Speaking Out About Dissociative Identity Disorder and Trauma

By Shirley Davis

No one understands or is more qualified to tell of the pain of being harmed by people who are supposed to love them than survivors. I am a survivor, and I am choosing to use my freedom of speech to tell my story and of my journey to peace.

I Have Decided to Speak Out

While some of my work has been controversial, there are many things that need to be brought out into the light of day so they can become open discussions. For too long speaking about what happens to people who were severely traumatized as children has been relegated to papers and opinions of mental health specialists. It is now time for people like myself, who have personal experience with the horrendous maltreatment experienced by survivors, to speak out.

Why? What is so important about telling the courageous and true stories of survivors?

There are many less controversial topics I could choose to write about. I could write about college life, being an aunt, or what it is like to be in my fifties. Also, I don’t have to write articles that draw negative gut reactions from people who mistake what I am saying. Then, I could also just take the recovery I have achieved and walk silently away.

But I don’t. I have chosen to yell as loud as my computer keyboard will allow me.

So, I write not only about the pain I have endured on the road less taken, but I also try hard to relate, to all who will listen, the things I have learned on those travels.

I have learned so much

Not just about what happened to me, but about life. I have been in therapy for 30 years, that’s three decades. In those years, I have taken a hard look at myself and often haven’t liked what I have seen.

To anyone who would shake their head at the number of years I have been struggling in therapy, I would say the following:

• Have you looked in the mirror of your heart lately?
• Do you acknowledge your fears, feelings, and flaws?

Do you love yourself?

To all these questions I can give an emphatic yes, can you?

I have felt shame and the overwhelming feeling of not being good enough to exist.

That I just don’t belong on planet earth and that I needed to self-destruct.

I have attempted to snuff out my life more than five times in my life, four of those times during my recovery.

Also, I have felt so tired of fighting to get well that the weariness has forced me into the hospital psychiatric ward over thirty times.

The fatigue grew so bad that I lost seven and a half years of my life being confined to an inpatient psychiatric ward.

I have had to make some very hard decisions too. Such as deciding I will live, and deciding I will get better.

However, the struggles I have faced are not extraordinary. There are millions of people around the world who suffer just as much or even more than I have in my short life.

Why do I write about Dissociative Identity Disorder and trauma?

Because I have been there. I have been there. I have been there.

When I speak, I don’t speak idle words from opinions I have formed from reading books or speaking to clients. I speak from heart-wrenching experience.

My main goal in writing about Dissociative Identity Disorder and trauma is to raise awareness and help those who are struggling forward in their recovery.

That is why I write this blog. That is why I even bother.

It’s also why, when I could get a degree in computer science or physics, I have chosen to earn a degree in psychology.

I have reached a point in my life, after so many years of work, where I could move on and never speak of my struggles again.

But…

I choose to write and speak out about the pain and free-for-alls people like myself are forced to face in therapy.

I am not a troll.

Also, I am not lying.

I am not saying things to get famous.

Huh, I am certainly not making much money doing this.

I do it because I am one of you.

“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I’ve learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can’t be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.”
― C. JoyBell C.

Reproduced with permission, originally posted on morgan6262

UNITED STATES

UNITED KINGDOM