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How
to help someone with DID
By
Mary Francen
Ok
let me start off saying right here and now that this little girl is not a Dr.
“giggles and plays wif her toy Dr.’s kit” So the things you will read in
this assignment are only the things that I feel or have known to have helped
with me and just one little girls
opinion.
When
I felt like the world was going nuts and everyone was losing it around me, I ran
and hid. I do that a lot when I get scared I hide.
After
facing some traumatic events recently in my life it brought up some very old
events that I thought were long ago dealt with and long gone. I was sadly
mistaken.
To
even get to the point where you are all reading this assignment is a major
accomplishment for me. “Blushes an giggles and sole the credit goes to one
persons tenacity and not giving up on me, even when I had long ago given up on
this particular ability of mine”
But
I was VERY fortunate in that I found this site just about the time that my world
completely started to fall apart. As well as finding a very special person my
uncle. :)
For
me one of the things that have seemed to be the most helpful is that my Uncle is
also my babysitter. He is there for me and “the girls” when my Daddy “who
is my husband is not home”.
In
the early stages of my becoming aware of “the girls” I thought I was going
crazy. I was losing things that I swore to goddess I had just put down
someplace.
I
was “sleeping” so much yet I was always so dang tired I thought I must have
some weird sleeping problem or something. “mild case of sleep apnea aside,
this was much worse than anything that could be explained”.
Eventually
it became clear to me, especially when friends were showing me chats where I
identified myself as someone else. That NO Mary you were not “sleeping” all
the time, but that you had MPD.
Did
this make it any easier to deal with now that I knew what it was? No. In fact
with the things that were happening in my life at that time, it only made me
hide from everything and everyone.
You
may have read the other “story” I wrote in which I mentioned that I know
what it is like to taste Christmas tree, well that is because one of “the
girls” actually was chewing on a piece of my live tree this past year and
didn’t very much like the taste of it, and I was the unlucky one to “wake
up” to find that nasty taste in my mouth and said piece of tree branch.
Now
by this time I can laugh about that incident. But when it happened it was
extremely upsetting to me. What or how can someone help you if you have DID or
MPD.
Well
for me that day I needed to be calmed down when I came back and told first of
all that, no I wasn’t going to die from eating pine. Even though it was only a
teeny little bit I was in a total panic.
Secondly
the person who was there to stop said “little one” from doing a lot of
damage by pulling the entire tree down was my Uncle.
“Yes
this can be done even over a phone, or computer keep in mind “my girls” that
I speak of are children and will respond pretty much like a physical child
would.
Being
a soundboard is another way that someone can help you. I can tell my uncle
anything. And ask him about anything that I do not understand.
In
the beginning there was a great many things that I did not understand about what
was going on around me and within me.
Regaining
back some impedance, to me this was a BIG issue. I had given up driving,
cooking, and doing all of the things that brought me joy.
My
feelings on this were that it just was not safe. I had no idea when I was going
to “fall asleep” so there for it most defiantly was not safe to be driving
or cooking.
This
was a “self made decision and not something that had been handed down by
anyone else. Although Daddy did and still does insist on certain things.
Like
me being on the phone with Uncle or having someone here in the kitchen when I am
cooking. And he also has had to been told that when I am in the car now Uncle
does “the driving thing where he tells “the girls” that they must stay in
there rooms!.
So
yes by now and with Uncle’s help I have started to do those things witch
brought me joy again. :) Including writing, this was something that took Uncle
some time to accomplish but he did manage this feat. :)
How
did he manage to do all of these things your asking? How did he manage to get me
to stop hiding? How did he get me to come out of the shell that I had made for
myself to keep myself “safe” when this all started to happen to me.
Well
with a lot of patience, a lot of talking, “Boy did I answer a lot of questions
“giggles” at times I thought he was the reporter and not me”. A lot of
cuddling, a lot of yanking me out of closet and putting me back into his lap.
“Yes I hide in the closet when I am scared”.
For
me I needed someone to be there for me, to listen to me, to guide me as well as
“the girls”. I needed someone who would look out for my best interests at
all times, because I was not able to.
I
needed and still do need all of those things on a daily basis. And I needed
someone to explain to me that the world was not “breaking in two” and that I
was safe. I needed that said and shown to me a lot.
Every
time I had to tell someone what was going on with me Uncle was right there next
to me, holding my hand, “or more precisely pulling me out from my hiding spot
and holding me in his lap”.
Sometimes
when you tell people who you think are very close to you what is going on, they
are not going to react as you would expect them to.
They
may say it’s ok. I love you no matter what. And a few hours later, they will
actually react in a very different manor, and you will end up losing someone.
So
for me this was a traumatic experience, and I needed someone to protect me from
that. And Uncle did do just that. :)
To
keep you safe from harms, not just ones that you may cause yourself but also
those created by others around you, who you may not even see coming at you.
“A
defender against the masses so to speak”. Someone who you know beyond a shadow
of a doubt is on your side no matter what.
I
needed someone who would also teach me about things; help me through spots in my
life that were adding to the problem. “I.e. stressors” Sometimes this was
done with cuddles and words, other times when a tantrum happened this was done
with a trip over his lap or some other form of punishment.
These things may or may not work for everyone but they did for this little girl. :) basically how to help someone with DID is to just be a constant compassionate, caring and loving person, and to remember that they are still the person that you love.
