One of the worst things about having Multiple Personality Disorder is the switching, or self-changing aspects. It ranges from being abrupt and unexpected, to the other extreme, which is sometimes even more nerve wracking (as that can just go on and on until I feel quite insane). Sometimes I am in a situation, fully there, embedded in it, I can't even imagine that there is another soul inside of me. It's completely preposterous, the idea of me having MPD.
An example: I'm driving my car at night. My S.O. is in the passenger seat. We are talking about our relationship, I believe, but nothing particularly upsetting as far as I know. I turn down a street into an upscale neighborhood that is beautiful in the day time; big houses set way back from the street; big old trees, manicured lawns, and pretty flowers in the spring.
As I drive, the streets I turn down slowly become more and more frightening; I feel something lurking. The feeling grows and grows and I fight it off, paying attention to the conversation, switching the radio dial, but finally unwillingly succumbing to the threat. I pull up to a red light facing a four lane street that is pretty busy, leading completely out of this neighborhood and stop.
As I stop the car, a terrified teenage girl immediately takes over the body, her eyes darting wildly to one side, then the other, her heart is racing, her breathing fast and shallow. The man in the seat next to her is a stranger to her; but others inside know him or know of him. I am pounding with my fists to get back out, to take control of the car, and fail. I can hear and see what she hears and sees but I have absolutely no influence on her or on anyone else inside. I am helpless.
The man tries talking to her but it is hopeless. I believe he offers to drive, and this statement blows her terror skywide. The last time she was in a car with a strange man, she was raped at gunpoint.
She grips the wheel in absolute terror and fear, tears flowing down her face. Her body is rigid and prepared for flight. Inside, there is a struggle for control, as she is completely frozen in her fear and has no idea what to do. Others inside know that we cannot stay in this car, in the public street, at a red light. Finally, after some agonizingly long moments, as the light changes from red, back to green, back to red, and so on, some adult is finally able to come out and move the car on a green light. This person knows how to drive, and she drives on.
________________________________________________________________________________
Then there are the other times, I feel people behind my eyelids, shifting, moving about, muttering under their breath, talking to me or to each other, waiting for an opening to jump out and take over the body. As the situation I am in, usually a perfectly normal one, continues on its normal pace apart from me, the inside people get more and more agitated, feel more and more threatened or angry or terrified.
A typical example of this slow takeover of my body is one in which I am talking with my mother, at her house, at a family get-together. She is very controlling and dominating, grasping to control every nuance of every situation, butting into every conversation and issue whenever she can.
I utterly despise and cannot handle well this kind of behavior. It is what I grew up with, every day I was there, with her. I cannot bear it as an adult.
I get angrier and angrier and people inside start popping out, saying inappropriate things, yelling at her, and urging me to get out of that hellhouse.
This happens nearly every time I am there with her, and there is some one else around, especially family members, as being together recreates all that old birth family shit.