I was discharged from inpatient psychiatry a week ago and it feels so good to be home again. The chief physician subtly threatened that if anything happens on the ward again, I won't be allowed to come back and will have to go to another hospital (which has a worse psychiatric clinic). It felt good... Before that doctor's appointment, we sat down and wrote a 15-page handwritten letter to the head of the ward, where we addressed, among other things, our fear of not being welcome, how we've been treated over the years and that inpatient care makes diagnoses without investigation. The head had time to read it before we went home and said he thought it was a good letter and thanked me so much. It felt good. My only worry is that we'll get crap from the chief physician or not be allowed to be admitted when we need it.

The weather when we got home was sunny at least and that always cheers us up. We are feeling better but not well. Then a lot has happened and everything has gone at once since we got home and it has been and is hard. We hope that things will calm down in the future but as it looks now, the probability is small.

We have started drawing a plan of how we want our patio to look. We are going to build grow boxes around the edges. It could be really nice. We have lots of dahlia tubers that we hope to bring back to life. We bought them two years ago but last year we couldn't plant them because of construction work in the garden. So we'll see if they survive... but they should because they are dormant during the winter.

There's a lot going on inside... mainly a lot about my feeling of inadequacy as a mother but also about feeling unnecessary, redundant and pointless. Everyone needs a sense of belonging and that you have a place in society in some way. What makes us feel a little better is writing, hopefully being able to lecture and running our social media... but even there we can often feel pointless. We may have a fun project going on but it's so early that we're not 100% sure about it yet.

Tomorrow we're going to a 1st birthday party. It's going to be fun. It's my best friend's son who turned 1 a couple of weeks ago.

// Joy

It's incredibly difficult in the meantime to feel like we're doing something meaningful, like we don't matter or contribute to society. Being sick is frustrating, not being able to manage a normal everyday life (whatever that is) or be able to work or take care of our son... We really want to contribute in some way, to feel useful and that we fulfill a function. We started our little channel on social media to feel like we're doing something good, something that can make a difference and that might help someone. We love writing and photography, it usually feels like there are way too many selfies but yes, that's how it is. We don't really like being in pictures because we don't feel comfortable in our bodies but we've started to get used to it now.

Before this dip we had started dreaming, for many years we have not lived, we have survived and then you can not see into the future or dream. Now our dream is to be able to lecture on a small scale. That would have been fantastic! We love lecturing, then it actually feels like we are doing something important, something that can help someone else. I do not think we will be able to do it on a large scale but maybe if we can sometime a month or every other month. We want to spread knowledge about Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental illness, psychiatry, social services and what it is like to be a mother and live with mental illness. Important topics that are not talked about enough.

Having to place your son in a foster home or be in an inpatient psychiatric ward and living with psychiatric diagnoses is far too little talked about. There has started to be more talk about mental illness in general, but the ignorance and stigma surrounding this is still enormous, especially around my main diagnosis Dissociative Identity Disorder. But also having contact with social services in different ways, both for my son and myself, involves prejudice, ignorance and pure misinformation.

In any case, what we wanted to achieve is that we try to turn this dip around. Most of the time we can kind of ride out the wave because we know that things will get better again. We have been through this so many times now. It is when the hopelessness and darkness become so great that we see no other way out than to end our lives that we need to go to the hospital. At the time of writing, we have been hospitalized for 9 days, we usually do everything we can to not do anything stupid in the ward but when we got bad news a couple of days ago we decided that we didn't want to do it anymore. No matter what we do, we get a pang of conscience, it is extremely unfair to everyone else but at the same time, why should we always live for everyone else all the time. The only small reservation we have is how it will go for our son and our relatives but me, when we end up in that state of mind then well... you don't think clearly. But someone will always find one... There are so many people who care and when we do something stupid we always make people scared, sad and disappointed. The staff at the hospital and the accommodation are affected, they want to prevent it and when I'm logical I understand but there and then you don't want to... It just feels so mean and horrible to expose these fantastic people to our problems.

It's going to be so incredibly double... But we're going to get through this! We're going to live, not just survive. We have to stop putting ourselves in danger and everyone else in difficult situations. We have to start being kind to ourselves even though we don't see how it's going to work out right now. Tomorrow we're going home on leave and on Monday we'll be discharged if everything feels good. It's going to be nice to come home, while we're still quite unstable. But the staff at our shelter are fantastic so it's probably going to be fine.

