Profile of an OSDD System with Q&A

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

This post is a guest interview with 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 with their own names, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, preferences, friends, etc., all while sharing the same body. Most people with OSDD 1 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.

Thanks for taking the time to chat. Who all is in your system?

Hey, this is Elizabeth. Sure, those of us who feel comfortable sharing are outlined below. There are about nine of us. This is written from my perspective as host.

Part: Elizabeth
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Traits: Responsible, nurturing, curious, kind
Role: I am the adult lead of our external life. I try to be co-conscious at all times in the external world (I think I reach that about 80% of the time). I keep us adult enough to function, and work on building internal community, collaboration, and communication. I serve as a healthy parent figure for our child parts for them to try to build secure attachment. I am not sure when I formed, my memory is not great and starts most clearly a few years ago.
Hobbies: Art, reading, hanging with friends and visiting museums
Mannerisms: Warm smile, gentle laugh

Part: George
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Traits: Superior, erudite, cerebral, “tough love”, skeptical
Role: George is an introject of our father. Importantly, he is not our father, and does not want to be like him. He used to front professionally and be us at work. Now, he helps get a lot of adult tasks over the finish line when we’re dragging — e.g. attentive driving when we’re tired, etc.
Hobbies: Business books, reading New York Times
Mannerisms: Stroking our chin, tapping our feet, crossing our arms, raised eyebrows

Part: Emma
Age: 14
Gender: Female
Traits: Self deprecating, full of doubt/shame, fear of authority figures, anxious
Role: Emma is a version of us at age 14, like an impression who has formed. She may be a trauma-holder.
Hobbies: Painting
Mannerisms: Rocking back and forth

Part: The Ellies
Ages: 3–8
Gender: Female
Traits: Silly, goofy, joyous, young
Role: The Ellies (there are 3 of them) help us access joy and appreciate life. They are our youngest system members. They are an imprint of who were at those young ages — Ellie is what our family called us, and so it is their collective identifier. They used to hold a lot of trauma/panic/fear. It was scary for them to front by themselves in the adult world before I learned to be co-conscious with them.
Hobbies: Arts and crafts, going to the park, cooking, playing with our guinea pig
Mannerisms: Jumping up and down, covering our mouth

Q&A

How do you identify?
Like many systems, our collective gender identity is nonbinary. Our individual genders vary across a spectrum depending on the part.

When did you form?
We formed during the body’s childhood, but it was only after a triggering event about six years ago that we became aware of each other. Before, we would be told things like, “wow, it’s almost like you are a different person at home than at work”, and had a lot of conflicting desires/beliefs/impulses, which made us feel constantly pulled in different directions. But we didn’t know it was possible to literally be different people!

How did you figure out you were a system?
We started having dissociative experiences that we couldn’t explain, and our trauma therapist referred us to a specialist for evaluation. It was pretty hard and scary at first because we didn’t know how to communicate with each other at all. Kind of a fronting free for all.

How will you get better?
Some systems prefer to stay multiple their whole life; they want to live in collaboration and cooperation called functional multiplicity. We see functional multiplicity as a step on the way to integration (parts combining with each other) and final fusion (all parts become one identity with the strengths of all pieces). Trauma therapy and structural dissociation therapy are the key components to improve, usually in combination with psychiatry.

What does this mean for your daily life?
Well, it means that we have to balance the time we have in a day with a broad range of interests, ideas, and proclivities. We try to be relatively democratic with our “body time share” and often take votes to make choices when we disagree. There is a lot of collective facilitation, coaching, and management on Elizabeth’s part. It also means that we have to approach each other with a lot of curiosity and compassion — we have very different personalities and ideas and it can be hard to get along.

Who fronts most of the time?
We all show up depending on our triggers (both positive and negative), but Elizabeth is our main host and she strives for dual awareness — always being co conscious with whoever else is fronting. It’s like a buddy system. She currently does that around 80% of the time.

