Mind Mapping - the NEWS (slowly - work in process)

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

News DID/MPD Week ending October 6, 2013 #1&2 (Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder)

    • Does anyone have alters that run? That run away I mean? That decide they no longer want any responsibility and run away from home, much like a teen would?
    • And does anyone have alters that hide? What does it mean when an alter comes out, and hides the body, stops using the computer, shuts things down and attempts to just...hide? Anyone have theories?
    • TRIGGER WARING*One of the younger alters had bad dream lest night and is now just crying all the time. I was able to pash my way out so we can talk but now she is not talking to anyone.
    • All we know is she had bad dream and ran out Anastasia tried to talk to her but she is to scared. She thinks something really bad is going to happen.
    • Anyone know what we can do to help her feel safe?
    • Does anyone else on here have synesthesia? We do, and it's really woven into the system.
    • If you don't know what synesthesia is, it's a neurological condition where the senses are connected when they normally aren't. People with synesthesia may see color when they hear music, for example. Or they may associate personalities or genders with numbers or letters. There are tons of different types, though, and it's a fascinating condition if you look it up a little.
    • Anyway, there are several different types in our system. I have a lot, and so does the original host. Some alters have a couple types, while others have none at all.
    • It impacts the entire system though because all of us in here have an "element" that represents our personality as an alter. Some have just one, some have two. Alexa's is fire and then dark purple velvet. Mine is a type of metal. Love's is emerald green. Everyone in here has one, and I know this is the synesthesia making this happen. It'd be personality to color/texture.
    • Does anyone else have synesthesia, and if so, does it impact your system like it does ours?
    • My husband whom has DID is wondering if those who are the host while they are on the outside at times hear voices which are at times higher than other times but when he goes in there is no one talking so he thinks it's their thoughts.
    • Has anyone else experienced something like that? If so, how do you stop them, or is it possible?Then if you hear their thoughts do you also have an impulse to repeat what they are saying?
    • Any help will be appreciated. He said thanks also.
    • been having some bad arguments. pretty tired and low. there was a bad screaming match earlier involving someone trying to tell the GF to go away and leave forever though i'm not really sure why now, i know i feel like i keep on hurting her because i'm pretty non-functional a lot of the time and she is finding it really difficult, and i don't want to keep upsetting her.
    • we had to go do some shopping this afternoon; in the store i kept having these overwhelming urges to break things, which is new. sometimes in arguments i go into a blurry rage state and punch walls, don't really know how to combat it because my emotions overload and i lose control. this was different though; it felt like a child wanting to act out, but i haven't felt this before from the child-states.
    • it was very hard to stop it, i had to pin my hands in my pockets and i did end up crushing something.any suggestions on how to deal with it?
    •  Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality ... 
      Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality DisorderDissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously referred to as multiple personality
       http://www.nami.org/Content/Microsites270/NAMI_Howard_County/Home258/Mental_Illness_Information1/DissociativeIdentityDisorder.pdf
    •  Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in ... 
      This article was downloaded by: [208.78.151.82] On: 21 October 2011, At: 09:20 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number ...
       http://www.isst-d.org/downloads/GUIDELINES_REVISED2011.pdf
    •  Dissociative Identity Disorder - MCCC 
      3/25/2013 1 What are Dissociative Disorders? What is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)? - What are the features of DID? What is the etiology of DID?
       http://www.mccc.edu/~jenningh/Courses/documents/Psy210-lecture11-DID_STUDENT.pdf
    •  Dissociative Identity Disorder 
      11/11/2009 1 What is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Ch. 5-Somatoform and Dissociative disorders Module Objectives What areDissociative Disorders?
       http://www.mccc.edu/~jenningh/Courses/documents/Psy210-Lecture11_DID.pdf
    •  Dissociative Disorders FACT SHEET - NAMI 
      obsessive-compulsive disorder. What are dissociative disorders? ... condition in this area is called dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple
       http://www.nami.org/factsheets/dissociativedisorders_factsheet.pdf
    • My child (16) is overwhelmed with something. So alt A (protector) tries to come out to fix it. Alt B prevents alt A from coming out fully ( alt A sucks at parenting) - Alt B does a great job of engaging and equipping the child to calm herself down. Alt B continues to act on behalf of the child which requires talking to a school counselor on the telephone and several emails.
    • All is well. Then after all this has passed and everything certainly is okay I remember being sad, overwhelmed and wanting to cry?
    • t this point Alt C moves forward to do her thing ( replacing the brake on her bicycle) like this was an urgent item?! Never mind making dinner ?!
    • Having DID and parenting feels so hard. I don't want my kids to be like me :/ I try to be engaged and helpful when they need me. However, this triggers out parts in response to their needs and sometimes it's triggering out parts that are about their age- I have two alters that will come out in response to two of my children and their emotional needs. I feel so inadequate :(
    • It's only been a couple of months since I've come to grips with the world inside of me. Fortunately , for me I was around people that knew about the disorder and tell me what was happening. I wasn't so much surprised that they were there, but why?
    • I did my own homework as well. Finding out that this disorder is a coping mechanism for those of us who have it. I thought "whoa how cool is that , that my mind could split apart like that to preserve me from trauma! How awesome is God, who created our minds in the first place".
    • My church family knows, which includes my Godmom ,who has took "my peeps" under her care, my spiritual parents, and the rest of my support team. Ironically, it may seem to you that my actual family does not know. I'm not bold enough to tell them but I hope soon enough , I can!
    • PS. I know I've said a lot but it would mean a lot of someone responded
    • October 31st, Halloween. A time to cash in on patient angst is Big Business for psychotherapists, drug companies and hospitals as I will explain in this post. What you will read below is not my academic conclusions or my distorted and naive understanding of what occurs for patients who believe they have multiple personalities due to being ritually tortured as a child. Instead, you will read about what I experienced while a patient. My psychiatrist convinced me that I was ritually abused as a child. In short, I’ve been there – done that. This is what I and other patients I knew experienced during the Halloween holidays – every year.
    • Psychotherapists treating women for multiple personalities after diagnosing them with Dissociative Identity Disorder is shameful because their patients routinely regress into a heap of emotions and new memories of child abuse that may also include ritual abuse and on the far extreme, satanic ritual abuse.
    • Therapists entrenched in this psychological treatment usually do not find it their responsibility to question their patient’s memories or to assist their patients in verifying their recall no matter how outrageous and implausible the alleged ritual abuse remembered may be.
       
