Keeping it Together: What to know about this misunderstood condition

We all dissociate. We plan our weddings while staring out at our backyards during breakfast. We get in our cars after a long day of work and somehow float home. We scroll through dozens of TikToks and don't realize hours have passed.

Hi, I'm David Oliver, one of Paste BN's wellness reporters. And I'm here to to tell you that not everyone dissociates the same way. Some have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a condition when someone has undergone such severe trauma during childhood that the mind creates multiple selves, or "alters," to help them function throughout the day.

It's a condition long-exploited in media. Now, the CBS soap "The Young and the Restless" has a DID plot of its own featuring character Ashley Abbott (Eileen Davidson). "Ms. Abbott, the first one we’ve met, she’s kind of a ball-breaker, like a femme fatale. But you see her kind of metamorphose into somebody who’s scary,” Davidson told TODAY, describing one of Ashley's alters.

What you need to know, though, is that DID refers to someone who's suffered ongoing complex trauma – think child neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, etc. – who fails to undergo regular identity development.

Someone living with DID may refer to themselves as a "system" made up of different parts or alters. For some, they add up to dozens, even hundreds, with different names, ages, races, and genders. People with DID can dissociate for a few minutes, but sometimes it could be days to weeks.

To learn more about this condition and those who have it, click here. And peruse other stories from our team below!