On not believing I have Dissociative Identity Disorder

Hello curious people of the world. I hope you are well.

This week has been interesting for me in that I feel different. There is change inside me, although I'm not sure in what way yet so I won't try to analyse it too much.

As you may have noticed from my not too subtle blog post title (which took an embarrassingly long time to come up with), this post is going to be about the annoying tendency I have to stop believing I have dissociative identity disorder, or anything wrong with me at all. This is not a new problem, as evidenced by this post, written nearly a year ago.

I talked with T in psychology this week about this desperate problem. It's always been something that has come up from time to time. I might wake up one day and 'realise' I have nothing to feel bad about and wonder why on earth I have felt the need to make up all of these lies and have wasted years in therapy talking about 'parts' when I should have been getting help for this awful, shameful lying disorder. Usually, within the space of a few minutes to a few hours however, something happens, either outwardly or inside my head and I realise it is true: I do have DID.

Recently, however, the doubting part of me is driving the bus so often and I have been really struggling to believe I could possibly have alters/parts/whatever you want to call them. I can think up completely logical explanations as to how it couldn't possibly be true and I convince myself that there has been a terrible mistake. The problem is, I am still doubting it, even in the middle of alters doing crazy things. It's not enough to get through to me. I'm struggling to really get out in words how difficult I am finding this. On Wednesday, I talked in therapy with T about this problem. It was she who brought it up actually.

The conversation came about because on Monday I self harmed. Not badly: just light cuts on my wrist and arm, but still, it's not really a good sign. It has been quite some time since I last cut myself. Probably the last time I properly self harmed was last year. So I feel let down/like I've let myself down. Disappointed. It is a sign as well, that no matter how disconnected I am from the others inside, they are still thinking and feeling.

I told T about it on Wednesday and first of all she asked me when I had done it and when I had last seen her and I wondered why she was comparing the self harm with the date of the last session. Was it because she knew the session took me out of 'function mode' and thought it could have been a result of that? Or was it because she knew I knew she was taking leave from work after the session and wondered if I was doing it in some kind of protest of her going away? Or am I just being really paranoid?

Anyway, it was not just after the last session and it felt in no way connected either. It just seemed to happen. I felt the same as I had been feeling i.e not much at all really... blank. And then I just started thinking about cutting myself and it became something that had to be done. If you had a sore that was infected, you'd have to clean it out and care for it: it might be painful to do but you would tell yourself you had to do it, because it needs done. This was the same. It didn't feel good but I just had a strong sense that it had to be done. So I tried to get myself to go into the background and let whoever it was who needed it done take over.

T asked me what I thought the trigger was and I told her I didn't know but then I wondered if it was anything to do with the internal conversation that I had listened to and written down last week. I showed T the conversation and also another piece of similar writing and she read through them and shared her thoughts about it.

One of the things that she pointed out was that even in the middle of the discussion that was going on between parts, there was someone saying 'it's not real, I've made it up'. She seemed a bit incredulous that there was still a doubting part of me in the middle of it all and started to say 'when it's so obvvv' and rethought her wording before saying that it was 'so strong that it is real'. I wish she would just tell me blatantly if it's obvious to her because it's not obvious to me and frankly, I do need some reassurance. Having said that, saying that it's so strong that it's real, is pretty much just the same thing and reassures me that she at least doesn't think I have a lying disorder.

I explained how I am struggling more than ever to believe it's DID and we talked about this for quite a while. T wonders if part of me feels a need to disbelieve it because it is too overwhelming. She told me that she is not trying to convince me but that my 'story fits'. She also told me that it seems clear to her from my other writings and drawings that they are describing traumatic events that I may not be consciously aware of myself but that are memories held by other parts and that it's clear that it's about an 'unwanted sexual experience' and that there is a lot of self blame.

Unsurprisingly I argued that I don't remember anything happening beyond a certain point and that maybe nothing did happen. She said that she didn't hold any views but that the experiences are held by other parts and she talked about how my experiences that we both know of would have affected me... the 'church' and my parents break up etc.

I know she is very careful, as she should be, not to put ideas in my head. Which is why she has never tried to convince me that I have DID. Today though, every time I came up with an argument as to what else it could be, she gave me reasons as to why that was unlikely to be the case:

 e.g. ME: I think it must be an organic problem; maybe from when I got knocked out as a child. T's thoughts: unlikely as there is no indication of this on a day to day basis and I am able to function very well at work and complete complex tasks. More likely that memories are just held by other parts and not accessible to me.

e.g. ME: where T says my story fits, for me it doesn't fit sometimes. T's thoughts: my experience of things varies and moves along a dimension of reality, so at times it doesn't feel real and bad memories don't exist whereas at other times it does seem very real.

