Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.

~ Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire Calm Character Death Dissociation Resolve

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.

~ H.p. Lovecraft

H.p. Lovecraft Comprehension Dark Age Dissociated Dissociation Human Mind Science

This book is a memoir - not of specific life events, but of the processes of dissociation, and of re-enlivening emotions that are shameful to admit or even to feel. It is an account of the altered states that trauma induces, which make it possible to survive a life-threatening event but impair the capacity to feel fear, and worse still, impair the ability to love. (292)

~ Jessica Stern

Jessica Stern Dissociation Fear Love Psychology Ptsd Terror Trauma

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me.They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction.With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country.

~ Jake Wood

Jake Wood Addiction Dehumanized Detached Detachment Dissociation Mechanical Mind Military Military Quote No Longer Human Opium Ptsd Soldier War

Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant.

~ Patti Feuereisen

Patti Feuereisen Child Sexual Abuse Coping Mechanism Coping Strategies Depersonalization Dissociation Fantasy Numb Numbing Emotions Sexual Abuse

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

~ Seneca

Seneca Consicousness Dissociation Mind Stoicism Transcendence Zen

That is the problem with repressed memory and dissociative identity disorder. Your mind represses certain traumas for reasons of pure survival. And then you learn that to survive as an adult, you must uncover the memories, find the parts, and relieve the traumas. The contradiction is almost too much for the mind to comprehend and for the heart and soul to endure.

~ Suzie Burke

Suzie Burke Abuse Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Endure Memories Mind Multiple Personality Multiplicity Personality Recovered Memory Repressed Memory Soul Trauma Traumatic

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual awareness, attention and memory. Everything I had lived through or imagined or dreamed appeared to have been backed up on a video clip and then scattered among those alien rooms. I could stumble into any number of scenes, from the horrifically sexual, horror-movie sequences that were crude and painful, to visualizing Grandpa polishing his shoes.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Abuse Attention Brain Child Sexual Abuse Cooking Deja Vu Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Distraction Dreamed Flashbacks Horror Horror Movies Incest Memory Mental Health Mind Multiple Personality Disorder Psychological Rape Sexual Abuse Survivor Trauma

Mind control is built on lies and manipulation of attachment needs.Valerie Sinason, (Forward)

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Abused Women Attachment Betrayal Child Child Abuse Child Abusers Cults Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotional Abuse Fragment Lies Manipulation Mind Mind Control Muliple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Physical Abuse Psychological Abuse Psychology Rape Ritual Abuse Sexual Abuse Spiritual Abuse Splinter Therapy Torture Trauma

How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life? We might, as a society, slowly find it possible to accept that one in four citizens are likely to have experience some form of emotional, psychical, sexual or spiritual abuse (McQueen, Itzin, Kennedy, Sinason, & Maxted, 2008), in itself a figure unimaginable and hidden twenty years ago. However, accepting the way a hurt and hurting parent or stranger re-enacts their disturbance with a vulnerable child or children remains far easier to digest than to consider the intellectually planned, scientific, methodical, procedures of organized child-abusing perpetrators-in other words, torture.

~ Valerie Sinason

Valerie Sinason Abuse Betrayal Child Child Abuse Child Abusers Cults Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotional Abuse Fragment Mind Mind Control Muliple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Physical Abuse Psychological Abuse Psychology Psychotherapist Rape Ritual Abuse Sexual Abuse Spiritual Abuse Splinter Therapy Torture Trauma Traumatic Unimaginable

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.

~ Gabor Maté

Gabor Maté Addiction Bravery Consciousness Courage Denial Dissociation Mindfulness Psychology Repression Self Knowledge Therapy Wellbeing

FLATOW: So you would - how would you treat a patient like Sybil if she showed up in your officeBRAND: Well, first I would start with a very thorough assessment, using the current standardized measures that we have available to us that assess for the range of dissociative disorders but the whole range of other psychological disorders, too. I would need to know what I'm working with, and I'd be very careful and make my decisions slowly, based on data about what she has. And furthermore, with therapists who are well-trained in dissociative disorders, we do keep an eye open for suggestibility. But that research, too, is not anywhere near as strong as what the other two people in the interview are suggesting.It shows - for example, there's eight studies that have a total of 11 samples. In the three clinical samples that have looked at the correlation between dissociation and suggestibility, all three clinical samples found non-significant correlations. So it's just not as strong as what people think. That's a myth that's not backed up by science. Exploring Multiple Personalities In 'Sybil Exposed' October 21, 2011 by Ira Flatow

~ Bethany L. Brand

Bethany L. Brand Controversory Dissociation Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Exposed Fake Fraud Mental Illness Stigma Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Reality Suggestibility Suggestible Sybil

The process of dissociation is an elegant mechanism built into the human psychological system as a form of escape from (sometimes literally) going crazy. The problem with checking out so thoroughly is that it can leave us feeling dead inside, with little or no ability to feel our feelings in our bodies. The process of repair demands a re-association with the body, a commitment to dive into the body and feel today what we couldn’t feel yesterday because it was too dangerous.

