Newly Diagnosed

I was diagnosed with DID at the end of 2015. I am still struggling to accept the diagnosis even though I know deep down that it is accurate. My therapist suggested that I reach out to others with DID.

So, I guess my questions are: 1.) How did you accept your diagnosis? 2.) How long did it take you to feel comfortable admitting to yourself that you had DID? 3.) What is the next step after acceptance?



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after I was diagnosed I had conversations with my treatment providers who diagnosed me. with their going through the diagnostic test results, scoring and where I was on each of the scores this helped me to understand how and why I was diagnosed this way and what my problem areas were. because my treatment providers took this approach of taking time to explain everything one step at a time I did not have much of a problem with accepting my diagnosis. because I had all the accurate information from my treatment providers first I was comfortable with knowing I had it. I didnt have all the garbage from online of conflicting and sometimes misleading /outdated information to com pare myself to.

each person has their own ways that their treatment providers want them to do things. my own treatment provider and I did not make a big deal over accepting the diagnosis and admitting to myself over and over again that I had it. the test scores and results spoke to that. my treatment providers and I handled it in a no nonsense matter of fact way. this is how you scored on the psychiatric evaluations and this is what we do next. I think of it like if I had a broken bone my doctors would say you have a broken bone and this is how we fix it.

so my first suggestion is talk with your treatment providers, let them know you want to know what your process is going to be (in your words of all your questions....how to accept, admit and what the next step is for you)

whats the next step only you and your treatment providers can say what you need to do next. with me it was just like any other mental disorder. I met with my therapist for therapy sessions, learned how to use therapy to help me to stabilize my day to day life by using therapy approaches like breathing, relaxation, grounding, ....

now that you have been diagnosed your treatment provider will be sitting down with you to make a plan of what you need to do next. we here online cant tell you what you must do next only your treatment providers can do that.

suggestion contact your treatment providers and let them know you want to know what you need to do next, that you need to know what your treatment goals are. they will most likely set a schedule where you can go in and have a session to talk about goals and what you want to get out of your therapy sessions.

Hey hon, I'm sorry for that, but it is the first steps towards recovery. The body is now 47, but we knew when we was 15 due to the fact that we all started to recognise the fact. After the idea of being found out and looking weird, we decided to go into system wide denial and quietly do our jobs for the next 46.

Well....hearing about "The United States of Tara" triggered off a system wide upheaval where we broke our vow and became individually noticed and recognized- independant of each other. Being like totally fragmented, some of us are still in denial while others have accepted ourselves, so it depends on who you are talking to. This has been over a year since the awakening.

Best I can say is keep going to therapy and working with your therapist on the integration of all your parts. We work mostly by co-operation here even though we do often go rogue.

We use to write to each other in a journal but soon learned that our thinking voices are actually our head voices, so we can now mentally talk, vote, debate, yell, ridicule, judge.....each other! Lol yes they are my lifelong head mates.

I know its a hard pill to swallow, but just accept that this is the way it is and it's better knowing then not knowing. The trauma has been long since over with, so it's time to make things right. Most can recover, some not so. I think I'm one of the not so because no-one wants to go back there...18 years of cruel abuse. Obtw...we don't need a diagnosis to designate the obvious, we just know.

I say keep on the path of self-discovery, talk and listen to others, do the research, ask questions, look for the similarities, and then I think you should do all right. Hang in there hon.

I was diagnosed in 2011 and there are still times when I think that it just can't be true. In the meantime, though, I sought out treatment for DID and I am still in treatment for it.
For me, acceptance comes and goes. At times I feel ashamed that I am mentally ill. At times, I think that I have done well to have gotten this far. At times I am very motivated to get healthy and at times I want to just give up. My ts and pdoc all agree with the diagnosis and I rarely raise my doubts with them anymore. The fact that I am responding to the treatment might be significant.
You may be like me and need therapy to accept your diagnosis. In fact, I am not sure that accepting the diagnosis was even one of my treatment goals. I just want to be able to function without all the interior conflict and time loss and disorientation.
I remind myself sometimes that I was thoroughly tested by an experienced psychologist who had nothing to gain by diagnosing me a certain way. I remind myself that ts and pdoc agree. I remind myself that DID does explain many of my symptoms. I remind myself that in the end, the label doesn't matter. Getting better does.

i was recently officially diagnosed, but my psychiatrist knew when i started seeing her in 2003 that it was DID. she left it up to me to share more though because it's not something that a lot of professionals really like to suggest up front for several reasons...but it took 13 years for me to share that the others existed and had names, ages, genders, etc.

that was more recent that i shared all that, and it has been a relief to be believed because i went back and forth about what it 'was' after reading a lot on DID...though i have dissociated my entire life and just wasn't sure what the diagnosis would be, DID, DID-like, OSDD, etc. or that i just would not be believed or misdiagnosed.

i am still new in the therapy aspect specifically for it, etc. and am still trying to get info on the system as it has changed the last few years since i last was able to understand more and know more of them.

it's a very slow process..and confusing..sometimes scary..etc. so for me..i am trying to learn about the others..but i don't have the communication with them i used to..and they aren't around daily, etc. and my ability to feel/hear them changes as well...so because of no pattern with that..it's hard to learn as much as i would hope to as fast as i would like.

We were diagnosed years and years ago, but several of the host parts really struggled with accepting the diagnosis for a very long time. After that they still went back and forth between acceptance and denial over many more years.

I think how long that takes may be dependent on one's individual circumstances, particularly when current day contact with perpetrators is involved. If there is ongoing contact with abusers it may take much longer to work through the issues, whereas if there hasn't been contact with perpetrators for many years it may be much easier to accept.

In my own case we had ongoing contact with abusers, so it was still necessary to maintain the dissociative defences... which meant, for some parts, not accepting that the dissociation (and thus the abuse) was true.

It's definitely a process. Some parts accept. Others refuse to accept, even though they know they are parts. Frustrating.

Participating in a group helped me.
It's easy on a good day to believe there is no DID.
I struggle with this. It feels like being in a maze of conflicting beliefs. Dead ends occur that you didn't know were even there because other parts see them when I don't.

I have DID. For me the next step after acceptance continues to be struggling to understand how this all works.