Readers are invited to listen to the brief audio at the beginning of this piece. The layered voices are intended to offer a conceptual representation of how dissociative identity disorder may be experienced, as depicted through a personal perspective as opposed to medical expertise.
Imagine the words spilling across the page in serrated lines:
“Fragments of one, yet all are real … Survival’s thread … deeply bled … Who am I now? The answer unclear.”
At 14, Mahdiya Kahn wrote a poem about dissociative identity disorder, a diagnosis she never had, yet one she researched and sought to understand.
This story is not about diagnosing illness, but about survival of the human mind’s extraordinary will to protect itself. It is written from a human perspective guided by curiosity, observation, empathy and compassion rather than clinical expertise.
The poem begins like a mirror dropped on concrete, each shard catching a different reflection. One voice remains calm, another whispers and trembles. One apologizes and is afraid. Another grows firm and protective as the calm voice fades, uncertain which is the original.
The rhythm of these pieces teeters on unbalanced edges, faltering, restarting and dissolving again into broken nothingness, uncertain how to restore order or normalcy.
It feels like standing in a hallway lined with half-open doors, each revealing a different version of the same person. Navigating this corridor means stepping carefully to avoid shards of reality or trauma, hoping one door opens to safety rather than hurt or disappointment.
For readers, the confusion is fleeting. For those who live with dissociative identity disorder, that fracture can shape entire hours, days or memories.
Once known as multiple personality disorder, it is often misunderstood or dramatized in film as a cinematic plot device. Yet beyond the stereotypes lies a human reality deserving of understanding, compassion and open dialogue.
Fragments of one: A teen poet’s curiosity
Through her writing, Mahdiya offers a rare glimpse into emotional reality, blending empathy, learning and imagination to understand what it means to live divided yet whole. Her poem invites readers to pause and consider the lived experience behind the label.
Mahdiya first encountered the concept of DID while researching topics for her ninth grade psychology project and chose to explore it through poetic verse, a creative risk that revealed both her intellectual curiosity and compassion. Her determination to make the invisible visible transforms research into revelation.
Even at 14, her work shows how learning can bridge awareness and empathy — something we should all seek to emulate. She gives shape to the unnoticed fracture and struggle within.
Born of a childhood marred by despair
where trauma lingered in the fragile air.
A mind too tender to shoulder the pain
split itself to survive, again and again.
Two, then three, identities grew
each with a purpose, each with a view.
Some to protect, some to conceal
fragments of one, yet all are real.
Memory fades, a life out of sync
moments are lost in the time’s broken link.
Derealization clouds what is near
depersonalization whispers, “Disappear.”
One identity shy, another bold
one a child, innocent and cold.
Gaps in the narrative, blackouts appear
who am I now? The answer unclear.
Shirley Mason, the world knew as “Sybil,”
sixteen voices within, none idle.
Each bore her pain, her laughter, her tears
a fragmented self shaped by fears.
Peggy, the child, with fears to bear,
Vicky, the strong one, beyond despair.
Born of trauma, cruel and deep
memories locked where silence keeps.
Therapy sought to mend the divide
to unite the selves she held inside.
But whispers rose, was truth concealed?
Or was her pain misunderstood, unreal?
Then Kim Noble stepped into view
a life of many, each bold and true.
Over twenty voices, their stories blend,
through canvas and color, their truths transcend.
Judy laughs with a childlike glow,
Ken’s strength steadies, a calm they show.
Bonny protects, her shield held high,
each a guardian, a piece, a why.
Her therapy builds a bridge of trust,
to unify the lives her mind adjusts.
Not one voice, but a symphony shared,
A testament to how the wounded are spared.
Behavioral therapy lays the ground,
to help the self stay safe and sound.
Grounding techniques calm the storm
rewiring thoughts to a safer form.
Talk therapy offers a guiding hand,
to understand, to softly command.
Trauma-focused care like EMDR,
reaches wounds buried so far.
Medications lend a steadying grace,
easing symptoms, creating space.
Antidepressants lift the haze
mood stabilizers steady the days.
A testament of resilience
through Shirley’s pain and Kim’s art,
we glimpse the strength of a fractured heart.
DID is not weakness, but survival’s thread,
woven by all those who have deeply bled.
From blackouts, fear, and memories blurred,
to hope, where healing voices are heard.
Mahdiya Kahn
Mahdiya’s poem opens a window into how little the world truly understands DID. The more we learn, the more we realize how much remains invisible. What she imagined through verse, science seeks to explain.
Understanding the fracture: what science says
A 2024 study from the National Library of Medicine estimates 1.5% of people worldwide live with dissociative identity disorder (DID). While that number may seem small, it represents countless lives shaped by trauma. The American Psychological Association shares how DID involves the presence of multiple identities or personality states, which at times become dominant, influencing how a person thinks, behaves and connects with others.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) expands on this, describing DID as the existence of two or more distinct identity states that alternately guide a person’s actions. They are not separate people sharing a body, but varied expressions of a person reshaped by trauma.
