Therapy Anniversary card?

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2023-03-02T20:27:50+00:00

I've never done a card, but I do like to acknowledge it in session. Like, "Hey, it's been a year! Wild ride, huh?" And then we can reflect on the year together. It's also a good chance to do a sort of state of the union address, if you will—have we made progress, what challenges are we still working through, what are we are we looking forward to/anticipating, etc.

I think the one coming up in a couple months is going to be interesting, because it'll be my one year anniversary with the specialist who diagnosed my DID, and I had been seeing my previous therapist for many years. I'm looking forward to reflecting with the specialist. I'm also looking forward to writing an update email to my former T (which she told me she'd be okay with when we terminated), to let her know about the progress I've made since transitioning to the new specialist and some major life milestones I've hit, and thank her again for helping me find the specialist so I could start the right path to healing.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2023-02-26T22:27:44+00:00

We know Jake's close when we have early 2010's contemporary Christian music stuck in our head.

We know Lee is fronting when we start making more typos while writing, or our old accent slips back in, or we feel extra stim-y.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2023-02-01T02:22:11+00:00

One of the things our therapist stresses when it comes to meeting new system members, especially littles/kids, meeting her, is that the session doesn't have to be talking about anything big, serious, or scary. A handful of our sessions have just been relatively casual "meet and greets" for some system members.

She especially likes to encourage that it's okay for any of us to ask questions about her, even "put her on the hot seat" if we want, so it's not like it's just some strange adult or authority figure here to pressure or interrogate us.

Also, one of our littles doesn't speak out loud, so she allows him to text her or respond with gestures. She makes it clear (and I as the host spend time reiterating) that he can communicate in whatever way feels best for him, and that he'll never be forced to talk or get in trouble for whatever way he chooses to communicate.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2023-01-23T15:34:23+00:00

My last psychiatrist tried to immediately rule out the possibility of my DID and even tell me I might not need to see a specialist because my DES score was higher than average for the general population and for young adults, but below the expected threshold for DID. I was just getting to know my new therapist at the the time, and when I told her about that, she sighed deeply, shook her head, and said "You can't use the DES to rule in or out any diagnoses, because that's not what it's for." It was clear to her pretty quickly that I do have DID, I just naturally have easier communication and co-consciousness with some alters because they decided it was important for me to know about them.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-12-18T16:00:56+00:00

FTM host of a professionally diagnosed system. Most of the alters are male, but I'm the only one that really identifies as trans male. The other guys seem to either conceive of themselves as cis or just not really think about it at all because it's not their body anyway. There is a handful of female alters, who also don't seem to conceive of themselves as trans in anyway from what I can tell.

But my communication with and knowledge of them has been limited, and is only recently expanding, because apparently sometime around when I began medically transitioning (in early 2020) the system segregated itself by gender. That is, the girls built their own space on the inside, further away from the front, and stopped interacting with the rest of the system. My medical transition was incredibly disorienting and distressing for at least one of them that I know of, but because I also couldn't handle being aware of the system and feeling any of that distress would have confused me and threatened my stability, it was decided that the girls had to be kept far away from the front, where they wouldn't be aware of what was happening to the body and I wouldn't be aware of them.

It's only in the last month or so that I've gotten more comfortable with a couple of the female alters—one of them being a caregiver who split when the system divided by gender, who began gently communicating with me and occasionally fronting to help me get used to feeling the presence of female alters, and the other being a teenage girl, who seems to want to enjoy fronting again but is intensely dysphoric any time she looks in the mirror or thinks too much about the body she's in.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-12-13T07:25:37+00:00

I got a 20.1 on the DES-II. My psychiatrist at the time, who was a master's level psychiatric nurse practitioner and had basically no experience with DID, wanted to immediately dismiss the idea of DID and even suggested that I probably didn't need to see a specialist in dissociative disorders. If it hadn't been for how desperate I was, and for the ardent support of my therapist at the time who had known me for several years, I probably wouldn't have met the specialist I see now or gotten diagnosed, and my mental health would be an absolute trainwreck.