    • Instead, these particular therapists support and encourage more and more memories of ritualized child abuse that may include satanic worship and torture. What occurs in the lives of these patients, usually exhausted and worn down from years of therapy sessions, is intense fear and hyperviligence. Due to constant reinforcement for alleged ritual abuse during psychotherapy and in Internet chat forms, they constantly look over their shoulder believing their alleged persecutors are coming for them.
    • These women are convinced their abusers are planning to abduct them and/or cause them to return to the ritual cult to continue the torture by sending a pre-determined message to commit suicide via an encoded telephone message, for example, because they dared to tell secrets held by the cult they remember being forced to participate in as children.
    • Most of these ritual and satanic memories of torture, murder, rape, and consuming human body parts are bogus but again, therapists do not care, find it necessary, or their responsibility to find the truth behind these absurd memories born during psychological treatment or other influential sources like self-help books and Internet forums full of like-minded individuals.
      • What you will likely find is that memories were born in therapy or in an environment that encourages and supports widespread ritualized torture of children are more than absurd.
         
        No need to take my word for it. Do a simple Google search using terms like:
         
           
        • dissociative identity disorder blogs or websites
        •  
        • multiple personality disorder blogs or websites
        •  
        • childhood ritual abuse memories
        •  
        • therapists who treat satanic ritual abuse
    • Does the implausible nature of patient recall deter these therapists from continuing to encourage these questionable and outrageous memories? No. It’s big business, job security, and a hefty paycheck usually cut from an insurance company unaware of what is actually occurring behind the closed doors of therapy largely because these therapists use other diagnostic categories to bill insurance reimbursement such as Borderline Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders among others.
    • So, what actually occurs in the lives of the psychotherapist? Overtime. Overtime. Overtime. Booking double sessions and/or additional weekly or daily sessions to support their patients through the terrifying Halloween season become the norm and are planned for year after year after year.
    • What actually occurs for Big Pharma? Sales. Sales. Sales. As the anxiety levels and suicidal thinking and/or attempts begin to unfold, more psychiatric drugs are prescribed. Anxiety meds, sleeping meds, antipsychotic meds – anything that will quell the fear and anxiety of those believing they will be abducted and returned to a cult to be sacrificed or otherwise tortured. Anyone under these conditions would cry out for help to get through a day while awaiting the inevitable October 31st — Halloween.
    • I am worried about my child. He's 9 and ever since was little, he always acted like a different person from day to day and hour to hour. One day, he's acting like a pirate. Another day, he's Peter Pan. I've seen him act like a lion, spiderman, batman, transformers, toad, x-men, etc. It gets even worst when he's around his friends and they would pretend to be power rangers. I don't know what's going on here...I feel like i'm losing my child. I'm afraid that if I go out and tell people, they may think i'm not a good parent...that something is wrong with me. What should I do?
    • In this I am talking about borderline PD, not bipolar, but feel free to stray if you want :) (If we break each of us down, we all fit different diagnoses - some of us don't fit any!).Many DID people have a dual diagnosis with BPD, or were misdiagnosed as BPD.
    • We were misdiagnosed in the past (I am like the opposite of BPD - we even got kicked out of DBT for not being impulsive/for doing as we were told!), although niva might fit it (her personality is stable, and she doesn't have dramatic relationships, but she's very intense, has abandonment issues, used to harm the body, and of course is prone to dissociation under stress..)
    • What about you/your system?
    • For the past year I have been bad enough with splitting and dissociation to warrant calling myself a multiple. If I'm honest with myself, I experienced dissociation before. Mostly in the form of - then unnamed - child selves.
    • But it didn't get this bad before "Josh". One day I just decided I was male, and I went with it, and wanted to go along with transitioning. Then more alters started to show up, and more, and more, more splitting, more selves, and I gave more of them names. I have been "Josh" for almost a year.
    • I want to go back. I want to be a girl. I focused so much on becoming this boy Josh that I didn't realize how unhappy I was becoming. I put the femme in a neat little box and dissociated from it to rationalize my nice little "trans narrative". I was never a little boy growing up. I didn't wish to be a boy any more than any other girl does, after realizing the implications of her gender. I am not a transsexual.
