My Personal Story - WorkingitThrough2

Hello everyone,

Today, we have the honour to hear @WorkingitThrough2's story. Please share your thoughts on the post and your appreciation for Working in the comments.

Trigger warning: Working's story includes the topics dissociation, foster care, sexual, mental and physical abuse, death, childbirth, and suicidality. Please only read the story if you feel well enough.

My Personal Story - WorkingitThrough2

I was just diagnosed with DID maybe 8 months ago. I had never heard of this condition until I began to write some content for 7 Cups of Tea. I had suffered with many of the symptoms and been given many diagnoses, but never any type of dissociation disorder.

As a little child, I was removed from my mother's home and placed in Foster Care. I was the youngest of the first 7 children. My mom was an alcoholic and on Welfare. One day, after using her money to buy liquor, she got some food from a dumpster and fed my sister and me. The food poisoned us and we were rushed to the hospital, where my sister died and I lived. This is why we were in foster care.

Two of us got adopted by an AirForce solider and his wife. I had not yet reached school age yet, but my name was changed, and my best friend was Teddy, who was a big bear that the Foster home gave me. He became my best and only friend. After the adoption was official, the sexual abuse began. It was during these times that I experienced my first episodes of dissociation. I learned how to separate my body and rise above myself, and watch the abuse, and I felt nothing. It became so natural to just leave my body, so I could not feel pain or any emotions.

My new foster mom began to notice something was wrong with me. I told her, dad was hurting me, and she took me to the Naval Base doctor that confirmed what I told my mom. They arrested him for a short time, and he was back home. My mom blamed me for the abuse even though I was 4, so she began physical and verbal abuse, then she disappeared.

My first child was a rape baby, and being sexually abused began to be normal to me. I began to give my other part that dealt with the sexual abuse a name, Hortence, and she has been with me all my life. I had told many doctors about her, and they just gave her some drugs until she couldn’t function. I refused to accept this existence and never tried to get help again.

7 or 8 years later the symptoms began to surface again, and I became very suicidal. There is more, some is blank and some just so unreal. I had to learn to hide me and my alter, which I never knew the name for until recently here on seven cups.

After years of not going to therapy, I felt things were getting out of control again with my family and health issues, so I found myself searching out another therapist. She was a Family and Marriage Therapist, but I chose her because I had heard that EMDR was supposed to work very well. She tried to do EMDR with me, but it was not working, it only made me more defensive and uneasy. It took her 3 years to give me the diagnosis of DID finally. I asked why she had taken so long to discover this, and her reply was that I dissociated so much she had a hard time uncovering it. Which she said was normal because that is what they do to protect me. I have very bad trust issues, and my symptoms get really bad when I feel stressed.

I know that there are others inside, but they talk very little, and I have only communicated with two of them, but now I know that the two figures that I sometimes see in my eyesight just whisper to one another and move into the dark. One is a male, and he is the guardian of Hortence, and he is 15 years old. We don’t have an open communication between any of them, it is in and out. Sometimes I go into these crying spells that I know are not me, but I can't even explain. Now I know what has been happening all my life, and that I am not losing my mind.

Thanks for reading.