NEW 30 Days of DID Challenge

This challenge is equally open to people with OSDD-1.

Day 1

What lead you to realize you were not a singlet? Did you start to come to this realization on your own, or did it take feedback of some kind from others around you to catalyze you into it? When was this in your life? [As many alters can answer this with as many different perspectives as your system likes.]

Day 2

When you first became aware of your system, did you already know about DID? If so how much, or how little? Did what you knew make it less intimidating, more intimidating, or both in different ways? If you did not know, what was your experience of eventually finding that information?

Day 3

If you have been officially diagnosed [by a professional, whether it is on record or off record], how did getting that diagnosis verified feel? What thoughts did it prompt in the different members of your system? Did getting a diagnosis play any role in what therapy options were made available to you? In your own private recovery work, did getting an official diagnosis smooth any difficulties?

Day 4

If you are officially diagnosed, how does having that diagnosis impact the struggle of denial? How does this compare to the difficulties of dealing with it prior to diagnosis? If you are not yet officially diagnosed, does this fact play any significant role in your grappling with denial? If so, how do you feel that having an official diagnosis would help?

Day 5

Do all parts of your system equally accept that you all exist and that the explanation for your [distinct] existence is DID? If not, what are the different levels of acceptance throughout your system? Do some people accept that the rest of the system exists but not that the explanation is fragmentation? If so, what other explanations do they cling to?

Day 6

When you first became truly aware of being a system, how was the [internal] communication between different parts of the system? Did some have better than others? If you are not still in that stage now, how has the communication level improved over time? What tricks and tools have helped to achieve that?

Day 7

Did you ever have to, or do you now, rely on external means of communication between any parts of the system? If so, is this out of an inability to communicate internally, or more a matter of preference/habit/record-keeping? Do you use a combination of internal and external? If so, when is each more prevalent?

Day 8

Do you journal to each other, or at least with the intent of each other seeing what’s written? Do you confide in each other, and ask one another’s opinions or advice on things? To what extent do you feel comfortable being emotionally vulnerable to one another? If you do not, what would make it easier for you?

Day 9

Does your system experience much effective co-consciousness [effective = co-fronting with coordination, co-consciousness without much blurring, and blending]? Are some parts of the system able to do this better or more easily than others? If you do, how does it benefit your functioning? If you don’t, how do you hope it would benefit you?

Day 10

Has your system learned how to cooperatively switch [switch at relatively free will, upon mutual agreement between the parts in question] yet? If not, does that sort of team work seem far off for your system? Why? If you have, what enabled you to get to this point? What advice would you have for those still struggling?

Day 11

If you have one of the forms of the disorder that includes informational/event-related amnesia, how pronounced has your experience of missing time been? Were you always aware of it or did you demonstrate “amnesia for your amnesia” as it’s sometimes put, where it is masked? If you were not, how was that symptom brought to your awareness?

Day 12

If you do have one of those forms of DID/OSDD-1, and have become aware of those gaps in memory occurring in your regular life, how do you feel about that? Do different people in the system who have large amounts of [event] amnesia feel different ways about it, or is there a consensus?

Day 13

To what extent are you aware of the emotional amnesia between different parts of the system? Do some people have more of an awaress (either while co-conscious, or while looking back) of how other people in the system feel about events? Do most of you find each other’s emotions baffling? To what extent does this disconnect impede your functioning or communication?

Day 14

For those who have been in the recovery process for a while, has your level of emotional amnesia (at least for people with whom one was co-conscious, in the case of systems with a default of event/informational amnesia) decreased as you’ve progressed through treatment? If so, what brought that about? What differences has it made to your ability to understand one another’s perspectives?

Day 15

For those who have DID or a form of OSDD-1 that includes the presence of amnesia as a default, but who have been in recovery for some time, has your general level of amnesia decreased as you have healed? What was it like to find that you could remember an increasing amount of what goes on even when you personally aren’t fronting? How does it feel now to look back and compare that to when you still dealt with event/informational amnesia in your everyday life?

Day 16

Do you, or have you ever, received therapy geared toward treating DID? If so, was it with someone who was formally a dissociation and/or trauma specialist? If you have worked with both specialists and non-specialists, which experience was more useful to you and why? If both were equally useful but in different ways, what were the pros and cons of each?

Day 17

If you have not received therapy geared specifically toward treating DID, have you received more general therapy? If so, which style or styles (e.g. CBT, DBT, etc) were used? [This can be answered by people who said yes above. Just specify that you did.] How did these help you in dealing with the difficulties of living with your trauma and with the challenges of DID?

