Quote:
Originally Posted by amandalouise
we cant diagnose you or tell you what is going on, only your own treatment providers can say that.
what I can tell you is that this jumped out at me in your post....
getting a diagnosis no matter what the diagnosis doesnt change things for the worst. it only puts a name on whats already happening \already happened. so when something suddenly gets worse after getting a diagnosis my treatment providers told me it wasnt related to my dissociative problems. it was either a completely different normal, mental or physical health problem or its just my perception.
this also jumped out at me in your post...
another key point my treatment providers made with me is that mental illness isnt selective, it affects a persons whole life so for example if the problem I am noticing only happens \or doesnt happen in one part of my life then its not a mental disorder issue.
my point....making a guess here based on what my own treatment providers do with me...that it most likely isnt part of your dissociative disorders.
suggestion talk with your treatment provider, they are the only ones that can tell you definitively what is going on and how to best fix this problem.
|
Hi AmandaLouise,
I appreciate your lengthy reply and the thought involved in providing it. I think I may not have been clear in my initial posting regarding "finding out I have dissociation." I didn't mean that things got worse after I got diagnosed. I meant that things got worse after my breakdown when dissociated ones started showing up unexpectedly, and I didn't know what was going on, or even what it was about. I didn't know what was happening to me because before my breakdown, I didn't even know I had different parts of me. Suddenly they were just coming into awareness out of nowhere (or at least it felt that way). Over time, my t and I realized I was dissociative. She said I had managed to block them out for most of the early part of my life, which was why I didn't know they were there. So the diagnosis itself had little or nothing to do with the dissociative problem getting worse. It was the emergence of the various others that has made it worse. Does that make more sense?
As far as the statement that "mental health isn't selective," I'm not sure I agree with that. It's too broad of a statement. For example, if a person has OCD, then perhaps they exhibit OCD symptoms, in one way or the other, no matter what they are doing, where they are, or who they interact with. However, a person with PTSD may only have a bad reaction when they are triggered by something that reminds them of the trauma that caused their PTSD.
In the case of somebody who has DDNOS or DID, the personality is fractured, as you know. Different parts hold different viewpoints, feelings, and beliefs, and they act different ways. They experience different things. Because of this, I think it makes a great deal of sense to say that the forgetfulness only occurs in certain circumstances. For example, in my case, I have at least one ANP (apparently normal personality) and several EPs, which manifest as younger parts of self that are technically frozen developmentally in the past and remain dissociated much of the time.
When I am at work, my ANP is present and in control. I generally don't get triggered and EPs don't show up. So I also don't experience the same kind of forgetfulness (and other unusual and unpleasant manifestations) that happen when EPs show up. The forgetfulness seems very much tied in with the presence of EPs that seem to show up any time I get triggered by "old stuff" or get under too much stress. My husband has noticed and commented on this many times. In fact, he says that when I get spacy and forgetful, he knows something has triggered me or is bothering me subconsciously, even if I am not aware of anything consciously bothering me.
We've been working more in my therapy with my dissociated parts, and I've been hoping that maybe that would explain why I am experiencing a greater amount of forgetfulness now (maybe dissociated parts are present more often). But I can't say for sure. It is concerning to me!
I should mention that as a child, I was forgetful and would often be called "absent minded" and punished for not doing things that I was expected to do. Looking back, I can see that I already had awareness problems back then. My dad would get angry and yell at me if I didn't clean my gerbil cage. He would call me lazy. But I honestly forgot to do it, or didn't notice it needed cleaning. If I didn't notice something visually (such as a piece of clothing or candy wrapper on the floor), my parents would assume I was lackadaisical or neglectful, when the truth is that I never visually noticed it was there. These kinds of things happened to me a lot, and really caused me a lot of grief because it led to a lot of criticism and bad feelings towards me when, in fact, I hadn't done any of those things out of laziness or neglect.
I wonder if that might be why when I get stressed or forgetful, it could be a sign of those dissociated ones becoming present? I dunno. Just thinking out loud. I need to talk to my t more about it. I just feel worried that it seems to be happening more often.
I really hope it isn't something else, like early dementia or early onset Alzheimer's. It seems like if that were the case, then it WOULD happen no matter what I was doing, who I was with, whether ANP or EPs were present, wouldn't it?