Stuffed animals, whether it be a Teddy Bear or other stuffie, can be an indispensable significant other in the life of someone with DID. It is a safe object to touch, to speak with, and to express deep emotions. In the community of therapists that deny the ongoing impact of DID and the appearance of alters, there is often harsh criticism of the attachment to stuffies of many with DID. Their arguments is that using stuffies in this way promotes regression.

I believe this view is fundamentally wrong. It is based on the view of such therapists that DID patients should “grow up” and be “responsible adults.” Such therapists lack either fundamental compassion, understanding of the etiology and ongoing impact of early childhood trauma, or both.

As I have written before, such a view of those with DID, or, in general, patients with severe past trauma, reflects a very thick bias. That bias is the idea that only a unitary personality can be healthy. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of alters that indeed may see and express themselves as young children. They are not adults pretending to be children. As a result of early childhood trauma, such young alters experience themselves, the world, and their trauma as children.

Why am I talking about early childhood trauma and stuffies now? It turns out that a significant portion of adults sleep with a stuffed animal. Not only is this now being seen as acceptable far beyond the DID world, it is being acknowledged without any of the critique that it engenders regression of adults to children. In fact, there is even a marketing classification used in selling stuffed animals to adults who want them for there own. “Kidults” is the term created to define the commercial adult targets for stuffies.

I must say that once again, mainstream society is beginning to acknowledging wisdom which has been carried within the trauma community. I say again because this mainstreaming of the use of stuffies as a healthy non-pharmaceutical method of relating to anxiety reminds me of the way the impact of trauma experienced by those with DID was demeaned as being weak and phony until the military was forced to address the issue of PTSD. This only happened after it had become a tsunami among veterans. Once PTSD was acknowledged as an overwhelming human response to wartime trauma, many therapists began to recognize that PTSD was no longer an unreasonable way to frame, understand, and identify methods to treat early childhood trauma.

An article published in the New York Times details this now current view of stuffies.

Best wishes