#dpdposting

[ix-c-999]

Hello, I'm terribly sorry to bother but I've got a question/request if you'd be up to answering

Can I ask about your experiences with dpd? I'm questioning if I have it and would like to hear others experiences with it to better understand it

This ask is completely /nf (not forcing a reply) and I don't expect much

If at all possible could you tag @sadgethethird when answering if you do answer? Though I would not recommend going on that blog as it is my vent blog.

Thank you so much for reading this and I truly appreciate any response

I'm happy to answer that, yes! @sadgethethird

For me, the discovery of having DPD has been a complex process, since there was a period of time where I thought I had it and was diagnosed by a therapist, then was convinced by both another therapist and a DP that I didn't have it (both of these people turned out to be less trustworthy than initially thought), but then some events happened and I discovered that DPD was the most likely explanation for how I reacted to them, which my current (more trustworthy) therapist agrees with.

When I initially started questioning if I had DPD, I was disabled and living with my family, but people expected me to eventually become more independent, which I never felt as though I could really do on my own. (I am now living somewhat independently, but not quite as much so as my family hoped I would; I can talk a little more about how that interacts with my DPD if you would like me to.)

I started learning about DPD when I started making more neurodivergent and persodivergent friends online, particularly a friend who thought he had DPD at the time but later concluded he more likely had BPD and not DPD. (For my part, I later discovered that I have BPD too, or that my brain does, but I'm a system, and the alter responding to your message does not have BPD symptoms, only DPD and possibly AVPD symptoms. I can talk more about that if you'd like, too.)

The concept of a "depended person" - someone a person with DPD looks to for guidance, wants to make decisions for them, etc. - seemed accurate in some respects to how I felt about my adoptive family (the ones with whom I was living at the time). I also had two friends at the time who I called DPs due to my strong attachment to them, but I think it was more likely that they were FPs, since I did not have the sense that I wanted them to make decisions for me (but I also didn't realize I had BPD).

My current situation is that my partner is my DP, but due to a variety of reasons (the long-distance nature of the relationship being a large one), I do not feel like they can take care of me the way past DPs have. This is something I am currently working to find a solution to, although I'm having a very hard time with it.

Here are some other DPD experiences I have or know about that might be helpful to figuring out if you have the disorder:

Difficulty initiating everyday tasks (e.g. cooking, cleaning, etc.), where there is a sense of anxiety surrounding the task because you can't do it or aren't good at it.

Overall fear of not being good enough at things, and often not trying to do them at all as a result. This can even include failure to engage with interests, especially if you have to be active in your engagement with them somehow or there's some element of skill or memorization.

Perception of other people as inherently more powerful than you in some respect.

A difficult relationship overall to the concept of "power"; it's hard to explain, because this exact thing isn't a clinically-described symptom, but for me, when talking to people without DPD about my concepts of power - where it comes from, who has it, how people develop it, how easy it is to remove power imbalances from situations, etc. - they seem to think my ideas about power are unusual, and it's most likely because of the disorder.

A desire to be taken care of by others, especially in a romantic/intimate relationship. Some people with DPD at first attribute this tendency to preferring certain relationship dynamics, and it would be valid of them to say they do prefer those dynamics. However, unlike someone who likes behaving a certain way in a relationship, a person with DPD will often experience a certain type of anxiety, unfulfilment, or distress over not having a relationship like that than somebody would if they wanted it for non-disordered reasons.

A lack of life direction and a desire for others to determine your life direction for you. I struggled somewhat with higher education because of this symptom, and while I have multiple degrees, I don't use them and am on government benefits. While I am indeed disabled (outside of my DPD and including physical disability), part of what led to my current situation was an inability to figure out a life direction and a partner who basically actively discouraged me from pursuing any life direction other than being his partner.

Fears of being abandoned, especially by your DP. I don't experience this as much, because I usually fully trust my DPs, but my therapist says that people with DPD tend to idealize their DPs, and my trust in my DPs (especially when that trust has not always been warranted in the past) is likely a part of that. However, some people with DPD are capable of distrusting their DPs, to the point where even hearing about their DPs other friends can make the person with DPD uncomfortable.

Separation anxiety from one's DP. The DSM describes this anxiety as caused by fears that one cannot take care of oneself, but separation anxiety can also entail fears that the person is gone because they have abandoned you, worrying about the person's wellbeing because you don't know what they're doing, and feeling unsafe without that person.

I know this was quite a lot of information, but I wanted you to have more rather than less of it in this response. There's so little discussion of DPD out there, and I'm happy to contribute to there being more of it.

If anybody has any more questions about DPD for me, please feel free to ask them. There are a few situations I have gotten into involving my DPD that I do not talk about publicly, so I may have to talk around some things depending on what questions I am asked, but I will try to respond in a way that would be helpful to someone trying to understand either how to live with the order or how to interact with someone who has it.

[systemconstellation]

DPD really is just being Ken from Barbie, the personality disorder

[ix-c-999]

Separation anxiety in DPD is one of those things that does not go away entirely, but it gets easier the more you experience it, especially if your DP is fairly accommodating to your disorder and tells you, inasmuch as they can, when they'll be away.

