DID Can did be provoked by suggestion?

[Sandstone]

You and she are on a journey together.

 

[markymark]

First, no implication at all that DID isn't real. It definitley is and that isn't my quest...

If it is real, you'll absolutely know it when the evidence cannot suggest otherwise. We all disassociate to a point; it's quite normal and sometimes healthy.

When you cannot account for time, money, places, or things, and it's affecting not only yourself, but those around you who notice significant changes in behaviors, then it's time to figure it out.

Dissasociation is supposed to be a gift, but for me it can be quite terrifying at times. But I don't think it can be suggested, nor do I think anyone should take the time to try to fake it. It's too hard to be consistent for years upon end.

Because of the consistency of multiple behaviors and characteristics for years, They thought I was schizophrenic for the longest time, turned out it was a symptom of PTSD. It's amazing how much better treatment you get with the right diagnosis!

hope you find your answers.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I'm definitely not trying to fake it. I vacillate between feeling like the diagnosis fits so well (and offers such a reasonable explanation for how I feel and act) and not believing that it is at all possible. I don't want to be broken. It scares me to think that it fits sometimes, because I just want to be okay and able to handle myself and my life.

I agree that the wrong diagnosis can impact treatment so much, which is part of my panic to figure stuff out. I don't want to waste anymore time - of my own or of a therapist. I've had so many diagnoses in the past and so many of them felt wrong - like an eating disorder - that I don't want to spend time treating something that isn't a problem.

 

[BlueOrange]

I don't want to spend time treating something that isn't a problem.

That's a really important point, and it relates strongly to the issue of diagnosis. But diagnosis is tricky, and the value (and harm) of it varies.

I started seeing my T in 2003, and I'm rather pleased that I've kept seeing the same one - it's been a hard road. In early 2003, my diagnosis was 'adjustment disorder and social anxiety'. By the end of 2003, we were talking PTSD. He revised my diagnosis to DID in 2015. Treatment for PTSD and DID are very similar - they both involve getting to know parts of yourself that are excrutiatingly uncomfortable to deal with, and confronting fears (about yourself and about your environment.)

Being treated for PTSD for 12 years made is possible for me to start confronting the DID. In a complex case, difference in diagnosis is very difficult to assess; the difference in treatment is minimal.

(To use a biology metaphor - if you're diagnosed as suffering from a specific bacteria, and you actually have cancer, that'll cause you a lot of problems. If you're diagnosed as suffering from a specific bacteria, and you actually have a different bacteria, the antibiotics are still likely to help.)

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

In a complex case, difference in diagnosis is very difficult to assess; the difference in treatment is minimal.

This is what I keep trying to come back to. I know that treatment is similar (in fact, my therapist gave me a copy of the ISST-D guidelines for treating DID). In so many ways, it doesn't matter.

Yet, part of me is really seeking validation for the weird things that happen. I'm not officially DID. Apparently, I'm DDNOS that is "under ongoing assessment and evaluation", whatever that means.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I'm back to panikcing about this in a really serious way. What if I'm just exaggerating and nothing is wrong at all?? What if I am just making it all up??

I just want to hurt myself and make myself stop pretending.

 

[Sandstone]

With you.

What makes you so worried about it right now? What makes it urgent that you do something as drastic as hurting yourself? What makes you hate yourself enough to think you are pretending to yourself?

 

[Ronin]

Please don't hurt yourself?

Being hurt wouldn't help or make anything stop, in every case. It'd just add on distress and panic and confusion, instead of bringing clarity, in any way.

 

[shimmerz]

Her telling me that I didn't meet the diagnostic criteria just was yet another under cut that I read as pure rejection, I think.

That's why they used to have a diagnosis of DDNOS. It has changed now I think. Someone else will be able to give the equivalent. Not all of us fit into a neat little box, you know? Doctors don't quite 'get' how the ambiguity of not having a neat label can effect us. Or conversely, how having a label applied can affect us.

I wonder if you could just sit with the fact that you have PTSD for now (C-PTSD?). And that you have issues with dissociation. As I explored the DDNOS label for myself, I recognized that what that meant to me shifted quite a bit as I healed. I still am not certain that I was not DID with my 'baby part'.

 

[Ronin]

Someone else will be able to give the equivalent.

Former DD-NOS (Dis. disorders Not Otherwise Specified), now OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorders.)

 

[shimmerz]

Thanks so much Ronin!

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

What makes you so worried about it right now? What makes it urgent that you do something as drastic as hurting yourself? What makes you hate yourself enough to think you are pretending to yourself?

I'm worried right now because the voices are getting louder and the feelings of being unreal are getting stronger. I want to just cut it all out but I can't seem to stop it. But there are also the echoes of past therapists in my head that accused me of lying and exaggerating and told me that I was just looking for attention, because I clearly am capable of behaving differently (at least at work). Plus I just remember my mother telling me that I was always seeking attention and always trying to manipulate people and how mean and awful I was. I'm so terrified right now that she is right.

Being hurt wouldn't help or make anything stop, in every case. It'd just add on distress and panic and confusion, instead of bringing clarity, in any way.

I know. But I still want to, so badly. I feel like I'm a terrible person and I need to pay for it. I feel like I deserve pain for pretending like I have problems and not just "behaving correctly."

Doctors don't quite 'get' how the ambiguity of not having a neat label can effect us. Or conversely, how having a label applied can affect us.

The insiders freak out whenever it gets suggested that they aren't real. Like, scary freak out. Prove-I'm-real-by-doing-something-drastic freakout. But I don't want it to be real and I'm scared of what will happen regardless.