Sometimes in my job I find that people lie to me. It doesn't bother me that people lie to me. I can see why they do it: because they are ashamed to tell the truth about themselves or don't want to hear the advice that would come from me if they told me the truth. Patients lie to me. I support other workers as part of my role, individuals working in other areas of health... they lie to me too.
One thing I do mind though, which happens more than I would have expected, is people who lie to me by telling me I told them something I didn't. Want a for instance?
OK, for instance, I tried to get in touch with a patient to arrange an appointment with them and found I didn't have the correct telephone number for them, so I sent out a letter asking them to contact me before a deadline date to arrange an appointment, or I would discharge them. I heard nothing from the patient for weeks. Today, several days after the deadline, they rang my office and told someone that I had arranged to go and see them but didn't show up. I asked to speak to the individual on the phone and questioned them about when they had rang, who they spoke to and what was arranged. Now, perhaps you are thinking that as I have dissociative identity disorder, maybe another alter did this and didn't inform me? It wouldn't be the first time this has happened at work but I have developed a pretty good system now of record keeping which allows me to check what has been done or said ie I try to record ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. If I, or any of my alters had spoken with this patient, they or I would have a) made a note of the appointment, b) made a note of the new contact details and c) not have made the appointment time that this individual told me I made because it was not at a time that would have suited me.
It's almost worse in a way when it's other health care workers that do it. I had a lady who rang my department to say I had promised her a place on a training course I was running the next day. I checked my records and found a note saying that I had informed her that she had been too late in sending back her registration and that there were no places available. Again, my blood boiled. It's so hard to be polite and say that they have misunderstood when I feel like yelling down the phone: "Don't you FUCKING lie to me!"
I don't mind being lied to but this INFURIATES me and it's simply because of the DID. Isn't my life hard enough, managing a life where I regularly find that I have done things I have absolutely no memory of? Isn't it tough enough that I have to write down every tiny minuscule detail of my day so that if another part is out during working hours they can know what has and hasn't been done? Isn't that hard enough without patients
who are just too fucking proud to ring up and admit that they are sorry they missed the deadline and could I still see them? I try to rationalise it in the same way I do other kinds of lies: they are only lying because it's important to them that I see them and they don't want to risk me saying 'tough luck' and discharging them. I try to remember that but it doesn't stop my blood from boiling because I am trying fucking hard enough and I don't need people throwing me into self doubt about how I am managing life with alters. It's hard enough.
I can live with people lying to me, but I don't want people doing it in a way that implies I am in error. I'm sure it appears strange to my colleagues that I get so angry every time this happens. I go on a rant about how it's disgraceful that people lie this way. I don't think they really get why it annoys me so much.
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Sunday, 4 September 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Manipulation and deceipt: you don't expect it from your brother
Hello virtual friends, I have just paused to say hello as I have been a bit distant lately from my blog (might not be reflected in the number of posts by us). I've had another really busy week. I'm starting to realise my work is never actually going to ease off; there is always going to be more to do than I have time to fit in. It stresses me out. I feel it may build up to a great big mountain of jobs not done and then I'll get fired. I need to draw up a timetable of what I have been doing each day over the last few months and a list of all the things I still need to do that haven't been done and take it to management to show that it's not my fault deadlines aren't being met, before they come to me. The problem is: I don't have the time to do that! Ptssh!
I've had a lot to do in the evenings too which is not good because usually I am fit for nothing in the evenings at the best of times. On Thursday, my brother in law asked me and Adam if we would babysit in the evening. I was already knackered after a full day of seeing patients and was just about ready to drive home from work and get into my jammies, but I agreed as babysitting just involves watching TV while the baby sleeps, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad. WRONG!
It turned out that he obviously just blatantly lied to us to get us to come over as when we arrived we realised he actually wanted us to help them move house! I was so angry. I was really physically exhausted and the last thing I had the energy for was packing and moving furniture. He started delegating jobs as soon as we got there. I hadn't even eaten any dinner yet and we weren't offered anything. Eventually I had to just bite the bullet and say that I needed to get some food immediately, so Adam went off to the Chinese to get us some food which his brother managed to subtly express was inconvenient for him because there was so much to do. What added to my fury was that I had made it clear that I needed to leave at 9pm as I had my own things to do (the things included a whole lot of shaving for a hospital appointment the next day and getting an early night).
At 10pm we were still helping (well by this stage I was lying on the floor because I was too physically exhausted to help anymore and 'on the floor' because the sofa had been moved out) when Adams brother came up to me to acknowledge that I'd said I needed to get away but to ask if I minded if they continue to move furniture. I said: “well I have things I need to do” and he just re-emphasized that he wanted to get the furniture moved. I felt so awkward. I hate confrontations and I had already made it clear at the start that I needed to get home no later than nine. If it wasn't bad enough that he had completely manipulated us into helping them move, he was now completely disrespecting my wishes. I didn't know what to say. Obviously he wanted me to say that I didn't mind, but I did mind. So I said: “I'll leave it up to Adam” hoping that Adam would have more balls than I did to tell him we needed to go, but he came back with: “Well Adam doesn't mind staying but he said you wanted to get away to do some things.” He then had the cheek to ask me outright exactly what it was I needed to do!
Sorry, but is it just me that finds all of this really rude, inappropriate, disrespectful and manipulative? Am I overreacting? You don't ask someone if they can babysit when you actually mean 'can you help us move house?'! The only reason I can think of as to why he did that is because he knew that we wouldn't have come if we'd known what we were in for.
It was so embarrassing for me to have to eventually refuse to help because I was so tired. Generally I just try to get on with things but with the way I have been feeling in recent months, often I don't actually have any physical energy left to move. I am actually going to the doctors on Monday about the problem as I've been starting to realise how bad it really is. I'm worried I might have a bit of chronic fatigue.
I can't stop feeling really annoyed with Adam's brother and I wish I had had the confidence to say so to his face on Thursday. I'm wondering now if I should contact him by email to explain how difficult it was for me and that he can't do things like that in future. I know that he WILL do things like that again. I know why he does it; his mother (my mother in law) is exactly the same. She deceives people and manipulates them in the nicest ways possible in order to get what she wants. It pisses me off because Adam's brother gets angry with her for doing it to him yet he is exactly the same.
So I don't know if I'll confront (or email, less confrontational) Adam's brother or not. I know Adam won't want me to, but yet I feel in not doing anything, it's letting others take advantage and giving them permission to do it again. People who want to control, need to know their boundaries.
Any opinions welcome...
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