My daily struggles with DID

"Waking up feeling uncertain about who you are is quite uncomfortable, but imagine feeling that way every day for weeks upon weeks and into years."

To clarify and for transparency, my name is Siobhan, you can also refer to me as Suna, and I am simply an alter that’s a part of our system. I don’t find it necessary to express my role in the system, but I will say a part of my role is trying my best to keep things under control in terms of conflict. 

For this post, there are so many heavy feelings that come up for me, but I’ve decided that we need to live in our truth as a DID system. After our recent hospitalization in September of 2025, we received two diagnoses. One was Unspecified Psychotic Disorder, and the other was a differential diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The reason it’s a differential diagnosis is because according to our care team at the hospital, it shares symptoms with our psychotic disorder; despite this, they say they’re almost 100% sure that we have dissociative identity disorder but admit their cautiousness around diagnosing it. They still set us up with therapy to cope with the disorder, where we’ve now received an official diagnosis. 

Due to the disorder, we constantly struggle with memory issues which get in the way of school, work, and basic relationships. We miss so many deadlines because of this, unless we put it in our planner or on our calendar across from our bed. Sometimes, daily functioning is hard due to heavy dissociation, making it hard to consistently get up for school or attend work, if we had a job placement. 

For school, during our previous semester, we kept things somewhat under control by consistently inputting events and assignments into our planner. But even with this planner on hand, some of us aren’t the best with getting things done, and that’s okay. We all have our own personality traits and flaws, and one of those include procrastination. But if procrastination isn’t an obstacle, then it’s the unpleasant dissociation that sometimes takes up all of our day. And while some say to push through it, it’s not easy to do so, especially when it takes a mental, emotional, and even physical toll on us. It’s easier to understand once one is in our shoes, but I wouldn’t recommend wanting to feel even a fraction of our pain and struggling. 

Unlike school, many jobs are less willing to understand even though they are supposed to be accommodating. But in NYC, one of the most expensive cities, money is one of the main priorities and anything or anyone that seems like they need extra resources is viewed as an inconvenience and not hired. There's a lot of factors into why we aren't hired yet, but we feel that our disorder is one of the biggest obstacles in terms of us getting hired and maintaining a job. 

A huge part of us wished we were exaggerating, wishing that life was just a little bit easier for us, but unfortunately this is our truth. Waking up feeling uncertain about who you are is quite uncomfortable, but imagine feeling that way every day for weeks upon weeks and into years. But of course, when we were younger, we didn't know what such a feeling would be called. Now that we have answers, it feels as if it's up to us to find a way to navigate the world and survive.