| Question:
First off, thank you so much for speaking to us. Your story is one I will never forget and will continue to learn from. I'm very interested in diagnoses and how they affect the individual. I was wondering what you felt when you first received your diagnosis. Do you believed that it helped or hindered you on your journey? Did it help you to see that you were not alone or did you feel that it labeled you or both? Thanks! |
||
Angel's response: I don't think labels are helpful. Read the post label/names. Labels come with to many boxes, stereotypes and stigma. The labels are need for insurance purposes but not for treatment purposes. It is a hurting human being sitting across, period. The two of you need to work together to find a solution for that person. The label helped in finding like souls. For that I am grateful. It was
helpful to find kindred spirits but it was not helpful to be treated as
"mentally ill". |
||
| Response to Angel: Angel, How did you diagnosis "integrate", for a lack of a better word, with your internal "system"? Had you heard of DID before? Did it also click in your head like "Oh, I know this or this makes sense"? Did the diagnosis help yourself in giving other people a better understanding in what they should do to help? Or was it just a label being placed on your identity as a human. Like you said you didn't need a map to know who was there. |
||
| Angel's Response: First of all the diagnosis, at the time, was MPD which has a whole different stigma attached to it. People identified with the Hollywood definition and found the whole topic a little too Hollywood. However, it does help to have a name for what's going. Like when you are sick and the Dr's can't figure out what's wrong. When the Diagnosis comes back even if it's Cancer or something bad. There is a sense of relief about knowing what is wrong because then maybe we can figure out how to fix it or not. But, at least, you know. If you die. You know what you died from. It was not very useful for myself. It made sense at some intellectual level but as a system we didn't care for the label nor ever used or referred to it internally. It was useful for my support system. It gave them something to read, understand, discuss. It gave them an avenue to learn appropriate ways to deal with me. It helped to steer me into the right therapeutic settings. Groups for MPD and not just AA. Therapists with experience with MPD not just the family therapist. I met other people like me for the first time in my life. I wasn't the only one. What a relief! The diagnosis afforded my Social Security Disability which was the ONLY reason that I was able to get the costly help that I needed. But all multiples are not the same anymore than anybody else and it that way the label becomes cumbersome. If we can use diagnoses as tools and guides as opposed to identity that
would be great. |