Emergency Therapy

I had to go see my psychiatrist for an emergency appointment the other day. This was the first time I'd ever tried to see her without a scheduled appointment; I wasn't sure she'd see me at all.  At first it seemed like she wouldn't see me, as two hours passed after I made my shaky, tear-filled phonecall to her office and still no one had called me back as they'd promised.  I was completely honest about my reasons for needing to see her so urgently. I told the receptionist that one of my friends had died and that I was having a complete and utter meltdown.  Her tone of voice never changed-it was professional-when she explained that Dr. H was with a patient and she'd have to talk to her and get back to me as soon as was possible.  I hung up the phone wondering if I'd wasted my time. What made it even harder to deal with was the fact that I'd sat patiently by the phone all morning, waiting for the time to come whereupon their office would open so I could call.  And then they tell me someone will get back to me. And then I sit, and I wait for the call. All the while, I'm going more and more out of my mind.  I was really not doing well at all that day, in fact I'd been doing poorly for a thousand days by that point in time.

We're not entirely certain when the event happened, but my psychiatrist and I have used my journal, this blog, and my Tweets and text messages to get an idea of a timeline. My doctor believes that my friend Bill died sometime around June 4.  The blog entry made on June 5 was written in a dissociated state; my doctor believes he died sometime between the evening of June 4 and the morning of June 5, as that's when I seemed to completely lose my mind. I don't remember these things. I don't remember when Bill died. I don't remember freaking out, but there's evidence right here in this blog.  I don't know how much time passed between my freakout and my emergency psych appointment...I just know that someone pushed me to make the call to my doctor, and eventually I did.  I thought I could handle Bill's death, I really thought I was OK. But I was very far from OK. The first thing I had to deal with was the terrible, overbearing guilt I felt. I felt guilty because I'd been meaning to email Bill, and catch up with him, see how he was doing.  I kept putting it off. I'd emailed him a few months earlier, and found out he had been sick, but I had no idea just how bad it was. And so I procrastinated.  And now it is too late. I will never be able to email Bill again.  That's hard to believe, hard to accept. I've known him since I was 17 years old and first moved to the city to go to college. He lived downstairs in my apartment building and we became friends. We even dated briefly, but it was his best friend who became my long-term boyfriend. Which means I was around Bill all the time. I was good friends with his girlfriend, and the four of us went out all the time, and took trips to Florida or to New Orleans together.  I had a lot of wild and crazy times with Bill. He was quite a character. A punk rocker with a mohawk and a motorcycle jacket. He loved tattoos, hot rods, and whiskey.  He looked all rough and tough but he had a sensitive side which he worked hard to keep hidden. The only reason I even know about it is because as I said earlier, we dated briefly. It didn't last long, and it ended with me shoving him naked out of my apartment and throwing his clothes out the door after him.  That makes me laugh even as the tears well up in my eyes thinking about it. Oh, Bill. I can't believe you're dead.  Making this all the more difficult is the fact that there will be no funeral, as per Bill's wishes.  He wasn't a religious guy and I'm not surprised he requested cremation with no service. But that puts me in a position in which I'm unable to say goodbye in any formal way.  There won't be a grave I can visit. I can't place flowers at the site of an accident. Nothing. He's just...gone.

When I finally got the call from my shrink's office, they told me to come right then at that very moment. So I ran out the door as is, hair unkempt, no makeup, tear-streaked face. I don't remember driving there but I do remember that once I got to the office, the receptionist was very kind and asked me if I'd like to sit in a private room (there were several people in the waiting room).  And so it happened that I was able to sit secluded and cry without embarrassment until my doctor was able to squeeze me in and talk to me. I don't remember everything about the session itself. I told her I was missing a lot of time and we did some investigation work using my journals and cell phone. She had told me at the last session to get a calendar and begin writing everything down, so that I might be able to keep track of my days and nights without losing so much time. So I'd been doing that, I'd been writing things down...and then there was a gap. Just suddenly, all the information cuts off. I have no idea where I was or what I was doing during that chunk of time, and we've come to gather that it's about 15 hours.  She told me that she believes I was in a dissociated state this entire time. I'm missing 15 hours. You have no idea how disconcerting that is unless you've experienced it.  It's like a drunken blackout, only there is no alcohol involved and you're not hungover afterwards. Also, you don't pass out. I was conscious during those 15 hours, and I have a feeling I never left my house. But anything else? It's just a blank.  My psychiatrist and I determined that we could never truly know what happened during that time period, and so far no one has come forward with any sort of damning evidence against me for some horrible stunt I pulled while I was blacked out, so I'm going to assume that I didn't get into any trouble.  If I had to take a stab at a guess, I'd say I was crying. Possibly curled up in a fetal position on the bed.

 “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”   ~Kahlil Gibran

An Animated Day

Today (Wednesday) has been quite a trying day, but interesting at least. We were supposed to be at therapy at 9:30 this morning.  I found out around 9:00 that the car wouldn't crank. Luckily, my husband was home and getting ready to go to work at 10:00...so I called my psychiatrist and told her I'd be a half hour late. Obviously I started the day off on a highly stressful note, and that is my greatest trigger, so it really came as no surprise that I had a rough day.  Hubby drove us in his car when we left, and he had to stop at the drugstore on the way to work. I waited in the car, and by the time he came back I was no longer in my body.  I struggled to pull myself back inside my head, but it was a hopeless battle. I dissociated and don't remember anything until he's getting out of the car, and I see that we are at his job, and like a robot I get out of the car and walk around to the driver's side and get behind the wheel... Hubby kissed me goodbye then disappeared inside but I just sat there in the car with the engine running for a long time.  I was trying to figure out how to make the car move. Everything began to physically transform and the inside of the car took on an animated appearance, like a cartoon. I began to operate on auto-pilot.  Driving to my doctor's office was exactly like being in a video game. I don't know how else to describe it. My hands weren't really touching the steering wheel; it seemed very far away, much too far for me to reach. I was looking through the windshield and it was unreal, everything was far in the distance and out of focus. I had the distinct feeling, nay knowledge that I was untouchable, unstoppable, impervious to harm. I knew I could not, would not wreck the car or have any sort of accident or run-in with the police. It wasn't possible, for all of this was just a game.  Not real.  I don't know how long it took to get to the psych's office; everything was in slow motion yet seemed to be flying by very fast at the same time.  I don't understand how that was possible, but that's how it seemed to us.  Once in the parking lot, I just sat in the car for a long time with the air blowing in my face. I pulled the visor down to look in the mirror and was quite upset to see that the reflection looking back at me was wearing bright red lipstick.

