming, very entertaining, humorous. - What if Molly doesn't feel like being touched today? - And it very easily could be one of her alters coming forward. - Okay, moving on.
36:10
I don't actually take over. I tend to be very close to just kinda like standing, standing behind someone, giving them feedback, giving them ideas on what they need to do and say. - So she's getting a lot of help and support from inside. - Yes. - Basically, what's going on in the brain with somebody with DID, when another part comes out, we don't really know. It's not really true that there's different people in there. Well, of course it isn't true.
36:34
Nobody says that there's actually separate people, and when I explain that to patients, I say, if we took an x-ray of your head, we wouldn't see all these little skeletons running around in there. You have to go back to what I call the central paradox of DID, which is it's not literally real, but it's very psychologically real. (somber music)
36:56
- I've got burns on my hands from before I was aware of their existence, so I'm pretty careful about not letting the alters cook and use the oven,
37:12
'cause they don't know how to use the oven.
37:17
One of the first things they taught me when I was first diagnosed was to try to maintain as much control as possible and not to recede into those safe places in my mind
37:33
when they are present. (solemn music)
37:40
- We want to see if there's a noticeable, distinct change in physiological state, one alter compared to another alter compared to another alter. (solemn music)
37:57
- [Paula] I was terrified when I first sat down.
38:02
There's that fear of, what if it doesn't show anything and everybody thinks I'm a phony?
38:12
- I'm anxious to see what does come about. I think this is kind of an interesting process to see if there is a change. - So it's basically up to you guys who would like to come out first. - Okay. (somber music) I think Mariah's probably going to come out. - Mariah, okay.
38:43
So you're here. It's nice to see you again. So what we're going to do is just you'll sit there for three or four or five minutes, just kind of still, not moving too much, and you're not looking around too much, and just try and stay kind of focused and paying attention, but you don't actually have to do anything at all. - Okay. Mariah is five, and she was just like wanting to kick her feet, and you know, shuffle around, and she's starting to laugh a little bit,
39:15
and then the doctor told her not to move her mouth.
39:21
- [Colin] Try not to move your jaw and your lip muscle too much. - And she was like, oh no!
39:28
It was just cute. - Okay, good. Well, I guess whoever wants to come next can just let me know when they're here.
39:35
And if you see very distinct EEG changes, that doesn't prove there's really different people in there. What it proves is it's really very vivid and subjectively distinct.
39:46
- I'm Melinda. - [Colin] Melinda, nice to see you again.
39:53
And you are? - Jonathan. - Jonathan, nice to see you again. So just like with the others, just kind of stay focused and alert, but you don't actually have to do anything other than stay kind of still. - Okay. - [Colin] Thanks.
40:11
- Hello. - Hi. - Miss V. - [Colin] Hi.
40:20
- You did good. It's fascinating stuff, fascinating data. What we would see during the length of change, there was more rapid eye movement, and it may have been a little stronger as well. Melinda, you will see, even the eye blinks were a little different looking. For whatever reason, something changed. - So I'll just give you a quick summary of what we found here. In the actual brainwaves themselves, we didn't see any dramatic difference between the parts,
40:49
but what we did see was, when any switch from any part to any other part was going on, your muscle tension got way more in the forehead and your heart rate became very erratic. It went up, it went down. So there's a lot of tension disorganization in your muscles and in your heart, both,
41:07
which then would settle down and smooth out, and then when we come up to the next switch process, again, big disorganization, big chaos. Again, it would settle down. The most striking one thing we saw was your heart rate was pretty consistent all the way along, except when Miss V was out. For a while, it dropped down 10-plus into the upper eighties, and she was the only person that had that drop in heart rate. So, a lower heart rate sounds like more relaxed, less stressed, calmer,
41:36
but her muscle tension stayed up about the same level as everybody else's,
41:41
and the flip opposite was true for Jonathan. For Jonathan, his heart rate stayed about the same as everybody else, but noticeably less muscle tension, especially in the forehead, also in the back. So we saw a distinct physical state difference between two parts, not in the brainwaves, but in the heart rate and the muscle tension, which again, to me, demonstrates this is not something that you're just imagining. It's not just in your head.
42:09
It's actually a change in the state of your body as a whole. - Wow. It's fascinating.
42:21
It just makes it more real.
42:26
I'm not a fraud. You know, there's so many people who don't believe that it's real, and it's just that much more proof.
42:41
I'm not making it up. I'm not just faking it.
42:48
(somber music)
42:57
- There's this big word, integration. Some people are for it. Some are against it. What's your view on that? - I have very mixed feelings about it. - I think everybody does, everybody with DID does.
43:09
- Yeah, I mean, my parts are kind of my companions. They're my friends in a lot of ways. They're my... One of my therapists called them my family, and the thought of them going away is kind of scary. - Right, right.
43:28
More sad or more scary or both? - Both. They're there, and I've had them with me pretty much for, well, as long as I can remember. They've been there, and they're not gonna be there if they're integrated. They're not going to be there anymore, and I don't know, I'm afraid of being alone. - You would think, well, if I have cancer, and I got rid of the cancer, yippie. If I have DID and I'm getting rid of my alters, yippie, but actually, more often than not, there's a really,
44:00
it's like one of your friends died or a family member left and you'll never see them again. So, there's this big sense of loss, grief emptiness sadness
44:11
and then the opposite side of the coin is, you mean I have to stay here and deal with all of this all day long? Nobody else is going to bail me out? How do you feel about this whole idea of joining together with her someday?
44:24
(somber music) - I don't know.
44:29
I don't know. It kind of feels like I'm going to die. I'm going to be dead. I don't want to be dead.
44:38
I don't wanna go away. (solemn music)
44:46
We talked a little bit about this yesterday. Miss V is probably the closest to integrating, just because I've been able to learn a lot of the skills that she has. I think she knows that she's probably the closest to integrating. It scares me, 'cause I feel like I'm losing a friend.
45:10
It's kind of strange to talk about going away. It's like you don't die, but you don't really live either. It's interesting. I don't know what that's going to be like.
45:24
- One model of therapy is it's just a nice picture of we all blend and join together and become one person. The other one, I call integration by firing squad, which is how the alters think of it. They're going to get killed off, thrown in the dumpster. When they look at integration that way, then they're against therapy, but the whole trick is to learn how to get control of that. So, in the process of therapy, you learn how to talk to your parts, get to know them,
45:49
negotiate and agree when the switching happens, and you also learn how to not be gone, so when another part's there, you're just in the background, watching, listening, and then it's just a gradual blending, joining, blending, joining blending joining until there aren't separate parts.
46:06
- You're welcome. Have a great day. Bye. (gentle music) - Paula is well down the road in the process of recovery, but she still has quite a bit of work left to do, so she's at the stage where she's able to communicate internally. They have meetings inside. They can discuss and agree on things. So she's at the point where we call this being co-conscious, where there's no amnesia, so you can see that there's some work that has been accomplished, and there's more to do. - Yeah, from last week?
46:36
- Yeah. (gentle music)
46:43
- I like myself more than I ever have in my life, which is just, it's odd to even say that, because I've hated myself most of my life, and to feel like I can say I like me feels really good.
47:01
It feels really good.
47:06
Somebody has to be that one voice, and I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to be the person that starts the choir and starts singing and talking about it, and maybe there'll be other people who are willing to join me and start talking about it and sharing their experiences with the world and start eliminating the misconceptions about DID.
47:35
(peaceful piano music)
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat