Living and working with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Living and working with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Welcome to our online event where we will explore what it's like to both live with and support clients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Through personal experience and professional insights, our speaker will offer an intimate understanding of the challenges and triumphs faced by individuals with DID. Discover how this therapist navigates their own journey and how this informs how she provides support to others. Gain valuable knowledge and empathy that can enhance your therapeutic practice. Join us for insightful discussions, personal stories, clinical experience, tips and strategies and an opportunity to ask those questions you arent able to ask elsewhere. Let's come together to support our clients, break down stigma and connect with others who are interested in this field. Register now and be part of this empowering event! This event is for licenced/registered health professionals only.

How can greater awareness improve support and reduce distress for DID clients?

The aim of this workshop is to bring an understanding of the lived experience of those with DID (allowing a voice), inform clinicians, minimise scepticism, improve support & understanding and improve the quality of the therapeutic relationship to facilitate healing. The issue of professional lack of awareness and understanding of DID has recieved much attention in the research literature (Husted, 2000, Brand et al, 2016). Studies also supprt the struggles that those with DID endure to access therapy (Reuben & Jefferson, 2020, Nester et al, 2022) and be believed (Paul, 2014). Belief in DID supports the acceptance of client experince and facilitates a collaborative working alliance (Ringrose, 2011). The importance of Rogers (1951) core conditions and the understanding of shame in the therapeutic relationship are essential for the building of trust and engagement with therapy (Platt & Freud, 2015).

This workshop assumes a basic trauma knowledge and basic understanding of the 3-phases of trauma therapy (we do touch on this but not in-depth). We will look briefly at how trauma leads to DID and the theory of structural dissociation (Van Der Hart, 2006). We will go on to look at the lived experince of a therapist with DID (case study), their journey to realisation and the impacts. This journey includes the themes of; reaching out and trying to get help in the NHS, the diagnostic process and associated issues, the 3-phase therapy experience (based on the ISSTD guidelines), what's important for therapists to know, a survey taken by the DID community, the medical model/shame, other dissociative aspects that come under dissociative disorders such as derealisation & depersonalisation.

The presentor Laura, is an integrative psychotherapist that spent her training working in two specialist trauma services, one for PTSD & C-PTSD. Across this time Laura has worked with differing levels of dissociation and has been working with DID in private practce for 3 years, under specialist DID supervision. Laura trained to work with DID through the ISSTD professional program and is trained to administer the SCID-D.

Through her training, Laura conducted a survey into the lived experience of those in the DID community (p=200). This presentation is based on her personal experinces, her clinical work, the results of the survey, her own specialsed DID therapy and the DID literature. Laura is refreshingly honest about her experinces of living with DID and gives plenty of opportunity to ask questions about her experinces and process.

Guest speaker

We are very pleased to have Sherri Park join us to speak about organised extreme abuse. Sherri is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Texas (License #91891). She holds two Master of Arts degrees in Counselling: one specialising in Trauma and Crisis Care and the second in Professional Counselling.

Sherri utilizes a variety of evidence-based and trauma-informed treatment modalities. Her preferred approaches include: Trauma-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TB-CBT),Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Somatic Experiencing, Sand Tray with EMDR Protocol & Ego State Therapy

Sherri integrates a profound understanding of the healing journey into her work. As a survivor of organized extreme abuse who has, to the best of her knowledge, achieved final fusion (the unification of all dissociated parts), she offers a uniquely empathetic and insightful perspective to clients navigating complex trauma and dissociation.