Sarah's Take - Dissociative Identity Disorder Unplugged: A true and raw telling of the thoughts, musings, meanderings of a woman with a Dissociative Disorder, Sarah's Take takes readers on a little ride through what most people can't really imagine.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Finding Gratitude
Gratitude comes to me in peculiar packages. I have been trying to train myself to be grateful every day for something, and yesterday was a real first and a testament to how far I have traveled from the depths of despair to where I am now. Living with DID is certainly an up and down experience for me, and the past week has really been "down." I was crying in my therapist's office (cliche, right?) about to have a system crash. One of my "parts," violent and angry, was hating on me, and my therapist asked a very poignant question - "why did Rae come into being?" My answer was "because the system couldn't function." We all stopped for just a moment, as that statement percolated throughout my system. I became Rae because otherwise the system couldn't function. At a crucial time in my teen years, I had been raped and it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Rae came to save the system. She graduated from high school, went to college, and became a teacher. For just a moment, I was grateful for the strength I found within to become who I needed to become to survive. I survived a childhood of trauma, and I survived that last assault. But I did more than survive. I gathered all that was strong inside and I became who "we" are today. I am many, and in my plurality I maintain close friendships, a marriage of 24 years, and a career as a teacher (going on 19 years). I have children, grandchildren, and a home full of love. I am working on co-consciousness in therapy, so that all of us can more fully participate in this life. I am grateful I have this strength. I hate that I have to hide behind these false names, as I worry that any knowledge of my mental illness would affect my career. It's self-perpetuating - the stigma of DID pervasively exists, requiring that those of us with DID step forward to share our stories so that the world may know who we really are. However, those of us with DID fear stepping forward as the stigma of DID and all mental illness could seriously negatively impact our lives. Someday I will have the strength to let the world know who I am. Someday I will use my voice.
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Congrats on finding gratitude! It is very important to healing, but sometimes really difficult to acquire, especially when parts are causing a lot of issues. The best way I ever heard DID/DDNOS described is as an ingenious coping mechanism that has now become maladaptive.
ReplyDeleteI think that's so true. Though it causes problems now, it saved us as children. I guess that creates a love-hate relationship.
I have only told one person in "real life", but blogging about it is the first step to speaking out! ^_^
I definitely think DID is an incredible coping mechanism, and see how it is maladaptive. But if I was pressed to describe HOW it's maladaptive, I don't know what I would say! Perhaps some of my parts are stuck in another time and so cause stress on my system. I think that with time and therapy, all of me will be a cohesively working system...and though I will always be parts I imagine I will be parts that work together. So when that time comes, will I still have DIDNOS? Will it still be maladaptive?
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