~ Alexandra Katehakis

Alexandra Katehakis Defense Dissociation Mechanism Psychology Repair Trauma

Rikki looked over at me.“Why now? she asked, looking back at Arly. “Why is this happening now?Hard to say. Arly [therapist] replied. DID usually gets diagnosed in adulthood. Something happens that triggers the alters to come out. When Cam's father died and he came in to help his brother run the family business he was in close contact with his mother again. Maybe it was seeing Kyle around the same age when some of the abuse happened. Cam was sick for a long time and finally got better. Maybe he wasn't strong enough until now to handle this. It's probably a combination of things. But it sure looks like some of the abuse Cam experienced involved his mother. And sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.

~ Cameron West

Cameron West Abnormal Psychology Abusive Mother Attachment Trauma Betrayal Betrayal Quote Betrayal Trauma Betraying Innocence Child Sexual Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Survivor Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Healing Insights Incest Male Survivor Mental Disorder Mental Illness Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Parental Abuse Psychology Psychotherapy Sexual Abuse Sexual Abuse Of A Child Survivor Therapy

The most chronic and complex of the dissociative disorders, multiple personality disorder, was renamed multiple personality disorder, was renamed 'dissociative identity disorder' in 1994 in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association). The rationale for the name change, was among other things, to clarify that there are not literally separate personalities in a person with dissociative identity disorder; 'personalities' was a historical term for the fragmented identity states that characterize the condition.

~ Colin A. Ross

Colin A. Ross Dissociation Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Psychiatry Psychology

Switches among identities occur in response to changes in emotional state or to environmental demands, resulting in another identity emerging to assume control. Because different identities have different roles, experiences, emotions, memories, and beliefs, the therapist is constantly contending with their competing points of view. Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

~ James A. Chu

James A. Chu Alter Personalities Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identities Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Psychology

The primary treatment modality for DID is individual outpatient psychotherapy.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

~ James A. Chu

James A. Chu Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Mental Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Psychology Psychotherapy

Treatment for DID should adhere to the basic principles of psychotherapy and psychiatric medical management, and therapists should use specialized techniques only as needed to address specific dissociative symptomatology.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

~ James A. Chu

James A. Chu Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Multiple Personality Disorder Psychiatrists Psychology Psychotherapy

Dissociation is the ultimate form of human response to chronic developmental stress, because patients with dissociative disorders report the highest frequency of childhood abuse and/or neglect among all psychiatric disorders. The cardinal feature of dissociation is a disruption in one or more mental functions. Dissociative amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alterations are core phenomena of dissociative psychopathology which constitute a single dimension characterized by a spectrum of severity.Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience 2014 Dec; 12(3): 171-179The Many Faces of Dissociation: Opportunities for Innovative Research in Psychiatry

~ Verdat Sar

Verdat Sar Child Abuse Developmental Psychology Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder Neglect Psychiatry Psychology Psychotherapy Trauma Traumatic Stress

Dissociation is characterized by a disruption of usually integrated functions of memory, consciousness, identity, or perception of the environment.

~ American Psychiatric Association

American Psychiatric Association Dissociation Identity Memory Mental Disorder Mental Illness Psychiatry Psychology

Isolation of catastrophic experiences. Dissociation may function to seal off overwhelming trauma into a compartmentalized area of conscious until the person is better able to integrate it into mainstream consciousness. The function of dissociation is particularly common in survivors of combat, political torture, or natural or transportation disasters.

~ Marlene Steinberg

Marlene Steinberg Amnesia Catastrophe Combat Complex Trauma Concentration Camp Survivor Concentration Camps Consciousness Dissociated Dissociation Dissociative Memory Political Prisoners Psychology Soldiers Survivor Torture Trauma Trauma Survivors

The apparently normal personality - the alter you view as the clientYou should not assume that the adult who function in the world, or who presents to you, week after week, is the real person, and the other personalities are less real. The client who comes to therapy is not the person; there are other personalities to meet and work

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Alter Alter Personality Apparently Normal Part Apparently Normal Personality Did Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Mpd Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Personality Psychology Psychotherapy Split Personality Structural Dissociation Therapy

What daily life is like for “a multiple” Imagine that you have periods of “lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also hear voices or babies crying in your head. Imagine that you can never predict when you will be able to have certain knowledge or social skills, and your emotions and your energy level seem to change at the drop of a hat, and for no apparent reason. You cannot understand why you feel what you feel, and, if you are in therapy, you cannot explore those feelings when asked. Your life feels disjointed and often confusing. It is a frightening experience. It feels out of control, and you probably think you are going crazy. That is what it is like to be multiple, and all of it is experienced by the ANPs. A multiple may also experience very concrete problems, even life-threatening ones.

