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Hello to all. I think maybe all my questions I have are making some of you uncomfortable and that is not at all what I want.

I want to make amends for causing anyone here any sort of distress. I also want to thank you all for sharing and posting on this website and forum. I have found an incredible sense of grace in everyone who posts and shares here. That is a true gift, and that is a gift that I need as much as anyone.

Dissociation and DID is an expereince that incoporates every aspect of a person's being and as a consequence it so hard to connect to others outside of this and talk about it.

When I found this site I was still working on stabilizing myself as one whole self aware self identifying person. I came here with needs just like anyone else. While the way I express myself may be a little more formal than most, I am soon to be a seventy year old woman and that is the way I have always written in the center of who I am before I became integrated and again now that I am here finally able and clearly seeing and perceiving life through one set of eyes.

I dont know if I have shared this before but iI do believe it is relevant to my asking so many questions: My therapist actually retired before all this was done and a lot of this I had to do myself. I had known this therapist for the course of forty years and then when he retired it was up to me to finish the work.

By then I knew I wanted to function as one whole self aware self identifying woman and after my doc retired that is what I worked so hard on, trying to figure out and understand how things worked with me and figure out ways to make this self therapy work for me. .

I am going to tell you something I have never told anyone. Looking back now. I now see that my own therapist had no idea how to work with me and my DID. We were all flying by the seat of our pants. and while that ended up being okay becaues over the course of so many years (I was in therapy actively It was I think 1976 when I first met this doc. A connection must have been made and that was my saving grace. Even though a couple years later he moved away and then after that I moved away and was gone for over twenty years I think it was, once in a while one part of me or another would contact him so somehow I knew he was still there. After so many years I returned to the palce I had lived before and ended up back in therapy with this psychiatrist. I believe it was the fact that this doc didnt put me on drugs and didnt think I was psychotic or anything like that that kept me able to trust he was trying to help me.

At this point int my life now that I am here I can plainly see that there is a better way to treat and work with patients with DID than that which I expereinced.

My need to understand was so great that in autobirogrpahical writing I doing I also wrote about what I believed I had needed in order to recover successfully. I wrote my own vocabulary because even that is up for grabs when it comes to DID. What is eprsonality? What is the difference between the self and identity?

I had to have some basis for understanding to build on. My autobiographical writing was a window into what I needed to work with and do. That was part of my therapy and I think because I found myself writing to be able ro read and clarify my own expereinces and make sense of how they were incorporated into everything I was and had expereinced I began to see the connections to where I was in a present moment.

The conenctions bectween mind and body and emotions and trauma became clear and then one day I read a quote by a peurop[sychiatrist I think he was antonio de silve in which he talks about our memories makng us who we ae. It was clear to me when I read that that of course if I was missing a lot of time and memories in my conscious awarness of course I could not be functioning as one self aware self identifying person!

I cant remember if this was ebfore or after the de slilva revelation but I also heard about someone writing abook about neuroplasiticity –and I knew that this was a means of faiciltiating recovery because old habits and old ways can be changed into new habits and new ways.

It wasnt until recently that I realized this was one heck of a way to carry out the final part of my therapy, ie by myself and on my own. In large part it was this revelation that set me looking for a place like this website and forum.

After all I have come through I beleive it is so important to have a therapist who knows about and understands DID .
Sometimes that isnt possible.

Lookning back I can tell you something Ive never realized until write recently. I had to basically 'write' my own therapy plan directing it on what I needed. My doc was a good man but he didnt have a clue as to what was going on with me. I know that now.
Becasue of my past history of misgdiagnosis and what was was done to me as direct result of that misdiagnosis and because somehoe we ahd managed to conenct in a very essential unconscious way during the first couple of years I was in therapy with him this on again off again then on myown to finish this work actually ended up being successful

Conncting with others on the website and this forum in particular has been a gift to me. I hope this helps anyone concerned about my motives or all my questions understand I am erhe because I needed the gift you give.

I need to stop writing now and go fishing. I need a break!