Healing Image Hi – Dissociation, Let’s Talk About It

Hello, this is Eva May, and I'm speaking to you on the Women's Radio Station for another in my series called Healing Image High. This week I'm actually away, and I have, um, nearly all of my family here. One of my children hasn't been able to make it, and my husband is here as well, and we've managed to have a few days away as a family. And it's here that we, we always come to the same place, and we have been for— I think it's about 20 years when we sat down and sort of worked out how long we've been coming to the same place for a, a break with some sunshine. And, you know, it— without realizing it, it's become, you know, a routine and a way of safety for me. And to be in the place where my children have grown up holidaying here. They've got friends here, and they absolutely love going to the same places and seeing the same people. And they have so many happy memories, um, here. And for me, it's just a real joy to, to have that and share those moments with them, both when they were, you know, very young children to now when they are adults. Bringing friends out and taking their friends to the places that they've enjoyed so much over the years. And for me, as being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, sort of revisiting and, well, repeatedly doing the things that I've enjoyed in my life, that have to be the things that I hang on to that give me pleasure and enjoyment, and seeing that they also have the same feelings of repeating things that they've done throughout their childhood, even though now they're into their adulthood, it's, it's something that I just think is so extremely important. Um, you know, we're, we're going to be able to spend so many more hours doing things together here than we would be with the distractions of being at home. And it's important, I think, for all of us to build these memories. And it's a great opportunity to sort of listen to my children and have some time to listen to them and catch up on what's been happening in their lives. I mean, even things like, um, yesterday, even one of my my kids, she came in to show me sort of new clothes that she's bought, and I really like that because obviously she's old enough now, it doesn't live at home, so she goes out and buys her things, you know, without me. So just still being a part of that and her willingness and wanting to come in— I didn't ask her, she came in and said, 'Mum, I want to show you that I got this,' and where it came from, and I thought I could wear this with this. And, you know, all those things, just— they're just so great to share, you know, lovely positive experiences with them. Although I do know that they do have some negative experiences as well, some of which I talked about last week. Um, the main one being that one of my kids, um, is a doctor in a hospital. Um, she's only qualified. This is her second year, and she's been struggling a bit with managing death. It was particularly sort of, I emphasized, or maybe brought on a little bit by the Queen's death, um, not that long ago, when not only was she having to deal with patients who are extremely unwell and, you know, who do unfortunately die, that in her work life, she found that when she was coming out of that situation, the news coverage, the anything that was on the radio discussions were all around the death of the Queen. And she felt she couldn't really get away from it, and she needed to address this issue. I didn't really know what to do about it because I'm not in her situation, but I can understand how it's extremely difficult. And we don't really talk about death or experience it. There's been an awful lot of death recently with the pandemic, but a lot of that, you know, people haven't even been able to go to funerals. So although we know about it, we've not actually been exposed to it in the same way that we used to be. I got her some professional help. I made her come with me to see my, my therapist, the one that I see for the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, because I have a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. So that is where your body's normal response to danger or threat, where it would fight, flight, or freeze, it's frozen for too long that even that doesn't work anymore. So your mind goes elsewhere and it, it takes you away from the reality and the horrors really of what was going on. Even today when I've been preparing for this, I still find it quite difficult. I have some sort of sad moments where I think, gosh, I've really got to realize that what happened shouldn't have happened, and what I know, I shouldn't know, but I can't unknow it. I need to heal from it. And although it's taken me— I'm now 57, and I've been in the— well, receiving care from the mental health professionals since I was 19. I probably could have done with some help before that, but I've spent all this time in the system, and it's only in the past year that I've actually been getting this specialist help in the UK. Um, nearly 8 years ago, I did get this help when I was in a residential facility for people with trauma in the United States. They recognize Dissociative Identity Disorder in the United States, and they train their professionals in it. So they are trained to diagnose and treat, which is difficult when you, you go and experience that help and then you come back to the UK and you realize that it's just the same help isn't here. And I think I almost shut down thinking, I'm just not going to get this help. And I continued using the things that were available to me. I was put into our National Health Service