AnnaLynne McCord’s Most Candid Quotes About Living With Dissociative Identity Disorder

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AnnaLynne McCord’s Most Candid Quotes About Living With Dissociative Identity Disorder

Sharing her story. Even before AnnaLynne McCord revealed that she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) — previously known as multiple personality disorder — she’s been candid about her journey to happiness. “For me, my heart is to change this narrative around these behaviors that follow [the] trial of the trauma, and not treating someone or responding to someone or judging someone from their actions. But asking what happened to you, how did we get here?” the actress told Dr. Daniel Amen in April 2021 via YouTube, adding that she was going public with her diagnosis because she is “absolutely uninterested in shame” surrounding DID. McCord explained: “There is nothing about my journey that I invite shame into anymore. And that’s how we get to the point where we can articulate the nature of these pervasive traumas and stuff, as horrible as they are.” Following TV roles in Ugly Betty, Greek and Nip/Tuck, McCord landed the role of Naomi Clark in the CW’s reboot of Beverly Hills, 90210. She played the bad girl for five seasons and more than 100 episodes until 90210’s cancelation in 2013. One year after the drama wrapped, McCord revealed that she was sexually assaulted. In 2019, she exclusively told Us Weekly that she had a revelation about childhood abuse after undergoing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). “I remembered and my whole life changed,” McCord told Us, referring to repressed memories of sexual abuse that surfaced during treatment in 2018. “It was this frozen image in my mind. I’m being slammed in the face with blackness. … My clothes are down, it’s not good. … My sisters are heartbroken by what’s happened.” [jwplayer fkyFRB3l-l3ahXupL] McCord has subsequently dedicated her life and career to help others with similar trauma. “The entire trajectory of my life has altered. That little 18-year-old arrogant, teeny-bopper who came into the world of Hollywood with all of her crazy energy and her rigid ideologies is a very different 33-year-old woman,” she told Us in November 2020. “Why I do what I do is what has really changed. I love acting. I love that I get to do what my 9-year-old self-dreamed of doing when she was little. I got to make her dream come true. And that makes me so very happy. But for me, now, if I’m not making a statement in some capacity, I’m not interested.” Scroll through to read McCord’s journey in her own words:

Credit: Shutterstock

AnnaLynne McCord’s Most Candid Quotes About Living With Dissociative Identity Disorder

Sharing her story. Even before AnnaLynne McCord revealed that she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) — previously known as multiple personality disorder — she’s been candid about her journey to happiness. “For me, my heart is to change this narrative around these behaviors that follow [the] trial of the trauma, and not treating someone or responding to someone or judging someone from their actions. But asking what happened to you, how did we get here?” the actress told Dr. Daniel Amen in April 2021 via YouTube, adding that she was going public with her diagnosis because she is “absolutely uninterested in shame” surrounding DID. McCord explained: “There is nothing about my journey that I invite shame into anymore. And that’s how we get to the point where we can articulate the nature of these pervasive traumas and stuff, as horrible as they are.” Following TV roles in Ugly Betty, Greek and Nip/Tuck, McCord landed the role of Naomi Clark in the CW’s reboot of Beverly Hills, 90210. She played the bad girl for five seasons and more than 100 episodes until 90210’s cancelation in 2013. One year after the drama wrapped, McCord revealed that she was sexually assaulted. In 2019, she exclusively told Us Weekly that she had a revelation about childhood abuse after undergoing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). “I remembered and my whole life changed,” McCord told Us, referring to repressed memories of sexual abuse that surfaced during treatment in 2018. “It was this frozen image in my mind. I’m being slammed in the face with blackness. … My clothes are down, it’s not good. … My sisters are heartbroken by what’s happened.” [jwplayer fkyFRB3l-l3ahXupL] McCord has subsequently dedicated her life and career to help others with similar trauma. “The entire trajectory of my life has altered. That little 18-year-old arrogant, teeny-bopper who came into the world of Hollywood with all of her crazy energy and her rigid ideologies is a very different 33-year-old woman,” she told Us in November 2020. “Why I do what I do is what has really changed. I love acting. I love that I get to do what my 9-year-old self-dreamed of doing when she was little. I got to make her dream come true. And that makes me so very happy. But for me, now, if I’m not making a statement in some capacity, I’m not interested.” Scroll through to read McCord’s journey in her own words:

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Her Past Roles

McCord told Dr. Amen that “all of her roles were split,” which she noticed after she filmed the 2012 horror movie Excision in-between seasons of 90210.

“In my history, you’ll see me, I would just show up with the black wig and a new personality and I was this tough little baddie. And then I’d be the bohemian flower child and also being an actress, my ability to split all of my roles — all of my roles were split, but I didn’t even realize I was doing it at all until I did a project [during] 90210. I played a very cerebral, disturbed, strange little girl that was very close to who I feel I am on the inside. It was very exposing, very confronting, probably a bit re-traumatizing without realizing it," she said. ”The crazy thing about it was that I wrapped that film at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday and had to be happy, crazy Beverly Hills blonde bombshell on Wednesday at noon. I couldn’t find her; she was not accessible. I was dark, I was very deep into this character Pauline, and I couldn’t get [out].”

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‘Little Anna’

“I spent a lot of my life as the split I was when I was 13 and on. And she was a balls to the wall, middle fingers to sky, anarchist from hell, who will stab you with the spiked ring she wears, and you will like it and she’ll make you lick the blood from it,” McCord told Dr. Amen about “little Anna.” She added: “She was a nasty, little creature but I have so much gratitude for her because she got me out of the hell I was in.”

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Being Called ‘Crazy’

“My team was like, ‘You’re doing what?’” she told Extra in April 2021 about her decision to speak out. “I love what I do as an actress and I’m very grateful, but this is my passion, and my passion is to change the narrative around this … because of how alone I felt through all of this … I was called crazy, I was told that I was in psychosis … I was told I needed to be in inpatient just because I didn’t know how to manage the ‘others’ and they were coming out.”

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DID's Terminology

"You don't have multiple personalities; you have fragments of yourself,” McCord said on Good Morning America in April 2021 about DID's former terminology, multiple personality disorder. “There's AnnaLynne, who you're talking to right now, right? Then there's this part of me that this trauma happened to that's still — if you can imagine it as trapped in Pandora's box. And I just opened Pandora's box."

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The First Time

“So what that looks like is the first time it happened, I was here in my house, I was on the phone with my sister, and I became overwhelmed with a memory,” the former Let's Get Physical star told Extra, noting she was “lucid” at the time. “That’s what the top of my brain felt like … I had no control over my facial expressions, my body language, my vocal cords … and it came out as baby talk … I told my sister Rachel, ‘I just want my Rachey, my Rachey.’”

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How Her Past Trauma Relates

“A lot of times, and you’ll see this most with people who experience DID, it often follows severe childhood trauma. So for me … three years ago, my memories came back of childhood sexual abuse, and that was when ‘others’ presented themselves in a very overt way,” McCord told Extra.

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Coexisting With Her ‘Alters’

“[In] March of 2019, I had an incident where I see [an empty room] except for 75 me's in there,” she told Dr. Phil in May 2021. “I had a moment with a partner where I couldn’t get the reigns back and I literally got up out of the room and locked myself in my closet and I was saying out loud, to myself, ‘Please let me be me.’ … This is something we have to talk about because it’s so hard to explain.”

McCord added that “now” she “can’t pull them out,” but she’s had “co-conscious” conversations with her 13-year-old self in recent months.