How Do You Recognize Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)?
Once called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is an illness where the individual’s reality is so unbearable, that their personality becomes fragmented into two or more distinct personalities. Up to 97 percent of DID patients suffered childhood abuse but some have had other traumas. One sign of DID is that often these patients refer to themselves as “we” or “he or she” rather than “I” without realizing they’re doing that. Many patients have early amnesia–huge gaps in their backgrounds beginning in mid-childhood or the early teen years. Understand that dissociation occurs in the face of unbearable childhood anxiety, pain or trauma that causes a disintegration of the ego or a splitting off of certain mental processes from the conscious mind. DID also causes memory loss. It is usually a response to childhood trauma and the lack of protection against it. Some say as many as 97 percent of those with DID suffered childhood abuse, but there have been ca
