Help for Someone with a Dissociative Disorder

As a therapist, I had several occasions where clients needed hospitalization to stabilize from their dissociative disorder. Struggling with flashbacks, memories, denial, backlash from family, etc. can just be too overwhelming. Mostly, in my experience, this additional help is mostly needed in early healing until coping skills are strong enough for the survivor to help themselves through difficult times…along with their therapist.

I worked in a state that had no specialized facilities for treating dissociative disorders approved by the leaders in treating dissociation. The closest one was Sheppard Pratt in Maryland. Some insurances would approve a stay; others would not. When approved, the facility almost always had a waiting list. My suicidal clients sometimes had to hold on for several weeks trying to stay safe until finally admitted. Some attempted suicide and were hospitalized in a psychiatric ward where dissociation was not acknowledged. At least they were safe until a bed became available and were transferred to Sheppard Pratt. A very sad situation.

I have probably stated that in my 14 plus years of healing, I never required hospitalization. I never acted on suicidal ideation. I struggled dearly with overwhelming desires, but managed to get through each time. That is, until last Sunday. Having programming triggered by news of my father’s death, as soon as the suicidal alter stepped in, she had a plan and flew into action. If not for BB’s suspicion mid-pill taking, I might have made it to the coma objective and counted on my DNR.

I’ve now had a week to process all that happened in retrospect which I disclosed in a previous post. Sadie appears to have healed but was connected to several other female SI alters…probably each a back up for the next. I Polyvored for hours to get the answers I needed. Simultaneously, I’ve been trying to get into a hospital highly recommended for treatment of dissociative disorders. My level of depression is still at suicidal level. BB has hidden all pills and knives. Initially I thought I would be admitted Wednesday…which moved to the end of the week…which moved most likely to the beginning of next week. I fully understand the impact this waiting had on my clients. I see the impact it has on me.

Regardless of programming, I know the facility will have coping skills for working with perpetrator introjects. In addition, after seeing my therapist today, she had an aha moment realizing it was me…my most integrated self, with the very deep depression as opposed to an alter. She described SI programming coming up when the host is so depressed as the perfect storm. It’s what I experienced last week. At her suggestion, I created an internal safe room for unsafe alters. I have felt somewhat less fearful of something “going off” until I’m hospitalized. That coping skill is called containment. I’m glad it worked for me.

So a large part of my treatment will also be evaluating my level of depression and perhaps switching some meds around. I am grateful for that. It is also a small 12-bed facility so I know attention will be high. It’s worth holding on to get in. My therapist has been amazing. She is meeting with me again tomorrow. Earlier today I saw my chiropractor. It was right after I got off the phone with the hospital about the further delay and I was in tears. He learned I was waiting and insisted I come each day to see him at no charge to make sure the muscles at the back of my neck are kept relaxed to help me not get too wired. I have a good support system.

Even knowing how much others in my life care, the depression thinking is that it would be easier for everyone if I were no longer here. No one would have to worry about me anymore. I will be okay. I have an appointment for something each day through Friday. I don’t like feeling such a lack of confidence in my ability to handle THIS. I knew before now that I could handle and heal anything that came my way. I suppose many wonder why I share so much. This is my journey. I hope sharing my journey…even this part…will help someone else one day. Thanks for all my friends and family who have supported me through this time.

48 Hours

Forty eight hours ago I was in the emergency room having taken an overdose of drugs. Guess I was fortunate BB figured something was up before I finished the bottle of Klonipin (90 tables). I had managed to take a handful (10-15) of Oxycodone and three handfuls of Klonopin before running out of water. I was upstairs and BB was downstairs. I had strategically asked him to make a chocolate martini…a rare request. I went down to the kitchen to fill my water thermos. Nothing unusual about that. Got back upstairs, started a bath, put the thermos by the tub and hid the rest of the Klonipin in the towel basket before BB came back up. I was even already relaxed in the tub.

I chugged the martini wanting the pills to kick in quickly. But *I* had carried over a small sharp pair of scissors to the tub as well. That’s what BB questioned. Not a normal item. A part of me I call “the tattletale” told him about the pills. BB called 911 and suggested I put clothes on before the ambulance arrived. They were there in less than five minutes and already I was too drowsy to barely move. Managed to pull on sweat pants and a t-shirt and flop on the bed. The rest was a daze. From the ER I was sent to an inpatient hospital ward. It was where I had served my therapist internship and the “d” word (dissociation) was forbidden. I slept through most of that first day although did speak to a caseworker, and doctor, and a psychiatrist. I did know I needed to be in a safe place. I was very emotional about waking up alive in the morning and it showed.

I know longer felt actively suicidal but had been really shaken about the night before. I did share that tearfully that I was so tired of struggling every day with my healing journey. Mostly the rest of the day I was fuzzyheaded but I kept thinking about something I said to the psychiatrist. In describing what had taken place, I told her “it happened so fast” (taking the pills)…”it was just so fast”. That was not “me” and as the day went on and my head cleared a bit more I was able to clearly see what had happened. I still don’t understand why I didn’t see the signs unless Sadie was preventing that too.

