“But the DID diagnosis gave me something tangible to work with,” McCord says, “and for that, I am eternally grateful.” A diagnosis certainly isn’t everything, of course. “I went the opposite direction, which was a really good sign that I was healing whatever it was that was causing the symptoms that looked like bipolar.” Ultimately, the experience confirmed that something else was going on. “I should have gone into a full-blown episode I should have gone to hell,” she says. To her surprise, McCord’s bipolar symptoms did not return once she stopped taking the medication-even amidst the stresses and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people may also benefit from medications to help treat related symptoms or conditions (like depression, for instance), but there are no medications approved to directly treat DID.

“I ticked almost all the boxes of bipolar symptoms, but when I cleared my trauma, I didn’t have the symptoms anymore,” she says, adding that she’s grateful for Zoom appointments with her doctor and that the two of them were able to monitor her moods so closely.ĭID is typically treated with some form of psychotherapy, the APA says, such as cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavior therapy. (Memory lapses like these are a common symptom of DID, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.) And her splits started to make sense in a whole new way.Īlong the way, McCord had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which she chalks up to her family history and her tendency to act in “extremes.” She had been taking mood stabilizers, but when her memories came flooding back and she was able to start working through them, McCord and her doctor made the decision to gradually take her off the medication in late 2019. “And it was not the life story that I knew.” While in treatment for PTSD, McCord began remembering parts of her childhood and her own sexual trauma that had been buried for years. “Within a week I had a consult, within two weeks I had an intake appointment, and within four weeks I remembered my whole life,” she says. “I didn’t have the latter until I was dealing with the severity of DID and it being prominent in my healing journey after treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and that was only two-and-a-half years ago.” “There’s an awareness of what you’re doing, and then there’s an awareness of something being strange or different,” she says. And when she first started experiencing symptoms, she wasn’t really aware of it. “There were many steps to getting me to the place where I actually got this diagnosis,” McCord explains. Her DID diagnosis gave her “something tangible” to work with, something that could help her begin to really heal.

But she also felt she had found a diagnosis that finally felt right, she tells SELF. For one, the 90210 standout hoped to counter the pervasive stigma that surrounds the disorder (sometimes called multiple personality disorder). Actor, model, and activist AnnaLynne McCord shared in April that she had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID), and she did so for a few very important reasons.

Anne lyn mccord