“I don’t have DID today.”
It’s a line I give my therapist often. I don’t want to talk about my parts or the inner world or the dissociative chaos that is my life. I don’t want to talk about how broken I am.
But that’s not enough for her. She always has to push me further. Then I shut down. Completely. Because that’s what any perfectly normal person would do, right?
I know it’s not good to deny my reality. I know that by denying my DID, I am denying my parts as well. I know that makes everything worse. But I still do it. Deny, deny, deny.
Then, one time, my therapist asked, “well, how do you explain your symptoms?”
I thought for a minute, wondering what symptoms she could be referring to, since I have so many.
“Maybe I’m just schizophrenic.”
The voices I hear, they are not my parts. They’re just hallucinations. Those feelings of depersonalization? That’s just distorted thinking. My memory problems? The cognitive deficits of schizophrenic disorders. It all fits.
Except it doesn’t. The voices I hear are my parts, the depersonalization is part of my dissociation, and my memory problems are because my parts hold those memories for me. I know that already. I’ve known that since the beginning of my diagnosis. So why do I continue to deny it?
My therapist seemed perplexed by my answer. Why would I want a disorder likely more stigmatized, difficult to treat therapeutically, more debilitating to some? “You would rather have schizophrenia?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Why?”
Then the truth came out. “Because then I wouldn’t have to acknowledge all of the trauma.”
Schizophrenia is largely chemical, an imbalance of dopamine that is treated with antipsychotics. It can happen to anyone.
DID, on the other hand, is caused by severe trauma. There’s no chemical imbalances, no pills I can take to make my symptoms go away. I am broken, a type of broken that can’t ever be fixed the way it should be.
So yes, sometimes I wish I had schizophrenia rather than DID. Sometimes I wish all of the abuse I went through was just a delusion. Sometimes I wish I could just take a pill or three and quiet the voices and be able to get through the day in peace.
But I can’t.
Denial is making it worse, but accepting the truth is just too hard.
Life Without Hurt 
It is so frustrating that when we work so hard in counseling and out of counseling that we can’t take a break from our mental illness….especially when it is so needed it seems.
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Yes…a break. That would be perfect. A mental health break to get away from your mental health.
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I was dx in 1992 by a very well internationally recognized doctor. I was treated by some really good people and yet there are times when I wonder if I’m just crazy and made all this up and that maybe my mother was right, I’m a good manipulator and I can manipulate the best in the business. 1992 I was dx but there are still times of doubt and denial. There always will be and for the very reason you explained, to fully expect the dx means to accept what happened and that is sometimes too much to take.
Denial is not always bad. It can sometimes be the thing we use to keep ourselves together one more day but eventually we do have to face the big stuff and progress to a more stable way of being. Denial is as natural as truth and is important but overuse of it can and will be harmful. Use it wisely.
Faith
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Thank you for letting me realize I’m not alone in denial.
It’s difficult because I am so aware that I’m denying it, but I still do it anyway. But it gets to a point where it gets in the way of managing things. I shouldn’t have to sit there and tell my therapist, of all the people in the world, that I don’t have DID. That should be the one place where I could put away the denial for a bit.
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