[Kendyll]

Hi, everybody!
I know i haven't been around in a while. Been busy. Been dealing with stuff...

My therapist has been questioning the diagnosis I brought to her office. Well, not questioning, but wondering if that's all. She thinks I've got a dissociative disorder as well as the personality disorder. She's even brought up once or twice that I may have "mild" DID.

I do know that I have some fractures, different aspects of my personality, divided ego states.

She thinks it's more than that. She tells me about the changes in my voice, my face, my...I don't know quite what to think.

I've used the term "we" for a long time. My old T didn't like me to say that because he didn't want me making up a problem I don't have. I know that we talk a lot, back and forth, we argue in my head. We've done that for about as long as I remember. Sometimes I find my thoughts and feelings fluctuating very drastically - feeling like a little girl, then feeling like an adult, then back. I get angry at myself, and we really do argue back and forth.

But I don't have the lost time...I do have things I've done that I don't remember doing. That's a bit of a problem at work. I'll run some calculations to design something, then look at them a few days later and have NO IDEA where I got my numbers ('cause they're usually wrong!!). I know sometimes I find myself doing things that I don't want to do, but that I don't seem to be able to control.

She suggested that I'm just very co-conscious. That I don't "present" as DID because I am aware of it all.

Does that make any sense?

In other news, Jon and I are doing well. We have our individual counseling sessions and we're doing couples' counseling too. I'm learning how to communicate better, how to keep my feelings in check. He's learning to listen to me a little more, hear my concerns and questions without going into attack mode. I mean, like, just because he doesn't remember something doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just because we remember things differently doesn't mean I'm lying to him. He's had another relapse - he drank again...but he's still willing to get help and move forward.

I've been getting into some of my sexual trauma in therapy and I've been really busy at work. I know raising my stress level doesn't help anyone...

[Elysium]

Well....it makes sense to me, as I am really co-conscious myself. I was just diagnosed in March and I have had three different T's experienced in DID diagnose me as DID/DDNOS with complex PTSD to boot.

I am so co-conscious that I wonder if I really do have DID sometimes. It doesn't help that one of my insiders tries to tell me that the diagnosis is BS, but then I analyze it and say, if an insider is telling me this, does that not show strong evidence that I do have DID. LOL!! Sometimes we feel so confused inside. Even when we question if it is real, we know internally that it is and that we are just getting stuck in denial.

I don't lose much time either, although I don't remember years of my childhood, or birthdays/holidays, and I have lost chunks of time in the past. I have what are termed micro amnesias where I can get into a dissociative state and one of my alters will be driving the bus, if you will, and some time later (minutes to hours) I will not be able to recall what was said or discussed, but I will know that I spoke with a particular person. If I take some time and ask around inside if someone remembers the conversation, sometimes I will get flashes of it in my mind.

I was in T for about 5 years before my diagnosis and we did a bit of EMDR. I think this may have helped me to become more co-conscious as it brought my alters out closer to the surface.

We're writing a novel again.....we'll stop now. Keep in touch!!

From the Troops!!

[Kendyll]

The sex trauma stuff seems to be the biggest trigger area I've got. That's where the split is most apparent, both inside and out. There's part of me who deals with sex - that's her job. but she doesn't have a very healthy view of it and she doesn't always care what the rest of me are feeling. Not her fault - I made her that way. She had to protect me and she had to learn it all so she did. There's just no emotion invested...

[josh1200]

Have you tried meditating on your abdomen?

[Eriksplus]

We are co-consicence, too.
Tobias

[multipixie9]

Each person does dissociation the way they need it to be. It is very individual and unique. There is no way that a person can be fitted into boxes and labeled.

You did what you did and how you did it, to survive. I admire all of us who used creativity and determination to survive in horrible places with evil people. I do think of dissociation as a gift from a good God for small people in terrible stress and pain.

OK, off my soapbox now,

preachypixie =)

[Kendyll]

Originally Posted by josh1200

Have you tried meditating on your abdomen?

???
What does that have to do with anything?

[Kendyll]

Thanks, all.
It's just very confusing. Jon and I were both switchy at therapy yesterday. He's used to it but it really weirds me out. I feel so disoriented and unreal after. Jon and my T said it's good that I'm comfortable enough with the both of them to "let everyone speak". But it wasn't like that, didn't feel like that inside...I had things to say and they got said. I just felt really agitated and all over the map. I didn't know I was actually switching except both Jon and T told me what they knew about it and I felt really weird/tired/spacey afterwards.

But if that's what that feeling means, then I do it more than I thought. I still don't think I'm separate. Not all the way. I know the way I felt yesterday and it's not the first time I've felt it. It's just different from the "other" dissociation that feels more like falling down a hot dark hole with the wind roaring in my ears and watching life on TV. But I'm familiar with feeling all over the place and thinking very different things at the same time and feeling spaced out and tired and not sure of "who, what, where, when or how".

I don't know what to think about this all. Part of me says that it doesn't matter - that therapy is therapy and recovery is recovery and what I call it isn't as important as what I do about it. Part of me doesn't want any more "mental disorders" 'cause I've got more thna enough on my plate already. Part of me is happy that T thinks it's all real 'cause I haven't been making it up.

When I was a child, I disappeared into my own head and created my own worlds in there. Why shouldn't those worlds have people?

I feel like i'm on the edge of something important. I hate that feeling. "Something important" usually means more disclosures, more therapy, more work. Yeah, growing and learning and recovering is important, but it can be really hard sometimes. I'm not sure I want to get into all the sex stuff. That's where we're going, but I don't like it already.
Is there anywhere safe to talk about sex stuff when I need to?