Healing My Parts: Real Talk on Dissociative Identity Disorder and Complex Trauma

Episode Summary

When an experience is too complicated, painful, or too early to have words…

In this episode, we’re joined by Corinne Li, founder of canDID Expressions, a nonprofit organization serving people living with trauma-based dissociation and provides them with opportunities to explore and share their experiences through writing and expressive arts.

Corinne shares how art first became a language for experiences she literally could not speak about—and how writing, poetry, color, movement, and other forms of expression can create pathways for communication when words aren’t there.

This conversation took a delightful turn into the little miracles that happen when you build and lean into community.

And in case you’re wondering, you do not need to be an artist.

As Corinne puts it: You don’t have to be creative. You just need to be curious.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:01 — Meet Corinne Li & canDID Expressions00:04 — When trauma has no words: art as another language00:08 — From one writing group to an international community00:13 — How compassion for someone else can become compassion for yourself00:16 — “But I’m not creative…”00:20 — A space where trauma is welcome—but doesn’t define you00:22 — Why community matters in healing00:24 — What actually happens in a canDID Expressions group?00:29 — Finding belonging—including for therapists with lived experience00:34 — Are peer groups for DID/OSDD actually harmful?00:36 — What peers can offer that therapy can’t00:39 — Going public with DID: authenticity, stigma & safety00:48 — When DID becomes more than pathology00:52 — “Does this ever get better?”00:53 — What Corinne wants clinicians to know

About canDID Expressions

canDID Expressions is a nonprofit community dedicated to fostering connection and expression for people living with trauma-based dissociation through writing and expressive arts.

Their virtual offerings include writing and poetry groups, classes, community opportunities, and more.

And importantly: canDID Expressions works hard to make its programming financially accessible. Scholarships are available, and they don’t want cost to keep someone from participating. If something interests you and finances are the barrier, reach out to them.

Resources

canDID Expressions Website: canDIDExpressions.org

canDID Expressions Offerings & Financial Accessibility

Healing My Parts Website: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack: healingmyparts.substack.com

Instagram: @healingmyparts

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Welcome to something new from Healing My Parts.

Our regular interview episodes aren’t going anywhere. This is something we’ll be sprinkling in between them: Two Systems Walk Into a Podcast… — casual conversations between two DID systems on opposite sides of the Atlantic who discovered an uncanny number of similarities, plenty of differences, and an endless supply of things to talk about.

Every couple of weeks, we’re going to take one of the very real topics that comes up in system life, toss a whole bunch of them into a hat, pull one out, and talk about wherever it takes us. No formal interview. No pretending we have the definitive answer. Just two systems chatting about figuring out system life.

For our first episode of the series, we’re talking about comparing and despairing.

Because when you’re trying to understand your own system, it’s incredibly easy to look at someone else’s experience and start asking:

Should we switch like that? Should we have an inner world? Why can’t we make a system map? Does this mean we’re not really plural?

In this conversation, we talk about:

* comparison, denial, and feeling like a fraud

* the pressure to “look like” other systems

* what changes when comparison becomes recognition

* inner worlds and system mapping

* why pushing yourself to fit someone else’s version of DID can backfire

* learning to trust what is actually happening inside your own system

No formal interview. No pretending we have the definitive answer.

Just two systems comparing notes about figuring out system life — with the occasional side-eye, bucket hat, and “oh my God, you too?” moment along the way. 😂

And sometimes the most helpful thing may be putting down the checklist and getting curious about the system you actually have.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:47 — Introducing Two Systems Walk Into a Podcast…04:53 — Compare & despair begins08:00 — Fraud fears and professional skepticism10:53 — When denial argues with itself 😂11:48 — The system trust fall15:00 — Comparison vs. recognition17:04 — Why talking with another system can feel different26:00 — What newly discovering systems are up against34:53 — “Do I need an inner world?”37:54 — The pressure to system map43:30 — Taking the pressure off

For more resources visit healingmyparts.orgHealing My Parts Substack@healingmyparts on Instagram

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Many systems spend years trying to get parts to behave.Skye spent 36 years learning to love them instead.

In this conversation, we’re joined by Skylar Lyralen Kaye, award-winning writer, actor, slam poet, storyteller, and openly plural, nonbinary trans fae, whose memoir Bachelorx does something most books about plurality don’t dare: it hands the page directly to the inner people and lets them speak.

What unfolds is a funny, heartbreaking, and deeply human story of a newly separated 62-year-old getting on dating apps for the first time, navigating intimacy, rejection, and falling hard for someone when the system absolutely does not agree. But beneath the dating story is something many of us long to know: what it actually looks like when decades of inner work finally click into place.

