On Monday it was decided that we would go to the hospital and closed psychiatric ward. So now we are here... Will be here for a few days stabilization. Some parts that are quite destructive were/are on the move. That's how a lot right now... We were quite low before grandma died but now we're quickly diving down. I had absolutely no desire to go to the hospital, but it's for the best.

It becomes dangerous to ourselves when destructive parts wants to hurt us. I usually am quite destructive but I have become calmer, but when the system becomes depressive while some parts are ravaged, it becomes more difficult...

Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder is difficult. explain. What fascinates people the most is this feeling that you has multiple personalities. And I understand why, it's an incredibly complex and interesting and weird diagnosis. It's hard to grasp, how the brain instead of to be integrated into a sense of wholeness continues to be fragmented. It is a controversial diagnosis that unfortunately many doctors don't believe exists. When we were at the hospital once the chief physician sat down and told me that DID does not exist. Can you understand how offensive it feels when someone sits and tells you that your experiences and your way of being does not exist. Thank you for it as well…

In any case, I think these self-proclaimed experts should think again. Anders Hansen is another doctor who is in the media and says that DID does not exist. He believes this because one cannot forget memories, but when you have DID you haven't forgotten your memories, they belong to a other part and is thus not available to other parts. It sounds twisted but between parts there are amnesiac barriers that make it seem like the memory is gone for other parts. But with the right conditions, the memory is there Hansen believes that you can't "forget" your childhood... but I have very few memories from my childhood, it's like a black hole of nothingness. Some parts have a few memories but I don't own them. I know a lot that happened, things that are in photos and that have been retold to me, but it is not a memory which is available to me.

When we wrote our book, because there were several of us who had to be helped ate, so we wrote down pieces of memories in a document. So the one who fronted right then and wanted to write wrote down his thoughts and memories, plus we used us from the medical records and social services. So writing was a big puzzle. Today I would have written differently because I now have a couple of years more experiences... The book may feel messy in parts, but that's because life was messy then. It was total chaos. The chaos consisted, among other things, of not being able to believed in my/our experience, we still have to fight against prejudice and ignorance every time we seek care. It's incredibly frustrating. There are lots of research into dissociation problems and there are logical explanations to why the brain does what it does.

There have been two camps within psychiatry, those who believe in our experience and those who don't. It is possible to trace DID as far as back to the 14th century (I think it was, I can't bear to double check right now). The diagnosis/experience has been around for hundreds of years but under different name. Today we know more about how the brain reacts to trauma, especially in childhood. I'm reading a book about this right now (but it's taking a while time because it is difficult to understand what I am reading right now). In trauma, the experience of moving from the reptilian brain to the thinking and reflective part of the brain. You could say that memory gets stuck at a stage which means that the brain does not understand that the event is not happening now, this is because the memory never reaches the reflective brain that can make one understand that it is not happens now, that it is just a memory. These memories have an easier time coming up to the surface when they have not been moved to the memory bank/long-term memory or whatever now I'll call it. It stays and if you're reminded of something/triggered, then you get flashbacks. Flashbacks can be like a movie, but also a smell, a feeling, a fragment, etc. It may be that in the middle of a happy moment you feel Great fear and insecurity, although you don't know why.

Now I've lost the point of my wordplay... I I think the idea was to describe that DID is not just about different parts of a whole (because all the parts form the whole) but it is primarily about living with severe trauma. All research indicates that one must be involved in repeated long-term trauma before the age of 9-12 years to develop DID. This is because as a child you are divided, it is only after the age of 9-12 that one begins to integrate all one's experiences into a whole. Trauma makes (as I wrote earlier) that you cannot transfer experience to the thinking person the brain and therefore it is not possible to integrate the traumatic event into a sense of wholeness. The divided child remains divided.

In order to live and survive, the brain creates amnesiacs barriers between their memories and experiences, which makes separate personalities develop independently of each other. Some parts take on the trauma so that some other parts can function in everyday life. The parts you live with can be anything from fully developed and functioning parts to fragments, a feeling or a behavior. Some parts only appear in specific situations while other parts function more generally. Some parts function in everyday life while other parts only work inside. At least that's how I understand it that after reading many books about trauma and dissociation.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is so much more than just a feeling of being several inside. As the name suggests, you also have big problems with dissociations of various kinds. You can have depersonalization, derealization, dissociative amnesia, etc. Feelings of unreality of various kinds. For example, sounds may feel like at a distance or the volume is turned up and attacks you. We can get stuck still for hours, unable to move or speak. Many times we feel foggy in the head and everything seems to be in slow motion, we get a headache and it kind of tightens over the forehead and eyes. A dissociation can mean that we is about to change personality, but not always. We can feel that way otherwise also.

