ngl i wouldn't trust youtubers like this. There's a huge issue with that right now, and something about the entropy system really rubs me the wrong way. A lot of youtube videos that are very..."entertainment" centered like "SWITCH CAUGHT ON CAMERA :O" are extremely voyeuristic and fetishistic of us and our struggles.

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I would recommend this DID sourcebook, that can be bought on amazon, as a ways to learn about the others and about yourself. It was made for therapists and DID systems alike.

I also recommend some autobiographies. Though these can be triggering and graphic, the few i've read have helped me understand my selves better. Truddi Chase, Kim Noble, Christine Pattillo... Three different people with 3 starkly different experiences and ways their disorder works with them.

I also recommend TV segments and documentaries. Kim Noble's artwork, Kim Noble's Interview (though not as good), this Netflix Doc (though outdated and slightly misinformational as well as talks to abuse apologists at the "false memory institute".), Truddi's Interview, and this old Documentary from the 90's about 3 different DID systems (old but informational, though triggering so please be careful).

I also recommend Special Books By Special Kids, an incredibly heartwarming group on youtube where a man goes and meets with people with disabilities / disorders and lets them talk about their life and experiences.

This is the book used in a support group I'm part of, which is dual-diagnosis for trauma/substance.

Recovery from Trauma, Addiction or Both (if you want to help yourself, the frogcabaret part)

Seeking Safety (therapists book, if you want to learn to help all your parts by also coaching them through these tough topics)

Both cover dissociation in detail, but neither go into dissociative disorders. For that, this book is best in class (IMO):

Coping with Trauma Related Dissociation

Gl,

Dee

Write a book you say? ;P

My advice for writing is to always write, even if it's just stream of consciousness garbage. The more you use a skill, the better you get, and eventually you will be able to shoot from the hip and create something amazing at will.

It doesn’t appear connected to Dissociation, and instead some neurobiological deficit. However lucid dreaming has a weak correlation to dissociation but shares some neurobiological substrates. If it’s psychogenic and another part can imagine, then it might fall under something like somatization.

Also maybe a deficit in your thalamus which is the part of your brain that transfers all sensory information sans smell to your higher cortices.
That has been theorized to be related to possible experiences of DP/DR. Along with changes in the Anterior Cingulate, which determines if people -and environments feel safe. Something something Occipital lobe, and parietal lobe, play a part.

Then we take into account maybe it’s something like an encoding or retrieval error, trying to retrieve the mental imagery from your hippocampus.

I’m really reaching right now though, from what I understand it has only been identified and given a name recently.

Edit: sources.

Neurobiology of Traumatic Dissociation

Lucid Dream, Psychosis, Dissociation, and insight

Edit 2: More digging suggest maybe depersonalization as a possible cause. Which would share all those pesky substrates I mentioned. I’m done for now. There’s just not enough research I can find.

Last link. it’s 23 pages and I haven’t finished read it yet.

When I first started reading about DID after I was diagnosed, it was when the new term was just beginning to be used widely, and a lot of the discussion about it was still along the lines of "is this real or not." I was treated by the dude who wrote this book, and I highly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Rebuilding-Shattered-Lives-Dissociative-Disorders/dp/0470768746

Edit: he didn't actually treat me with meds or therapy, just diagnosed me and then consulted on my treatment.

I am so sorry this happened. You have every right to feel how you feel. You have every right to protect yourselves from this toxicity. This is classic, get others to do their dirty work for them. If they can't reach you, they'll send in people they can manipulate to do it for them. They calculate these things. They actively think about ways to control and manipulate others. She's projecting her ugliness onto you. Your friend was sent in as bait. A pawn sent in retaliation for your going no contact. There are so many books written about this type of abuse. There's one written for victims specifically that helped me understand the psychological abuse in prior relationships as well as how to stay no contact and protect myself. The reason it helps to learn about, is it gives a name to what they are doing and provides you with tools to stay effectively no contact. You deserve your freedom and peace from these toxic people.


https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Free-Expanded-Emotionally-Relationships/dp/0425279995/ref=sr_1_2?crid=NICJ2OFLL5F5&keywords=psychopath+free&qid=1550433412&s=gateway&sprefix=psychopath+free%27%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-2

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to get more in touch with their body especially around food and weight.

Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight https://www.amazon.com/dp/1940363195/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1Jy7CbKB1D448

My advice is to find a therapist who specializes in dissociative disorders. There are a lot of therapists out there who want to help, will take you on as a client, accept your money, but will not provide the right type of therapy for you. DID is a complex disorder. So many doctors are not trained in the specific therapeutic skills that you might need.

If you are struggling to find a therapist, you could start reading self-help books in the meantime. Here's some good ones:

https://www.amazon.com/Amongst-Ourselves-Self-Help-Dissociative-Identity/dp/1572241225

https://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Managing-Successfully-Dissociative-Identity/dp/1932690034/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0FHHASZHRBA7H2K6KBEE

https://www.amazon.com/Coping-Trauma-Related-Dissociation-Interpersonal-Neurobiology/dp/039370646X/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0FHHASZHRBA7H2K6KBEE

An article I've dug up to re-post a few times regarding persecutor alters, and a theory about why the exist, and how to interact with them. Note: the article has explicit examples of persecutor alters. It's aimed at therapists, but it's easy to transfer to you interacting with your own system.