Inside this conversation:

* What it actually costs a system to date — and what singlets fundamentally don’t understand about it

* MICAH: the protector who kept everyone alive, never got credit for the grades or the poems, and finally gets the page — and the all-caps

* 17 therapists, 4 who helped — and what those four actually did differently

* How Brainspotting took decades of healing over the finish line

* Why IFS both normalizes and sometimes minimizes plurality — and how Skye holds that tension

* What system responsibility really means when a part goes rogue

* The chapter where the whole system disagrees about falling in love — in real time, in multiple fonts

* What later-stage healing actually feels like — not symptom-free, not perfect, just known

And at the very end, what Skye wants every system to take away from this book:"The humble gratitude of what it's like to fall in love with yourselves."

⏱️ Timestamps00:01 — Meet Skye: out, plural, trans fae, just off the paddleboard02:06 — Why the book opens with being outed on a first date09:16 — MICAH sets some limits — and the little kids feel protected23:24 — Coming out as plural to a date — and choosing integrity over a perfect cover story40:19 — Kids FIGHTING: writing the chapter where the system isn't unanimous46:09 — Giving MICAH the page — and the all-caps49:40 — 17 therapists, 4 who helped — what made the difference57:59 — What healing looks like now versus what it looked like in crisis01:00:45 — A message to the inner people listening right now

Resources:

Skylar Lyralen Kaye Website: https://lyralenkaye.com/

Bachelorx

Skylar Lyralen Kaye Substack

Additional Resources

Healing My Parts Website

WORKSHOP👉 Building & Using Your Inner World: Practical Tools to Make It Work for YouIf you're looking for practical tools to strengthen communication, cooperation, and daily life inside your system, this Live 90-minute workshop is designed to help.📅 Wednesday, July 29 | 7:00 PM ET🎥 Recording included with registration.💜 $37For more info & to register: healingmyparts.org/workshop

Healing My Parts SubstackHealing My Parts Instagram

Thank you for listening 💜🫶🩷

When Two Systems Fall in Love

Two people fall in love. That’s already complicated enough.

Now imagine loving someone who is many — and bringing your own crowded room to meet them. Two systems, dozens of parts between them, all figuring out who’s actually dating whom.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jenn and Naomi, two women living with Dissociative Identity Disorder who met in a DID support group, became close friends, and eventually fell in love. Together they offer a rare, honest, and often funny look at what it means to build a relationship when both partners are systems — down to color-coded triggers, competing playlists, and parts who have entire relationships of their own.

But this conversation goes further than romance. Jenn and Naomi walk through two completely different roads to diagnosis — one through years of self-research, one through hospitalization — and the real damage that gets done when providers miss what’s actually happening. They talk about raising kids who read switching more fluently than most clinicians do. And they talk about what it’s like to finally be loved by someone who doesn’t need switching explained to them, because they live it too.

If there’s a thread running through this entire conversation, it’s hope and trust. Trusting your own system. Trusting the process of healing. Trusting that a relationship can become a place where parts don’t have to survive alone anymore.

Whether you’re a system, love someone who is, or are a clinician trying to understand DID from the inside, this episode offers real access to the complexity, the humor, and the tenderness that live inside all of it.

In This Episode

* Two very different roads to a DID diagnosis — and why so many systems still get missed

* The specific loneliness of diagnosis, and of not being believed before it

* What it’s actually like when both partners are systems

* How kids often understand switching better than the adults around them

* Navigating triggers, attachment, and communication between two systems

* What good DID therapy looks like — and where even well-meaning therapists get it wrong

* Why hope and trust keep showing up as the answer

Timestamps00:01 — Meet Jenn & Naomi, and how two systems fell in love07:35 — Two very different roads to diagnosis — and why so many systems get missed24:05 — When your partner can clock every switch and no one else can31:00 — Parenting with DID: what kids pick up on that adults don’t40:00 — Two systems, dozens of relationships, triggers, and figuring out who’s actually walking down the street48:30 — What good DID therapy actually feels like59:00 — Hope, trust, and what they want every system to hear

Contact Jenn & Naomi at [email protected]

📣 New Workshop — July 29th

Building & Using Your Inner World: Practical Tools to Make It Work for You

Registration opens July 10 on Substack and at HealingMyParts.org.

Thank you for listening and for being here with us! 🩷🫶💜

Show Notes:

He trained on three continents. He was board-certified in Hong Kong, Britain, and Canada. And by the time he became a fully qualified psychiatrist — he knew absolutely nothing about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

That’s not a confession Dr. David Yeung makes lightly. It’s the starting point for forty years of learning, unlearning, and quietly changing lives one session at a time.

