trauma survivor

Doctor’s Appointment

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

I had my doctor’s appointment on Monday.

It was full of a lot of disappointment.

I am proud of myself for sticking through it and not backing out, despite terrible anxiety.

I sat in the waiting room filling out endless paperwork. I’m pretty sure my legs were shaking the entire time. I considered walking out twice, but I couldn’t.

I finally got in the room and the doctor came in. She seemed a nice. A little upbeat. I’m weary of upbeat people. Perhaps she drank too much coffee. She looked over my paperwork, then focused on my lengthy list of hospitalizations. Panic attacks, psychiatric, psychiatric, malnutrition, psychiatric, psychiatric, and then at least six hospitalizations for pneumonia that I could remember in the last decade. Then she noticed the name of the hospital and asked me where it was.

“Oh, I delivered babies at that hospital. I used to live there!”

My heart sank a little. Of the hundreds of cities and towns in this state, this doctor happened to live in my hometown, just a few minutes away from where I used to live. It’s not even a major city, which makes it even more weird. A part of me instantly put a guard up. Anyone from back home is a possible threat in my mind, even though the actual likelihood that they are is slim to none. Tell my brain that.

She did a mental health/depression screening. I failed. I should have known better. Because then, of course, she wanted to put me on psych meds. No thanks. She named several antidepressants that her patients had shown success on. That’s great. Except a) I don’t have clinical depression and b) I can’t take anti-depressants. I am part of the small percentage of people who have reverse reactions to SSRIs and SNRIs and end up more depressed and suicidal. There are no medications for DID. I didn’t come here for psych meds. I started to get frustrated and lost hope in the rest of the appointment.

Then she suggested a medication for my migraines, and said it would also help me stop smoking. I recognized the name as a medication I had taken before and had to stop taking because I couldn’t handle the nausea and complete loss of appetite. But she was a little insistent, even after I subtly mentioned a few times that eating enough is already a problem for me. But I’m fat, so most doctors don’t see past that and assume I could benefit from a loss in appetite. They don’t realize that, just two years ago, I weighed 160 pounds more than I do now. I just gave in and let her write the prescription, telling myself I could decide later on if I wanted to take it. Then I realized that her dosage is 4X the dose I was taking when I stopped taking it some time ago. So I’m certain taking this medication will not go over well.

She was especially concerned with my respiratory problems. I have a history of asthma, chronic pneumonia, and respiratory failure. I smoke. I have a family history of heart disease. She wanted an EKG, but by the end of the appointment I just couldn’t do it. She listened to my lungs. I hate taking deep breaths, because I can hear and feel the air struggling to get out of my lungs when I exhale. It is not a good sound. It is not a good feeling. This was no different.

She tried to explain, using her hands, what was happening to my lungs. She mentioned COPD – and this wasn’t the first time I had heard that. My long history of respiratory problems and consistent pattern of breathing difficulties had been pushing me towards a COPD diagnosis, but no doctors had ever made it official and never made it a priority. She prescribed me a few different inhalers, which she said would treat both asthma and COPD. And in my mind, it hadn’t yet clicked that she was insinuating that I had COPD. I thought she was just saying it was a risk to try to get me to stop smoking.

But then, the next day, I checked my medical record online to make sure all of my information went through, and right there, towards the top of my chart, was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, unspecified – Active – Diagnosis Date 03212016. For some reason, in that moment, it hit me. This diagnosis was on my medical record. What the fuck.

I was angry. I was enraged. Not at myself. But AT THE DOCTOR. How could she do this to me? I am 30 years old. COPD is for old people. I am not old. I do not have COPD. And being the irrational person that I am sometimes, I responded by going to the store and buying MORE cigarettes – because in my mind, if I already have the diagnosis, why the fuck should I care now? It’s just been a whirlwind of emotions about this that I still haven’t processed yet.

