It’s very hard to get disability at the “best” of times. My therapist warned me when I brought the subject up that I had a 2% chance of being accepted for disability right off the bat, so I’m trying to do all I can while filling out the paperwork to ensure that I either get through expeditiously or at least get to the appeals process quickly.

I’m in the process of filling out the forms online at the apply for disability page here, thankfully you can save the forms and continue them later provided you do so within 60 days, and at least with the online forms you can work on them at any time of day and night, but people are only available to help you at the toll free numbers between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

For me the first snag that I encountered was being confused about income and net income. One of the questions they ask you is if you’re self-employed and given I work from home doing blog reviews and occasionally helping people out with web design or tarot predictions depending on which alter is more active…I figured that would count against me, because I’m able to work (sort of) but I make negative income…my businesses aren’t really worth it, they technically give me some extra play cash, but the amount I put out to try and advertise, to run my computer, the phone lines and all the rest of it I actually don’t make anything, and I also found out recently thanks to someone on AO who was answering my question about what net income actually meant that I could technically deduct therapy from my expenses too, so that would mean I was making even less.

Another thing I figured would be a good idea to do is to get my therapist and doctor on board with this so that they could be writing up whatever it was they needed to do so that I could get things all together and send them in at once so I didn’t have this issue like I did with Medicaid where I was getting letters from the offices saying, “Well, we might approve you but we need your birth certificate, your husbands, copies of your driver’s licenses, passports…” and all the rest of it before we’ll process things, and in the mean time I was without insurance.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens after I call the doctor’s offices on Tuesday and as I got more pointers I’ll edit this entry.

Looking around for some places on line for different suggestions of things and here’s a few I found out about.

A Mind’s Journey Forum, according to their site they are “learn more specifically about dissociative disorders, PTSD, and trauma. Questions and comments must be for learning/ support purposes. Questions and comments will be answered by members of AMJ to the best of our ability.” However they do warn that negative comments from guests will be deleted.

Referrals for DID/MPD therapists. I know of a few people who have successfully used SIDRAN to find good therapists who actually work with them in the way they want. That site also has some other places listed for various different kinds of support.

Coping in Crazyville has some interesting input on DID, and the experiences of the author as a survivor.

Of course I can’t not recommend Amongst Ourselves the yahoogroup that I’m a member of. There’s a wonderful group of systems on there who are very caring, conscientious, supportive and helpful.

My spouse and I have been having a debate for several months now about whether or not I should file for disability. For a while I felt it was a moot point because I was not a U.S. citizen and would therefore be ineligible, given I wasn’t eligible for Medicaid any more once our child was born.

However I got my U.S. citizenship last month thanks to a generous helping hand from my mother who didn’t want to go through the citizenship process by herself. So, my husband once again suggested that I apply for disability. I’m a bit nervous about applying for some reasons which are probably silly, like being afraid that having DID or MPD on paper like that would mean that we’d get a visit from DCF and my son would be taken away, even though my therapist and psychiatrist have both assured me that given our son is in a loving home where he’s taken care of that wouldn’t be an issue.

My therapist told me that she would support my efforts to get disability, but warned me that it would be a long hard road before we saw any light. It’s not as though sending in the application magically gives us extra money. It means that the application is sent for review, and anyone applying for disability has a strong chance of being denied, and if it’s an application for disability based on mental issues there’s a much greater chance of being denied.

I started the application today, and it’s so confusing. I’m not sure how far in to the application I am at the moment, but it’s asking about self employment income and net self employment income and I had to save it because I’m not sure what’s it’s asking for exactly, so if I can’t find out from one of my friends what they mean I’ll see if my husband has any idea.

They want to know if my net income from self employment was over $400 last year but I’m not sure what they mean by net. The income reported for self employment on taxes was -1600 dollars, I made $200 and something from tarot, but about $1200 from paid blogging. So I’m not sure if they would consider that to be over $400 because I technically made $1500 (or thereabouts) but with all the expenses there was no profit.

I seriously think it’s worse than taxes.

The Multiple Monday meme has been going on since February of 2007, so I’m going back through and doing some of the older memes to see if it can teach me some things about my selves.

Multiple Monday #1 originally February 26th 2007.

1) Do you usually front run alone, in groups, in pairs, or some other way?
For the most part Abby is front some times with Max, we’re working towards a collective where we can freely communicate backwards and forwards, but we’re not there yet.

2) Is anyone a front hog?
Max sometimes. He says he’s like Beetlejuice because if he’s mentioned at all he’ll come right forward and that’ll be it for the rest of us.

3) Does anyone like to come close to the front and let someone else do the talking?
Ami will do that a lot, where she just relays messages because she’s too nervous about being forward.

4) Clothing: Basically the same or does one or more of the front-runners have a separate style?
At the moment yes, because we’re overweight and there’s a lot of our former clothes that we can’t wear, but when we’re slimmer there are definite variations in style. Ami wears more actual colors, Abby wears gothic style clothing and more skirts than the others. Those are the main differences, others tend to just schlep around in jeans and t-shirts.

