An Evening in the Life with OSDD

Part of an ongoing series about life with complex post-traumatic stress disorder

This post is a guest post by an other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD) system. OSDD is often similar to dissociative identity disorder (DID), without amnesia. In disorders of structural dissociation, people experience severe trauma before age ten that prevents personality from unifying into a single identity. They usually have many different parts of self, sometimes called alters, that may just hold fragments of traumatic memory, or be complete personalities with their own names, preferences, friends, etc., all while sharing the same body. Most people with OSDD or DID (formerly called multiple personality disorder) also meet the criteria for complex PTSD, so they can be considered a subset of the CPTSD population. Therapy for disorders of structural dissociation focuses on developing internal collaboration, co-consciousness, and communication in addition to management of PTSD symptoms. Eventually, with the right therapies, the parts of self become aware of each other, and can work together in what is termed “functional multiplicity”, and over time, they can try to integrate into a singular, healed self (“integration”, or “final fusion”) if that’s their preference.

My system has several known parts. Here are some of them:

• Elizabeth, adult self — me! That’s who’s writing this article. Present day body age (~38). One of our managers of daily life. This part is what’s called an “apparently normal part”, an ANP. Curious, gentle, and warm.
• George — This part is an “introject”, a part who is modeled after a real person, in this case my abusive father. In the past, this is the part who was most forward at work. We also believe this part is an ANP. We believe that our introjects were created because if we could just be more like our parents, maybe they wouldn’t be so mean to us. Also, by having strong inner critics, we could anticipate punishments, and punish ourselves before anyone else could to make sure the punishments weren’t so bad.
• Mom part — An introject of my abusive mother. Very judgmental, and emotionally immature.
• Teen self — A version of younger me, around age 17. Likes to make jokes.
• Emma — 14 years old, this part is very convinced we are a bad person, and must take care of others including our parents.
• Ellies — A group of “littles”, or child parts ages 3–8, these parts are trauma holders, and often show up little and scared. These parts are not always aware of other parts, though this has improved over time.

We are all part of the same person, in the same body. Parts show up or “come forward” depending on what is happening in our life, and whether we are triggered. As you can tell, not all parts are the same age as the body. And not all parts know what year it is; some are stuck in the past. My goal as adult self is to make sure other parts know that I am with them, to stay online/conscious with them, recognize their needs, and communicate they are safe now. We work together with therapists to learn self awareness, internal communication, and coping skills while processing past trauma. Life as a system can be disorienting, and I wanted to write this piece to provide more awareness of what our day-to-day is like.

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We sit reading at the kitchen table. I come mentally online, and am wondering why we are reading instead of doing our work. I internally ask ourself, “How old do we feel?” We sense inwardly and get the feeling of being a young teenager. The body giggles and our hands come up to our mouth shyly.

“Did I catch you?” I ask out loud.

“Yes!!” Emma trills, “You thought I was adult self!”

“I know, you totally got me!” I note. This has been a thing lately, child parts coming forward for snacks, time on Youtube, or time reading before I notice that it’s not a planned part of the day. We get up from the table together and gather up our things to move on with our tasks.

While working at our computer, a young voice shouts out of our mouth, “Mommy!!” A wave of anxiety washes over our body and we start rolling our swivel chair back and forth to self soothe. “Hi sweetie,” I say, “I am here with you. You are not alone, you are safe. Let’s name five red things we can see.” We look around the room and ground by naming the five things. Orienting to present time is important when we feel scared.

As we continue working, images of cheese crunchies start flashing through our head, along with a sense of urgency. “Are you bored?” I ask. We wander over to the snack cabinet and start shoving snacks in our mouth. “Ok, but only one serving guys,” I add. Little parts are so bored by our work day that I feel bad denying them something fun to eat. We struggle with food in general. We don’t feel hunger cues often, so remembering to eat, and feeling like eating, is hard for us. We’ve tried in therapy to build an internal world for little parts to hang out in and do fun things like go to the park, but they seem to stick with me during the work day sometimes regardless.

