Five years. Yes, five. December 2013 marks the five year anniversary of the Discussing Dissociation blog. Five years. FIVE years already already. Wow. Where does the time go? At this moment, there are over 200 articles written about dissociative disorders, and over 3400 comments from the people who understand dissociative disorders better than anyone else in the world -- thank you for your comments, … [Read more...]
Is THIS Abuse? Yes or No?
Many times I get asked what abuse is. I understand this question, and the need for that question because many of the dissociative survivors who I speak with grew up in such chronically abusive homes that abuse was normal. Normal is just normal to them. What I would define as abuse was their norm, their everyday, their usual, their expected. And once abuse is “just how it is”, it becomes tricky and confusing to … [Read more...]
Momma Larks – A Job Well Done
Mothers. Mothers are a difficult topic. Mother's Day is a difficult day. Complicated. Painful. Often a day of loss and grieving. A day that many dissociative survivors don’t want to think about. Ouch. If only…. If only, if only….. I’ve been thinking about these things all week, knowing I would / should write something about mothers. Hmmmmm…. I wasn’t sure which angle to talk about…. Then I … [Read more...]
Turning Self-Injury into Self-Soothing
Self-injury is a problem all too common for trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD) or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). For that matter, self-injury (SI) is an issue for other populations of people as well. This discussion will focus more on the effects of trauma and abuse and how self-injury can be addressed effectively. However, because self-injury is actually a very … [Read more...]
A Real Unicorn?!! Really?
This article is written for the child parts of the DID survivors that read this blog. Hey Kids, did you see the news yesterday? Hmmmm…. probably not, because most kids don’t watch the news. And because of that, I wanted to make sure to let you know about something I saw in the news that might interest you. Look! Look! They found something that looks like a real unicorn!! If you look … [Read more...]