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

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! 🩷🫶💜


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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 💜🫶🩷


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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 pluralitysquared@gmail.com
📣 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! 🩷🫶💜


Get full access to Healing My Parts at healingmyparts.substack.com/subscribe

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! 🩷🫶💜


Get full access to Healing My Parts at healingmyparts.substack.com/subscribe

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! 🩷🫶💜


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