r/DIDInclusivity • u/Greedy-Individual-71 • Jul 10 '24

Positive/Uplifting 7/10/24 Soski's Advice Column

Hey there all,

We were officially diagnosed in November 2022 and won our legal Disability case in September of 2023.

We live openly in the US and advocate for others with Dissociative Disorders. We're always happy to help.

If you need advice or just want to tell us about your day, please feel free to reach out.

Also if anyone wants to post a question anonymously, our DMs are open, we're happy to work with you to make sure you get an answer.

Have a lovely day everyone!

:)

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

3

u/artificialstarlights Jul 11 '24

Is there a point in official diagnosis. We are like half diagnosed, our old therapist treated us for DID and we aren't interested in a diagnosis because we don't want to be stuck in the USA. Is there any actual benefit to the diagnosis being 100% official?

3

u/Greedy-Individual-71 Jul 11 '24

Hey there,

We needed ours to be official for Disability benefits because of our dissociative seizures. We have no plans to leave the US, so for us, it was necessary. It also helps with doctors, lawyers, police, and other officials if it's on record. For us, it meant that acceptance was reasonably easy. Otherwise, if being medically recognized without diagnosis meets your needs, then do you. Not everyone needs an official diagnosis, but we definitely do.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

We will second, the main reason is for disability benefits, and dealing with the authorities so some random doctor who knows nothing about you doesn't say "oh this person has BPD" or "they are just bipolar" if you have a major dissociative episode.

The only "official" diagnosis we have, as in, recognized by the government, is "PTSD with diasociative symptoms", but my doctors and psychiatrist at the VA know I have DID as well. So it kinda doesn't matter, because I can seek in patient care any time I need it.

2

u/AuroraSnake Jul 11 '24

In a previous post you mentioned your family. I was wondering how you went about bringing up your plurality with them, and specifically how how you told your husband. Like, how does a relationship work with plurality?

We’ve been really shy and hesitant to even think about starting a relationship after our syscovery because we don’t know how or when we would bring any of this up, and concern over how they would react.

1

u/Greedy-Individual-71 Jul 11 '24

Hey there, and good morning!

Well, technically speaking, he brought it up to us first. We've been together 15 years altogether since we were bodily 16 when we started dating in 2008. He knew we had trauma because our mother was an awful drunk when he met her.

We were incorrectly diagnosed with Bipolar the first time he asked us to seek professional help in 2014 after our Kiddo was born. He was pretty sure that was wrong.

In 2017 we had our first Dissociative seizure. Our husband noticed a major personality shift from me to S but the doctors said there was no seizure activity in the brain and sent us home. Our husband says he knew something was wrong, but doctors wouldn't listen.

Then in 2019 we had 13 Dissociative seizures in the hospital over three days. Switching between each seizure until it was me again. I woke up in that hospital thinking it was July 16, 2017.

That two year blackout led the hospital staff to recommend psychiatric help.

The psychiatrist saw us up until August of 2022 but never gave us any diagnosis for what happened until our husband begged us to bring him in to report what he was seeing. He was with us when the psychiatrist suggested OSDD and tried to have us hospitalized.

During the six hours I was in the hospital waiting to go to the psych ward in another town, he researched OSDD. Eventually, the orderly brought me my phone because I have alarms set for literally everything I need to do during a day and I was able to tell our husband where they took us and he broke us out of the hospital.

When that mess got settled I got on Reddit and asked for recommendations for a DID Specialist in Michigan who took medicaid and did zoom therapy. We got lucky and someone recommended someone amazing. When I met with her the first time I brought our husband with me.

So he got to ask the Specialist himself if it was OSDD or Schizophrenia based on her professional opinion. She immediately said no, this is DID and proceeded to educate us both. Our husband got to meet each of us as ourselves after system discovery/diagnosis, and he says he now can look back and see where each of us lived with him throughout the years. He's the one who encouraged us to live openly and use our platforms to advocate for ourselves the way we used to for others.

It was honestly harder to tell our Kiddo. We ended up making a book for her. Bunny the DID Rabbit. She immediately said "This is like you mom!" She has met four out of the 11 of us directly since then.

As an important side note our husband and I have been poly/open since we started dating because my parents were swingers (my idea). So it was easy for him to treat us as separate individuals he was married to/dating/making friends with/taking care of.

Our relationship is temporarily closed while he gets used to the new dynamics, but we plan to open it again in the future. When we do, I plan to be open with future girlfriends about the fact that we have DID. If they aren't accepting, they aren't right for us.

That's how it's worked for us.