Well I know the title of this post is quite cartoonish and ironic. Rest assured, I don't think there is a "TDI sect"!
I'm doing this post to shout about things that have pissed me off since I started scouring the web for information regarding dissociation. And I have to tell you it's pretty boring, bad, annoying, frustrating ... and it tends to make my adrenaline rate go up quite regularly!
It started when I realized that I had suffered violence for 7 years from the "morons" who served as "shrinks". People I wouldn't call shrinks but unhealthy and destructive people ... How many lives do they destroy each year? How many people are driving suicide with their destructive "follow-up"?
And my anger at having wasted 7 years before having a diagnosis ...
Then I understood that it was quite specific to France, that these famous "psykk" did not have such strong recognition and legitimacy in other countries of the world.
Then I looked for books, news sites, films ... and there ... how to say ... total nothing or almost! The Internet is very large, you tell me, maybe there are some interesting sites with a full bibliography, but I haven't found them yet!
Besides, if you have any interesting information, don't hesitate to send me an email! And concerning France it is a massacre! The terms used by victims' defense associations are inaccurate, reading them makes me angry. Terms like "traumatic dissociation" (instead of "dissociation"), "traumatic amnesia" (instead of "dissociative amnesia"), "post-traumatic stress disorder" (relating to "post-traumatic stress disorder") which are not accurate in terms of nosography recognized worldwide and leave a door open to detractors to question the validity of these disorders. Not to mention the famous term "sexual abuse" used everywhere ... And the fact that none of these associations speaks of "derealization", "depersonalization", "TDI", "PAN", "PE" .. .
Doctor Muriel Salmona is doing a tremendous job in France to promote dissociative amnesia (which she also calls "traumatic amnesia"), she democratizes and popularizes what happens in the brain of dissociated people and I find that great! She's upright in her boots, and focuses on one single goal without scattering all over the place like a lot of associations or people who fight publicly and I admire her for that! But sometimes I would like her not to simplify things so much ... Her public interventions mainly talk about post-traumatic stress disorder and the underlying phenomena that go on in the brain in this case, but for me the most It would be important to speak and popularize the dissociation which is the basis of many psychiatric illnesses ... Anyway ... It is already very positive that a person has taken on this fight in France!
Another frustrating thing is that most of the interesting sources are in English. I have nothing against English or against this language but it has the gift of irritating my younger parts who do not master or understand at all this language to have to "depend" on the translation of my more adult parts. .. This often creates internal conflicts when I read English books or articles because some parties think the translations are "filtered" and they are suspicious of our "translators". I then live "power struggles" of the style if you do not translate everything word for word you are prevented from reading, crying or screaming during reading which ends in a big headache ...
Then, I looked for groups of dissociated people, dedicated sites hoping to find answers, constructive advice and a "network" with exchanges of reliable resources (books, sites, films ...) and I confess that it was very disappointing for me. Sometimes I feel very angry and I feel even more lonely when I spend time on the internet doing research. For me, understanding, finding supports for autobiographical books, films that talk about my disorder is a vital need and I have a hard time understanding that this is not the case with other people. Or that these are not sufficiently critical in the sources they put forward. I often have a somewhat compulsive or obsessive functioning regarding "training". I want to understand, I want to find the information on my own and I need to learn as much as possible about what concerns or affects me.
And exchanging in these groups or reading the exchanges that these people make awaken in me a lot of rage and anger. I would like to find a group who like me seeks to understand, exchanges all the reliable data, a training support system ... But that would only be possible if I became a professional myself ... Apparently, this kind of group exists but is reserved for professionals and I find it very annoying !!!!
I am not looking for confidants or friends to support me. Unable to see these people writing, I have no way of knowing who they really are, if what they write is true ... Impossible for me to trust enough! You can really get to know a person by seeing them, by analyzing their micro expressions, by having a visual relationship! And my dissociative parts can exchange but they reserve that to my shrink and my sister who have become people of trust! I can speak about myself intimately here because I have this protection of anonymity and the ability to block or delete a contact that would be disturbing without social pressure.
If there are pros reading me, I find it unfair that you keep the knowledge and information to yourself. We should have access to places of training and reliable information without having to go through the box "I become a psychiatrist too". It would be enough to put clear rules on the fact that no psychiatric follow-up is done on these platforms and I think that you would gain a lot by having our point of view and our opinion from "inside" on these groups ...