Day 18

Aside from formal therapy, are there any support groups or other forms of organized counseling/healing (such as in your church, synagogue, mosque, or other spiritual congregation) that have provided you a safe place to work on your recovery? How were these things the same as formal therapy? How where they different?

Day 19

What has been your support network in your efforts toward recovery when it comes to friends? Have there been people with whom you’ve shared some of what you’ve gone through? If they were supportive, in what ways has having their support benefited you and made it possible for you to accomplish more in your recovery?

Day 20

Do/es your signicant other(s) -if applicable- know that you have DID? If so, do they support you in your recovery and healing work? Is there any way in which having that support from a partner impacts you more deeply or differently than having it from someone who has a different role in your life? If so, how, and why do you think that is?

Day 21

Do all of you agree about wanting treatment/therapy (wanting to work formally on recovery)? If not, who/how much of the system feels in favor of it, and why? Who/how much of the system feels opposed to it, and why? What do you think might help make those in the later category come around and become more willing to work on healing? If your system is not in that position now, but once was, what brought about the universal understanding that recovery had to be a priority?

Day 22

If you have any permanent body modifications (piercings, tattoos, other) or semi-permanent ones (hair dye, hair cuts, etc), were these agreed upon by the whole system, or did a limited number of people participate in those decisions? How does your system assess who gets to make or contribute to those decisions? Has there been any conflict over these topics in the past? If so, how did you end up coming to a resolution?

Day 23

Do you all take part in the same social circles? If not, how has that made forming close bonds more difficult? Are there any things it has made easier? When it comes to close friendships, do you find yourselves drawn to the same kinds of people? Does someone becoming close friends with one part of the system tend to act as a bridge for other parts of the system to join in on that bond? If the answers are different for general social circles vs specific close friends, why the distinction?

Day 24

Do you decide upon romantic partners (regardless of all having the same variety of interest in them) as a group? Does everyone in the system have to feel comfortable with a person on some level for dating or having a romantic relationship with that person to be on the table for any of you? If not, why not, and who then makes the decision? Do the different parts of the system who are old enough to and interested in dating/having romantic relationships do so in any sort of interconnected way? If you all share a partner or limited set of partners, how do you coordinate things in those relationships so that no one part of the system gets neglected?

Day 25

Do you all have a career or general field of study (or two) upon which the majority of you can agree? If not, is that largely because of individual indecisiveness or collective inability to come to a consensus? If you do have a career or field of study upon which you can agree, what is it, and how did you reach that decision?

Day 26

Do you have different handwritings/different variations on your handwriting? To what extent do these/have these differed? CAN you use each other’s handwriting (or a standardized one) if you want to? Did you notice that you had different writing styles before or after you became aware of each other? Did you notice it yourself or did someone have to point it out to you?

Day 27

Do the people in your system have the same accent/have the accent from where you grew up? If not, is there a wide array of accents or only a few exceptions? Have any differing accents caused you any difficulty by drawing unwanted external attention in the past? What about the pitch and timbre of different alters’ voices? How comfortable do various people in the system feel speaking in their own natural accents/voices externally?

Day 28

Different parts of a system frequently demonstrate different posture, body language, and/or gestures. Have you noticed any particular changes in those things between when one person is fronting and when another is? Are there people/groups of people who share similar mannerisms while another section of the system may be grouped together with a different set? Are there any mannerisms that tend to be fairly universal?

Day 29

Are you aware of any physical medical differences between alters? These might include (for reasons that range from metabolic fluctuations to conversion symptoms) different responses to allergens, tolerance levels to various substances, variations in eyesight or hearing, chronic pain levels, and more. Do any of you deal with an external physical disability or challenge that the rest of your system does not? What recommendations do you have for others in coping with such things?

Day 30

Are you aware of any psychological medical conditions that are present in one alter but not in the rest of the system? This does not apply to things that are neurological like schizophrenia or autism. Nor to things like major depression and PTSD, which are experienced by the entire system regardless of whether their symptoms are equally demonstrated by each part specifically. Instead it refers to things like anxiety disorders, PDs, OCD, etc. How do you cope with and support each other through dealing with those conditions? What advice do you have for other systems who might be facing the same?

Bonus:

What is one goal your system has for recovery over the course of the next year? It can be for any part of the system, for a specific issue or across the board, for something that is big picture or fine print- anything you feel like sharing.