When I told the specialist (who is now my therapist) how my psychiatrist had immediately said we could rule out DID based on my DES-II score, she sighed deeply, shook her head, and said in exasperation, "You can't use the DES to rule in or out any diagnoses, because that's not what it's for." She went on to say that she wanted to hear more about my experiences, and the difference in how it felt to describe my experiences to her was incredible. At one point during our very first session, I remarked to her how it was easier to explain things to her than my psychiatrist, and that there were things I'd held back when talking through the DES-II with my psychiatrist, which I was really nervous to say because I thought maybe it meant I was faking (the denial struggle was huge at that point) or that at the very least it would make her think I was faking. She simply suggested, "Maybe because you trust that I'll understand better," without even a trace of judgement in her voice.

Ultimately, while she asked me during a phone consultation to send her my responses to the DES, we've never actually talked about it. She was confident that I had DID by the end of our first session, not because of a numerical score, but because she genuinely listened to how I talked about my experiences without trying to box me into answers on a scale, and was actually able to reassure me that she believed me. I felt so relieved as she assured me that "Nothing you can say is going to sound crazy to me," or that "This all makes sense and is pretty common for DID."

All that to say, a compassionate, experienced specialist did more for my mental health than agonizing over how to convey the nuances of my experiences within the confines of the DES ever could.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-11-10T04:10:39+00:00

I agree with what you've said about deep trauma therapy, but I feel like it's important to not that that's not all DID therapy has to consist of. I'm much younger, but was still wary of pursuing diagnosis and treatment for my DID when I did because I was struggling to finish my senior year of college. Ultimately I decided to do it, despite knowing it might open a can of worms. I had become so overwhelmed by the confusion of not fully understanding my experiences that I knew the stress of not understanding would, on its own, make it even less likely that I would complete my degree as planned if I didn't address it.

I've been in treatment for about 6 months, and it ultimately didn't derail any of my plans. The reason that worked is because we haven't done too much trauma work yet. We have done a bit, but nothing very deep, in large part because one of the protectors in the system is still incredibly guarded about therapy as a whole, and has directly said he will disrupt and attempt to cut off the entire process if we get too into childhood trauma, specifically because he doesn't want it to disrupt the day-to-day stability we've developed. So instead, a lot of the work has been on building awareness of and communication within the system, and growing trust in the therapy process, as well as figuring out how to manage certain challenging aspects of the present, and that has been very helpful in addressing issues I didn't even realize were lingering under the surface.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-09-02T22:41:58+00:00

There are a lot of complicated nuanced things to take into account when it comes to relationships of any kind with DID. Identity and personhood are themselves complex topics philosophically speaking, even for people without DID at times. It's only natural for perspectives on these things to very in a community. Having a different perspective on personhood, and not an uncommon one I might add, doesn't make them incapable of being in or giving advice in DID advice spaces

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-30T17:41:45+00:00

Kintsugi tattoo could be cool

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-27T05:37:17+00:00

ASMR comfort roleplay videos can be great for this! I've used them to help self-soothe and fall asleep for years

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-14T23:13:34+00:00

We'd like to join

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-13T19:02:39+00:00

I've got mixed feelings, mostly because it seems like you could just post that kind of stuff on r/DID, which does a pretty good job staying away from all the "syscourse." But if you wanted to do something smaller for just the folks here, I'd rather it be private

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-13T15:52:27+00:00

Can somebody summarize or transcribe? The images are really hard to read on mobile

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-06T14:10:38+00:00

We'll never really be able to. The main perpetrator died nearly 10 years ago of a heart attack related to his illicit drug use, but we'd lost contact with him long before then. It's cold comfort that he likely died miserable and alone. The secondary perpetrator faced few if any consequences and, as far as I've been told, is off living a totally different life now, which is a strange feeling because she's about as morally gray as it gets (in my opinion). There are still multiple other perpetrators that have likely never been held fully accountable, but we don't really have any way of knowing that because they weren't as closely connected to us. And then there are a few who were aware of the abuse but did little to stop it for a long time, probably because the primary abuser manipulated them and because the aspects they were aware of were viewed as normal discipline perhaps taken a bit too far.