Unfortunately, not everyone can accommodate you 100% of the time, and you can't be excessive in what you ask from your DP. While it's nice when your DP tells you they're going to be away and for how long, it's also not realistic to expect your DP to be able to forewarn you about every time they'll ever have to be away, and it's not fair to subject them to too much of your fear and anxiety.

If you and your DP are patient with each other, and if you are patient with yourself, you *can* get to the point where separation anxiety is more bearable and doesn't have to cause problems in your relationship. Your DP has to be committed to understanding a person with your disorder, and you have to be committed to not letting your disorder run your life, but you can learn to live with this.

[ix-c-999]

For anyone who didn't read this post (which is understandable, it's quite long), I am open to answering questions about DPD and my experiences with it.

My system has been diagnosed with it since 2016 and was convinced in 2021 that we didn't really have it, but we were rediagnosed with it in 2024 (including receiving a BPD diagnosis). The alter making this post is specifically a holder for our DPD and I find I am the alter who is most strongly affected by the disorder currently.

There are a few DPD-related situations I've been in that I don't talk about publicly, so I may need to obscure some details when answering certain questions, but I would like to provide to the availability of information and experience-sharing about DPD.

I may also make some posts about my experiences with DPD even without having been asked about them. This will include things like how symptoms feel, how they affect my relationship to certain topics, and how being a system factors into my DPD.

Also, a lot of my experiences with DPD have connections to my experiences with kink, you can only be diagnosed with DPD if you are an adult, and this blog does not generally interact with minors. Therefore, if you ask me a question about DPD and you do *not* state that you are a minor (which, if you are a minor, please *do* state that you are because that is a very different demographic to answer a PD-related question from), I will assume you are an adult, and if the question you asked has an answer that involves kink (whether you predicted the answer would involve kink or not), I will not censor myself when answering it. I will also not be going into graphic or sexual details, but I will tag them all as "kink mention".

[ix-c-999]

The DPD community needs a term for a person that a person with DPD does NOT see as being inherently more powerful than them. There are a handful of people I know for whom this is the case (mostly fellow unemployed disabled people). I don't think "equal person" works, because that's already a term for NPD. Does anyone have any ideas, or is there already a term for this?

[ix-c-999]

We talked in therapy about coping with my DPD and how triggering things have been since moving. She gave us one suggestion that I'm going to try. She also has a worksheet she's going to send us with more, similar suggestions.

She asked us something very interesting as she was talking about all this. She asked if the DPD traits were something I wanted to focus on coping with, or if I wanted to focus on overcoming them. I said I would rather not try to overcome them but rather just live with them better.

Part of why she gave me this option is due to her observation that nothing will make the DPD go away entirely. One of the things I said is that being dependent makes me feel like myself, and I wouldn't know how to be myself without it, even when it makes other identity things different. I don't think she really understood that, but it's understandable that she didn't.

I really do hope that the things she has to suggest can be helpful...

[ix-c-999]

Separation anxiety is one of the most frustrating parts of DPD for me.

Not counting members of my own system, my DP is my partner (system), and while they're able to spend a lot of time with us (online, as they're a long-distance partner), there are still often situations where they are away.

Sometimes the separations are planned, and sometimes they are spontaneous. It's always under circumstances my partner has the right to do - because they're going out somewhere, or they've gotten absorbed with something else, not because they're ignoring me on purpose. And unlike in other relationships I've had, I do genuinely get enough interaction with them.

However, I still have absolutely agonizing anxiety when they are away.

It's easier to handle when it's a planned separation. With unplanned separations, it takes a little while for me to realize they're away and they're going to be away for an indeterminate amount of time. With planned separations, I still don't always know how long they'll be away, and there's always an amount of time into their absence where it hits me that they're away and they likely won't message back if I message them.

There's a sense of emptiness and fear with that separation anxiety. I do feel very empty without them, like I'm not myself. There's also the feeling that I'm unable to trust myself and if they're not around, I can't run my thoughts and perceptions by them, and I can't trust my own judgments on anything.

It very often leads to dissociation. Occasionally it helps to play video games with another friend (I am generally not disordered about my other friends).

My system has a headmate, Dove, who split from the stress we experienced when our partner started spending more time away from us, and Dove's main role is to have DPD and hold separation anxiety in particular.

There's a member of my own system, Reinholdt, who is also my DP and my partner, and it does help to have him fronting when my partner is unavailable. However, while I recognize headmates are people, in-system relationships don't register exactly the same as external relationships, such that, while it's helpful having another member of my system who can take care of me and who can front with me when my partner is away, it doesn't solve everything.

The unfortunate thing about separation anxiety is that, unless spending time with another person works for you, there's really not a whole lot you can do about separation anxiety when it's happening. All you can really do is reassure yourself that your DP will eventually be back.

[ix-c-999]

@ the anon who asked about DPD: I'd be happy to write out some information about it! I might also make some more posts about my experiences, as I would like to be able to help people by sharing about myself and what I know.