The thing about ending everything is not something you actually want, but something you do because you can't take it anymore. The doctor yesterday asked us if we were afraid of death... I said no. We are not afraid of dying, not at all. In dark moments we don't want to live, but otherwise we do. We are hungry for new knowledge and new adventures when we feel good... We have to aim to end up there again,

// Joy

We finally have a release date for the audiobook version of She Falls Heavy. You can start listening to the book on various streaming services on August 20, 2025. There is something positive in everything that is difficult right now.

We have been in darkness for a few days. Inside it feels black as if we have a tarry, horrible mess to the core. Today we have really tried to turn it all around but not without being completely exhausted. We had a doctor's appointment and as usual we had to explain everything again... The doctor started by saying that he had read my report and that it is really good. We thought that was great, but then he continues to say that I cannot have DID because he had met people who had it and I could not have that... Ok?! we think. And as usual he goes down the Emotionally Unstable Personality Syndrome route. Then we got a little irritated and explained that you can have similar symptoms but for different reasons and that you need to have 5 out of 9 criteria to have the diagnosis. My symptoms are like two, a self-harming behavior because we punish ourselves (not to regulate emotions, as with EIPS) and that we are perceived as impulsive, this because we switch. However, the "impulsive" is planned by the changing part and is not really impulsive at all, but may be experienced that way because the previous part may have had a completely different state of mind.

Many in healthcare and elsewhere have such a hard time understanding that you can sit and have an intellectual conversation while another part of you is sitting and planning something stupid. We had to explain to the doctor that we have amnesia and how this is experienced, we had to explain a lot that if he knew the diagnosis he would know. During the conversation, several of our parts were present and co-conscious, we switched without him noticing anything... Because that's how dissociative identity disorder works. You see, not once did she talk to "Joy" because she hadn't been there for a while.

The important thing is not that they "admit" that we have DID, what we are upset about is that they continue to use a stigmatized diagnosis, which means that we are treated unfairly and wrongly. We have been treated so incredibly badly because of this diagnosis, which we have never recognized ourselves in. We have always reacted strongly to being accused of something we did not do or who we are not. We do not want a label that is simply not true. Most often we have chosen not to put effort into pointing this out to the inpatient doctors, my regular doctor and counselor for 10 years and the residential staff at my accommodation for 5 years, give me/us the right treatment and start from the diagnosis we have received after an investigation. Now we are sitting here defending ourselves again... So completely unnecessary but yes, that is what is going on in our heads right now. We are completely exhausted after a 45-minute doctor's appointment. It is often new doctors...

The regular doctor of the department, yes... he wasn't here today but he also insists that we have EIPS but has finally started writing OSDD (Unspecified Dissociative Syndrome). Always something my counselor said... However, we hope that the doctor we spoke to today understood what we were trying to explain. If you weren't crazy before, you will be after constantly telling the same thing over and over again.

Luckily, my friend who also has DID called just as we were finishing the doctor's appointment. It's so nice to talk to someone who actually understands what we're talking about without having to explain yourself. It's so nice to have someone on the same wavelength. We felt completely drained after the doctor's appointment.

We've tried everything we can to turn the ship around today. On Sunday we go home on leave and on Monday we're discharged. Because that's the plan... It doesn't matter how we feel, whether it's better or not. We understand why you have a plan to follow and we don't really want to be here, but when you become unstable and dangerous to yourself, it's necessary. But now we have a couple of days to really get back on our feet before we finally come home.

Eating is really bad right now. We can't eat much at all... We know it's not good but it just doesn't work. We try anyway but the anxiety and stuff is terrible.

At least we have to start ignoring that EIPS thing again because it just makes us upset, I'm pretty sure we'll have to read that diagnosis again when we open 1177.

// Joy

As you may have understood, we have been struggling for a while now and the last two weeks since the surgery have been very difficult. We stuck together because March 5th was International DID Awareness Day and then we were going to be on Sveriges Radio P4 Väst and talk about Dissociative Identity Disorder.

