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Healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder by Going Down the Road Less Taken
If any of our readers have seen the movies Sybil or Split, you may think you understand what dissociative identity disorder (DID) is about. If so, you would be wrong. Neither would you understand what was once called multiple personality disorder by watching television programs like The United States of Tara.
The truth about DID is much more dramatic than any TV program or movie has ever been made.
I’m Shirley of the PatientNextDoor support team and was diagnosed in 1990 with DID. In this article, we are examining a better understanding of not only what dissociative identity disorder is, but also what it is like to live life with the condition.
Robert Frost and DID
Robert Frost wrote a poem called “The Road Less Taken” in which he describes his traveling down a forest path and trying to decide which way to go at a fork. To be honest, Mr. Frost never intended for his poem to be anything but a whimsical description of walking in the woods. However, people like myself have found deeper meaning in his words.
Dr. M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist, and author wrote a book in 1978 that has given new meaning to the poem written by Robert Frost. Mr. Peck’s book talks about confronting and solving problems and how painful that can be. Human beings, he tells us, will take the path of least resistance if they can to avoid the hardships that come from changing their lives. Dr. Peck discusses how to become one’s own person by suffering through the hell of honest self-examination to find one’s life anew.
This path of most resistance he called, the road less taken.
Achieving healing from severe childhood abuse and especially dissociative identity disorder takes years of arduous work and self-examination. Working with a dedicated therapist, it is such a difficult path that many choose to quit or die in their attempt to find peace.
That is the significance of this piece, to examine not only the facts as they are known about DID but also about how it is to travel down the road less taken.
