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DID For people that have did, what is your opinion about integration?

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Ursa

MyPTSD Pro
Seems like the opinions about Integration of DID people are very mixed.

My first therapist told me I had a choice to do it or not. My new therapist assumed integration as part of the treatment right away. On books, I have read a couple and one of them defends integration, while the other one says it is a choice.

What is your opinion about this? If you had DID and integrated, how does it feel like?
 
Dissociative Identity Disorder.

It is very related with PTSD from Child Abuse.
 
I am not sure if I am finding some peace in this area, I think I am ...I think it has come in part from really being able to work through trauma and being supported as I have been here.

I hope this helps some

~fin
 
Hi Ursa,

my therapist doesn't really do the diagnosis thing, but I am pretty sure I am being integrated right now. In therapy we (the therapist and I) often speak to/give voice to parts of myself that are damaged (do other peoples therapists use this approach?) I don't know if it is a general PTSD approach or 'other'. Some days I wish I could go back to my dissociated old self and ways, while some days I am grateful for all the work we have done to make me feel more complete. I do feel grief at the anticipation of the loss of the part(s) of myself that will be integrated. However, my experience is that they don't go away, they are just less split off.

I find the process of speaking to and acknowledging the different part(s) of my self helpful, though I realise this is a slow process. I have never experienced depression like this before in my life and my emotional responses are really intense right now, part of me would like to be back in the cotton wool state (dissociated) I was in before.

Like I say, this is perhaps not that helpful as my therapist and I don't speak diagnostically, perhaps it doesn't even relate to DID, just something in your post resonated with me.

dust
 
Dust,

The old and the new therapist try to perceive who is speaking while I am speaking. The old one would talk directly to a part. The new one does not speak a lot, but on the other day he said he said that he did not understand what I said and was trying to understand who said what.
The old one told me I switch very fast, sometimes the sentence is started by somebody and finished by someone else. I am starting to notice these patterns in myself.
About the integration I am scared of it but I am not sure if I am feeling this or one of the parts. Everything is so confusing sometimes in my head...

So I want to understand better what it is.

Thank you for your post.
 
I would like to say that I don't really understand this myself. BUT;

I know that when I take myself into trauma to begin to work on it to help me manage some, other emotions and feelings come up and I have wondered if these are different personalities or whatever they are called in on top of PTSD and everything else. I do know though that they are feelings and they then start to give voice (for want of a better word) to other traumas and past abusers.

Like anger comes up and I try to voice it because I know we need to get somehow in touch with anger and that a certain amount of anger is also healthy so I try to let it speak from inside me, but because I am so afraid of anger it is almost pushed out by other feelings like guilt and fear and shame and the fact that I am feeling like I am totall shit and then of course all these emotions are connected to different parts of trauma, and all the trauma's start battling it out almost.

I think this is also why I am finding it so difficult to pin myself down to one trauma to be able to begin to work on my pTSD. So I am at the moment trying to write down different parts of traumas and also different parts of my life seperately. I am not sure if this will work or what but I have to give it a try as I do feel like I may be running out of options and in the outside realworld there are none so...this at the moment is how I am trying to resolve some of it for myself.


Also I am struggling to find some kindness to myself and because others kindness is so strange and unfamiliar it has no volume to it, and because I am not used to the good stuff at all, again the voices and feelings of past trauma abusers speak up louder and drown out anything good at all, that is also a result of zero self esteem. And I have no love or time for my inner most fears and vulnerabilities, while I set out to ...it doesnt take a whole lot to thow me off and get me spiralling down again.

I also feel so much pain at the good stuff now, and I never know how to respond to kindness properly, whatever that is. I now I keep fCking up badly.

But I do know that I am fragmented some; because I struggle with time lines and I am very "compartmentalised" in some ways (perhaps), I didn think at first I might be and I have not been diagnosed as such but then my diagnosis has been pretty crap too. Over and Over and then some more and then nothing no proper or real treatment outside of here, so this is here and now and it is working I am going with it the only way available to me right now. I hope this works

Another thing is I need to try to keep getting it ALL out and then maybe I can paste it all together perhaps in some kind of oredr I am not quite sure how to do this at all but in working that through I am hoping it will help me better, regain some cohesion as I see it and believe that is what I have somehow lost.

This is all conjecture on my part, because I know for a while there I was kind of glued and taped together badly and I just also know it wasnt good, well it isnt good still but as I have said before I know that to some extent this is soo working and I am hopefull that it will continue to. Of course if I come completely unstuck then I am maybe really more screwed than I thought but at the moment as I see it this just might help me some...and if anything I have written here can help someone else I will have done something good somewhere for someone else and that might elp me feel like I have some sense of accomplishment also. And maybe that will feed in and help me feel connected to the outside world also because right now...I couldnt feel more cut off at the moment. I had no sense of any kind of a furture at all, I used to have one- I can even remember what it was, but after so much has happened and never ever really having any respite from it at all, I know I have become much more damaged than perhaps I could have been if I had just had help earlier to try to even just help myself...because occassionally I am able to see something that says I am not anidiot and for years I did cope PTSD and managed to just keep going, the problem was I had no social support that was not abusive or detrimental to my physiacal or mental being.