Going back to the appointment, she took a lot of blood. Probably more than I’ve ever had taken before. She is testing my vitamin levels, thyroid, blood titers, all the usual shit and then some. And that was it. There was so much focus on my mental health and my breathing, issues that I thought I had under control, and nothing about my constant pain. I was disappointed. I have to go back and see her next month, but I just don’t know if it’s worth the travel to get there. It did not go as we (me and my therapist) had hoped. I will talk to my therapist more about it in our session tomorrow, but I just don’t know. I need to take some time and think it over. As I smoke more cigarettes. With my new inhalers.

I’m sad that so many doctors don’t consider the past, only the present. Of course I have trouble sleeping and hate life sometimes. If you knew what I experienced the last 30 years, my present makes sense. Yes, I’m overweight now. But I lost a tremendous amount of weight in a relatively short amount of time and got sick from it. So while yes, I need to lose weight, I don’t need to promote my eating disorder to do so.

I know that some of my health issues are my own fault. Smoking does not help my cause. But I also had severe respiratory problems well before I started smoking. I started because at that point, I didn’t care. Part of me still doesn’t. But still. I’m only fucking 30. Where the fuck did I go wrong in life?

Meanwhile, the shittiest fucking people alive are still living. My mother will probably outlive me. My father has had several heart attacks, a stroke, and congestive heart failure for years and he is STILL hanging on. What the fuck.

Life is a cruel joke sometimes.

239 Days

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Today is the 239th day of my freedom. 34 weeks. Nearly 8 months. I’m still alive and kicking (although sometimes, I’m kicking myself).

For anyone that assumes that life is easy once you escape a trauma…it’s not. Thanks to PTSD, I oftentimes feel like I am reliving my past over and over again. I still get panic attacks. I still have parts that think we are living back home, and are scared of our mother. I still, in some sick way, miss being home.

It’s hard for people to understand why I do the things I do. In some ways, I am still a scared child stuck in an adult body. I lock the bathroom door because I feel safe that way. I lock my bedroom door at night for the same reason. I could live in the safest neighborhood on the planet, and I would still lock the door. I sometimes hide in my closet. No one can see me in there. I still wear 3-4 shirts and three pairs of underwear (simultaneously) every day. It is a habit I have had since I was young and even though I know I am no longer in danger, it still helps me feel protected. As an adult I should know better, but it’s not that simple.

I’m exhausted. I sleep for two hours and twenty minutes each night. Then I wake up, completely disoriented and not even sure WHY I am awake. If I’m lucky, I’ll doze off a couple of times before I have to wake up for work. My exhaustion is evident. My therapist even asked if I had considered taking my Ambien again. I realized at that point it must be bad, as we both believe that I have been better sans medication (in general).

Half the time, I’m battling a migraine. My feet are causing me excruciating pain. I go to the bathroom at work sometimes just to get a break for a few minutes. I hibernate in my room at night because I can’t physically handle going up and down the stairs.

A couple of weeks ago, my therapist called countless doctors, trying to find someone experienced in dealing with trauma patients. I give her a lot of credit. She worked her ass off trying to get me care, because we both know I need it, even though I deny it a lot of the time. Fortunately, she found a doctor who is experienced and is willing to take me on as a patient. The doctor is not even in my county, but I am sort of at a desperation point. My therapist has already filled her in on some of my problems and she seemed eager to help. I have an appointment on March 21st and I’m scared as fuck. My therapist keeps telling me that I deserve not to be in pain; but pain is something I’ve known my entire life.

Me and denial have been best friends lately. I still at times find myself denying my DID. My therapist talks about my parts and I go on as if they didn’t exist. I told my therapist in our session yesterday that I just wanted to be normal. I want to have a normal childhood. I want to have a normal life. I want to feel normal. I don’t want DID.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I am denying my past. Memories come up and I discredit them. That never happened. My mother would never do that. My therapist brought up a memory that came up in our session on Monday and I told her that it wasn’t true. I denied it. I didn’t want to acknowledge something so sick, something so vile. Even though on some level, nothing my mother did, does, or will do surprises me. But it’s just so much easier to deny it. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen. Let’s just pretend I had a happy life. Please.

