My healing journey is systematic because my therapist and I made it that way. Back in 2001 when my son went into foster care the first time and my therapist at that time started putting together that I had DID I disclosed to her I had been diagnosed with it but never worked on it.

At that point I didn't believe I was that. I knew I fit the symptoms and been daignosed with testing but covered like hell so that noone would put me back into the hospital. By the time I went through the testing I had been hospitalized 3 times and had been raped in there the third commitment. There was no way I was going back and there was no way I wanted the DHS child protective services to find out that I had this. They never would have given me my son back. My lawyer at that time later confirmed that we were NOT to disclose my DID. My present lawyer says it ok for it to be disclosed now and I think did so. at this point it can't do anything to the case. my son is in residentail most likely until he turns 18 because of his violent behavior.

So while I was researching it so that I could hide it better for if my therapist picked up on it within 6 months of seeing her then DHS would soon be on to it. My therapist in the meantime was asking area professionals in the field of DID and researching outside the area for books and professionals to find out what to do for me and at the same time not draw DHS attention to our work.

She was told first to start with acceptance and being honest about what I had. I had seen the movie Sybil and that scared the you know what out of me. There was no way I was going to be a Sybil. I was working on things to prove to her I didn't have this.

So the first thing my therapist had to do was get me past the denial stage and fast. I had been in the denial stage for about 12 years.DHS had already required me to go through a comprehensive Psycholgical Evaluation. I managed to hide my DID by shear luck - the MMPI does not test for DID. so any DID symptoms I had got scattered around into all the other areas and was helped by my lying on eval (the validity scales picked up on the fact that I wasn't being honest but didn't know why because on purpose I was not being consistant in any area) we had just gotten a new caseworker who was what I call the wicked b..... of the west. any time anyone on my side of the case challenged her about her accusations and behavior towards me she brought up my medication may need adjusting and new psych eval threats.

So my therapist knew we didnt have time for pussyfooting around. So she was looking for things that would do get me out of denial. but I beat her to it.

One day I looked at her and told her everything I was finding in every area was proving I had it and I started to cry because I thought I was going to lose my son cause I was a sybil.

She sat down with me and explained my DID just like she was told to not in terms of sybil flesh and blood alters taking over my body that the media likes to portray the disorder as but in the true psych world terms of I had pieces of memories, they were called alternate personalities and that the memories had been separated and I was rerunning those memory pieces and we needed to know how to take care of them.

She told me about contacting people in the field of DID and they said The first step was communication, then getting them to work together and fit together. No major scarey hospitals and meds we were going to do it together and one step at a time.

Then told me that I had already been working on it with my research for flashbacks and so on. She pulled out my journal entries I had given her and pointed to where the writings had changed and said thats communication. no big scary force them to leave or sybil actions The only thing I needed to add to my journalling, drawing and crafts that I was already doing for depression flashbasks and so on was to start listening to the static and see if I can hear any words. those words were my auditory memories. Something in the here and now was making them replay. if I listened to them I will know how to take care of myself for whatever is happening now.

She gave me a book she had found called Amongst Ourselves I told her I would read it. I ended up doing some of it. this lead to my buying a copy and writing to the authors for more information. I love this book. It focuses on the positive not the negative scarey uncontrolable sybil.

In this book DID was controlable. It had activites that showed how the parts worked together to make who I was - a creative special person who can accomplish anything I set out to do. Having this didn't mean my life and I had to be out of control doing things that I couldnt control. DID was controlable and I had to be the one to work on it.

From then on my therapist and I worked on researching and finding workbooks in every area possible and we created activites that would stimulate all my senses at once while keeping me grounded in reality.

Since I am an amnesiac DID I couldn't do one of the activities alone - charting the memory pieces. So I created a chart listing as many things as I could that could be filled in by my therapist that would give me information about my memry pieces. What I liked and didnt like while experiencing one, favorite food, activities. When ever I was triggered into one my therapist she would get that information. and then later a friend joined in on helping me with my therapy projects. If I knew the memory was there by way of pictures and writings she varified the information I told her. If I didn't know the memory was there she did not tell me about them. When I asked her about this she said she had been told finding the memory pieces had to come from me naturally not by her telling me them.

I had a son to get home so I wanted to barrel on through and be done, My therapist allowed me to barrel on through my research and activites but she got LOTS of practice in slowing me down so that I would take much needed breaks from my studying, research and working the workbooks and projects I we came up with.