In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Yeung and his editor and publisher Lyle Weinstein — the team behind the four-volume Engaging Multiple Personalities series — for a wide-ranging, deeply human conversation about what it actually takes to treat DID well, why so many systems still go unrecognized, and what forty years of listening has taught one psychiatrist about trauma, healing, and hope.

This one moves.

Dr. Yeung doesn’t talk like a textbook. He talks like someone who has sat with a patient holding a knife, a patient who planned to jump off a bridge after her session ended, a patient who had been hospitalized 28 times before anyone looked past the depression diagnosis. And he talks openly about what he got right, what he got wrong, and what his patients taught him along the way.

Whether you’re a system, a clinician, or someone who has spent years wondering why no one ever saw you clearly — there’s something in here for you.

Inside This Conversation

* Why “treatment-resistant depression” is often a missed DID diagnosis in disguise

* What it means that the whole system is evaluating the therapist — long before the therapist knows it

* How listening (not technique) became the foundation of Dr. Yeung’s entire approach

* What he said to a part who walked into session holding a knife

* Why he no longer believes complete fusion is the goal — and what he thinks actually holds

* The moment a book chapter got a mother her children back

⏱️ Timestamps

* 00:01:26 — “I was well-trained in psychiatry. I knew nothing about DID.” — the admission that changed his practice

* 00:08:04 — The first time he saw a part front in his office — and what happened when he tried to call one out

* 00:22:06 — “She’s not just one single identity” — why the therapist is always being evaluated by the whole system

* 00:42:18 — A mother in a tiny village in Wales, a book, and a psychiatrist who finally changed his mind

* 00:48:25 — A patient brings a knife into session — what Dr. Yeung said to the part holding it

* 01:03:26 — Integration vs. functional multiplicity — his honest answer after four decades

Resources

Dr. Yeung's Website Engaging Multiples

Engaging Multiple Personalities, Volume 1: Contextual Case Histories Audible Paperback Kindle

Engaging Multiple Personalities, Volume 2: Therapeutic Guidelines Audible Paperback Kindle

Engaging Multiple Personalities, Volume 3: Living in Multiplicity Audible Paperback Kindle

Engaging Multiple Personalities Volume 4: The Collected Blog Posts Volume 4: The Collected Blog Posts View on Web or download free EPub by scrolling to the bottom of Engaging Multiples Website

A Fractured Mind — Robert Oxnam (mentioned and recommended by Dr. Yeung)

Man’s Search for Meaning —Viktor Frankl

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Whether you’re a system navigating your own journey or a clinician supporting one, we’d love to connect.

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Episode Summary:

Some people receive a DID diagnosis in their twenties.

Some in their forties.

And some spend more than six decades trying to understand themselves before finally finding an answer.

In this deeply honest conversation, we’re joined by Tom from The Kids Are in Charge, diagnosed just 14 months ago at age 64.

What began as a frightening wellness check during a period of profound loss ultimately opened the door to understanding a lifetime of experiences that suddenly made sense.

Together we explore the grief of a late diagnosis, the challenges of being a man with DID, the isolation that can come with aging, and the surprising ways healing emerges when parts finally have room to be seen.

But this conversation is also about something else:

What happens when you spend 64 years believing one story about yourself—and then discover there’s another one underneath it?

Thoughtful, vulnerable, funny, and full of hard-won wisdom, this is a conversation about survival, self-discovery, and learning what it means to finally live with compassion for all the parts that got you here.

Inside This Conversation

• Receiving a DID diagnosis later in life

• Why dissociation is so often missed

• Reinterpreting a lifetime of memories through a new lens

• The unique challenges men face when navigating trauma and dissociation

• Music, creativity, work, and the different parts that show up for each

• Finding community later in life

• Learning to care for younger parts

• Moving from survival mode toward connection, compassion, and genuine relaxation

A Line That Stays With You

“I don’t know if I’m tired… or if this is what relaxed feels like.”

Timestamps

03:20 — The wellness check that changed everything

06:50 — Looking back through a dissociative lens

24:00 — Discovering new parts through video journals

31:00 — When the wrong part shows up for work

39:30 — Doubt, denial, and "Holy Moses" moments

53:30 — Being a man with DID

Resources

Find Tom at The Kids Are In Charge on Instagram

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Whether you're a system navigating your own journey or a clinician supporting one, we'd love to connect. Consults & Services for Professionals and Consultations for Systems

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Some people find art. Others are found by it.

