Trauma destroys the fabric of time. In normal time you move from one moment to the next, sunrise to sunset, birth to death. After trauma, you may move in circles, find yourself being sucked backwards...

Take it from me, that kind of torment causes you to retreat to a place in your mind where you are so strong that nothing and no one can bother you. Or so you think!...

According to Hoge and colleagues (2007), the key to reducing stigma is to present mental health care as a routine aspect of health care, similar to getting a check up or an X-ray. Soldiers need...

Pathological dissociation is characterized by profound, functional amnesias and significant alterations in identity; normal dissociation is expressed primarily in the form of intense absorption with internal stimuli (e.g., daydreams) or external stimuli (e.g., a fascinating...

Our inner experience is that which we think, feel, remember, perceive, sense, decide, plan and predict. These experiences are actually mental actions, or mental activity (Van der Hart et al., 2006). Mental activity, in which...

Denial and minimizing is often seen in genuine PTSD and, hence, should be a target of detection and measurement.

behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.

Public stigmaStereotypeNegative belief about a group (e.g., dangerousness, incompetence, character weakness)PrejudiceAgreement with belief and/or negative emotional reaction (e.g., anger, fear)DiscriminationBehavior response to prejudice (e.g., avoidance, withhold employment and housing opportunities, withhold help)Self-stigmaStereotypeNegative belief about the...

People who live with mental illnesses are among the most stigmatized groups in society.Fighting the stigma caused by mental disorders: past perspectives, present activities, and future directions. World Psychiatry. Oct 2008; 7(3): 185–188. PMCID: PMC2559930

Dissociative parts of the personality are not actually separate identities or personalities in one body, but rather parts of a single individual that are not yet functioning together in a smooth, coordinated, flexible way. P14

Patients with complex trauma may at times develop extreme reactions to something the therapist has said or not said, done or not done. It is wise to anticipate this in advance, and perhaps to note...

I think the stigma attached to mental illness will disappear just like it did for cancer years ago.

The unique stigma of PTSD. The stigma of PTSD remains one of the most formidable barriers to effective care.

OCD, ADHD—pretty sure if they come up with some new acronym tomorrow I’d have it.

When he first said my diagnosis, I couldn’t believe it. There must be another PTSD than post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought. I have only heard of war veterans who have served on the front lines...

Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s...

focus” it takes you nowhere. It is the deepest anger when someone you love hurts you, and the greatest love when they don’t. It is beauty when it has purpose. It is agony when it...

With DID patients, if they feel hostility or aggression they take it out on themselves with self-harm… They’re self-destructive and repeatedly suicidal, more so than any other psychological disorder. So that’s what’s typical – not...

There are men who wants only the woman; such are tagged, ‘real men’, and there are ones who want only their bodies; such are tagged, ‘fake men’, and there are others who wants neither the...

When you’ve had a psychotic breakdown it’s always so difficult making that decision. You meet someone new and you wonder how much you should tell them? You wonder what that person’s threshold of ‘strange’ is,...

There is clear evidence from internal investigations in the past that some raters actually see themselves as adversaries to veterans. If a claim can be minimized, then the government has saved money, regardless of the...

The central mechanism of the avoidance mechanism of PTSD is the ego defense of denial

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don’t understand.

Mental illness” is among the most stigmatized of categories.’ People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.

What people don’t understand about depression is how much it hurts. It’s like your brain is convinced that it’s dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that’s...

It felt like this was never going to end. The world wasn’t going to stop crashing down until there was nothing left of me but dust.

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., “That wasn’t really bad, I barely remember it”).

You are not your illness. You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is part of the battle.

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental...

We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out.

The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.

Dissociation is characterized by a disruption of usually integrated functions of memory, consciousness, identity, or perception of the environment.

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent...

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes...

She was so shattered about what kind of man he was — brutal, tender, passionate. There was little doubt he had some mental disorder.

lost time.” You may find writings or drawings which you must have done, but do not remember producing. Perhaps you find child-sized clothing or toys in your home but have no children. You might also...

I couldn’t trust my own emotions. Which emotional reactions were justified, if any? And which ones were tainted by the mental illness of BPD? I found myself fiercely guarding and limiting my emotional reactions, chastising...

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest...

I had people saying ‘it’s all in your head’. Do you honestly think I want to feel this way?

Holding one’s self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the...

front person” for the system.

Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike...

The primary treatment modality for DID is individual outpatient psychotherapy.Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

My own studies on the natural history of DID indicate only 20% of DID patients have an overt DID adaption on a chronic basis, and 14% of them deliberately disguise their manifestations of DID. Only...

Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know.

The distinction between diseases of “brain” and “mind,” between “neurological” problems and “psychological” or “psychiatric” ones, is an unfortunate cultural inheritance that permeates society and medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between...

Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33):- fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore,...

within.” Taken together, all of the alternate identities make up the identity or personality of the human being with DID.- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p7