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Abuse Amnesia Anp Child Identity Communication Confusion Crazy Ddnos Diagnosis Dissociation Dissociative Amnesia Dissociative Identity Disorder Fear Feelings Hearing Voices Internal Voices Intrusive Thoughts Mental Disorder Mental Illness Mental Problems Mpd Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Psychiatry Psychology Psychotherapy Ritual Abuse Secrets Shame Stigma Teamwork Therapist Therapy Trauma Voices

Research on organised abuse emphasises the diversity of organised abuse cases, and the ways in which serious forms of child maltreatment cluster in the lives of children subject to organised victimisation (eg Bibby 1996b, Itziti 1997, Kelly and Regan 2000). Most attempts to examine organised abuse have been undertaken by therapists and social workers who have focused primarily on the role of psychological processes in the organised victimisation of children and adults. Dissociation, amnesia and attachment, in particular, have been identified as important factors that compel victims to obey their abusers whilst inhibiting them from disclosing their abuse or seeking help (see Epstein et al. 2011, Sachs and Galton 2008). Therapists and social workers have surmised that these psychological effects are purposively induced by perpetrators of organised abuse through the use of sadistic and ritualistic abuse. In this literature, perpetrators are characterised either as dissociated automatons mindlessly perpetuating the abuse that they, too, were subjected to as children, or else as cruel and manipulative criminals with expert foreknowledge of the psychological consequences of their abuses. The therapist is positioned in this discourse at the very heart of the solution to organised abuse, wielding their expertise in a struggle against the coercive strategies of the perpetrators. Whilst it cannot be denied that abusive groups undertake calculated strategies designed to terrorise children into silence and obedience, the emphasis of this literature on psychological factors in explaining organised abuse has overlooked the social contexts of such abuse and the significance of abuse and violence as social practices.

~ Michael Salter

Michael Salter Abusive Groups Amnesia Attachment Denial Disclosing Dissociation Diversity Epstein Galton Memory Organised Abuse Organized Abuse Psychological Psychology Psychotherapists Research Ritual Abuse Ritualistic Abuse Sachs Secrets Silence Social Contexts Social Workers Survivors Therapists Victimisation Victims Violence

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren't alone, that there is hope, then I will have achieved one of my goals. A sad fact is that people with DID spend an average of almost seven years in the mental health system before being properly diagnosed and receiving the specific help they need. During that repeatedly misdiagnosed and incorrectly treated, simply because clinicians fail to recognize the symptoms. If this book provides practicing and future clinicians certain insight into DID, then I will have accomplished another goal. Clinicians, and all others whose lives are touched by DID, need to grasp the fundamentally illusive nature of memory, because memory, or the lack of it, is an integral component of this condition. Our minds are stock pots which are continuously fed ingredients from many cooks: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates, strangers, acquaintances, radio, television, movies, and books. These are the fixings of learning and memory, which are stirred with a spoon that changes form over time as it is shaped by our experiences. In this incredibly amorphous neurological stew, it is impossible for all memories to be exact.But even as we accept the complex of impressionistic nature of memory, it is equally essential to recognize that people who experience persistent and intrusive memories that disrupt their sense of well-being and ability to function, have some real basis distress, regardless of the degree of clarity or feasibility of their recollections. We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self.

~ Cameron West

Cameron West Abuse Abusive Parents Child Abuse Child Range Child Sexual Abuse Diagnosis Did Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Incest Memory Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Pedophiles Psychiatric Psychology Survivor Trauma

We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories or focusing on the content of traumatic material. It is not enough to just remember. Nor is achieving a sense of wholeness and peace necessarily accomplished by either placing blame on others or by forgiving those we perceive as having wronged us. It is achieved through understanding, acceptance, and reinvention of the self. At this point in time there are people who question the validity of the DID diagnosis. The fact is that DID has its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because, as with all psychiatric conditions, a portion of society experiences a cluster of recognizable symptoms that are not better accounted for by any other diagnosis.