That reshaping often begins early in life. Severe or repeated trauma in childhood can cause a child to separate from experiences too painful to process, disconnecting awareness from the body, mind and emotion in an effort to survive. Over time, this coping mechanism allows identities, also known as “alters,” to emerge and take control of moments and shield the person from further harm.
Switching between alters can be subtle, almost imperceptible, a quiet internal shift unnoticed even by those closest to the person. Medically speaking, researchers and clinicians describe this process as dissociation, which is a protective partition that shields one’s self from pain too immense to hold inside all at once.
Psychologist Dr. Bethany Brand, in episode 191 of the American Psychological Association’s “Speaking of Psychology” podcast, speaks about this process. She explains how chronic trauma at a young age can fragment the way young people develop their sense of self, describing DID as a profound change in the mind to survive what should have been unsurvivable.
Dr. Brand says dissociation separates a person from their physical and emotional experience, muting the full force of pain. “They disconnect from their body,” she said. “They may not feel as much pain. … If a child or an adult disconnects from themselves, their body, their emotions, or if they disconnect from their memory, it would help, somewhat, dull the pain.”
Detaching from trauma does not make it any less severe. In simpler terms, dissociation is a coping mechanism that allows alternate identity states to hold memories and emotions that, as Brand shared, “are not fully integrated into normal memory” or the person’s conscious life.
Living with DID, then, is far more complex than the casual remark, “Guess what? I have five different alters,” or “I have different personalities.” Each alter represents a facet or identity state of the same person, unique in its emotion, memory or perspective, yet sharing one mind and one history. Together, these identities navigate daily life, each carrying what the others cannot bear to hold due to trauma.
Inside the mind’s flight: one woman’s story
Science explains how dissociation protects the mind, but to understand what that protection feels like, learning from lived experiences is helpful.
In a widely viewed YouTube video, Tania, a woman living with seven distinct identities, describes how her mind fragmented to survive years of childhood abuse.
She prefers to use the term personalities, a term reflecting both her warmth and her effort to make sense of a complex diagnosis. From age four to 17, Tania endured repeated sexual abuse by a family member. When her reality became unbearable, dissociation became her lifeline. Her mind splintered, creating personalities to shield her from pain she could not otherwise endure.
Outwardly, she appeared composed and academically competent, a façade of normalcy concealing the trauma that necessitated her mind’s defenses. Inside, her identities negotiated memories and emotions too heavy for one consciousness to carry. If only others had known the extent of her suffering, the way her mind disconnected to survive.
For Tania, dissociation was her brain’s final line of defense, a way to protect itself when her body could not. She explained how repeated trauma “will cause your personality to split. … Our brain will automatically create dissociation related to it. … Your brain starts to create this separation with yourself. You will change the way you behave so you can protect either yourself or others from your trauma.”
Her calm delivery revealed a quiet courage. We often speak of “fight or flight” as the body’s instinct to survive, but dissociation, she suggested, is another form of flight, one that takes place entirely within the mind.
Tania’s honesty and openness were both haunting and deeply human. Her story invites a deeper critical reflection on what it means to live divided yet whole. She described a period when one alter’s violent behavior led to a two-week hospitalization, an experience she does not recall. When that alter receded within her mind, the memory vanished with it. As she spoke, sadness and despair eclipsed her face, a visible trace of the pain words alone could not contain.
We often underestimate what we do not understand, especially when confronting mental health conditions like DID. Misunderstanding breeds stigma and isolation: people tend to conflate DID with schizophrenia or assume it reflects exaggerated or dramatic behavior rather than a survival response. Transitions between alters may be subtle and outwardly invisible, unnoticed even by those nearest to the person.
Consider dissociative fugue, for instance. The amnesia that brings it is not the casual forgetfulness we joke about when we say, “Oh, wow, I don’t even remember what I did last weekend.” Dissociative fugue can feel like a blank space where time, events and accountability vanish. Imagine waking to find two weeks of your life are gone, erased by your own mind, with no recollection of what happened during that time, as Tania experienced.
The mind protects itself by hiding what it cannot bear. My heart aches for people who experience a blackout and the depth of pain it must take for the mind to protect itself in that way. That is sadness. That is heartbreaking.
It can be difficult to explain such an experience to others, as explaining it tends to be inherently incomplete. How do you describe something you yourself cannot fully remember? Reflect on that. To explain DID is to piece together fragments of a story that even the person living it may not completely hold.
And yet, in smaller ways, we all live with fragments of identity. We move between roles throughout the day: the professional voice on LinkedIn, the social one on Instagram, the private self in our journals that no one else sees. For most of us, this fluidity is a choice, an adaptation to context.
For those living with DID, it is not performance but survival. Their identities do not log in and out of social media for convenience, but they emerge and recede as part of the mind’s effort to protect itself from what another part of the mind cannot suffer.
Generally speaking, when anyone is misdiagnosed or dismissed, it is unfortunate. When anyone is misdiagnosed or dismissed and DID is not “discovered” and their pain is unseen, it is alarming. DID is not a made-up disorder or an act of choice. It is survival, the mind’s way of surviving the unbearable. It may be more common than people realize, which is why understanding this type of dissociation is essential.
