Many of you already know this, but perhaps as a kind of secret. I’ve made a commitment to being fully self-expressive and I’ve come to realize that being secretive is actually causing more difficulties than the problems I am supposedly sparing people from. Also, if I act like there is a problem or I am uncomfortable with who I am, that puts a kind of energy out there that I don’t really want.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, what was once known (rather sensationally) as Multiple Personality Disorder. I have been aware of this for many years now, so don’t worry. There is nothing wrong and I am in no danger. I’ve been living with it all this time, but some of you did not know about it or really understand what it involved. I’m coming forward with this information as part of the aforementioned openness.

One reason why I don’t discuss it often is because it can take a while to explain. Sometimes I will have an episode and it is just easier to withdraw from people rather than get them up to speed on the back story.

Another reason is because most people’s knowledge of DID comes from something they saw in a movie or on TV. It is rarely displayed in a positive way. I can’t think of a movie where the person with the “split personality” isn’t sometimes a violent psycho. I am concerned about being misunderstood and having to combat this stereotype.

And finally, it can be embarrassing. There are times when I cannot physically or mentally cope with the world and it doesn’t look very sexy. Sometimes, if I was having an episode, I would worry about reaching out to people because I didn’t want them to see me as weak or incompetent or untrustworthy.

DID is typically caused by various types of trauma. It does not just happen to women who are sexually abused as children, as is the common misconception. It can be caused by traumatic head injuries (of which I have had several) as well as physical and emotional trauma (ditto). I have speculated elsewhere about the origin of this for me. I’m not sure it is something I can definitively know, as my childhood memory is drastically edited. At one point I turned to a childhood friend to fill me in on details in my own life. He had some pretty astonishing things to say.

I hear voices in my head. They have their own names and personalities. If my life is out of balance and I don’t eat right, don’t get enough sleep, I’m under a lot of stress, there is an emotional trigger or several other vectors are at work, one or more of these personalities will assert control or at least push hard enough to influence my actions. I have relationships with them and think of them as people. I know that they are a metaphor my brain has invented to represent the fragmentation going on in my brain.

The multiple personality thing does not really have as much of an impact on my daily life as it did when I was in therapy and confronting it regularly. Instead, there are a host of peripheral issues created by DID. I don’t have a good sense of time. I have no idea how old I was when anything happened to me. Anything beyond a month becomes “always.” I have a document I can refer to if I need to answer difficult questions like “How long were you married?” or “When did you move to Austin?”

I experience weird headaches and get strange body spasms. I sometimes have extremely paranoid delusions and believe the most ridiculous things. Sometimes objects vanish, reappearing in other places or never again. I have trouble being present and alert sometimes. I forget the names of people close to me and I gradually forget that certain relationships ever existed.

But I have done a lot of work managing all of this. My life is fantastic. I sometimes pretend that I don’t have DID and something will happen to remind me. That’s just what is so.

What I found out recently was that suppressing the other personalities or being in denial was much more harmful to me than letting them out to interact with the world. They are used to talking with a small handful of people and I thought anything more than that would spell disaster. Instead there is immense relief and freedom. Sure, it may mean that I behave oddly sometimes, but, if I’m honest, that isn’t too big of a change.

So there it is.