 
I do NOT wear bright lipstick, although we're aware that some of the K's do. I unceremoniously wiped it off with the back of my hand, then just stared stupidly at the red streaks coloring my pale skin. Decided I just didn't care-what difference did it make?-and just left the red lipstick smeared all over my hand.  Finally walked into the building but it felt more like I was gliding or floating or something.  I couldn't feel the ground beneath my feet. I made it inside and walked up to the counter and signed my name, but not without some difficulty. I was unable to write in cursive; I had to print my name, and the handwriting was shaky. I had taken 1 mg Xanax while in the car at my husband's job, and as soon as I sat down in my usual corner chair I took another 1 mg.  There were a number of people in the waiting room with me; I'm not sure how many because I kept my head down and wouldn't look at anyone. I pulled my legs up underneath me and tried to curl up into a ball in my seat... and the waiting started. I was antsy and anxious and very eager to see my psychiatrist, as I'd been under a lot of stress since our last appointment.  I got out my notebook and tried to make a list, but just couldn't focus...I was too distracted by the thought that everyone in the room was staring at me. I kept looking down, or took out my journal and flipped through it, or played with my phone, perhaps even tried to tweet I can't remember now.  I just couldn't think about anything except how things were in what looked like claymation...3D cartoons of sorts. I was looking around the room in wonder when this guy came in the door... He was younger than K's body but walked like an elderly person, all hunched over and wobbly and he shuffled across the floor using a crooked wooden can and his jeans were hanging very low around his hips, exposing his striped boxer shorts, and for whatever reason, he scared us. K's heart began to pound just as soon as she laid eyes on him (even though she never looked directly at him) and of course our luck would have it that he came over and sat down in the chair right beside us. Panic started welling up inside me. My body was turned away from the strange young man, and I was intentionally looking across the room, through the other people, staring at the wall with nothing in my head except the irrational fear I felt of the person to my left. I wasn't sure I could handle it, and thought briefly about going outside and sitting in the car, but I was terrified my name would be called while I was out and I'd lose my place and have to wait even longer to see the doctor.  So we sat there, panicking, in the middle of a childlike environment filled with caricatures of people...and then my name was called. The receptionist walked over to me and asked me to come with her. I was confused but did as I was told; I wondered if we were being scolded for some reason.  She walked us out the door and around the building to a back door, while explaining to us that the toilet had overflowed and how sorry she was for the inconvenience. It was bizarre to me, but so was everything right then. Now I'm in the psychiatrist's office and I'm trying to explain to her how everything feels like a video game...and she asked me if I was a different person. I can remember all these things because we wrote them down in our notebook. We take notes in therapy now and it is really helping us.  So she asked me if I was a new K, but I didn't know the answer to the question.  It's strange to not know who you are.  I really can't even begin to put it into words. You feel lost and empty and...like nothing.  I told her I didn't know for sure who I was at the moment, and that I felt "switchy".  I don't remember the rest of the session, except for one part:  she was telling me how to use a calendar to keep up with time, so that I can remember when things happen.  I guess that sounds silly to someone with a normal grasp of time, but to someone who struggles to keep up with what day of the week it is, this is a really big deal.  She asked me if something happened this past Sunday or last Sunday, and I didn't know the difference.  I admitted that I never knew when things happened, that I use old text messages as clues to how I spent my time. So she told me to get a calendar and take notes on it, like it was a diary. Write down when I go places, when I do things.  She said it'd help me put my lost time together.  I intend to try it.  I don't remember the rest of the session, nor do I remember driving home.  The rest of the day is scattered and disconnected. I can only recount bits and pieces of it...someone bought McDonald's fries and K doesn't eat at McDonald's anymore, hasn't in years.  I remember we decided that perhaps if we took a nap, that the proper K would be with us whenever we woke up.  I might have tweeted about that, I'm not sure.  Then there's a big chunk of time missing, where I'm assuming I was napping. Next thing I know, I'm putting on an act for my mother, and pretending everything is normal as I put her to bed.  After that, I found myself hanging out with my husband in our bedroom, and I remember him asking questions like "Which K are you?" and "Are you switching on me?". Again, I remember because I made notes about all these things. I found the questions intriguing. I don't remember anything else after that. I think his questions flipped some switch in my brain, and my reality shifted once again. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in bed in my clothes and wearing my glasses.  And that's when I began to write this blog post.

What's Up, Doc? (False Truths Pt.2)

Two weeks ago, I went to therapy and said some things that I later regretted.  I told my psychiatrist that not everyone believes my mental illness is real; some people think I'm faking it.  So ever since I left her office, I've been paranoid as we could be. I got the thought in my head that I'd planted an idea in her mind and that she no longer believed the things I was telling her.  I decided that she thought I was a liar and a fraud.  I was unsure whether or not I'd be able to talk to her anymore.  I even considered changing doctors.  I wrote a blog post about my paranoia on this subject Here.  I literally have obsessed about this morning and night ever since that therapy session.  So I had my first session with her since the incident...I was incredibly nervous before I went in.  Making me even more nervous and paranoid was the fact that they called me 3 times to reschedule the appointment; I got it in my head that they didn't like me and didn't want to see me.  Then, once at the office, the waiting room was so crowded I had to be placed in an adjoining room, all alone.  All alone is just fine with me-it's far less stressful than being around people. So anyway, I wait and wait and wait.  Over an hour and a half passes and still I'm waiting.  I was just getting more and more anxious as the minutes ticked by.  Finally, my name was called.  I held my head down low as I walked slowly into the doctor's office.  I sat across from her but could not look at her. At first I couldn't speak...then I got out my notebook, in which I'd written down topics to discuss, questions to ask, and journal entries to read to her.  When I finally opened my mouth, the words gushed out all over each other.  I let everything out-my paranoia about our relationship, my fear that she thinks I'm lying, my obsessing about our last therapy session, my worries of being doubted.  I poured out my feelings on all of these matters, and she listened patiently and then smiled broadly.  She told me that she didn't think I was capable of concocting some elaborate scheme to make people think I'm mentally ill.  She said that in our last session, when I confessed to her about the doubters and disbelievers, she thought that took courage on my part to bring those things up.  She doesn't think I'm a liar.  She doesn't think I'm faking my symptoms. Oh thank the heavens! Relief washed over me and my mind was cleansed of negativity and I felt like a new person.  The rest of the session was spent discussing this weekend's big event: my nephew's wedding.  I have to drive over 6 hours to get there. I have to meet the family of the bride. I have to attend fancy teas and dinners and cocktail parties and on Saturday, a black-tie wedding.  A very-crowded, formal affair is not my idea of a fun weekend.  Just sounds stressful and terrifying and panic-inducing.  In fact, my psychiatrist told me that because of the stress and anxiety caused by the wedding, I'd more than likely dissociate.  That does NOT help me feel better.  I asked her if it would be OK for me to have some champagne at the wedding; she said I could drink IF I did NOT take my Xanax that day.  Well, hell, I can't even leave my room without taking a Xanax, so I guess that means I won't be drinking.  The last thing I want to do is tempt fate by not being sedated in a crowded public environment.

CBT or DBT?

What's the difference between CBT and DBT?  I have to admit that I didn't know the differences until I looked it up to write this blog post. I was curious as to what kind of therapy I'm receiving, as I really don't know. I usually can't remember what my therapy sessions are like anyway, due to my dissociation and memory problems. However,  I want to know what method my doctor is in fact using.  I need to know what course she's charting for me, even if my ship keeps trying to sink. 

CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive meaning of or pertaining to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning (as contrasted with emotional processes).  Behavioral refers to the sum total of responses to internal and external stimuli.  Therapy...well, you know what therapy is. The premise of cognitive behavioral therapy is that changing faulty thinking leads to change in emotions and in behavior.  Therapists use CBT techniques to help individuals challenge their patterns and beliefs and replace errors in thinking such as overgeneralizing and catastrophizing with more realistic and effective thoughts, thus decreasing emotional distress and self-defeating behavior.  Catastrophizing is to view or talk about an event or situation as worse than it actually is. (I have a problem with this)  CBT also focuses on changing or reversing the habits of magnifying negatives and minimizing positives.  It helps individuals replace maladaptive coping skills, emotions and behaviors with more adaptive ones, by challenging an individual's way of thinking and the way that they react to certain habits or behaviors. In other words, it's showing a person another side, an alternative, something different, that happens to be more positive rather than negative. Replacing "bad" thoughts with new, improved thoughts. It's like gaining a fresh, new perspective.