We stop in the restroom to brush our hair before our next conference call and see our razor sitting on the bathtub. Images of our eyes slashed by the razor blades flash through our mind. Intrusive thoughts are part of our PTSD. I remind the system that we have rules against self harm and that I will keep us safe.

The work day wraps and we prepare to go outside to take a walk to clear our head before heading to the gym. It’s after sunset and some parts are afraid of the dark and try to keep us from going by picturing the couch or a hot bath, and remind us of the cold outside. We go outside anyway, and as we pass the intersection thoughts of the train running us over flash through our mind. Some part is scared that being outside is dangerous. We continue walking down the street and little parts send me an image of our favorite bubble tea place. I suppress the thought with the response that it’s too late in the day for caffeine, and we’ve already had our sweets for the day. As we walk past the town square, we pass several people, and Mom part chimes in our head, “Stupid fatty uggo! I would die if I looked like that!” about an obese man nearby. Simultaneously we feel her scorn at the man, repulsed by the vitriol of the thought, and ashamed that we still have so much internalized fatphobia, homophobia, and racism.

We think about calling our friend from college. “We hate her, she’s so rude and such a shallow thinker, why do we even talk to her” one part thinks. “But she’s so loyal and if we push away all our friends, we’ll be lonely!” another part worries. “I don’t care, I am so done with her, I can’t stand her for another minute. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to talk to her, seriously.” We decide to call her another day so that we don’t come across as unfriendly — sometimes when parts have strong feelings about people in our lives, they can be hard to hide, and we don’t want to come across as blowing hot and cold to our friends. Parts can exert passive influence on what I am saying and doing when I am fronting — they convince me I think a certain thing or that something is incontrovertibly true because that is how they feel — and it can be extremely hard to distinguish from what I actually think. That is how we spend most of our time, “blended”, where our behavior is influenced by multiple parts. We switch quite often and we only know who is fronting about 50% of the time, based on the tone of someone’s thoughts, or the feelings/impulses we are having (e.g. if we want to color and watch kids’ shows, it’s probably a young part…if we want to read the Wall Street Journal, it’s probably George).

When we get to the gym, we dread the mirrors. It’s hard for us to see ourselves there. For many parts, we look very old to us. Our eyes immediately go to the bags under our eyes, our sad expression, our little tummy pudge. We get started on the exercises our trainer has written for us. “Looks like you’re struggling a bit there, buddy!” George chimes in our head as we do our third set of chest presses. “Pick up the pace!” We ignore him and do the exercises doggedly. Together we have to work to keep the body happy and healthy. That includes eating good food, exercising regularly, staying in touch with friends and ignoring the nudges to be a hermit who never interacts with anyone out of fear of getting hurt. Trauma responses are real!

We head back upstairs. “Now it’s time for dinner!” I announce to everyone. I feel a general lack of enthusiasm. We heat up our food and watch a tv show while we eat. Nothing too scary, so that we don’t get nightmares, which are a feature of our PTSD. Our head turns to the chair in the corner and a wave of melancholy washes over us. Little parts are feeling sad that our foster puppy, who normally sits there, is back at the shelter. “It’ll be ok guys, I know you’re sad, but we’ll have a new puppy soon.” I say. The character on the tv show describes their outfit as a mess. “Your mom is a mess!” Teen part thinks gleefully. It likes your mom and your face jokes a lot. A couple hours later, our phone reminder goes off announcing that it’s bedtime (this helps us stay organized even if we’ve lost track of time). Our body doesn’t move and we’re glued to the tv. People want to keep numbing out! I feel internal resistance from younger parts. They hate going to bed. It means the next day is coming. More work and sitting still and being good and other things they don’t like. It’s hard waiting for change in the adult world. It takes so long to find jobs we like, people we enjoy spending time around, and building a life that is rich and meaningful for all of us. I remind them of all the fun things we have planned for the weekend, and how much better we feel when we get enough sleep.

Reluctantly, we go through our bedtime routine, turn on our glowy nightlight to ward off nightmares, and wait for sleep to come.