Each alter personality had a common goal and raison d'etre, namely my survival. They didn't all realize that though, and so were at odds with each other much of the time. So I continued to be fragmented and divided.

Jenny couldn't believe herself a multiple. She was a mother, a nurse, not that screwball who appeared on the screen like some dysfunctional figment of her imagination trying to find a life. Still, she was coming to a realization that accepting who she was would be the jailer's key to liberate her from this cuckoo's nest.

It's one thing to have your partner tell you he or she has multiple personalities, and it's another to walk in on your partner and find him or her sitting on the bedroom floor, speaking in a child like voice, having a tea party with stuffed animals.

Dear little ones, I know this might be scary and confusing right now, but my name is Jade and I'm here to help.

It isn't depression, or anxiety, though it can sometimes appear as a symptom of these better—known conditions. Often, it emerges with cruel ferocity as a chronic disorder completely unto itself.Its destructive impact on an individual’s sense of self is implied in its very name—depersonalization.

Trapped within the confines of his mind, he is too aware of every thought passing through it, as if he were outside, looking in. At night he often lies awake ruminating endlessly about what’s wrong with him, about death, and about the meaning of existence itself. At times his arms and legs feel like they don’t belong with his body. But most of the time, his mind feels like it is operating apart from the body that contains it.

Practically from birth - or so it seemed to him - he had been aware that the elegant, filigreed, eminently reasonable world around him was destined to collapse under its own weight, like some elaborate architectural folly; the obvious response, to any sensible observer, was to have as little to do with such a world as possible.

There’s so much misinformation about dissociative disorder treatment out in the world, and especially on the internet.

No, my GP hadn’t ever heard of dissociative disorders and just wanted to prescribe medication, but I could still build a good, supportive relationship with her.

When I was a kid I used to wonder if, just maybe, the world existed only for me. If rooms ceased to exist when I stepped into the hallway and people disappeared once they left me, the rest of their lives imagined solely for my entertainment.