But we all know that never works out that way.

Denying my memories will only make them come to the surface more. Denying my parts will only make them louder in vying for attention.

But yet here I am, on day 239, still denying most of my life.

Twelve

~ KJ ~ 11 Comments

I haven’t written much lately.

I’ve been stuck between two worlds. Sometimes, I am 29 year-old, adult me. Other times, I am 12 year-old, child me.

This has been going on for a couple of weeks now, but more in the last week or so. It is confusing because I know that I am a grownup, but I don’t feel like one.

While I know that I am free from harm now, my 12 year-old self is still frozen in time and constantly in fear that mother is coming.

As a result, I am in an ongoing battle in my head between what I know and how I feel. I know mother isn’t coming, but I feel unsafe. I’m on high alert, just waiting for her to come through the door. I panicked in school the other night because I was scared she was going to find me. I’ve been scared to go to sleep at night because I fear that she will find me and hurt me.

Irrational fears. I know they are irrational to me. But my 12 year-old self doesn’t know they are irrational. For her, they are valid.

My therapist said that there is dissonance between what my adult self wants and does and what some of my others parts want. While I don’t care whether or not my mother looks for me or knows what I’m doing, some of my parts are still too scared of her and feel unsafe that I am so open. It creates a chaotic experience, both inside and out, and ends up causing a downward spiral much like I’ve been experiencing over the last week.

I just want to be an adult again.

 

Secrets

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

Secrets are dangerous.

They eat away at you, slowly, from the inside, like a slow-acting poison.

The shame takes residence in the pit of your stomach, where it causes a nausea that never seems to subside.

The guilt takes residence in your chest, where it weighs you down so immensely that you can feel your heart hurting from the pressure, you can feel yourself slowly suffocating.

The memories take residence in your mind, where they replay over and over, reminding you of things you can never take back, things you can never change.

These secrets can never come to the surface, so you push them further and further down, hoping that one day, they will just go away.

But they never go away. You push them and you push them as far as they will go. They jounce back, beating you up, ripping you apart from the inside out.

No one can see the damage. No one can see the poison flowing through you. You look okay on the outside. No one suspects a thing.

So you learn to live with your secrets. You let them overtake you, control you, because the alternative seems so much worse.

You can never tell anyone. You can never even write it out because then the paper will know. No one, no thing, can ever know. No one will ever understand the darkness that lives inside of you.

You become a slave to your secrets until the day there’s nothing left of you. Your mind is shattered. Your heart is broken. Your soul is gone forever.

And now you’re just a shell. One final tap and you’ll finally crack, you’ll finally fall to pieces.

But your secrets fall with you, too. No one ever has to know the truth. No one ever has to see the darkness.

Your secrets die with you.

Why I’ve Been Crying

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I’m so used to being able to shut down my emotions, to numb myself entirely of feeling. But for the last couple of weeks, I find myself crying. Consistently crying. I cry in the shower. I cry at work. I cry in the bathroom. I cry walking home. Most nights I cry so much that I end up falling asleep from exhaustion. Normally that would be a bad thing, except that has been the only sleep I’ve been able to get.

Crying gets you in trouble. Crying gets you beat. Crying creates more pain.

I hate crying. I hate feeling weak. I want people to think I am strong and put-together.

I hate crying.

I’m not even crying over one thing. I’m crying over everything.

I’m crying because I’m alone.

I’m crying because I want to belong to a family. I want my family.

I’m crying because I never had the childhood I deserved.

I’m crying because for 29 years, all I was was a pawn in my mother’s game. I was never a person.

I’m crying because the home I am living in doesn’t really feel safe.

I’m crying over all of the relationships I could have had with people, the relationships my mother stopped from happening.

I’m crying because I will never experience the joy of bearing a child.

I’m crying because I’m still so scared of the world.

I’m crying because my father will die before I ever tell him how I feel.

I’m crying because my brother is so far brainwashed, he will never experience true freedom.

I’m crying because so many people could have helped me, but chose to look away.