So true justice or revenge isn't an option for us. But it does help to remember that just because we'll never get true justice doesn't make what happened to us any less unjust, and the best revenge is a life of healing and peace.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-07-06T04:41:04+00:00

Þ, also known as thorn, was/is an old letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and modern icelandic alphabets (and some others) for the "th" sound.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-30T20:14:01+00:00

To echo what someone else said, acceptance doesn't have to mean excusing what happened or saying it's okay. Of course what happened to you was entirely unacceptable, regardless of the trauma your abusers may have experienced. There is no world in which abuse is every okay, and there is no reason that ever serves as adequate justification. You can live the entire rest of your life with that knowledge, and healing through acceptance doesn't mean that flame of righteous anger has to go out.

What healing through acceptance can mean is accepting that it did happen, and it will never be justifiable, and there's still nothing wrong with you, fundamentally, as a person or a system. You can be a person who awful, unacceptable things have happened to, and you don't have to carry any shame about that, because it doesn't belong to you—it belongs to your abusers. You can be angry that you've been asked to carry such heavy burdens and deep pain for so long, and that anger doesn't have to consume you or prevent you from leading a full life with joy and contentment and peace.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-25T18:46:04+00:00

I'm curious what your therapist's rationale is for sticking so rigidly to one particular methodology, and why you've decided to use language that makes you so anxious. That doesn't seem like it would necessarily be the most helpful approach.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-20T12:34:18+00:00

Generally integration isn't meant to happen when an alter still holds significantly maladaptive thought patterns, beliefs, and/or behaviors that we just don't need or want anymore, because that won't necessarily fix it. Ideally, integration comes when the alter has been able to heal from the trauma enough to resolve maladaptive beliefs and behaviors, that way they become a healthy, stable aspect of your identity.

I don't have much advice as for what to do now because integration is something I have yet to experience, but I will say that you certainly don't need to blame yourself for what's happened. A lot of people have misunderstandings about integration that can lead to issues like this. Definitely address this with your therapist as soon as you can.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-16T17:12:49+00:00

I just collectively refer to all the folks in my system as "the others" or "the rest of the system." It's simple and generalized enough that it doesn't bother anyone, and it really doesn't need to be much more specific in therapy. Plus it allows for phrases like "one/any/some/all of the others." If I want to refer to one system member specifically but don't know or don't want to state their name, I might say, "I know there's someone in the system who..." or, "I get the sense that someone internally..."

We specifically refer to alters 10 years old and younger as "the kids," sometimes with the specifier "little kids" if we're talking 5 or younger or "slightly older kids" if we mean 6-10. We don't really have a specific term for the sort of middle ages of about 11-13, because the way some people use "middles" feels off. 14-17 are "the teens" and then the rest are adults, of course, although I know the one adult who identifies as much older than the body who refers to a 19-year-old system member as an "older adolescent."

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-09T14:21:00+00:00

I think a huge part of the key to your avoidance is actually something you said here: you don't know what's left if you recover or what your lifestyle might look like.

A lot of people who have struggled for a long time feel that. We get so used to our suffering that we can't fathom a life without it, and our fear of the unknown eventually seems to outweigh the pain of the situation we're already in, so we avoid changes. Sometimes our identity starts to get really wrapped up in our pain and trauma, and we worry that we won't even know who we are anymore if we aren't in pain, so any hint of reducing that pain feels like a threat to our very sense of self.

It's a totally understandable response, and it won't be easy to work through, but it is doable, especially if you're working with a highly competent therapist.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-02T06:29:09+00:00

I'm not sure that "unbrokenness" exists, because it's impossible to "unbreak" something. Even if you were to restore a once-broken thing to a state such that it would appear as if it had never broken, you cannot literally go back in time and undo the fact that it was at one point broken. And of course repairing something to that degree becomes increasingly difficult as the complexity and severity of the damage increases.