5) How often do your front-runners change/switch out?
We’ve been fairly consistent with front runners for a while, it used to be that one person would be out for a few days and it would rotate like that, now we do switch at least once during the day but it tends to only be for a couple of hours to give breaks.

Multiple Monday #2 originally posted March 5th 2007.

1) Do you have a favorite food (out front)?
Several. We really like certain sub sandwiches, and sushi, and chocolate (for the most part).

2) Who usually does the eating?
Abby or Max.

3) Is there a specific food or drink that will almost always coax someone in particular to the front?
Chocolate or alcohol will invariably bring Max. In order to get Jay out some times he’s bribed with pretzel sticks.

4) Does alcohol affect everyone in the same way?
Oh, no. Max can drink people under the table, the rest of us have pretty decent tolerance, although Jay refuses to drink AT ALL, and one of our quiet ones now ’soka, he could get drunk off half a Hard Lemonade.

5) What beverage do you drink most often?
Mountain Dew. But we’re trying to cut soda out of our diet and drink more water and crystal light type things.

Multiple Monday #3 originally March 12th 2007

1) How many people are in your household/group?
I usually say around 7-8 who are active at the moment, but at one point counting who had initialed things and all the rest of it we were closer to 24.

2) What percent are you guys to girls?
Right now it’s 75% girls who are active.

3) What gender is the body?
Female.

4) How many kids are in your household/group?
As far as we know at the moment there’s just one little girl.

5) How many kids come to the front usually?
She’s been to the front a few times lately, but she’s not very often forwards, because she’s very shy and very traumatized. We’re going to be working on helping her feel safe at therapy starting on Thursday so that we can help her work through her trauma.

I’ll post another few Multiple Monday memes in a couple of days if I’m having a hard time thinking of things to write about, or getting things out.

“You could write a book about your life, you’ve experienced so many great things since coming to the US,” my step-father said to me more than once while extolling the virtues of things that have gone on, and it’s true I could. I’ve experienced many things but not all of them are that great.

I’m not trying to say my life’s been all suckage and sob story. I’ve had a lot of great things happen and a lot of good influences in my life, but obviously my life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses otherwise I wouldn’t have fractured over the years and be in so many pieces as I am right now.

I’ve recently learned that it’s probable my biological father hit me when I was a baby, under a year old. I was dropped out of a carry cot when I was small, but thankfully landed on the carpet, and that one can be put down to an accident. When I was two I hit my head on a radiator. I’m not sure what I was doing. Mum tells me I was bouncing on a bed with my cousins.

I also know that I’ve always been very empathic and sensitive about others, so much so that even witnessing violence and bad things happening to other people on the television and things like that was always very upsetting to me. I’m coming to realize that a big chunk of trauma which messed me up probably came about when I was about six or seven and was shown a fire safety video at school. When I ask my Mum about it she feels that I was older, that I was in Junior One or Two which would put me about eight or nine, but I clearly remember Ms. Woods my Infant 3 teacher questioning me about what upset me about the video, and if I had been in Junior One or Two it would have been Ms. Newby who was talking to me and I wouldn’t have had my side to the black board, it would have been to the display table, and the coat rack would have been on the other side of the room instead of within my eye line where I could keep staring at it while I tried not to cry.

I’ll actually use the more function because I’m going to talk about some pretty nasty things involving fire and amputations so read on only if you’re prepared.

Read more…

I’m still not really sure what to call her. She gets called Little or Chibi or Crazy Girl, none of which are really good. Little and Chibi mean the same thing, just the second one is in Japanese, and Crazy Girl, well, who would want to be known as Crazy Girl? My husband and I do joke about “Crazy, Bitch” being my theme song, and he uses “Psycho by Puddle of Mudd” as my ring tone on his phone some times. However it’s in good fun and I know that he doesn’t mean it, I wonder if Little would know though? You know?

But the point is that she was out again, twice within a week, is unheard of. She wrote several pages worth of ramble in my journal and also drew a picture in there. I’m not sure what to make of it all really. It’s good that we have proof. It’s good that she mentions in there that she trusts and likes my husband, but it’s also unnerving to see the rambling, well, craziness, that’s in there. It makes me more than a little nervous.

I’m assured that a lot of her language is fairly common. I have a wonderful group of systems I can interact with on the yahoo list “Amongst_Ourselves” and apparently her way of writing and speaking is fairly common among systems, but I’ve never experienced it before, for the longest time I thought I was just an anomaly without a little, even though I knew of “Crazy Girl” I really didn’t connect her with being a little, despite the fact that I would carry around a plush toy and a blanket when she was around and talk in jumble sentences and sing songs about buttons. Not a little at all, right?

Ah, well, there’ll be fuel for therapy on Thursday if nothing else.

There are so many times I wonder why my husband stayed with me, agreed to marry me even though we really didn’t know what was going on with our mental health, put up with the times we would be doing something and I would just suddenly stop speaking and curl up on the bed and not say anything for hours at a time, deal with me yelling at him, randomly calling him and telling him to get lost, and all the rest of it.

