This truly was a hard video to make. Like I said in the video "depression and I are good friends"...I have suffered "depression" my entire life.
I was always treated for depression, and the therapists and doctors all said that the depressive state I am in all the time is what has affected my physical health along with my mental health, and they would give me drugs. All those drugs did, was drug me and my alters, they NEVER helped me...
Why? Because I have DID. All the decades of therapy and mental medications and doctors and hospitalizations all of it, had nothing to do with the core problem...I was never correctly diagnosed, why? Because the mental health doctors do not believe in DID...they say its just PTSD. And it is, but its PTSD on steroids.
The doctors never looked any deeper, just treating the symptoms, but not the injury itself.
Having DID is complicated and confusing. Why am I feeling this way? Where did the time go? What is wrong with me?...now, I know, that my alters can be upset too. They get angry, sad, happy, they have all the emotions basically that I, Sparrow, have. How can that be?
They have lived my life with me. They have shared in my triumphs, in my heartache, in my day to day life. They are me...yet they are not me...they are them...such a strange concept, that I am starting to understand. The knowledge that I have this disorder is also depressing...but not because its a mental condition I have to live with, but its because of how the disorder originated. The circumstances of a small little girl trying to survive in anyway she could. How sad is that?
Imagine, that you find out a small child, you know, is being horribly beaten, sexually abused, mentally and emotionally abused, ignored and humiliated every day...YOU would be appalled and would do anything you could to get that kid out of that situation....but for me, I had no YOU, I had no one to get me out, to save me....so I had to save myself...I saved myself by my little brain splitting...
How devastating...but in todays world, this is still happening, all the time...and this depresses me, because I am so sad for all the abandoned children.
Now, I am doing better, because I know that if I am feeling a certain way, and I cannot point to a reason for that feeling or emotion, then I know it must be one of my alters, and then Kevin can speak with them and 9 times out of 10, the issue is resolved. This is the most important thing in the world for a person with DID. We need someone our alters can trust, the alters need to be safe, they need to know that they are safe too...DID people need an advocate. Someone to step up and help, defend, and teach, and accept that each alter is different and to understand that.
It took me over 50 years to be properly diagnosed. It took over 50 years to finally find my "advocate"...it is a crying shame that my husband of 34 years NEVER paid enough attention to me to see the "changes" in my personality...none of my family did...instead, I was ignored, ridiculed and medicated...just like when I was a child.
I am still emotionally and psychologically abused by my family...and that saddens me, and it also saddens those alters I share my head space with. How depressing is that?
But, being in a safe place, knowing that my alters are safe, them knowing that they are safe, has helped so much in my recovery. And by recovery, I mean, acceptance of my condition, the willingness to learn about it and to get therapy and to not fight them, learning about the 'how and why' of each alter, and letting them also live "their" lives, has helped me so much in my journey...I am recovering and learning to accept my diagnosis. Some days, I hate it, and I fight it, I throw fits (haha), but most days I accept myself and I move on.
I can deal with my depression now, I don't need to be medicated, I just need to be understood.
Sparrow
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