LJWorld.com

Years ago, when I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I felt that a judgment had been put on my head, a label had been set and therefore that was who I was. A person with DID that had to be fixed.

I forgot about all of my other talents and became another person who needed the establishment to help me.

I went through many hospitalizations, most of which were almost as traumatic as the events that caused me to have DID.

In one hospital I was immersed into the discovery of memories, but given little to help me deal with them. I walked away feeling spent and unable to see up from down.

In State-run hospitals I was pretty much left up to my own demise. I was given medications that did or didn’t help and was treated like an inmate at a prison. The conditions of the hospital were not conducive to getting better, but to acting out to get attention.

There has always been a measure of hand-holding that individuals who have Severe and Persistent Mental Illness (SPMI) have gotten use to.

For example, when we were hospitalized, we were given instructions by our caregivers how and when to sleep, what medications we would take and basically how our lives would be lived.

Fortunately, we have come a long way from this station in life. We as CRO members, like those of us at RAHN, and individuals with disabilities everywhere have the right to determine our own destinations and make our own definitions.

However, this means we must get away from the mindset that, because we have a diagnosis, we are sheep to be corralled. It is important that we take on the responsibilities of our individuality…which has been taken from us for decades.

So, even if we are to be a self-defined group of people…for example, all of us at RAHN who are working together on our recovery…we must truly be able to define who we are and how that will look. Not how some other organization or agency or group wants to define us and how we should look.

If we are to continuously be defined as SPMI and not as people, where will we be ten years from now? Still accepting the definitions of ourselves that have always been pushed upon us? I’m bi-polar, you’re borderline personality, and so forth?

We must not let our illness define us. We are people with individual skills and talents. We are people who function and go through life just as everyone else does. Our mental illness is but a part of who we are, just as diabetes is a part of some people.

Knowing this, we must not give in to the conventional ideas of our caregivers. We need to travel out on our own and create the definitions of ourselves as we see fit.

I am no longer DID. I am a human being, getting through life just as everyone else. I am learning skills to keep me out of hospitals and thriving in my family life. I am wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, writer, artist, caregiver…and I carry on in life as these things which I chose to be with dignity.

Life does not have to be defined by our mental illness and, in fact, should not be defined by anything but who we want to be.