Groups of TDI people exchange messages in which they talk about their ups and downs or let their dissociative parts speak without any filters. I have nothing against this, everyone finds what they need to be supported, heard but I am unable to do this! For me it's putting yourself in danger. The risk of having another patient mistaking themselves for a therapist and setting an unhealthy grip is great, the risk that well-meaning people in the beginning find themselves trapped in a vampirizing relationship that they can no longer control. The consequences that the patients mutually reactivate themselves, the risks of relapses or suicides ... Each of us is not at the same stage of advancement in our therapy ... Some have no follow-up or follow-up. formally diagnosed ... Recently in one of these groups, a woman's profile asked for information on the number of dissociative parts, who they were, how many and how they were formed ... profile was empty and created just recently. This woman said she did not have DID and just wanted to learn. My internal alarms went off immediately when I saw several people of this group accept and respond to this request ... We can sometimes have the reactions of an "innocent child" who sees no harm anywhere and "leave with the unknown who offers us a candy "without even seeing a danger in it ... The risk of falling on" false profiles "of malicious people is great. Who is this person ? His way of inviting us to "share" our traumas concealed something unhealthy in my opinion ...
Another thing that also annoys me is this kind of behavior that I perceive as sectarian that I found in many discussion groups which consists in giving a specific vocabulary word to everything. It annoys me !! You may not know how much! I am obviously for the fact that we put the right vocabulary word on things. Speaking of "rape", of "violence" to qualify what we have experienced is essential for our reconstruction! Having an exact diagnosis of "dissociation", "derealization", "depersonalization", "dissociative identity disorder", "dissociative amnesia" is essential! Talking about "PAN" and "PE", "switch", "dissociative parts" and "integration" allows us to better understand ourselves ... But many sites give a term for all the "psychic phenomena" that we live. The "front / fronting", "co-fronting" "co-conscience", "blending", "host" 'innerworld "," blurring / purpling "... for me that goes too far! science and psychiatry is not known to most professionals (and let's not talk about society in general!) adding so many specific terms makes our disease obscure and borderline sectarian and frightening to an outsider ... Maybe I am wrong and I am amalgamating but in the sect in which I grew up, we also had a very specific vocabulary and I am wary of this kind of thing now which I think cuts off the dialogue with the "outside world" This makes things complicated and obscure which are ultimately very simple and logical. For me, a dissociated person is a normal person who has gone through very difficult things and found a very ingenious way to survive them but we don't have to "hang on" to it as a specificity to claim as part of our own. identity. The goal is to "become" again the person we should have been without these traumas, to remove the suffering and pain of everyday life. I am a strong and combative person. I survived and I am proud of it but what I want above all is to be functional and not to suffer anymore. I speak, inform about the TDI but only to advance and improve our therapeutic, legal care and popularize and explain our functioning! Personally, when I find out about something and this subject requires you to remember far too many specific terms, it turns me off! I need to understand things in a clear and limpid way and I think that being as simple as possible in the explanations allows a greater number of people to understand and be informed.
Many try to "map" or try to visually represent their dissociative parts with a face, take the MBTI personality test to put each part in a "box". Software or applications make it possible to make a complete description of each dissociative part by giving its tastes, its age, what it likes, its gender, its survival goal, its objectives, its "internal friends" and its "enemies", the "persecuting parties" (I hate this term which is totally false and brings internal conflict!) and the "protective parties" ...
For me all this is unhealthy and locks up, accentuates the phenomenon of dissociation in us. And that goes against our therapy, our "healing goal." My dissociative parts are not frozen! They evolve, grow, modify their internal roles, they help each other ... And we must not forget that we share the SAME body! To give too much "reality" to our parts favors in my opinion our splitting up and our beliefs of independent and separated existences ... Our dissociative parts are our thoughts, our lived, our feelings and felt at a moment of our life and to heal we must become aware of this and relearn how to unify and harmonize our functioning. We have to decompartmentalize and classify each part does not allow it. I don't know how many parts I have, I don't always know who is speaking and who is in the foreground in me, I don't know the name of each of them. But in the end it doesn't matter! Although sometimes I would like everything to be clearer is easy. Even though I still have a great tendency to want to classify as "black" or "white", "good" or "bad" every event or action in my life. I just believe that one of the essential points in therapy is to re-educate the patient by taking him out of this binary operation. Life, the world is not like that! Everything is complex, changing ... Something true at time T may not be true 5 minutes later ...
Well, as long as I bitch I keep going ... I also hate those YouTube channels where people film themselves "changing their personality" to show the switches. I find that vulgar, intrusive and borderline ridiculous! To me, this is a grotesque caricature of what TDI is. These people put on excessive makeup to accentuate a change in their physique and so that the switch is obvious. TDI is not that, not for me anyway! You would ask those around me (not informed of my TDI) if they noticed any changes in my physique or my attitude, they would answer you no! The TDI I think it is an extraordinary means of CAMOUFLAGE! Everything is done so that almost nothing is seen, our changes and switches are very subtle. Our survival depended on it. When we understand how it works, signs are seen, changes in the voice, looks, ways of speaking or expressing ourselves and especially what we say, the logic of our reasoning shows it. In our writings, this can be perceived, our moods, despair or our obsessions, our momentarily lost faculties, our absences or amnesias ... We can dress a little more "guy" or on the contrary very sexy but it goes unnoticed! Who doesn't have a comfortable jogging or a pretty short skirt in their wardrobe?
I close the rant chapter there and wish you a nice day all the same!
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