The interview went great and Angelique, who interviewed, was genuinely interested and asked great questions. It felt both important and fun to be able to be on the radio to spread knowledge about Dissociative Identity Disorder.

The link to the interview can be found below:

https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/hor-hela-intervjon-med-joy-andersson-har

Afterwards, we discussed a bit in our Facebook group for those of us with DID about whether to say DIS or DID as an abbreviation. I didn't really come up with a good answer, but yeah, what do you think? Is it confusing to use DIS? I don't know why we started using DIS, but it's the direct abbreviation for Dissociative Identity Disorder in Swedish. Then it's become so that we use it. What was discussed was whether it gets confusing because most often DID is used, which is the English abbreviation when it's called Dissociative Identity Disorder in English. I just thought that if it confuses people, we can use DID instead of DIS. It feels so double, because we're in Sweden and all that, but yeah. For us, it doesn't matter, so we think we use what most people think works best.

As you might guess from the title, we are admitted to the inpatient psychiatric unit. We held together to do the interview but have been struggling for a while now, so together with our counselor and the residential staff we decided to go to the hospital. It has been incredibly difficult, chaotic and dissociative since the operation. We have struggled for a while before that too, with food, but before it started to get complicated we had a decent period, which was nice. Now we have had self-harm problems and suicide plans since the operation and it can be dangerous. But we hope things will turn around soon so we can go home again. The chopped up and confusing life is difficult to deal with and I think it will be that way as long as we are in pain.

We miss the chickens and our apartment. On Tuesday we made a swing for the chickens and put up a mirror, I also bought some toys for them. They liked that. The mirror in particular was a big hit. I'll post some pictures below.

// Joy

Damn, how hard it is to deal with the pain. We have really intense flashbacks, we switch often and have time jumps and amnesia. The pain itself is not the hardest thing, we can handle that, but all the other bodily reactions and flashbacks are incredibly difficult to handle. I also believe that parts of the pain are psychosomatic, meaning that it is due to body memories and not from the surgery itself. But hopefully it will get better soon, it has now been a little over a week since the surgery and it would be hard for two to three weeks.

Yesterday was really hard, we almost did something stupid but I managed to stop it. We're not going to the hospital again, we'll get through this! We're in a lot of pain today too and have had to take oxycodone, the problem with that tablet is that it blocks the intestines instead and it's absolutely not good for the pain. But it's so hard when the pain reminds us of all the horrible things... We feel really stupid but it's not so easy when body memories and flashbacks take over.

One of the reasons to fight is that on Wednesday, March 5, we will be on the radio (P4 Väst at about 11:10) and talk about Dissociative Identity Disorder. March 5 is International DID Day, a day when we pay attention to Dissociative Identity Disorder. I am so happy that someone wants to be there and pay attention to DIS/DID, we have been fighting for this for a long time. It is so important to spread knowledge about mental illness and relatively uncommon diagnoses. Dissociative Identity Disorder has a prevalence of between 0.5-1.5% of the population, so we usually say that it is around 1%. What is believed is that in inpatient care and trauma care, the prevalence is significantly higher, we have heard figures of up to 10%. However, I do not know if the figure is for Dissociative Identity Disorder specifically or if OSDD (Unspecified Dissociative Syndrome) is also included.

There is a lot of research on dissociation and there are many suggestions about how it develops and within what age range. In the past, it was always said that it would be before the age of 6, but research indicates that DIS can develop until the brain begins to integrate all experiences into a whole, that is, when the brain forms the whole, the self or the sense of self. This happens sometime between the ages of 10-12. This applies specifically to the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Dissociation as a phenomenon can develop at any time in life. It is a defense mechanism for coping with traumatic or overwhelming situations. Dissociation can be found in Autism, ADHD, PTSD, EIPS, Depression, etc. It is a way of coping with overwhelming emotions or situations. The difference between DIS/DID and "regular" dissociation is primarily amnesia and the feeling that you have multiple personalities.

The reason why you feel that you have multiple personalities is that you have amnesia between your different experiences. The experiences then develop separately into your own feelings of self, this is because all the experiences cannot be integrated into a whole and then create a self. At least that is how we understand it after reading many books and essays on the subject. We are absolutely not experts and not professionals either. We base our ideas on our own experiences, perceptions and what we have learned through literature and lectures. We try to be clear about this, that we base our ideas on ourselves, for someone else with Dissociative Identity Disorder it may be different because we are different.

