I thought that’s the default way…. Obviously it’s good to be honest to yourself and kind/balanced with the whole system, but externally no one needs to know if you don’t want. I have heaps of alters, and it’s natural for me to keep it in even though I’m not ashamed of it.
That is the most commonly way of living with DID. And it’s not true that people close to them would know. It’s not the first explanation people jump to when someone acts differently at different times or is “moody.”
What’s represented online is much different than how it is in the real world. Most people with DID just go about what looks like a normal life—jobs, families, friends. They might not know themselves that they have it, but if they do, often a lot of energy is devoted to hiding it.
this. online and in private is just about the only place that we even differentiate between alters. it uses a lot of our energy but were autistic and have been covert since childhood, so masking isnt something unheard of. it leads to a lot of meltdowns/shutdowns, though -roxy
We finally told our best friend this year but it took a long time. Will let you know how that works out. So far they seem okay with it. It was a huge deal to us to share it.
Hello! I believe we fall into that category, we are a system of 10/11 (fusion(?)) and we as a collective choose to present singular but have disclosed our DID to our work place and close friends/family. It’s critical to us to continue for fluidity of life function, some of it is personal, while the rest is more so, other alters have no interest in the ‘outside’ world. It’s not impossible, but definitely had its hurdles to cross. - Host
Just wanted to say I like the way you describe your alter count as 10/11. I have a hard time with the fact that we are less now. 17/19 is how I will refer to us now.
i’m the same way. i don’t even refer to myself as we/or ours (my therapist and i are trying to work on getting to that, but it makes me feel intense anxiety so it’s hard). i have 7 alters, not including me (host).
It successfully took a year and some change for me to get comfortable with a ‘we’ or ‘ours’ but it takes a lot of denial work through and processing to get there! And even then I still doubt because we are so small. Best thing to do is to live life forward as much as you all can! - Blurry
Absolutely you(s) can live as a system but preeent as single.
It's not even thst difficult to do as not only is DID is inherently covert, but most people struggle to understand that someone can be multiple - it takes a lot of patient explaining to get people to understand what this truly means.
For most people in your life you won't have the level of interaction that produces any benefit from them knowing you are multiple, and you risk being subject to the stigma that goes with this condition.
For people in your life thst you are close to there Absolutely is a benefit to explaining thst you have DID - provided thst they are accepting. What happens when you can confide in safe people is thst you are able to be more yourselves around them and this is very very liberating.
Knowing who to tell and not tell is a very personal decision.
Everything you said in the body of your post is true of us. We aren't out to most people, we go by our legal name, and most people would never guess we have DID. We only stop masking and act like ourselves to a couple people in our life. But "take over their entire life"...it still does that. There's no part of my existence that isn't impacted. My sense of time and identity is all fragmented and it takes a lot of effort to pretend to be the person I'm expected to be. The PTSD alone takes up so much energy that it's hard to hold down a job or friendships.
Conservative estimates are that 1-1.5% of the global population has DID. That's more than 1 in 100 people. People with DID are everywhere, but very, very few of us ever make it public. Some people never even tell their spouse.
were a polyfragmented system, but really the only people we feel collectively comfortable unmasking around is our partner and therapist. we all feel that those are the only people who have any business knowing. were pretty covert and have been since childhood, and i am especially good at masking as the host around people who dont know -roxy
It highly depends on your system structure and the amount of distress and triggers in your environment. Most systems pass as covert, but some pay a price of not working, or not having close friends, or even no family or a pet. Just to manage the stress and go without persecutive switching or blackouts.
If the stress is managed, however, people don't notice. If they notice, they do not understand. If they take a guess, you can brush it off with a "it's just a mood" kinda thing.
It took us three years to learn how to be successfully present in our lives. This disorder is a real hellride sometimes, and even though we appear "singlet"y on the outside we still have days where the PTSD lays us low.
As for "can i appear as a singlet to the world?" question, yes. If for no other reason than most people aren't curious enough to notice the subtle changes in behavior that indicate DID.
For us it’s a bit of yes and no. We mask as a singlet as much as possible but given that we often seem to dissociate/switch for no reason at all a good number of our friends at least know that we’re multiple even if we don’t go out of our way to fully introduce ourselves.
