Dissociative Identity Disorder
How dissociative are you?
Do you know what it is?
Does dissociation feel familiar to you?
Have you ever floated above yourself?
Have you ever felt like more than one person?
Have you ever separated from your body?
Do you wonder if you have a dissociative disorder?
Do you wonder if you are more dissociative than average?
Learning about dissociation, being dissociative, and how to work effectively with your DID system requires ongoing effort, study, and exploration. There are many necessary elements to creating your own effective healing path and therapy journey — this is not a simple task! DID is complex. While there is an abundance of information available in the world today, it is also crucial to learn genuinely effective and helpful ways of managing your dissociative issues. Following misinformation or a misguided path could cause harm, and waste years of time.
In addition to the 400+ articles of information written here at Discussing Dissociation, we have added or created a number of different resources that will be helpful for you and your inside system, or for you and your therapist. The information gathered here has been created by a clinical therapist who has specialized in working with DID for over 30 years, via listening to hundreds of different multiple systems. We have learned what helps, and what doesn’t!
Check out the following educational options available for you, your supportive loved ones, and/or your therapist. And remember, more resources are being created for you on a regular basis.
1. Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), with scoring guidelines
2. Free eBook, “101+ Ways to See DID — Dissociative Identity Disorder Described”
3. Educational videos about DID
4. Phone, Video, or Email Consultation options
5. Our DID Community Forum: DDCF for dissociative survivors
6. DDEF — the Educational Forum, with Kathy and Laura’s active participation
7. Saddest Little Bear Dissoci-ACTION Story Pack
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 1
You can take a simple 28-question self-reporting questionnaire to get a sense of how dissociative you are. It will take about 10-15 minutes to read through the questions.
The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) was developed by Eve Bernstein Carlson, Ph.D. and Frank W. Putnam, M.D. It’s available for free for dissociative folks, and we’ve happily added this resource for you and your therapist to find easily.
The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES)
Answer each question, selecting how often that experience happens to you. Pick any number between 0 and 100. Of course, 0 represents none of the time, and 100 represents all of the time.
There is no right or wrong answer – it is more about the reality of how often these experiences happen for you. Try to be as accurate and honest with yourself as possible.
To score the DES, add up the individual scores of each of the 28 questions to get a total score. Divide this total score by 28 to get the average score.
Read about Scoring the DES.
- When you were answering these questions, what were you thinking? What were you feeling?
- Are you worried about being highly dissociative?
- Are you upset about being dissociative?
- Are you relieved to finally find something that explains how life is for you?
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 2
Another option for answering the question, “How dissociative are you?” is to have a good look at the free eBook, 101+ Ways to See DID — Dissociative Identity Disorder Described.
101+ Ways to See DID — Dissociative Identity Disorder Described
While this eBook is not an official diagnostic tool, I guarantee that the more of the 101+ Ways that you experience in your life, the more dissociative you are. As you look through the list of potential signs and symptoms of DID, how many do you experience in your life?
How many of the 101+ Ways to See DID describe you and your life experiences?
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 3
To learn more about Dissociative Identity Disorder, watch these short, educational videos:
The Discussing Dissociation videos have been created by Kathy to teach about Dissociative Identity Disorder and to talk about relevant issues for DID survivors. These videos are free, of course. New videos are added from time-to-time so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the channel to stay up to date.
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 4
If you are still wondering about your own experiences of dissociation, you have the option to discuss your personal individual situation in a DID Consultation, either by phone, or by email. Both Kathy and Laura have many years of clinical experience, and are extremely familiar with DID, dissociation, and trauma dynamics. If having an individual conversation would be most beneficial for you, select your preferred consultation option.
DID Phone Consultation with Kathy from Discussing Dissociation
DID Email Consultations with Laura from Discussing Dissociation
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 5
DDCF: Discussing Dissociation Community Forum
Do you live a life with many different parts?
Are you confused? Learning? Alone?
Do you need more people to talk to about being DID?
Our Community is a wonderful, friendly, and supportive group.
This DID Forum is available 24/7.
This Forum is managed by a team of professionals.
If you have not yet joined in, and if our Forum Community sounds like a place where you wanna be, YOU are invited to join our DDCF Community, even now. Who else understands living with DID better than other folks with DID?!
DDCF is open, available all day and night, everyday. It’s safe, it’s protected, it’s private.
Our friendly members chat comfortably with each other. They talk openly about life as a dissociative survivor, how to manage as a dissociative spouse, how to be a dissociative parent, how to manage the hard days — all areas of life! They share good times, funny jokes, stressful events, therapy gains, and even therapeutic struggles. And all of this is said openly by dissociative people with DID systems.
And yes, inside parts are invited to talk!
How could you benefit from this group?
What would you contribute as a DDCF Community Forum Member?
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 6
The Discussing Dissociation EDUCATIONAL Forum (DDEF) is also open and available. Our Educational Forum is a separate forum membership. The unique difference for DDEF is that both Kathy and Laura participate in the forum discussions. Kathy and Laura ask and answer questions, write responses, provide tips and guidelines about DID in a private forum setting.
Getting personalised responses from DID experts, or reading responses written about a variety of dissociative issues that you experience yourself can be amazingly helpful.
The conversations in DDEF are in-depth, specifically DID treatment oriented, focused on specific DID issues, and target very detailed situations that arise for dissociative survivors. This is the most economical way to get specialized assistance from 2 DID experts.
Contact us for more information about how to join DDEF.
EDUCATIONAL OPTION 7
The Saddest Little Bear Dissoci-ACTION Story Pack is available.