// Joy

Yesterday we had surgery, everything went well but now it will be a couple of tough weeks with pain. But it will be fine in the end. So far it is mostly just a matter of time, nothing we can't stand but it gets hard inside because the pain reminds us of the trauma. We have to calm the little ones down all the time and say that now is not the time.

At the hospital they were great. We had to wait a few hours before it was our turn and when I woke up the staff from the accommodation were there. It didn't hurt then because they had anesthetized us so well. We got coffee and a sandwich, the first thing we ate for the day. We weren't allowed to eat before the operation because we were anesthetized.

Yesterday we also found out how long we can extend our stay. It will be another five years. It feels so good!

Today we have decided who will read our book. It was really hard to decide but after weeding out five, there were two left. At first we liked one but she became monotonous after a while so it had to be the other. We hope it will be good. We wanted a woman to read.

March 5th is the international day when we pay attention to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Then we will be on P4 Väst and talk about DIS/DID. It will be fun! Finally, DIS is getting some attention. The broadcast is at approximately 11:10.

Otherwise, we try to take it easy. We'd love to go for a walk, but we'll have to wait a few days.

// Joy

It's been a long time since I wrote, but life has gotten in the way. Last week I was at Grandma's, it was cozy. We love being at Grandma's. Being out there is our safe place. It's so nice to have a safe place. We're afraid of what it will be like the day Grandma is no more. She's 94 now, but she can handle herself and is lively.

Today we received the news of relief that we will be able to stay in our accommodation for a few more years. We have been quite worried because you never know, it is the social services who write what they think (and they think we should stay) but it is the committee that makes the decision. Today it went up to the committee and they approved, so nice. Now we can relax again.

We have some exciting news. Our book, She Falls Heavy, will be an audiobook later this year. We don't have a date or anything yet. The process has just started. We've also taken the opportunity to order a bunch of copies of the book since the ones we had at home are gone. So we're thinking of having a couple of new raffles and you can buy it directly from me if you want.

Yesterday, I and two others named Moa and Anna made a new podcast episode for our podcast. It can be listened to on Spotify, for example, search for Livet as plural. It's fun to podcast, but it has been a bit neglected due to a lack of ideas, so when Moa and Anna wanted to join, we were happy.

Tomorrow we're going to babysit my brother's children when he and his partner are going to Thåström. It'll be fun. I was actually going to my grandmother's, but we were there last week so I had to babysit my brother instead. It's always fun to be able to help.

There were lots of things and very few facts about psychiatry, but hey, we can't always write something sensible.

// Joy

It is difficult to communicate internally, sometimes it feels completely impossible in fact. But it should be possible. With the right help, the right therapy, you should be able to achieve communication between the parts. We still don't have good communication inside, but we have worked a lot on mapping the system and starting internal communication between parts. So it is starting to work sometimes now.

As it stands now, there are a few parts that know each other or at least someone else. To try to follow who/who is there during the days, we have the app Daylio, it is mostly used as a diary but we also click in if we have been there, not everyone does this though... but yes we have to start somewhere.

Some doctors or psychologists or other healthcare professionals say that they refuse to talk to anyone other than Joy. We have heard this a million times and are equally shocked every time. What they don't know is that they have most likely already talked and interacted with someone else because we are not stupid enough to use any other name than Joy. But my point here is not that they don't understand that they have already met someone else, my point is that this approach is harmful. If you want to be able to work with an individual with Dissociative Identity Disorder, you need to allow all parts to be, talk and exist. This is because you will never be able to have communication in the dissociative system without the different parts.

The part that is most prominent is usually called the Host. Some believe that the Host is some kind of basic self that has then split into different parts or that the parts (alters) are somehow around the Host. We don't think so. For us, the Host is the one that is most prominent right now and this may change (it depends on what life is like, is it stressful, calm, scary, etc.). We believe (based on the literature we have read) that you are always born split, and when you are around 12 years old, you begin to integrate all your experiences into a sense of self. But if you have developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, the brain has set up amnesic barriers between the parts/experiences, which makes it impossible for the brain to integrate all experiences. The different experiences thus develop independently of each other and develop into several parts. Together, these form the self, all the parts are needed because all the parts are parts of the whole. The problem is the amnesic barriers between the parts. This hinders communication.

