way to go.

the jopurnal idea of junerain's is a great one. I have a few different ones. A daily one that I free write, and then daily logs so that I can kkep track of how much things I want to change hppens and how what coping tool I am using to make those changes. For example in the self injury message board I started a chart of keeping track of what level of thoughts I was having and what I was doing to maintain a manageable level. That is the charting that I keep on a daily base here in my real life. I have a depression one, and an anxiety one too. Those two can be found in the book Mind Over Mood. I also have a log that I keep for my DID. All these I share with my therapist so that she can help me or suggest things that I am missing in them or that I can try. They come in real handy too for helping my therapist to better understand me, and see that I want to know what is going on so that I can fix it. By the way about not needing to know the diagnosis label. yes a person should always be told by their therapists and therapy treatment team what the DSM IV TR label is that they have. But I have found the label isnt important in taking care of my problems. See with or without knowing a label the person knows they have problems and can take care of that problem. I still float into my la la land and physically act out separated memories with or without being told that is called Dissociative Identity Disorder. And if I want to change that I can still pay attention to my surroundings and use relaxation techniques when I get upset so that I decrease the amount of time I spend floating in my la la land with out knowing I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. I can still keep track of how sad I am, how much I think about hurting myself, and do things to make this better without knowing this is called Depression and Self Injury. A person may WANT to know their DSM IV TR diagnosis, But they don't NEED it to take notice of how they feel and what they need to do to take care of it. A while ago my past therapist and I were thinking about having me retested to find out my level of DID now compared to my 10 of years ago. We even went to meet a DID tester here in town. My lawyer told me No, if we did the update testing DHS would have access to the results and he did not want my DID being disclosed. Because I wasnt able to get retested specifically for my DID level didn't mean I couldnt take care of my DID and work to get and keep my level down. I still don't know my exact level but I can still keep the chart of how often I find myself losing time, spacing off and so on. I don't NEED to know what that diagnostic test will reviel in order to know that I have gotten better and that what did it was keeping these journals, logs and charts and making up my own treatment goals based on what I see in my free writing that I want to change, But sometimes I would like to know. But its not important because I can still notice my feelings and set goals to take care of those feelings without knowing the update retest results.