Dissociative Identity Disorder and SSA

Dr. Maggie Bell is an Australian composer of music, who experienced sexual, physical and emotional abuse by her brother for 17 years, from the ages of 5 to 22 years. For Maggie, the prolonged severe abuse she endured resulted in Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), in which different memories, reactions and feelings were isolated into separate parts of her personality. Her doctoral thesis project was a series of musical works, composed by her parts, either separately or in collaboration.

Listen to Maggie's music here: www.maggiesmusic.com.au

Learn more or follow Maggie via her LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/maggiesmusicdid

Hello, I’d like to talk about incest!

Did you notice what just happened? How you may have tensed your back a little, squirmed in your seat.

Very few people want to think about any type of incest, let alone sibling sexual abuse. It’s taboo, something so painful it might make you… crazy…

Well, I’m not so crazy, but I am wounded.

My own wounding resulted in over 60 dissociative identities or multiple personalities, as a result of prolonged severe incest and abuse from the age of 5 to 22.

Being a victim of incest and having a highly misunderstood diagnosis are both deeply steeped in shame and stigma. I want to break the conspiracy of silence that has surrounded my own and other victim-survivors lives.

Dissociative responses to trauma are common, especially in young children and in overwhelming and prolonged traumatic situations. Usually they take the form of “leave-taking”, a way to distance oneself from the reality of what is happening, such as floating above your body; time distortion (slower or faster); feelings of unreality (depersonalisation and derealisation); and amnesia. These are highly protective coping mechanisms to help at the moment of overwhelming trauma.

When ongoing, severe, repetitive trauma occurs during childhood development at the time a cohesive sense of self is usually forming (before the age of nine), these repetitive dissociative experiences can become states-of-being that fail to integrate. Instead, they become isolated self-states with their own sense of identity, memory, feelings and behaviours. Although these dissociative identities help a person cope, if they cause impairment or distress in at least one area of functioning (school, work, relationships, self care etc), the condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder can be diagnosed.

Prior to my doctoral thesis, I had not publicly disclosed my diagnosis and its cause. I have now been able to do that through composing music. This artistic research involved 14 new musical compositions, with a written explanation to go with each. To my knowledge, this is the first time a dissociative identity system has published an investigation into how different parts feel and relate to each other, communicated through musical composition.

Some pieces were composed by small groups of the previously scattered voices, or parts, who held different aspects of certain themes, such as suppressed rage, while other pieces reflected the struggles of daily life and were created by nearly all parts, each composing the

sections relevant to them.

Through that process I came to identify, know and accept my dissociative identities better than I ever had before, and my parts came to know and accept each other and work together collaboratively. That has been a game-changer for me. And breaking my silence about what happened to me and how it has affected my life has also been a game-changer. I realised how soul-destroying being silent about your own truth can be. And I stopped being ashamed. 

Your takeaway from this might be about this weird multiple personality music composer. Having multiple personalities brings to mind TV series and movies of dramatic switches and serial killers. Actually, most of us are just people you would never notice, carrying our wounds in hidden silence. 

I hope that by hearing a bit of my experience of living with DID, you will have more understanding and be able to talk about it in open conversations, which in turn helps to reduce stigma and shame. Maybe you can personally relate to this description of DID, within yourself or in someone close to you.

I hope you will also remember that there are many victims of incest and many sufferers of Dissociative Identities, who have not yet found a voice and can be hidden in plain sight. Learning more about DID might help you understand yourself or those around you. https://www.aninfinitemind.org/ would be a great place to start.