Coping without a therapist..?
 

We have a lot of dormant memories that are coming thru in the last few months. It's a lot to take in n we currently don't have support aside from one person to help us get better.

We don't want to rely on them 100% because that would be unhealthy for both of us and they have a lot going on as well.

We have been without a therapist for 2 years and the NHS won't see us because of the DID diagnosis. It's getting harder and harder to cope mostly on our own. We already didn't know how to deal with the few memories we had but these are much worse and they can't be pushed aside.

Is there a way to cope when you can't get a therapist? Any good self help books or anything? We don't know where to start.

Fox.

Unfortunately we can't right now, with how expensive private therapy is we wouldn't have much wiggle-room financially n we'd only be able to manage a session every 3-4 weeks which would be difficult with trust n memory problems etc.

We do keep checking for cheap private therapy but most of them tell us we're too complicated for them to work with n they aren't willing to learn either. The ones who were ok to work with us demanded we had to integrate but that's not a goal for us so they refused to work with us for choosin our own path for recovery.

I know of The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook, though it is not very interactive.
As for working through abuse - The Courage to Heal workbook has more exercises in the book.

I think there are some online communities centered around dissociation and trauma, though I don't remember what they are.

I also find daily journaling immensely helpful, along with a journal for other parts to communicate.

There is also the Dissociative Distress Thread on this site.

Sorry if none of this is helpful.
I am diagnosed with DID, so if you would like to talk, feel free to pm me.

When was the last time you looked into NHS therapy as a possibility? It sounds like you're trying to cope with a lot, and having a DID diagnosis shouldn't be a barrier to getting help. I'm in Cardiff and mental health services have improved a lot over the past few years, so I do think it's worth enquiring again.

I'm coping with similar issues to you at the moment and my psychologist recommended a helpful book to me a few months back; I will try and find the name of it again and let you know.

@Horizon
Thank you so much for the help! Your input will be really useful and we will take a look at the book about working through abuse.

We have the DID sourcebook and have read some of it, but we've also been warned by many people that it can be highly triggering if your system are more noticeable or if you consider them real, full people etc. Plus it's more technical and can be confusing at times. Maybe we'll try to slowly read through it, or get the more stable people in our system to do so in case we get triggered.

We absolutely need to journal more. We have an online journal but that's not always something people are OK updating (whether for being too young, not being good with technology or not trusting internet platforms etc changes). So we will have to find the notebook we got a year or so ago for this purpose. We had a not-so-good relationship that we got out of last year and then were mostly away for 5 months so now that we're settled at home again and are with a safe person we can do this without worry.

Maybe this is something I'll begin tonight and then I can leave some messages around for the rest of the system.


@Epicene
It was only maybe a year and 3/4 months ago. We saw a psychologist and psychiatrist with them and both of them agreed that none of the people there are willing to deal with our DID. We were told that they will deal with the anxiety/depression but can't do anything else.

We had 3 or 4 assessment appointments with the psychologist and he was completely baffled by DID. Theo from our system went to one appointment, he had no clue how to deal with it and in the next session kept telling Kimi "you said this in your last appointment" and couldn't understand them not being able to remember or saying that they weren't the one there.

The psychiatrist dismissed our DID, it didn't seem like she believed in it. She recommended we left the house every day no matter how bad we felt because it would force us to deal with anxiety, phobias and PTSD. She also recommended going to CBT classes on anxiety, which I don't think would have helped much but were also too far away to get to alone and were in the middle of a hospital (massive trigger).

We've seen the GP a couple of times since to ask for extra help, but they said they can't do anything.

The MHT also told us that they couldn't see us for more than 6 months, or maybe 12 if we were lucky. That's not enough time to actually build trust for us if we're only seeing someone every 1-4 weeks, so we wouldn't cover any of the trauma or anything we needed to.

If you can find the name of that book that would be wonderful! Any help at all would be really great and we would massively appreciate it.

Nik.

I hope the journaling is useful for you! I feel the same way about an online journal - I used one for a bit but felt very exposed even though it was restricted. I also had a journal specifically for the others to communicate, then I stopped using it, but since starting sessions with this new therapist, we have started keeping a new one which has proved very valuable for me as well as for our sessions since I find it difficult to even talk about the others.

I'm so glad to hear you're with a safe person now. Please be gentle with yourself as you use the books (if you do).

Sorry I'm short on words today, but I'm thinking of you! And my inbox is open if you need anything. :)

I hope it will be too. We absolutely need a safe space to vent and it's getting harder to find safe places at this point. I think offline is the only place we're going to feel entirely safe, or at least 90% more than online. No matter how private an online journal is, there's some degree of feeling unsafe and I'm unsure why exactly that is, but fingers crossed that now we're safe we can journal in a book again.

I honestly wish we could find/afford a decent therapist. For now we'll find other ways to cope and I hope the journal, book(s) and the few supportive people we have will allow us to heal and recover.

Thank you so very much for your support. We appreciate it highly. Also, please never worry about how large or small a response to us is, we honestly appreciate any response at all. So thank you for taking the time to say something to us.

Dev.