Thoughts After Therapy

I was very angry before I went to therapy yesterday.  I mean, I was really pissed at my doctor.  Her office had said last month that they would call me to set up an appointment, and they never did.  Subsequently, I ran out of medications and then proceeded to lose my mind.  I really thought I was going to let her have it when I got there. I was scared she'd dump me as a patient, for I intended to cuss her out big time. My stress level was very high when I walked in the door...but things didn't go as I thought they would; someone sad took the place of someone angry when I sat down.  It felt like 15 minutes, but according to the clock I was at my psychiatrist's office for nearly 2 hours (30 minutes were spent in the waiting room, 15 minutes in the lab for blood work).  Can't remember all that we talked about, but that's not unusual.  I do know that I complained (without the use of swear words) about the fact that her receptionist had never called me after our last session to tell me my next appointment time, and since I have trouble calling people, I just kept waiting on her to call me and 2 weeks went by. So not only did I run out of meds, but I went quite crazy by the second week. When I finally got up the courage to call her office, I found out she was on vacation and the office would be closed for another week.  I had a major crisis (my mother was hospitalized and could've died) while she was on vacation and had no medication to help me, so she felt really bad that I'd had so much trouble. She was determined that I never be put in that situation again, so she gave me an emergency contact number for her. I am so grateful for that! In all my 20+ years of therapy, I've never had a doctor give me a 24 hour emergency number. She said I can call that number any time, any day, and they'd be able to contact her and/or refill my prescriptions. That is fantastic and I couldn't have dreamed of  anything better.

For some reason, I asked her again what my proper diagnosis was, and she told me-again-that she doesn't put labels on her patients.  She would only verify that I am experiencing frequent dissociative episodes.(Duh!)  At one point, however, she asked me if perhaps a different K had been taking care of me for the past few days; doesn't that indicate she knows about the other K's?  (She brought it up when I made a casual remark about the fact that I didn't recognize the clothes I was wearing, that it wasn't something I would normally wear.) Isn't that an indication that she's leaning toward a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder? I'm feeling more hopeful now that I know she believes me. I asked her if I could ever get better, and she asked me if I was sure I wanted that.  Made me think.  On the one hand, it'd be nice to be more stable and on less medication, in other words, more normal.  On the other hand, I don't think K could handle the stress of our day-to-day life with only one of us in control of her brain and body.  We help each other, we keep an eye on K, you know?  Each of the K's has a specific job to do, a specific area of our life which they handle for her. K needs all of us. Dr. H thinks the other K's are for my own well-being and protection, and she doesn't seem to think that integration (the blending of all the different personalities of someone with DID into a single identity) is the best goal for me.  To be honest, I'm glad I don't have to integrate.  I am fond of a few of the K's and would miss them were they to be fused into my core personality (whomever that may be). Not to mention the fact that if, say, The Good Daughter goes away, then K won't remember everything she needs to know to take care of our mother.

 I'm blogging too much, or at least spending far too much time online.  My husband says I'm obsessed.  Big shocker there. And my shrink stressed that she really wants me to hand write a diary which I should bring with me to therapy every week. Of course, I forgot to take it with me yesterday.  I did start a diary, but I find it difficult to remember to write in it everyday, and a lot of days I just don't have the mental energy to do it. Plus, while there are some diary entries which are obviously written by someone else (I can tell by the handwriting, the grammar, and the language) some of the K's refuse to participate in that activity.  I think maybe there are parts of me who are still hiding from the outside world, or even from myself.  Apparently, this blog is worthless to my shrink, and that just sucks.  "Blog less," she said.  But this blog is my outlet for my madness!  Some of the other me's blog sometimes, and I think that's important.  I can't talk to anyone in real life (other than my psych) about my mental issues. My husband has never fully recovered from the shock of seeing me become a different person right in front of him.  I feel like he looks at me differently now.  That's why I worked so hard to hide it after we got married.  I thought I was doing better at that time.  I really did.  I seemed happy and safe and stable and I kept the other K's hidden from him for 2 years.  But it was not meant to be.  I have crashed and burned, repeatedly now, since January.  Yet I still asked my shrink yesterday if I could cut down on some of my medications; instead, she increased my dose of one of them. She explained that each pill has a different function and that if I were to stop taking the meds, I'd be bombarded with all the hallucinations and voices that I now experience to a "lesser" degree, plus I'd be likely to fall into a dangerous depression.  I don't think I'd want it to be any worse than it is.  I can get used to the dissociation, the depersonalization, the derealization for the most part, now that I understand what is happening during those times.  I guess I must just accept the fact that I'm always going to see and hear things that are not real, I'm always going to have anxiety attacks, and I'm always going to be prone to depression.  The other issues I still need a lot of help with. The paranoia.  The self-harm.  The suicidal ideation.  The self-loathing.  The fear of people.  So I guess there are plenty of things for us to work on in therapy, even without a specific diagnosis.  It still frustrates me though.  If someone asks what my disability is, I don't know what to say. (How about "Pick one"? LOL)