DBT is dialectical behavioral therapy.  Dialectical refers to linguistics, or language, and behavioral refers to actions. DBT combines standard cognitive-behavioral techniques for emotion regulation and reality-testing with concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance, and mindful awareness largely derived from Buddhist meditative practice.  It uses a combination of one-on-one therapy and also group therapy. DBT may be the first therapy that has been experimentally demonstrated to be effective in treating Borderline Personality Disorder (generally speaking).  It also has been shown to help with mood disorders, including self-injury.  Recent studies suggests its effectiveness with sexual abuse survivors and chemical dependency. (I'm a chemically dependent self-injurer who's been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder in the past and who my psychiatrist (and some of the K's) believes is a survivor of sexual abuse, who also has an unspecified mood disorder.)  DBT strives to have the patient view the therapist as an ally rather than an adversary in the treatment of psychological issues.  Accordingly, the therapist aims to accept and validate the client’s feelings at any given time, while, nonetheless, informing the client that some feelings and behaviors are inadequate or faulty, and showing them better alternatives.  Mindfulness practice is increasingly being employed in Western psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety (both of which I have).

The more I read about DBT, the more I'd like to try it. The idea of using Eastern meditative traditions in my therapy sessions really appeals to me. It's too bad that DBT also involves group therapy, and I don't do group since I generally don't like people, and am even afraid of them. It appears that my therapist is using CBT (I think) and since we seem to be making progress, and even more importantly, since I've finally found a doctor whom I both respect and like as a person, I shall continue with my current course of treatment. After all, it's taken me years to find a therapist I feel comfortable with, and I think that's the most important thing of all when it comes to therapy.

False Truths

I had a psychiatrist's appointment yesterday morning, and now I'm feeling paranoid and nervous and highly uncomfortable and terribly anxious.  I fear I have made a huge, glaring mistake.  I am afraid that my words have tarnished the professional relationship that I have with my doctor and that she will never trust me again.  I'm scared that I've planted a seed, a seed which will sprout into a full-grown disaster.  I can't believe that after all the progress which has been made, I had to go and fuck everything up like this.  Or, at least I think so... It seems like we were advancing before then...  I mean, it's easier for me to talk to her now; isn't that an improvement?  So it seems that I've been coming along-after 2 years I was finally able to talk to her openly.  And then I go and do something like what happened yesterday.

First, I told her how some people feel about my illness. I told her that I'm not taken seriously, that I am thought to be pretending, that I am believed to be a spoiled brat who just doesn't want to work.  That's completely outrageous. How could I possibly, as a little girl, have thought out this elaborate plot to fool everyone into thinking that I'm mentally ill over a span of decades?  More importantly, what could I possibly hope to gain from that?  Why would anyone want people to think they're nuts? It's done nothing but make my life harder.  It just doesn't make any sense.  K was so actively involved with life when she was younger, (plays, choir, soccer, Girl Scouts, Art Club, gifted class, etc) I guess it's just hard to believe that she could be living with all these symptoms for all these years and have only a couple of people ever figure out what's really going on.  Only a couple of people ever "got it"; just 2 in my lifetime, only 2 people outside of a couple of my doctor(s) recognized that I switched and became different K's.  Both of the people who figured out my secret were men who lived with me for a year or more.

So it would seem that I really am a good actress.  I fooled everyone all right, I fooled everyone into thinking that I'm just one of them. That I'm stable, that I'm existing in the same reality as everyone else is. We certainly can't let on that we are on a different plane of reality; that might upset people or create problems for us, so we must hide that from the world.  And that's just what we've done, for all these years.  We've been pretending to be emotionally mature, to be a regular person, to think clearly and rationally. It's not true.  It's all make believe.  The part where I'm "sane" that is.  That is all just make believe. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, I suggested to my shrink that the memories I have could possibly be false memories, or that they might only be true in my head, not in the real world.  I said this as an outside observer of K, watching from the sidelines. (I wrote it down; that's how I remember) So I basically admitted to my shrink that there's a chance the bad stuff I remember is all fairy tales, that it's not true.  That I've somehow twisted the facts around in my memory and created things out of misconceptions.  I'd like to call these memories "false truths", memories which I completely believe to be true, but which are actually just distorted partial recollections. I can't remember now where I got that idea or how I started thinking stuff along those lines.

Maybe I was reading something from out of the diary...  I remember taking it into the session. In fact, I'd left home and forgotten to bring it, and I actually turned around and went back home to get it before my session.  So it seems there was some stuff in the diary that I wanted to talk to her about.  Yes... yes, I remember talking about 3 different males in my life who would have had both the opportunity as well as the reputation to suggest that they might have done something wrong, and that it involved me.  I just don't get it.  I am struggling with myself to accept that these things from my childhood are not my fault and to forgive myself.  I suffer from guilt like you wouldn't believe.  I feel perpetually guilty, about things I can't even remember properly.  It's completely ridiculous. And now I've gone and implanted the thought in my psychiatrist's head that I might be a fraud.  What the hell were we thinking?!  Now the paranoia has me, and it's squeezing the breath out of me.

I'm also worried that perhaps I am faking it and just don't know it.  But that doesn't seem to make any sense.  I mean, if I don't know I'm doing it, then it's a subconscious thing, which means it's real.  Fuck. I'm so confused.  Am I doing all this on purpose?  Have I taken so many pills that my brain is fried and I'm unable to be like other people?  Have I forgotten what normal means? Yes, there's a good chance I have forgotten the meaning of normal.  I haven't felt like a regular person since, roughly, age 10.  That's tough to admit.  But it's true.  I've felt like an outsider, like a visitor or something, not like a real person existing in the here and now.

I'm so paranoid that I'm thinking of doing something crazy, like stalk my shrink. I need to find out if she's still on my side, or if she's the enemy now.  Because I honestly don't know anymore.  I don't know if she's with me, or against me.  I can't stand not knowing.  I MUST find out what she thinks.  I can't live with this feeling.  I can't tolerate being disbelieved, being thought to be dishonest.  I strive so hard in my life to be truthful...  I even hurt people's feelings sometimes as a result of my brutal honesty (I hate when that happens though).  I believe lying is bad karma. I just won't do it.  I may withhold information, but I cannot lie. I'm just beside myself with worry about all of this.  What if Dr. H doesn't believe me anymore??  What if she's crossed the line into enemy territory?  I'll have to get a new doctor...  Damn!!! And I was just getting to feel really comfortable with her.  Now it's all weird between us, even though she doesn't know that.

My Own Reality Show

It's hard work being more than one "entity" and sharing a brain.  I'm mentally & physically & emotionally exhausted.  I'd like nothing more than to open up my skull, remove my brain, and stick it on a shelf  for the night.  Just let me be empty. No feelings. No thoughts. Nothingness. That sounds glorious.  I'm so very tired of thinking. So many thoughts, coming at me from all sides, some being shouted at me by different voices in my head, some whispered into my ear. Mental noise. So much mental noise!  Sometimes I fear I'm going to freak completely out, just going to snap from all the voices trying to talk over one another, each one vying to be heard. Some of the voices are male, some are children, many of  them are females of different ages both young and old.  Then there are the other, outsider voices which are (almost) always present in my mind.  These are the voices of the news broadcasters, the sports announcers, the disc jockeys,  the talk show hosts, and the paparazzi-all of whom exist in my head-and who bombard me with information, questions, and laughter. I also hear applause, cheering, and, more often, booing and heckling;  sometimes I'm even threatened with violence.  They are telling the story of my life as though it is unfolding live on TV and the world is watching.  My every action is commented on, "liked" or "disliked", critiqued, analyzed and gossiped about.  I am currently the star of a reality TV show and I'm never sure if the "special guests" are going to talk me up or make fun of me. And it's all live, in real time.