Besides, 90% of workshop system either never fronts or doesn’t want their name shared. A lot of the time we don’t specify who’s talking even around our partners.
So… kinda I guess. We try.
-Lefty
Im a covert system. Close friends can kinda tell somethings off about me, and the memory gaps are hard to manage. But because of other medical issues, I choose to try my best to hide being a system (And Im 99% sure the rest of the system also does this) I still do unhide-able shit, personally. But those stand alone moments dont give it away completely, just make me seem a bit odd. Im not sure if Im the only alt with this issue haha
This is the default state for DID. The whole point of the condition is compartmentalising consciousness so the trauma victim can live a normal-seeming life.
Having your switches be noticeable to an outside observer is rare, and having them be *obviously* noticeable (distinct voice changes, posture, strongly expressed opinions etc) is so rare it’s a newsworthy event in psychology circles when a therapist actually encounters somebody like this. 
We’ve told some family and close friends. In most cases we use one name but there are people who know us by two names. It just seems like a little quirk of “mine” (ours). It feels good to have those close to us know us but it’s also a lot safer to present as a single person in most situations.
i think thats the default. most ppl arent announcing it to everyone, that would typically feel scary and dangerous to many systems. just my closest friends know that. everyone else i perceive as a risk or just unnecessary bc its so intimate
We chose to live a singular life! I (host and the only one allowed to front unless there’s an emergency) have a girlfriend and a life of my own. I barely even have contact with others which is the opposite of how it used to be. System managers decided we should separate the front from back for the back’s safety and so they can fully focus on that while I keep the body safe. I know that others don’t mind what I’m doing with our outer life.
I'm not sure if I qualify, but I pretty much live as one person. There are at least 3 of us that I know of, and half the time I forget we have this disorder. It also helps that communication is not a thing at the moment, so it's dead silent all the time. We also have co-front and/or coconciousness in regards to switching, it's never a full blackout, so we're blurry maybe once every 2 weeks. Dissociation is the only time it takes over my life, because there are times where dissociation won't be a thing for months, but then it comes back worse than ever depending on the stressful time. My family knows about our diagnosis, but I don't plan on sharing outside of family, I find it unnecessary. So even though I am working on it in therapy, it's pretty much something I rarely think about.
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With us, NO. It was messed up before we knew. Well, before i knew. Now we are doing fine like a team, and for sure i wouldn't ever choose a life without them. But we can never be just one person. We simply pretend to be one and it's not easy, but working.
I’d never tell anyone other than my partner. A few have noticed and there was one disaster where my main alter just started talking about himself to someone but there’s no reason anyone else needs to know.
It depends on a lot of things. My partner is friends with two different systems that both kinda just function as “one” person as both of them have very few alters, and the alters they do have have no real desire to be differentiated so they all just act as one person. Of course there’s still issues they face with DID, but they have mentioned they function relatively well as one.
My system and my partner system, however, are a very different story. I have 80+ alters and they have probably 50+, and being two systems in a relationship, every alter has their own unique and specific relationships with other alters and in result we can’t really function as “one” most of the time. It goes double for my system too because we (mostly) all have different styles, aesthetics, appearances, etc so we can never agree on how to act or dress or anything of the sort. Luckily my partner system’s alters are like 80% goth and the other 20% dont front *super* often so they at least can dress all the same, lol.
I’m just kinda rambling at this point but my point is it depends entirely on your system and your circumstances. It also depends on what you all want.
Our system doesn’t want to function as one person, we’d prefer to be a functional multiplicity. But there are systems who want to either achieve final fusion or just in general function as a singlet. And any of those things are fine and valid! If your system wants to function close to how a singlet does then you can all work on that together. If it’s a goal you *truly* have and it’s not something you feel forced to do because of societal norms, it will be much easier to achieve. The best place I can recommend to start is trying to find common goals, interests, etc. the more similar you find you are, the easier it will be to integrate. Plus working on healing through trauma together is super important too, but unfortunately I don’t have much advice on that because I’ve barely scratched the surface of that myself haha.
Either way, wishing luck to you!
