BDSM With DID

by Amaranth

BDSM with a mind broken into many identities

"Broken Toys" - a very apt name for a website about subs and bottoms with mental health issues. And I do often feel like a broken toy, not just because I don't function like other people do and thus might be broken, but because my mind is literally "broken", fragmented in many parts and pieces. I, or more correctly, we, deal with what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder and now is often called Dissociation Identity Disorder. It means my mind is divided in many "parts" or "inner people", or what the professionals call "alter egos" or "alters". (Though you should keep in mind many multiples do not like the term "alter" because it makes our inner people feel like they're not considered full persons, and it's very important for all of us inside to be taken seriously).

In this essay I use the word sub rather than slave. A slave is normally perceived to be required to obey the rules 24/7, and this situation is in my personal experience not feasible with a sub with DID, who will have many different people inside. There might be only one or a few who would be happy to be a slave, maybe more who are subs and/or bottoms, and maybe some parts who do not enjoy BDSM at all or are only submissive in a non-sexual way. So I keep to the term sub, even if that doesn't mean all of the inside people want to act as your sub (or that it would be healthy for all of them to act as your sub), to keep it simple. All the ideas in this paper are just that, ideas and advice, and if they don't work for your situation, please take what sounds useful to you and leave out the rest. Even if your sub has DID as well, every person is different, and every sub with DID is even more different.

Not all multiples become split up like this because of childhood trauma, but a significant amount of us do. It is what most health care professionals consider the reason for the existence of MPD or DID, along with an ability to go into trance really easily (high hypnotizability) and a higher than average IQ (over 130), needed for all the parts of the mind to be able to create separate identities. Along with these personality quirks, a mind may fragment as a child when they are confronted with caregivers who show inconsistent behavior, abusive one moment and loving the next, so that the child is not able to encompass all the proper reactions in one identity. The reaction to the wildly swinging behavior creates a similar setup in the mind of the child, which shatters into more identities. Sometimes such identities are aware of each other ("co-conscious") under some circumstances, but the most important functional insiders (especially the one(s) that show the face to the public, often called the "host") may not be not aware of what is going on at all They may lose time, find themselves in places and situations and not remember how they got there, find clothes (and in my case toys) in their closets they don't remember buying, and to the outsider it can look like they have one opinion or idea one time and something completely opposite and different 5 minutes later.

There are more than a few of us into BDSM; I have met more than I can count on fingers and toes on Fetlife.com alone. Most people will tell us we should not be into BDSM at all. My therapist, for example, is very opposed to my sexual expressions. Unfortunately, I see being a bottom or sub as being the only option for us to express our sexuality. I have people inside who do not like sexuality at all, but they are still very submissive in a service-oriented way; they don't express it with sex but with things like caring for the food and household of our partner, Dom, and (to some of us) Daddy, Lamentation. If we can be sexual, it will be with pain and force, because gentle sex actually is more scary to us and more triggering (making us nervous and panicked) than physical pain and force. But what we have also found is that in order for us to feel safe and relatively sane (or as sane as we can be) in such a relationship, it has to be clear that the force, and the statements that our opinion doesn't matter, is only an illusion. In reality, my Dom/partner/Daddy Lamentation puts my well-being almost always over his own in sexual matters. He has needs and they will go before my wants, but he always puts my needs at the top of his list, and I am very grateful for that. I did not know someone would ever be willing to do this until I met him, and it opened a world of good things for me.

Most important is that Lamentation is willing to take on the role that each of our people needs, if he enjoys that. He is a daddy for our inner children, reading them children's books before bed and helping them calm down, and fixing their toys. He is sexual with some of us who need that, relatively gentle if needed, but we also have a hardcore masochist inside and when she's out he can be rough with her. Lamentation is very flexible, and I think this makes it possible for us to be together as life partners. Sometimes I can change personalities (we call this shifting) very fast and he is still able to recognise who is out, be even more aware of it than we are, and be able to react appropriately to them very quickly. Lamentation is very flexible in all the roles he has, and he is inclusive to all of us. He takes care to make sure we are all okay with something he would like to do, and he takes time to speak to anyone who is not comfortable. He makes it clear all the time that he likes all of us insiders, even if he gets along better with some than others. He is always careful to remind us that even if he doesn't get along with all of us equally well (one of our protectors can be very hurtful to him), he understands that we need her to stay safe, and that he respects the job she does. He is very careful to show respect for the reason for existence of all of them.

It is important that you make sure that your sub or bottom has as wide a safety net and social support group as they can manage, not just with you but also with their mental health professionals, family if possible (unless the childhood trauma is family-based), friends and activities that help them get out without being too triggery or scary. People with DID/multiples can feel very isolated and misunderstood, but there are more of us out there than is generally thought, so there are people out there who'll understand the situations we have to deal with and who can be good support, either online or real life. Because I also have physical issues, going out can be hard. I try to make it to local munches and Lamentation supports me in that. I have a very wide support network online, with several support groups, and Lamentation understands how important it is to be able to speak about our relationship (he has some mental things going on as well so that can make things extra interesting), so he let's me speak as I need to about frustrations or what is happening in my life, and I use good judgment as to where to refer to the BDSM part and where to keep silent about it.

