Since many times the abuse in early childhood is perpetrated and covered up by family, I am wondering if anyone here has an ongoing family relationship with people who have abused you?

Are you able to be around them--and if so, how? What about breaking off 'dissociating when you are around them/in reaction?

Is a safe environment away from abuse and abusers a necessary element in effective therapy for PTSD, dissociation related to abuse, or DID?
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I am really troubled by the fact that DID is not understood or even accepted as a legitimate disorder by many practioners in the psychiatric community itself. How, I ask myself, can anyone treat the patient without a basis in understanding what is going on ?

So, I read books, looking for some common basis which could be applied to to DID. I am reading Self Comes to Mind. What part does the brain play in mind and self? What about awareness? How can this apply to DID and the basis and formation of self identity?

(I think of awareness as being the basic element necessary for having a sense of self and self identity. In my own expereince, the awareness of what others /alters/function had expereinced and felt was not there and that is why I think I was not functioning as one whole person with a continuing linear personal history. Only after becoming aware of my other aprts and having access to their own perviously separate expereinces/memories/feelings was I able to accept and acknowledge and work through all the peices of my life that were mine and that in the end ultimately shaped the whole intact person I am today. Awareness was the key: I couldnt acknowledge and react and feel my own life in entireity until " I" was aware and in the memory expereince feelings myself. )

I read Antionio de Silva's work in which he talks about memory being/making us who we are --and that explained a lot. "Of course," I thought to myself as I read, " if we dont have access and ownership awareness all our memories we are going to be less than a whole intact person--especially since the memories we are disconnected from are traumatic and fundamentally affect us unconsciously. "

Unlike other mental disorders drugs do not help a patient with DID. In my own case, I was misdiagnosed as a young girl and given all sorts of antipsychotic drugs for years. I spent years in and out of mental hospitals and had the mental and emotional awareness of the undead. Being sedated and altered chemically in my awareness and abilitites to function as an adult not only diminished my awareness of everything around me, when the mistake was finnaly discovered and I was off all the drugs, the misdaignosis also complicated my therapy and added years onto my recovery time.

That fact that DID does not depend upon drug treatment also leaves therapy dependent upon understanding and forging a solid therapeutic realtionship with the patient, and that in turn depends on the therapists understanding of self and mind and how we become who we see ourselves as and understand ourselves to be.

Any thoughts out there about any of this?