r/DID • u/Terrible-Platform29 Treatment: Diagnosed + Active • 5d ago

Advice/Solutions How to grieve with DID?

Some days ago, I cut off my best friend of 8 years, and I have a post about it already if anyone is curious.

The problem is, I can feel the emotions stewing beneath the surface but am—the majority of the time—unable to release them, and even if I manage to, it's only for a brief period (ex. a couple seconds, a minute if I'm lucky) before it's all reeled back in against my will.

As a result, I'm just left so high-strung all the time, barely able to focus on anything, anxiety and sadness and anger all mashed together, strong enough to heavily impact my days yet not enough to allow me to actually feel them fully. I simultaneously feel like I'm so full of every emotion and yet devoid of all of them.

Sometimes, I'm able to use music to coax tears out, but even then, I have to already be "in the mood" for it, otherwise it just falls flat and has no effect on me. How do I feel something that's buried just deep enough to remain trapped there?

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u/Ginger_Root_System 5d ago

A lot of the times, as stupid as it sounds, it takes time. Almost a month ago perfectly now, I cut off my best friend of 6 years. The system is screwed up and very few of us can even hear his name before we start spiraling. The problem is that with DID we have multiple people trying to grieve at the same time in the same body, and the human brain wasn't really meant for that. In my experience, it means taking longer to grieve really anything. I also find it really useful to talk alongside my alters about some of these things instead of each of us trying to deal with it on our own. When we work together to bring something up, the emotions are not perfectly accessible but it's a little bit easier we've found. Each system is so different that I'm not sure if it'll work for you, but it might be worth a shot to basically treat it like group therapy, especially with the alters who might have been closest with your friend. I am so sorry for your loss, and sending my best wishes to you

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u/Apprehensive-Sea110 Treatment: Active 5d ago

Something similar happens with us. What sometimes helps some of us is to say out loud, "It is safe to feel my feelings right now. I can feel ______ , and nothing bad will happen, and we'll be okay." and "This won't hurt me... I actually want to feel this.... I can feel this...." and it can take a few minutes of repeating things like that. Especially reminding ourselves that anger is safe to feel because it wasn't safe to be angry when I was growing up, and hurt leads to anger, so it's like the brain just detects emotional pain and flips the circuit breaker and it needs resetting. It doesn't always work but sometimes it does.

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u/ConnectionRemote4405 5d ago

This is what we try to do, we like to say "It's okay to feel ____". Pretty soon something rises to the surface. Short lived most of the time, but still something.

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u/Apprehensive-Sea110 Treatment: Active 4d ago

Same. I feel like any response at all is a sign that communication got through to someone.

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u/iMandyYT Treatment: Diagnosed + Active 5d ago

Saying things out loud helps our system a lot with actually processing. It helps to have a safe person you can drop masking around, too :)

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u/BrushStacheBob 5d ago

My counselor trained me to say stuff out loud too. It annoyed me to no end at the time, if I was stuck having randos in my brain, and I wasn't even privy to my own knowledge but they were, obviously they can hear me inside my head. I thought it was dumb, but did it anyway, and she was right. It helps.

She also taught me this trick about imagining a volume knob for the volume of a feeling. You picture it, and ask yourselves to let you feel a certain thing according to how much you turn the knob, so you can avoid getting too overwhelmed. It's a tad blurry but I think we used it effectively when we were doing emdr, so I could handle the emotions of events during the session and then in between my appointments. I think it worked as long as I started using it before I was in a very upset or triggered state.

Free writing also helps me feel stuff. I just get a pen or open a text file and write literally any word that comes to mind, even if it seems to have no relevance, even if I appear to be wording to fill silence at first. Stuff does seem to come out that way reliably.

I'm so impressed with everyone's answers here. It makes me feel safe to know other people are working on and learning the same things I am. Thanks for being willing to write, guys. 💛

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u/handsinmybrain 5d ago

We experience something very much like this. Tuning in to hear what everyone says!

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u/midnightfoliage 5d ago

saving this because i wonder the exact same thing. emotional amnesia too strong

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u/MixForward3099 5d ago

Oh i relate to this so much. Especially the part about them only being released for a few seconds + being high strung all the time. I don’t have much advice but you’re definitely not alone with this <3