...or she encouraged me just to stick with what I do know and keep an open mind. She said that what we do know is that certain things or triggers activate strong emotions and physical experiences and that it would suggest that I don't hold the memories but that they are somewhere.

I don't know if it has really helped to put my mind at rest. It's reassuring to know she is convinced, although I'm sure it must be frustrating for her that I keep coming back to this point; she has a lot of patience. I think if I had a patient who was so much in denial about something I'd want to shake them up and shout at them to get it through their thick head (just to clarify, I wouldn't do that to a patient... although it's not wrong to want to is it?! lol) I guess in one way, if I trust her, I could trust that she knows better than I do. If I do have DID, I can assume that she knows more about me overall than I know about myself, being that I am one part who doesn't share memories or experiences of others, but that those others have shared things with her. She would therefore have more of a rounded picture of things than I do. I also trust my husband, Adam and I talked about this with him and he has told me that he never doubts it and that it all fits for him with what he knows about DID. So the two people who know me so well both don't doubt that I have DID. Is that enough for me to go on?

I wish it was.

But what could help me to know for sure?? If I got an official diagnosis from a psychiatrist would that help me? In some ways I think it would but I know that at other times I would just tell myself I had lied to them about my symptoms... and if my research serves me, don't a load of psychiatrists not even believe DID exists anyway? Maybe this is going to be a permanent thing. I know it's not unique to me. I know it's a common trait for people with DID to doubt it. As Adam reminds me, the author of 'First Person Plural' (Cameron West) struggles with the same issue throughout his story. This doesn't help me though as it's not evidence either way. It's only proof that disbelieving DID is not evidence that I don't have it, if that makes sense. I need something to convince me.

T feels it is useful for me not to believe it all the time as it gives me a break from having to deal with it, but I wish I could just come to an understanding. It's not nice feeling like a fraud and worrying that I'm getting treatment for something I don't have, which then isn't going to help me to be better in the end. If I could just believe it once and for all, I feel I could move on and start learning how to deal with it. At the moment it feels like I'm just going round in circles, thinking I am making progress but then crashing back to square one every time these doubts come back in.

I'm just getting tired of this constant tug of war.

Questions for my therapist

I had a session at psychology today which for my standards went very well. I was nervous about going in function mode but T has been really good about it. She kept things at a tolerable level and didn't try to talk about 'parts' too much. Instead we chatted about function mode itself and why it happens. I also got to ask some more of the questions that I've been wanting to ask for a while. I had gathered a list of questions which I never really get a chance to ask and last week I suggested that I would like to ask them. It has been a good time to do this because it gives a focus to the sessions where we are taking a step back temporarily from the more intense work we have been doing while I am in function mode.

Last week I asked about the plans for T's leaving as she hasn't talked much about it (I'll tell you about this some other time).

This week I asked about EMDR. T had talked about doing EMDR with me a long time ago and had actually tried it out briefly but I had become really anxious at the time and she didn't mention it again afterwards. I've been unsure as to whether it is going to happen or not so I asked about that today. T told me that it is still on the cards but would be later down the road as there is work that needs to be done with 'parts' before it can happen.

I also asked about my first ever appointment at clinical psychology. You may remember that I had looked at the Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule recently and recognised that the psychologist I originally saw had asked me questions from it at my first appointment. I was curious as to why I was asked these questions as my referral was for 'depression'. I wanted to know if the psychologist just routinely asks these questions or if something I said even back then made him suspicious that I had DID.

T was not sure; she said that the psychologist I saw then worked a lot in the field of trauma so may have noticed something. She looked back at my notes from that day and read out that my first description of myself and my problems included that I had suffered depression on and off throughout my life and that I had memory problems which had been getting worse in recent years. I'd also said I didn't feel normal and felt different from other people. She said that the memory problems could have triggered him to ask me about dissociation.

It means a lot to me to think that my dissociative disorder may have been evident to the psychologist even back then at the start. I know it's silly, but even after all this time I still occasionally have periods of doubt about if I have DID. Sometimes I am just so separate from my memories of childhood that it seems impossible to believe that anything traumatic could have happened to me. Sometimes I just feel fine and like one single person and I think I must have been making up stories.

It's reassuring to find evidence to suggest I may not have made it all up after all. It may be hard to understand how a person could think they have made something like that up if they haven't, but DID in itself means a person can have so many different states of being that it is entirely possible that one alter could be so separate from the others that to them they are the only one. At those times, when I reflect that I have been going to therapy for four years I marvel at this fact and wonder what on earth I have been doing wasting valuable NHS time when there's absolutely nothing wrong with me. At those times I am blind to the others. I don't realise that they are not far away. It doesn't take much to bring back the part that sees life differently. I forget that not too many weeks ago I was passing the time by tying ropes around my neck and thinking about how appealing the bannisters looked.

