Just Let Me Be Anonymous/Do I Have DID?

[hannah19]

If I'm not anonymous, I get scared, dissociative, I lie if I'm desperate.


I won't tell you anything about me. I've tried to tell about my rape/childhood sexual abuse history online before, and all I've gotten is creepy people stalking me, pretending to care about me when it's only because I turn them on. Since I was a child I've known that I'm attractive, and I can use that to get people to take care of me to some extent, protect me. Now I'm only angry. Whenever someone deceives me, violates me, objectifies me, I change the story in my mind, form new images, pretend I'm someone else, or I'm not my body, I'm looking down on it, watching it happen to someone else--so I don't have to feel the humiliation and pain.

Do I have DID? I don't know how much amnesia I have--I guess it would be hard to know for sure, because you don't remember whatever it is that happened. Waves of pain wash over my heart. I'm never safe. Sometimes I wish I could wear a ****ing burka, for real. I play mind games with myself, warp the truth at the sensory level, remove myself from the situation...my heart still hurts, but I forget exactly what caused it...unless something directly triggers. I escape. I can't form relationships, because I'm afraid of people discovering my weaknesses and raping me. I'm only comfortable with strangers--and not even always with them, if they're eyeing me. I was a stripper. I forgot my real name for a year. I'm 19. I stopped (stripping) a few months ago. I want to die. There's no one I can trust. Help. ****. I'm ashamed and betrayed. There is always a sick, sinking, terrified feeling in my stomach. My heart beats fast. I have become manipulative...mostly manipulating myself...because the pain was too strong...was the manipulation even voluntary? I can't tell...I don't know who's to blame. This started when I was little...as soon as I was conscious. What the hell is wrong with me...??

[Nana4&cntn]

Just Let Me Be Anonymous/Do I Have DID?

I think you are a person who is looking in the wrong place for the right reasons. You need to be validated. You may be dissociatING. as is very common of an abuse victim.

I am a Survivor of Abuse and very proud to no longer be a victim.

You need to seach out a therapist who is close to your area, provides services on a sliding scale, if you do not have insurance. A Therapist who preferably provides cognitive therapy. This type of therapy validates and teaches you what and how to deal with the pain, misguided guilt, and anthing else you need to move on.

You never forget, however, you CAN MOVE ON.

Take care,
Kathy

[houghchrst]

Sweetie you definitely need to find some help. It is obvious that you know that because you outright ask for it. What do you need to know or for us to do to help you? You are definitely worth helping and saving. You can not escape memories, not really, they hide and then pop up when you least expect it. Memories that are not properly dealt with can destroy a life, but that is another thing you are discovering for yourself. I am glad to hear that you stopped stripping, I know that for some it is just another career but there is also an environment that comes with it that can suck a soul down. You are not in any position to be in that environment. Get some help, go to your local social service organization and tell them you need psych services or even walk into a local clinic or hospital and tell them what you need and someone there can tell you what to do. In order for you to do this you have to really immerse yourself in the type of care that you need. No more hiding or lying because you will never heal that way and any help you get will be meaningless. I hope you find some help soon, please keep us updated.

[tic chick]

nobody can tell you if you have DID except a qualified person.

we just know you need help.

you have had bad experiences on the net talking about your history. please visit this website:

http://www.rainn.org/

this is a website for sexual assault victims. watch the video and you will learn they can even help you through instant messaging services.

you need to talk to a real person who has the capacity to help.

National Sexual Assault Hotline • 1.800.656.HOPE • Free. Confidential. 24/7.

please, get help,
jeannie

[Tootsie]

Hannah, there is no need for you to tell us anything that you do not want to. This forum is simply for emotional support in whatever problem is presenting itself in your life.

I have nothing more to add to the good advice that others have given you. While we can give you support and encouragement, the situation that you describe, requires therapy from a trained professional. That is not available on line, on the Internet, or from just plain folks, like us.

I have a good friend whose husband was a psychiatric social worker before he retired. He was able to help many people who suffered from sexual abuse. One of his former clients keeps in touch, and visits him and his wife when she vacations with her family, in their part of the country.

There is someone who can help you, but only if you search and find that person. Please begin. Cheerio.

[Buttons2]

Hannah, you're still very young,even though you might feel like you've already been through a lifetime......you deserve to have a life,with relationships & peace of mind. Please check out those links provided for you here.

And I agree you need professional help. Perhaps we can help here in some ways,even if it's just a place where you can vent or tell your story.

Are you living on your own? Do you have family nearby? You were not born abused & you do not have to die being a victim. Think of yourself as a survivor,with the will to fight the demons from the past & go forward to a life you deserve.

[Nana4&cntn]

Hannah,

How are you doing? I have been thinking of you. Hope you are doing well.

