Three Kids in a Trench Coat

People with DID, more often than not, have difficulty sleeping.

Not necessarily all the time – we, for example, have periods where we sleep just fine. But find me a person with DID who hasn’t had periods in their life where they just weren’t sleeping and I’ll…. I dunno, eat a hat. A pillow? No, we need that for all the sleep we’re… not getting…

It’s a thing, and it’s a Big Thing for a lot of systems at times.

We’re not talking, “Yeah I only got 6 hours last night & I’ve felt tired all day”… I’ve had 6 months go by where 6 hours of sleep is like… woah… I didn’t know people could sleep that long. We’ve had whole weeks at a time (many, many of them) where the average sleep a night was about 30 minutes.

Four days in a row can go by with literally no sleep – sometimes because we don’t even try to, we just stay awake on purpose because whoever’s up front is worried they’re not going to still be in charge when we wake up… which, often… yeah, that happens.

It struck me just how relatable the openings to both Moon Knight & Fight Club are when it comes to disrupted sleep & dissociative identities.

Self-restraint (literally) in Moon Knight

Steven to human statue: “Yeah, it’s like my body just wants to get up & wander, like it’s trying to get those 10,000 steps in or whatever. I’ve no idea it’s happened until I wake up god knows where having done god knows what. It’s why I try and stay awake all night. Of course, if I’m gonna have a girlfriend, I can’t go having ankle restraints on the bed. It’s like, the definition of a red flag, innit?”

(Steven, let me tell you – I’d love you either way, but ankle restraints on your bed is most certainly the opposite of a red flag for us… *gestures to similar setup on their own bed* BUT WE DIGRESS ^^;)

Steven is so innocent & I love him so much.

“Hello, and welcome to Staying Awake… let’s start with a puzzle… remember, you’ll need about 5 hours to keep your natural self”

I assume they mean 5 hours sleep here, but what do I know?

Steven wakes up in a field in the Swiss Alps, with a dislocated jaw, no idea how he got there, before immediately being chased by men with guns.

Which, honestly – that’s kinda what happens when you try to stay awake forever.

We’ve all been there, right?

Right?

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Waking up in strange places in Fight Club

Doctor: “No, you can’t die from insomnia…”

The Narrator: “Well, what about narcolepsy? I nod off, I wake up in strange places with no idea of how I got there…”

And, shortly after – The Narrator wakes up on a plane, next to… Tyler Durden.

There are some alters who seem to most easily have access to the body when we’re really sleep deprived (not all, by any means), and it’s like… sleep deprivation is a path to them being able to get the time outside that they want. It seems to particularly be the case for parts that are most dissociated & most likely to be met with a flat-out, “No” to suggestions made while we’re well rested.

It checks out with the brain science of sleep deprivation – one of the first things to suffer as sleep dips further & further below a healthy level is impulse control. And when the impulses don’t feel like your impulses, you shut them down…. unless you can’t.

Which is why it feels very fitting that Tyler Durden, a somewhat ‘extreme alter’ (if we’re looking at the totality of his actions across the film…) first manifests during this period of extreme sleep deprivation.

I should say, our alters that we view as more ‘extreme’ have never, to our knowledge, bombed financial institution skyscrapers across 50 US cities.

That we’re aware of.

(obviously ‘extreme alters’ is a Hollywood trope that most systems can only relate to at a much more personal level. They’re usually only extreme in terms of disruption to the system’s own life… but this is a Hollywood film, and a damn fun one at that – it gets a pass from us. If you’re gonna make things extreme, at least do it like this, do it with style).

It’s also quite fitting that when The Narrator meets & talks to Tyler Durden, he’s very much hallucinating him as another person. Ok, ok, that’s not actually how it works, for most people with DID – and ‘hallucinating another physical person’ is a trope also used by e.g. The Crowded Room to preserve mystery so they can have the big, “… but they were the same person the whole time!” reveal…

But I will say, the more sleep deprived you are, the more it can feel like another person is literally in the room with you & become more hallucination-like in nature. Also, the visual style could just be thought of as a visually compelling way of portraying the, “Watching yourself in third person” aspect of it all.

As Tyler (Brad Pitt’s depiction of him) puts it, “Sometimes, you’re still you… other times you imagine yourself watching me…”

You’ll notice, if you watch again, no-one ever actually interacts with Ed Norton’s Narrator & Brad Pitt’s Tyler in the same scene – it’s always one or the other. The world is never treating him like two people.

Also, again, this film pulls off what it’s trying to do narratively so well, making such a compelling story, while also not claiming to be about DID, that it doesn’t bother us one bit. YMMV.

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Make sleep a system wellbeing priority

Which is all to say… it’s worth getting enough sleep, or at least some sleep.

It really is one of the most important things for having the capacity to navigate a life with more of what you want & less of what you don’t want.

And if things are rough right now, getting enough sleep can be one of the best things you can do to get back on track if you ever find yourself careening off the rails of your life.

We’ve been sleeping a lot better for a while now, and we’re feeling a lot more grounded, there’s a lot less switching, and a lot more internal collaboration, and that’s a good thing.

Hardly sleeping at all can lead to some of the most pronounced & dramatic switching, which, when it feels like the chips are really down, can feel empowering, like a more “complete” form of escape for the parts that are exhausted and want to hand the reins to their system’s Tyler Durden or Jake Lockley (who I will remind you, in the real world are not violent psychopaths….)

But it’s not a sustainable strategy to just try and disappear from your own life, and sooner or later you & the rest of your system will have to take responsibility for your actions – with each other, and anyone you’ve hurt or neglected in that time.

And while you may feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day for everyone to get their needs met, a handful fewer hours awake each day is actually a small price to pay for being more awake, present, and active the rest of the time.

Sleep makes both system-wide fulfilment & system responsibility easier – so at least try and make it a priority in the ways you can… and be gentle with yourselves when it’s hard to come by. Look for small steps in the right direction, celebrate your wins together, and you will find more harmony again.

Until next time – take care of yourselves, kiddos x

Riley & fam ❤