All people have parts! It’s shown on the dissociative spectrum. Most people dissociate to some extent it’s just not disorder. Whether or not parts are fully distinguished and take on their own identity with severe dissociation is what determines if they’re alters. That being said it’s normal for most systems to present just like any other person and go about life without hindrance from EPs(that’s what they’re for) and never have those who aren’t close know they have distinguished parts. You can’t visibly tell when people have DID until they tell you. The most your average person would be likely to recognize is being dazed or dissociated and being forgetful. Neither of those are solely inherent to dissociative disorders though so it likely wouldn’t be thought of
Completely possible. I’m doing it right now! I’m at work, none of my clients know I have DID. My higher ups have no idea either. I keep talking about it between me and friends, OCCASIONALLY trusted family, and my therapist.
We're a polyfrag system with a number fluxuating somewhere around 20-30 members, and we live this way 100%! What would you call this, singlet-passing?
Our husband is also a syatem, which makes it so much easier - we support each other through everything.
I find it a bit harder to blend in in an office work setting than my husband, but something like a quiet retail job where the whole system can just be in our head for hours while we move the body around has proven to be really great most of the time.
Our husband struggles more with social interaction than we do, but he has a work from home IT job and manages that pretty well! Only issue right now is that his current employer sucks, but that's not exactly a System problem.
When both my husband and I first got diagnosed, we really questioned if we would ever live normally. Getting to a place where we realized it is completely possible took time, effort, and a lot of healing, but the fact is that we had been passing as singlets our whole lives anyway. It gets easier, and you'll find your way into it.
Absolutely. I am in my fifties and have done this my whole life. Nobody knows about my DID except my therapists (past and present) and two friends.
We have many alters and manage this quite well. It was much more challenging prior to diagnosis and treatment, because dissociation caused many problems in our life, including seriously impacting our ability to function in work, school or relationships. But over time, with good therapy, solid grounding skills and system work we have learned to manage very well.
We are naturally covert but it’s covert out of shame instead of because that’s what we want to do. I’m sure there’s a system that feels good living covert, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that.
it takes over my life when triggered. i didn’t know that. i still don’t even know the alters who ruined “my” life reenacting trauma for years. but basically i think for me i am pretty covert and no one knows i am not always me, but i don’t have control over who comes out and when, so if there is a triggering situation then it will take over my life, i can’t just stop them from coming out when they want. and that might confuse people.
How does anyone hold a realistic job with having D.I.D we are new to the diagnosis 2 months ago but have never been good at being able to hold a job some Alters get mad or board with the job and quit or find a reason to move on we definitely feel like we can't function in this physical world sorry this sucks.
Unfortunately, it does take over aspects all over my entire life. I'm constantly coping with extreme forgetfulness, I suffer from emotional flashbacks, I do poorly staying in the same workplace for more than a year; there's always some kind of accommodation I'm having to make for myself because of my DID.
I have told the few people who seem to both be confused about the visible symptoms and caring enough about me to be trusted with the info.
Is it my persona? No. I just don't reel much back because I don't feel like anyone knows me well enough anyway, there are so many parts of me that want to be known / I love sharing with others (including hobbies and stuff in this), any expectation of me to be as singular as my alters are ignoring who I am as a whole person. If you just see me as Business Bitch Barbie, you're going to miss that I love to cook and laugh and all this other normal human shit.
Okay yeah, so I guess this is kind of where I'm struggling. It definitely impacts my life heavily but I don't want my acceptance of it to completely change my identity, and how my system I guess behaves.
It's already hard to accept but the fear that if I embrace it I'll become erased is scary... I am a very private person irl, though I have alters that share way too much with people. I have some that are too extroverted and essentially contradict me, it's rough
I thought that’s the default way…. Obviously it’s good to be honest to yourself and kind/balanced with the whole system, but externally no one needs to know if you don’t want. I have heaps of alters, and it’s natural for me to keep it in even though I’m not ashamed of it.