A shift can be fast or slow. In the case of a fast shift It's hard to keep up and it's impossible to predict or prepare. Slow shifts are a bit more difficult because you can feel mixed/blended for a long time. It becomes difficult to mask and we lose the words or what we were talking about or doing. Almost all exchanges take place on based on various triggers. It can be something positive or negative for the part that is ahead or the part that takes over. We kind of have a place in the head where several people can stay and we have named it the Hub. In the Hub you can the parts are co-conscious, i.e. peeking at what is happening with the body. But here it is also complicated, some parts do not know about each other or will do not agree. We have mapped the parts we know exist by comparing different parts made themselves known in various ways. For example, by writing, leaving messages or entered in our diary that they had arrived, etc.

When you live with DID, you always have complex PTSD with everything. what it means. It can often be difficult with relationships, fluctuating moods, flashbacks also continue. A great many are misdiagnosed before they get a DID diagnosis, often with Emotionally unstable personality syndrome (EIPS) as well called borderline. DID, cPTSD and EIPS have many of the same symptoms but there are different reasons for the behavior/symptom. That's what bothers me incredibly, that an EIPS diagnosis is often made without doing proper investigations. At least that was the case for us, they haven't done any investigation for EIPS, they only diagnosed me because they thought my behavior was appropriate in. But the reason for the problem is something else entirely. It has taken years to reduce the impact on how we are treated because the hospital made the EIPS diagnosis before we received an investigation that later turned out to give us a DID diagnosis and complex PTSD. But now I won't whine more about that... but unfortunately you often get treated badly when you have EIPS in the journals.

The last thing I want to say here, because now the post is starting to get... very far, is that you often have comorbidity when living with DID. We have to example recurring depressions (although I'm starting to wonder if it's not constant depression because it feels like it), self-harm, anxiety, eating disorders and a likely anoxic brain damage after multiple suicide attempts. So it's complicated and It's hard to know exactly what's what always. But the dissociations and The splits come from the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Thank you for taking the time to read this novel. Have you any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to write in the comments and we will We will try to answer. Have a nice day!

Today my best friend and family visited. We went swimming in the pool, went for a walk and had chicken salad. Now I'm lying down listening to the Green Party's Almedal speech and I have to say that it's the best speech so far. Significantly better rhetoric than KD, SD and L who spent more than half their speeches smearing S, V and MP. Yesterday on the way home I listened to SD. What a fucking crap speech. I don't understand why politicians are allowed to stand there and outright lie and then everyone else who goes along with the crap. You can't improve welfare without money, money comes in through taxes. Lowering taxes as the right wants will worsen welfare. It's not possible to have a good, equal school, health and care without taxes. Solidarity in society has disappeared and polarization has increased. Us and the judgmental thinking that the right is driving is dangerous. We who are rich against you who are poor, we who are native Swedes against you who are immigrants, etc. No society is good for that attitude; a good society is built on solidarity and a "we are together" mentality.

Does Sweden have problems? Yes. Do these problems need to be solved? Yes. Is the right way to point fingers and blame each other? No! Sweden needs solidarity and strong welfare. I would gladly pay 100 SEK extra in taxes if schools and healthcare were better and received more money. You can't suppress the sick and vulnerable, in our real Sweden we are in solidarity with our neighbor, we help each other and build a strong country.

Now it got very political 🤪 but politics is so important. Politics affects our entire society and therefore our lives. In Sweden we have a democracy. In a democracy you have rights but also obligations. One such obligation is to vote, because without elections we have no democracy. If you don't know what to vote for, you vote blankly, but you should vote. I think it's terribly bad of people who don't vote. Sorry but it's lousy, especially if you then sit and complain about your life. So regardless of whether you know what you want to vote for or not, go and vote, because as I said, you can vote blankly.

Now I've written so long that I'm going to listen to Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democrats. So far, her speeches are better than those right-wing populists who want to turn Sweden into a mini-USA. And you know, the USA is a very dysfunctional country.

It's already been a week. A week since you fell asleep. Now you're with grandpa and mom... We hope at least you're with all your loved ones who went before you! Because we don't know what happens when we die... if you just disappear or if you live on...

It's mostly just empty here. We have a hard time feeling emotions, dissociating a lot and trying to grasp that you're gone too now. Everything happened so terribly fast... You, grandpa and mom, some of the nicest people we've ever gotten to know.