DID is severe, traumatic and ultimately a coping mechanism that disrupts identity as the mind’s last resort to survive.
Learning about DID challenges the discomfort that education can dissolve. A growth mindset can help deal with our unease, bridge the distance between knowledge and empathy and help us to remain cognizant that an open mindset is not only an academic act. It is a human one, too. Sometimes, understanding finds us not through research or reading, but in the moments that test our composure and compassion.
Discovering more knowledge about mental health can deepen compassion for those living with DID and invite more honest, humane conversations about what it means to endure.
What you heard at the beginning of this story — the varied voices, the overlap — is not imagination. For many living with dissociative identity disorder, that noise is not a metaphor. It is memory, protection and survival.
A classroom moment that changed everything
Here is the audio version of the classroom moment written below. Readers are encouraged to listen to the audio to imagine and feel what transpired.
I would love to share the story about a former student of mine and I will call her Olivia.
She was quiet, kind and somewhat solitary, the type of student who blended into a classroom yet left a soft impression. Near the end of the semester, something happened that I have never forgotten and rendered me silent with a racing heartbeat.
Olivia was settling at her desk when, without warning, she struck her right cheek with her hand. A tremor rippled through her body. She clasped her hands to her chest, cowering, whispering to herself. Her face changed, with tension in her eyes and the sudden collapse of composure. In a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “Can you please walk me to the counselor’s office?”
Without hesitation, I replied, “Yes, let’s go now.”
In the hallway and through the empty cafeteria, Olivia began to cry, striking her face and head, tugging at her hair, whispering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I whispered a prayer, “Oh, God, please help her.” Fear tightened in my chest as I walked beside her, uncertain what I was witnessing. Was it panic, trauma or something deeper breaking loose? Instinct told me to stay gentle, to steady my voice. “We’re almost there,” I said softly. “You can do it.”
Moving carefully, I slipped off my cherished Mother of Pearl, floral-shaped earrings, an act of quiet defense that shamed me even as I did it. I did not know what this moment might become. Only that fear and compassion walked side by side as we made our way toward the counselor’s office.
When we arrived and a counselor met Olivia, I turned and walked slowly back to the classroom, checking my pulse on my smartwatch and counting each breath. I was nervous and I was concerned for her. The rest of the day unfolded quietly, unable to shake the image of Olivia hitting her face, the sound of her whispered words echoing in my mind throughout the day.
My heart ached over what happened to her. Afterward, guilt lingered, not for what I did, but for what fear made me imagine. I doubted her, believing she might lash out. That thought haunted me.
I tried piecing together Olivia’s truth and what I had seen. Was it a trauma response, an alter emerging, a surge of panic related to bipolar or schizophrenia or something else entirely? That moment reshaped my understanding of the invisible battles our students fight, the quiet fractures that unfold before us, often unseen.
What we can learn from Olivia & Tania’s stories
We sometimes assume only visible pain deserves attention, though the deepest suffering can be silent, the fissures or fractures hidden behind composed faces and polite smiles. Tania’s openness and Olivia’s collapse, though vastly different, revealed the same truth: we should learn more, ask more and meet distress with compassion rather than confusion.
We may not be mental health professionals, but we can show grace and empathy. Sometimes that means staying steady when others unravel. Perhaps if I had more knowledge about DID or other trauma-related disorders, I might have met Olivia’s pain with less fear and more readiness. That uncertainty now fuels my learning.
In classrooms and beyond, awareness is not a luxury. It is a lifeline. In moments of crisis, grace and empathy become the first form of safety we can offer.
Learning as compassion
I invite curiosity into this story of survival; a story etched across the human mind and its remarkable will to protect itself. It reminds us that we cannot teach or serve what we refuse to see. Dissociative identity disorder is more than a diagnosis. It is a story of hope and a testament to endurance. Every alter, every memory gap, every moment of disorientation reflects someone who found a way to survive when life became unbearable, even at the tender age of four.
As an educator and researcher, I have learned that knowledge is more than information. It is a connection and builds bridges where silence, naïveté and judgment build walls. Learn about the symptoms, the subtle shifts and the daily impact of DID. When we choose to look closer, to ask, to learn, to remain present, we not only strengthen understanding but also compassion as the dual forces that sustain education and our shared humanity.
If anything in this story stirred something in you, let it. Reflect on it. Ask questions. Read more. Speak openly. Our students, our colleagues and our communities deserve that much.
The following audio represents resolution, not conclusion. It portrays a sense of peace from a layperson’s perspective of someone with DID who has sought medical treatment to move forward while learning to live with balance and greater peace, just like Tania, the woman I wrote about in this story. She found greater peace while living each day with DID. She has a community to help her now, and that is what we need for all students suffering from DID.
Education is power. Knowledge is power. But empathy is what keeps both alive.
Featured image courtesy Pixabay via PICRYL
Edited by Steven London & James Sutton
