Articles and Blogs

Do female clients prefer female therapists and male clients prefer male clients? Or are there more pressing questions to ask other than gender? Who would you work with?

OSDD is a strange-sounding diagnosis and seen by many as a 'not yet' or 'not quite' version of dissociative identity disorder. This article explores the differences between the two diagnoses and whether that difference matters or is arbitrary.

How do you go about getting a diagnosis for dissociative identity disorder? In this guest blog, one client describes her long struggle for treatment on the NHS and the path to the Clinic for Dissociative Survivors.

The recommended treatment for dissociative disorders is psychotherapy, but how do you go about finding a therapist or counsellor? This article guides you through the process, either via the NHS or privately.

It’s scary to think you’ve ‘gone mad’. It’s scary to think you have some serious, incurable ‘mental illness’. It’s scary to not understand what on earth is going on in your brain. And perhaps what’s even scarier is finding out that what is ‘wrong’ with you has a name: dissociative identity disorder.

I applied, with Emmott Snell’s assistance, for CICA. This is the compensation that the government pays out to victims of crime, administrated by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. In the end I was unsuccessful, but the experience was full of learning that may be helpful to others, and so I share it here for that purpose.

‘I’m not seeing a doctor!’ I insisted with a look on my face that was intended to end the debate once and for all. As far as I was concerned, it was simple: I wasn’t going to the hospital, walk-in centre or GP surgery, because I couldn’t go. I couldn’t cope with going. Such was my abject terror that, unless it was a matter of life or death, I avoided all things medical. The problem? This was rapidly becoming a matter of life and death.

It might have been ‘just a routine blood test’ but that didn’t stop me passing out. Again. From a teenager through into adulthood, even the word ‘medical’ could render me light-headed. For a long time I didn’t understand why I was such a ‘wuss’, as I saw it.