 
It is notable that I often "rewind" parts of the show and watch them over and over again.  Sometimes I pause a scene, to look more closely at the physical details.  I can't erase anything I see or hear.  That's very important.  I can't erase what I hear. I may very well forget, but my subconscious never does. And while I can still recall listening to the sports announcers discuss my every move as I played tennis (actually just bouncing a ball off a brick wall) at about the age of 8-for example, one of the men would exclaim "Wow! What a great shot!"-the people who narrate my life now are not nearly as nice, as complimentary, as appreciated as the ones of my childhood.  When I was 10, the news broadcasters praised my people skills, my high I.Q., my talents for art and short-stories... I was a celebrity in "Kellie World" and I was popular. By the time I was 13, though, all of this had changed. People (in my head) started making fun of me, criticizing me, and insulting me. There was -and is- often laughter in my head, laughter directed at me, and not in a good way. I must take the time now to note that not all of the K's are very nice to us/me, and in my day-to-day life other K's talk down to me, make fun of me, point and laugh, and worst of all, one of them slaps me in the face or even punches me.  I'm my own worst enemy.  Wow. I've never admitted that before, not even to a therapist.  I guess that's pretty important:  the fact that I hit myself in the face.  Hmm.  Perhaps I should tell my psychiatrist about it... I wonder what she would say?  Maybe I should write a short synopsis of my TV show and take that to her.  Is it strange that I've never told her about all of this?  You must remember that I've only just begun to trust my doctor, it took me 2 years to get comfortable with her, and so I started talking to her openly and honestly about 3 months ago.  So there's a TON of stuff that I haven't told her yet.  I go in to see her every week, and my mind just goes blank.  I can never remember what I want to talk about or tell her.  Actually, after the session is over, I usually can't remember what happened anyway.  She tells me that this is because I sometimes come to therapy in a switched state or I'll switch while I'm in her office.  I don't know what to make of this.  All I know is, my TV show is for mature audiences only due to bad language, drug use, sex, mature subject matter, and, I realize now, violence as well.  I never thought about the violence until today.  At least, not about any violence that K causes.  She's often been the victim of violence, but I'm surprised to learn that she can also be the perpetrator. Hmm. Oh well-I guess it makes for better television.

Another Day, Another K

Today was interesting.  Went to therapy. Floated across the waiting room and onto the ceiling and looked down at K. Noticed she was all dressed up and wearing heels, and that her makeup was very dramatic.  The weirdest part of all of this is that I was watching her, and she was talking to a couple sitting in the room with her.  She was talking very quickly and was using her hands a lot and was quite animated. She was out-going and friendly and chatty and self-assured. I listened to her, fascinated, and kept wondering what she was going to say next. She was a storyteller...but chunks of what she said were untrue.  She was not like K normally is; this girl was confident and not at all afraid of people.  But she was familiar to me.  When I got into my psychiatrist's office, I told her about this experience.  I asked her if I were dissociating, would I be aware that I was dissociating.  She said what I was experiencing was depersonalization (a sense of detachment or separateness from one's self), which I would be aware of, and that it can be a part of dissociation.  I know this because I wrote it down.  In fact, I took some notes today, and it's good that I did. Otherwise I'd not remember a thing I'm afraid. Which is one of the things that I wrote down, coincidentally.  Dr. H told me that I probably wouldn't remember much about today's session.  And she was right. All I can remember is what I've jotted down, and I don't really remember those things. One of the things I put down is that Dr. H believes all the me's exist to take care of K, and that each K has a different, specific job. Several times she spoke about "the other K's".  I made a note that Dr. H used the term "different personalities" today when talking about me; that seemed important. Also, she pointed out that I was dressed differently today, and that my makeup was different, and that I was different. She said the K who usually comes to see her dresses all in black, and I was wearing a full-length paisley dress in bright shades of green,  accessorized with tall platform shoes and a lime green, faux-crocodile purse in a funky, curved shape. I know all of this because I'm looking at a pile of clothes on the chair in my room and I'm able to see exactly what I was wearing. Also, I made some notes about my outfit when Dr. H was telling me that I was a different K today. 

Earlier this evening, I had to remove heavy and colorful eye makeup in shades of lime green and turquoise, and hot pink lipstick. That's the first time I've worn eye shadow in...well, a good while.  I just know that I've felt funny all day long. I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong but I was...um.. I felt like I was just outside of my body, or like I was in a movie, that it wasn't really real. I also felt like I was sharing a brain with someone else; I was an us, more so than usual even. Sitting here now, reading my notes from therapy, and looking at the facts in black and white, both from my notes and from this blog post, it occurs to me that I remember this K, but that I can't recall seeing her in at least a year, perhaps longer. Tonight, though, there's physical evidence that she was here.  The clothes. The jewelry. The glitter I found in the bathroom.  The fact that my toenails are now painted lime green-the same color as the purse I carried today. The fact that my freshly cut and colored (bright red) hair has been meticulously styled.  All of these things describe one of the K's whose job is to socialize, to see and be seen.  She often went on dates for K before she got married, and yes, Husband dated her sometimes.  I remember all these things because I'm reading my old online diary now,  from 2008.  Interesting reading. Perhaps I should do a blog post introducing each of the K's, or at least the ones I am familiar with (thanks to numerous diaries/sketchbooks/photos).  A number of them journal, and that's how I get to know myself/us. I can't tell who I am at the moment; think I'm in between me's. I'm in a drugged, dream-like state and I feel as though I'm running on autopilot. I wonder what/who tomorrow will bring...

Psyched To Be Here

I had therapy Wednesday.  The only reason I know that is because it's written on my calendar, and I look at my calendar weekly because I need to know when I have to go out in public, e.g. a dentist's appointment, therapy, a birthday party. (I actually have to prepare myself mentally to be around other people, sometimes for days)  I'm trying to strain my brain and remember what happened in that therapy session.  I honestly can't recall anything at the moment.  Let me concentrate harder...  I still can't remember.  Damn.  I have no memory of showering and/or getting dressed, no memory of driving to her office, no memory of sitting in the waiting room.  Perhaps I should check my phone and go back through all my texts, and then read all my Tweets from the past 2 days, and check my journal for any entries made in the past 48 hours.  This is so frustrating.  I wanted to write about my session, but I can't remember it. Not any of it. Hmm.

OK, something's coming back to me now- I showed her my journal.  Yes, I remember that. I read her parts of my journal, the parts written by other me's.  (Hey, I'm starting to recall stuff now!)  I talked to her about how I switched over the weekend, and remained a different K for about 2 days. I have evidence-notes and lots of lists and partial blog posts and various writings, all written by person(s) other than "me".  Also, there is mention by the one known as Switch Kellie of another K coming to our assistance, the one known as The Cleaner.  So there's that. I talked about being 2 different me's for a few days.  I mean, I switch for short periods of time rather frequently- I'll suddenly change into someone else and get a wild look in my eye and say something out of character or do something odd or my voice and/or language will change, but it could be for an afternoon or even just a moment-but as far as a complete transformation goes, well that happens less often. It does happen however. It all depends upon my stress level and my mood and my environment, among a hundred other things.  When this incident occurred, all the factors were conducive to switching, and so the other K's took over, and my style of dress changed to something more pulled-together (for Switch Kellie) or something very casual (for The Cleaner) and my likes and dislikes (Switch Kellie drinks tea instead of coffee) and habits, both good and bad-all these things changed.  Some differences were more subtle and probably only I would notice them. But I was a different K, no bones about it.