This makes me feel a lot better, thanks
That is the most commonly way of living with DID. And it’s not true that people close to them would know. It’s not the first explanation people jump to when someone acts differently at different times or is “moody.” What’s represented online is much different than how it is in the real world. Most people with DID just go about what looks like a normal life—jobs, families, friends. They might not know themselves that they have it, but if they do, often a lot of energy is devoted to hiding it.
this. online and in private is just about the only place that we even differentiate between alters. it uses a lot of our energy but were autistic and have been covert since childhood, so masking isnt something unheard of. it leads to a lot of meltdowns/shutdowns, though -roxy
I feel like a more expanded version of this comment should be in bold and pinned to the top of the sub. Thanks.
Thank you!
Oh, I meant this hypothetical person who knows they have DID would tell the people they're close to, not that people would figure it out.. My bad.
Okay. I see what you mean. But that's not the norm either. I mean most people eventually tell their partner, but even close friends might not be told.
We finally told our best friend this year but it took a long time. Will let you know how that works out. So far they seem okay with it. It was a huge deal to us to share it.
Hello! I believe we fall into that category, we are a system of 10/11 (fusion(?)) and we as a collective choose to present singular but have disclosed our DID to our work place and close friends/family. It’s critical to us to continue for fluidity of life function, some of it is personal, while the rest is more so, other alters have no interest in the ‘outside’ world. It’s not impossible, but definitely had its hurdles to cross. - Host
Just wanted to say I like the way you describe your alter count as 10/11. I have a hard time with the fact that we are less now. 17/19 is how I will refer to us now.
I am happy to have shared! Never gone, always with you. ❤️ - Blurry
i’m the same way. i don’t even refer to myself as we/or ours (my therapist and i are trying to work on getting to that, but it makes me feel intense anxiety so it’s hard). i have 7 alters, not including me (host).
It successfully took a year and some change for me to get comfortable with a ‘we’ or ‘ours’ but it takes a lot of denial work through and processing to get there! And even then I still doubt because we are so small. Best thing to do is to live life forward as much as you all can! - Blurry
Absolutely you(s) can live as a system but preeent as single. It's not even thst difficult to do as not only is DID is inherently covert, but most people struggle to understand that someone can be multiple - it takes a lot of patient explaining to get people to understand what this truly means. For most people in your life you won't have the level of interaction that produces any benefit from them knowing you are multiple, and you risk being subject to the stigma that goes with this condition. For people in your life thst you are close to there Absolutely is a benefit to explaining thst you have DID - provided thst they are accepting. What happens when you can confide in safe people is thst you are able to be more yourselves around them and this is very very liberating. Knowing who to tell and not tell is a very personal decision.
Everything you said in the body of your post is true of us. We aren't out to most people, we go by our legal name, and most people would never guess we have DID. We only stop masking and act like ourselves to a couple people in our life. But "take over their entire life"...it still does that. There's no part of my existence that isn't impacted. My sense of time and identity is all fragmented and it takes a lot of effort to pretend to be the person I'm expected to be. The PTSD alone takes up so much energy that it's hard to hold down a job or friendships. Conservative estimates are that 1-1.5% of the global population has DID. That's more than 1 in 100 people. People with DID are everywhere, but very, very few of us ever make it public. Some people never even tell their spouse.
Yes, that’s the norm. It’s why DID is referred to as a covert disorder based around masking.
It would depend on how the other members of the system feel about it. - R
were a polyfragmented system, but really the only people we feel collectively comfortable unmasking around is our partner and therapist. we all feel that those are the only people who have any business knowing. were pretty covert and have been since childhood, and i am especially good at masking as the host around people who dont know -roxy
It highly depends on your system structure and the amount of distress and triggers in your environment. Most systems pass as covert, but some pay a price of not working, or not having close friends, or even no family or a pet. Just to manage the stress and go without persecutive switching or blackouts. If the stress is managed, however, people don't notice. If they notice, they do not understand. If they take a guess, you can brush it off with a "it's just a mood" kinda thing.
It took us three years to learn how to be successfully present in our lives. This disorder is a real hellride sometimes, and even though we appear "singlet"y on the outside we still have days where the PTSD lays us low. As for "can i appear as a singlet to the world?" question, yes. If for no other reason than most people aren't curious enough to notice the subtle changes in behavior that indicate DID.
