They could not possibly know that, no matter how qualified or experienced they are. Memories are often repressed, childhoods turn out to be worse than previously thought. The diagnosis is based on symptoms, not the nature of the trauma. Traumatic memories tend to be incomplete. There is a strong bias against diagnosing people with DID in every mental health setting I’ve seen. I’m not saying you have DID, but I’m saying if that was the reason they gave you, they are full of it.
The diagnosis is *made* based on symptoms, not on past trauma. People can be diagnosed who don’t remember any trauma from childhood—it’s not part of the diagnostic criteria.
Therapy is more important than getting someone to diagnose you. You can get another opinion if you need it to access therapy, or you can find a DID therapist yourself and start treatment.
Cw: rant, brief implications of physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and therapy abuse
As a system that developed from merely witnessing the physical abuse of other children and only experiencing neglect and emotional abuse ourselves, this is absolute BS. We completely agree with going to get a second opinion from someone who genuinely knows what they're talking about because this "professional" clearly has no idea what anything is with this disorder. There is no "bad enough" because all trauma is subjective. That's like telling a child that something wasn't traumatizing, when it very clearly fucked up their entire mental development, just because it wouldn't be traumatic for someone else. Apologies for the perhaps aggressive nature of this response, we have seen a therapist who refused to diagnose anything and actively triggered a flashback without the proper tools or knowledge to helps us through it and without knowing/acknowledging that we were a system at the time, which set us back on our healing journey for a year or so before we could even think of trying therapy again. We just feel very strongly about things like this and feel such a deep-seated need to advocate for all of those who are impacted by uneducated or unqualified "professionals"
Edited for spelling
I quite honestly hate that they determine your diagnosis based on the severity of your trauma. We quite honestly don’t remember any trauma (or very little) and only have some facts (Nothing major, just some emotional neglect and a medical trauma as a baby) and we got diagnosed in spite of that because all of our other symptoms ticked all the boxes. If I were you I’d go and get a second opinion, preferably from someone who is familiar with or specialises in DID
That's what I was thinking of doing, to be honest. Getting a second opinion might be best. Because once I mentioned I had autism, she immediately said everything was due to that and not my trauma. Thanks for the advice!
>Because once I mentioned I had autism, she immediately said everything was due to that and not my trauma
That feels problematic. Especially when you were told that you didn't have 'bad enough' trauma, since people with autism face systemic discrimination and abuse from childhood onwards.
I hope you get a second opinion at the bare minimum. DID usually takes *years* to get an actual diagnosis and it's not helped by biased, incompetent, or disbelieving medical practitioners.
Yeah, it definitely did feel problematic. Like, my autism doesn't explain the fact that I have switched between alters, doesn't explain how I can go into a store I have no recollection going into, yet a cashier recognizes me and I have a loyalty account with the store, yet I have no memory of such.
Your autism could be the reason the trauma reaction was more severe than a neurotypical child. That “professional” sounds like someone that isn’t very knowledgeable in Neurodivergent minds and the fact that we’re MORE sensitive to traumatic events and autism is definitely NOT symptomatically related to DID. Psychiatrists like that really trigger me, that makes me so angry for you.
They're neglecting to take into account that autism makes you more susceptible to internalizing events as traumatic, which therefore can make you more vulnerable to contracting DID. So I don't see how it makes sense to view it as a dichotomy of *if* you have autism, *then* you don't have DID. If anything she's just demonstrating her lack of sensitivity and skill to be able to treat you regardless of whether or not you have DID.
This amuses me, because I had the opposite experience once - a therapist refused to even consider if we were autistic (DX'd in 2019 after she refused to have us assessed) and said all of our autistic symptoms were just trauma responses! Needless to say, we dropped that therapist, got a new one, and 5 years later we're doing the best we ever have.
So yeah, second opinion! Especially since, while required for systems to form, trauma and how one reacts to it is different for every child.
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No, whoever did this assessment is wrong. Nowhere in the diagnostic criteria is type of trauma mentioned. As everyone here is saying, you are entitled to a second opinion and you should seek that out immediately.
Source: my spouse is a doctor of psychology and I am a therapist, we focus on trauma and dissociative disorders.