Julia Mes had never made art in her life — until about a year and a half ago, when a stone-dotting workshop and a YouTube rabbit hole into neurographic art opened something she didn’t expect. Parts of her system turned out to be artists. Others are still not so sure. And one part has been loudly, clearly stating for months: “I am not an artist.” No further information.

In this conversation, we explore what it looks like when creativity becomes a language between parts, how system mapping evolved from a spreadsheet to a 42-page Google Doc to a park in a shoebox to hand-painted stones. We also move into something rarely discussed: intergenerational trauma, the concept of the “Grandchildren of War,” and what it means to carry images that may belong to another generation entirely.

This one is quiet, honest, and really beautiful.

Inside This Conversation

• When parts disagree about who you are — including one who is very clear: “I am not an artist”

• System mapping as an evolving, tactile, annual practice

• Neurographic art as an unexpected tool for internal communication

• Late discovery, menopause, and the energy that was keeping things submerged

• Growing up in Germany as a grandchild of the Second World War

• Holding images that feel like memory — but may not be yours

• What the messy, funny, sometimes devastating day-to-day looks like

⏱️ Timestamps

00:55 – Introducing Julia and her system

07:43 – How the artistic practice began — by accident

14:04 – When not everyone in the system wants to be an artist

23:01 – System mapping: from spreadsheet to painted stones

32:07 – Finding out you’re a system in your late 40s

34:46 – Menopause, DID, and the energy that kept things submerged

42:54 – Grandchildren of War: intergenerational trauma and the German context

56:54 – The messy middle — desperate days, dark moments, and laughing because it’s so sad

01:02:17 – What Julia wants listeners to take away

If you’ve ever struggled to put your internal experience into words — Julia has an invitation: grab a piece of paper and a Sharpie, write “there is no way to do this wrong,” and see what happens.

Resources

Julia by Mes — juliabymes.com

Instagram: @juliabymes

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Consultation & Training

Healing My Parts Substack — healingmyparts.substack.com

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Episode Summary

Some people discover they’re a system in a single moment.

Others… don’t.

In this episode, we’re joined by Mike and the Committee, a system who came to understand themselves not through diagnosis—but through patterns, reactions, and a question that changed everything:

What protected me?

From there, their journey unfolds in a way that’s messy, human, and deeply relatable.

We talk about what it actually looks like to live as a system while navigating work, relationships, parenting—and the internal chaos that can come with it.

Inside this conversation:

* When system awareness feels more like chaos than clarity

* Learning to recognize which part is activated—and why that matters

* The shift from fearing intense or “dark” parts to understanding their role

* A simple grounding tool they use in real time

* Why safety—not insight—is the foundation of healing

* What happens when you push too fast internally

* The role of the body in healing (and why it doesn’t always happen in therapy rooms)

* The impact of stigma, silence, and being misunderstood in the outside world

This episode doesn’t offer a neat, linear path.It offers something more useful:

A lived-in look at what it means to build trust inside a system—slowly, imperfectly, and over time.

If parts of your experience feel overwhelming…If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re “doing this right”…If you’ve been trying to make sense of something that doesn’t follow clean rules…

You may find a mirror in here.

⏱️ Timestamps

* 00:01:05 – Meet Mike & the Committee

* 00:02:07 – The question that changed everything

* 00:02:18 – A simple tool for overwhelm (BAR)

* 00:05:22 – When system awareness feels like chaos

* 00:08:21 – Rethinking the parts you’re afraid of

* 00:13:49 – An unexpected turning point

* 00:17:02 – From “what’s wrong with me?” to something else

* 00:24:20 – The cost of pushing too fast internally

* 00:35:40 – Stigma, silence, and real-world consequences

* 00:46:00 – Advocacy and being seen

Resources

Books:

The Many Faces of Me

The Throne Within

Etsy Shop:

HealWithCourage

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

✨ Episode Summary

What happens when the people who live with dissociation and the people who treat it finally sit at the same table—and actually listen to each other?

In this deeply human conversation, we sit down with Dr. Paul Langthorne and Melanie Goodwin, two of the editors and contributing authors of a powerful new clinical text on treating dissociation—bringing together lived experience, clinical expertise, and something often missing from both: real relationship.

This episode is for systems, clinicians, and anyone who has grappled with the tension inherent in complex dissociation care.

There’s honesty here.There’s grief here.And something else too—quiet, persistent hope.

This is one of those conversations that stays with you.

👥 About the Guests

Dr. Paul LangthorneClinical Psychologist (NHS), working extensively with trauma-related dissociation

Melanie GoodwinExpert-by-experience, co-founder of First Person Plural, and long-time advocate for improved care

Together, they helped create a resource that bridges a gap many people have felt for a long time.

