The past few months of my life have brought with them the suicide of a family member, the substance abuse problems and sudden onset mental illness of another, some unexpected financial difficulties, and not nearly enough time and space for me to cope with it all effectively. I’ve taken the put-your-head-down-and-keep-moving approach in part because I know I’ll leave other people in the lurch if I stop to recuperate. When a tornado hits is not the time to announce that gosh, you’d love to help out but you really need some Me Time. Instead, I’ve relied on my long-held belief that Dissociative Identity Disorder is both a blessing and a curse when life gets messy. But I’ve changed my mind. All DID does is make nasty situations nastier.

I've been trying for four days now to finish an article on depersonalization, one of five primary ways dissociation manifests. I wanted to address the milder episodes of depersonalization most people experience at one time or another. But I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and severe depersonalization is part of living with DID. Ironically enough, it's depersonalization itself - specifically, mental clouding - that's preventing me from finishing that article. I've finally decided that if I'm going to continue to try to write in a highly depersonalized state, it makes sense to stop fighting it and simply do my best to describe what I'm experiencing. The article I intended to publish today will have to wait until I can think clearly again.

There’s a space of six weeks between my last two posts here at Dissociative Living. Some of that month and a half disappearance has to do with the fact that I’d been trying to do too much for the better part of a year and I reached a kind of critical mass that left me depleted and in desperate need of rest. And some of it has to do with the nature of Dissociative Identity Disorder itself. It’s natural, within the context of DID, to compartmentalize one’s life to such a degree that the various arenas in which we live – work, school, friends, etc. – are separate worlds altogether. And when one or more of those worlds collide, as they inevitably do from time to time, the resulting anxiety triggers a full retreat from one or all of the affected worlds. But I’ve discovered that there’s more to these disappearances than I believed.

Nothing about dissociative identity disorder is quite what the most popular phrases used to describe it imply. “Losing time” is no exception. When we talk about losing time we’re talking about severe dissociative amnesia which, in a milder form, is something I believe everyone experiences. But the phrase “losing time” suggests a highly dramatic, easily recognizable aberration. In my experience, however, dissociative amnesia is startlingly surreptitious. It’s easy to be unaware that you’re losing time at all.

I’ve discussed my difficulties with setting personal boundaries and some of what contributes to those difficulties. But it occurs to me that there may be a link between the high suggestibility of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder and the challenges so many of us face with personal boundaries. It seems reasonable that saying no would be more difficult for people who are particularly susceptible to the power of suggestion.

Like so many others with dissociative identity disorder (DID), I have comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder. But it isn’t the temporary response to short-lived trauma that most people think of as PTSD. It’s a deeper, more pervasive, and chronic response to life in general. This form of PTSD is called complex PTSD. And it occurs so often in conjunction with dissociative identity disorder, that I sometimes wonder if there's anyone with DID who doesn’t live with this monster.

Despite reminder tools and sheer determination, I keep forgetting to take my medication. I get up in the morning and think to myself, 'Now don’t forget to take your medication!' while heading to the bathroom where it’s waiting for me in a brightly colored container right there on the counter. And I repeatedly discover, much later in the day, those pills lying untouched in their little compartments. I have dissociative identity disorder and this is just one example of how my dissociative memory affects my everyday life. On its own it may not seem like a big deal. And if my memory problems were exclusive to forgetting medication or if they were irregular, here-and-there occurrences they probably wouldn’t be much of an issue. But what I just described is how my memory works all the time, with everything.

While not everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder also has a diagnosable depressive disorder, I’d wager at least 50% live regularly with some type of depression. As for me, I have Major Depression and Dysthymia. The former is a real pain; the latter is far more manageable. I’ve never taken either one very seriously and I think the magnetic relationship between dissociation and depression is the primary reason why.

While not everyone with dissociative identity disorder also has a depressive disorder, I’d wager at least 50% live regularly with some type of depression. As for me, I have major depression and dysthymia. The former is a real pain; the latter is far more manageable. I’ve never taken either one very seriously and I think the magnetic relationship between dissociation and depression is the primary reason why.

How many times have those of you with Dissociative Identity Disorder drawn a boundary of some kind and later felt awash in guilt and anxiety? If you're like me, the answer is "just slightly less than always." And it's not just those of us with DID that struggle with boundary setting. That backlash of guilt and anxiety isn't unique to Dissociative Identity Disorder. But I suspect the path to resolving it might be.