Other Ddnos

[Abstract]

As long as you adhere to the DBT underpinning of mindfulness in all things - you aren't promoting dissociation.

This is very well explained and I agree and with the rest.

I will add that I think its fine to temporarily do some of the not so mindful mild distraction forms of zoning out in small amounts in certain circumstances like this one. Not that I would say that to myself of course.Harsh judgemental and uncompromising with self about this stuff. And it of course does impede action and awareness. But we don't have to go all out and tackle everything in a day. There is good reason for the need to escape always and it can serve a purpose. And thats what proper therapy is for too. To help these things and help us do so. Of course you need to get through the next phase and get to that t which is the issue here for you. But Rome wasn't born in a day and thats Ok too. Sometimes some escape facilitates the next lot of action if managed correctly.Not long term as mindfulness all the time is the aim. But short term at the beginning of a new journey is fine too in my opinion.

 

[Sandstone]

I may not have multiple personalities, but I certainly have multiple truths. I wrote elsewhere about the assessment that I told the precise truth, but it wasn't the sort of truth that is meant for telling.
There are so many truths going along and around right now. The one where I am lying and manufacturing this, which I honestly expected to be the outcome. The one where I am an ungrateful child. The one where I am simply engaged in winning a battle with MH services. All those variants seem so much more likely than the two sets of severe, seriously ill reports I have.

If I try to suspend disbelief and go along with it, I'm still left with the mystery that I've voiced ad infinitum on here; there simply isn't enough trauma to create that level of dissociation. It cannot be there, because nothing made it.

 

[digger]

I may not have multiple personalities, but I certainly have multiple truths. I wrote elsewhere about...

'Liking' that by way of identification rather than liking that it is your experience. Bit short on words just now, but that post sums up how my head seems to operate often too.

 

[BuckarooBanzai]

there simply isn't enough trauma to create that level of dissociation. It cannot be there, because nothing made it.

I went through something like this initially. My signs and symptoms of trauma were unmistakable and yet I was unable to recall trauma.

Over time, with the help of a therapist, I was able to recognize and name significant trauma. Turned out, part of the trouble was the 'naming' process, meaning I didn't recognize certain forms of abuse as abuse. Also, it turned out I had an alter holding abuse memories. Finally, the worst documented abuse occurred during my preverbal years, so I didn't have a verbal narrative.

It all came out in the end.

 

[Abstract]

And both digger and Buckeroo's quotes of yours I relate to.

 

[Sandstone]

I already know my traumas, they are neatly packaged and labelled as the 5 and a half. Ex-T wanted to add one more and I see what she means, but don't think it is a Crit A trauma, and in any case that was in my 40's. There is an amnesic gap in middle of one event and the end of another, but I know most of the detail otherwise. I have spoken at some length to the early abuser; from what he said I am confident he did no more than I recall. Since I went nowhere outside the family until the age of 9, there can't be any more.

With past therapists I have been able to see that the parenting I received was actually poor, rather than merely odd, but again it doesn't seem to me poor enough to have impeded the integration of myself to a wholly whole child. The best I can do by way of explanation is to lump together the fairly mild early abuse, poor parenting and especially what the report summarized as a multi-generational " family history; persecution, secrecy, dishonesty and shutting things out of mind were particularly emergent family themes". In comparison with the true horrors of torture, violence and trafficking I see others describe, there isn't enough, really nothing like enough.

@BuckarooBanzai I'm glad for you that you had

the support of a skilled therapist in weekly sessions

but I don't and I'm bereft and grieving over that. Please could you stop reminding me of yours? Grammatically it would be easy; both times you put the reference in a subordinate clause, so maybe you could just delete that instinctively included clause in any future response?

The gaping hole where the input of a T would be so valuable leaves me with many areas I need to ask about here instead. The two at the top of my fermenting brain now are safety and retrospective (ab)normality.

However i find that even after stopping to pace around the house, eat toffee and drink tea I can't manage to write about them, so I'll leave this hanging for later and go and do something else.