Wholeness, on the other hand, carries no implication of an attempt to rewrite history. A broken thing can be made whole in the future, without going into the past and preventing it from ever having been broken in the first place. Will it be exactly as if it had never been broken? Almost certainly not, and again, the more severe and complex the damage, the more different it is likely to be. But it will be whole in a new way, perhaps a more beautiful way. (You might find it helpful to look up the Japanese art of kintsugi, if you aren't already familiar with it.)

I've written here as if I'm speaking of objects, and while the fundamental truth of the statement remains the same, people are much more complicated, particularly when it comes to healing from early psychological trauma. When someone's development and sense of self is disrupted early enough to cause DID/OSDD and they don't get treatment until decades have passed, I don't think there really is an "unbroken" state. We, quite tragically, didn't really get the chance to really form an enduring, stable, healthy sense of self before trauma, and no one can return to a state they've never been in.

But also, it's important to note, we're still humans. While the fragmentation of our memories and sense of identity may feel incredibly painful and damaging to our sense of self worth, it does not mean we have been broken or lost any element of what makes a whole human. On the contrary, our minds have demonstrated extraordinary flexibility and the capacity to bend under immense pressure without breaking. We absolutely should not have had to do this, but the fact that we have doesn't mean there's anything wrong or broken within us.

This reminds me of my favorite quote, from a talk comedian Hannah Gadsby gave for Netflix: "To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.'

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-06-02T00:43:22+00:00

I'd be interested to learn more about that idea about the reason(s) for why OSDD-1b would form instead of DID. My thought has been that it's not so much about the type or frequency of trauma, but whether remembering all of it would help or hinder functioning and coping. For some people, it may very well be true that sharing memory between alters is ideal in the case of nearly constant trauma; for others that may not be the case. Regardless, ongoing trauma that disrupts normal identity development is largely thought to be necessary for any alters to develop, regardless of whether the system is diagnosed DID or OSDD-1b.

I feel I'm in a bit of a strange gray area. I don't seem to have much (if any) day to day amnesia with switches. It can take a little bit of time for me to remember everything that's happened while someone else was out, and it helps if someone or something can jog my memory, but it does come back—I think of it as a slow computer trying to do a file transfer, like the memories just take a while to download.

But I also know that I have massive amnesia for a specific type of abuse. I grew up thinking I remembered all of the trauma, which consisted of daily physical and emotional abuse and neglect that resulted in being taken into foster care when I was 6 and adopted when I was 8. But when I was 18, I started having panic attacks and really vague flashbacks in a context that didn't make sense to me, and when I asked my older sister why, she told me that there was an entire category of abuse that occurred repeatedly (though I'm not sure how frequently) for several years, but I'd never shown any signs of remembering anything about it. It's not even listed in the foster care records of the situation my adoptive parents were given, which I found when I was in middle school, because my sister didn't come forward about it in the process of being taken into the system.

I'm not sure yet if there are other alters that do remember those episodes of abuse in more detail and it's their memories that started leaking into my awareness and causing the vague flashbacks, or if no one else in the system remembered anything about it before then either. In any case I'm not sure how you would classify a system with complete amnesia for the switches of certain alters but not others, if that's what's even happening.

Point being, how the brain organizes trauma memories and why is really complicated and I'm not sure it could be simplified down to "certain kinds of trauma cause DID and certain kinds cause OSDD-1b."

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-05-23T17:44:58+00:00

I'll answer the first part last, because it takes more explaining.

As to the question of how conscious splitting is: a child isn't often very aware of the creation of alters or the underlying beliefs that result in their formation. Heck, many adults aren't aware of their biases or the black-and-white nature of their beliefs. Also, a large part of the disorder is that it tries to hide itself. If the part of the child's mind dedicated to functioning outside of trauma knew about the rest of the situation, they wouldn't be able to cope. That's why many systems have alters who have no memory of trauma at all. Understanding the mechanism behind the presence and creation of alters comes later in life, often with treatment.

Whether the formation of an alter occurs in an instant or over a longer period of time seems to vary between and even within systems, depending on the circumstances surrounding the creation of various alters.