I wrote about Sadie before. She’s an alter I found early on. I knew she went with death. Because she surfaced since my father’s death and I’d been feeling overwhelmingly suicidal since her emergence, I tried working with her internally as well as doing several Polyvore sets. She looked so sad and desolate. I did one set of her alone where several comments said she seemed like she had something very important she had to say. But I did think she was healing.

My therapist was out of town but I wrote her several emails and sent her several Polyvore sets expressing how suicidal I was feeling. It was two weeks before my next appointment but I did ask her if she had something sooner. I even had thought of calling my psychiatrist but it was Sunday when it got so bad and I knew he wasn’t available.Oddly I received a call from the therapist that Sunday offering me an appointment the next day which I readily took.

The retrospective of the event is I had gone upstairs about 7 p.m. for my evening nap but couldn’t relax or sleep. My mind was circling with one though: I want to die. I called BB upstairs to tell him. Guess what I should have said was “I don’t feel safe. Please don’t leave me alone”. Instead I just told him the message in my head. So when I asked him to fix me a drink, that was Sadie’s break. The term I use is “sneaky dissociation”. It felt like me…my thoughts…my actions. But that isn’t how I behave. Sadie snuck into my consciousness without my feeling her although I got up from the unrestful nap feeling shaky and agitated.

The time I was awake at the psych ward, I was still feeling residual agitation. And then reflecting on my words to the psychiatrist that it happened so fast like it had to be done right then. Then came the thought of making the therapy appointment the next day. Sadie must have felt suddenly pressured to act on her impulses since she knew my therapist would focus on her and try to talk her out of her programmed missed to self destruct. After figuring that sequence of events out, I called Wendy. I had missed her Monday appointment but still had my appointment for next week. She asked me about safety if I went back home. I called Brian and asked him to find all my drug stashes and regular supplies of dangerous drugs and hide them and just hand me my daily cup of meds. Wendy had liked that idea.

This morning I woke up happy and giggling with my roommate whom I had befriended. The psychiatrist poked her head in the room while I was giggling. It was time for my progress meeting. I did feel free of Sadie and no thoughts of self harm whatsoever. That came out in the meeting. I was surprised to see about three other people who were social workers and reviewers. I had taken the chance of explaining to the psychiatrist that I had DID and the self harm came from an alter…that was the first day. I feared she chalked me up to permanently crazy knowing in 2003, when I interned there, the word dissociation was not allowed. I was really nervous about thie meeting I found myself in.

Surprisingly, to me, the psychiatrist seemed to understand about Sadie and had even remembered her name. She noted my mood today and asked if I were to be released today, what my safety plan would be. She liked all I told her. One of the social workers had said she would call my psychiatrist to move my appoint up a week if possible. Before that even happened, I was told I was being released today. Wow! Not what I expected going into the meeting. I was discharged about 5 pm and am now home writing this blog entry slightly longer than 48 hours since the overdose.

Lessons to be learned

While I had written several messages about feeling suicidal, I felt I was safe waiting for my therapy appointment. I took for granted that every suicidal alter in my system healed before her programming was carried out. I can never count on that again. The extreme struggling, the emails to my therapist, the desire to call my psychiatrist were all overlooked as warning signs. I didn’t know Sadie’s agenda.

I was extremely relieved that I could speak of my DID at the psych ward to the psychiatrist. She had some grasp of it but I knew she didn’t have the skills to work with Sadie. And I knew if a professional not very experienced in working with suicidal alters could be dangerous. I stated that first day how I believed it was essential I work with my own therapist of 10+ years. And I knew my psychiatrist was affiliated with the psych ward but unfortunately only on an outpatient basis. I may have buried myself by being open about the help I needed…to find and help Sade to heal. The first day the psychiatrist asked for my website which I provided: the knowdissociation.blogspot.com link. I recalled later that would like to the mind control struff and she might just have me on lithium the rest of my life. That morning I was admitted, I asked about the 72 hour release. I asked several time and no one responded. Finally that first night I insisted that I be provided with the form. I was threatened that if I signed the form it likely meant a legal hearing and an extended stay. I signed it anyway.

The psychiatrist mentioned she was aware of the three day form even though it had only been 24 hours. But the rest of the meeting went so well. Something must have struck a chord with her. I like to think that she saw I knew what I need to heal myself.

Sorry this turned out to be so long. I am going to write a note on Facebook on a related matter and will come back and post the link here.  I really want survivors to know you can’t let your guard down. You must ask for help in healing. You must accept support for healing. And, most of all, my death wish was so strong but went away in less than two days after Sadie knew she could no longer overdose. Please keep choosing life. I’m glad I’m here to say that.

Allergies and Mind Control

Because of recent events with my own health, I wanted to document my history and the known history of the government mind control programs. The programs began with Artichoke, followed by Bluebird, and then MK-Ultra, which I believe has changed names throughout the years.