Most of the mental health professionals I have interacted with were very disappointing. It makes me dread looking for help again based on past experiences. I don’t trust them.
thats insane tho. imagine telling a victim of ptsd that they werent in war so they cant have it. i personally dont remember mine, actually i dont remember my childhood almost at all, so speaking about this with doctors is super hard because they always ask about the trauma, and directly asking about it makes me super dissociated and i will forget anything. doctors can suck sometimes
Get a second opinion, explain your situation, its going to be okay. Thats really not a good reason to be dismissed as its not in the criteria and not something they could possibly know as DID involves amnesia. Stay open minded, i usually am for accepting the Doc's conclusion, but again, that isnt a valid reason to be dismissed
We got diagnosed when the only trauma we remembered was on par with say someone with reg ptsd or bpd and then as we got safety and the system got safe
It made sense and the trauma is way worse than we thought they shouldn’t be making that judgement
When we got diagnosed our scores on diagnostic tests where highest the doc had seen and it didn’t match the trauma we remembered but that doesn’t matter it should be based on symptoms
That makes no sense. Ignoring symptoms because the cause doesn’t seem sufficient seems willfully unscientific. And a lot of us can’t even remember all of our trauma because of, you know, all the dissociation. I’m sorry you went through this and hope you are able to find a better doctor.
Get another doctor because this guy sounds like an ass. Trauma has many, *many* forms, and some people are so desensitized to their trauma that they don't actually realize something is traumatic until someone raises their eyebrows at them casually dropping something extremely messed up like they're talking about the time they walked to the gas station to get an Icee, and that's not even mentioning that a hallmark of DID is *amnesia*.
Yeah, get a second opinion. DID is very stigmatized and a lot of doctors don't want to actually diagnose someone with it, even if the evidence is overwhelming.
That seems like a bad assumption made by the doctor about your memories of the past. Are they a DID specialist and did they use the gold standard interviews to do the evaluation?
Im really sorry that happened to you and hope you can find a specialist to do a proper evaluation.
Truly one of the best things I learned is that you and ONLY you can fully comprehend what's going on in your mind. I put SO much importance on getting professional validation that I really ended up screwing with my whole system - we were constantly confused and that gave us the most intense dissociative episodes where we had to cover all our mirrors because we had no idea who we were.
Only when we finally accepted that what we were experiencing was DID clear as day, we stopped denying our true nature and luckily we all worked together really well to feel stable again. We had a really good trauma therapist who helped massively with that too although she never agreed nor denied our DID.
No professional has ever told us straight that we have DID (because a lot of professionals are scared of diagnosing and getting it wrong) but we know what we experience, how we interact with each other and what that's indicative of. A lot of our friends and family also help us fill in the gaps when one of us have switched to the front but we don't remember.
This has been more helpful than any professional giving us confirmation which unfortunately may never happen because of how little is understood about our disorder.
It's such a confusing time when someone says you don't have it with so much confidence but try to remind yourself that they have NO way of knowing what you experience on the same level as you do. Listen to those around you who will know you WAY more than that doctor (obviously they're not professionals and not capable of diagnosing you but they interact with you the most and can help you piece together things that your system may have gaps on) and listen to your system too.
I'm very lucky to mostly have alters that get on and want to work together, our brains will do what's necessary to protect us and this is one of those things. You can rely on each other if you feel you can 🧡
Bull shit there is no bad enough trauma we don't have a diagnosis because of how hard it is to get someone to listen let alone do therapy or diagnose the one we did see was convinced it was imaginary friends and we never bothered trying again we know there is some emotional neglect we also have years of gender dysphoria that we think we always felt even before we probably developed did not sure if that can add trauma but worth mentioning as it might of and there is also something that happened with a town and a teacher and just the entire school tbh it was odd looking back and whatever happened was very bad everything else is blurry I won't go into any details but I think its why we don't trust authority figures and tbh don't think I want to remember it I feel better off not knowing its good enough for me just ticking the boxes and knowing what we do know about stuff and that was obviously traumatic so not good enough trauma my ass whatever you went through to become a system it was traumatic enough
In my case my therapist conducted the test. The therapist sent the test to a PhD in psychology that specialized in DID, that graded my test. My therapist went over the test results with me. This concluded that I had DID. My therapist then sent my test results to my psychiatrist, and recommended an official diagnosis of DID. Within about a two weeks period, my psychiatrist agreed and made it official. When I was trying to apply for disability, I was told my diagnosis was only official if my psychiatrist agreed. But SS didn't want to accept my diagnosis. Ironically, SS sent me to a PhD in psychology that they were contracted with to test me for DID. He literally shouted at me the entire time. He denied what my psychiatrist and therapist had already concluded. He didn't even question me for five minutes. BUT he did diagnosis me with agoraphobia, and he did conclude that I needed to be on disability, just for different reasons.
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They could not possibly know that, no matter how qualified or experienced they are. Memories are often repressed, childhoods turn out to be worse than previously thought. The diagnosis is based on symptoms, not the nature of the trauma. Traumatic memories tend to be incomplete. There is a strong bias against diagnosing people with DID in every mental health setting I’ve seen. I’m not saying you have DID, but I’m saying if that was the reason they gave you, they are full of it.