So this past week was eventful, to say the least, and I at times had to take extra anti-anxiety medication. And I was really looking forward to seeing my doctor.  To be honest, I was hoping that I'd show up for therapy and be one of the K's who appeared over the weekend.  Even though my psychiatrist has witnessed me as a different K (she has met Switch Kellie before), I still feel the need to prove myself to her.  I want her to actually see me switch, so that she knows once and for all that I'm being serious. There are many doctors who don't believe in multiple personalities or MPD/DID.  Now granted, Dr. H has never done or said anything to make me believe that she doubts me.  In fact, she's sometimes asked me about the other K's, which implies that she accepts their existence.  And one time I flat out asked her if she thought I was full of shit, and she looked me in the eye and smiled and said, "I don't think you're full of shit."  So this whole paranoia thing is really unnecessary...I think the reason I feel the need to prove myself, to give evidence of my dissociation, is because I've been accused of faking it before.  What's even worse is that it was a family member who proclaimed I was a liar. That still hurts when I think about it.  Maybe I should discuss that incident in therapy one day.

OK, I've been going back through my Tweets and text messages and emails and diary entries and lists and anything else I can find with clues.  I have a better idea of when I switched (approximately April 14) and for how long, and what I did during those times, and where I went.  Also, who I encountered, who saw me "out".  And then there's the Tweet from April 17 which says "Back in my head and body now", so I guess that's when I officially felt like the world had stopped spinning so fast.  Thinking about these things now, it all feels like a dream, or like a story I was told or a movie I watched.  It seems like it happened to someone else, not to me.  I can remember seeing things happening, but it just comes across as so surreal now.  And of course, there are huge chunks of missing time and lost memories.

I went to a bar that weekend. Boy that was tough; I can remember how I felt so out of place while I was there.  And everyone seemed to be staring at me, like I had a neon sign hanging over my head that flashed "MENTALLY ILL".  The bartender that night was a friend, but she doesn't know me as the K that came into the bar; I wonder if she noticed the difference. First of all, I ordered Diet Coke without vodka. Unusual. Secondly, she probably thought it was strange, since for the first time ever, I chose NOT to sit at the bar, but rather to go off someplace where there were no people (I was hiding). Also, I didn't speak to my friend very much at all...I hope she doesn't think I was rude. Was I rude? I'm not sure.   My husband wanted to go check out the band, so he left me alone, just for a few minutes, but it felt like hours. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me, and I was nervous and had to pop a Xanax.  It was really hard being in that environment, surrounded by strangers, when I myself  felt like an outsider in my own world.  That's it exactly! I felt like an outsider in my very own body. My thoughts were not my own; they were foreign to me.  But here I am, and I am fine, I survived AGAIN and no one other than my husband and my shrink knows about me switching.... except maybe anyone who might have stumbled upon certain Tweets during those in-between-me times.  Perhaps no one even noticed. After all, I've been faking normality for more than 30 years now, so I've gotten quite good at it.

I'll tell you one more thing about my psychiatrist's appointment.  She made absolutely certain, before I left, that the receptionist made me an appointment for next week, and for the week after that as well. I thought that was really top-notch of her.  My last doctor would never have been so thoughtful as to do that.  This doctor stood there at the desk with me while the receptionist tried to find an opening. Dr. H insisted that it be in one week's time. I am really beginning to like her, maybe even trust her a little bit. (!) I am holding onto her 24-hour emergency number as though it's my most-prized possession; I put it in my wallet along with my appointment reminder cards and her business card.  I don't have pictures of my kids or my dogs in the clear plastic windows in the center of my wallet; I have my psychiatric information.  How fitting. If anyone ever finds my wallet, they're going to see that I'm just a nutcase with no money but a lot of lists.

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)

Therapy Trainwreck

We have been having a very difficult time lately but can't concentrate long enough to blog about it, which is the homework assignment given to us by our psychiatrist on Friday.  She asked me at our last session to start keeping a diary and bring it in to our sessions; instead, I brought an old diary from 2004, which was written in various states of consciousness,  often while we were dissociating. There was so much I wanted to tell her, to read to her from the diary, to explain to her-but I just couldn't stop crying long enough to get the words out, and I didn't have the energy to talk to her anyway.

It was all I could do just to get to the appointment.  On the way there, in the car, I pounded on the steering wheel and screamed and yelled curse words, tears streaming down my cheeks.  I was shaking and hyperventilating and my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest.  I took 1 mg Xanax- thankfully there was part of a bottle of water still in the cup holder from a couple of days earlier.  It was difficult to see through my tears as I drove to my doctor's office. Not only that, but once I got close-within a few blocks-I got confused and forgot which way to go and I took a wrong turn...sigh...I got lost on the way to a psychiatrist's office which I've been visiting regularly for 2 years.  I figured this would make us late but as it turned out there was another patient ahead of us.

Whew~what a relief to get to her office safely, to park the car, to look around frantically and find no other people in the parking lot. I cursed out loud to no one. I took another drink of water and looked at myself in the visor mirror.  I was a wreck, an absolute mess.  My hair was all wind-blown and I had sweat pouring down my face, mixing with the tears pouring from my eyes...I was wearing black sunglasses but you could still see the tears running down my cheeks.  My bangs were sweaty and stuck to our forehead.  I had on no makeup, not even lipstick, and the sunlight accentuated each blemish, scar, and bump on our face.  My cheeks were flushed red from crying and I was huffing and puffing and I looked like I might explode or something.  I searched the car desperately for a napkin or tissue, to wipe my forehead and face, but I found nothing, so I pulled my shirt up and used it to dry my eyes and cheeks and forehead.  I didn't have a brush with me, so I finger-styled my hair and longed for a hat.  Thought about taking another Xanax, but can't remember now if I did or not.  I was quite unsteady on my feet as I got out of the car and walked to the door.

 Inside, I found a couple sitting in my usual spot (the corner) so I was upset about that on top of already having to hold my breath to keep from crying.  I watched my hands trembling as I tried to sign my name but for a minute I was unable to remember how to write it.  I had to think really hard, and even then it seemed foreign to me as I wrote out my first and last names; I don't think I used my typical handwriting-it looked unfamiliar to me.  I sat down and took out my phone to Tweet.  (I Tweet when I'm nervous or upset.)  Pretty much immediately I started having a serious freakout, but luckily at that moment the doctor called for the couple in the corner, and realizing I had some precious time to spare, I somehow found a voice with which to squeak out to the receptionist, "Do I have time to go smoke a cigarette?"  That's funny because I quit smoking 2 years ago, although we have been known to cheat now and then.  At that time, Friday morning, I would've given just about anything to smoke a cigarette, but we had none. She told us the doctor would be a few minutes, so I practically sprinted out of the office.

