The diagnoses

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I've posted here, but I have something I'd like to ask.

I've been with my T for about a year and a half now. However, I see her out of my own pocket because I didn't want my parents to know about her, so there is no insurance involved. As such, she doesn't give diagnoses, though she has told me she believes I have DID.

About 6 months ago, I started getting really bad paranoia, so I went to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with Psychosis NOS. (At this time, he only knew about the paranoia. I told him nothing else.)

So where I'm at right now is Psychosis NOS, and Undiagnosed DID.

It is still sometimes difficult for me to accept that I (could) have DID. Or that I even have a dissociation issue at all. So I feel like I'm ready to find out "for real." I want to get tested and find out what exactly is going on with me. The question is, how do I do that?

I don't feel comfortable telling my psychiatrist anything about that because he's not that great of a listener and I've only known him 6 months. My T is great, but I need to know for sure. While I value her opinion, I do want a second "official" one. Does anyone know how I might go about finding out what's truly going on with me?

Well, given that you are withholding very significant symptoms from your psychiatrist, his diagnosis of Psychosis NOS (a) makes sense and (b) is next to worthless.

As for getting a very rigorous diagnosis, you could locate a specialist who has training and experience administering the SCID-D (by Marlene Steinberg), an interview tool for evaluating all the dissociative symptoms. You could also (or instead) download the MID (by Paul Dell) and print it and fill it out and give that to your current T for her to get it scored or obtain the scoring spreadsheet and score it herself. We have a thread here about the MID. The MID is similar to the DES in style but has over 200 questions and the scoring is very complicated. Have you done the DES?

Thank you for answering, Una. I went to him in a crisis because the paranoia came literally out of nowhere and it was fast and VERY aggressive.

That seems to happen to me a lot. I get these out of this world feelings seemingly randomly and they always hit so hard out of nowhere! So that's the main reason I didn't tell him anything else because at the time I was so preoccupied with the paranoia. (Even so, I do not wish to tell him my other experiences. I don't like psychiatrists and I have a hard time talking to them. Especially because he always wants my mother in the session even though I'm an adult.)

Unfortunately I don't think there are any specialists in my area. Or at least I can't locate any? But I will talk to my T about the MID. I had never heard of it before. I did take the DES (I took it a long time ago, but I just took it again) I got a 54.

Last year my social worker and pscyh were going down the wrong path with me too. They seemed to think it was psychosis (now my other social worker said there was a debate as she saw more than one of us). Anyway, it really upset and frustrated me so I asked my T to call them and tell them what was really going on. It helped a great deal. Whilst there is still some debate over my offical diagnosis, they know too believe it is dissociation (and a personality disorder which I don't) and it has really helped with them helping/dealing with me as they have taken their time with me, even to the point where one day I asked my social worker twice who she was and why she was here...and she very calmly explained again (but oh how we want to ask again because we don't really know still.

Anyway, we've gone off on a long spin. Could you give your T permission (I sat down with my T and she took notes on what she was allowed to say) and ask her to contact psych for you and have a chat. Note that without your permission, psych shouldn't (grumble grumble no-one sticks to the rules) tell your T anything without you giving them consent too. Or is that too scary for you. I fully trust my T with the information she will disclose and she will only ever talk with my social worker in the future if I have given permission beforehand again (she never assumes that permission once is permission forever )