This Dissoci-ACTION Story Pack in a specialized educational resource about DID that you can work on in the privacy of your own home, or for mental health professionals to use in their office with their dissociative clients.
- Now that you know you are DID, do you know what to do?
- Are you new to working with your DID system ?
- Do you have any sad little ones in your system ?
- Do you have any lost ones in your system ?
- Do you know how to reach your insiders ?
- Or how to find your insiders ?
- Do you know what to do with those little ones once you find them or feel their presence ?
When you are first diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), you may feel overwhelmed and utterly confused and at a loss about how to manage a system of inside people.
These first weeks and months of recognizing your internal system can feel chaotic, frightening, embarrassing, noisy, and frankly, far too huge of a problem to address, let alone solve. It can feel like a great big headache!
This Dissoci-ACTION story pack is designed to teach you action steps. You can learn what to do as you begin to meet your dissociative parts.
Click HERE to learn more.
CHOOSE YOUR PREFERRED EDUCATIONAL OPTION
How about all that? That’s a lot of stuff!
Which options are best for you?
I hope any — or all — of these options help you to figure out more about how dissociative you are.
I am confident that these resources will genuinely help you to learn more about dissociation and how to work effectively with your DID system, or with your dissociative clients.
If you have further questions, don’t hesitate to contact the Client Care team for further guidance.
I wish you the best in your healing journey.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2020 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
Related Articles:
- Discussing Dissociation, Five Years Later
- 50 Treatment Issues for Dissociative Identity Disorder
- 20 Types of Dissociative Splits
- My 100 Strengths, as Said by a Group of Dissociative Trauma Survivors
I answer no to those first few questsions yet I am diagnosed DID.
I went an a course run by PODS last week. I asked how to believe I have DID and the psychologist hadn’t made a mistake as I am co conscious, don’t think I lose time, haven’t found things in my possessions etc etc.
Carolyn Spring, PODS director (DID)and leader of the course said he would add that into the diagnosis criteria- if you think you have it (for definite and don’t doubt it) then you probably haven’t. It’s a disorder of denial. Dissociation for the dissociation is common. She said she just remembers when she doubts she has it, that not believing you have it is a part of the condition. I was very grateful for that. Because I don’t feel I fit DID properly even though I met the diagnostic criteria. And feel invalidated every time I read anything about DID because ‘I’m not like that’. I only passed the DES one time…the second time I didn’t come up as likely to have a dissociative disorder. Luckily my psychologist is an expert in the field and we did the SCID-D anyway. And got the diagnosis…which I was shocked by. I thought I might have been what was DDNOS.
What do you think of Paul Dell’s MID?
I found so many of my symptoms in his work that i feel were lacking in other evaluations, and it was such a relief to find these things so specifically listed and expounded on in his writings. I gave my therapist some of his articles because it had just been so hard to pinpoint and describe some of the things i experience, that i wondered if i was the only one. Like sometimes you become so engrossed in what is happening in your head, you have a hard time stepping back from it and questionng it until much much later, if ever. I just feel that he must have really, really, REALLY LISTENED to patients in order to be so comprehensive.. I find this to be true of so many posts that i’ve read here on your site, too, and can you imagine what a help that is to me? Like for instance, your explanation of introjects, but there are many more.
It just seems like there is only one finite picture people have of dissociation, many professionals included, when in my own experience i often find myself thinking, oh, what next?! For instance, re the previous post on alters, to put it as mildly as i can, a slowly dawning realization of a part of me that tells me another part of me is not alive. Sorry.
Anyway, just some thoughts, and many thanks for what you do.
Reblogged this on Discussing Dissociation and commented:
Hello everyone. Through the years, lots of readers come to this blog to learn more about Dissociative Disorders. Working through the free online DES (Dissociative Experiences Scale) has been one of the top searches for a very long time. Have you tried answering the DES questions? Before you do, please have a read of this explanatory introduction written in 2009. And please be sure to take the results to your therapist! Warmly, Kathy
I took a test, can’t remmeber which one but it took awhile, was detailed.
But I KNEW I was fudging.
I knew WHY they(p-doc and SW) were asking the questions.
In retrospect I think I was quietly switching away even as I took the test ROFL!!!
It came out GAD severe!
I’m actually generally not that anxious. I have one part that is only that i know of. LOL!
He wanted me to get another testing done psych something? but it was gonna be like HOURS long testing, and there was long waitlist, so I kinda didn’t bother. I was on seroquel by then and too busy eating my fool head off ….(no longer on seroquel)
My present Dr. she says she got no use for testing and she not fond of labels. They have their place perhaps, but she avoids them where she can. We are ourselves, not a label. She says she can test me if I want, but I don’t see the point myself either.
Ones
Ya it really does depend on who is taking the test doesnt it. I like the MID test by Dell, as it address the full spectrum of dissociative experiences and has a validity scale also. But then again what do I know, 🙂
I never liked this test. I guess it’s a decent screening tool, but that’s all it is. And, as you know, there are many others. What I don’t like about it is that the questions are not in context. “How often have you…” can be interpreted as “in my life” or “in the past week”. And in an inpatient setting when you are more vulnerable, the answers will be different from other times. If you gave this test to someone with DID every day over the course of days or weeks, you would find very different results. Which makes one wonder about how helpful the test really is. I have parts who can take the test and will score low. I have other parts who score high.
http://counsellingresource.com/quizzes/des/index.html
This is same and it’ll score it for you.
Just a random site. Lots sites will score it for you.
depends on who you ask…..
I PWD so I keep it at that.