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Originally Posted by katmc1
Hi. I have been thinking I might have DID for a while but my therapist said I have PTSD and that I dissociate. I think I am not aware of a lot of things and feelings and why I do some things but I wonder how therapists decide if it is DID or PTSD. Do they say PTSD if they don't think DID exists? When I tell him I feel like a child or kitten or anything else that I am worried about, he makes me think I am normal and okay. So maybe I am okay and just worrying?
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Welcome to this thread!
DID remains controversial.
It's hard enough finding a good trauma specialist, but even harder to find one who assesses and treats DID. Not all mental health professionals use the same battery of tests or evaluations to diagnose.
If you are feeling undermined or minimized by your T, or if your T is not really evaluating you the way you believe you should be evaluated, you can ask for another T or simply quit that T and find a new one in a different network that treats dissociation and trauma. If you call around to therapists or view their lists online, ask specifically if they treat and/or evaluate dissociative disorders. If they try to question your integrity as to why you're asking that, they are likely not the right therapists. The right kind of therapists to treat dissociative disorders will answer with a simple yes or no, the same way they would answer anyone who asks if they treat bipolar, depression, anxiety, eating disorders. Those disorders don't get the interrogation-like questioning of, "Why would you think you have dissociation?" Or "let's first see if you actually have that." Instead, with non-dissociative disorders, the answers are pretty straightforward.
So, to find a good therapist who takes you and your dissociative symptoms seriously, regardless of what dissociative disorder you may or may not meet the diagnostic criteria for, just simply ask if the therapist treats dissociation, and then see how they answer. That's the most simplest way to test the waters without wasting tons of copay monies on initial visits that wind up going nowhere. I've spent thousands of dollars trying to find the right therapist. And even then, not everyone is a good fit. I've dealt with short-term therapists and long-ish-term therapists. I finally found a really good one - the one I currently have, who has been my therapists the longest (for over 2 years now). But for the 15 prior years, I've not had that good of luck.
You came to the right place!
I'm sorry you struggle with dissociation.
