Life with DID before the memories

I'd like to share, as best I can, in broad terms, what it is like to grow up before the abuse becomes conscious. This is my story and several other stories known to me. I had one big symptom of DID that no one caught. I had no idea it was a symptom until I already knew I had dissociated my abuse and was reading the checklist in E. Sue Blume's Secret Survivor. I had two failed marriages prior to remembering which is no red flag in and of itself. I changed my last name though each time I was married and returned to my maiden name in between. And I was always fussing with my first name and middle name since high school and went through several legal name changes for that.

Apparently it is not uncommon for abuse survivors to change their last name to dis-associate from a perp parent. Most anyone would laugh at my name history. I couldn't believe it was on the incest checklist. (Most with DID would score extremely high on the Secret Survivor checklist.) Outside of that, I could see that I always had a very intense internal world. I created a "safe place" with protectors when I was 5. I met several survivors who had done something similar. I would "pretend" that certain television characters were my real relatives--loving, protective, safe. I had inside imaginary friends. I loved to nap and sleep because I liked being inside more than outside where I was sad and lonely.

The others with DID who had done this absorbed one particular television show with a healthy family and that was their pretend world and family. Some did have very memorable external childhood imaginary friends (in addition to or in lieu of).

Until that first abuse memory hits though, and that amnesia barrier begins to crack, people with DID usually have no idea they were abused and can't imagine having been. We all say, "I would have REMEMBERED THAT!" Well, no. If you have amnesia, you wouldn't remember. People with DID, where the amnesia is in tact, are clueless about the reality of their childhoods and any present danger.

There is no typical way someone will behave if they have DID but not identified as such. It is as invisible as the pedophiles for most and usually misdiagnosed many times even after clear symptoms present. If a child or young person begins to remember while still in that organized pedophile community, that community will use all of its resources to try to stop the remembering. If the person goes to therapy, in my experience with two people still actively being abused, the person becomes a greater target for abuse and the therapist does as well in hopes one will be too afraid to continue.

I was aware of my client's perps because I don't dissociate my environment any longer. I realized how *I* (the one holding the conscious memories of my life) never saw my environment. At the time I began to heal, I realized I missed years/decades of news and had/have virtually no name or face recognition skills. It was all tuned out without realizing such a mechanism existed.

If parts of me knew about others around me who were part of my abuse, *I* never knew prior to the memories. It felt like a life. I had worked through most of the issues in therapy on some level which, I believe, gave me an advantage over many survivors. Depression, anxiety to include panic attacks, full blown Post Traumatic Stress responses to known and unknown triggers, all require the development of coping skills. DID, by necessity, takes coping skills to a new level.

No one knew. Aside from some odd habits which I now understand, I thought my life was normal. Being diagnosed with DID and remembering just a piece of the abuse can be life shattering. Who was I that I lived a life not knowing of such harm? How could this have happened? Maybe it only happened once. Initially there can be very strong denial. Who would blame someone for not wanting to remember a horrific past? There is no going back though.

Likely all survivors have a moment (or two or three) when they wish their minds would just go back to not knowing again. It was so much easier that way. But at what cost?