What do you think of the current APA Guidelines for dealing with someone who is DID? How does this relate to your own therapy? (maybe someone can post the APA Guidelines for everyone here?)
New Landscape ~ DID/MPD Support Group
New York support group for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) / Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
Hmm. I don’t know what the guidelines are, but here’s the ISST-D site’s guidelines:
http://www.isst-d.org/education/treatmentguidelines-index.htm
It’s really long.
The sad thing though – is that I tried to find DID/MPD treatment guidelines on APA’s website (American Psychological Association) – and couldn’t find anything! They don’t even list DID as a disorder that you can look into! How can they continue to ignore this or believe it’s not real – when it’s in the DSM-IV now??! Anyone else wanna try looking at their site?:
http://www.apa.org
when i brought up the topic at the group, i was most likely thinking of articles likethis one about “the hazards of treating child alters as real children” or this one, about the “types” of people who are partners of someone with a dissociative disorder.
i’m not a fan of the official guidelines. i’ve found that many of the things they say absolutely NOT to do, it works far better for me (or my therapist, or my partner and friends) TO do.
i’ve read, for instance, that it’s a bad idea to spend unstructured time with other multiples, because it makes people get “worse” or more committed to being multiple. but for me, it’s been like, “oh, ok! these things that happen to me actually make sense, and i’m not that crazy!” and i’ve never felt a temptation to “compete” with other multiples to have a more lurid story.
the two articles i cited above both annoy me. the one about not treating child alters like you’d treat real children… that one especially drives me crazy, because their examples of treating them like real children are things like spending your rent money to buy them presents. um, hello?! i wouldn’t do that for external children, either! or things like not having good boundaries or paying attention to safety. it’s like, if i go around behaving as though my younger parts are real, i’m going to all of a sudden let the little kids make all of the decisions. i wouldn’t do that with the inside kids any more than i would with external kids. just because the littles think that a diet consisting primarily of fruit roll ups would be delightful, i exercise the same restraint over them that i do over external children. (and, actually, spending more time with the inside kids, and getting to know how much they NEED to have limits has made me firmer with OUTSIDE kids, because i figure, they probably need limits as well!)
or the one about the “types” of people who will be partnered with someone who is multiple? the really irritating thing is that absolutely *none* of the types listed is someone who is healthy, and just happened to fall in love with a multiple. the authors of the article seem pretty much to believe that the only people who would fall in love with, and stay with, someone who is multiple have their own mental health issues, because obviously, no one who is healthy would stay with someone like us. (um, perhaps someone who thinks more of the article could give me an alternate reading on it?)
i just get fed up with the idea that my problem is having parts, rather than things like, oh, healing from abuse, or learning how to cooperate and cope with the regular world. because, honestly, having parts is the *least* of my problems. and what’s more, compared to the people i know who went through similar things and *don’t* have parts, let me tell you, splitting into different parts is a WAY healthier coping mechanism.
i think a lot of the guidelines presume that “different” equals “unhealthy.” and also to assume that the problems multiples have are because of the multiplicity, and not because of the abuse we suffered to get this way.
um, yeah. so i feel strongly enough on this that i’m probably ranting on and on. sorry about that.
ps: my captcha words are “purity blaze” (i really enjoy some of the combinations, and appreciate whatever change the admin made so that the words are less blurry!)
i am glad our therapist isn’t hung up on guidelines. we are treated like humans and addressed in ways that are appropriate for each varying age we have. i don’t think we would get very far if a little one were treated like an adult or told to act more like one, or if an adult were treated like a kid. i think our therapist has pretty much ignored some of the so called ‘rules’ and has done what seems appropriate and ‘human’ instead.
this (d.i.d.) is our reality. i think our therapist really just tries to meet us in our reality. and i think it’s working better than staunchly abiding by rules ever could. we function in the world pretty good now – really well even. we contribute to world around us and make a difference, even as we are. i think our t has really helped us a lot – because of going outside of the box.
my captcha words were baseball and heavy. i like the funny words too!
My T has never mentioned guidelines. Our last T? She was horrid. She said we made her have sadistic thoughts and emotionally blackmailed her. She was terrible. This T, though, awesome. I don’t know what the guidelines are for treatment. I use APA Guidelines for school, lol. That just tells you how to align your paper on the page and how to cite references. I am sure you’re talking about something totally different.
yeah, i’m talking about the treatment, not the writing, guidelines.
can’t say as i much like the writing guidelines, either, but that’s disciplinary prejudice–i prefer the writing guidelines for history, because that’s my academic discipline. parenthetical citations drive me BONKERS.
it really sucks that there are therapists out there who are jerks, or incompetent, or just not able to acknowledge they aren’t a good match with a client. on the other hand, maybe it helps us to appreciate the good therapists to know about all the mediocre-to-bad ones. glad you have a good one now.
I think so. Our last T hurt us deeply, though. Even attempted suicide in her office because of her. She did “holding” therapy and unnaturally bonded a lot of us to her. She gave us a key to her office (she was perpetually late) and then accused of stealing her clock — which never happened. She claimed someone inside took it and I didn’t remember. She then proceeded to say she wanted to slap us, that we were blackmailing her emotionally and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember now. That day I almost died because I took 30 Elavil and 30 Restoril and ended up on life support. 2 weeks later we OD’d again, this time on Ambien and Unisom. Not a good time. Eight hospitalizations and 2 overdoses in 8 months last year it took us to realize she was trying to destroy us. Makes me cry right now just typing it all out. We felt so alone that day.
But now we have an amazing T. One who doesn’t threaten us with dumping us or call us names or bond us to her in weird ways. Stephanie was a scary woman.
From reading some of your blog – whew! Your last therapist definitely sounds like she was WAY off base. I wonder how many people have to get ‘extra’ therapy just to deal with the poor therapy they’ve already had??!! It seems like so many DIDs have been misdiagnosed and mis-drugged – for years! If they had a crappy childhood, then struggled and get terrible help, then finally get diagnosed correctly and possibly get good help – yeeesh!! ….. what a struggle…..
I’m so glad you have a good T now. I’m so glad you’re still alive to tell your story.
What exactly is ‘holding’ therapy? Do they force a hug on you till you cry and get mad and all that? ….doesn’t sound very good to me….