And having to keep trying to be positive and keep trying to work through it I am conflicted quite badly with soo many intrusive thoughts constantly vieing for attention and all the parts and all the trauma are greater than the sum of the broken bits of me- while they are broken like they are...or rather while I am broken like I am.

I am pretty fCked but I hope that soemthing of what I have written here has helped you, and I am sorry at my long winded ness, but I guess maybe this thread was perhaps exactly what I needed in some way to explain it not only perhaps to you and others but also to myself.

So I thankyou for starting this thread here, it has helped me greatly.

I struggle with a lot and I know I have more thoughts on this subject but I have talked enough now and you need no more of me on here than I have shared already. Again I hope that this might help you or someone else some and better

Take care and peace
~fin

Oh and in case I wasnt clear I am PTSD (complex) BUt I am not thinking on the label at all or anything much past the bloody labels, because the labels wont help me working on this will help me. I just need to work on it and to begin to manage it, because that is what is important to me now, and I am important, while I may not feel like I am ...I HAVE TO BE TO ME TO TRY TO WORK THIS. Oh and I was also messed heavily around with for nearly 20 years on and off with different chemicals- otherwise known as meds and also misdiagnosed as depressed, and while I know Im despressed I also know PTSD ... so.

Hey this place works I hope you are finding this also.

LOL at me saying peace at the end of this *sermon* huh? sorry
 
I don't have an official diagnosis either, but this rings true for me as well. After the accident, I started writing as a child, doing child-like doodles along with these writings. I also find that one part of me starts talking, and another takes over somewhere along the line.

The imagery that I use is to pick the child in me up and comfort him, a parent child relationship, though this doesn't seem to speak of integration, rather just coping and emotional self-care. I will have to ask my therapist about integration now and see what their take on it is.

Sounds like you guys are doing some hard, honest work on this. Good for you both.
 
OH I dont think I answerd the question at all, I am sorry for that.

Ok so in answer I think I am fractured yes, but it is only my opinion but I dont think I have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out for myself any longer.

And yes I think it is important to me to integrate and I am trying to do just that, because I am not able to see that it would be possible for me to work on and manage PTSD without integration and cohesion of all my thought processes.

And I will be interested to know what the final me is likely to be like, I know I will still be PTSD but at the moment, I can see some tiny little sparks of some points in me that seem pretty ok, and maybe I might be ok in this respect, of course it is entirely possible I may loose the plot altogether, but right now for me it is better to do this and maybe live, than any other alternative.

And I can often forget parts of traumas and questions also, just in conversation, trying to piece myself together to even be able to answer questions is a nightmare. As I have forgotten or shut parts down, parts being traumas and whatever. I can also shut down and get taken along with whatever it is that is filtering down through my brain and mind.

Almost feel like I may be intergrating if I am like this..and I have to say.. some little flashes of how I could be every now and then kind of surface...and everyone now that I see or meet in the real world does seem to like the person that seems to be showing so...maybe this is good. I know I have to try to trust more...myself and others...it is just soo hard to do. And I worry also about whether it is real and whether or not they really do like me and also whether I can trust them not to fck me over and worse. So it is scarey as hell and shit...BUT DONT BE AFRAID...I am doing this...and if I can I believe that anyone can.

OK I am stopping now

Thankyou and sorry again
 
Fin,

I don't really think you have to apologize. I understand how complicated some thoughts can be... Sometimes I argue with myself in ways that I don't really think could be understood by somebody that is a whole...

Thank you for sharing. It has helped me.

Cragger,

This is my point: since I can remember I have been functioning this way and it has always worked for me. I cannot conceive myself thinking about myself differently than I have been doing... About the PTSD, the anxiety and depression, etc. have been my struggle. My parts hold my painful past and some tried to use memories to fload me (they were kind of desperate to try me make something I did not want to) while others were trying to protect me from what I cannot deal with yet... So I would like to have some help to manage all that better but I am not sure if integration is the right answer.
The old therapist was using some imagery like yours is doing right now. And this helped me to have peace a lot but the new one did not even speak about anything at this level at all. I know also that integration requires a lot of work and usually a long time, and I feel that maybe managing ourselves would be better than just integrating. And maybe help managing everything would take a lot less time than working in integration right away.

Thank you for sharing.
 
Ursa, I think finding comfort and balance to be able to function now is the priority, for me anyway, but integration I am sure, is aimed at a more complete solution, albeit long term. You would need the coping tools in place to be able to handle undertaking integration, would you not? I don't think these two things are mutually exclusive. However, I can certainly understand your reluctance to change horses, since what you deal with now is familiar to you. I find it VERY HARD to let go of what i already know.

Whatever you decide ultimately is up to you. I wish you the very best with it.
 
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