Of the four blog posts I published this month, three were about blogging itself. That’s called metablogging; and I do it a lot (more on that later). This month I was bitching about Dissociative Identity Disorder therapists doing it wrong and worrying about how to expand on that without upsetting readers.
Now that I’ve resolved the latter (thanks for your help, guys) I figure I should get more specific about that whole YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!!! thing.
After all, some of you are actually interested!
I’ve been struggling for quite a while to find something that works for me in dealing with my DID, and I feel like I’m tilting at windmills while running in circles. So I’d be really interested to hear more specifically what problems you see in DID conventional wisdom. – weordmyndum
I echo this. I would be interested in hearing more from you on this matter. I certainly am not one to be chained to knowledge by “experts”. And especially my therapist as he is certainly not an expert. Our work today is very individualised. We don’t have no big wigs telling us how to do it! Can we hear more from you? – Bourbon
I can’t guarantee that you won’t wish you hadn’t asked, but I’m happy to say yes! And though I’ll try my best to discuss this topic in a balanced way, it’s unlikely that I’ll succeed. I can, however, promise transparency. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so it’ll have to publish as a series. Look for the first installment this week.
Self-Discovery
I posted this on Facebook with my readers in mind:
I guess I think anyone in treatment (whatever that means to you) for a complex dissociative disorder is actively in the process of learning who they are beyond their pain. And so it seemed worth saying that no matter how weak this process may make you think you are, remember that self-discovery takes more courage than survival.
But then again, maybe courage doesn’t have much to do with it….
Dan Kline is in that distinctly challenging period after a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis where you’re suddenly more aware of your own pathology (diagnosis is often the first step in the integrative process). It’s a messy time for most people but I’m confident Dan will thrive as a result of it. Why?
- He’s pissed off.
- He asks questions.
- He’s willing to tolerate ambiguity.
Together, those three things are a potent recipe for self-discovery. And I love the way Bilal Ghandour words number 3: The willingness to be perplexed.
Reader Ayelet adds in a fourth ingredient, saying, ” … support so you know you’re not delusional.” Genuine validation can be surprisingly healing, but her comment reminded me of something else that’s an asset to anyone dedicated to becoming more of who they truly are: a sense of humor. (Ayelet has boatloads of it.)
What do you think? What does it take to find out who you are beyond your pain?
One More Thing …
I’m going to work on the site design and structure for a while. Think months. In that process I anticipate editing already published posts to change how much of the content appears on the front page. If you subscribe to DCMS, you might get notices when I do those edits. Please let me know if that’s the case so I can rethink things. I don’t want my site revamp to end up clogging up my readers’ feeds.
“I was bitching about Dissociative Identity Disorder therapists doing it wrong
“I guess I think anyone in treatment (whatever that means to you) for a complex dissociative disorder is actively in the process of learning
“And I’m not really interested in participating in what I see as a stupendously arrogant assumption: you’re too fragile to handle what I have to say about DID.
“if we want to know something and are willing to put in the effort to find out, we really ought to be able to learn.
“I also don’t think it’s pretty great that the people who identify themselves as the professionals – people, in other words, who ought to be able to teach us what we want to know
“So as long as I can do it without hurting myself, I intend to continue to share whatever information about DID or related to DID that has been helpful to me, as well as point out the attitudes, beliefs, etc. that have been particularly unhelpful to me. I figure if I write the articles I would have wanted to read when I was first diagnosed, I might not make the lack-of-accessible-information-about-DID situation better, but I can’t possibly make it worse…”
—
Holly, the above words are all yours. Do you see a thread? That you are framing therapy in a teacher-learner process? And now you’re trying to teach the rest of us what you’ve ‘learned’?
That you’re angry at the therapists because you haven’t ‘learned’ enough yet? Maybe good therapy isn’t a teacher-learner process, maybe it isn’t an intellectual process that you figure out and it’s finally solved (however much we wish it could be so straightforward); rather, for me it involved a very painful process of feeling. and feeling. and feeling. With a very patient and experienced therapist. Really difficult, revisiting-feeling.
When I asked my very experienced therapist why we had to keep going over and over the same stuff (that had me literally climbing the walls) he said “we do it until it takes the sting out.” Guess what? He got the sting out. Or, more accurately, he got me to get the sting out.
Now I own my story and I own my past and I am not ashamed anymore. It took tremendous courage on my part and immense patience and persistence on his part. In some ways I was fortunate that my story had been so witnessed and so corroborated by other victims (and I’m not ashamed of that word either) that I didn’t have to go through the depths of questioning about how it could possibly have happened. There was irrefutable and acknowledged evidence – as well as those who I knew knew, also denying what they knew. to my young and trusting face. I was told “it didn’t happen” but it did happen and I couldn’t put it together. Orwell called this “doublethink,” which I find a very good description. Of course I split.
When your world is so irreconcilable, so incredible, how are you going to ‘learn’ it out? Or be taught how it is or isn’t, when by nature it is an unthinkable, inconceivable concept?
Therapist are not teachers. And neither are you, really. Talk about your experience, talk about what you know, but don’t expound as if you can figure this out by thinking it through, when that notion of figuring it out as a resolution is so off the mark of what good therapy is.
No wonder you’re frustrated and angry. My guess is that your ‘thinking it out’ is simply another layer of distancing yourself from the real gut-wrenching front-on facing of what you lived through and who you really are. I can’t say whether or not you had horrors in your life, that’s your journey. But when you talk about responsible blogging and come off as an authority who can ‘teach’ or ‘educate’ others about this illness that you have so many questions about yourself…. ? You are a writer. Write about what you know. Surely one of your writing teachers told you that along the way.