~ Cameron West

Cameron West Abuse Child Abuse Child Sexual Abuse Diagnosis Did Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Incest Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Psychiatric Psychology Trauma

Janna knew - Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, miso soup, black bean soup, black sticky soup, black sticky me. Yeah. Inside I was still a fetid and festering corpse covered in sticky blackness, still mired in putrid shame and scorching self-hatred. I could write an 86-page essay comparing the features of Borderline Personality Disorder with those of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I barely knew what day it was, or even what month, never knew where the car was parked when Dusty would come out of the grocery store, couldn't look in the mirror for fear of what—or whom—I'd see. ~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.

~ Cameron West

Cameron West Abuse Abusive Parents Child Abuse Child Range Child Sexual Abuse Diagnosis Did Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Incest Memory Mental Health Mental Health Stigma Mental Illness Multiple Personalities Multiple Personality Disorder Pedophiles Psychiatric Psychologist Psychology Self Blame Self Esteem Shame Split Personality Survivor Survivor Of Abuse Trauma

Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.''It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said.The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter.In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family.I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Alter Personalities Alters Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Embarrassment Mental Health Mental Illness Multiple Personality Disorder Psychologist Psychology Self Stigma Split Personality Stigma Therapist Therapy

It is necessary to make this point in answer to the `iatrogenic' theory that the unveiling of repressed memories in MPD sufferers, paranoids and schizophrenics can be created in analysis; a fabrication of the doctor—patient relationship. According to Dr Ross, this theory, a sort of psychiatric ping-pong 'has never been stated in print in a complete and clearly argued way'. My case endorses Dr Ross's assertions. My memories were coming back to me in fragments and flashbacks long before I began therapy. Indications of that abuse, ritual or otherwise, can be found in my medical records and in notebooks and poems dating back before Adele Armstrong and Jo Lewin entered my life. There have been a number of cases in recent years where the police have charged groups of people with subjecting children to so-called satanic or ritual abuse in paedophile rings. Few cases result in a conviction. But that is not proof that the abuse didn't take place, and the police must have been very certain of the evidence to have brought the cases to court in the first place. The abuse happens. I know it happens. Girls in psychiatric units don't always talk to the shrinks, but they need to talk and they talk to each other. As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson, the marathon runner. Now that I was living back at home, he was again my GP. When Mother bravely told him I was undergoing treatment for MPD/DID as a result of childhood sexual abuse, he buried his head in hands and wept.(Alice refers to her constant infections as a child, which were never recognised as caused by sexual abuse)

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Abuse Amnesia Colin Ross Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Dr Ross False Memories Medical Memory Mental Health Mental Illness Mpd Multiple Personality Disorder Psychological Problems Psychology Recovered Memory Repressed Memories Split Personality Survivor Therapists Therapy Trauma Victim

Chronic trauma (according to the meaning I propose) that occurs early in life has profound effects on personality development and can lead to the development of dissociative identity disorder (DID), other dissociative disorders, personality disorders, psychotic thinking, and a host of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse. In my view, DID is simply an extreme version of the dissociative structure of the psyche that characterizes us all.

~ Elizabeth F. Howell

Elizabeth F. Howell Anxiety Child Abuse Chronic Trauma Depression Development Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Eating Disorders Mental Health Mpd Personality Disorders Psychology Psychosis Schizophrenia Trauma Traumatic

Those of us who work in the field of trauma and abuse, whether psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, doctors, counselors, or psychotherapists, have been provided with beautiful tools for understanding the impact of trauma. We become adept at understanding the dynamic of why the messenger is always shot and broadcast the Bionic insight of why the visionary is not bearable to the group.However, when it comes to military mind control, abuse within religious belief groups or cults, and deliberately created dissociative identity disorder, we enter the least resourced field of all.

~ Valerie Sinason

Valerie Sinason Abuse Cults Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Messenger Military Mind Control Mkultra Muliple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Psychological Abuse Psychology Psychotherapist Religious Abuse Ritual Abuse Satanic Ritual Abuse Social Worker Therapy Trauma

SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATIONThe patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment.For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver.In the dissociative individual, ‘there is no uniting self which can remember to forget’. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self ‘as a central and coherent organization of experience. . . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self’ (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others.Middleton, Warwick. Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients. Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49.

