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Videos
Videos from the Ivory Garden community about Dissociative Identity Disorder, understanding, and hope.
Dissociative Identity Disorder: Who Are We?
We are 1% of the population: loyal friends, compassionate advocates, capable parents, sons and daughters, employees, creators, and imaginative dreamers. What we need is what everyone needs: support and respect, empathy, unconditional love, loyal friends, and safety.
This video is dedicated to all who take the time to understand, support, accept, and love those who live with dissociative identity disorder.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID): An Overview
This video has been around for a long time, but it is still accurate. It is dedicated to all the courageous survivors of child abuse.
What it is
Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder) is a complex, chronic mental health condition caused by severe trauma, usually in early childhood. It’s characterized by the presence of two or more distinct identity states (often called alters) that take control of a person’s behavior at different times.
Key symptoms
- Identity disruption: The person has two or more distinct identities, each with its own sense of self, behaviors, and memories.
- Memory gaps: Loss of time or missing memories, not explained by ordinary forgetfulness.
- Switching: Shifts in identity may be sudden or triggered, and others may notice changes in voice, posture, or mood.
- Amnesia: Often for personal information, traumatic events, or daily activities.
- Depersonalization: Feeling detached from oneself.
- Derealization: Feeling that the world isn’t real or is distorted.
- High comorbidity: Often co-occurs with PTSD, depression, anxiety, or borderline personality disorder.
Common features
- Alters may have different names, ages, genders, voices, skills, or preferences.
- Some systems (the collective term for all identities) have clear internal communication, while others do not.
- May involve inner worlds, time-sharing, or protective roles among alters.
- Often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years.
Causes
- Almost always linked to severe, repeated trauma or neglect in early childhood.
- Dissociation is used as a coping mechanism to escape the impact of trauma.
Treatment
- Trauma-informed psychotherapy is the main approach.
- Common models: Internal Family Systems (IFS), EMDR, DBT, or phase-oriented treatment.
- Goals include improving communication between parts, processing trauma, and building a stable sense of self.
From Ivory Garden
Webinars & Conference Talks
Recordings from our live webinars with therapist speakers and from the Ivory Garden conferences held in Seattle.
Dissociation and EMDR with Ellie Fields
Extreme Skeptics About DID: Why They Are Wrong
Psychosis and Dissociation
From Ivory Garden
Our Seattle Conferences
From 2014 to 2017, Ivory Garden hosted trauma and dissociation conferences in Seattle as fundraisers, bringing leading clinicians and researchers together with survivors and professionals.
2017 Seattle Trauma-Informed Care and Dissociation Conference
Speakers included Colin Ross, MD; Steven Frankel, PhD; Sandra Paulsen, PhD; Laura Brown, PhD; Dana Ross, MD; David Calof, DAPA; and others. The conference offered 17 CEUs.
2016 Trauma and Dissociation Conference: Trauma-Informed Care
Open to clinicians (17 CEUs were offered), survivors of abuse, supporters, teachers, nurses, and anyone interested in trauma and abuse. Speakers included Colin Ross, MD; Dana Ross, MD; A. Steven Frankel, PhD; Laura Brown, PhD; Fiona Barnett; David Calof; and others.
2015 Complex Trauma and Dissociation Conference
Research on how childhood complex trauma affects people, with CEUs offered for clinicians. Speakers included Colin Ross; Steven Frankel; Richard Loewenstein; Robin Shapiro; Laura Brown; Thomas Carlton; and others.
2014 Trauma and Dissociation Conference
A look back at our 2014 dissociative identity disorder conference, including the speakers and topics. CEUs were offered for social workers. Thank you to everyone who made this first conference a success.
From our community
Created by Our Members
Videos made by members of the Ivory Garden community.
About Fireflies: “Fireflies is a Dissociative Identity System. We are mental health patients and peer supporters, not professional mental health workers. All opinions in our videos are our own and should not replace professional advice.”
