Why We Are Not Currently In Therapy For Our Dissociative Identity Disorder
We’ve decided to briefly explain why we’re not currently in therapy, which intersects with why we are not “formally” diagnosed and why we are not using our legal name on this blog.
This is Cordelia, but I’ll be allowing my others to have input. (Actually, we’re switchy and we’re losing track-- Cordelia did most of this though.) (Actually this was written across multiple days and several had input.) (Actually-the-third, this was mostly written before Healing Together 2026 and a couple more notes have been added here and there since.)
1. DID-specific therapy is prohibitively expensive.
After looking for therapists that specifically work with DID, it seems that the going rate in our area is $300 per session. At that price, even a singular session in a month would be a severe financial strain, if manageable at all. Two or more sessions in one month would definitely not be possible.
We’re looking into alternatives, such as interns that work at cheaper rates and peer support.
That said, this paragraph is Nadia, and I will be blunt, therapy even at $100 a session would be a strain. I can’t afford to go to the doctor despite needing to, I don’t have a primary care physician. A visit to an urgent care, which I had this month, fucks my month. The car breaking down, which it frequently does, fucks my month, and prevents saving up for a new vehicle. My spouse nearly died two years ago and we both have debt from trying to survive that. I will highly likely never afford my own home, I cannot afford rent, and the parent my spouse and I live with can’t afford to have us move out. I am employed full-time and make more than minimum wage, my spouse is employed part time and is unable to find full time work despite a diligent job search and a “good” degree, and we are barely surviving. We can’t eat out unless it’s a very special occasion (and then we still have to stick with somewhere “cheap”) because it’ll be too expensive, I can’t recall the last time we saw a movie theatrically because it’s too expensive, we can’t buy books or clothes or anything that’s not a necessity because it’ll be too expensive. I can only afford to go to Healing Together this year because the parent I don’t live with gifted me the cost of admission (EDIT POST HEALING TOGETHER: and this year was a tad fucked for me honestly, but it was Healing Together, good things were still had from it). Earlier today, upon hearing a couple regular bills might increase, I had a nervous breakdown and asked, “What’s the point of living if I can’t afford to enjoy life?” And I can’t say that too loud because if some idiot decides to hospitalize me against my will, I have no idea how I will pay the bill. If I’m a “bad person” for not being able to afford therapy, if I’m a “DID faker” for not being in therapy, I invite you to either pay the therapy bill or shut the fuck up.
Prices like this create a situation in the USA where the wealthy are the most likely to survive this condition while the poor are priced out of diagnosis and treatment (some estimates say that over 70% of people with DID attempt suicide-- keep in mind, that was calculated with people whom have been diagnosed). DID is obviously not the only condition this applies to, but I notice an odd bias where some people seem to think DID “only seems to happen to wealthy people.” That’s not true whatsoever. Any time you see a condition that seems to disproportionately effect the wealthy, there are plenty of poor people who also have it, but the wealthy are the ones that survive and don’t feel that their livelihood will be threatened by speaking about it. Which brings us to reason 2.
2. The stigma surrounding DID is life-altering.
Several years ago, I (not Cordelia, don’t feel like specifying) told a friend of many years that I believed I might have DID and detailed some recent experiences. This person told me to “get on antipsychotics before the voices in my head tell me to kill someone.” What’s worse, that ex-friend was an aspiring therapist, as well as a person with a history of violent behavior that knew I had no such history. In fact, I ended the friendship because this person proved to still be violent, in that case towards a small animal.
I haven’t told any physical health doctor about having DID. Doctors already seem a bit nervous around me when I say I have the dissociative subtype of PTSD.
Other doctors have denied patients with DID their bodily autonomy, refusing them services including (but not limited to) HRT and giving and receiving organ transplants. People with DID have had their newborns removed from their custody after giving birth. Even those in the Mental Health profession are nervous to “come out” about having DID after hearing terrible remarks about DID from colleagues and find themselves having to argue colleagues and strangers alike about what DID is really like.
Other people have lost their jobs and housing from this diagnosis. Drew, whom is half of the podcasting team A Couple Of Multiples, was recently fired from her job as a teacher despite doing very well at her job because a parent found her podcast, spread it to other parents, and claimed to be concerned that she would “switch and get stuck as an alter unable to teach,” which had never happened before. She was lucky enough to find a new job quickly. Many in this job market aren’t.
That’s without repeating what US politicians have recently been saying about mental health and people diagnosed with certain conditions. Now is not the time to get any new diagnosis on my record. I do not feel safe doing so.
In order for therapy to be safe for me, there needs to be no formal diagnosis, no records. That’s also part of why I/We are blogging without our legal name. We hope that we can attach our name to this one day, but not today.
3. We’re currently trying to process trauma from bad “therapy” in our childhood. (Or, specifically, Evelyn is.)
Many people with DID have had bad therapy experiences. It takes about a decade on average for those frequently in therapy and in-and-out of mandatory psych holds to be correctly diagnosed with DID. This could involve multiple therapy modalities that just don’t work, medications that either don’t work or make things worse, and possible abuse in psychiatric hospitals, or even by individual therapists. When we were a child, we had an issue with an individual.
We’re not actually positive what qualifications our middle school guidance counselor held, but she acted as a therapist for us, and she was not good. In short (because I’m sure Evelyn and Mitzi will elaborate on this sometime later), we were bullied in middle school, and we were treated as though we were the problem. She was also aware that we had recently experienced suicidal ideation and, to her point of view, decided not to commit suicide after beginning to speak to a fictional character, but she did not refer my parents to more qualified mental health professionals until the final week of 8th grade.
Mitzi knew it was wrong as it was happening, while it seems that Evelyn internalized some of it and just realized how it’s been effecting her long-term.
This is one of the reasons why Mitzi, outside of some concepts from Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, is into anti-psychiatry: it’s not often acknowledged that bad therapy can have a negative impact equal to the positive impact of good therapy. (We were introduced to a life-changing Frankl quote in CPT for PTSD by a very good therapist that did radical good for Clementine, if not several more of us; Mitzi wants to acknowledge he was really great.)
Since the emotional burden resurfaced, Evelyn has been in an incandescent rage. I (I’m Cordelia, this part actually is me) realize her previous blog entry was more serene. I have been trying to keep the burden of what’s currently happening in the world more distant from Evelyn and Ignatius because Ignatius was already processing a lot, Evelyn hit a point of overwhelm before this, and now it seems they’re both processing a lot. But, I believe they can help each other. I’m only here because their love saved us back then! And Mitzi has been amazing at helping her others lately as well. So, I think the best thing for this right now is to give us a minute.
If a therapist or someone perceived as a therapist hurt you psychologically, hesitancy to try another therapist would be understandable, wouldn’t it? So, the rest of us are not pushing to start with a new therapist immediately. When this hurts Evelyn a little less, we’re aiming for something in the near future, given it’s affordable. (Update: We have someone specific in mind we hope to see, bearing in mind that the world is constantly becoming less affordable and we have yet to see if the cost will actually be do-able.)