ABSTRACT
Students are well-known for their chaotic lives: for burning the midnight oil, drinking too much, living off baked beans to pay for gig tickets, and for thinking that traffic cones make appropriate front-room furniture. The staff member thought they were offering a bit of support to a mature, slightly fragile twenty-year-old, and did not understand that they were also offering it to a very traumatised child. University is a very permissive environment in many ways. Bizarre behaviour is not uncommon. Chaotic behaviour can therefore go unchallenged or dismissed as eccentric. By design Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) allows a level of functioning away from conscious horror of the abuse. Additionally, living with DID is unpredictable, something can get triggered that needs all of the therapy time, induces hours of flashbacks, and means people simply can not meet deadlines.