    • I don't know if "Josh" is still there or if you would call this an "integration" or simply a "waking up". But I feel like I've lost myself in all of this. I feel like in becoming a boy i left a core part of me behind, and the mask has been falling apart. I don't know how to tell people. I don't know how to say that I've wasted everyones time, that I made a mistake, and can't even explain why. I'm afraid of losing all of my trans friends.
    • I'm afraid of what this all means. Surely this moment of "clarity", or what feels like clarity after a long storm, won't last? I couldn't just have made this year up. Will Josh come back with a vengeance after I've had my "run"? I don't know.I just want to live.
    • Welcome to the Trauma and Dissociation project. We welcome and encourage editors to join with us in creating a wealth of information about the mental disorders caused by trauma.
    • The mask represents the normal face that traumatizedindividuals present to the world; behind the mask are the parts of the personalitywho struggle with one another.  The demons represent the shame and issues that can occur; the lightning strikes the attacks against the self. The train carries the healed toward paradise while the unhealed looks on, stuck in their nightmare setting.
    • Art by: Jeffsong Little was known in the 1970 s and 1980 s about the lingering effects of childhood abuse, but in years since, a great deal of research has been directed at this subject. Abusers, and go to great lengths to hide the emotional, physical and sexual abusethey enact upon children, but the fact remains that child abuseis common, and is truly a hideous and hidden epidemic of the human culture.
    • :7Individuals who are, or were abused, suffer from shame, and often blame themselves for the abuse they suffered at the hands of a caregiver
    • The abusive parent, which a child must depend on to live is essential to a child s survival, and cannot be easily discarded.  :7-19 The issue of forgotten abuse is coveted by abusers, in hopes their victims will not remember their childhood suffering. The book Sybil, although much has been learned since then, has shown the public that amnesia plays a significant role in those who have (Multiple Personality Disorder).
    • Jennifer Freyd s “Betrayal Trauma Theory” suggests that Dissociative Amnesiais an adaptive response to childhood abuse. :225A child mistreated by their caregiver(s) must find a way to survive, and Dissociative Amnesiaallows this by letting a child maintain attachment with their caretaker.  :9 Pathological dissociation is a complex psychophysiological process that changes the accessibility of memory and knowledge, mechanisms can provide temporary adaptive protection from that abuse.
    • 225 Individuals respond differently to abuse, due to a variety of factors, so what is traumatizing is subjective.  However, certain factors are present when trauma occurs, including treatment of life, body integrity, sanity, abuse of power, betrayal of trust, entrapment, helplessness, pain, confusion, loss, and an overwhelming inability to cope. :178-181Psychological trauma occurs from a series of severely distressing events, such as constant child abuse, or less often, as one event.
    • f stressis prolonged and takes place during childhood, then the result can be all the more devastating. [] DSM-5 Category: Dissociative Disorders The DSM-5, was released May, 2013 and the DSM-5 committees have settled on the following categories: Terminology for Dissociative Disorders .
    • i, I am new here too and to any real certainty that I may have alters. I understand the freaking out. As I read on the DID forum, I am both relieved and afraid -appauled and drawn to.
    • I have been dx with bpd with my last therapist and have had the screaming in my head and crying for a couple years and finally started telling my current therapist about this anger (screaming) and sadness
    • The sadness happens and then immediately my head is screaming at me and sometimes mocking me but mainly feels protecitive of little ones when the crying starts. Constantly kicking my legs with full body muscle spasms at times
    • I am so afraid and can barely read and retain anything tonight after being on here the first time. I don't believe I could be DID I am very scared too, Thx for ur post which I now cant remember (and I don't know how to go back to check while writing)but I know I appreciated it sorry for rambling
    • When you are in a crisis, with a lot of unnoticed/uncontrollable switching, influencing, and feeling really spacey and disoriented/sucked inside/confused, would you recommend continuing your public activities? I mean, if we would not continue doing them, we'll be more isolated and kept in a sort of spiral maybe? But if we would, we could make a huge fool out of myself which would definitely not help and maybe make sure we wont have the courage to go back to that activity at all anymore.
    • We were trying to think about something today. We have been told by our doctor that our hears are working ok and the body is hearing. So why can we not hear?Is it normal for alters to be Daef and the body to be Hearing?Is it linked to the DID?We do not understand what is going on.None of us can hear.
  • 05 Oct 13
    A Girl Not Named Sybil
    By DEBBIE NATHAN
    Published: October 14, 2011
    By the New York Times

