dissociative identity disorder

One time, many years ago, I sat in a counselors office.  She nudged her glasses down her nose slightly, looked me straight in the eye and said, Its not possible that any one person has had all these terrible things youve told me about happen to them in one short lifetime.  Rather than working on the things you thought youd come to me for, were going to work on your problem with lying.

Lying?!

Every word Id told her during the three sessions was the absolute truth. Each and every one of those horrible things had happened to me.

Well, does it need to be said that I didnt go back to see her again after that?  She probably just assumed that shed called my bluff and caught me in my lies.

But the sad thing was that I hadnt lied to her.  Id come to her office seeking help because I knew I wasnt equipped to deal with the magnitude of troubles I was trying to work through, and dissociative identity disorder a trained professional to help me sort out the of my difficult young life.

I was only 22-years-old at the time.

Im now nearly 50 & dissociative identity disorder you know what?  Life just dissociative identity disorder on happening.  The issues I dealt with at the dissociative identity disorder of the disbelieving counselor were difficult, tis true, but pale in comparison to the things I deal with now.

Things like discovering after 25 years of marriage (we married when I was 19), that my husband has Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID]   it used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.  Yep, the whole Sybil and Three Faces of Eve routine.

I found out that Id essentially been married to a mulitude for my entire adult life. 

Unbelievable, you say?  Well, I found it unbelievable dissociative identity disorder first, dissociative identity disorder it sure explained a lot, let me tell It explained the sudden changes in my husband, the memory lapses, the abuses, the kindnesses, the inconsistencies, the rages, the childlike actions, the dissociative identity disorder thinking, everything.

Golly, its been a wild ride.

But then guess what happened?  Youll never guess. 

My husband (same guy) was diagnosed at almost the same time with a fatal, degenerative brain disorder (Frontotemporal Lobe Dementia, aka FTLD) that has caused his DID to become out of control.  What used to be something that was subtle (or at least subtle to people outside our home, that is) and fairly under control, turned into something he could no longer control.  As the frontal lobe of his brain deteriorates, hes losing impulse control and losing the ability to keep himself from acting out.

For example:  If he feels the impulse to hit someone, he will.  If he feels the impulse to switch to being a young child lost in the city, he will.  If he feels an impulse to rage on the road, he will.  If he feels the impulse to toss someone across the room, he will.

Due to the severe changes and frightening diagnosis my dissociative identity disorder has undergone, it sadly became necessary to in seperate homes.

We have three children (well, theyre not really kids anymore & technically, theyre a preteen, a teen, and a young adult) still living at home.  If itd just been my husband and myself living at home, I think I might have tried to find a way to stay in dissociative identity disorder same house with him (maybe get a deadbolt on dissociative identity disorder room for myself or something).  But I was told by doctors, lawyers, social workers and counselors, that it was dissociative identity disorder for someone with my husbands two conditions (or even just one of the problems) to live in the same house with children/teens.  Itd put them at risk for mental and bodily (if not worse).

So all at once, I not only found out my husband was suffering from a serious mental illness and that he was also dying a slow death from a progressive, untreatable, incureable, degenerative brain disorder & Id also become a single parent & all in one big swoop.

Ugh.

Remember that counselor I mentioned earlier who insisted I was lying about my life?  Well, I suspect if shed known back then that I was married to a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder (with at least 6 different indentifiable personalities), she might have understood a little better what was happening in my life.  Many of the things that had happened were the result of various parts of dissociative identity disorder husband acting out his rages and manipulations on me.

So even though I was just one person, I was married to essentially six different dissociative identity disorder & all with a variety of ways of handling life, and only one of the parts was essentially sane.   In many ways, it was like I got to experience the married life of six abused, battered, and manipulated women in my one little life.

Well, thats a short version of some of what Ive faced over the past quarter century or dissociative identity disorder of married life.

Betty