I’m crying because my mother will never get the justice she deserves.

I’m crying for the children my mother will hurt because I’ve allowed her to roam free.

I’m crying for the people that I’ve hurt because I didn’t know any better.

I’m crying for my younger parts, the ones who miss our mother, the ones who don’t understand why we had to leave.

I’m crying for my younger parts, the ones who got hurt instead of me, the ones still in so much pain.

I’m crying because I’m exhausted. I just want to be able to sleep.

I’m crying because of the pain in my heart.

I’m crying because I fear that a piece of my mother lives inside me, making me just like her.

I don’t want to cry anymore.

The letter to my grandmother

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Grams,
I am sorry I haven’t reached out to you sooner. I had to make sure that I was safe, and that meant cutting contact with anyone who was still in contact with my immediate family.

I am safe now. I graduated from college (with high honors) and already started graduate school. I’m working at a great job, I write semi-professionally, and I recently started an organization to help others that have been through circumstances that no one should ever have to face. I am doing great things now.

I am not sure what my family has told you regarding my sudden disappearance, but I can be certain it hasn’t been the truth. I left to escape. I realized that I didn’t deserve to be controlled, hurt, taken advantage of, and abused any longer. I made the decision to leave on my own. No one made me leave. No one helped me except for a close friend. I left with two bags of clothes and shoes, my computer, and whatever money I managed to hide away. I left everything and everyone else behind.

I left because my mother is not a good person. She lies, manipulates, and controls people. She has abused her own children since childhood. She is dangerous. That is why I left. She will never change. I deserved better. R deserves better, too, but I worry that he is far too controlled to escape her.

I won’t get into too many details, because that doesn’t matter. I just want you to know the truth. My mother tries to discredit me by telling people that I am bipolar and a liar. I am neither. I have post-traumatic stress disorder, which is why I was hospitalized so many times in the past 18 months. I wanted to die because the memories of what happened to me were too painful to handle.

My mother has no genuine concern about me or why I left. She was and always has been only worried about herself. My mother sent me one text message a few days after I left. No one – not her, or my father, or Robin – has contacted me since. I have the same phone number and the same e-mail address I’ve had for the last decade. No one is blocked from contacting me.  I specifically didn’t change my number because I knew my mother would make this claim. They are lying when they say that they have tried to contact me.

I worry that they are using you to create rifts in the family, and it’s not fair. They aren’t concerned, they are using you and others to get to me. If they really needed to contact me, they would have. It’s been seven months of nothing. My mother is playing a game. Please don’t be a part of it.

You don’t have to respond to me. You don’t have to believe me. I know the truth because I have lived it. Others know the truth because they have seen it, but they are too afraid to come forward, too scared to stand against my mother. I am not afraid. She can’t hurt me anymore.

I’m sorry that it came to this. If you take anything from this, know that I am safe and well. I am healing now. I struggle every day, but I am getting by. It’s better than the life I had before. I will be okay, and I will love you regardless.

I read the letter out loud to my therapist in our session yesterday. When I finished reading and looked up, I could see the emotion written all over my therapist’s face and I immediately turned away.

She told me my strength really comes through in my writing…the same strength that I so often have difficulty finding when I need it the most. I know I am strong, but I still feel so weak.

I could have said a lot more. But what would that have done? I didn’t even mention my father’s involvement. That’s her son. I am not doing this to hurt her; I am doing this to protect her. I don’t want her to be among my mother’s countless victims.

I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. This can be the beginning of something. I just don’t know what that something is yet.

Don’t believe her, she’s bipolar.

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

My mother worked hard to isolate me from the rest of the world.

She did it in childhood by instilling into me a fear of the outside. As I grew up, she isolated me by telling everyone else I was crazy and a liar.

I knew for years that she was telling people I was close to lies about me. She was telling people at my work, and people I considered my friends. It was pointless to fight against her. She had her game down pat. She would talk all of her shit about me, and then would tell a sob story about how she was so hurt by my behaviors, how she just didn’t understand why I treated her so badly, why I hated her so much.