 

[Sandstone]

OK, safety. This comes up in the context of researching, as suggested by both @joeylittle and @BuckarooBanzai That would be my normal approach to everything, but, because I have no-one to direct or monitor that research, I'm very cautious. I constantly have to remember that approaching trauma in therapy too soon has twice led to me acting in a way that endangered others lives as well as my own. I have to be circumspect in what I expose myself to, and stop well short of anything that might be too much. The aspect of myself that believes it is better to be dad than to reveal those secrets to another pops up so suddenly. I'm all the more confused because I find myself thinking "but that wasn't me, that has nothing to do with me. I'm a calm measured person" I don't know what I might read that is too much, or what is there to be set off in an unexpected explosion.

Then much bigger and reverberating around all my thoughts is the issue

I have also find it helpful to remind myself that although my understanding of the situation has changed I in fact am the same person I was before the diagnoses

My understanding of myself has been changed, in a way that is reverberating on and on. It is not just the DDNOS diagnosis itself, much more the examples given throughout the report of why my depersonalisation / derealisation / amnesia are Severe. Suddenly I'm being told that I have always been pathologically abnormal.

things I considered to be just how I was, or how the world was - were actually an illness - and aspects of it were considered shocking to doctors, even though I'd mostly figured out how to live with it

I can accept things like a single childhood experience of watching myself standing on the other side of the school hall as clearly odd. Some of the other examples- always having multiple unexplained bruises, not knowing my birthday, or age,or chronological sequencing, finding things in odd places, losing track of meetings and of time, having a running commentary in my head, things dropping out of 3D - they all seem wholly normal. I wouldn't have brought them up in therapy because as the report quotes me saying repeatedly "that's just how it is, that's how I live"

Now, I'm told that all those things add up to Severe abnormality. I'm having to reframe and reorient my view of myself. I want someone who will go through each of those examples - and the ones I've listed are just a selection - and help me understand how and then why they are not normality.
I want someone to tell me if I the long term work is supposed to change those things, and how, and what that would be like. I can't imagine not having this
"a constant presence of ‘2 opposing
views, without conflict, it just is..it makes decisions or answering any
question very difficult… the I of me is very clear but there is other stuff,
facets, around that is very dark…’. She said that her inner sense of
constant contradiction is ‘disciplined enough’ not to affect relationships
and work. She wasn’t sure about the level of associated level of distress,
‘ it is confusing, muddling, chaotic but it has always been like
that…neither I or anyone else want to know about that..’ "

I know I used not to show that. OH commented that I used to be exactly the opposite, both spontaneous and decisive. But I assumed at least something along those lines was everyone's normality.

I feel as though I'm looking at myself in a freak show.

 

[Abstract]

Hope you take this in the way its meant Sandstone. :) I want to firmly say there is nothing freak show about dissociation. It is in fact a perfectly normal and creative possible reaction to not so normal situations. Which I imagine then opens up your whole nothing bad happened etc thoughts. Which a normal possible reaction to internal conflict. You have had bad experiences and dissociation is a possible response for human beings.

I always say I dissociated my dissociation. Never once for most of my life thought anything of it, Vocal cords or hand not working? No thought about that. Standing next to myself in therapy most of the time? Never occurred to me to mention it. Not feeling parts of my body? No. Not having any chronology or sense of a history or normal memories? No. Not remembering what had happened week to week? Not either.I think when its an entrenched part of functioning for a long time and by the nature of it one has a tendency to block things out then its maybe not so strange not to realise. Not saying my situation is anything like yours. Just saying my experiences with mine. When I started realising one of the most strange things for me was trying to understand why I never thought about it or thought to say anything about it, Even in all the many years of therapy that I had. In truth I was 90% shut down all the time so thought wasn't happening too much, For me.

 

[BuckarooBanzai]

@Abstract - I so relate to your experiences with dissociation, above.

Please could you stop reminding me of yours?

I will do my best. I always mention that fact because people are always asking me how I healed and if I managed to heal alone. But, I will do my best not to mention it again on this thread.

Could you do me a favor? Would you put this request on my member page to help me remember?

I feel as though I'm looking at myself in a freak show.

Definitely not a freak show. I don't get that impression at all.