Dissociative Identity
Plurality or living with a dissociative identity is an often misunderstood, maligned, and even feared neurodivergence. When labelled, this way of being used to be referred to with the term ‘multiple personality disorder’, although now either Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) are used. So what exactly are we talking about here?
We are talking about a person who experiences different self-states, also called parts or alters, which help them function day to day. Parts might carry emotions like fear or anger, carry memories of past events, or complete daily functions like work, school, or household tasks. A person might be conscious of their parts or they might not be, instead ‘losing time’ when one of their parts has taken over.
A good way to explain this is to consider that everyone tends to behave differently in different contexts with different people. Everyone also tends to have ‘inner voices’, such as the voice of a parent that might come to the forefront when having an urge to do something that would have been reprimanded in childhood, or the voice of an inner child when in a situation that provokes fear or elicits nostalgia.
In the case of plurality, these inner self-states are simply more defined. Parts might have their own names, ages, genders, sexual orientation, and hobbies, or they might be nameless without such an explicit personality of their own, but carry memories and emotions that are fully inaccessible to the host (the person who usually ‘fronts’ or presents to the outside world).
Plurality usually emerges in early childhood before a stable identity will have developed (which tends to occur somewhere between the ages of 5 to 8), and is often caused by some form of trauma (i.e., a child’s resources are insufficient to meet the demands of their environment). In response to events outside of their control, a child may then subconsciously begin to compartmentalise their identity into parts (e.g., a ‘studious quiet girl’ for at school, a ‘good girl’ for at home, a ‘happy tomboy’ for leisure time), and to lock unpleasant memories and emotions away so they can keep living their life.
While compartmentalising one’s identity can be an incredibly adaptive way of coping with overwhelming trauma in childhood, it can cause challenges later in life when a person’s environment has stabilised. Parts and unfamiliar memories and emotions might suddenly surface, which can make it difficult to keep living life in the same way. When dissociative identity is identified and a system of parts or alters learns to collaborate, however, most systems prefer not to integrate into one identity and would much rather stay plural. After all, why be alone when you’ve always had company? And why change when you have a working system and all parts of you can live life to the fullest?
Identification
Being identified as a system or a person with dissociative identity is not easy, as many different types of neurodivergence look alike. As dissociative identity has a reputation for being ‘rare’ and interesting, there are also concerns both within and outside the community of people feigning plurality. The diagnosis itself is also heavily gatekeeped, both by the requirement of extensive PTSD-level trauma in a person’s childhood and by the requirement of significant amnesia between parts to diagnose DID (as opposed to OSDD, the leftover category for self-aware systems or systems with less well-defined parts).
As would be expected, accusations of people feigning or simulating plurality and policing those who are trying to figure out where they belong often does more harm than good. Support for systems is additionally hard to come by, with many therapists uncomfortable with parts ‘fronting’ in therapy and having no idea how to help a system collaborate (which ideally would include journalling, encouraging internal communication, identifying parts [including perpetrator and protector parts], and enlisting roles, although most systems remain reliant on self-discovery and the internet to learn these skills).
While there are contexts where it is important to be vigilant for those who may be motivated by secondary gain (e.g., in a forensic context, where a person who committed a crime wants to claim innocence on the basis that their alter committed the act and that they do not remember it), in general, it does not usually benefit individuals to feign plurality and subsequently ostracize themselves. It is always important to validate an individual’s (or system’s) experiences while figuring out what explanation might fit best for them. For example, a young person might have developed a ‘mask’ to cope with social situations which feels like being someone else, but this persona is a result of closely observing and mimicking others to ‘fit in’, an experience that is very common for autistic people.
As neurodivergences often co-occur, it is also important to consider how plurality might present differently in someone with otherwise neurotypical wiring and in someone with, for example, autistic or ADHD wiring. Communication differences can lead some systems to be very open about their parts and inner workings, which might be perceived as unusual compared to systems who tend to hide and try their best to present as singular at all costs. These differences, in turn, can lead to snap judgements and misdiagnosis of subconscious malingering and pervasive personality patterns (‘disorders’), which ultimately leads to further erosion of trust and hiding away where support could have been offered.
Even when plurality does not appear to be the best explanation for a person’s challenges from a professional perspective but a client is attached to this explanation, it is always of the utmost importance to listen and validate experience. Not diagnosing at all and celebrating self-identification and changes in how a person perceives themself over time are often preferable! It is also important to recognise that ‘small-t’ trauma (emotional abuse, bullying) might more easily lead to structural dissociation in individuals with more sensitive wiring (e.g., autism, ADHD), something that is not currently receiving much research attention or acknowledgement in diagnostic classification systems.
If you suspect you might be a system and feel you would benefit from a diagnosis (e.g., as you find yourself in locations without knowing how you got there, seem to self-harm without remembering doing so, or recognise notes written to yourself that are not in your usual handwriting), it is usually best to find a therapist with expertise in trauma and (structural) dissociation. A lot of psychologists will not be that familiar or comfortable identifying dissociative identity or plurality, but as dissociation and trauma are so closely tied together, psychologists and psychiatrists working in the trauma space tend to be more familiar. If you also suspect other neurodivergences like autism, it would be good to find someone who can comprehensively explore autism, ADHD, as well as trauma and dissociation in one go to help with differential assessment (teasing apart neurodivergences that can look like each other).
Self-identifying can also be perfectly valid, especially given the many barriers to accessing a diagnosis and the limitations of classification systems. The Plural Association (https://thepluralassociation.org/) and The System Speak Community (https://systemspeakcommunity.com/) can be good resources if plurality is something you recognise yourself in and would like to explore independently.