system, having been in the private system for quite a long time, because what I— we thought that I needed, and I agreed at the time, was some sort of support within the community. Well, the private provision that I was with, they didn't have that. There wasn't a community psychiatric nurse or anything like that available, so I went back to the National Health Service. And for a time, this worked really, really well. I thought it was— I find it— found it helpful. I, I sort of welcomed this person into my home and into my family. When my children were about, I made my sessions sort of coincide with them being in so they could talk to this person if they wanted to. And I built up, you know, a degree of trust because You have to be receptive and open and willing. And this person used to sort of make notes. And when I went to see the consultant that I was under, a psychiatrist, then she would come with me, bring her notes, look back on them, and, you know, share some of what I'd said and prompt me so that I could sort of use the session quite well. And I found this quite helpful too, because you do forget. Depends, especially if you have a dissociative disorder, that's one of the things, your memory. And it means that you have different parts. So as a, as a kid at varying ages, then I would experience things but take my mind off. And I've developed different parts and they, they go away, and my conscious memory doesn't have any memory of that. So all of this was really helpful. That was until, um, a time when I'd been seeing this person for quite a while. And bearing in mind that mental health is meant to now have a sort of team approach whereby, you know, there were meetings and patients would be discussed I received a text from her saying that she wasn't coming anymore, that I was discharged. There was no plan. This was out of the blue, and it really, it really knocked me in a really bad way. I felt almost as if I'd been tricked to say things that were extremely difficult but things that I knew I needed to say. And then to have that just shut down without any warning was just awful. And, you know, it does— even if dissociative identity disorder does not have guidelines in the United Kingdom, so then you have to think, right, okay, well, if that's the case, then the person that I was seeing wouldn't have any training in this. They were also, you know, very young. And a lot of things come with lived experience, which, um, you know, I have. I shouldn't have, but I do. And I thought they would be able to help me with this, but, but they weren't. And what was really awful was that the consultant and the rest of the team— I was seeing an art therapist as well— they had absolutely no idea about this, but There was an investigation. So anything like this that happens to people, it needs to be, um, reported. Um, it was investigated, and the result of that investigation showed that it wasn't my idea that it was— it was something that had to happen— was that the consultant had actually— it was flagged up that he'd actually done some things that shouldn't have happened regarding my care. So I was left with nobody. There wasn't somebody that I could possibly see anymore, being let down really badly by a system that, you know, I've, I've worked for a very long time and paid my National Insurance and expected that anything that happens to people, if they have a diagnosis or something in for health then they would get the support. But for Dissociative Identity Disorder in the UK, we are really behind. There's nearly 40 years of research. Our, um, National Institution for Care Excellence, NICE, they have guidelines for pretty much everything, but if you put in their search Dissociative Identity Disorder, it comes up with no results found. If you put up— put in, rather, in the search complex PTSD, then yes, it does come up, and there are some guidelines. Um, I hope that there's going to be a change in this and that it— there are guidelines. I don't understand why not, because they've actually just launched a new 5-year strategy plan where they want to lead the UK and in fact sort of the international community into sort of striving for excellence in all areas. So I don't quite understand why we haven't got this. We have a European Society for Studies into Dissociative Disorder and an International Society for Studies into Dissociative Disorders. So the information is there. And other countries in Europe and the United States are training people and helping people. And I really feel almost sort of discriminated against because of what happened to me when I had absolutely no control over it. I was, you know, young, a young child. The other thing that I have spoken about before and it's a little bit of an ongoing thing, is that around the benefits system, for me, mine is a Personal Independence Payment. I have physical disabilities as well as mental health disabilities, and I was in receipt of a payment. It's not a huge amount of money, but it helped. It would help me to travel to my therapy, the costs that are involved there. I can't work. I do this broadcast once a week. That's actually really all I do. I am trying to write a book. I would love to not be in receipt of benefits and be able to get myself in a position where I could actually sort stand on my own two feet financially, but at the moment I can't. And the benefit system I have found to be pretty cruel and harsh, and it has had an extremely negative impact on my health, um, so much so that I've had to get an advocate to be my representative for this, and I'm extremely grateful I don't think this should have happened. This