We never really had a hospitalization style break down, but still I think this The Significant Other’s Guide to Dissociative Identity Disorder could be useful to him, and to other significant others of survivors; because that is what we are. We survived. We did it in a weird way, but we did it.

There are times I still feel like I shouldn’t be hear, but then sometimes I’m not, LOL. We’re getting used in our house to the fact that there are things which aren’t remembered, and I no longer, or at least I’m getting better at not freaking out about it. I write notes about everything and everyone else is pretty well trained to write notes too, so that things will get remembered, and we’re training ourselves to write therapy appointments on the calendar as SOON as we get home so we don’t show up early or late for them again.

Hubbie helps when he can. He leaves me notes if I do something strange and out of the ordinary and he’ll make sure that certain alters who are prone to not taking meds take meds, because even though there’s eight (or nine, or twelve) of me we’re still a partnership and that’s what you do.

I think she was out last night. I have to check with my husband, but then he might not be aware. I was having a bad flare from fibromyalgia last night, and he gave me my pills and helped me to bed.

The next thing I’m aware of fully I’m wrapped up in my comforter like a cocoon and curled up on the floor near the door. I have this fear lodged in my brain that the bed was staring at me and there were tons of them staring at me.

This morning when I’m more awake I realize that we’re currently using bed sheets that have moons and stars and suns on them with faces. I remember when I was small I was terrified of our curtains because they had faces in them and would stare at me.

So, I think she was out. I’m not sure for how long. I’ll have to check with hubbie to see if she interacted with him, but I don’t think so because there was no note on the computer this morning about it.

Or at least that’s what McHugh’s Article on Multiple Personality suggests.

This gentleman who is apparently or at least was at some point Henry Phipps Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore claims in the article I linked above that people only experience multiple personalities because they feed on the input given them by their therapists and counselors. He likens the experience to that of hystereo-epilepsy which was a combination of hysteria and epilepsy that another psychiatrist identified, but apparently invented.

I’m so glad that I have a good support system and decent therapist in place before I read this article because it could have really done me some damage. I had read about and knew of multiple personalities before I went to therapy, that’s true, but I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure that was what was going on. There was a lot of evidence which pointed to that but I didn’t want to walk into the psychiatrists office and tell him that’s what was wrong because I’m not trained in psychiatric evaluation, and I know well from reading WebMD that you can talk yourself into a lot of illnesses I was worried I had Multiple Sclerosis before I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.

Anyway, my therapist and my psychiatrist did not make assumptions. They read my journal. They talked to me about my experiences, they evaluated every ounce of my being before pronouncing that they agreed I did indeed have multiple personalities.

Ironically, in regards to the article my therapist has only talked to one alter, me, the main one, she’s read some journal entries by the others, but she hasn’t talked to any of them. She’s also commented that I’m not typical, because I was not repeatedly sexually abused when I was a child. I had some traumatic events happen, and I was sexually attacked when I was in primary school…but most of the abuse I received was psychological.

A hyper-controlling family environment, a school where there was tons of pressure to succeed and compete. There were some events, a classmate attacked me sexually and either later or before, things are hazy, gave me a concussion. My biological father may have hit me when I was a small child (under a year old) because his narcissistic behavior couldn’t comprehend crying.

It’s taken me a long time to accept that rather than just being a channel these alters are a part of me, they’re different portions of my soul. They’re not going to go away if they’re ignored I’ve tried that. I’d much rather find out what their purpose is, why they’re here and if they want to blend back or just find a way to live in balance again, rather than trying to ignore them. I become completely unable to function as a normal person if I ignore them.

I’m so glad that we don’t have a therapist like McHugh.

It’s been a busy few days again because my husband had surgery on Thursday and then my son got stomach flu the day after that, so between one and the other I’ve been very tired and crabby and not getting much sleep, which means I’ve had a few times where I’ve had blank spaces again, or at least hazy impressions of things but nothing clear, like someone coming by around midnight one night asking to borrow something (which turned out to have happened). My friend apologized for coming by profusely the next day, so I’m guessing he got to deal with the short end of Terri’s tongue, she’s one of the few I don’t have a good handle on, but she really doesn’t deal well with the child so doesn’t come out if he’s awake, which is good on that score.

Tomorrow my mother is coming to my therapy appointment with me. My therapist figures that’ll be a good thing to do so that she can perhaps get a bit more background on my childhood, cover things that I don’t remember or might not have thought of, and then we can move on to hypnotherapy, after the next appointment which is going to be a joint session with myself and my husband and both our counselors.

Such a busy time, not to mention my husband has his doctor’s appointment to follow up on his surgery and at the end of the week I’m taking the cat to be microchipped, and there’s also the fact that my car had a flat tire and needs an oil change and a tune-up. Hubbie’s car will probably be in need of an oil change too. Life is so hectic.

I suppose it’s no wonder I’m exhausted and sore and have a hard time keeping things up beat, even with rotating alters around I’m still snippy most of the time. The terrible two tantrums don’t help at all.