But, you can work around the amnesia. All the parts are not completely isolated from each other. Part A might have contact with part E, and part E has contact with part C. Then A could communicate with C via E. If you understand what I mean. Then A knows that E and C exist, but has the best communication with E. You can try to communicate only internally, but we feel that you can also benefit from, for example, keeping a diary, having notebooks or calendars to write and communicate in. Regardless, back to the parts. The hope is that A and C will eventually be able to communicate and share experiences directly, without having to go via E. And then you can continue to map and work with the system. It takes time, lots of time and you can work on your own at home even though it is more beneficial to work with a therapist. We have worked a lot at home ourselves, writing has helped immensely, reading about dissociation and trauma as well. We have not been able to work with the therapist, now maybe we can start at some point in the future but we have simply been too unstable. We have lived in a fog of time jumps and chaos for many years, now, after five years in a psychiatric facility, we are reasonably stable.

So what did we want to get out of writing about this? We wanted to try to explain how complex it actually is when you live with Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's not just about starting to communicate or work with traumatic memories. It's so much more difficult. We're trying and we see that it's making progress and that means a lot.

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to write in the comments or via direct message. All the best to you!

//Joy

We are sick... Being sick is not fun. We are coughing so much that our ribs and chest hurt and we have had a fever for about a week now. When we get sick, there is chaos inside. Some parts of us panic, mostly because we can't do things like we usually do. When the body doesn't function properly, already unstable parts don't know what to do about it. The only thing you can do is take it easy... not always the best thing when your head is in turmoil. When you have to take it easy, it's easy for your thoughts to spin and then there is a fight between parts.

I don't really understand why many people have to argue... There's not much we can do about being sick. We started getting sick a week ago but it escalated on Sunday. Now we just feel like a hotbed of infection... Jonas reacted very strongly to the fact that the staff put on face masks and just came in to ask how things were... After that, the staff stopped doing it so it's good. Now they come in like usual. But at the same time, they have to be allowed to wear face masks if they want to... I think it's through the staff that we got infected, but yeah, it doesn't really matter. There are many people who are sick now with coughs and fevers.

We are going to have surgery on February 21st and in connection with that we will not be able to be in the stable for 2-3 weeks and not ride for at least 4 weeks. Of course, it all depends on how much pain we have and how it heals. It feels so stupid not to be able to be in the stable and help out as usual, both because we feel good about being there and because we feel like crap because we can't help with the little kids who are riding before us... We are also sick today too...

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about it. We need to have the surgery to feel better in the long run.

Yesterday (Tuesday) it was time for a meeting with the social services. We mainly talked about how I feel now and how I have developed in recent years. We were the ones who wanted the meeting to have the chance to tell our perspective and our experiences of the contact with the social services. My son was placed via SoL 2015-2017 and via LVU 2017- now. But now they are going to cancel the LVU so he will be placed via SoL again. The reason why the LVU was placed is a long story with lots of misunderstandings between me and the social services, then they continued to have the LVU without direct basis for quite a while when they got the idea that I objected to him being placed. Something I have never done. I criticized who he was with because it was not the best for him. But yes, now it will finally be canceled. There will be no difference in practice, I want my son where he is now but formally there will be a difference. Above all, it feels better inside. The meeting was attended by a staff member from my accommodation, my doctor and my counselor, plus my son's social worker and another social worker.

Since we were allowed to move to our psychiatric facility, we have made great strides forward. We have been very, very sick for many years. We didn't understand how sick we had been until we requested our medical records. Tough reading, but we also gained perspective on how it was and what a difference it is now. We took out the medical records to be able to write our book, She Falls Heavy. After we wrote the book, we have developed enormously and gained more metacognitive thinking about ourselves and so on. We can see that we have been very sick and that, despite the fluctuating state of health, we have learned an incredible amount about ourselves. As it stands now, we can even dream a little, we want to be able to lecture a few times a year... We have a long way to go, the plan right now is not to do trauma therapy and instead focus on learning to live with our diagnoses and have as high a quality life as we can.

