To Our Therapist

[Maybe this will help us organize our thoughts and come up with a better solution than running away]

[Meant to post this last week but kinda forgot to do that…]

You are willing (now, at least) to believe that we are asexual. That we are part of a 1% of the population group. But you can’t seem to accept that we might have DID/OSDD, which is 1.5% of the population.

Because we said we weren’t scared of having this disorder, did you think we wanted to have this? Did you think we were doing this for fun? Do you think we want to have one of the worst form of PTSD? Do you think we like having the knowledge that the few things we’ve been able to remember are probably just the tip of the iceberg of our trauma?

We can’t remember anything from before we were 8. We know some stories that our family has told us but those aren’t our memories. Everything after that is hazy most of the time. You should know from our conversations by now that our memory is very minimal. That we don’t remember a lot of the things that have happened to us, good or bad. You hadn’t been able to figure out that maybe we were a lot more dissociated than we realized?

You’re telling us to be skeptical and self-analytical. Yet this is something that you know we already are. We already look for multiple possible answers and make sure we’re not deluding ourselves. We eliminated BPD as a possibility because of it (which I still stand by). But now we’re suddenly making this up? You’ve told us, multiple times, that we know ourselves better than you do, but now, what we say can’t be trusted? What we know, can’t be trusted? I’m sorry we didn’t use the right words to describe things or used too many of the right words. I’m sorry that we’re still in the tangle of trying to figure things out and were looking for your support and guidance.

You say there have been no signs of this disorder, that it just came out of nowhere. Isn’t the point of a covert disorder that it isn’t discovered? I’m sorry that we didn’t dump loads of trauma on you from the start (because we can’t remember it!). I’m sorry we’re so good at masking as a single person because it wasn’t safe to not be. It barely felt safe and like a good thing to be even that version of ourselves, which still hid things because it didn’t feel safe! I’m sorry we didn’t start switching to other identities who had no idea what was going on. That we somehow don’t have the gaps in the important information and well-learned skills. That we haven’t had (or don’t remember having) another experience like we did in 3rd grade when we got lost in a school we’d been going to since kindergarten.

How are we suppose to know what’s considered normal and what’s not without learning definitions and such when this is our normal? And it’s been our normal for so long. There have been so many things that lately our host has discovered are not normal experiences that we have experienced for as long as we can remember. Is it normal (even for adhd) to completely stop mid-conversation, feel like you cease to exist for a bit, and then when you come back, either completely lose the conversation or have to put in what feels like considerable effort just to remember that you were talking and what you were talking about? I understand it being normal to go on tangents or lose where you were going with the conversation, but that’s not what we do.

We finally felt safe and accepted for long enough that it was OK to become self-aware. We finally have family and friends that we trust aren’t going to just leave or not accept us. Our husband’s family understands and is comfortable with people who aren’t straight/cis, who have shitty mental health, who are more than one person. To them it’s just part of being human. We don’t have to hide who we are and what we’ve experienced. We have had fewer interactions with our family. Our husband has been actively encouraging us to do what we want to do, to take care of ourselves, and to be who we want to be.

We’ve talked with you about how authority figures in our life have made us believe things about ourselves and how likely we are to listen to them (especially since that’s what they trained into us). Then you sit there, as an authority figure (whether you see it that or not), and tell us you think we’re mistaken. That you are very skeptical because this disorder is “rare” and “there were no signs” and “it just suddenly appeared when you’re 32/33”. That basically anything further we say to try to show you that what we’re experiencing is real you are just going to take as further proof that we’re lying. Do you not understand how much weight your words would have for us? Do you have any idea the amount of distress we have felt in the past week since then? The alter that’s likely our current host has had “what if he’s right?”, “what if I’m just making all this up?”, and so much other doubt running through her head on loop since then. She can hardly front without wanting to cry, without questioning everything she is doing and saying. She has basically been living in a trauma response state since then, leading to a panic attack and self-harm attempts a couple days ago about a relatively simple decision about our car. [At the time of posting, more like 2 weeks ago] Our protectors are beating themselves up for putting us in a situation that caused this much distress. Some alters were scared and very hesitant about telling our therapist, but they thought it would be OK. Now they’re blaming themselves for not listening, for not waiting longer. Some of us are scared that this is going to force alters back into either dormancy or complete masking again. Some are scared alters are going to “die”. Some are scared that our host is going to be completely cut off again, because the darkness that was thinning is thicker again.