    On the couch she talked about her old feelings of loneliness, her simultaneous sense of superiority and worthlessness, her puzzling body aches. After several sessions with Wilbur, the insomnia worsened and so did her menstrual pain. To treat these problems, Wilbur wrote prescriptions for powerful drugs: Seconal to help her sleep, Daprisal for her cramps. Seconal was later determined to be habit-forming (it is now typically prescribed for no longer than two weeks) and Daprisal eventually proved so addictive that it was yanked from the market. Many doctors prescribed these drugs in the 1950s, but Wilbur sometimes gave Mason higher doses of her medications than was customary.

    Wilbur was astounded. She believed Mason was experiencing what were known as fugue states, a condition she treated in her very first patient in 1940. A person suffering from a fugue state left home for hours, days or even weeks, and behaved like someone else entirely. Fugue states were a rare form of hysteria caused by dissociation. From Wilbur’s point of view, they were also spectacular.

    Wilbur decided that she would have to psychoanalyze not just Shirley but Peggy Ann, Peggy Lou and Vicky. She vowed to treat her patient no matter how much time it took. The treatment would be given on credit.


    “It’s like love, and love hurts,” Vicky answered. “When people love you they hit you this way and this way with the knuckles and they slap you.”

    Trauma. Finally. Vicky had more. “And they put flashlights in you and bottles out of little silver boxes and they put a blanket over your face and hold a light over. You can’t breathe and it hurts and you kick and you can’t move.”

    Who had done it? Wilbur figured it was Mason’s mother, Mattie — after all, as many psychiatrists and psychoanalysts believed in the 1950s, people with emotional problems were almost always hurt by their mothers. Wilbur began to suspect that Mattie Mason was a paranoid schizophrenic.

    Wilbur frequently made house calls, even on evenings and weekends. Sometimes she crawled into bed with Mason to administer electric shocks with a special machine. She helped Mason financially by trying to sell her paintings. She also offered to get her into medical school and pay her tuition and living expenses. One day she approached her about doing a book on her most special patient. Mason agreed to participate.

    The therapy continued for years. It included regular sodium pentothal injections, though psychiatrists in the 1950s knew the drug was addictive. It eventually dawned on Wilbur that Mason was becoming dependent on the drug. But when she tried to stop administering pentothal, Mason became frantic. She spent hours scolding, cajoling and groveling, on the phone and in single-spaced typed letters. She began to sprout additional alters.

    “I am not going to tell you there isn’t anything wrong,” the letter continued. “But it is not what I have led you to believe. . . . I do not have any multiple personalities. . . . I do not even have a ‘double.’ . . . I am all of them. I have been essentially lying.”