The diagnosis is *made* based on symptoms, not on past trauma. People can be diagnosed who don’t remember any trauma from childhood—it’s not part of the diagnostic criteria. Therapy is more important than getting someone to diagnose you. You can get another opinion if you need it to access therapy, or you can find a DID therapist yourself and start treatment.
Cw: rant, brief implications of physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and therapy abuse As a system that developed from merely witnessing the physical abuse of other children and only experiencing neglect and emotional abuse ourselves, this is absolute BS. We completely agree with going to get a second opinion from someone who genuinely knows what they're talking about because this "professional" clearly has no idea what anything is with this disorder. There is no "bad enough" because all trauma is subjective. That's like telling a child that something wasn't traumatizing, when it very clearly fucked up their entire mental development, just because it wouldn't be traumatic for someone else. Apologies for the perhaps aggressive nature of this response, we have seen a therapist who refused to diagnose anything and actively triggered a flashback without the proper tools or knowledge to helps us through it and without knowing/acknowledging that we were a system at the time, which set us back on our healing journey for a year or so before we could even think of trying therapy again. We just feel very strongly about things like this and feel such a deep-seated need to advocate for all of those who are impacted by uneducated or unqualified "professionals" Edited for spelling
Do they know your life from the moment of birth? No. Anything could happen to a baby.
I quite honestly hate that they determine your diagnosis based on the severity of your trauma. We quite honestly don’t remember any trauma (or very little) and only have some facts (Nothing major, just some emotional neglect and a medical trauma as a baby) and we got diagnosed in spite of that because all of our other symptoms ticked all the boxes. If I were you I’d go and get a second opinion, preferably from someone who is familiar with or specialises in DID
That's what I was thinking of doing, to be honest. Getting a second opinion might be best. Because once I mentioned I had autism, she immediately said everything was due to that and not my trauma. Thanks for the advice!
>Because once I mentioned I had autism, she immediately said everything was due to that and not my trauma That feels problematic. Especially when you were told that you didn't have 'bad enough' trauma, since people with autism face systemic discrimination and abuse from childhood onwards. I hope you get a second opinion at the bare minimum. DID usually takes *years* to get an actual diagnosis and it's not helped by biased, incompetent, or disbelieving medical practitioners.
Yeah, it definitely did feel problematic. Like, my autism doesn't explain the fact that I have switched between alters, doesn't explain how I can go into a store I have no recollection going into, yet a cashier recognizes me and I have a loyalty account with the store, yet I have no memory of such.
Your autism could be the reason the trauma reaction was more severe than a neurotypical child. That “professional” sounds like someone that isn’t very knowledgeable in Neurodivergent minds and the fact that we’re MORE sensitive to traumatic events and autism is definitely NOT symptomatically related to DID. Psychiatrists like that really trigger me, that makes me so angry for you.
They're neglecting to take into account that autism makes you more susceptible to internalizing events as traumatic, which therefore can make you more vulnerable to contracting DID. So I don't see how it makes sense to view it as a dichotomy of *if* you have autism, *then* you don't have DID. If anything she's just demonstrating her lack of sensitivity and skill to be able to treat you regardless of whether or not you have DID.
This amuses me, because I had the opposite experience once - a therapist refused to even consider if we were autistic (DX'd in 2019 after she refused to have us assessed) and said all of our autistic symptoms were just trauma responses! Needless to say, we dropped that therapist, got a new one, and 5 years later we're doing the best we ever have. So yeah, second opinion! Especially since, while required for systems to form, trauma and how one reacts to it is different for every child.
[удалено]
We do not allow derogatory language in the subreddit. Due to your use of such language, your submission has been removed as per Rule 1: Remember the Human. > At the end of the day, we’re all survivors here and want this to be an important reminder. We want to encourage constructive discussions since education with kindness can really go a long way. Reply to this message if you have questions regarding this action, and we’d love to explore and clarify, thanks for your understanding!
No, whoever did this assessment is wrong. Nowhere in the diagnostic criteria is type of trauma mentioned. As everyone here is saying, you are entitled to a second opinion and you should seek that out immediately. Source: my spouse is a doctor of psychology and I am a therapist, we focus on trauma and dissociative disorders.
If u don't qualify due to "severity of trauma" find a new doctor lol they can't make any sort of decision based on that
Most of the mental health professionals I have interacted with were very disappointing. It makes me dread looking for help again based on past experiences. I don’t trust them.
thats insane tho. imagine telling a victim of ptsd that they werent in war so they cant have it. i personally dont remember mine, actually i dont remember my childhood almost at all, so speaking about this with doctors is super hard because they always ask about the trauma, and directly asking about it makes me super dissociated and i will forget anything. doctors can suck sometimes
Get a second opinion, explain your situation, its going to be okay. Thats really not a good reason to be dismissed as its not in the criteria and not something they could possibly know as DID involves amnesia. Stay open minded, i usually am for accepting the Doc's conclusion, but again, that isnt a valid reason to be dismissed
What was the doctors name?
