[thelostone]

i think i used the trigger icon right but warning this may trigger.

ok, i am almost afraid to post in here. i don't know if i am did, but from everything i have read and heard lately i am starting to wonder. would like some impute from someone who knows.

to start with, i am 44 and up till 2 years ago i would have told you that i had a very lucky and charmed life. parents divorced when i was to young to remember, but we always lived with or near grandparents. i am the youngest of 4. they are all 14 months apart each and i am 5 years younger than the youngest. i was spoiled by everyone in my life. at 14 mother got tired of being a mother so she sent me to live with my daddy. daddy and i have joked about the fact that she just couldn't handle me anymore. at barely 18 i gave up on my childhood sweetheart and married someone else and got a short taste of the real world, hubby was abusive, his family didn't like me, or each other. they yelled and fought all the time. had a baby(she is a miracle for a different thread). stayed with him for 14 months and went home to daddy. started seeing childhood sweetheart again off and on for a few more years before we married and had 2 more babies, first one lived off and on with ex's parents but we had the perfect little family. he was hurt on the job when the youngest was not quite a year old so i went back to school and became the bread winner and all was right with the world.

sorry this was long and i am not done yet but that history was needed i think, and if this is in the wrong place mods please move it.

2 years ago, after working my way up to 1/4 partner in my job, life as i knew it ended.

i had been having problems with stress, and early agoraphobia, hubby had been doing everyting he could to try to help me cope. i was fired for trumped up reasons, sued on trumped up bs and even threatened with being put in jail by someone i thought i could trust as a friend and partner. i basically had a nervous breakdown, became increasingly agoraphobic to the point of total housebound suffering from panic attacks multiple times a day.

that is when the flashes started. at first they were just flashes of feelings that triggered panic. then they started having some sound and visuals with them. mostly of childhood SA by my stepfather, some of my relationship with my first hubby.

i have voices in my head. they are not schitsophrenic voices that talk to me. they are more like sitting in a crowded resteraunt. people talking, fighting, laughing all together. i tryh to block them out and not hear them, occasionally i will try to tune in and hear what they are saying, sometimes they are talking about me sometimes they are talking aobut other people. i have missing time. the most disturbing is from when i went to live with my dad. i clearly remember being in the room with my stepfather(i was 14) and him starting to touch me. the next thing i remember is happily loading my carefully packed belongings in my fathers car. i have no idea how long a space is there.

in high school i would lose time mostly at school. not bad, an hour here or there, being in one class then magically being somewhere else. my middle daughter tells me i threw a can at her head one morning. i never even spanked my kids, it made me throw up. haven't had the nerve to ask the other 2 if i ever did anything like that to them but as close as we all are i would think not.

i am currently being treated for panic disorder with agoraphobia and ptsd because i actually remembered the incident with my stepfather the day of my first therapy session, early morning before i went to therapy. there is more from my work years, but i have already gone on forever.

i need opinions, or advice. haven't told therapist most of this, only the missing time when i was 14, haven't let her make em talk about it since.

i am very scared. someone please help.

lost

[multipixie9]

Oh Blast!!! I wrote a long reply to you and it disappeared into the rotten ozone somewhere!!!!!!!!! GRRRRRRRR

I tried to show how I related to your story. I had a first version of my life and then eventually the actual version. As a small child I made up a better version of my life to cope with a pretty terrifying set of abusive events.

I went through satanic ritual abuse and other horrors and lots of abuse of all kinds. I too lost time by high school age. I performed pretty well in life but by age 18 I began to be physically ill from stress and off and on depression. By time I had children I was terrified someone would abuse them, but not sure why I was so scared for them. I got ill when I occasionally needed to spank them. I was gentle with them, but I too actually almost threw a can at my youngest when she was 7 and was being difficult. Thankfully I picked the can up and threw it into the door and left a big permanent mark there. I never before or after did that again and was horrified at myself. I struggled more each year I was alive. I was finally diagnosed - after several other diagnosis before (ptsd, depression, borderline...) just after my mom died suddenly after a short cancer illness. I went totally apart then and I fought the DID diagnosis for a long time which made it all so much worse. I finally stopped doing that and began to cooperate and be kind to my alts who had worked so hard to help me and gotten not much for all their work.

(I call my alts the "committee in my head who can't agree". I do hear them as background chat a lot of times or a random commenter who is usually saying something different from what I think up front in my mind. My sytem is complex and has all kinds of weird rules and ways of acting and is not at all visual, so I cant see them and therefore couldn't speak of them when i was little and the cult abusers were threatening to kill me in various horrid ways.) This is the added part

It certainly sounds like DID to me - but I'm no doctor. I hope you can gain the strenth to mention it to your counselor and see if you can get some real help to deal with what is going on in your life. Hang in there, Dear!

Leslie and the Pixies

[Monty_girl]

Hey Lost

I'm also an agoraphobic, this is the second time in my life I've been homebound with panic attacks.

First off I commend you for writing the post. I know it took a lot to do. A couple of us have been talking that it seems that ppl with DID seem to start having problems in their 30 &40's. ( 35 here ) I would say to be honest with your T. Let them know what's happening.

Resteraunt, that's how I always descripe my head to T. In a resteraunt and all the ppl just talking in the back ground. Not really hearing what they are saying, but the noise they make.

I hope I'm making sense. Just let your T in on what's going on in your head.