Why I treated her so badly? Guess who was paying the bills, cooking meals for the ‘family’, and cleaning up after everyone. Me. Who bought a vehicle for her? Me. I certainly didn’t need the vehicle; I’ve never even had a license. I did all of that because that’s what she instilled in me since youth. If I didn’t support her financially, I was selfish and bad. Yet even when I did support her, she’d still tell people I was selfish and bad. I could never win.

The biggest blow came last spring, when I realized just how low my mother would go to sabotage my life. I woke up to a series of text messages from my mother. My mother allegedly thought she was texting my brother the whole time, and then conveniently realized her mistake a few texts later and then started texting me this sob story about how she was so concerned about me and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah because that’s all it was. Lies and nonsense. I could see right through her. And I would bet my life savings that her texting me this was no accident. My brother and I have names on complete opposite sides of the alphabet. For a woman so careful in every action of her life, she would never make a mistake like that. She wanted me to read this. She wanted me to know that she was in control of everything and everyone, even the people I called friends.

My mother told everyone she met that I was bipolar, as if it were the main descriptive criterion of my entire existence. She never told anyone how intelligent I was, how selfless I was, how hard I worked…no, instead she told everyone that her daughter was crazy. Even worse, I don’t even have bipolar disorder. She liked to throw that diagnosis around because it came with all the added stigma that played perfectly into her game.

What kind of person tells everyone that their child hurts themselves as a part of regular conversation? I guess she used it to add on to my “crazy” label. But why did nobody question WHY I was hurting myself for the last 19 years? Ten year-old children don’t normally understand self-injury, and they shouldn’t comprehend that type of pain. That is a red flag that everyone just kept ignoring.

Why did nobody question why this woman’s other child, her adult son, my brother, was also hurting himself? What are the odds that a perfectly innocent parent raises two children who end up with psychological problems and extensive self-injury? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say those odds are pretty low. But damnit, my mother just played on people’s emotions like a violin. The odds never mattered because all people could focus on was my mother’s fictitious plight.

She just picks up and leaves without saying anything to anyone! Oh my God, someone call the police! I say that jokingly, but my mother would threaten to call the cops in the rare times I managed to escape from home prison for a few hours unsupervised. But why did no one see an issue with this? Why would her 29 year-old daughter need to ask permission to leave the house? THIS IS NOT NORMAL BEHAVIOR. It angers me that people did not question her at all. It really angers me. They enabled her, allowing her behavior to continue until the day I finally left.

She doesn’t want friends. Wow. I longed for friends. I never had real friends as a child. I was never allowed to spend time with anyone outside of school, and I was never allowed to have anyone over our house. I was alone my entire life. I looked forward to work because that was the only way I could have friendships. Unfortunately, that also meant my friendships were easier for my mother to control, because she had access to everyone I also had access to. I can’t imagine how many people she told these same lies to. I can’t think about all of the people I could have gotten closer to had my mother not poisoned their opinions of me with her lies. I actually had a few people come forward in the months after I left and told me similar stories – that my mother had told them I didn’t want any friends, that I didn’t like anyone, and that I thought I was too good for people. I would be lying if I said it doesn’t hurt me. It hurts me to this day.

She thinks she’s better than everyone else. That could not be farther from the truth. I still struggle with my own self-worth. My problem is I don’t think enough of myself, not that I think too much of myself. I downplay my intelligence and my abilities. I treat myself like shit often because that’s how my parents treated me. I never thought I was better than everyone else. I thought I was worthless and undeserving of life. I figured I never had any friends because I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t realize that my mother played a hand in every aspect of my life, even my potential relationships with others.

The truth is that my mother thinks she is better than everyone else. She believes that she is worthy of respect, that she is above the law, and that she deserves everything to be handed to her.

I can’t find it in my heart to delete these screenshots from my phone. The day this happened, I realized that I could trust no one. I realized that my mother had poisoned everything and everyone around me. It hurt then, and it still hurts now.