📚 Featured Resource

BOOK: Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice: Guidance for Mental Health Professionals and Multidisciplinary Teams

A long-overdue bridge between research, real life, and the care people actually receive..

* Blends clinical knowledge + lived experience

* Offers practical, grounded guidance

* Designed for providers, systems, and supporters

✨ Use code: 26ESE1 by June 30th for 20% offWorking with Dissociation in Clinical Practice: Routledge

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – “Something is missing in how we treat dissociation…”Why this conversation matters more than most—and who it’s really for

07:30 – “I thought I was helping… and I wasn’t.”The quiet reality: most clinicians were never trained for this

18:30 – Head and heart—and what happens when they finally meet each otherWhy lived experience changes everything (and why it’s been left out)

32:00 – “They saw everything… except what was actually happening.”Misdiagnosis, being unseen, and the harm that follows

48:00 – It’s not the technique—it’s the relationshipWhat actually helps (and why that can feel risky in systems that want quick fixes)

1:05:00 – What if healing isn’t what you were told it would be?Stabilization, daily reality, and a kind of hope that doesn’t rush you

1:20:00 – If the system is broken… what now?What needs to change—and how this book begins to open that door

🌿 What You’ll Hear in This Episode

* Why dissociation is still so often missed, misdiagnosed, or dismissed

* The quiet harm of treatment that doesn’t fit—and how often it happens

* What actually helps (hint: not just technique… but relationship)

* How validation—even in small moments—can shift everything

* Why collaboration between clinicians and lived experience isn’t optional—it’s essential

💬 A Line That Stays With You

“It’s not the clever stuff—it’s the everyday human stuff that helps.”

🧠 For Providers

You don’t have to get everything right.

But being willing to:

* step into authenticity

* compassionately listen

* genuinely validate

* stay curious

…can change the trajectory of someone’s life more than you may ever know.

🫶 For Systems

If you’ve ever been:

* misdiagnosed

* disbelieved

* told to “try harder”

* or made to feel like the problem

This conversation might feel familiar.

And maybe—just maybe—a little less lonely.

🔗 Resources

Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice: Routledge Books Use code: 26ESE1 by June 30th for 20% off

Conference: Building Foundations Together: The Future of Complex Dissociation in the UK. Playlist: (16677) Dissociation Conference Recordings - YouTube

Training film Remy Aquarone, Melanie Goodwin and Jamie Wright

More Resources:

CTAD Clinic Youtube

Dissociative Disorders Alliance- UK

Carolyn Spring

HealingMyParts.org

An Infinite Mind

A Couple of Multiples

Beauty After Bruises

The Plural Association

Multiplied By One

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜

Episode Show Notes

Healing My Parts Podcast — with Body Wise: Many Selves, One Body

This episode sits inside the lived reality of DID—specifically polyfragmentation—and what healing looks like when the body becomes part of the work, not just the story.

We’re joined by Body Wise: Many Selves, One Body, a polyfragmented system and somatic trauma therapist, who shares openly about system discovery, co-consciousness, and the slow, often non-linear process of building safety in the body.

There’s honesty here about how hard this work is.And also… a grounded kind of hope.

In This Episode

* What polyfragmentation can actually look like from the inside

* Discovering DID suddenly—and skipping denial

* Living as a co-conscious system (and holding a lot of memory)

* Why somatic work can feel terrifying—and still be essential

* How healing often happens in very small, tolerable steps

* Trusting the internal intelligence of the system

* What helps (and what doesn’t) in therapy for complex systems

Timestamps

00:00 — Opening + podcast intention

01:18 — Meet the guest (polyfragmented system + therapist)

02:29 — Sudden DID discovery

05:01 — Understanding polyfragmentation + subsystems

07:28 — Co-consciousness and holding memory

11:33 — Why somatic work changed everything

17:22 — Healing slowly: building safety in the body

21:02 — Trusting your system’s internal guidance

33:04 — Somatic flashbacks + coping tools

43:49 — Rewriting trauma through the body

For Listeners

If your experience doesn’t match what you’ve seen elsewhere, remember:

There isn’t one way to be a system.There isn’t one way to heal.

Resources

Connect with Body Wise Many Selves One Body on their Instagram: bodywise.manyselves.onebody

Connect with them at their Natural Holistics Practice website.

For more resources visit: healingmyparts.org

Healing My Parts Substack

@healingmyparts on Instagram

Thank you for listening! 🩷🫶💜