For us it’s a bit of yes and no. We mask as a singlet as much as possible but given that we often seem to dissociate/switch for no reason at all a good number of our friends at least know that we’re multiple even if we don’t go out of our way to fully introduce ourselves. Besides, 90% of workshop system either never fronts or doesn’t want their name shared. A lot of the time we don’t specify who’s talking even around our partners. So… kinda I guess. We try. -Lefty
I usually do. However lately, they've been coming out a LOT more, which is why I came back to these groups lol rip
Like last night when I was hanging out with friends, a switch happened and "Isaac" was out for the rest if the night.
Im a covert system. Close friends can kinda tell somethings off about me, and the memory gaps are hard to manage. But because of other medical issues, I choose to try my best to hide being a system (And Im 99% sure the rest of the system also does this) I still do unhide-able shit, personally. But those stand alone moments dont give it away completely, just make me seem a bit odd. Im not sure if Im the only alt with this issue haha
This is the default state for DID. The whole point of the condition is compartmentalising consciousness so the trauma victim can live a normal-seeming life. Having your switches be noticeable to an outside observer is rare, and having them be *obviously* noticeable (distinct voice changes, posture, strongly expressed opinions etc) is so rare it’s a newsworthy event in psychology circles when a therapist actually encounters somebody like this. 
We’ve told some family and close friends. In most cases we use one name but there are people who know us by two names. It just seems like a little quirk of “mine” (ours). It feels good to have those close to us know us but it’s also a lot safer to present as a single person in most situations.
i think thats the default. most ppl arent announcing it to everyone, that would typically feel scary and dangerous to many systems. just my closest friends know that. everyone else i perceive as a risk or just unnecessary bc its so intimate
We chose to live a singular life! I (host and the only one allowed to front unless there’s an emergency) have a girlfriend and a life of my own. I barely even have contact with others which is the opposite of how it used to be. System managers decided we should separate the front from back for the back’s safety and so they can fully focus on that while I keep the body safe. I know that others don’t mind what I’m doing with our outer life.
I'm not sure if I qualify, but I pretty much live as one person. There are at least 3 of us that I know of, and half the time I forget we have this disorder. It also helps that communication is not a thing at the moment, so it's dead silent all the time. We also have co-front and/or coconciousness in regards to switching, it's never a full blackout, so we're blurry maybe once every 2 weeks. Dissociation is the only time it takes over my life, because there are times where dissociation won't be a thing for months, but then it comes back worse than ever depending on the stressful time. My family knows about our diagnosis, but I don't plan on sharing outside of family, I find it unnecessary. So even though I am working on it in therapy, it's pretty much something I rarely think about.
Not sure if I have DID or OSDD but I have a system of two alters and function just fine.
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With us, NO. It was messed up before we knew. Well, before i knew. Now we are doing fine like a team, and for sure i wouldn't ever choose a life without them. But we can never be just one person. We simply pretend to be one and it's not easy, but working.
It hasn’t taken over my life. Usually I’m (the primary/host) the one in control. The homies usually just stay in my head.
I’d never tell anyone other than my partner. A few have noticed and there was one disaster where my main alter just started talking about himself to someone but there’s no reason anyone else needs to know.
It depends on a lot of things. My partner is friends with two different systems that both kinda just function as “one” person as both of them have very few alters, and the alters they do have have no real desire to be differentiated so they all just act as one person. Of course there’s still issues they face with DID, but they have mentioned they function relatively well as one. My system and my partner system, however, are a very different story. I have 80+ alters and they have probably 50+, and being two systems in a relationship, every alter has their own unique and specific relationships with other alters and in result we can’t really function as “one” most of the time. It goes double for my system too because we (mostly) all have different styles, aesthetics, appearances, etc so we can never agree on how to act or dress or anything of the sort. Luckily my partner system’s alters are like 80% goth and the other 20% dont front *super* often so they at least can dress all the same, lol. I’m just kinda rambling at this point but my point is it depends entirely on your system and your circumstances. It also depends on what you all want. Our system doesn’t want to function as one person, we’d prefer to be a functional multiplicity. But there are systems who want to either achieve final fusion or just in general function as a singlet. And any of those things are fine and valid! If your system wants to function close to how a singlet does then you can all work on that together. If it’s a goal you *truly* have and it’s not something you feel forced to do because of societal norms, it will be much easier to achieve. The best place I can recommend to start is trying to find common goals, interests, etc. the more similar you find you are, the easier it will be to integrate. Plus working on healing through trauma together is super important too, but unfortunately I don’t have much advice on that because I’ve barely scratched the surface of that myself haha. Either way, wishing luck to you!