Hugs coming your way,
Kathy

[hannah19]

Thank you for responding.

I think I have a serious problem. I don't know how to describe it, & I don't know exactly what's wrong. Therapy isn't an option for me. I almost died of anorexia when I was 15. After I was hospitalized, I was forced to go to therapy for a while. I didn't trust the therapists, I was a bad patient and everything they suggested sounded ridiculous to me, like they were reading out of a textbook, had no personal reference or empathy, were misdiagnosing me. Like it was for them and not for me, to make them money. I have almost always felt like no one is capable of understanding me...maybe I am delusional, but people don't seem to understand. I often wonder if there is something wrong with me, and that's why all this happened. I always hung around with boys when I was little. I was hyper and wild and always wanted to run around, so it was easier to be with boys than girls. My first best friend was in preschool. We were best friends until 4th grade, when I moved. Mostly because I did what he wanted me to. He used to chase me around, hitting me with ****, and then he would kiss me. He started doing that in first grade and after that he kissed me every single time I saw him. I let him do whatever he wanted to me. Right before I moved in 4th grade he was starting to get more physical with me but I was starting to hate it and avoided him and even ran away from him once. He was mad, hurt, didn't know why I was avoiding him. Or maybe he just wanted to keep doing whatever he wanted to me. My cousin is a year older than me, he's been beating me up and abusing me practically since we was born. He used to live with my family a lot. We were friends, but he's sexually abused me before. The first time I remember was when I was 9, but I think there are other times I don't remember. It would happen every time I would see him. Anyway...these are the first times I can remember.
I don't know. I black out certain parts, I'm almost sure. But this has always happened to me. Boys victimize me. Maybe it's not normal that I don't like it, but I fight them and say no and they still do it. I can't say a lot of the really bad things. I started being really mean and rejecting boys mercilessly. That just made them angry and they would talk about raping me.
When I moved into a new neighborhood, went to a new school, it went to a whole new level. I was 12-13. I learned how to dissociate then. We lived in a project. My mom was being abused, sexually, physically by her boyfriends & at her job. I was too close to her. She affected me too much, pulled me into her drama, but I never told her anything that happened to me. Sadly, I was always the strongest member of my family. It was like nothing I experienced was real then, though. I pretended that what was happening was a movie, wasn't real, I was a character and wasn't real. I did anything to separate myself from the things that happened, so I wouldn't have to feel the pain. Anything. I even lied to myself. I even believed myself sometimes, even though no one else was fooled. I think the most significant thing was that I got so I saw myself from above, or from another perspective--not through my own eyes--all the time. My body had been violated, so I erased its history, and the history of my mind. I could become a totally different person--start over--and then it would be ok. I would be safe if there was nothing associated with my body or mind, no one could do anything to me, and even if they did, it wouldn't matter, I wouldn't feel it.
I stopped having friends then. All I ever did was lie to my friends before then. I would lie about nothing, everything, my family, my past. But then I began crying at parties, crying and breaking down and couldn't control it. I couldn't explain what was wrong, couldn't even lie, and I couldn't stop crying. I was in deep despair and couldn't convey anything about it to anyone else. I was raped right before then, when I was 14, at school by a boy I had to be with all the time and had a bad relationship with. He had tortured me for a long time before then. I didn't tell anyone and dropped out of school. I stopped eating 2 months later. 3 or 4 months later I was dying in the hospital, anorexia. After this part it gets confused in my memory. I think I have amnesia. I was 16 when I forgot my real name. I lived a different life for a while, I formed a new identity. When I was stripping I came up with a new name and a new identity. With different people I was a different character, a different person.
Now, I am silent, and feel an inability to speak. I can write, but not speak. I feel like i am too complex to convey, and anyway I'm not intelligent enough to do it accurately. I feel suicidal sometimes.

[hannah19]

Thank you for the rainn link (:

[hannah19]

The people who hurt me will never be brought to justice, though. They will always get away with it.

[tic chick]

writing is speaking without sound.

you write intelligently and accurately.

you have to trust someone can help you. you have to trust someone.

*smallheart
jeannie

[gizmogirl]

There's 2 directions you can go in when you've been screwed up unfairly and alot - one is to get really stupid, maybe burn away your brain or something else, and the other is to get really smart; smarter than you would have been if you had had your same environment without any abuse. (You can wreck yourself either way).
However, you got to be really intelligent, it's obvious, and because of that you feel awful, but it also means you have unlimited potential. For example, you know that you can appreciate certain simple pleasures MUCH more than the average schmuck, right?

