So you're depressed, and you're DID. That feels like a double whammy already, so what do you do now? Depression and DID go hand in hand for many trauma survivors. They are not the same diagnosis, but can be closely knitted together. When you are DID, you might have some parts that are depressed, while simultaneously having other parts that are not depressed. Dissociative walls and amnesiac barriers can … [Read more...]
Being Hated, Feeling Hated, Overcoming Self-Hatred
Practically every dissociative trauma survivor that I have spoken to has said to me that at some point in time or another, they have felt hated, truly hated. What's worse, they didn't feel hated by strangers -- they felt hated by their loved ones. These trauma survivors felt hated by their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their spouses, their children, their friends. They felt hatred from the … [Read more...]
Split Decisions
When you have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID or DID/MPD), and you’re thinking as a multiple personality -- thus having a multitude of different thoughts at once time -- it can be very difficult to make decisions. How do survivors with DID ever make up their minds? How do survivors with DID decide whose opinion to follow? How do survivors with DID ever decide what is best for … [Read more...]
Cats and Dogs and Trauma Survivors
Pets are very important to trauma survivors for a variety of reasons: A place to express love, affection, and tenderness Many abuse survivors have difficulties with attachment issues due their extensive histories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. Because people were the perpetrators, trauma survivors frequently find it difficult and complicated to express caring and affection to other people. And yet, … [Read more...]
12 Tips for Reducing Shame
Need some tips for reducing shame? One of the hardest areas of healing work in trauma disorders is dealing with shame. For many survivors of sexual abuse, healing work involves learning about a lot of intense memories that leave them feeling a great deal of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment. These are difficult emotions to process, and the memory material is typically very overwhelming. Some survivors … [Read more...]