    Mason was the most important patient in Wilbur’s professional career. She was preserving the tape-recorded narcosynthesis interviews she was doing with Mason and preparing to speak about the case at professional meetings. Wilbur told her patient that the recantation was “a major defensive maneuver,” merely the ego’s attempt to trick itself into thinking it didn’t need therapy. But Mason did need it, badly, Wilbur insisted. She was denying that she’d been tortured by her mother; this showed she really had been tortured.

    Mason would eventually give up pentothal. She would give up her alters (Wilbur pronounced her “cured” in 1965). She would even give up her connections to family and friends, going into hiding after “Sybil” was published. But she could not give up Dr. Wilbur.


    This article is adapted from “Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case,” by Debbie Nathan, to be published this month by the Free Press.

    Editor: Sheila Glaser
    • I used to believe that MPD was a real phenomenon—the mind can indeed do strange things—but it increasingly seems like a hox. I had a tab with a great summary of the situation—an article by a psychiatrist in the US who was alarmed to see that in the UK diagnoses of MPD are still common. The article was extremely good, but Chrome crashed and “Restore” didn’t work and no matter how I skim “history” I cannot find it. So it goes.
    • And Google was of little help, though it did uncover this article in the NY Times Magazine by Debbie Nathan a couple of years ago:
    • “What about Mama?” the psychiatrist asks her patient. “What’s Mama been doing to you, dear? . . . I know she gave you the enemas. And I know she filled your bladder up with cold water, and I know she used the flashlight on you, and I know she stuck the washcloth in your mouth, cotton in your nose so you couldn’t breathe. . . . What else did she do to you? It’s all right to talk about it now. . . . ”
       
      “My mommy,” the patient says.
       
      “Yes.”
       
      “My mommy said that I was a bad little girl, and . . . she slapped me . . . with her knuckles. . . .”
       
      “Mommy isn’t going to ever hurt you again,” the psychiatrist says at the close of the session. “Do you want to know something, Sweetie? I’m stronger than Mother.”
    • The same year that her identity was revealed, Robert Rieber, a psychologist at John Jay, presented a paper at the American Psychological Association in which he accused Mason’s doctor of a “fraudulent construction of a multiple personality,” based on tape-recordings that Schreiber had given him. “It is clear from Wilbur’s own words that she was not exploring the truth but rather planting the truth as she wanted it to be,” Rieber wrote.
       
