
Category: Dissociative survivors’ experiences
Dissociative survivors' experiences
Making the most of your GP Appointment
‘I’m not seeing a doctor!’ I insisted with a look on my face that was intended to end the debate...
Read MoreThree types of trigger … Three techniques for taming
All I did was walk into the kitchen and pick up a cloth. But the sudden waft of bleach flung me far, far back into some childhood memory. I switched to a traumatised part of myself. I had been ‘triggered’.
Read MoreMy therapist is retiring
My therapist is retiring next year. I’ve worked with her for nearly five years and I’m not ready to finish therapy yet, so this is a difficult issue for me. Having spoken to PODS, I’ve realised that many other people face the same or similar situations, so I thought I’d write about how it’s impacting me and how I’m dealing with it. But I have DID, so I have a variety of responses…
Read MoreLiving in a Glass Bubble
I was abused by my dad, and also my grandad. And in many ways, I want to just leave it there and...
Read MoreManaging Medical Procedures
It might have been ‘just a routine blood test’ but that didn’t stop me passing out. Again. From a...
Read MoreDifficulties we face: survivors’ perspectives
Dissociative survivors face a range of challenges and here, in their own words, they describe the things they find hardest about life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreThe quest for diagnosis
How do you go about getting a diagnosis for dissociative identity disorder? One client describes her long struggle for treatment on the NHS and the path to the Clinic for Dissociative Survivors.
Read MoreDivorcing old habits
What do you do when the worst thing you think could happen to you does happen? Do you fall back into old habits, ways of coping that you’ve worked so hard to reform? Or do you work the problem? … In this searingly honest and vulnerable piece, Carolyn Spring talks about how she coped with a double loss of attachment figures and how what she had feared the most actually became a springboard towards new growth.
Read MoreOvercoming Trauma
Pauline Rachael talks about her experience of working towards recovery from trauma.
Read MoreMaking a Life Worth Living
It was the last week in May 2014. I had packed up all my belongings in my flat, got my affairs in order, and decided that I needed ‘to be dead’. I didn’t want anyone else to have to clear my flat, so I took some stuff to the tip, packed my remaining belongings into labelled boxes, and wrote detailed instructions.
Read MoreCan we heal?
‘Can we heal?’ she asked, quivering with the significance of what she was saying, as if her very life depended on it. ‘Can we really heal?’I could well understood the agony in her eyes. I lived for many years overwhelmed by trauma, the symptoms of unhealed suffering. And if recovery is impossible, then why are we even trying?
Read MoreAlters assemble: using Marvel’s Avengers to understand dissociative identity disorder
There’s no denying it: everyone likes a superhero. From the Greek gods to the current comic book heroes, the human race appears to be endlessly fascinated by the notion of power and ability that exceeds our natural levels of physical prowess and mental dexterity … And here, Xanthe Wells talks about how Avengers Assemble became a metaphor for her of dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreWords fail me: describing my inner experience
I exist as a phantom. I ache to be connected, to be able to express what life is like for me. Me, as a dissociative we. But I don’t have the words to become connected, I don’t have the words to become real. Words fail me.
Read MoreTen roadblocks to recovery
Recovery from trauma is a difficult process but what are the specific things that can get in the way?
Read MoreIt’ll be alright on the night – my experience of sex after abuse
After sexual abuse, it’s very common to have difficulties in your sexual relationship. But is that just the way that it is and we have to just accept it? Or is there a way towards a fulfilling sex life after trauma?
Read More‘Don’t make me vomit slowly’ – my experience of phase two work
When I first started therapy in 2006, I didn’t know much about trauma and nothing about ‘the three phase approach’. My counsellor didn’t know much more. So although I’d like to say that we started by carefully doing the Phase 1 work of safety and stabilisation, the reality was a great deal messier than that.
Read MoreRecovery is my best revenge
Is recovery possible? That’s the question that everyone is asking, even when they’re not asking it. After a breakdown, perhaps after years in the mental health system, do we have to simply accept that we’re broken and that we’ll always be broken, or is it possible to live a life where we’re back in control again, where we’re living as we want to live, where life has purpose and meaning?
Read MoreTrauma, psychosis and dissociation
Recent years have seen an influx of numerous studies providing an undeniable link between...
Read MoreSuicide – to be or not to be
I could cope with it no longer. Every part of me—eyelids, throat, bowels—everything was clenched tight in a ball of furious unbearability. This feeling—such a feeling!—loomed up over me like some prehistoric sea-monster, ready to snap me up and devour me, ready to pilfer my bones and pick apart my brain. This feeling was too much.
Read MorePart 9: It’s all in your head
Part 9 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreFeeling labelled and judged
When I was an in-patient in a locked rehab unit, a secure facility with an airlock as standard, the local taxi firm would not collect people from the unit. They judged without any real information. Ignorance, I guess, led people to hold a view that was without foundation and based upon stigma.