A renowned expert in dissociation, Colin Ross, M.D., authored the book Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality By Psychiatrists. You can Google him to find his citations of the universities, government sites, doctors and psychiatrists, and companies/individiuals/organizations complicit in MK-Ultra experiments.

Martin Orne was a notorious psychiatrist and “expert hypnotist” who demonstrated extreme extents to which unwitting people would go in a trance state. I ordered a video of one of his subjects and experiments through a psychiatric website. In horror I watched as a woman placed her hand in acid immediately after Orne demonstrated it was indeed extremely dangerous. The woman placed her hand in it after Orne, I believe, suggested It was simply a glass of water. She had no response to the burning effects and simply removed her hand from the glass when asked to do so by Orne. He also held up a huge snake that he had her do something with. I blocked that out. Couldn’t bear to watch. When I became a therapist, I shipped all of my mind control research and tapes to another survivor for safekeeping.

This information is to provide a background for the evil and the ways these government employed participants helped in creating the perfect mind control subjects from birth. In 1997 I came across the actual study done explaining how subjects were made to believe they had allergies to anything suggested to them. That was validation for my own “histamine programming” (my term).

I had at least one alter trained to produce histamines based on environmental and/or informational cues. Basically, if my mind was going near a forbidden topic, I would have an allergy attack. I have a very clear memory of my allergies having a sudden and dramatic onset in September 1969 when I was 16. The moon landing had been that July. I believe my POW memory was that summer. But something happened that summer. I just know I was home to watch the moon landing.

Am not certain it was the first day back to school but that first month back to school my face swelled up unknown to me on the bus trip to the school. A friend on the bus told me I should go to the nurse’s office but wouldn’t tell me why. As soon as I walked into the nurse’s office, she had me lie down and called my mother to take me to the doctor. When she left the office for a minute, I walked into the bathroom and saw my highly distorted swollen face. A panic attack ensued recalling my father had an allergic reaction when I was about 5 where his tongue had swelled in his mouth cutting off his air passage. My mother told me about that only when I was older. Thank goodness that was not the case with me.

That day began a decade-long regimen of allergy tests and allergy shots and constant sinus infections. When I was an adult continuing the allergy shot regimen, I began to realize the shots were causing the sinus infections. I went off the allergy shots and relied solely on nasal sprays and allergy medication. From that time until 1997 I came to dread early Spring and hay fever season. In the mid-90s, my then family doctor began steroid injections to help control the onslaught of sneezing and constant eye-watering. By the third year of steroid injections, I was begging for injections about once a month when they were supposed to last for three months.

One of my early memories in latter 1997 had to do with being suffocated by a pillow by my father. My connection to a memory with breathing issues had an amazing impact. "Magically" my allergy symptoms slowed down dramatically to the point where I had no Spring allergies and required no steroids whatsoever by hay fever season and haven’t since.

Since begging for more steroid in August 1997 and following first abuse memories in September of that year, I came to know an alter, Annie, who constantly sneezed when she emerged. That’s when I came to understand how histamine was used to distract the mind from memory to allergy symptoms. I had begun to use herbal remedies for some non-allergy related symptoms. Once I realized my brain had been trained to produce more histamines, I researched and found that Pycnogenal lowered the level of histamines in the brain as opposed to stopping the overproduction as antihistamines did. I just stopped taking the Pycnogenal recently since I haven’t had allergy issues in about 10 years. I’m guessing my brain is back to normal levels of histamine.

What I do still have are the sinus issues for which I just processed the Delgado memories of using a removable implant in my sinus cavities. Perhaps the artificially induced allergies were more to cover up the sinus issues since that was a major component of Delgado’s mind control methods.

I believe all of my body issues are connected to how my “autonomous” system was able to be internally controlled by alters. My sinus doctor declared me infection free at my last visit but I must use a special medication to help my body do what it cannot do for itself…move accumulation in my sinuses to the nose to exit the body. I’ve been doing guided imagery to imagine the cilia moving again suspecting it froze from trauma.

When I first went on the inhalant to help my sinuses, it was to be three times a day. It caused me to have bronchial spasms which led to my having to take codeine sulphate tablets to quiet the cough. After several tries I found I could take the inhalant once every other day. Now I’m wondering if the bronchial spasm is another conditioned response.

After my cranial sacral massage two weeks ago which opened up my sinus passages, I did cough but without the spasm. It was a normal cough. No traumatic response. Yet last night the bronchial spasm returned with a vengeance. My mind tells me I need to learn how to relax my vocal chords or whatever muscles control the throat. I will work on that.

Since age 16. It just makes me want to sit down on the floor with a blanket and cry. All those shots. All those horrid injections in my sinuses in the 70s  and 80s before there was a better way to treat infections. The sinus x-rays and CT scans. It all leads back to the devious mind control methods to keep me from remembering and apparently to ensure I would remain in a desired state of compliance. I like to think of myself as a rebel. I hope that rebelliousness helps me to keep fighting this crap.

Once again, everything is connected to everything.