      It wasn’t the first indication that there might be problems with Mason’s diagnosis. As far back as 1994, Herbert Spiegel, an acclaimed psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, began telling reporters that he occasionally treated Shirley Mason when her regular psychiatrist went out of town. During those sessions, Spiegel recalled, Mason asked him if he wanted her to switch to other personalities. When he questioned her about where she got that idea, she told him that her regular doctor wanted her to exhibit alter selves.
    • And yet, in the popular imagination, Sybil and her fractured self remained powerfully tied to the idea of M.P.D. and the childhood traumas it was said to stem from. “Mamma was a bad mamma,” Wilbur declares in the transcripts. “I can help you remember.” But countless other records suggest that the outrages Sybil recalled never happened. If Sybil wasn’t really remembering, then what exactly was Wilbur helping her to do?
    • Hi everyone. I have a problem, I don’t know what to do, and I can’t talk to my T because she’s out of town for two weeks.
    • I used to be able to communicate with other multiples, but for the past couple of months, I literally can’t. I used to post here a bit. Then I stopped being able to be open and sharing, and went to just lurking. Then I stopped even being able to lurk.
    • The moment I read ANYTHING about someone’s alters, or something written BY one of the alters, an overwhelming surge of anger washes over me. There’s so much hate I feel so terrible about it. The only thing I can assume is that it is coming from someone I don’t know yet. I am 97% sure it is not from anyone I know. But they don’t communicate with me at all.
    • It feels like they are punishing us for being multiple. (Due to the alarm fiasco yesterday)Is this normal? I’ve never dealt with this before. An alter that downright HATES the fact that we are multiple?
    • I am just so at a loss as to what to do. I’m completely closed off because of him/her. Does anyone have any ideas?(After I wrote this I started feeling physically sick. :/ )
    • I wake up tired all the time. Since I can remember I've always had sleep problems. I'll stay awake for days if I don't take my medication. But sometimes it still doesn't help.
    • ut well I'm wondering if it's because of an alter. The little girl only "comes out" at night. (There's been a few times where she'll come out for a minute/talk to me, during the day time.) But she normally only fully "comes out" when it's dark and no one is around/up. So I'm here all day, then she wants out at night (when I need to sleep).
    • Lately my meds haven't helped half the time, or I'll remember going to bed, but I'll "wake up" finding myself outside walking on a street or doing other things. Or sometimes I'll wake up going back into my house or sometimes I'll wake up in my bed half dressed (not what I go to bed in).
    • So when I wake up it feels like I haven't gotten any sleep. I'm tired all the time and I have to work during the day. If I'm not getting any sleep it makes it difficult to work and do things.
    • I don't know... Does anyone else have this kind of problem? Is there anything that can actually help?
    • Well, my story begins in childhood. when i was a kid, I heard voices and saw things. I have always been schizophrenic. when i went to school i saw things on the walls, Numbers. Well one night when i was 5 years old I had hallucinations to the point i couldnt tell where i was
    • I know because i was moving around and was in full control of my body, and it wasnt like a dream. Then i find myself in hell, and then heaven, and then in a cave. i actually wandered to the kitchen door of my house during the hallucination, unlocked the door, and then went outside. my parents were quick to see me because they heard me while i was up. All they remember me saying was i can't see you, because i couldnt tell where they were because i couldnt see them in my hallucination the last time.
    • But i became a christian at 12 years old. so In 8th grade, my symptoms really start to show themselves. I start to become more paranoid, and my dad said he suspected it when i talk to him today at this point.
    • 8th grade year was my worst year in terms of Bullying and also at the time my mental illness. I started to hear voices telling me people were trying to hurt me and poison me and all of those types of voices. they told me to kill myself as well. the year went by and my grandfather died. at that point my paranoia became really severe. years pass by until i am 16. then i start seeing demons and hearing demons and also start hearing very weird things.
    • Next year, things get really bad for me. 2011, my senior year of high school. I start having horrible mood swings and still hear voices. i think my mom is plotting to kill me at this point. Also i begin to self injure. I go to a psychologist, and she diagnoses me as rapid cycling Bipolar. She didnt know i was hearing voices too though. she refers me to a psychiatrist, who i see now, and i told him how i heard voices and saw things and was thinking people were trying to kill me and everything and what i see, and he diagnosed me as Paranoid Schizophrenic.
    • en put on. It makes me feel better really rapidly with very few side effects, actually none at all. After exercising i've finally gotten my weight back down to 208 lbs. i am 20 years old now, and have battled mental illness all my life, but now i am much better. i've been without symptoms for 10 months, and now my doctor thinks i can come off the meds, with his supervision in two months. so now i am feeling much better. I'm proof anyone can recover if they have the right medicine and therapy. Oh, and i had one other alter, but i integrated with him.
    • i am male, with really bad schizophrenia. Or it was bad, until i started taking medicine. I took depakote because my original dx was bipolar, it made me suffer from mania, so i don't believe i was bipolar.
    • t made every thing worse i crashed into anger on it. risperdal managed all my symptoms, but had bad side effects, and zyprexa made me gain tons of weight. Geodon has worked wonders for me in managing symptoms. I still get the sick feeling i get when i am about to hear voices though. i think its anxiety though, might have to bump up the lexapro. It makes me not depressed.
    • my depression comes from my schizophrenia. I still see lights sometimes. thats what i hallucinate and see now, lights with no source. I used to see all sorts of things, mostly paranoid in nature. like demons and aliens and all of that. i used to hear a female voice, but haven't for a while. She and the other voices were a prominent part of my hallucinations for two years. I stopped hearing voices in february, but i now the most prominent thing that stands out in my mind is i hear my mom calling for me from the other room. If i don't take my medicine i feel horrible, and paranoia and voices come back really rapidly.
    • had one alter but we integrated. I missed two days of my medicine, and voices and paranoia came back very rapidly. as well as visual hallucinations and delusions. My doctor wants to take me off of my meds in 2 months, as i have been doing well. I'm not really sure if it will work, but i am open to the idea and actually want to try it. I feel as though it probably will not work though.
    • a daily/weekly blog about successfully living with Dissociative Identity Disorder and the daily challenges of living with this condition.
    • I look out my window and  see the raindrops gathering on the bows of Western  Redcedar tree. The raindrops  slowly pool together until they hit the critical point where they become heavy enough and run down its fan like sprays that come off its branches. They seem to hang on momentarily, then drop off, the branch bounces back up, ready for a replay.  I get up to put a sweater on.
    • see warmth in the colours, all be it they are not as spectacular as most other areas of Canada.  But here, this time of year, the maple leaves change from green, to an amazing array of yellow and gold before they fall off. The light this time of year is warmer and gives off amazingly long shadows.  The coats on the local deer have changed from  light brown to a spectacular rich, dark reddish brown that looks as if it’s made out of mahogany, it truly is beautiful. And in the next month the first of the Trumpeter swans will show up to winter over and fatten up, to get ready for their spring migration back up north. 
    • For me, there is also internal change coming.
       
