I'm new here and need some guidance, please

First off, let me say hello. I'm new here. I've been reading these forums for a long time for some reason, likely because maybe I knew I had DID at the time, or may an alter wanted me to? This community has some of the kindest people I have ever seen in some forum of community. I have finally taken the first step to writing here and really just wanted you all to know how awesome I think you all are. My name is Shawn Ashley, I think I'm what you call the host.

I was diagnosed with DID about three months ago. I heard my alters for as long as I can remember but really never questioned what they were. I accepted the voices as they were. However, I started to get anxious out of nowhere, and had thoughts of ending my life for no reason. I never found the trigger but my alters became more active and the feelings became too intense for me to handle. I found out that it was my little Lily. After I got out of the hospital, I bluntly asked why they existed and they revealed why... Which was earth shattering. I was completely oblivious, which is kind of the point, right?

Well, I started therapy and have been going for about 2 months. It's been a struggle since I don't have the abuse memories and none of my alters have taken front to talk to my therapist or even around my mother since I told her. As the host, I feel like I am "fine" and the others need help. I've told them that it's safe to come out for therapy, when we're alone, or to even my mom but my angel, Hael, won't let anyone else front. He told me he hasn't let anyone else front in a very long time. Some of the alters have expressed that they want to. They want to see my mom, and play with my dog, have friends, eat food, etc.

I am not sure my therapist has any experience with DID and she has offered no help on any of this. I want others to talk to her because I think she can help.

How can I let go of front, or get an alter to come forward? I have been trying to get someone else to take front for almost 3 months and I have nothing. I don't even know what my head scape looks like, if I am supposed to know, etc. The only experience I remember having where I wasn't at front was when my little, Gaberiel, and Clint wanted to play a video game I was playing where I was flying a plane. They were arguing back and forth about who should play. The next thing I knew, I kind of closed my eyes, and slumped sideways while sitting on the couch, and when I opened my eyes, a few seconds later, I could hear Gabriel laughing with my? voice. I felt like I was looking through a window, and I tried to look around but couldn't. I looked back at the screen, and the plane I was flying moments before was doing loops, and flying crazy and was about to crash. I know my hands were on the controller but when I tried to stop the plane from crashing by moving the controller, I couldn't. And when it crashed, Gabriel laughed and said, "This is fun." I don't remember how I came back to front.

Any help any of you could offer, I would greatly appreciate. This is all very new to me.

Welcome to the forum and they don't have to front maybe they could talk through you. So you tell the T what they are thinking feeling they respond and you act like a relay. I also think it's really important to have a T that knows and understands about DID. Could you look for a more specialised or experienced T when it comes to DID?

The other advice we would have is to work on communication. Parts don't always understand that the past is over and might not feel safe coming out. Or they might be so used to being hidden that any change is extremely hard.

Try different ways of communicating talking inside and out, writing, using representational objects to help them express themselves, creating art. Some parts in some systems will communicate in different ways other systems will use the same way.

I doubt you will get far with trying to help them or in threapy without a good foundation of communication.

unfortunately, I live in a smaller town. Finding a therapist who believes in DID is going to be difficult. When I was in the hospital, I saw 2 different psychiatrists who don't believe in DID. My current one doesn't either and I can't get a new one since he's the only one accepting new patients. Apparently there's a year waiting list to get in for mental health issues in my area. The reason I got in faster was because I was in the hospital. I asked my PCP if she'd diagnose me and we went through the questionnaire, I told her my issues, and she diagnosed me. I'm going to be taking the MMPI this week to help more with diagnosis.

Ever since I went to the hospital, the others have been a lot more talkative, I know which ones have the abuse memories, I can usually call forward someone and I can talk to them. I seem to be decently co-conscious with one of my alters. Granted he won't tell me his name.

The biggest feeling I get is that Hael is preventing anyone else from fronting. He has stated he doesn't want others fronting. He's worried what the others will do is the justification I get. Others DO want to front and I did say I allow them to. It just seems that I can't just give permission. It seems like Hael is the one who needs to be okay with it, and he's not. On top of it, I guess I'm worried in a way that if they start talking about things that I'm obviously not aware of, I'm worried how I will be mentally and of course I am worried that if alters start to come out, time will get lost, I won't show up for work, I'll lose my house, etc. I have told Lily, who seems to have PTSD that nothing bad is happening to us, and it's okay to feel sad, since when she's crazy overwhelmed, I end up sobbing for no reason. When I ask what's wrong she won't tell me. No one wants to talk about anything that happened to me. I kind of get the feeling that they'd rather just not tell me and I continue living my life the way it has been, but now I know why they exist, I need to know what happened.

