If I grew up in a sane family, I would not have a mental illness. If my parents had communicated in a sane way with me as a child, I would have been diagnosed then. Communication is critical in getting help.

I have two significant others in my past that I now know could have proven that I was dissociative. All they had to do was to talk to a mental health professional about the communication that occurred.

When I put myself in the Charter Hospital in Plano, TX I met some women whose dissociative disorder exhibited just like mine. It is extremely hard to tell one personality from another. One woman had no memory of abuse but she had a positive diagnosis. She would go out and buy lots of clothes with a credit card which she and her husband could not afford. Then she would not remember doing it. So her Dad and her husband put her in the Charter.

A point: If you are traumatized between newborn and three, you very likely will not remember the trauma, but you can still develop a dissociative disorder.

My Mother admitted to me late in life that my Brother was very likely hurting me while I was in the crib. She said that I was a quiet baby usually, as apposed to my brother who had the cholic. She said she would be cooking or on the phone and I would start screaming. She would not bother to come see what was happening and would simply wait for me to stop. My brother was two to three years old at this time. I am positive that this was when he developed his obsession with hurting me and making me cry. Though-out my life I had night terrors, where I would dream someone was trying to get me but I could never see a face.

Most of the women that I met at Charter, whose symptoms exhibited like mine had loved ones who cared enough to get involved in their mental health treatment.

I, unfortunately, do not have any loved ones who care. My Mother and Brother decided when I was a toddler why I should be treated differently than my Brother. My Brother justified his abuse of me in his mind and my Mother reinforced this behavior by telling both of us that it is normal for older brothers to "pick-on" their younger brothers.

Sibling abuse in the same as spouse abuse psychologically.

I met women who were horribly abused as toddlers in the Charter. Even a layman could diagnose them. These are the people who have extreme differences in personalities and they are the self harmers.