Read MoreTen things I have learned about child sexual abuse
Understanding the dynamics around child sexual abuse, who the perpetrators are, how they achieve their ends, the impacts of abuse on us—all of this knowledge, this ‘psycho-education’ has aided my recovery. And so these are ten of the many things that I have learned about child sexual abuse, some of the insights that have begun to heal my shame.
Read MoreHelp – a four-letter word?
Although I am fiercely independent and repeatedly declare that I don’t need anyone to help, lately it seems that some parts of me don’t agree. Their cries for help come mainly at night. I can hear them inside, begging for someone to help them, and it’s relentless.
Read MoreThe cost of benefits
Being on benefits wasn’t a choice I’d made and certainly not something I did willingly. From before the age of fourteen I’d always had a job, pausing only for maternity leave. But when my dissociated trauma burst onto the scene three years ago it became a massive achievement simply to stay alive.
Read MoreSymptom or experience?
When I first started to see visions, I believed that they were monsters. More than that, I believed that I was a monster. Aged seven, I was sure that buried deep inside me was a monster that only revealed itself when I glanced towards a mirror. By wearing a ‘little-girl-suit’ and walking amongst the real humans I felt like a fraud.
Read MoreMy experience of dissociative identity disorder: crisis care
I had no idea where I was, except—rather obviously—that I was on a beach. It was raining and I was soaking wet. My legs were drenched up to the knees, indicating that perhaps I’d been in the sea. It was dark and late and freezing cold. I put my hands in my pockets and felt sea-shells. The policewoman told me where I was but it didn’t make any sense.
Read MorePart 8: The bitterest pill
Part 8 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreI need a mother
Of all the things that are painful; of all the abuses of my body, my mind, my emotions; of all the effects I live with in my attempts to ‘be fine’ and seem normal: this one, this wound of ‘un-motheredness’ is one of the most difficult.
Read MoreDamage limitation: covering up a life out of control
Tears were streaming down my face as I tried to explain to the teacher – this angry, spiteful, menacing teacher – that I hadn’t stolen anything. It wasn’t me. I didn’t know why she was accusing me, but she was, and here I was – in trouble, again, and not understanding why.
Read MorePart 7: The anger business
Part 7 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreFamily fortunes: care, court, and all those crap Christmases
It has been hard to accept that there was no justice for me. My father was killed 8 years ago, so that robbed me of the possibility that he might ever apologise to me for what he had done. It’s unlikely that he would ever have done so anyway, but now there is no chance. Such have been my family fortunes.
Read MorePart 6: The train now standing
Part 6 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreIf there were one thing you could educate people about, what would it be?
Members of the PODS Forum talk about the kinds of things they wish they could educate other people about living with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreIt’s never too late to have a happy childhood
When I first read the statement “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood”, I thought rather crossly, “Yeah, right!” But when I had thought about it for a while, I changed it to an enthusiastic “Yeah, right!”
Read More‘And so I told’ … myths, disclosures and not being believed
In primary school we had learned about ‘myths’ – Greek gods and Aesop’s Fables and Robin Hood. What I didn’t realise was that ‘child protection’ professionals in England in 1989 clung more fiercely to myths about child abuse than they did to the truth.
Read MoreMy experience of living with DID: the NHS
I have been a victim both of childhood abuse and abuses within the mental health system of the NHS. As someone said to me recently, the fact that I was abused as a child is appalling, but to be reabused again as an adult by the people who were supposed to be caring for me is equally unacceptable.
Read MoreAt war with my body
I was born 35 years ago. With this body. This body that is a little too short and a little too plump. This body that sags in all the wrong places and looks the age it is, not the age I feel. This body that has produced two healthy children and enabled me to watch them grow. This body has been with me my entire life.
Read MoreTen helpful things my therapist does
Dissociative survivor ‘Recovering Insomniac’ details ten helpful things that her therapist does.
Read MoreWhat are the hardest things about everyday life with dissociative disorders?
Users of the PODS forum talk about what is hardest for them in living with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreMy experience of living with DID: denial
Denial and dissociation are two sides of the same coin. In employing dissociation, we are employing denial: “This isn’t happening” or “This isn’t happening to me.” We create alter personalities to whom it happened, so that it didn’t happen to me.
Read MoreWhat is the biggest battle you have in your head?
Members of the PODS forum talk about the battles in their head that they endure as they live with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreIt’s not the ‘X-Factor’, it’s the ‘A’-Factor
My smoke alarm was going off in the swimming pool even when there was no real risk. There was risk and danger when I was a child, and that has affected my brain’s ability in the here-and-now to assess when there really is danger and when I really need an adrenaline rush so that I can escape or protect myself. This is what is happening when I am triggered: I am responding to a danger that is not really here now.