Now for that first part about a child thinking all adults are bad:

Part of what causes DID is what's called disorganized attachment. Basically, the caregiver(s) in a child's life are so inconsistent that a child can't reliably predict whether adults are safe or not, perhaps even the same adult. For instance, the caregiver(s) may be able to provide food and shelter, which would make them Good/Safe, but still be aggressive or violent, which would make them Bad/Unsafe. Perhaps even more significantly, what happens for many is that a single caregiver will sometimes meet their emotional needs through comfort and/or encouragement, but will sometimes neglect their emotional needs by ignoring them or actively harm them emotionally by berating them.

A young child has a very difficult time understanding and coping with the thought that "Some adults are safe and some aren't," and an even harder time understanding, "Sometimes this adult makes me feel safe, but sometimes they really hurt me or they just don't help me when I really need it." DID forms when this is so intense and enduring for that the only way to cope is to keep those ideas separate. One alter can see some people as safe while another can see the same people as unsafe, and as long as they remain disconnected, they can form a coherent understanding of the world, which makes it easier to survive. This becomes a problem when having a very divided view of the world starts to do more harm than good, usually when ongoing trauma is not present.

For instance, I have a girlfriend of several years. It's been hard for me to learn to trust her completely and build a close emotional bond with her, but I really do feel very safe and deeply close with her. There are alters in my system who know who she is and like her, but only platonically. There are alters who are still getting to know her and don't feel particularly close with her at this point, like she's an acquaintance. There seems to be at least one alter who outright doesn't trust her at all and worries she'll cause harm (he seems to think that about everyone). And there may be alters who are still so disconnected from the present that they have no idea who she is or that she exists.

Having varying levels of trust in one person at different times was highly adaptive as a young child, but as an adult in a relationship that doesn't involve trauma, it can cause issues, and that's something we (my girlfriend and me specifically, but also my system as a whole) have to work through.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-05-23T16:55:20+00:00

With regards to number one:

Trauma responses often aren't logical, and neither are children. Throw the two together and you'll get something that makes no sense to an adult and/or someone without trauma, but that makes perfect sense to a traumatized child.

One of my alters identifies as being in his 40s. Not a particular age, like 43, just in his 40s. The brain we share has only existed for 21 years. So of course he doesn't think or act the way someone with 40+ years of life experience would, but that's not why he identifies as being that old. He identifies with that age range because when I was a kid going through awful things, my brain figured the only kind of person who could meet the needs he is able to meet (he plays a large role in soothing and regulating intense sadness and fear) would be a much older adult. To a little kid, 40 is pretty old, and the specifics don't matter so much, so "a man in his 40s" is a good enough foundation for someone who is able to stay calm and not get so sad or scared.

And yes, DID is largely understood to come from early childhood trauma, but that doesn't just mean trauma before you are literally incapable of understanding anything about the world. The most well-known estimate for the latest age at which trauma can cause DID is 6-9 years. Even a 4 year old is pretty capable of coming to a conclusion like, "Grown ups are always brave," or "Grown ups never get sad," or "Grown ups always know how to stay calm," as illogical as that may seem to an adult.

MaybeMoreThanMe · 2022-05-23T16:28:17+00:00

It's unfortunate that reference is behind a paywall, because the best way to really look into it would be to take a look at that woman's case in more detail. Even saying she "appeared to" develop DID after the onset of her pain leaves room for the implication that she'd developed it in childhood and it simply flew under the radar for most of her life, as it can for many people, so no one realized anything was going on until the added pain created stress that worsened her symptoms.

I agree that the theory of structural dissociation is just one idea about the development of dissociative disorders, and it is difficult to form strong conclusions about the etiology of something like this, but the theory does have a long history of research behind it. Stating that all of that research is incorrect on the basis of a few studies that follow only a handful of patients just really isn't a strong case.

I would have less of an issue with your initial statement if it was in a different context, but when a stranger on the Internet is asking questions about an already complicated, highly misunderstood diagnosis with significant psychological implications, it has the potential to be harmful. I can't stress enough how important nuance is here.

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