Function mode: once and for all

OK, I AM going to write a blog post. I AM! I have tried to write a few recently and not gotten much further than one sentence before giving up or getting distracted.

Today I had one of those moments where you find out you have no recollection of having done the thing you are being told you did. Apparently I had a whole conversation with this woman on the phone and arranged to give her some resources that she needed for a group programme she's running. She rang today to say it is starting tomorrow and she hasn't received the stuff. I didn't even recognise her name and can't remember such a conversation. It's funny because I was only remarking to myself a few days ago that I haven't seen as much evidence of memory lapses lately. 

As the more observant and devoted followers amongst you (that's all of you, I'm sure!) may have noticed from previous posts I've been in function mode lately. I've talked about function mode here, here, and here to name a few (wow, I really like talking about function mode don't I?!) but in case you can't be bothered reading those posts, function mode is a state of being where I am quite out of touch with my 'parts' or alters and have few positive or negative emotions. Life can be quite easy in function mode. I do my job. I don't 'think' and am not in touch with alters therefore I am not affected by them and my energy levels don't get drained by the psychological stress of living with many people in my head. I might find I even have a bit of energy for things like housework or hobbies (not always, but sometimes). In function mode I have a universal lack of interest. I have no interest in myself; no interest in others; I neglect friendships as I drift off into a world of nothingness. It doesn't worry me that I'm shutting down from everything, because I have no interest. It's a catch 22 situation (or is it? I've never been entirely sure what that means... but hopefully you know what I'm getting at).

There are two ways to come out of function mode. One is when I catch on to myself and realise that I need to get out of it and then work really really hard at trying to get out of it over a period of time. I do this by listening really carefully to what's going on in my head (what the voices are saying) and trying to open myself up to communicating with others inside. I also look over things parts have written and sometimes reading my blog is helpful. Trying to write blog posts can help too (which is what I'm doing now. You wouldn't believe how long it has taken me to write this much). It's hard to get out of function mode this way as it takes motivation (something I lack in function mode) and perseverance.

The second way to come out of function mode is with a crash. This is a really painful way and is dangerous. It will most commonly happen if I attend therapy in function mode and am asked to think and talk about parts. Quite often I will feel the parts start to stir and it causes very unmanageable feelings. It could also happen if something upsetting happens in the course of my day, like a bad argument with Adam or if something big triggers me. Then I will most likely plunge from my clouds of nothingness into sudden despair and this I call 'dangerous' because self harm can be a likely option for helping to manage the painful feelings.

So how did I get myself into function mode and how can I get out of it this time? I think it was inevitable. It started off when my therapist went on holiday and I subconsciously (maybe partly consciously) felt it would be best to shut down any feelings or thoughts just in case I might have a crisis while she was away and not be able to contact her. It seemed like the simplest option. But she's back now and I've had two therapy sessions in function mode and am still in it, so what the heck is the problem?

I think it's simply that work has been so difficult lately and my health hasn't been so good so function mode has been a coping mechanism. Keeping on top of work, worrying about my liver and trying to figure out my head all just got too much and something had to go. It puts me in two minds as to whether it's a good idea to get out of it or not though. I'm obviously in it because it is a difficult time, but it holds me back from progressing in my therapy sessions and when will be a good time to come out of it (bear in mind I have spent several years in function mode in the past)? 

Which leads to the question: why not just stay in function mode forever then and forget therapy? Function mode has several down sides: firstly, I am more inclined to feel physically ill (somatization), secondly I am much more likely to self harm (suggesting that things are still going on, I am just disconnected from it: or as T might say, other parts are being ignored and trying to get noticed); thirdly, I don't feel bad but I am alone and eventually, sooner or later, I will feel that 'aloneness' once I have pushed everyone out of my life (not many people left until I achieve that!). Struggling through therapy is painful, but my reason for persisting is that in time, I hope to be able to experience not just 'nothingness' but happiness and peace and enjoyment from life. I hope that one day the world and everyone in it won't seem like a monster that's about to get me. One day I wish to see the world as a place where I belong and can feel safe.

For now, I will have to learn to let pain and frustration and hurt overwhelm me. It's a painful investment I will make which I hope will pay off in the end to give me the kind of life I see others living. One with acceptance... many kinds of acceptance.

This post contained excessive use of the words: 'function mode'. Once you notice it it's like when you suddenly notice the annoying canned laughter in a sitcom and then can't help but notice it at every joke where you may have been watching the comedy for years and it never bothered you before. I put this FYI at the end because if I'd pointed it out at the start you wouldn't have been able to concentrate on what I was saying for noticing my overuse of the words. You're welcome :P