I got into my car and locked the doors, looking around me, all paranoid.  I suppose I could've turned on some music but at the time it was so loud in my head that I couldn't stand any more noise around me.  The noise on the inside was louder than the noise on the outside, and it was nearly unbearable.  I did the only thing I knew to do to quiet the voices, the yelling, my screams--I dug around in the car until I found a small stash, and I smoked a couple of hits of marijuana.  Sometimes it really is the only thing that will help calm me down.  So I took a couple of tokes-not enough to get me stoned, just enough to take the edge off- and tried to talk myself down from this state of panic and sense of being overwhelmed.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it through a therapy session, and I pondered driving away, but part of us knew that we desperately needed to see the psychiatrist and so we stayed.  Didn't get out of our car until we saw the couple from before come out of the office.

The doctor was waiting for me inside, and as soon as she told me to sit down, I collapsed into a chair and started sobbing.  There was just too much to tell her, too many thoughts, too many feelings, I had too many questions for her and didn't even know where to start.  I was having trouble getting words out at all, so she paged the receptionist and asked her to bring me a glass of water.  With it in my hand, I took another 1.5 mg Xanax.  Tried to take slow, deep breaths and finally, after what seemed a really long time, I was able to speak.  I couldn't sort my thoughts and found it quite difficult to express myself with words.  Pictures would have been better--I'll have to remember to take a sketchbook and pencil next week.  Every time it seemed I was going to get my point across, I'd forget what I was talking about and start stammering, searching for the end of a sentence which no longer made sense to me.  God it was frustrating!  And the tears kept interfering, and the gasping for breath...

It's a terribly inconvenient time for me to be this depressed.  Mom doesn't know; well, she knows we're blue and not eating and wearing my pj's a lot.  But she has no idea that I've given up on my personal care altogether.  I'm not eating or drinking anything but caffeine and alcohol.  I'm self-harming.  Two weeks ago I was binging and purging, now I'm just purging.  I don't have enough energy to shower or get dressed.  I haven't washed my hair in over a week, probably longer. I don't know, and frankly, I don't care right now.  It's hard to care about shit like flossing your teeth when you're searching for a reason to exist, just one more day. I told her I'd been sleeping for about 15 hours a day, sometimes more.

I can NOT do this right now--my mother needs me.  She's very sick-she has shingles-and is physically suffering a great deal; she cries out in pain often, and it tears at my heart.  I can do nothing to help her, and the doctor tells us she could be sick with these shingles for 3 weeks.  Sigh.  I just don't have time to be depressed right now!  There's so much work to be done at home and in therapy.

I told my psych, Dr. H, that I absolutely had to see her more than every other week.  I tried to explain to her that I was too sick to be left alone for 2 weeks at a time.  I tried to tell her that there were different people all living in my head, and that some of them were very ill and needed intense psychiatric care.  I tried to briefly explain about the K's, and how I desperately needed the "strong one" to come out and take control of my life.  I can't understand why she hasn't come to my rescue this time, like she has before.  Usually when things get really bad, when there is just more stress than I can handle, then she comes out and takes over my life and sees to it that everything gets done, everything gets taken care of.  She's the Smart One.  She's quite productive and can multitask and is very capable of handling stressful situations.  She needs to be here taking care of Mom, and taking care of K.  She'd fix things.  I just don't know how to force her out; I haven't learned how to control things like that yet.  I don't have any control over who comes out of my mind when, but usually, say in a social situation, the right K will automatically appear and handle things until she's no longer needed.  And no one ever notices that there are different K's because generally, no one sees different K's, just the one that they know.  Each friend knows their own version of K.

But I've gotten way off topic.  I was talking about my therapy session.  I can't remember everything that we talked about, I mainly just remember getting very upset and worrying that she was going to put us in a hospital.  I tried to tell her that in the 2 years we'd been seeing her, we'd not had the courage to be honest with her about what was in our head.  I'm always afraid that if they find out how sick K really is, they'll lock her away.  That, and the fact that I just do NOT trust people, makes it difficult to open up and be honest in therapy.  I fear my thoughts and feelings.  If they scare me, I figure they'll scare the doctor too.  And I don't want another label, I want an accurate diagnosis.  But she told me at one point during the session that it would take more than a couple of sessions to make a clear diagnosis; since I've only just now started to talk to her, really, we had a way to go to get to proper diagnosis and treatment.

One more thing I just remembered....  she asked me if I remembered any abuse from my childhood.  I told her I couldn't remember the actual abuse (I've blocked those memories) but I had little clips of memories of things which seem suspicious or not normal.  So I told her about the 3 or 4 things that I recall from childhood that I find to be inappropriate memories for a little kid  She asked me again to write in my diary and bring it with me next week. Incidentally, I guess I got my point across about needing to see her more frequently--I saw her Friday morning and she wants to see me again Monday afternoon.  That's as quickly as is possible.  (She also gave me a prescription for yet another medication.  Abilify.)  Or maybe I just scared her and she's keeping a close eye on me lest I become suicidal.  So far, that's not been a problem.  Self-harm is not at all the same as suicidal actions.  I can't kill myself right now-not only is it bad karma, but my mother needs me to take care of her.  I have too much to do to die right now.

Peeling Off An Old Label

Yesterday, (I'm pretty sure that was yesterday...) our husband took us back to see the psychiatrist again.  A different K went this time than had gone last time; I think that's because our doctor specifically requested that K come, instead of Switch Kellie, and somehow our mind just unconsciously pushes a button of some sort and we are another K, with different thoughts and emotions.  (I didn't realize this was abnormal until I was about 30 years old.)  Now, sitting here drinking my coffee,  and wishing that I had a cigarette, even though I no longer smoke, I wonder if I'm the K that went to see the shrink or if that was someone else.  I'm not sure because when I think back to the appointment, I can recall parts of it, large chunks actually, but it's all a bit blurry, like I've smeared Vaseline onto the camera lens. Did that happen to me or what is someone else, someone whose consciousness I sometimes share?  I remember one part very well, and this is important too--the psychiatrist told K that she doesn't believe she's schizophrenic.  This is HUGE. 

K was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 27, and every doctor since then has just agreed with the diagnosis (and usually tacked on a new label to go along with it, labels such as BDD and GAD) rather than trying to dig a little deeper and see if perhaps she didn't have something DIFFERENT.  So. This is life-altering news.  Everything that K believes herself to be is false.  All these years, she's been living with the stigma, and with the shame, and with the despair which stemmed from this diagnosis, and now we find out that the diagnosis is (most likely) WRONG.  K is simultaneously thrilled and terrified.  Thrilled to find out that she probably does NOT have schizophrenia, yet terrified of what she really DOES have, and also afraid that one of the K's IS schizophrenic.  More labels... Take one off and put another one on in its place.  Sigh.  K didn't mention to her mother what the doctor had said about doubting the presence of schizophrenia, and I can't remember if she told her husband or not....that information is no longer with us.  I hope that she told him, he needs to know what the current status of his wife is.  Plus, it'd just be nice to know once and for all what the hell is really wrong with K!  We've been drug through the mud and given the run-around so many times over the decades....  K no longer has any faith in doctors.  This "new" doctor-who, it turns out, has been treating us for 2 years!-seems very willing to help K, and she makes K feel comfortable and perhaps even safe.  That's what the shrink told us yesterday; that her office is a safe haven for K, and that when she's there, she doesn't have to be afraid.