Someone already told you that you are young enough to have a gratifying life. I'm sure you are only just beginning to realize the depth of how screwed up things can be, but the flip side of that is how satisfying life can be. You said on the one hand that you feel that no one can understand you, but that at one time when you were younger you know that you weren't fooling anyone. That's the nice thing about finding people worth trusting. No matter how smart I was, I could eventually find people who thought more clearly than me and write more concisely or descriptively than I can write, for example. That makes me interested in talking with them and learning from discussing things with them how to do it better myself. Of course, being able to articulate things better makes it easier to deal with things, too.
There have always been screwed up people who have abused and screwed up kids. Sometimes the people who do the worst things can only get away with them with young people, and when you're young, you can really be screwed up by them. So, there's all kinds of assumptions about abused kids. If an adult or counselor isn't really smart, they might just try to fit you into the standard assumptions. There are so many assumptions I couldn't start to list them: like you'll probably test friendships to the nth because you couldn't trust adults at the ages when you should have been able to. Or that you will probably push away those who have something good to offer because you don't want to get disappointed one more time with adults or yourself. Of course you catch on right away that you are not going to learn anything useful from this adult, so you think that therapy and counseling are useless. And you're probably not crazy to think this way with the experiences you've probably had. But, someone already suggested cognitive therapy to you. Look it up in Wikipedia or google. What's useful in cognitive therapy is that you set some really straightforward goals and go for them. You haven't got somebody fitting you into the boxes they understand, or making you dwell on stuff you're sick to death of. You just learn techniques for whatever might be your goals, whether it be taking care of yourself better, or changing your expectations of others, or finding good, intelligent, caring people that you can trust, so you can finish your growing up with useful people that aren't out to screw you, and are interesting.

Well, I wish I wasn't such a wordy person. I shut up for a few years and got pretty into myself so I wouldn't have to fail at anything when I was 19 - my neice who is 19 and stripping isn't as screwed up as me. She does say some really smart stuff. Her mother was so busy trying to change her abusive husband, instead of learning how to get away from him and support herself and the kids, that my niece says her mom couldn't have a normal supportive relationship with anyone, let alone her kids, so my niece says she went looking for attention in all the wrong places. It's funny how she understands so much now. She used to go up to strangers when she was cute and 6 years old and tell them she had a really strange dream last night, and then make up shocking stories to tell them. She just wasn't getting the attention a little kid deserves. Thank god my sister dumped him eventually, and later she moved in with me for awhile, and stopped doing meth. When she was 13 her teenage sister's friend knew she wanted affection and thought it would be cool to get her high. She lost a year there for sure since she didn't have any way to pay after her 'friend' got her addicted - she had only herself to sell. Oh, it's amazing the things you can do to yourself when your family is not spending their time trying to find cool environments in which you can do cool, healthy stuff. I really respect her because she just got her GED, and she will soon go to a community college just so she can get decent pay without having to work the nights around the drunks and all anymore. Just a few classes - she doesn't want to deal with big debt and pressure.

Someone else told you that if you can't find sliding scale cognitive therapy, you could even go to a hospital and tell them you need help to find this and whatever else you need. That was actually pretty good advice. Until you are 21, I think they have to try to get you some social services benefits, and I think that it usually includes some counseling. The worst you'd have to endure is saying you're cracking up and that you really need a social worker. Every hospital has a social worker that is supposed to tell you what services you can get free at time of discharge (usually you have to ask for this or they forget). While you're young enough, I would think about trying out whatever you qualify for. You only need to find an intelligent person here or there for it to be useful to you. You owe it to yourself to do something for you, don't you think? Trust me, there is always somebody who has been whereever it is you are and can be useful to you so you can learn from their experiences.

I don't want to minimize what you are going through, which is probably totally existential. I just want to tell you that you will find that you've gotton old enough to mother yourself a little bit and do some nice things for yourself, which you've certainly earned. But you're young enough to still get others to help you help you. It's about time you use your youth to your advantge! Nineteen might just be the best year yet for you. Check it out. In any case, I really found you vey interesting, so post again, please.
Good luck,
Jane

[Nana4&cntn]

Oh Hannah,

You are not unintelligent!! You write very well. You make sense with what you write, and you seem to have taken on alot of responsibility for the actions of others. Shame on your mom for laying her problems on you.
You are probably right that the people who have abused you will non be punished. It is a very sad reality.
Alot of what you wrote sent chills through me because it could have been written by me.
I have been where you are. Almost the exact set of circumstances. I blocked out my abuse, I shoved it deep, never told anyone. In later years I began having flashbacks that were so incredibly disabitating. I had become a dormat so to speak, I let pretty much anyone to walk over me, as I felt I deserved it. I was scared s**tlessto speak up or to go into public for fear I would once again be in a situation to be abused.
You mentioned your anorxia, this is something alot of abused women go through. Eating or not is one area in your life you have control of. So if you don't want to you don't.
I think you have had some very horrible experiences both with the abuse and with the therapists. I have to assume these therapists were in a hospital setting. There are so many very compassionate and good therapists out there. You are in charge and can interview them to find one you think fits your situation. If it weren't for the young woman I saw, I would be a major basket case here. Please try to find someone you can relate to. Someone who does cognitive therapy, it teaches you that you had no control over the situation, also to reparent yourself and allows you to get very p**sedoff. Please don't feel I am shoving this down your throat, I am trying to show you the way to find help. This will be with you your whole life (abuse)but can be put is a very small area of the brain and not affect youday to day. The therapy helps you to be able to get on with your life and choose healthy safe people you can have friendships with. Therapy will also help you to recognize people who will eventually hurt or abuse you.
I sure hope you will try to find someone for help. I also hope you don't judge me too harshly for trying to help you. Take care of yourself and keep posting so we know how you are doing.

