may have been diagnosed as a teen... (tw abuse talk)

I asked my mom about it, since i cannot remember. as a teen (about 20 years ago; wow...) I had seen a psychologist. i remember that part; his office, his manner of speaking, etc. at any rate, i remember being diagnosed with clinical depression and also being referred to him, but had no memory of what came of that. I asked my mom, and she said...

"I don't remember offhand, but it was some sort of identity disorder."

These words echoed in my head, and while I don't remember a lot from that time period other than an abusive then'boyfriend' dredging up memories of SA that occurred in childhood (at the hands of a non-relative; someone who is deceased now, but was not a constant in my life, but still...) it makes sense.

I can look back and start remembering things. how my identity took a huge swing at that time. i went from being an A+ student (not that that is neceeeary for goodness in life, but just for reference) to a follower/perceived 'delinquent' with no sense of opinion of self or value; it was also when i was suicidal/tried and failed (very fortunately at that) at that.

it's... part of the puzzle I am figuring out with my past. it's helping me in healing a lot. NOT that i felt like i needed any present or past diagnosis for validation, but wow... I do plan on drilling my mom with more questions (she was an awesome person in my life then as now; my chief protector and never an abuser) and i feel like i want to know more, where several short years ago, i was in denial/thought i was just misdiagnosed.

that is so powerful.

these blasts from our past, factoids, have helped get a grip on things.

happy for you.

could it have been borderline personality disorder? that was something diagnosed a lot back then (was also a diagnosis i carried up until recently). that was/is seen as an identity disorder due to lack of sense of self, shifting how a person acts when with others, etc. as well as the other usual things that go with that diagnosis.

i was a teen, 16, in an adolescent psych ward when i was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (but it was not technically official since i wasn't 18 yet). in that same week, five other teens were also diagnosed with it. it was ridiculous.

i never did agree with it. i had a hard time talking about things or making sense of much, so the dissociation wasn't really mentioned to professionals then..and no one picked up on it. everything that they saw from me was that particular diagnosis, in their mind, which looking back now i know was the dissociation/DID and related to some of the others. my prominent symptoms were depression, anxiety/panic, self harm, and suicidal thoughts. i was highly dissociative but didn't really talk about it because i guess i either didn't have the words or it just wasn't talked about for whatever reason until my early 20s.

in my early 20s, i started to see the therapist i currently see. she picked up on the dissociation and DID somehow. i don't remember all that i said to her over a few years and then wasn't seeing her consistently, so it wasn't until a year ago (in my 30s now) that it was more official after i had started talking about it all.

it is hard to put things together..what was said to who and when..who caught what, if anything..

those pieces fit; i did make a post about BPD thoughts in a semi-recent post on-here; think it was actually in the BPD forum. if not, it might have been in the bipolar one; i somehow mix those up, despite their being different and my suspicion that i was not really either of those, but one of my alters might seem to have BPD (fear of abandonment) issues.

Amazing isn't it. I was also diagnosed with DID in my teens and didn't remember it until 2 or 3 years ago. Sadly I don't have a way of verifying my memories. Not that I really need to have verification though but it would have been nice. I only remembered being diagnosed in my teens, after I gave up fighting to get the DID diagnosis while I was in therapy as a young adult.. Lol I think I've been diagnosed 3 times by now, but somehow I could never believe that the therapists actually believed me. Triggers from the past of some sort I think (not being believed). It's remarkable how things like that can even be forgotten.

the not-being-believed is a trigger for me too, with doctors. because of so, so many times going in and being fatigued/lackluster from one doc. finally got diagnosed with anemia, and took care of that in a physical/vitamins sense it seemed, but was still tired all of the time until my switch in May, since which I have been having human-seeming energy levels. old-doc kept brushing me off as being depressed and I knew that it was more; it was more than the more that it was with the anemia diagnosis though.

the thing too is that even if someone explained feeling dissociative to a psychologist... it never seemed like they understood, or gave me a term for it. I was mistaking dissociation for no-energy and wanting to get home asap after work and just 'rest,' when in al reality I was not sleeping; I was tuning out the world via learned-to-do dissociation that became second nature. having a more-externally-friendly mindset now, we are doing better.

This is only slightly related but I read the book Sybil as a teen and was briefly 100% sure that is what I had, multiple personality disorder. Of course, it was alarming because Sybil was "crazy" and I was pretty sure I wasn't that crazy. Then the usual denial and fog swept back over and I (one of us) forgot about it or figured I (he?) was just being dramatic. I don't even know how I have this memory, it's like a recording of overhearing someone else talking about remembering it.

As nondescript mentioned, these factoids from the past have really helped fill in the gaps.

A long time ago we were diagnosed as - Lazy daydreamer who pissed people off by not remembering things and was seriously disappointing his parents by not living up to his potential.

Now we're DID which is better.

Iain

ty for your replies. It is very reassuring to have a name to put to all of this. Very unfair for others to view one of us as lazy or choosing-to forget or otherwise not-connect; it was much worse before I knew what DID was and felt like I was actually lazy, or somehow doing something to cause this.

Thank yous.