Articles and Blogs

Who should pay for treatment for survivors of abuse who have gone on to develop a dissociative disorder? For many conditions the expectation would be that help would be available on the NHS, but this is rarely the case for conditions arising from trauma.

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.

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?

A brief guide to dissociative identity disorder, a post-traumatic condition, by me, Carolyn Spring.

Twenty helpful, and sometimes surprising, things that my therapists said to me.

In this article, I describe the process of designing 'a life worth living' as part of the process of recovery from trauma.

It's not a definition or some bullet-points on a page, a menu of things that were done or could have been done, or might yet be done. It's something to do with me as a person, the me that I'm so scared to show you, that I'm so scared to be, because of what happened ...

What is it like to be me? What is it like to be the me that is me-not-you, different, alone, DID? You – in my minds you are you-not-us, but who am I to you? Can you know me?