Articles and Blogs

Physical symptoms are a big part of life for me with DID. Yes, I have ‘multiple personalities’, 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.

Crisis makes sense. The adrenaline of it can become addictive, or be all we’ve known. Life doesn’t feel right if things aren’t frantic, if relationships aren’t disastrous. Crisis can be an attachment cry. Crisis is the language of emotions that we don’t know how to regulate.

For a long time, therapy sessions would end with a fairly typical exchange. I would express frustration at myself for not doing enough, and gently but firmly the response from my therapist would go, ‘Be kind to yourself.’

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?

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?

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.