~ Warwick Middleton

Warwick Middleton Abuse Attachment Child Abuse Control Ddnos Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder Identity Mpd Personality Psychiatry Psychological Psychology Suicide Traumas

Identity confusion is defined by the SCID-D as a subjective feeling of uncertainty, puzzlement, or conflict about one's own identity. Patients who report histories of childhood trauma characteristically describe themes of ongoing inner struggle regarding their identity; of inner battles for survival; or other images of anger, conflict, and violence. P13

~ Marlene Steinberg

Marlene Steinberg Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Dsm Mental Health Multiple Personality Disorder Multiplicity Psychiatry Psychology Reference Works Scid D Steinburg Textbook

The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Abuse Alter Personalities Alters Anoretic Anorexia Anorexic Child Abuse Child Sex Abuse Depression Disconnected Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Headache Incest Internal Voices Mental Health Migraine Multiple Personality Disorder Porongraphic Self Confidence Sexual Abuse Survivor Trauma Voices

Dissociation is numbness and nothingness; it is a feeling of being lost; it is floating on a cloud that threatens to suffocate; it is automatic speech and action without awareness or control; it is looking at the world and blinking to try to remove the blurry fog; it is hearing and seeing the immediate world and simultaneously feeling very far away; it is raw fear; it is unfamiliarity in familiar places; it is possession; it is being haunted everyday by unknown monsters that can be felt but not seen (at least not by others); it is looking in the mirror and not knowing who is looking back; it is fantasy and imagination; and, above all else, it is survival. Dissociation is all of these things and none of them at once.

~ Noel Hunter

Noel Hunter Depression Dissociated Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Symptoms Mental Health Numbness

How can I put this? There's a king of gap between what I think is real and what's really real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-or-other is there, somewhere inside me... like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a wardrobe... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established for myself. The way a magnet can make a machine go crazy.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Anxiety Borderline Personality Disorder Bpd Depression Dissociation Dissociative Identity Disorder

I think the therapists around this place think that if you know yourself, then somehow you’ll be better and healthier and you’ll be able to leave this place and live out your days as a happy and loving human being. Happy. Loving. I hate those words. I’m supposed to like them. I’m supposed to want them. I don’t. Don’t like them, don’t want them. This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you’re just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I supposed to do with that information? Just tell me that. Most of the time I get the feeling that I’m just an animal disguised as an eighteen-year-old guy. At least I’m hoping that maybe deep down inside I’m a coyote.

~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Benjamin Alire Sáenz Depression Dissociation Ptsd

I don't knowwhat I'm feeling. Existing like I'm on auto pilot.I've put my Armour on now. Limiting everything gettingin but also not letting anything out.

~ Tina J. Richardson

Tina J. Richardson Autism Depression Dissociation

If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-loathing and the deep distrust I had towards my father wouldn’t allow that sunny person to come out. When the black thing had an iron grip on me, I couldn’t even look at my father: Did you do bad things to me when I was little? Like a line from a song stuck in your brain, the words ran through my head and never once came out of my mouth. Not that I needed to say what was in my mind. I was sure Father could read my thoughts in my moods, in the blank, dead stare of my eyes. It was hardly surprising that there was always an atmosphere of strain and awkwardness in the house, and the blame was always mine: Alice and her moods, Alice and her anorexia; Alice and her low self-esteem; Alice and her inescapable feelings of loss and emptiness.

~ Alice Jamieson

Alice Jamieson Abuse Anorexia Child Sexual Abuse Depression Dissociation Dissociative Dissociative Identity Disorder Emotion Emotional Emptiness Empty Essay Incest Mental Health Multiple Personality Disorder Sexual Abuse Survivor Teenager Trauma

Although it is important to be able to recognise and disclose symptom of physical illnesses or injury, you need to be more careful about revealing psychiatric symptoms. Unless you know that your doctor understands trauma symptoms, including dissociation, you are wise not to reveal too much. Too many medical professionals, including psychiatrists, believe that hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia, that mood swings mean bipolar disorder which has to be medicated, and that depression requires electro-convulsive therapy if medication does not relieve it sufficiently. The “medical model” simply does not work for dissociation, and many treatments can do more harm than good... You do not have to tell someone everything just because he is she is a doctor. However, if you have a therapist, even a psychiatrist, who does understand, you need to encourage your parts to be honest with that person. Then you can get appropriate help.

~ Alison Miller

Alison Miller Bipolar Bipolar Disorder Bipolar Ptsd Ddnos Diagnosis Disclosure Dissociation Dissociative Disorder Dissociative Disorders Dissociative Identity Disorder Doctors Hearing Voices Lack Of Knowledge Medical Model Medication Mental Illness Misdiagnosis Mood Swings Osdd Psychiatric Drugs Psychiatry Psychotherapist Ritual Abuse Satanic Ritual Abuse Schizophrenia Stigma Therapist Therapy Trust
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