It hurts because I know my mother continues to tell lies about me, even to other members in our family. She tells people I have problems, that I make up stories. For so many years, I didn’t fight back.

Today, I have chosen to fight back. I sent a letter to my grandmother tonight. I told her why I left. I told her the truth about me. She deserves to know the truth, and not the lies my mother has continued to tell. I will not continue to be torn down by this woman any longer. I don’t deserve it.

 

Guilt

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

My heart is heavy.

The last two days have been hard for me. I’ve learned some things I didn’t know before, and I’ve had things confirmed for me that I had long suspected.

Anger, frustration, sadness, guilt…all of this overwhelms me. I spent the majority of today crying. I tried to distract myself with reading and TV, but my thoughts always returned to the emotional whirlwind going on inside.

I worry about my brother. I left him behind in order to save myself. I left him behind to continue to be abused by our mother. He is suffering. He is trapped. And I’ve done nothing to help him. I feel incredibly guilty. I am no better than all of those people who turned a blind eye to my abuse.

I fear he suffers from similar psychological difficulties that I do. Considering what we have both gone through (and I’m not even fully aware of the extent of his experiences since he is seven years older than me), it’s not unlikely.

People that I love are being dragged into the mess that I created. Innocent people. People that don’t deserve to be affected by my mother’s toxicity are now having to deal with it. It’s not fair to them. I put them at risk. Because they chose to remain connected to me, they now have to endure my mother’s bullshit, to be pawns in her chess game. This adds to my guilt even more.

Then I have people close to me that don’t understand why my mother isn’t in jail. Why haven’t I pursued legal action? Why am I protecting her? She deserves to be sitting in a prison cell, not living her life taking advantage of everyone around her. And I know that, trust me I do. But what am I supposed to do? They don’t just convict people of crimes based on what someone says. I have no proof. And she has the charm and the know-how to work the system in her favor. It would be a fruitless effort.

To be told that I am protecting her feels like I’m being stabbed in the heart. I don’t want to protect a monster. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I feel guilty for letting her go free.

Doctors

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I haven’t been to the doctor at all since I’ve moved here.

I’ve been avoiding doctors like the plague. I was always like that, though. I never really liked doctors. I felt like I needed to protect myself from them, and my way of protecting myself was to avoid them any way that I could.

It probably wouldn’t be that bad if I was a person in generally good health. But I’m not. I have asthma, arthritis, anemia, and malnutrition – all conditions that should be monitored regularly by a doctor. I know I need to see a doctor. I made a few half-hearted attempts to find one nearby, but the places I called were not accepting new patients, so I quickly gave up the search.

Then I received a notice from my college that my account was blocked due to missing health records. I’m not sure if I had mentioned it before, but I have no medical records, no immunization records, nothing. My mother switched doctors so much that my medical records were never complete, and I eventually lost track of them altogether. The only required vaccination to get into graduate school was the MMR, so I found a Walgreens clinic last month and paid for the vaccine with my credit card.

I didn’t realize, however, that a second MMR vaccine was required. I got so frustrated and angry because I know I had to have had these vaccinations as an infant, but because of my mother’s foolery, it is impossible for me to prove it. I looked into paying for a titer test, which would cover all vaccinations, but that cost way more than getting a second vaccine would. If I would just find a doctor, this would all be no problem. I have insurance that covers everything. But doctors. No doctors, please.

Perhaps it was because doctors and medical issues had been on my mind more than usual, I don’t know…but last week, I had a memory that eventually put things into perspective for me.

I was very sick. I had been sick for awhile, but my mother didn’t like doctors very much so I only went when required. By the time I got in to see the doctor, I was sick enough that he wanted me to be hospitalized. My mother talked with the doctor, right outside the exam room, insisting that she could take care of me at home. After enough back and forth, my mother somehow convinced the doctor to not hospitalize me. I was stabilized with breathing treatments and sent home with a bunch of supplies and medications.