If at all possible, anyone with DID should have a therapist, or at least a support group, where they can speak about issues about shifting, abuse memories, etc. so that the job doesn't all fall on you as the dominant. Therapists, who are professionals, can even get burned out on working with someone who is a multiple because they can be so needy and are so difficult to treat. It is possible to get better, or at least a lot more functional, but such work takes at least years of intense therapy. This is not a job you as a partner should take on. If the sub has a therapist it would be ideal if that person could know about the activities you do. However, therapists who have experience with DID and are kink-friendly on top of that are very, very rare. I had the remarkable luck to run into one of them, and I am hoping over time more mental health professionals will become both more aware and accepting of DID and of BDSM. Unfortunately, right now all survivor-self-help-movement literature (especially The Courage to Heal, which is a good book to have if you're dealing with a multiple sub with childhood trauma) speaks out against BDSM as being retraumatizing.

That will be your biggest challenge, making sure that BDSM is not retraumatizing for the sub with DID/MPD. Communicate, communicate, communicate; but do it much more carefully than you would with a mentally healthy sub. Do not start out doing intense play if you don't know them well. Learn their body language before you go into places where you are not sure how they will react. At first, negotiate every little action you want to take in a scene, including things that seem light to you, and agree on specific safewords for shifting situations. You never know what type of things were used in the abuse most of us had to deal with as a child, and something innocent like a blindfold can set off a major panic attack. (I will also write a separate article on how to recognize a panic attack during a scene and how to practically react to it.) Also, realize that if you're dealing with a sub who is not co-conscious, they might not remember the safeword you two agreed on. Make sure that you stop the scene if there is any doubt at all.

Try to get to know all the people inside the sub you play with if you are their main play partner. If you are not their main play partner, but are playing with them occasionally, and there is someone who does know the ins and outs of the inner workings of a multiple sub, ask for this person to be present at the scene at first. (Lamentation will have others co-Top or co-Dom with him, or even take charge of the scene, but he wants to be there so he can step in if he sees a problem.) This is your best way of making sure that the "play" or scene will not be retraumatizing. Always be aware that what one inner person wants might not be what another one of them wants or can handle, and that the needs of the inner people of a multiple sub can change and differ by who is out in the body and who is not.

One thing that needs to be discussed is the presence of inner children (usually called "littles"). This is difficult to deal with for all Dominants, since most multiples do have inner people of children's ages. They may be in adult bodies, but that part of their mind is not able to deal with the world or reason on an adult level. Just like with real children, you probably want to be very sure you don't retraumatize these inner children, who often had to deal with a lot of the abuse and may hold most of those memories. The simplest and most effective way to do this (and, according to some people who are familiar with subs with DID, the only way) is not to do BDSM activities with inner children at all. The problem with this is when the littles become used to the BDSM activities and expect them, see them as expressions of love, and are not able to handle other expressions of love. It can then become very hard not to have BDSM activities with them.

For us, the littles ended up coming out whenever there was any sexual activity between us. He ended up talking to each of them separately, practicing with them so he knew they could say "no" to any situation they didn't want, and did very light activities until he actually noticed that they did say no. ("No, we don't want to masturbate today," or "No, we don't want a blindfold today.") But that was a personal choice for us. If you are doing BDSM activities at all, make sure that all the people inside the sub (as well as the Dominant) are all right with it, and that you've taken all possible precautions. If you can actually find ways to be inclusive to littles and keep them happy without having to fall back on BDSM activities, though, that would actually be a lot safer. If you can communicate to the littles that coming out during BDSM activities makes it hard for you to be a good partner to the older inner people, but that if they're good they can have special time with you together later, they are often very willing to cooperate and will give you room.

So, in short, to have a rewarding relationship with a sub or bottom with DID the following areas can be useful to keep in mind:

• If at all possible put the sub's true needs above your own needs (wants is another matter),
• Try to be flexible and allow her (sometimes him) to look up to you in many different roles,
• Be inclusive, try to respect the job any of her (his) inner people are doing and get to know them,
• If you play with the sub only occasionally, ask for help from someone very familiar with the sub,
• Try to emphasize to the sub that it's important to have as many people to rely on for support as possible,
• Remember that the sub loses time and forgets things easily and make room for that,
• Make sure that under no circumstances are you retraumatizing the sub; learn to recognise their body language,
• In the beginning, negotiate everything ad nauseam and make sure all inner people are ok with things,
• Decide together if you will stop any play or BDSM activity if littles present, and communicate to them that if they can stay out of the way they will get special time later, like story time or coloring. (Be warned that this might not always work.)

I hope these were some useful, practical ideas. If you have specific questions please feel free to contact me on Fetlife.com; I'm Amaranth13. I will try to answer them as well as I can, and if something you bring up needs adding to this paper I will add it. Please use any of the ideas that work for you and disregard the rest.

And finally, thanks for even considering taking on a sub with a shattered mind. Some of us really need BDSM as our only sexual outlet and so many in the BDSM community are telling us and others with mental health issues that we should not be in the scene. You are giving a great gift to that person even by just considering being their Dominant.