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Old Jun 19, 2006, 04:46 AM
Anonymous29319
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your welcome.

In other posts you stated you were past the denial about having DID but were denying the abuse -

from your post -
But, I recognize that I'm in HUGE denial over the fact that something bad must have caused this.

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for the work needed that you are asking for -memory work - certain things have to be done and in place such as -

You must be past the denial of both that you have DID and that you were abused.

You must already have some memorys of that type of abuse whole or parts of ) to work with

You must have 100% trust in your therapist judgement as to what is best for you.

You must have a support network in real life set up.

You must have an "emergency to do list" set up and have consistantly used that list when in crisis for when the actual work begins things are going to go from calm to the chaos of fully feeling and experiencing those memories you want to access.

You must have done work on grounding techniques not only by yourself but also with your therapist..

You must be able to pull yourself out of your "tunnel" (the feeling of being floaty and things are far away)

You must be able to focus on your therapist. Your therapist acts as a "tour guide" so to speak with memory work by asking you questions and asking you at times to do things that are going to help ground you should you start slipping / floating off away from him/her and the memory you are working with.

You must have done work on relaxation techniques. not only by yourself but also with your therapist. It takes total relaxation in order to access repressed memorys.

Your therapist must be comfortable with doing the memory work with you.

Your therapist must be willing to see you upset and at times force you to feel and experience things in short that therapist must be willing to trigger you and see it through.

Your therapist must be available to you. doing the work the week that therapist goes on vacation is not the right time to do it.

Once you and your therapist has everything set up (it takes about 6 months to a year to do all the setting up of the above foundation work) and the therapist is confident in your abilitys to stay grounded in your normal day to day functioning level and you have consistantly used the grounding tools and relaxation tools during your daily life crisises the memory work can begin.

There are two different ways I know how to do this - the first one is by using your known triggers to trigger the memory and then the therapist asks you questions while you hold yourself in your tunnel at a point where you are aware of the therapist and at the same time aware of what is going on in the memory replaing like a flashback in your mind.

The second way is to use relaxation and visualizations (hypnosis) to and then the therapist asks you to focus on one memory that you already know a little bit about and when that memory starts going like a flashback the therapist asks you questions about it.

Since you are still denying your abuse history these are not going to work with you. as long as you are denying your abuse history you will not gain any knowledge or memorys about your abuse. that is what DID is - separating abuse memorys and storing them in the unconscious level so that the person has no memory or access to them.

Like I said before people are usually diagnosed with DID after they have been in therapy a while and their therapist has some sort of history and behaviors that makes them suspect the disorder.

In order for your therapist to suspect you have this disorder you had to have told her about some sort of abuse and have dissociated to the point where you are acting out memories while not aware that you are doing that during your therapy sessions.

then the therapists asks specfifc interview questions to find out if the test should be done. depending on your answers to the interview questions the therapist refers the person to a psychiatrist or psychologist for a Comprehensive Psychological Evaluation with suplimental tests specifically for diagnosing DID.

When the results of the testing comes back the person is told they have DID.

So in order to even think about testing you your therapist had to have witnessed you switching from full awareness to the autopilot of acting out pieces of memories (Alters). and so your therapist already knows abuse situations that you went through.

So if you want to know if you were sexually abused but you do not remember that all you need to do is ask your therapist.

She / he may not give you the detailed version of what you were acting out when you switched during sessions but she will tell you yes or no as to if you were sexually abused and who the perpetrator is that sexually abused you.