I’m looking for online support for me in regards to my partner who has Dissociative Identity Disorder.
How can I get him to accept that he has it? (He’s not aware of his switches)
What do I do when it’s a switch that becomes violent? (Not to me, but he breaks things, like a few days ago he broke the fridge handle.)
How do I deal with memory lost issues? (One identity will have the memory but another will not. He gets upset when I mention something he doesn’t remember.)
What about trauma? (When I try to talk about his childhood, he says it was good but can’t give me details on anything that happened. I know that he spent considerable time living with his grandmother, but he doesn’t remember any specific times or events.)
What is causing the switches? How do I know which identity he is? (Each identity presents with a whole new set of ways in which I have to approach him)
Please don’t tell me to leave him as I love him for everything that he is. I love each dynamic parts that make up the whole I fell in love with. I’m trying to find ways to make his life more comfortable. I know that he struggles just being in his own skin some days.
If i was you i would talk with a psychiatrist addressing your questions and guiding you how to handle him .
Sounds like he may have anasognosia meaning no insight and if thats the case it is a tough one and trying to convince him may anger him and he won’t believe you .
ask a professional , i would stay in another room until he calms down .
3.Dont upset him as you don’t want to stress him , try and see if he will seek help and speak with a psychiatrist .
4.This needs to be dealt with a therapist
5.advise from a psychiatrist .
I would never tell you to leave him , i’m proud of you for caring and wanting to learn his illness, hang in there as its a life long struggle . Go to Nami classes
Frankly, I think you need to look to the online DID community for answers, I doubt you’ll find answers here. I’m 35 years into a recovery with SZA and I’ve spent time researching DID and I have a very hard time making sense of it all, yet I understand the dynamics of SZ fairly well.
There are some people where DID is comorbid with other SMI. The more I learn about it, the more I feel like a cis gendered person grappling with understanding the LBGTQ+ Community especially the intricacies of trans and gender non binary folks. There’s a ton of lingo and complex individualistic inner relationships of alters. It seems no two DXes are alike. There are a number of DID folks on YouTube and that may be a place to start.
Best I can tell this is more complex than simple anosognosia, a sort of selective amnesia between alters in many cases. Finding treatment in the US can prove difficult as many psychiatrists were initially taught that DID was a hoax, and can be very skeptical of such a DX. False or coached memory syndromes were common in some early treatments which led to discrediting many accounts. My psychiatrist admits that DID exists, but is very skeptical and has said frankly that he thinks most psychiatrists would try to over medicate to suppress symptoms than try to get suffers to adapt or integrate.
One thing you may gain from this forum is to learn from the many people here who live with spouses or partners with SZ or other SMI. Regardless of DX or symptoms, there’s a personal emotional toll to be paid. Some advocate running, not walking, far far away from a relationship with sufferers, yet others advocate learning as much as possible and sticking it out. Since you seem to be asking for practical answers to specific questions that only someone with a DX could understand, I think you’d be better off in a DID forum. Good Luck.
Here are a few. Acceptance of the DID diagnosis is most common in the U.K. so many of these are hosted there. I believe these forums are tightly moderated as it’s a controversial topic subject to trolling, so some of these have some gating processes to cut down on ‘tourists’ and ‘researchers’.
As I mentioned there are DID channels on YouTube as well— that’s where I got most of my info.