Today (Wednesday) we went to the hospital and had an examination. They might fix the problem today depending on how it looked. The doctor said straight away that we need to have surgery under anesthesia, because the procedure will be bigger than they first thought. So now the surgery will be in a month with anesthesia and a lot of pain for 2-3 weeks afterwards. We also won't be able to ride or do water aerobics for 3-4 weeks, but we can still be in the stables provided that we are not in too much pain or are too dissociative. Being in pain means that we risk more dissociations. It feels nervous but getting the problems fixed is priority one.

Right now I don't know how we're feeling. It's really messy inside after these two days and we've been dissociative...

Speaking of completely different things, we bought a great grow light. The plants love the light. We have four grow lights but the best one hangs over the kitchen table. It's fun to see how happy the plants became.

Have a nice day!

// Joy

This week we have been in our home municipality and looked after my brother's cat. A wonderful charming 16 year old cat. It has been cozy. We have also had time to meet dad and a couple of local friends. It is always fun when you get to meet those you usually don't have time or can't meet because of the distance.

We are starting to get stressed about whether we will get an extension at the accommodation or not. Our caseworker wants us to get it but she is not the one who decides, it is the committee. But we should get an extension because things are going well for us at the accommodation anyway. I don't know what we will do if we don't get an extension... Yes, yes, we have to hope that it will work out.

We thought we'd write a little about assistive devices. We've developed several aids to make everyday life work as well as possible.

We have a medical bracelet. Why, you might wonder. For us, it means security, on our medical bracelet is our name, social security number, diagnosis, phone number to the accommodation and a website address: IDprofile.com. There, healthcare professionals can log in with a code, which is on the back of the bracelet, to be able to read more about how to treat me in the best way and my history and medication list as well.

It is common to have a medical bracelet or necklace when you have epilepsy, take blood thinners or have Alzheimer's. We think that you might as well have a medical bracelet when you have other disabling symptoms that make you unable to orient yourself or talk further. We can end up in severe dissociation or in a fugue and then we are usually uncontactable and do not know where we are or where we are going. This means that we can end up in danger because we cannot talk or determine what is dangerous. Then a medical bracelet can be worth its weight in gold. Previously, we also had a watch with GPS which meant that the staff could find us via GPS. It was safe but unfortunately that watch has broken.

Our medical bracelet was purchased from RoadID.com. We have had bracelets from there for several years and are very happy with the quality.
We have a friend in the US, she bought her medical bracelet from americanmedical-id.com. American medical ID also has a dementia lock which means you can't take the bracelet off so easily. It can be good if you have parts that tend to come off the bracelet.

We just want to clarify that not everyone with a mental illness needs a medical bracelet. However, if you can end up in severe dissociations or severe panic attacks or flashbacks due to PTSD, etc., then a medical bracelet is a benefit both for you and for healthcare professionals or people who help you in a crisis.

We are also quite dependent on our phone because we rely on calendar functions and alarms to manage our daily lives and remember important things. We also write a diary in the app Daylio, it has helped us a lot to be able to go back and see what happened. We can add pictures, text, sound, etc.

At home we have a weekly calendar (right now we are waiting to see if we get a digital calendar from the assistance center but it takes such a terrible time...) and a food menu for each week. On Sunday we make the next week's planning and food list and shopping list. On Mondays we do our weekly shopping based on the shopping list. The list is quite important because otherwise there will be chaos inside as everyone wants different things.

We have a weekly schedule as a basis where it says, for example, when we shop, clean, do recurring activities and continue. All these frameworks give us security and predictability, which is very important to us. Because when there is a storm inside and outside, life becomes total chaos, when there is a storm inside and it is safe outside, the chaos becomes more manageable. I don't think we would have been where we are now without living in our psychiatric accommodation. The accommodation has helped to maintain security and routines when we are in chaos. As they must have struggled for us to get better. We are so happy that we have had the chance to live in our accommodation. They are fantastic, not flawless but still as good as they can be.