       
       
       When I first got back off of my Outward Bound Course, life became unexpectedly busy. It has just been in the last week that things have started to settle down and I have had the opportunity to start to process the amazing adventure that I had. 
    • I have noticed that some of my old life does not feel right, nothing drastic, just little things.  Things like where do I really want to put my limited energy? Do I see things the same way? Priorities have changed and I am seeing things with new eyes.  
    • I am also calmer, more at peace with myself and my life. I notice I worry less about when my disability pension will be put in the bank and what am I going to do in the future.  I am living more in the moment. I have much more gratitude for my life and for those who are in it. I value and respect myself more than ever thought I would.
    • Yes, I feel a change coming. Like the change of seasons here, it will not be dramatic, it will be subtle, it will happen bit by bit, day by day, and when it does, I know it will be right for me. I am open to it and I look forward to the new and improved me. 
       
       
       
       I will keep you all posted on this new and exciting chapter of my life. 
    • Ggggrrr. Was talking to a friend earlier, I have a mental health assessment tomorrow and I was saying I'm not sure what to say at it/what I want out of it. And that I'm not sure about my new counsellor as I talk a lot about the past so feel more unstable. She went on about how with her she had to think happy thoughts, look at the situations and realise they weren't that big, and talk about the past to get over it.
    • WHY does everyone think it's that easy....if it was that easy we wouldn't all be on this forum! I just feel that no-one understands 'all you have to do it x,y,z'.
    • Am I missing something here, is it not as complex as I thought, can it be treated easily with counselling and positive thoughts. Am struggling so much at the moment and now I feel as though I shouldn't have bothered going to the doctor and shouldn't bother with the mental health assessment aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    • Anonymous asked: I was wondering if you could share what you say when you come out to people as multiple? How do you phrase it? What do you find effective to say to someone? I want to come out to my mother but I am having trouble finding the words. Right now she doesn't know I exist.
    • hmmm well we’ve come out to both family and friends and I know with people closer to you it’s harder (sorry, anon). Basically, we just came out and said it.
    • To friends we went ‘I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, I’m part of a system, I’m an alter. Deal with it.’ And then we just bring up stuff in conversation that convinces people we aren’t lying
    • Family is harder. We’ve told a few and none of them really get it, their nan is all ‘it’s a spiritual link’ and I just… I had to hold myself back from whacking her because just no. Their grandma is kind of ignoring it and their dad, though he sometimes brings it up, uses it as another thing to pick fault at and tries to convince us to hide again.
    • Basically, we were blunt. We just say it and explain why we know this is true. People look amazed and like we’re a little bit crazy but, after a while, they see that we can’t be lying. And welcome all questions but I know we haven’t told Scar’s family about the way it it’s caused: Scar refuses to let that cat out of the bag and her family are famous for sweeping things under the rug.
    • I've noticed that a lot of female-bodied multiples have an angry/aggressive/protector male alter. Is this the case for you? (it is not for us). For men with DID who have female alters - are they girly/innocent/vulnerable?
    • I am Anette. I was not out for more than 20 years. I went to school two years. The body was 14 and 15. I had lots of friends. I was good at school. I was in a nice family. I was happy. After that I have been sleeping or somthing like that.
    • nd now I am here. I have ben here for some days now and everything is strange. Nothing is normal. I just want to live a normal life. I like normal things. Normal food. Normal cloths. Normal familys. Normal friends. But nothing is normal anymore. The others had destroied everything. They are not normal.
    • They eat strange food and have only black cloths. They are fat. They watch strange TV. They are in a fight with my parents. They have no friends. And they live with a woman! Everyone knows about that and they have told everyone and I am so embarrased! They are even getting married wearin dresses both two. I am tolerant and know that they are born like that, but they don't need to tell everybody. It is so embarresin!
    • I do not want to live with a woman. I do not like girls! The woman are nice, but I am not lesbian! I just want a normal life. Friends. Family. Just be normal like everybody else. I do not want everybody to hate me. I want to have a boyfriend. That is most normal. A girlfriend is not normal. They can not help it, but they do not need to tell everybody. It can be a secret. But it is to late becase everybody knows about it. It is not my life. It is so embarresin!
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  • 05 Oct 13
    Dr. Linda Marten has been in private practice for 37 years. She is the Associate Professor in the Counseling Department at Dallas Theological Seminary.