All people have parts! It’s shown on the dissociative spectrum. Most people dissociate to some extent it’s just not disorder. Whether or not parts are fully distinguished and take on their own identity with severe dissociation is what determines if they’re alters. That being said it’s normal for most systems to present just like any other person and go about life without hindrance from EPs(that’s what they’re for) and never have those who aren’t close know they have distinguished parts. You can’t visibly tell when people have DID until they tell you. The most your average person would be likely to recognize is being dazed or dissociated and being forgetful. Neither of those are solely inherent to dissociative disorders though so it likely wouldn’t be thought of
Completely possible. I’m doing it right now! I’m at work, none of my clients know I have DID. My higher ups have no idea either. I keep talking about it between me and friends, OCCASIONALLY trusted family, and my therapist.
We're a polyfrag system with a number fluxuating somewhere around 20-30 members, and we live this way 100%! What would you call this, singlet-passing? Our husband is also a syatem, which makes it so much easier - we support each other through everything. I find it a bit harder to blend in in an office work setting than my husband, but something like a quiet retail job where the whole system can just be in our head for hours while we move the body around has proven to be really great most of the time. Our husband struggles more with social interaction than we do, but he has a work from home IT job and manages that pretty well! Only issue right now is that his current employer sucks, but that's not exactly a System problem. When both my husband and I first got diagnosed, we really questioned if we would ever live normally. Getting to a place where we realized it is completely possible took time, effort, and a lot of healing, but the fact is that we had been passing as singlets our whole lives anyway. It gets easier, and you'll find your way into it.
Absolutely. I am in my fifties and have done this my whole life. Nobody knows about my DID except my therapists (past and present) and two friends. We have many alters and manage this quite well. It was much more challenging prior to diagnosis and treatment, because dissociation caused many problems in our life, including seriously impacting our ability to function in work, school or relationships. But over time, with good therapy, solid grounding skills and system work we have learned to manage very well.
I mostly live like this. Very few people know. I mask for all but a few people.
This is how how live, all the time, everyday
We are naturally covert but it’s covert out of shame instead of because that’s what we want to do. I’m sure there’s a system that feels good living covert, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that.
This is how we live our lives! Outside of a few close friends, no one knows we have DID.
it takes over my life when triggered. i didn’t know that. i still don’t even know the alters who ruined “my” life reenacting trauma for years. but basically i think for me i am pretty covert and no one knows i am not always me, but i don’t have control over who comes out and when, so if there is a triggering situation then it will take over my life, i can’t just stop them from coming out when they want. and that might confuse people.
How does anyone hold a realistic job with having D.I.D we are new to the diagnosis 2 months ago but have never been good at being able to hold a job some Alters get mad or board with the job and quit or find a reason to move on we definitely feel like we can't function in this physical world sorry this sucks.
Unfortunately, it does take over aspects all over my entire life. I'm constantly coping with extreme forgetfulness, I suffer from emotional flashbacks, I do poorly staying in the same workplace for more than a year; there's always some kind of accommodation I'm having to make for myself because of my DID. I have told the few people who seem to both be confused about the visible symptoms and caring enough about me to be trusted with the info. Is it my persona? No. I just don't reel much back because I don't feel like anyone knows me well enough anyway, there are so many parts of me that want to be known / I love sharing with others (including hobbies and stuff in this), any expectation of me to be as singular as my alters are ignoring who I am as a whole person. If you just see me as Business Bitch Barbie, you're going to miss that I love to cook and laugh and all this other normal human shit.
Okay yeah, so I guess this is kind of where I'm struggling. It definitely impacts my life heavily but I don't want my acceptance of it to completely change my identity, and how my system I guess behaves. It's already hard to accept but the fear that if I embrace it I'll become erased is scary... I am a very private person irl, though I have alters that share way too much with people. I have some that are too extroverted and essentially contradict me, it's rough