We have bought a gimbal stick so we can film better. It arrived the other day and we haven't really learned how to use it yet but it is so much fun to film with. It's called the DJI osmo action 6, it was a bit expensive but we have wanted one for a long time. We have made two videos and put them on our YouTube: Life as a Plural .

Have a nice day!

//Joy

We have thought a lot about how we want to develop our social media. We are thinking about investing more in our YouTube and here on the blog and giving lectures. Of course, continuing with the other social media as well, but we will try to start more videos again and here you can write a little more freely and longer texts. I don't really know what the videos will be about, but some combination of what it is like to live with mental illness/dissociative identity disorder and more knowledge dissemination. Maybe try to make at least one video a week. What do you think? Is there anything that would be interesting? It feels like our life is not interesting, but yes, that's kind of what we have to show... Sometimes it feels like we are just standing around and stomping. It becomes the same all the time and then it feels difficult to manage to grow as a platform. But as I said, maybe film during the week and make a slightly more proper video on YouTube instead, that might be more interesting. What day do you think is best to publish in that case? We really want to spread knowledge and such. We also really appreciate it when you ask questions and comment! So if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to comment.

It's been a mess inside for a while now. We're really struggling to turn it all around and get into that positive state where we feel like we can actually pursue our dreams. The only thing is that it's hard to dream when you can barely see the end of the day. But anyway, we love writing and running our social media gives us a feeling of being of some use sometimes... We often have a hard time seeing what our function is. We have small goals that we strive for, for example, that we'll make it to the next get-together or something else fun. The last get-together didn't happen because our son refused to get out of bed on time. I was sad then, I had been looking forward to meeting him.

Thinking about what to do with my book, She Falls Heavy. We've had a few competitions and things where we've given out books. Now we don't have any books left at home, but we'll have to order new copies when we can. We'd really like to make the book an audiobook too, so we're working on that now. And as I said, we want to lecture when we can, that's the dream. Do you have any tips and ideas on what we can do to, for example, spread the book even more?

This year we have lived in our psychiatric home for 5 years. It means that we now have to apply for continued accommodation with special support because you can only be granted for 5 years at a time. I really hope we get an extension, we really want to stay here. Our caseworker thinks we should have extended it, but in the end it is the committee that decides. So it feels a little uneasy. Living in the psychiatric home has really stabilized us and made us develop in the right direction. 5 years ago we were really, really sick. Life was a mess and we were a hair away from not surviving. Sure, we had received DBT and treatment homes and such, but that was not what we needed. We needed peace, security and predictability, because our diagnosis made everything just one big mess. Throwing ourselves into a treatment that we had no way of carrying out or coping with was not the right way to go. I think psychiatry could have done the whole thing much better, while they were probably helpless, they simply didn't know what to do. So many zealots who actually saved our lives. It's just such a shame that some doctors in particular have acted so terribly wrongly. I don't understand why people choose to work as psychiatrists if they don't want to help their patients. It feels like some people just want power.

When we were admitted a while ago, one of the staff said that they didn't think I would survive. They had simply given up on us when we were placed in our psychiatric facility. At first we were in a more short-term facility but it never got any better. You had a room with a toilet, there was a dining room that was only open at certain times and a kind of activity house but it wasn't a good place. There were too few staff for too many users and many of them were addicted. They missed supervisions and medications and yes, it was simply not good. Where we live now, there is a high staff density and the wards are small with only 7-8 users. The staff is continuously trained and it is calm and stable. There is zero tolerance for drugs and alcohol here, which we think is great. Not because we were doing it but because those who do that tend to be more capricious and aggressive. It's not perfect here of course, there have been misplaced clients and staff, but they usually don't stay long-term and that's nice. For us, it's often a real pain when routines are broken, for example when it's temporary workers, especially if they're new. They don't know us or our signals and it's stressful. Most people want to, but yes, you can't get along with everyone, that's the way it is. As I used to tell my students; You don't have to be best friends or like everyone, but you should treat each other with respect, in a fair way and be able to cooperate with each other. But that requires that both parties have the same attitude. We hate bullying, especially when it's adults who are being bullied. But bullying usually comes from the adults and their way of talking and acting... Regardless, it's difficult to have temporary workers and other staff that you don't trust.

Well, I've rambled on in this text. We want to wish you a really good day!

// Joy