It's hard to deal with losses if you're "normal" but when you have DID it takes even more. Not everyone understands that you're gone, not everyone knows it yet but I'm doing my best to try to make sure everyone knows. I can't understand it myself... how is Ella, for example, supposed to understand...

Death also makes me reflect on our own mortality. So many times we have been so terribly close to not being there anymore... I don't want to do that to those close to me, especially not my son. It's scary that the brain can distort everything so that ending feels like an option... Right now it's calm, I'm not the one who thinks that way but those inside who do, scare me.

Yesterday we were at the funeral home planning your funeral. I hope it will be nice!

❤️ Grandma, grandpa and mom ❤️

Yesterday, June 17 -26 my grandmother passed away. She took her last breaths as I sat there holding hers. Love you forever angel moemoe

Life is so crazy messy... mostly messy inside actually but also outside. A lot has happened and I'm both tired and stressed. But I've had the honor of babysitting my best friend's kids for a while and it's super cozy.

Once again I'm thinking about shutting down our social media, but not everyone wants to because most people think it gives them a lot to share life with everything it entails. It's mostly just me who hesitates and thinks it feels dangerous. Yesterday I had to remove a post that was written when someone inside was angry at how the driver of the ride-hailing service drove. Angry at the drivers in general because unfortunately many of them drive very badly. The language and choice of words in the post were anything but good though... But he drove at times over 145km/h, I think he was up to 148km/h at most. But I reported him so hopefully he'll at least get a warning. I know we should tell the driver but usually we don't dare then and there, especially since we don't know the driver who is also usually a man. Unknown men are unpleasant.

Right now I'm at my grandmother's but I'm going home today. The weather has been sunny, cloudy, rainy and windy. So quite ambivalent weather right now. I'm reading a book called: Sensory pathways to healing from trauma. It's incredibly interesting. I'll write about it here when I've finished reading it but I think it's great. It goes into great detail about how the brain works and why you get PTSD, cPTSD and DID, for example, and how trauma causes the thinking brain to be blocked.

I'm planning on going to grandma's again soon anyway. The summer is fantastic out here on the islands. We are still dissociative very often and it feels hard, especially it feels hard to get stuck in a dissociation as this makes us so incredibly vulnerable.

All the best to you!

// Maray

It's been a long time since we wrote here on the blog, so it's time to start writing again.

Today we have read a little bit of the book: Sensory pathways to healing from trauma. Now we only have 1½ chapters left. It feels good to read about the brain's plasticity and the ability to relearn, but it is also so exciting about how the brain works and why we react the way we do.

Last Friday we watched or rather listened to Anja Söderberg's defense of her doctoral thesis. It's about Dissociative Identity Disorder and inpatient care. So good! Finally someone who says out loud that inpatient care is terrible at trauma and especially dissociation. I haven't read her research yet but it's at the top of the list after Sensory pathways...

We have long said that inpatient care has large knowledge gaps about trauma and dissociation. And we say that based on our own experiences, how we have been treated and treated over the years. In the book Sensory pathways... they talk about the importance of predictability, clarity and calm in being able to recover from trauma. Something you rarely see on a psychiatric inpatient ward. In my book, She Falls Heavy, I try to convey the chaos that has been in care. It is so important to get the right diagnosis and with it the right help.

Why is it so terribly difficult to feel good enough as a parent? We often feel like the worst mother in the world... It's so incredibly difficult to balance parenting with mental illness. It's hard to be a parent normally, but it often feels impossible when you're also sick... Then it feels like it becomes extra vulnerable because my son doesn't live with me. He's fantastic and extremely independent, which is good in many ways, but we struggle with the feeling of being inadequate and superfluous. I'm sure all mothers feel that way at some point... It's hard to be a teenage mother... Then it's hard because we haven't really gotten to be a mother for social services, with too short contact times, etc. Now it's better, but otherwise we've had to be a mother more in the background and children don't understand that. We've had to sign papers and stuff, but meeting our child enough to build a really good relationship has been worse. Meeting for 3-4 hours every three weeks is contrived and far from natural and that's what we got while he was growing up. Now he's so big that he wants to fend for himself (which is fantastic) but then I feel completely redundant. Although now we get to hang out more naturally but it's only on his terms and never on mine. God how whiny it sounds but the feeling of inadequacy is eating away at me and with it the longing for my son. Don't get me wrong, we have a great relationship based on the circumstances. I just want him to be happy and that he (despite his messy upbringing) wants his mother in the picture...