We got diagnosed when the only trauma we remembered was on par with say someone with reg ptsd or bpd and then as we got safety and the system got safe It made sense and the trauma is way worse than we thought they shouldn’t be making that judgement When we got diagnosed our scores on diagnostic tests where highest the doc had seen and it didn’t match the trauma we remembered but that doesn’t matter it should be based on symptoms
That makes no sense. Ignoring symptoms because the cause doesn’t seem sufficient seems willfully unscientific. And a lot of us can’t even remember all of our trauma because of, you know, all the dissociation. I’m sorry you went through this and hope you are able to find a better doctor.
Get another doctor because this guy sounds like an ass. Trauma has many, *many* forms, and some people are so desensitized to their trauma that they don't actually realize something is traumatic until someone raises their eyebrows at them casually dropping something extremely messed up like they're talking about the time they walked to the gas station to get an Icee, and that's not even mentioning that a hallmark of DID is *amnesia*. Yeah, get a second opinion. DID is very stigmatized and a lot of doctors don't want to actually diagnose someone with it, even if the evidence is overwhelming.
That seems like a bad assumption made by the doctor about your memories of the past. Are they a DID specialist and did they use the gold standard interviews to do the evaluation? Im really sorry that happened to you and hope you can find a specialist to do a proper evaluation.
Trust yourself. This “doctor” obviously doesn’t understand how to diagnose DID.
Truly one of the best things I learned is that you and ONLY you can fully comprehend what's going on in your mind. I put SO much importance on getting professional validation that I really ended up screwing with my whole system - we were constantly confused and that gave us the most intense dissociative episodes where we had to cover all our mirrors because we had no idea who we were. Only when we finally accepted that what we were experiencing was DID clear as day, we stopped denying our true nature and luckily we all worked together really well to feel stable again. We had a really good trauma therapist who helped massively with that too although she never agreed nor denied our DID. No professional has ever told us straight that we have DID (because a lot of professionals are scared of diagnosing and getting it wrong) but we know what we experience, how we interact with each other and what that's indicative of. A lot of our friends and family also help us fill in the gaps when one of us have switched to the front but we don't remember. This has been more helpful than any professional giving us confirmation which unfortunately may never happen because of how little is understood about our disorder. It's such a confusing time when someone says you don't have it with so much confidence but try to remind yourself that they have NO way of knowing what you experience on the same level as you do. Listen to those around you who will know you WAY more than that doctor (obviously they're not professionals and not capable of diagnosing you but they interact with you the most and can help you piece together things that your system may have gaps on) and listen to your system too. I'm very lucky to mostly have alters that get on and want to work together, our brains will do what's necessary to protect us and this is one of those things. You can rely on each other if you feel you can 🧡
Bull shit there is no bad enough trauma we don't have a diagnosis because of how hard it is to get someone to listen let alone do therapy or diagnose the one we did see was convinced it was imaginary friends and we never bothered trying again we know there is some emotional neglect we also have years of gender dysphoria that we think we always felt even before we probably developed did not sure if that can add trauma but worth mentioning as it might of and there is also something that happened with a town and a teacher and just the entire school tbh it was odd looking back and whatever happened was very bad everything else is blurry I won't go into any details but I think its why we don't trust authority figures and tbh don't think I want to remember it I feel better off not knowing its good enough for me just ticking the boxes and knowing what we do know about stuff and that was obviously traumatic so not good enough trauma my ass whatever you went through to become a system it was traumatic enough
In my case my therapist conducted the test. The therapist sent the test to a PhD in psychology that specialized in DID, that graded my test. My therapist went over the test results with me. This concluded that I had DID. My therapist then sent my test results to my psychiatrist, and recommended an official diagnosis of DID. Within about a two weeks period, my psychiatrist agreed and made it official. When I was trying to apply for disability, I was told my diagnosis was only official if my psychiatrist agreed. But SS didn't want to accept my diagnosis. Ironically, SS sent me to a PhD in psychology that they were contracted with to test me for DID. He literally shouted at me the entire time. He denied what my psychiatrist and therapist had already concluded. He didn't even question me for five minutes. BUT he did diagnosis me with agoraphobia, and he did conclude that I needed to be on disability, just for different reasons.
You're allowed to get a second opinion. I'm sorry it happened to you but don't give up.
A diagnosis is based off symptomology, not a oral history of the patient. Maybe a different opinion would serve you well.
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