Where do you live?
In the external world, we have a nice home. In the internal world, we also have our own home with different rooms for different parts.

What is the hardest part of being a system?
Well, disorganized attachment is hard. Having some of us be secure, some anxious, and some avoidant means we get pushed and pulled around a lot with relationships. And, PTSD is very tough to deal with, so flashbacks/nightmares/depression. We didn’t learn a lot of the things most people learn growing up in terms of emotional regulation and interpersonal skills.

It’s also hard for our system members who are “littles”, or children. Because our body age is adult, they can’t run and play and hang out with kids their age, because other kids do not see our body as the same age as them.

Elizabeth also really struggled with being a system parent at first as she got to know our littles. Can you imagine being a parent 24/7, where your kids can read your thoughts? When you never expected to be a parent to begin with? She had to learn a lot of parenting skills on the fly.

What is the best part about being a system?
We are never alone, which is nice. We are very rarely bored and always have a ton of things we want to do. And we all have strengths that we bring to life.

How can someone come out to someone as a system?
Part of the reason we’re participating in these articles is to help with that. Here’s a script we’ve used with our friends (adapt as you like):

“Hey all, I wanted to come out to you as plural. Plural is a term used to describe people who are OSDD/DID systems. Dissociative disorders are caused by childhood trauma, and it means that someone’s personality does not fully integrate into one adult, instead leaving multiple consciousnesses in one body (this used to be called multiple personality disorder). It’s a compartmentalizing coping mechanism so that some parts of a person can go on with daily life, while the other parts hold onto traumatic memories.

We were diagnosed about [x] years ago, and have about [x] known members of our system, including our host [name], who you know well. We are working together in therapy to integrate into one person over the next few years, but it usually takes a while.

Unfortunately, OSDD/DID are highly stigmatized disorders, so we cannot be very public about it with our friends/family/colleagues. We just wanted to come out to you because we feel you are safe people, and so that we could use collective pronouns around you and be more authentic when we catch up.

We are happy to answer any questions that you have — there are many funny or silly parts of life of being a system. You can read a sample day in the life of a system here.

It doesn’t really mean any changes for our friendship. We probably won’t “switch” in front of you and [host] will likely continue fronting the most around you. We don’t want to make you uncomfortable, we just want to be able to be ourselves.

Unlike movie portrayals of multiple personalities, in most real life cases it’s a very subtle disorder (94% of systems are covert) and most people mask easily as “singlets”. But we are trying to create more spaces where we don’t have to mask, because it can be tiring to constantly edit the narrative of your life to make it easier for other people to consume. If you have any forms of neurodiversity, you probably can relate.”

I heard your have done some research on integration, what did you find?
Sure, I do not define myself by the success rates below because they are 40 years old, before most of the treatments existed, but they are interesting.

Really old studies on integration say:

• After three years, 5/18, or 28% of clients had integrated
• Over ten years, 83/123, or 67% of clients integrated

A therapist we know says major factors for integration (which she notes does typically take multiple years) include:

• Successful cultivation of dual awareness of wise self ANP and EPs
• Building a trust-based relationship between wise self ANP and other parts
• Adult parts learning to provide missing experiences, secure attachment, and safety for younger/other parts to grow/heal in relationship and begin to trust

Research additionally suggests that factors for integration success include:

• Continuing specialized treatment
• Not switching therapists frequently
• Age — children and teenagers integrate dramatically faster (2 years vs. ~6 years)
• Avoiding re-incidence of trauma

What should you do if you think you are plural?
Search the ISSTD directory for a therapist who can do at least a telehealth evaluation in your region (also try Dissociative Disorders on Psychology Today). And, join communities like The Plural Association for peer support and the reddits for the different conditions.

What should I do if I’m a system in crisis?
Reach out to Crisis Text Line (TPA Warm Line might be available soon!)

River Oaks Trauma Inpatient (LA), McLean, and Sheppard Pratt’s (MD) dissociative programs are the best in the country for dissociative clients in crisis.