The shrink, Dr. H, talked with us for a while about different ways we can go about treating K.  I asked her if she'd had any experience with mapping therapy (wherein the different personalities are charted) and she admitted that she had never done such therapy.  She did NOT say that she was opposed to it. She also didn't say that she believed integration was the best route to take, and I feel that's important.  (Integration is organization of different aspects of the personality into a hierarchical system of functions, or one, unified personality)  We, the K's, are afraid of integration.  The Smart One is all for it-she just wants to be "normal" and be able to live a productive life and perhaps have a successful career in the arts.  The Good Daughter would like very much to feel more connected with her environment, with her mother, with her husband.  She's in favor of integrating all the different aspects of K into one being, assuming that being would be a positive addition to the world around her.  Some of the K's (like The Little Girl) are dead-set against integration, for this state of feeling split apart, of feeling shattered, this is all we've ever known and while it may not always be pleasant or convenient or logical, we're used to it-it is who and what we are.  (I think...)

The best part of the therapy session was when Dr H told us that she'd like to use the old diaries that we found, that she believed we could learn a lot about K and her different personalities from these books. (See Blog Post "The Discovered Diaries" from January 9)  K was elated that the doctor recognized the importance of the diaries.  They could change my life as we know it.  I just knew it, I knew when I found those diaries and read them, I KNEW they were important to K's recovery.  This could change everything.  We're all on the edge of our seats.  What's going to happen to us?  What will become of the K's?  Who will come out to meet the doctor, and who will stay hidden?  Who will we ultimately become?!?  (panic attack coming on-I have to go take a pill now)

My Newest Obsession

I've mentioned before that K has an obsessive personality and tends to go overboard when she gets an idea in her head.  Well, the idea currently inhabiting her brain space is the possibility-nay, likelihood of her being diagnosed with a dissociative disorder.  Based on the clues which I seem to be leaving myself-notebooks, lists, folders on my laptop filled with helpful websites, and the all-important diaries-I was first labeled MPD/DID back in 2004.  I'm looking at the calendar and seeing that it is now 2012, which can only mean one thing: I've been in denial for about 8 years, or so it would seem. My theory is that the paranoia took over and I refused to accept the diagnosis, for I certainly didn't want to be THAT crazy...  I've been under a doctor's care-regularly, without a break-since 2002.  So that must mean that it took my therapist and psychiatrist roughly 2 years to figure out what was going on with me.  Apparently I've been misdiagnosed over and over again, for all these years, ever since I saw my first psychiatrist at age 16.  Every doctor I see takes notes and makes a diagnosis based upon the "me" that is sitting in the doctor's office.  I can't say for sure how many of the K's went to therapy, with that wonderful therapist whom we loved so much, (who later dumped me after 7 years together) but I have recalled a memory or two in regards to that period of time and my current state of mind. I thought I'd share these memories with you (plus, it'll help me remember again in the future)

I remember one time going in to see the therapist (this was about 5 years ago) and she asked me to do a homework assignment;  I was to draw a picture of the way I viewed myself.  I think the assignment was supposed to help me with my Body Dysmorphic Disorder and self-esteem issues.  Well, she was blown away the next week when I showed up with a whole handful of pictures of different K's, each with her own fashion sense and musical tastes and hobbies.  I didn't get what the big deal was; I just did the exercise as it was assigned to me.  Now I'd give anything to get hold of those drawings again.  I can see some of them in my mind, but it's all fuzzy, like it was a dream.  I think perhaps I'll do this exercise again and see what happens next time.  I wonder how many drawings there will be...?

Another interesting memory is really several similar memories, all taking place at different points in time.  I remember my therapist asking me what my name was.  I remember that well.... in fact she asked me for my name on half a dozen or so occasions that I can recall.  I never knew what to say.  I never knew the answer to the question.  Although the question stirred something within me, I couldn't put my finger on the point of it all.  So I forgot about it, until recently.  Now it's true that I've probably developed an unhealthy obsession with Google and Twitter and the web in general.  In fact, I'm so focused on doing "research" on the subject of DID that it pisses me off I have to stop for eating and sleeping.  There's no time for such trivial matters!  I'm working on a deadline here! I don't know how much longer I can stick around and take care of things.  All I can remember clearly about my being here, in this "lifetime" is that I once had my own office and kept lots of photos, to remind me of my life-literally-and when everything fell apart, (as it always inevitably does) I ran away to a different state and became a different ME.  And that's how I usually handled working a job-stay and do well until the pressure builds and we snap and disappear, go away.  But I've totally gotten off the track of our subject!  Damn!  I HATE when that happens, when I "lose my place" and have to reread everything I've written and try and figure out where I  left off.  Sigh.

I can't remember what the point of all this was, I just wanted to share with you my theory about K.  I think she's got DID, and I think she's been in denial for years because it's too frightening a diagnosis for her to bear.  Also, I've been researching and have found that DID is the same as MPD, so those 2 diagnoses, made by different doctors at different times in my life, were actually the same thing and thus gives us more reason to believe that K does in fact has this disorder.  I just wish I had read all those diaries and journals I've been keeping all my life.  So much time has been wasted at this point already...

Major Breakthrough or Break From Reality?

(When we started writing this blog post, it was yesterday? Last night? Some time in the past, not terribly long ago, yet it seems I've been typing for so very long...at least 12-16 hours now, but since time is foreign to us there's really no way to be certain)

I'm not sure how to start...Something has happened. To me, to us, to K.  She really, very much needs to see her doctor!  That's not a viable option for us right now, however, as it's currently either horribly late or ridiculously early, take your pick.  Now it could be that she's just experiencing what is known as a psychotic break...

(Wikipedia says: A psychotic break is a term used to describe an occasion of a person experiencing an episode of acute primary psychosis, either for the first time or after a significant period of relative asymptomaticity.)

This has happened to us before, I can't say for sure how often it happens or even when it last happened, but it's certainly not something we are unfamiliar with.  If that is not the case, (and I have my suspicions) then we are having a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH. I really can't stress enough that we're not sure at the moment what is happening to us, and I'm not sure if THIS has ever happened before. (I have a terrible memory, for a number of reasons which I'm not going into but which include my mental disorder(s) and my medication side effects)

psy·cho·sis [sahy-koh-sis] noun

1. a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality.

2. any severe form of mental disorder, as schizophrenia or paranoia.

I feel, at this moment, that something profound has occurred to us. I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I can't be certain how long this has been going on.  I've tried to trace this "event"(?) back to the beginning, using Tweets and Facebook posts and my phone data.  I would normally just check out my personal journal, but we were shocked to discover that K hasn't made an entry in that particular journal since October 21, 2010, so that really didn't help us much at all.  K has spent her entire life trying so hard to hide her symptoms from the outside world, that it feels somewhat liberating for her to open up and let things show now.  Several of the K's are shy, but I am not.  I guess that's a good place to start...

