Living with a Shattered Mind – Insight on Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Trigger Warning!! Some content may not be suitable for all readers due to covering topics of: mental illness, physical abuse, sexual abuse, religiously affiliated abuse, satanic ritual abuse, and potentially more. Know-It-All Magazine is dedicated to giving people a space to share their own truths’ and stories, so please be cautious of what you know may lead to stress.

For more information on Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), click here.

A Submission from Dhara Rose Rainier

Living in a world when you feel like you’re floating isn’t living at all. Over time you begin to adapt to the floating, sometimes you can feel your surroundings on the edge of your fingertips. Other times you float so far from your body everything evaporates into the air.

In the evaporation, your sense of self, emotions, gravity, personality, and self-worth dissipates into the air. Eventually, it forms clouds filled with rain and lightning. Before you know it, you become a dark cloud that threatens to become a storm in a moment’s notice.

My name is Dhara, and this is the easiest way to explain my experience as a Satanic Ritual Abuse survivor with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Maybe you’ve heard of it, more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder.

You’re more than likely completely oblivious to what DID is and how it is formed in desperate times, The media has allowed a narrative of stigmatizated presumptions based on zero research.

In extreme, prolonged trauma the child may begin to dissociate creating a fragmented consciousness that is unable to integrate around the age of nine. Although my DID was a purposeful tool used by the cult & my abusers I lived with, the experience of dissociation seems to streamline across the systems of DID. DID comes from a place of survival. The person who experiences DID must dissociate from one’s self to survive whatever they are experiencing, in most cases, it’s life or death situations.

Each person dissociates differently, I feel dissociation in different ways depending on the situation. Sometimes I am moving through the air; weightless, emotionless, and completely unaware of what my mind and body are experiencing or doing.

I suffer from amnesia. I cannot recall most of my life. There have been instances where I will lose 48 hours at a time, and when I am present in my body again I usually go through a plethora of reactions and emotions; because living a life without knowing what you’re doing will inevitably cause destabilization.

I call my other “personalities” parts. I call them parts because they are not separated from me, they are most definitely a part of me, a version of me. This is then distributed into systems of parts that exist within me for various reasons and they all have their roles to fulfill.

When I was a child, I was exposed to extremely horrific rituals. Some of the members would make other children and I act out their deepest, most despicable, sadistic sexual fantasies. I was lucky enough to live, but in many cases, the little children I met didn’t live past four months.

Without proper care (water, food, etc) their small bodies weren’t able to meet the demanding needs of the abusers. I cannot tell you about each time I was abused – I can only remember a handful of the abuse, but there are parts of me that are stuck in those memories, in their altered states of consciousness that they relive every moment of every day.

There is a part of me & she lives in a world surrounded by four concrete walls, a freezing floor, blood between her legs, starvation, fear, and in complete isolation. I can feel her in times of extreme stress. I dream of her life, and it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like a movie that is always on replay, but without the emotional attachment to these memories, I was able to live through my real-life nightmares. She is a part of me. She holds things I cannot conceive or know all at once. If all of the memories that she holds were to suddenly become apart of my conscious memory I would spiral out of emotional control. She is pertinent to my life, even now.

I live a life, and that within itself is a victory, even when I cannot see it as anything but a burden. Though I am not currently experiencing trauma, I experience the terror and repercussions of Ritual Abuse. For nineteen years I was subjected to constant trauma, it was never just one or two experiences of trauma.

Every day I struggle, but these two things keep me in an anxious mindset that does inherently affect my day-to-day life.

1. Believing my memories and that I did indeed experience a life full of injustice.

2. That DID is real (for me). I am an extremely academically driven person, I have read books upon books of research and proof that DID exists, but I am also human. I have been brainwashed by media and other incompetent therapists that have made me believe that my experience is not real, that I am attention-seeking, and that I am Bipolar or have Borderline Personality Disorder. And in a way, I have always known I had other parts.

I know deep down my life as I am sharing it with you is real. It is real because I wake up in pure terror as my dreams, my body, and my parts scream their memories into my consciousness. I know this is real because when I saw pictures of me as an infant and as a toddler, I immediately threw up. I know this is real because I always feel like I am in danger. This is real to me.

The gaps of memory that seem like a nightmare when I begin to remember. It’s the trust and vulnerability that I am just now learning. I am emotionally growing. I know now that my thoughts of fleeing and dying are coming from a part of me that has been exposed to nothing but pure darkness.

This part is in a dark place, they are desperate to end their suffering. They contribute to my past with extreme self-harm, a handful of suicide attempts, disordered eating, and my lack of sleep as they are unable to hold any more nightmares. With this comes communication between me and my parts. When things become emotionally unbearable I reach for them to help pull me through so the other part doesn’t take my life.

I am still in the very, very early stages of complex trauma treatment. I am nowhere near perfect and in control of my dissociation, regardless of what the world believes I should have accomplished thus far in extensive therapy.

One of the other objectives I hope to meet is for those of you who are considering going to therapy, those of you who feel hopeless because your journey hasn’t met the standards and societal expectations – I see you. I cannot stress enough that everyone goes into therapy at their speed.

You will go through hills and valleys. Sometimes you will be as high as mountains climb with success and happiness, other times you will be as deep as the oceans dive in sadness and failure. What is the most important thing to take away from therapy is that you are ever-changing. You will always grow even when it is invisible to you. You have to have faith in your resilience and keep your eyes towards small victories.

I am an artist, a musician, a fierce friend, a dedicated partner, a grower, an activist, an advocate, but at the end of the day, I am merely human.

I ask that you take a moment to understand the importance of kindness and empathy in a world that has completely silenced survivors of Ritual Abuse. Complex trauma is all around us, the statistics show that DID is just as common as Anorexia. It exists, & the damage society is causing by turning a blind eye is costing children their lives – even if they live through the abuse, the healing journey will take most of their life.

My hope lies in the belief that people want to do good, regardless of evil influences. In my lifetime, I dream of reaching those who do inherently good deeds; that those who align with goodness and my aspirations believe they will extend their hands to those of us lost in the darkness of merely surviving atrocious traumas. My aspirations for change are ingrained to my core, although this article is short I am handing you a truth.

With this truth, I ask that you educate yourself & others in preparation that you will meet someone with DID & hopefully you will treat them as a human being deserving of your love & compassion.

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Follow Dhara’s Instagram here