This past year, I have been working as a Special Education Teacher at an elementary school. As we all know, I have DID, along with many other conditions. Originally, it was my hope to be able to connect with my students by sharing my many different-abilities and showing them that having a "disability" is nothing to be ashamed of. I wanted my students to feel empowered and to not feel alone in their diagnosis. My plans, however, immediately got veered off track and I never got the chance to do so. Instead, my first week of school, I was told not to share any of my "mental health issues" with students as the school did not want to have to deal with confused, flustered, and troubled parents. I was never even given a chance to explain who I was or to authentically connect with the kiddos. I spent the whole semester avoiding topics such as: "what's your family like?" and "do you have any kids or siblings?" How could I talk about my family when we all constantly lived in a crazy life filled with multiple personalities, from multiple people? Additionally, anytime Sally tried to come out to say hello, I had to shut her down. My poor students looked so confused when my voice would change. And what made it worse is that I wasn't able to explain what was happening in that moment.

Over the past few months, I have been bouncing between doctors, for various reasons. But the main reason being that my emotions and hormones have been all over the place, and they kept telling me it was situational depression. It in fact, was not situational depression. After struggling with the same psychiatrist, I tried a new one, and got diagnosed with Bipolar. We are not sure yet if it is Bipolar 1 or 2, however I am personally leaning towards the one that is more depressive in nature. Before my diagnosis, I had been struggling severely with thoughts of harm, towards myself and others, and with wanting to disappear into a void. Now that I have been put on a medication specific for Bipolar, those thoughts only come around once every couple of months, which is amazing. I cannot wait until the day that they do not come at all.

Did you know that females have a four week cycle while males have a 24hr cycle? The female cycle goes through menstruation, follicular, ovulation, and luteal phases. You may have heard of menstrual and ovulatory, I know I have, but what the heck are the other two? Follicular phase is when the body is preparing to release an egg and luteal phase is when your uterus lining thickens. Now, what does this have to do with emotions? Our emotions change DRASTICALLY during these four phases. In the follicular phase we feel happy and energized, ovulatory we get risky and are still happy, luteal we get tired, sad, anxious and start craving foods. For some people, the depression and anxiety can be exacerbated by a disorder known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). PMDD is a more severe PMS that causes one to become unable to function in society.

I am currently in my own kind of circus. My balancing act involves school, cleaning, being a wife, being a daughter, being a sister, writing, and recently, training dogs (and eventually, this art business!). Every day, I need a reminder that it is physically impossible for me to handle every single part of this circus act without loosing a part of myself and my girls going crazy. Each time I forget and try to juggle everything at once, my system sort of breaks down and I become useless. My current system, is to delegate some of my cleaning tasks to my brothers and husband (when he has energy) and to only focus on a couple of things a day. 

One billion people worldwide have some type of disability. Our world is slowly making amends for us and finding ways to make everything more accessible, but it is still a wide gap. 85% autistics are unemployed with a college education and there is no number for how many people with a personality disorder are unemployed. Now, take in fact that DID is a personality disorder that can have autism as well as many other disorders. How many people do you estimate are unemployed? Probably around 90%, unfortunately. The job system is made for neurotypicals and has very little wiggle room for accommodations and modifications. Those few people who do manage to secure a job end up with severe burnout because of the lack of accessibility and empathy from their coworkers and workplace. Due to these small injustices, many of us are left in uncomfortable situations where we are forced to create an incident report or leave a job that is unfit. Yes, incident reports can benefit the growth of a company and business; but, when we say we are fine multiple times, it is very frustrating.

Healing is very different from acceptance because it is the hard work that you have to do AFTER you have accepted your trauma. When you are on your healing journey, there are many hard moments when you need to talk about your trauma, cry about it, and then forgive yourself and others. REMEMBER forgive DOES NOT mean forget. Healing through your traumas teaches you how to live, you learn boundaries, and you relearn how to love yourself. Abuse will beat you down, tear down your self-love, and leave you in a puddle on the floor. Make sure that after you have accepted your situation, you start your healing process.

DID is a dissociating disorder, which means that it is the bodies way of removing us from the danger at hand. When we are in danger, most people react in fight or flight; however, there is a third response: freeze. Similar to the possum who plays dead when they are near predators, our nervous system will freeze to hide from danger. Dissociation is a form of the freeze response. Dissociation is the inability to be connected to our body, therefore causing immobility. There may be moments in our dissociative journey when we will be able to keep aware our surroundings will being unable to move our body. Just remember not to panic and to allow yourself to relax.

I want to talk about the comorbidities that other disorders have with DID because I was greatly affected by the words of a certain doctor. Some disorders we can have include but are not limited to: major depression, somatization disorder, borderline personality disorder, substance use, schizophrenia, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, PTSD, reactive attachment disorder, autism, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The DID ribbon is designed as a quilt with each piece being a different shape and color. The stitching of a quilt is what holds them together. The first DID case that was documented was in 1584, but was commonly mistaken as possession or hysterics. The first official DID diagnosis was in 1882. Once DID became an official diagnosis option, many were mistaken as having schizophrenia. DID was officially added into the DSM as multiple personality disorder in 1980. DID is still a controversial diagnosis for many psychiatrists.

Throughout life, we have many people who will care for us and will do everything they can to be supportive. But sometimes, it can take a toll on them. My husband had been the most supportive person throughout my DID journey. He has taken me to doctor appointments, counseling, gotten to know the girls, and still finds time to spend with me all alone. Yet every few weeks, he has been feeling like he has not been doing enough for our relationship. He is worried about how our marriage will work and coincide with other people, how I will function, and if I will even be able to handle the change of lifestyle (newsflash: I did!).

In the first few weeks of her entrance, Sam had been adjusting to her new reality and I had been adjusting to having a new alter around. These moments of learning to work together are very valuable and can also be very exhausting. Most of our days are spent sleeping. When we are awake, I am usually in the background, watching Sam and Sally (my only alters at the time). Throughout this period of time, Sally had been incredibly helpful by making sure my daily tasks were being fulfilled. Sam, on the other hand, had been getting to know everyone in the family. She has now grown comfortable around certain people and will incite games of mischief.

A common misconception is that switching can be forced by others or by the host. Sometimes calling their name may cause them to come forward, but that is not always the case. In fact, forcing a switch is extremely dangerous for all who are involved. If an alter is brought forward against their will, you may cause them to lash out at all who are surrounding them. Another possible consequence involves the system: if the alter who is being called is currently stuck and they are forced out, you can cause them to be stuck for a longer period of time.