DerangedNormalcy wrote:unfortunately, I live in a smaller town. Finding a therapist who believes in DID is going to be difficult. When I was in the hospital, I saw 2 different psychiatrists who don't believe in DID. My current one doesn't either and I can't get a new one since he's the only one accepting new patients. Apparently there's a year waiting list to get in for mental health issues in my area. The reason I got in faster was because I was in the hospital. I asked my PCP to if she'd diagnose me and we went through the questionnaire, I told her my issues, and she diagnosed me. I'm going to be taking the MMPI this week to help more with diagnosis.

I don't think the MMPI will be useful. It is geared more toward personality disorders. I'm glad your PCP was able to give you the diagnosis--what questionnaire did she use? The SCID-D is the best one-that's done as a clinical interview and is very sensitive and specific. The DES is very non-specific and just a general guide that there is dissociation going on. The MID is another self-report questionnaire that is more useful than the DES, but needs to be scored by a professional.

DerangedNormalcy wrote:I am not sure my therapist has any experience with DID and she has offered no help on any of this. I want others to talk to her because I think she can help.

Those two sentences are contradictory. DID requires very specialized experience and skill to treat. Is she willing to learn about how to treat it? There are guidelines written by the ISSTD--she should at least read those and then hopefully would be willing to take one of their training courses. You should read the guidelines also--the three phase approach to treatment is really important. It's not the time yet to start having parts bring up traumatic memories without (all of your parts having) a strong and trusting relationship with your T. It's possible that your protector, Hael, is worried about opening up a lot of stuff without the proper support in place.

I was only dimly aware of parts (and would have said I didn't have any) until I started seeing a therapist who is very skilled in this. Then they started communicating with me and I gradually became aware of my system.

There are skilled therapists who can do Skype or phone consultations with you, and of course there are experts probably available for your T to consult with. She would just have to look into it and be willing to.

Welcome to the forum!!
the Gang

I had to Google the MMPI because I'd never heard of it before. And what the ever living ###$ Minnesota!!!! I hope its only in Minnesota but I feel like it's probably not. And America has this reputation of being good when it comes to mental health. But seriously WTF.

Honestly I think taking the test is asking to be misdiagnosed. I don't see how any of the sections are going to diagnose any kind of dissociative disorder. I think that because of the potential for overlapping symptoms the chances of being misdiagnosed would be extremely high and then incorrect treatment would be likely to be given. Ask them about the DES-II (dissociative experience scale) and the MID (multidimensional inventory of dissociation) at least they are relevant to your experiences.

Good luck it sounds like you are going to need it.

All 3 links basically say the same thing but I wanted to make sure I was correctly understanding if I was gonna bitch about it.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/minnesota- ... tory-mmpi/

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-th ... ry-2795582

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/gener ... about-you/

NyxX wrote:I had to Google the MMPI because I'd never heard of it before. And what the ever living ###$ Minnesota!!!! I hope its only in Minnesota but I feel like it's probably not. And America has this reputation of being good when it comes to mental health. But seriously WTF.

It's called the Minnesota multiphasic blah blah because it was developed by the University of Minnesota. It's used everywhere... But I agree with you it sounds very archaic. I'm on the fence about it. I see my psychiatrist next week and might ask him why it's even being considered. I just have a feeling most it has to do with their beliefs that DID doesn't exist.

If they don't believe in DID and that or similar is what you have they can end up doing more harm then good. I know you said you don't have much choice with where you live but it seems like a really bad idea to get treatment from someone that won't believe you.

DerangedNormalcy wrote:I am not sure my therapist has any experience with DID and she has offered no help on any of this. I want others to talk to her because I think she can help.

Those two sentences are contradictory. DID requires very specialized experience and skill to treat. Is she willing to learn about how to treat it?

Sorry, I should have elaborated. I think she could help individual alters with some of their issues of anxiety, depression, etc. If they were to be at front instead of me. I just don't think from the DID standpoint she's good and I don't think she's willing to dig or search much. It seems to be the culture where I live in terms of DID. They either think it doesn't exist or they have no experience with it. I'm getting a lot of resistance and they all seem to think something else is "wrong" with me.

hi, I'm kind of in the same situation as you, so maybe I can give you some advice?...

where I live the waiting list to see someone who knows a bit about dissociative disorders is also about a yeaR, or a bit over a year. and now that i have a spot, I will have to travel about 45-60 minutes to get there. I don't know if you're working on finding someone who can really help you with the whole DID thing, but you really should start signing up for good T's, even if the wait for an appointment is extremely long, because there is a really big chance that you'll regret not signing up later on and you can always cancel your application if things do turn out alright.