Read MorePart 5: Gardening for beginners
It’s okay. You can come out now. Honestly, it’s all over! Whichever survival strategies you’ve...
Read MorePart 4: Gang on the run
I wake up abruptly as you do on days like these. My mouth is almost indescribably dry. Unless of...
Read MoreParts are only part of the problem
I have dissociative identity disorder. I have many separate, distinct and unique ‘parts’ of my...
Read MoreWanting to tell the world
I spent the whole of my childhood having to play the game and say that these things weren’t happening. They were and they hurt. The world should have known then, and the world should know now. But it still doesn’t.
Read MoreIt’s a pain: the physical impact of trauma
Physical symptoms are a big part of life for me with DID. Yes, I have ‘multiple personalities’, the “two or more distinct identities that recurrently take control of the body” and I’m not for one moment denying the significance of that or the impact it has on my day-to-day life. But I would say that physical symptoms such as chronic, unexplained pain, headaches and nausea have been and still remain far more distressing and life-impacting for me than the presence of parts.
Read MorePart 3: No hard feelings? So long, Sheila!
Part 3 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreFeeling listless
All the signs were there that I did in fact have feelings, but initially I could not link these physical events with having an emotion, and I certainly could not put a name to them. Frequently my counsellor would gently remind me to notice what was happening in my body.
Read MoreExperiences of birth after sexual abuse
Samantha Russell, a survivor of child sexual abuse, talks about her experience of childbirth after trauma.
Read MoreWhat I want people to say
The work of therapy can bring up strong feelings inside us of wanting to be cared for, wanting to be rescued, and wanting all the trauma and all our ‘parts’ to go away. It can be a very confusing time. As a dissociative survivor, I realised that there are things that I want people to say to me, and then there are things that would be more helpful for them to say to enable me in the long-term to recover.
Read MoreMan up, man down
Four men all talk about their experiences and life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreNot a victim
No matter how logically illogical it apparently is, I know I choose to listen to barbed words and vindictive self-beliefs about me: I am a subhuman being. I wrap the heavy chainmail-blanket of blame tightly around me. That is my fall-back position.
Read MoreDID and me
It is not about diagnostic labels. It is not so much about dissociation, parts, losing time – although all of those add to the constant sickening sense of being different. For me it is about being me. The reality of everyday living with myself. ME.
Read MoreThe paradox of shame?
I feel ‘shame’ that I have emotions, while desperately seeking out those very emotions. Feeling shame for not owning them. Feeling shame for feeling them. Paradox.
Read MoreBoys don’t cry
I’ve just had my heart broken and I’m struggling to accept it; or accept it again, I should say. I haven’t attempted many relationships in my life and this one ended some time ago. But when I realised I still loved her, or parts of me did, I attempted a reunion. But she’s moved on and unfortunately for me, loss still equals death.
Read MorePart 2: Multiple parts
Part 2 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreWho am I? – Questions of identity in dissociative identity disorder
I look up and I am in my therapist’s room. I look up and I am in the cafe area of the shopping mall. I look up and I am in bed in the dark. I look up and I don’t know if I am I. There is no thread of continuity between these places, these experiences. Who am I now, writing this, re-reading this, re-writing this?
Read MorePowerlessness
Powerlessness is such a core experience for victims of abuse that often we don’t even notice that it’s there. It is played out in the way that we interact with people and the world – it’s the shadow cast by the sun, rather than the sunlight itself.
Read MoreTherapy room push-pull
You ask me how I feel … I feel panic, nothingness, panic, more nothingness. Laced into the panic is sadness, guilt, doubt, paranoia, then dreadful nothingness. And worst of all, shame. Always here, I feel the shame.
Read MoreRescuing dogs, rescuing insiders: learning to care for young parts
Dissociative survivor Kitty talks about her experience of getting to know the various parts of her personality and how similar the process has to been to taking on a rescue dog.
Read MoreThe Nintendo Wii as a therapy tool?
First there was Freud and the ‘talking cure’, then Rogers’ core conditions, then CBT. And now? Now...
Read MorePart 1: Finding support in unlikely places
Part 1 of the Cathy Le Roux Chronicles, a sardonic look at life with dissociative identity disorder.
Read MoreA life worth living
I knew a lot about pain, but I didn’t know very much at all about pleasure. I asked myself: what do I like doing? For weeks I couldn’t answer that question, not with anything tangible or concrete.
Read MoreWhat is it like to be me? – I am DID
Each day me – tip-toeing through life (your life, your world, your complex unknowable system of rules and experiences), a desperate yet futile quest to hide my oddness.
Read MoreThe body remembers
I hate my body. It was there, always there, during the abuse. My mind went away but my body could not. My mind could forget. We parcelled up little chunks of our mind, bit by bit, and sent them off into dim little rooms where they could be forgotten and not heard.
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