[thelostone]

thank you both for responding

biggest problem with T right now is she is trying to do CBT for my panic disorder. she spent 20 minutes yesterday trying to get me to tell her how i felt during a particular event. i have no idea how i felt, we got pulled over on the way to T and i had a major panic attack. All i remember is fear. i don't remember getting the rest of the way there, and i really only remember about the 2nd half of therapy. and she is telling me all i need to do is tell myself that i am a good person who deserves to be loved and i won't have panic attacks anymore.

i am terrified. i left the house the other day. alone, walking. i vaguely remember needing to go somewhere, the next thing i remember is standing in the middle of the road with my husband telling me i couldn't walk anymore, he would take me anywhere i wanted to go but i had to get into the car. i was 6 miles from home on a major highway. everyone says oh, good job, you left the house.

i am scared and alone in a house full of people who i know love me. hubby is on verge of a nervous breakdown, and won't seek help, and i don't know what to do. and i am afraid to try to find a different T till i finally get my social security, because i can't find any other way to make money and get medical treatment.

lost

p.s. multipixie, i have found 2 pics for you for avatar, and i think i can walk you through getting them posted, but i couldn't pm you the pics to look at.

[wanttoheal]

Hi Lost, welcome here! While none of us can really diagnose what is going on with you, it seems we all have some similar things going on.

I can tell you that when I was diagnosed, I fought the diagnosis tooth and nail for a couple years before I exhausted all other possibilities. It was so scary for me to even consider that this is what I had.

Like you, I thought I had a pretty decent life. I was married to a wonderful man, I had two children, a home, etc. I didn't remember my childhood, but I reasoned with myself that it was ages ago, I was a child, no one remembers their childhood. I didn't remember a lot of my adult life, but I'm forgetful, weird, etc. Even without realizing it consciously, I had a reason and excuse for every behavior that I couldn't explain.

In the beginning, my awareness of life was so limited that I didn't even realize I was losing time. I think I just moved in and out of a dissociative state so much that even when present, I was never even fully present. Actually even now, when I am here, present and accounted for, I sit in the back of my head and watch a lot.

I liken the voices in my head to a crowd of people. For me, it's like standing off to the side of a crowd where they are all talking and you can hear them talking and even pick out a word here and there, but you can't really hear or follow the conversations (although when the namecalling starts, I hear a lot more words ). While I've always had that, I didn't even think to ask someone if they had it too. I didn't even really think about it, or a lot of things because I didn't have any reference to normalcy (and I didn't know those things weren't normal).

Then a lot of stuff happened in my life that disrupted everything I knew. I started to get these horrible flashbacks. I remember sitting in therapy once and I got one. I didn't even know what a flashback was until T told me what was going on. And I got a flood of flashbacks and still pictures. I can't tell you what they are now though because my brain pulled it all back behind the barrier again and I am only left with the knowledge that I had them, not their content.

It was surreal. How did I, with my decent life, have this running around inside?

While I had always reacted to things horribly, I reasoned everything so that it was normal reactions.

Now that I've accepted that I am DID, I realize how much it makes my life make sense.

It's a struggle for me daily, I'll admit it. I still have a lot of time that I cannot account for every day, though I am getting better at being a private detective.

If I could change one thing, it might be that I went to a therapist earlier, but in all honesty I don't think it was time for me earlier than when I went. My old therapist knew what was going on with me even though I didn't and sent me to the therapist I have now because he didn't know how to help me. But I wasn't even aware enough to know why he was sending me to her. I thought it was for a different reason and didn't find out until a few years later that it was because of the DID. She deals with DID and understands and has helped me immensely.

It might be that your therapist already knows what is going on for you. For me, I was the last to find out lol. My advice to you is to try to let your T know somehow what is going on for you. Perhaps you can print out what you wrote here and take it to your T and ask her to read it. I know it's scary. Phew! It took me over 3 years to talk to my current T even though I could never figure out how she had more information about me than I did. You might be surprised at what your T already knows. We have a lot of injunctions here, but there are creative ways that you can still get information to T.

I'm rattling on and on. I just wanted you to know that I understand your fears. No matter what is going on for you, your T can help you more if you tell her everything you can. I know that's hard though. It's a scary thought.

It might not be DID. It might not even be a dissociative disorder. But if it is, please know that it's not a death sentence. There are reasons for whatever is going on for you and knowing is not going to change who you are. It does, however, open the door to healing.

Please keep posting. We're glad you're here.
:Heart::Heart::Heart:

[wanttoheal]

I took so long on my post (hazards of dissociation too lol ) that I missed your other post.

I understand not knowing what an emotion is. Feel what? T and I discovered that I only could recognize fear and anger. Were you able to convey to your T that you did not understand emotions? My T has gone to the very basics on emotions so that we can learn them through their body responses. Each emotion has a body response and while I can't feel the response, sometimes I am able to see it. It's a long process.

Is your T stuck on CBT? Maybe if you can let her know what's going on for you, she will be willing to work outside the box to help you in ways that work for you. T always tells me when I say there is no solution that there is a solution, we just haven't found it yet, but we will keep going until we do.

We're glad you're here lost and look forward to hearing more from you.
:Heart::Heart::Heart:

[thelostone]

thank you wanttoheal, i need to talk to her about the cbt thing. it is not so much that i don't know the emotions, but that when i am scared, telling myself that i am a good person is the last thing on my mind, and if i do manage to remember to it doesn't help the fear any. i am glad i found this place.

lost

(((((((((((((((((((((( thelostone ))))))))))))))))))))

I'm sorry you're going through a scary time right now.

I don't have any great words of wisdom, but I did want to give you some hugs!