I went to my first appointment with my current T (he works at my GP's and he's the person that does the main diagnosis and then refers you to other people who can help you, and he sometimes does the helping himself, but then only the basic stuff) about a year ago for depersonalisation and derealisation and he told me to look for specialists, so that's what I did. but after 9 months I still hadn't heard back and my depression got really bad and I just couldn't deal without getting a bit of help anymore, so I went back to him until I would get my appointment with the specialized T.

When I started seeing him about 3 months ago my main problems were depression, dp/dr and the amnesia thing, and i hadn't even considered having DID so that didn't come up at the beginning and now I'm scared. Because he mainly does the basic stuff, I tried to focus on that and leave my dissociation out of it, since he doesn't get it and says it's because i'm emotionless, which is absolutely not true. but because my depression and basically every problem i have is caused by the dissociation being 'helped' it just made everything a lot worse. My T doesn't take my problems seriously, because they seem to weird and contradictory to him. From the beginning he has had this idea in his head of what is wrong with me, and everything I tell him he just bends in such a way that it fits into his theory, and he then comes up with weird solutions that don't make sense at all. Like i told him that I'm asexual and that i feel like my genders switch very often (as a way of trying to introduce the idea of trauma and DID, because I'm terrified to actually say those things to him, but he just talks over me halfway through my stories when he thinks he's figured it out), and he basically told me that the way to fix my head was to have sex... like sex will solve all the problems in my life right now... also, his main response to anything i tel him is 'yeah that's really weird' and then he just moves on because he doesn't know what else to do with it.


sorry for the rant about my T, but my point is that being treated by somewhone who can't really help you doesn't help and might even make things worse. I don't know anything about you or your situation and i'm not trying to be rude or anything, but trusting someone to help you who doesn't put the effort in to actually help you, or at least tries, isn't really worth it. I mean if your alters have issues, they are likely tied into being an alter, and if you want to solve those issues you have to be able to tak about them without the fear of judgement or the person not believing you, because that will be very harmful. Also, you said that your alters don't want to front in therapy, and knowing that your T doesn't believe in DID that seems like a very reasonable response. Therapy should be a safe space for everyone and if you're talking to someone who doesn't even believe you exist it clearly isn't.

I'm not saying you have to give up your current T, but please try to put a lot of effort into finding someone who can help you with everything, even if it takes a lot of time and even if the traveling is horrible, but talking to the right person is really worht it. For me having a bad T really made everything worse and made me lose faith in therapy or ever getting a bit better completely, and I really don't want you to go through the same thing.

I have my first appointment with my new T on the 14th (I signed up last year in july ), so i really hope everything goes well. I've alreadytalked to her on the phone twice, and it's honestly such a big difference when people now what you're talking about and take you seriously.


Also when you're looking for a good T really make them confirm a lot to you that they really can help you, before you put yourself on their waiting list. I once had an appointment somewhere where they said they could help me, but then when I showed up there they just said they couldn't and i was in and out in about 7 minutes, wich was very harmful to me.


Good luck with everything,
Liz&Kat

Thanks Liz and Kat. I am trying to find a therapist who specializes in DID. I have gone onto a few sites like psychology today and sorted therapists that specialize in DID, called, left a message, and haven't heard anything back. I used a website, I think it was ISST-D, and there were none within 2.5 hours from me. Which would be fine if I were not working.

When I read about DID and how people didn't believe in it, I think I had optimism that I wouldn't have this big of an issue considering my location has one of two mental health facilities within a 3 hour drive. I'm obviously getting a reality check.

I am not giving up, but I think the prospects of me finding help where I live or within 3 hours is going to be pretty slim. I may venture out and use BetterHelp or something similar to try and find a therapist. The only thing that sucks is that my insurance covers what I'm doing currently. It won't cover services like BetterHelp but honestly, I want to start focusing on me and my system.

I think the next time I see my Therapist I need to be blunt and ask her if she believes in DID and has experience with it and go from there. It's been two months of seeing her, and I feel like the only thing I've covered with her is grounding exercises. She also wants to cut down from one time every week to once every other week. It's like, why? I feel like I should be seeing you twice a week. So, we'll see. We get a few weeks to come up with what we want to do in terms of our therapist.

Thank you for sharing your experience.