It's a bit of a weird thought, but I would also recommend reading some traumatic brain injury literature. The tips they have for people with suddenly much shorter attention spans and memory issues are can be re-worked and transferred to make an external communication system, and can help you make external coping tips. A lot of DID literature I read focuses on system cohesion, survival, the controversy, and so on. Traumatic brain injury literature will cover how to reorganize your life physically when you're not "there" for most of it. (With tips such as calendars, medication sorters, and so on.) I ended up reading this one.

Yeah, that's how it works. There's a part of you holding on to all the fear, anxiety, rage, sadness or whatever so that the rest of you can function, but that part needs time in the body to express and release those emotions. Meditation will help you tap into that alter, and help calm it down a bit, but also possibly get in contact with it and offer alternatives to cutting. Get creative. What is it about cutting that alter finds therapeutic? Most cutters I know are in emotional pain, and like to cut because it gives them a sense of control over when/how that pain can manifest, so for each cut there's also a release of pent-up emotion at the same time. Sometimes it can even be a sexual feeling, if the abuse was sexual, that's where a lot of BDSM play originates from. So try to figure out what that alter gets from cutting, and then get really creative to let it keep getting that but in safe ways.

For example, here's a crazy idea that just might work: Get a TENS unit (http://amzn.to/2FudNZY), basically it's a therapeutic electric shock machine used to relieve pain in muscles, but when used by a cutter they can turn the intensity to maximum and when they have control of the on/off switch, get a similar sensation to cutting with the right pulse pattern but no damage. You can even get a pinwheel attachment so you can simulate the action and the pain response of cutting without any damage: (http://amzn.to/2CHqi1h).

Good luck to you!

> aspects of my abuse required me to extinguish my empathy and do things very far away from my core beliefs

The alters who handled that for you had a critical role in your survival. People who aren't able to dissociate and who experience this kind of abuse get pretty permanently messed up - meaning, think about the fact that if you didn't have those alters to step in, YOU would probably have become what they are. I think a persecutor generally IS a protector, the mindf*ck being that they learned the best way to protect you/others is by becoming the abuser. What they went through was trauma in the form of psychological torture, and I guarantee none of them see it that way. But as far as healing goes, that's how it ought to be approached with them.

The empathy piece is tricky. I read this book a while ago that really helped me understand more about how and why it can get shut off. It's called The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. At the time I read it I was struggling with my own (lack of?) empathy but also trying to get a handle on how our abuser(s) could behave like a normal human being in one setting but then carry out unspeakable abuse in another.

I ended up getting back into meditation when the pain was bad and I had a useless doctor. A lot of standard meditation advice doesn't work for me (btw there ARE dangers, especially with trauma), so I had to throw out a lot of it and sorta flail about until I found what worked for me. There' a book that I suspect might overlap a lot with what I worked out, but I haven't got around to reading it yet: https://www.amazon.ca/Trauma-Sensitive-Mindfulness-Practices-Safe-Healing/product-reviews/0393709787/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1

My own approach was... ugh words are hard... I often thought of it as "balancing on a knife edge in a hurricane". it was partially.. um.. the one where you don't try and control your attention, you just try and be aware of where it is (which would quite easily settle on the pain, because pain). also part insight meditation. and it was like the pain was behind a giant dam, and I was letting just a tiny trickle through and figuring out how to process that and sorta.. surf/float on top of it instead of being sucked in.

What really helped was getting a better doctor and finally finding medication that worked, that got the pain down to a level where I could process it faster than it came in, and start draining that massive backlog. a couple of years of that and I actually got off the pain meds in the end :) :) although I do still have to be careful and I'm still not well enough to work.

Oh, and there were also times I focused more on teaching my muscles to relax, since their tension seemed to be causing the pain, and I had to retrain them to not do that.. but my laundry alarm went off minutes ago, I should go.

edit: oh, as a bonus my pain management seems to work on emotional pain too! yay!

as for the muscles... well, pain would make them tense and tension would cause pain. aren't feedback loops fun? :P I didn't start training them out of it until I found out I had a bladder problem ruining my quality of sleep (omg sleep is important) and had to retrain muscles to cure that. then I just sorta... applied what worked on them to the rest of my body a bit at a time. when one finally started to relax it'd go through a twitchy phase that felt kinda creepy... but if I could get through that, then it was a much happier muscle and if I could avoid pissing it off for a while it'd be much less likely to join in the spasms. The hardest have been the neck and jaw muscles; I'm still working on those even now, with the help of a physiotherapist (finally found one that's not a quack, yay). they are fucking stubborn, and when I do relax them they'll tense back up again, faster if I'm trying to focus at all. trying to think while relaxing them is like trying to walk in two different directions at once. :/ but hey, not being in constant pain is still pretty awesome. :)

Books:

• Treating Trauma Related Dissociation
  
• Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation.
  
• Trauma and Recovery- Judith Herman, M.D.
  
• Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness
  
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
  
• Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma
  
• Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame: A Relational/Neurobiological Approach
  
• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation
  
• The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
  
• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
  
• It Wasn't Your Fault: Freeing Yourself from the Shame of Childhood Abuse with the Power of Self-Compassion
  
• Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder
  
• The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook
  
• The Stranger In The Mirror by Marlene Steinberg M.D.
  
• Rebuilding Shattered Lives: Treating Complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders
  
• Dissociation in Children and Adolescents: A Developmental Perspective
  
• Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization Disorder and the Loss of the Self
  
• Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality (Wiley Series in General and Clinical Psychiatry) 2nd Edition