PTSD & DID/MPD: When You’re Broken
Stay Strong, Keep the Faith, and Never Give Up
Mental Health: Making a Crisis Plan
Shaydee speaks on how to make a crisis plan, and how to prepare yourself for the breakdowns and relapses that can sometimes happen. (The title on the video says Jackie, but it was actually Shaydee who recorded it. This is a re-upload with pictures added by Jackie.)
Mental Health DBT Skills: Core Mindfulness
Ka Pepeke Kālele Kūlana: The Situational-Emphatic Sentence in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi
There are grammar books, and then there are books that teach you to feel a language in your body. The Pepeke Kālele Kūlana: Patterns of Beauty, Resiliency, Graciousness is the second kind — a visual, somatic, full-color workbook that treats the Kālele Kūlana sentence pattern not as a grammatical item to be memorized, but as a living structure with beauty, weight, and cultural meaning.
The situational-emphatic sentence is an expressive pattern in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, used to speak identity, relationship, standing, and emphasis with precision and grace. This 65-page landscape workbook makes it approachable for visual-spatial, kinesthetic, and right-brain learners who may have struggled with more conventional classroom approaches. It draws on years of study with kumu Kaliko, kumu ʻOhu, kumu Kalei, and kumu Kahanuola.
Created by a diaspora Hawaiian and Traditional Hawaiian Cultural Practitioner as part of a decades-long return to ancestral language and identity, it is the offering of someone for whom these words are healing ground. Published affordably and with aloha through Lulu.
He haumana wale nō au — e kāhea aku ana i nā hoa hele ma ke alanui ʻōlelo.
Just a humble student, calling out to fellow travelers on the language path.
Dedicated to all my loving ancestors.
From around the web
Lectures & Educational Videos
Dissociative Identity Disorders and Trauma
A Key Sign of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Content warning
Videos With Trigger Warnings
The videos below deal with difficult subjects. They are hidden until you choose to open them. Please check in with yourself first, and only watch when you feel ready.
If you’re having a hard time right now, you don’t have to go through it alone. Find immediate crisis support →
TW: Self-harm / self-injury — “The First Cut” (click to show)
TW: Suicidal ideation — “What’s It Like to Feel Suicidal?” Part 1, by Fireflies (click to show)
DID & PTSD: Suicidal Ideation, Part 1 — “What’s It Like to Feel Suicidal?”
Trigger warning: heavy topics discussed. This is Part 1 of a two-part series about what it is like to feel suicidal — what Fireflies feels happens, at least for them, and why other people sometimes can’t get through with reasonable suggestions about why we should live.
Fireflies is a Dissociative Identity System. They are mental health patients and peer supporters, not professional mental health workers. All opinions in this video are their own and should not replace professional advice.
TW: Suicidal ideation — Part 2, with a DID switch, by Fireflies (click to show)
PTSD: Suicidal Ideation, Part 2 — DID Switch
Part two of the suicidal ideation video series by Fireflies. This video discusses what it’s like to feel suicidal and the emotions behind it, with a bit of personal testimony and a switch in the Fireflies system about midway.
“It’s scary to show this, as it’s such a vulnerable part of our journey, but we hope it helps others on the same path.”
Fireflies is a DID system and peer supporters, not professional mental health workers.
TW: Deep topics — A DID therapy session: change of host, alter validity, and boundaries, by Fireflies (click to show)
DID Therapy Session: Change of Host, Alter Validity, Boundaries
Trigger warning: this video discusses some deep topics, so please prepare before watching it.
This is an audio recording of a therapy session Fireflies had not long after a change of primary personality. It also discusses setting boundaries, and the validity of each individual alter as a person in their own right.
“It’s scary to upload something so personal, but we believe it can help other systems going through similar issues, so we are taking this chance.”
Fireflies is a system of alters and peer supporters, not professionals in the mental health field. Their psychologist is remaining anonymous.
More videos coming soon
We’re gathering more conference talks, webinars with therapist speakers, and educational videos about dissociation and DID to share here.
If you’re struggling right now, you don’t have to wait. Find immediate crisis support →