    The definition of Dissociative Identity Disorder in the DSM-V is “disruption of identity characterized by two or more
    distinct personality states or an experience of possession. This involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense
    of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or
    sensory-motor functioning.” In this presentation we will look at the criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder in the
    new DSM V, noting the changes from the DSM IV. Through examining the development and purpose of dissociating,
    participants will gain an appreciation for the functionality of the creation of alters and an alter system. Using case stories and art, we will see how this dividing of self is both a solution and a problem. Treatment approaches will be shown
    and discussed through power-points and Q & A time.
    This workshop will assist participants in their ability to:
    ∙ Understand the DSM V diagnostic criteria for DID and how it differs from DSM IV
    ∙ Explain the function of DID and how it serves the self
    ∙ Describe treatment goals appropriate for DID
    ∙ Know strategies to attain stabilization and possible integration
    ∙ Have resources for further study
    • He's a nice guy, but I still can't wrap my head around the fact that he's 3 different people. (3 major ones, I should say) And his "main" personality is created completely by medication.
    • He refuses to let me meet one of them, as that personality is very violent, so he'll just up and disappear for a day or two at a time.
    • m I having such a hard time understanding him because I've never been around people with Multiple Personality Disorder?
    • All his personalities aren't created by the meds, his "balanced and appropriate for society" personality is. His other two major ones are all natural.
    • Well I think rapid switching is a (for us very common) way to deal with pain or stress. We do it all the time, basically daily, we don't have a host who is in control most of the time. We grew up rapid switching due to a ahum, very dynamic situation, and it just kinda stayed that way. But I don't think it's necessarily grieving. If anything I think the constantly switching back to non emotional states interrupts this grieving that the younger ones are doing. But if we would (be able to) let them we wouldn't do anything but cry.
    • Other than this, I received undeniable knowledge of our official diagnosis finally which is still difficult for some- even though others in our system initially self-diagnosed.
    • Today is a good day, we didn't wake up crying, haven't cried since, and I may even actually be up to some of our tasks today.. I keep feeling them inside, pushing the pain, hearing them cry, but honestly I don't know what to do about it. I'm not going to lie and say it will be alright cause I don't know that it will.
    • If it were up to me I didn't have DID and I wouldn't be in therapy, and I sure as heck wouldn't be going back anymore now. But I lost the vote, we're going back..
    • And I guess I know I need it, cause damn I can't even imagine how we used to be able to do all the stuff we did before the DID hell broke loose. There was a time we cleaned 2 complete houses in one day. I can't even do my own house in a full week now. We're a mess.
    • It has been a long time ago, but one time i saw a shadow standing over my bed, and then it molested me. i could feel it happening, but couldn't stop it. It was really scary. I don't know why it happened. i am schizophrenic and had DID at the time. but I wonder, could i have been molested when i was younger, and not remember it? even after integration, i don't remember any of that happening to me. all i remember was occasionally my parents screaming at me. never any of that. That never happened. and honestly if it did, i wouldnt want to remember.
    • constant frustration - feel like everything inside is knotted up all tight. keep feeling so damn pissed off with everything and then feeling nothing at all. trouble communicating; allowing space to talk but all i'm getting right now is different variations on 'I couldn't give less of a $#%^ about your problems'.
    • There's a massive vacuity and it's inaccessible and i can't be ######6 bothered trying to patch up all these gaping holes inside the mind of someone whose best attempt at existing is sitting inside a messy house day after day. It isn't my responsibility to take care of
    • sorry, i feel really embarrassed about this post. also can't stop these massive waves of anger.
    • What was life like before you were diagnosed with DID? Were things unstable and chaotic? Did you find yourself confused a lot of the time?
    • I am a support person and for those of you that remember me, my boyfriend recently had a hard switch and left. He is undiagnosed and not in therapy. Life for him has been a series of jobs, relationships and seeking out happiness and never quite finding it. I'm sure there's a myriad of other symptoms at work here such as depression and depersonalization.
    • I've come across so many threads on this forum with folks that have successful relationships with their SO's, and are working on things, yet my partner is the one that ran away! I can only assume this is because the issues are not being worked on. Help! Were any of you this way before diagnosis/therapy?
    • when getting a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, what do they do exactly to determine you have DID?