Get to Know Us
DID we write are Amber Louise Ainsworth, a diagnosed DID system from Sheffield. We've no idea what we're doing, where we're going, or how we're getting there - we do know there is a huge lack of knowledge globally about dissociative disorders including within the medical professionals and mental health care systems.
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We write, a lot. We found writing to be one of the best tools for us to process our trauma, and are sharing our experiences with anyone who will listen. Our book, 'The revelation', details us finding ourselves (we were polyfragmented without having the assumed 'ongoing abuse and/or neglect') and healing all our childhood trauma. We are currently working on 'Healing the big T', which details us healing our only significant trauma from when we were two.
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As we said, we don't know what we're doing. This website isn't about our books, but we do have a page for them, it's about sharing information that can help, hopefully helping people to advocate for themselves, hopefully giving some direction and hope to people we know are suffering due to the lack of information, understanding, and support available.
Our Alters
We've been working on our integration and healing since we started finding each other in October 2020. Our system is very fluid, many of us split and fuse easily and we've had many fusions in the two years since we found each other. We were polyfragmented, and don't know how many alters we have. But we know who is generally around day to day, and we usually function blended these days.
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Amber and Penelope are our two hosts. Amber is our main host and 'apparently normal part', and lived to 37 without any idea that DID was the reason for years of disabling depression, anxiety, and cyclical breakdowns. Amber is/was a massage and myofascial release therapist, she is currently not working while we focus on us, our writing, and hopefully raising awareness about DID.
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We believe Pen has lived with Amber our whole life, she was the 'alternate state of consciousness' that experienced our first trauma, she split, and Berlou (Amber Louise) cried inside until she was came out in 2021. Amber used to think she had bipolar disorder or cyclothymia ('mild' bipolar), and she's known for years she ticks a lot of boxes for borderline personality disorder, but it's not her that has these mental illnesses, it's some of our alters.
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We think Penelope has bipolar disorder, we've seen a lot of mania (and depression) since we started finding each other, and we know now how Amber manages to be incredibly productive, intermingled with bouts of disabling depression (Woe is Mia is Mia's second book of poetry and is almost 250 pages of processing depression and suicidality with poetry).
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Our main alters are:
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Amber - host, alter who lived most of the life, massage and myofascial release therapist.
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Penelope - co-host, overachiever, probably suffers from bipolar disorder and chronic splitter.
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Caris/Isabel - Caris is a fusion of Isabel and Cara, Is is one of our protectors.
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Mia - a version of Penelope, our most productive alter, primary poet, wannabe child star.
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Berlou - first trauma holder and person driving the need to help other trauma holders.
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Maya - a split from Mia.
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Jessica - the writer (a Penelope).
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Berwoo - a non-traumatised version of Berlou, hilarious, has published two books of nonsense.
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Stef - sexual alter and protector.
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We've got a few photos where we know who is the one being photographed, and Mia likes playing with editing apps, so here's a few of our 'team'...
Berlou
Mia
Caris
Berwoo