And just as my mother had often done, she saw opportunity in my illness. I was a perfect target now, sick enough that I could not fight back. She abused me. Under the guise of a concerned, caring mother, she took advantage of me. And she got away with it, because she continued to do it every time I was sick, throughout my adolescence and adulthood.

At first, I didn’t really think much of this memory. I didn’t think it had a purpose. But I thought about it for a couple of days, and then I realized something. In some twisted way, I associated doctors directly with the abuse my mother inflicted on me. Doctors were not there to care for my health; doctors helped my mother hurt me. As an adult, intellectually, I know that those doctors had no idea what my mother was doing. They didn’t help her perpetrate; she did that all on her own. And as I’ve mentioned before, my mother had the amazing ability to sway people on to her side. Those doctors didn’t know what hit them.

As a child, I wouldn’t have known any better. I didn’t know the extent of my mother’s powers over people at that time. I just knew that the doctor sent me home with my mother so she could hurt me. So I associated all doctors in the same way: as my mother’s helpers.

My feelings towards doctors became less muddled as I thought more about this. This whole time, I have been unconsciously blaming doctors for my mother’s abuse. I can’t do that now. My mother has no access to my doctors anymore. I can go to a doctor without fear that I will be hurt. This was a huge realization for me.

Acting on this new insight, I gathered some more phone numbers from my insurance website and made a few calls. I found a doctor who was accepting new patients, and scheduled an appointment for the end of the month.

I told my therapist in the beginning of our session Monday about the big news. My medical issues and my hesitance to go to the doctor have been an ongoing discussion over the last several weeks, and I had regularly shot down her subtle insistence that I see a doctor. She smiled as soon as I told her I finally made an appointment. I could see that she was genuinely happy for me taking this step. I gave her my usual weird look and told her that this wasn’t that serious.

I could tell that she was holding back excitement. “I really want to celebrate, but I don’t want you to be all uncomfortable and tell me I’m weird,” she said. I told her to just let it all out. So she did. She did some version of a sitting dance in her chair and threw her arms up in celebration. All I could do was laugh.

My therapist then asked what prompted the sudden change. So I told her about the memory, and my subsequent insight and connecting of the dots. She agreed that it made sense, and was not surprised at all that I would have formed that association in the first place.

We started talking about the possible complications of seeing a new doctor. She had e-mailed me a packet of information for trauma survivors on how to handle medical situations a few weeks earlier. During today’s session, my therapist asked if it would be better if I called the doctor ahead of time to explain my trauma history and some of the things I may need. I gave her a look, and she already knew my answer. Using the phone gives me horrible anxiety, and needing to engage in a regular conversation, especially about those topics, is still not doable for me.

Then my therapist suggested a second option. She offered to call the doctor for me, to vet her and her experience with trauma patients, and find out if the doctor would be a good fit for me. If she was, then my therapist would talk to her about some of my issues -my diagnoses (physical and psychological), my triggers, things I would not want to talk about, etc. I was all on board for this. My therapist and I came up with a list of what I wanted to be included in the discussion – she would not talk about anything that I didn’t want to be disclosed.

I agreed to have the PTSD diagnosis disclosed, but not the DID; I don’t feel like most medical doctors have enough of a grasp on DID to handle that information adequately. My therapist asked if I wanted her to address my issues with eating. Since I am overweight, doctors automatically assume I need to diet and associate all of my health issues with weight. The reality is that I have lost a significant amount of weight in the last two years and I struggle with an eating disorder that often causes me to not eat enough. I know that my eating habits will need to be addressed because I have chronic malnutrition, but it would be helpful if my doctor knew my specific issues ahead of time so she doesn’t end up triggering me into starvation.

We talked about what procedures I wouldn’t be comfortable with, and what the doctor could do in case I am triggered during the appointment. It was a lot to discuss, and I ended up getting a headache halfway through our session today just thinking about it. I still have a few weeks to prepare. My therapist is going to call the doctor in the next few days, and I guess we’ll go from there. Until then, I’ll just try to deal with my anxiety about it as best I can.