questions: dissociative disorders version

The longest time spent with one T was nearly a decade. All other Ts have been seen for between a few weeks and a year. I'd guess about 12 years all up. With lot of breaks inbetween.

Question:
Do you have a formal diagnosis of a dissociative disorder?

thank you! I thought no one was seeing my message...which of course feels like rejection, then I saw you and someone else saw it...feeling better...tangled web right?

yes i was diagnosed officially DID about 16 years ago or so.

what is something you and your insiders like to do together?

grocery shop!! haha, some in here would say they prefer to do that on their own!!

what do your teens like to do?

i have one teen in my system and she loves listening to music (punk rock is her favorite genre) and going to concerts.

is your T able to recognize when you switch and who you have switched to in sessions?

my teen likes music too!. (stuff from musicals, which i myself personally can't stand)

no not really.. i've had therapists who could, and ones that couldn't
what is the longest you have ever been on ward?

Umm, when my children were born. I've never been admitted to a psych ward.

My long term t knew when we switched a lot of the time. She recognized the main front ones but the trauma based ones preferred to go incognito. Often other ts / doctors / people knew something had happened but not what.

How old were you / the system when you first learned about dissociation?

i'm impressed!. nah seriously.. that's cool!. never have been admitted to a psych ward is an acheevement. you must handle your illness very well

i don't remember how old we were, but i remember how we found out- through 1 of our old friends cathy, who explained what it was- and that no, we're not crazy, it is a disorder

we first became aware of alters when the police were called to talk to 1 of them about killing the rest of us
are your insiders mainly calm and collective, or angry

I don't think of it as an illness but more as a natural result of an unnatural childhood.
I wouldn't say we handle it well. I would say we handle it alone. On the whole we've been quite stable for the last decade or so, but prior to that although we could hold down a job we were very, very... 'messy'.

Our outside group is calm and collective.
Our inside ones whom we don't know much about are very much in distress.

Have you even taken the SCID-D?

Have you even taken the SCID-D?[/QUOTE]

I've never heard of it until now. I just took it online

Adaptive Behavior: 46, 25, 11, 18

Natural Behavior: 31, 23, 23, 23

But I have no clue what those numbers mean so I have to look that up. And I'm super triggered right now, so the numbers are probably scewed. Thanks for giving me something to do with myself for a while

Question: Do you email/phone with you t in between sessions? If yes, how often?

It looks like you might have taken the SCID personality inventory online. The SCID-D is different... it's a structured interview for diagnosing dissociative disorders. I might be wrong but I think it can only be given by a psych. It takes around 1-2 hours to complete. I'm glad you got something out of taking the other one, though!

My current t has said I can call her between sessions if I need to, but I never have. My ex t still supports me via email contact when I need it, so yeah (if you consider 10 years to be 'between sessions'!)

Question:
Are you compassionate towards the other parts of yourself?

i'm not sure.

honestly a lot of them i'm not.. some of the littles though, maybe- i know bethany is really shy, so maybe her

question:

do you have anything in your system that's not a person?. (animal, angel, etc)

yes.

Are you still in the process of figuring out how dissociation affects you?

Perfect question timing for me to find this thread...lol..... ABSOLUTELY YES!!!

T has already said the depersonalization and derealizarion (happens a lot) and fragments... but I don't know how far the fragment part goes or what it means to him and I don't really want to ask.

Are you able to control whether your alters can come front and or force you to say things if you have a 'main front'person?

no.. it's 1 of our main problems.

when we want an insider to say something or to be their for some reason or another, they arn't

do any of your insiders claim to have mentaal health issues that you yourself don't have?

I don't have any (clear) internal communication, but I strongly suspect a bit of me depressed, when the rest of me isn't. I've been accused of having aspergers plenty of times, so maybe someone inside is autistic. I don't think I have aspergers as a whole- but maybe.

Did your T tell you you had dissociation issues, or did you tell your T?

i've had more than 1, and in most cases i told them

had 1 experience where she figured it out without me saying anything

what is 1 real dislike of your system

I'm not sure if you mean something I dislike about the system, or something the system dislikes as a whole. I'm going to go with the first one.

I dislike that the hidden part of my system is so elusive. I work hard to manage things and get us all to work together, but the hidden part of us is still hidden even to me.

Do you have at least one person in your life you can trust?

Really only t

Do you have internal fights about what is calming and if so, what do you do when life is overwhelming to try to cope when nothing is going to make everyone feel better?

we usually write in our journal and discuss our diffrence of opinion

our journal is like our only friend, so we talk to it as such- actually something we've started doing is writing open dialogue in the journal.. what's being said and who's saying it

something else we do is go to a mutual interest.. a tv show or music cd the whole system enjoys

have you recently discovered any more alters?

Maybe. Someone wrote to T. I can't read their email so I don't know who it is. I don't know if I know of them already or not.

We do what we call 'roll away', which to me means if we come face to face with information we are protected from we literally cannot take that information in. It can happen without switching... I stay as me but am unable to physically read what another part has written or watch another alter on video or whatever. if I persist in trying to look then I do switch out.

Do you 'roll away' from things you are not yet able to know?

does this insider have another email address (diffrent to the rest of you?)

i have at least 1 insider who's done that- created their own email acount

anyway.. i probably do, without even knowing it

does your system have a name?

No, used the same. The reply came to my email. I can read what t wrote, but not what the alt wrote, which is attached to t's reply.

This system does not have a name. We also do not go by the birth name. That is not our name, or the name of any one of us.

Do you respond differently to meds?

They tend to make my dissociative amnesia worse. I'll start having black outs more frequently and I'll feel depressed on an anti-depressant. Even Gabapentin for fibromyalgia was setting off massive depression. Once I stopped it the withdrawals caused my black outs. Last time I was on Amitriptyline and I blacked out so long I was in the mental hospital. It took a lot of work with a therapist, tears, and extreme stress but I was able to remember parts of what happened. I had cut myself up. Oddly my moves when blacking out aren't usually suicidal, they seem to be (Once I remember them, if I'm able to) me trying to get attention. Like "Help me, it hurts inside so I need to hurt outside to take this away!". Medicine usually seems to exacerbate the problem, as does extreme stress, high anxiety, etc.

Thankfully I start with a therapist next week. Let's try to remember a good majority of my childhood I've forgotten... I'm scared but medication is only triggering me. This is what I need to do.

Do you ever feel your dissociative disorder took entirely too long to be diagnosed?

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Good luck with your first visit with your t.

We were diagnosed within a year or two once we started t as an adult. I don't think that was too long. We weren't misdiagnosed with anything else (probably because the country I live in doesn't require a diagnostic label for funding.)

How long ago were you diagnosed?