Hugs,
Kathy

[houghchrst]

Hannah, it can be very hard to find the right therapist. There are many that are in it for the money or maybe had good intentions when they started but just don't have the knack for it. There are also many out there that can help. Please don't give up. You have made a wonderful, brave start on the path to recovery. You have opened up to us. We can hear you, understand, empathize, sympathize and be a strong shoulder to cry on but we are not qualified to do what you need done. Do not stop talking to us but you need to work yourself up to the work of finding a professional that can help you. Maybe, despite how hard it may be, you can try a group with others that have been through the same thing. Then you will be with others who know what you mean and what you have been through. They can probably recommend a good therapist or program in your area. I know this could be very hard considering how tight you have closed yourself off from others but they are like you. Otherwise you could try getting on the phone and call some women's shelters or abuse hotlines and get some advice. You are worth saving.

[joy]

Hi Hannah. Hannah you sound intelligent enough to me. I am not sure at my old age I would be able to mutter anything anyone would understand if I'd had the hard life you have had already at such a young age.
((((hugs)))) I wish it had not been this way for you and I hope things change for the better for you.

I am not capable of having an intelligent conversation but I do want to try and convey that I am hoping that you understand that many people here including myself are hoping that you get the help that you need.

gizmogirl keep talking. It is very hard for me to get to the bottom of some people's messages but you managed to give me hope that some people need to keep trying to find that person that could help them. I know of people that have tried to find help from several therapist type people (my daughter is one) and give up thinking that there are none that could help. Hannah I hope you get that help from somewhere and I hope you keep posting here.

[gizmogirl]

Encouraged by Joy I will say just one more thing to Hannah - you have a real personality and an interior life and are already unusually articulate. You are, in other words, a neat person that I would like to see enjoy life, because you have SO much more potential than the average schmow. Check in to it; you deserve an interesting life not only because it's been rough for you, but because you would really enjoy life more than many.

[jess2002]

Hi there Hannah everything you wrote made complete sense to me and unless the people who did these things to you are dead you CAN get justice however firstly you need help. Find yourself a counsellor and talk, tell them everything you have wriiten down here type everything up if need be and just print it off and take it with you. Get yourself the help you need and fast you need to learn to trust again I ain't saying it's gonna be easy cause it ain't, then when you trust you can open up that won't be easy either but it needs to be done. I wish you all the best. Jess

[Nana4&cntn]

Hannah,

There is a law on the books for survivors of abuse. It has a time limit, usually from the time you remember the abuse. I will try to find it.
I was abused by my stepfather for years,married an abusive man,divorced him and ended up in anther abusive relationship.
The therapy is the only reason I am sane today. Please I will help any way I can. I will help you find someone to talk to, if you want to pm me to tell me where you live, I can and will do my best to find someone who will help. I was a Social Worker for years and continue to advocate for folks who can't do it for themselves. I am not judging you or your abilities. All tou have to do is ask and want to want help.

Please take care,
Kathy

[Nana4&cntn]

Hannah,

I have an idea for you. Being that you are such a great writer, I think you should keep a diary of all the abuse you went through. The dates don't matter if you can't remember. This is something you can share with a therapist without talking to her in the begining. I do recommend a woman therapist, preferably one close to your age or 10 years older. You can pm me and I will give you my phone number, or you can give me yours and we can talk. I think of you often and keep you in my thoughts and prayers. I have a ton of ideas for you but have a horrible headache and cold so this will be short. Remember you have people here who care for you. Please let us help you. Let us know how you are doing.

take care,
Kathy

[gizmogirl]

hey hannah! What's up? There's ALWAYS someone worth writing to and reading from. Hang in there. I don't like not hearing from you after you said you sometimes feel suicidal. what's up?

[Nana4&cntn]

Hanna,

Just checking in to see how you are? We haven't heard from you in 11 days. I hope things are okay. We really do want to help you. If I came on to strong I apologize, I really do want to help you any way I can.
Hope this finds you well,
Kathy