Hello. I'm the K that takes care of business, the K that gets things done, the K that is responsible and does necessary things such as pay the bills and take care of our mother (who is frequently in poor health) at times when things are just too stressful for K to handle them on her own.  K is currently unavailable but will (hopefully?) return at some point and things will settle back down to what we know as "normal". Not that it is normal in any way, mind you.  That's one thing I'm starting to realize.  There's something strange going on around here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.  This feels SO important, I really can't stress that enough.  This feels like something of vital importance to our very existence, we being the K.  Now K has been in therapy for most of her life.  For over 20 years, we've gone from doctor to doctor, looking for answers, and hoping someone would say "Oh, you have this condition and you should take these pills and then everything will be fine. You'll get better."  We are painfully aware by now that this is just NOT going to happen for us.  I don't know if it ever happens for anyone (but I sincerely hope that it does). But television commercials and the media in general would have you believe that everything can be cured with a magic pill or X number of therapy sessions.  If either of those things were true, I'd be long cured.  I've been placed on a veritable cornucopia of psychotropic drugs since I was given my first prescription (for Lithium) at the age of 16. I know for a fact that I'd never be able to name them all, as I've been on so many, and of course because of my memory problems.  Depakote, Trazodone, Zyprexa,  Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Ativan, Valium, Lexapro...I could go on but I won't. You get the idea. I've been on different combinations of different drugs for years now; for so long, in fact, that I can no longer remember what it feels like to be completely drug-free. I'm currently prescribed 60 mg Prozac, 300 mg Wellbutrin, 50 mg Seroquel XR, 3 mg Risperidone and 4 mg Alprazalam per day, plus a Folic Acid tablet for what my relatively-new medical doctor (non-psych) tells me is a deficiency which supposedly affects your moods. The last time we were without our pills, we turned to self-medicating to help us feel more "sane".  It's very common behavior in people with mental illness and since I have an obsessive-compulsive personality, it can lead to a lot of problems, physically, mentally, legally, financially,,,(sigh) You get my point. I tend to overdo things, become obsessed, act impulsively and compulsively. K, according to some people, "just doesn't know when to quit", but the obsessions themselves generally come and go over the course of "time".  Time is something we have a special relationship with, and no realistic sense of, but I'm afraid I don't have enough of it at the moment to go into that story, so please let me continue before I switch again.

I have both a relatively-new medical doctor as well as a new psychiatrist (I can't remember how long I've been seeing her, but she was unable to get my medical records and/or therapy notes from my last doctor, whom I disliked).  OOH just checked my neglected hardbound journal and found out that I started seeing this new shrink sometime after Feb. 9, 2010 and before April 17, 2010.  (WOW I had no idea it'd been that long; maybe she knows me better than I give her credit for) I saw my last therapist (not to be confused with my psychiatrist, whom I usually refer to as my shrink, even though I know they hate that) sometime in early April of 2010.  She dumped me after 7 years together!  Because I missed 3 appointments at various times throughout our relationship.  She said that was the limit; that after 3 misses you're automatically kicked out of the system on your 4th miss for being a "non-compliant" patient.  So even though I have this alleged illness-which she herself was attempting to properly diagnose and treat, and which she herself brought up first in our sessions-and even though she knows that we have issues with understanding time and "reality", still she cut me loose just as soon as I had walked into her office and plopped down on her up-until-that-moment-"comfortable & familiar" couch.  Well, actually I think she let me rant first for a minute-I recall I was dying to talk to her about my (often-recurring) then-current obsession (suicide) so she let me spill for a few minutes, then asked the obligatory questions: "Are you thinking about hurting yourself?  Do you have urges to harm yourself?  Are the voices telling you to hurt yourself or someone else?"  I told her that at that time, I did NOT have any plans to hurt myself, and I'd certainly never hurt anyone else!, and so as soon as she was satisfied that I wasn't going to leave her office and kill myself, she dumped me like a bag of garbage.  Up until that point, I'd been seeing her at least every other week, or weekly if I was struggling., for 7 years. A few times I had more than one appointment in a single week.  And I tried to always see my psychiatrist in tandem with my therapist, as they shared a clinic location, and because I was driving an hour to get there from my home. While I may not recall the exact date of our last appointment, I do recall parts of the session.  It was quite brief, or at least it seemed so to me.  I described to her my obsessing over suicide, and how I'd been Googling it and researching and reading news articles and how everyone around me seemed to be doing it at that time, like the voices were trying to get me to "do what everybody else was doing" and how fascinated I was by the whole process. At that time, I explained excitedly, there had been a number of prominent suicides in the news, including a famous fashion designer as well as a former television actor. I had intended to tell her how the TV was speaking to me personally about these things. She didn't like that I was talking about people killing themselves, and as I've stated earlier, she quickly asked me the "suicide watch" questions...and I gave her the answers I knew she needed to hear.  Don't get me wrong.  I had NO intention of killing myself that day, or any day soon, as K was and still is a big believer in Karma and I think that killing yourself is bad karma, regardless of your religious beliefs. Plus I'd never put my family through the humiliation and pain and suffering of the whole suicide event. (some of us do indeed have suicidal tendencies though) I love them too much to do that to them.  Also, I don't think that anyone would be able to style my hair nor do my makeup as I would like, or even pick out the right outfit for me to wear to my funeral.  This may seem trivial to you, but to K,  it is really important.  Damn.  Now I've gone off on a tangent and can't recall where I was in telling the story...

Interesting.  I just left the safety of my bedroom, wherein I've been holed up for roughly 9 hours now, and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which K is almost always able to make (she's a coffee fiend) and which, sure enough, she had prepared much earlier, as in last night.  Now we must interact with our mother, for she is in said kitchen and expects some sort of recognition and acknowledgement.  I'd been wondering what would happen as I walked up the hallway, before I ever saw her.  And then-BOOM-I'm in the room with her and the Good Daughter is hugging her mom and asking how she slept and how she was feeling that day, which is today. I know because I've begun taking notes in a notebook, and I see the date and time written on the notebook and I can compare it to the date and time on my new cell phone, and I can get an idea of "when" I am existing, I being the current K, the smart one, the one who used to attend college and hold down a job (hard to believe now).  We are the K that has ambition.  We are the K that dreams of going back to school and finishing her degree, and of having an actual career that she could nurture and benefit from and perhaps even earning a living and being completely self-sufficient, which up until this point, we don't think she's ever been.  She has always ended up needing some help.  She just can't do it on her own.  She can't make enough money.  She can't have the proper benefits of medical insurance and retirement funds.  As much as K HATES to admit it, she is completely held hostage by, and controlled by, The System.  The System currently considers K "mentally disabled" (due to schizophrenia I believe) and we get a Disability check every month for a set amount of money.  Not a lot, let me tell you.  In fact, I've NEVER been able to afford to pay all my bills in addition to buying food and gas for the car.  K is really ashamed of that fact.  She came close to being self-sufficient once; she had a full-time job and was in management, and she had a checking account and a house and a car and a seemingly "normal" (only NOT) life. Sigh. (That was before our first, and most severe, "nervous breakdown") We're really rambling here.  I need to wrap this up before some other K comes along and messes it up, or erases these words without posting or saving them because of our over-the-top paranoia. I still very strongly feel that these events, happening to us "now"-whenever that may be-are going to have an enormous impact on K's future, hopefully for the better.  Hopefully, this is a brain-altering, life-changing moment of clarity within our foggy, crowded existence.  Hopefully this is K taking the first steps at realizing how she can go about getting the sort of help that she really needs, and not just drugging us to keep us at bay.

We've tried to explain this, or some of this, to K's husband, but he is having quite a difficult time in wrapping his brain around these concepts. We have, in fact, completely blown his mind by telling him openly and honestly what K was thinking and feeling. Now K feels completely vulnerable and fragile and I have to alter my train of thought before the stifling paranoia takes over again... My husband is my best friend, but even he has never seen me like this before,  he's never witnessed me switching from one K to another. I imagine it is quite upsetting and disturbing to him, as it would freak anybody out who wasn't prepared for it. Sigh.  I really, REALLY hope I don't scare off my husband...!!! I tried, very hard, to warn him, to prepare him, for the day he'd see the real me.  "US".  And now it turns out he can't handle it, or at least not at the moment.