I know this will piss you off and I expect all kinds of re-quoting and commentary, but I also know that I am a bit farther along in my journey than I suspect you are. For example I know that I will never need to be hospitalized again because the only way to get out of a hospital is by being compliant. And my days of compliance are thankfully over so I am completely engaged in changing my life – drastically. I absolutely know where I’m going, I know what I choose to do and I also know how to navigate the obstacles of my illness that still come up from time to time. And when these obstacles come up I know it’s temporary and I have great confidence in myself to pull through or to arrange allowances for the ‘times out.’.
My patient and persistent therapist saved my life many times over and then retired before he was able to see my successes. I’m very grateful that he went through the deep deep shit with me, believed in me and I only regret that he can’t see me now.
So it’s not about learning and it’s not about teaching. It’s about going headlong into it – with a therapist, because this is not self-help stuff here – and somehow coming out the other side much wiser and enriched, possibly integrated – which isn’t an intellectual attribute. It comes from experience and experiencing. Courageously.
I hope you keep on writing because you are so thoughtful and provoking, but I question how you can do it while at the same time you need to be doing your own journey and are not in as good a position as you might think to be telling other people how to take their journey. Write your experience, write your questions, but maybe responsible blogging isn’t to tell us what you don’t even know yet – a journey you haven’t fully taken. Be sure to put your own air mask on first and then you will be alive to save those around you.
I’m concerned about you and I hear desperate frustration as I’ve followed you through these years. Please take care.
Lu
LuPaul’s Instructions on How to Do Your Journey and Write Your Blog:
1. Keep on writing.
2. You need to be doing your own journey, so you may not be able to keep on writing.
3. Put an air mask on while journeying and while writing, which are two different things, though both require an air mask.
4. If a reader says you come off as an authority, it’s because you’re choosing to come off as an authority and has nothing to do with reader perception.
5. Don’t come off as an authority.
6. If a reader feels that you are expounding as if you can figure this (unspecified; apply to everything you write) out by thinking it (unspecified; apply to everything you think) through, then that is exactly what you are doing.
7. Don’t expound as if you can figure this (unspecified; apply to everything you write) out by thinking it (unspecified; apply to everything you think) it through.
8. You cannot teach or be taught how it (unspecified; apply to everything) is or isn’t.
9. But isn’t about learning.
10. And it isn’t about teaching.
11. It is about going headlong into it (unspecified; apply to everything) with a therapist and experiencing courageously.
12. If you use your intellect, you are not experiencing.
13. If you use your intellect, you are not feeling.
14. If you are writing, you are using your intellect (intellecting).
15. Finally, write about what you know. Unless what you know are your own thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on Dissociative Identity Disorder and anything related to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Don’t write about that.
Great tips! And all joking aside, you’ve inadvertently taught me via your comments over the years not to take myself (or what other people have to say about myself) too seriously.
Thanks, teach.
Wow Lu, not in any way overtly hostile, not at all. Ok maybe a little. You say you have been following Hollies blog for sometime and I personally know you have I have seen replies from you before. I agree that she needs to write from her own journey and her own experiences, I had gathered that she was going to do that, not preach or try to educate the masses about DID, from what I understood she was going to use her life experiences to try to make a connection with the reader and if that helped the reader then all the more better. Personally I think it is right to question your therapist and demand answers to your questions, you know what that is not even the issue, why attack someone when all they seem to want to do is use their own experience to help out others. You seem to have figured out your life with DID dont you think that someone might benifit from something that might have helped you some technique or a type of discussion in therapy, or how you might have worked out a problem. Share your knowledge dont degrade others for wanting to share what they feel might help others, she is not and has never told anyone that this will work for you if you do it the way I tell you to do it, and if you think I may not be telling the truth then go back over all of her old blogs from here and Dissociative Living, never once has she said do this or you wont get well. always , and i mean always using her experiences about her own recovery and telling people what has worked for her, never demanding or taking on the role as a therapist for herself or wait what else did you call it becoming a teacher, you your self looks like you have taken on the role of teacher with Holly herself, instead of giving encouragement you give negative feedback and tell her what she should and should not do. Your journey is your journey and will not be the same journey each of us take, we will all take different paths and hopefully end up in the same place as a whole person, and there is no such thing as intergration it is called cooperation. Perhaps you need to look back at your journey and see if you might have something use full to contribute instead of attacking and not thinking. Your post was lovely and insitefull, and somewhat mislead, look before you leap and mind the tall grass as it tickles your wee bits. Old Irish proverb for you there.
With much gratitude and devotion,
Dan Kline
Ignoring the above, I’m glad you are back writing again. There’s a lot on my blog recently about therapists being seduced by DID and encouraging multiplicity rather than healing it. Id be interested to hear your views on that.
I do think a lot of therapists unwittingly encourage multiplicity. And sure, I think there are those who feel enchanted by the idea of treating a client with Dissociative Identity Disorder, but that’s only because they don’t understand it. And I can’t imagine that enchantment would carry them very long.
Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think therapists knowingly do any of that. It’s no secret that I take issue with a lot of what gets called treatment, but I don’t think anyone’s *trying* to make patients worse
Not that you said they are … I don’t know, that’s just where my brain decided to go with that. Ha!
Hah naw I wasn’t saying that therapists willingly make patients worse. More they become mesmerised by the DID and fail to really treat it. I was being cynical when I wrote that post because I was with a very cynical therapist. Moved on from him now though!
geez. It looks like I stepped into a bit of a pissing match, or at least on one side. I don’t understand why people in spite of disliking what someone has to say yet continue to read the writings. On top of that some of these people then rant. Why not read something else?