role shouldn't even be something that's required. I have got a huge amount of medical reports that go along with me now from all the people that I've seen, people at consultant level who have written reports in accordance to sort of strict guidelines and the assessments that I've had, which state very, very clearly what I have and why I cannot work and what help I do need. But people who— caseworkers, I don't know, handlers, whatever they're called— and they're not medically trained, can just stop your payments. They, they look— it, it, to me, it feels like they look for ways to stop giving you benefits. I went for a face-to-face assessment in a centre that was 1.3 miles from my home, and I've lived in my home for 33 years, and the car park that I went to was Sainsbury's, where, where I shop. So I managed to do that. I don't particularly like driving, and I don't drive long distances, and I certainly don't go to places that I've never been before without somebody with me. Usually they would drive. It's not something I'm that good at. I get quite anxious about it and can, and can have a bit of a panic attack, um, which they just suddenly happen. I just don't feel safe. I don't know if, um, for one reason that's possible that has affects this is that I was abused by— it was organized abuse, so that means there was a group of people, and I would be transported in the boot of a car. So I do have anxiety around cars. Anyway, I got to my assessment, 1.3 miles from my home, and the reason that I lost my benefit really was because they've done this huge cut and paste paragraph. I'm presuming it's cut and paste because it was quite unbelievable what I was writing, but I've since found out that this is standard format for what they use to say that in my ability to drive, although they didn't check the distance, which they could have easily done with the postcode, and they didn't also read back to see that they had originally offered someone who has a centre in their town to go about 20 miles away somewhere else. I mean, to me, that just doesn't make any sense either, where they're meant to be trying to help you and get you assessed properly so you can get any help you need. And there was this massive paragraph about the cognitive and physical skills that are required to operate a vehicle. And I mean, it was a massive paragraph. It's way more than I've just mentioned. And that was the main sort of reason that we've had to go through— we've now had 5 tribunal hearings. And I can say it's the most stressful thing. It makes me feel like someone is actually sort of squeezing my heart. It hurts. That is disbelief. Um, there are hearings with, um, judges that, you know, it's pretty scary stuff. And there's a format, it's pretty alien to you if you're not in that you know, that's not your area of special, um, special expertise, then it can seem quite— it is, it's extremely daunting. And they don't know you, they don't see you or anything. You don't actually physically go to these, not since COVID It's all done on the phone. I've had, um, judges instruct their clerks not to send me specific pieces of literature or material that's to do with the case because it's just has such a negative impact on my mental health is to go to my advocate. They don't read things, they don't follow instructions. They send you things and it is like a body blow when you get these, when you clearly know you shouldn't have got it. I've also had phone calls and I've had to say to the clerks, but have you not read the sheet with the judge's directions? Because it says you should not be contacting me. And they're like, oh, I haven't read that far. It's just extremely unprofessional and extremely unhelpful. Um, but finally, after all of this, I think we've now got somewhere. I think it's going to take a few weeks yet for it actually to, to materialize in anything for me, because I haven't been contacted about it again for weeks. But the last hearing The judge was actually pretty cross and told the Department of Work and Pensions, the DWP, to come back within 3 weeks with what they were going to do, so to offer me a solution. So that has now happened. I'm now having to— well, I've got to wait now. I don't know how long for, but, you know, my advocate who who does this a lot, and they are a specialist consultant, which the NHS— it's because this is a, a center for dissociative studies and it's not recognized in the UK, so they're not part of the NHS. Then there's a group, a funding group called the CTG. They're paying for my treatment, so it's recognized that I need specialist care, and then I've got the benefit system working against me. I've also got a text on my phone asking me to come in and have my autumn COVID booster jab because people like me who live with a severe mental illness and their carers, we're now eligible for this because we're more at risk of ending up in hospital. We're more at risk of neglecting self-care, which means that our immune systems might become, um, you know, more susceptible to viruses, so like COVID-19. But then the benefit system is trying to— so you've got all that that's confirming what you need to try and keep yourself healthy, and then you've got the benefit system trying to cut off any financial support that you might be able to claim. We also now have a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and in her sort of financial planning, she's actually refusing at the moment to say whether benefits will be increased as in line with inflation. When you hear the word sort of benefits, I think it makes people feel like they're only given to sort of unemployed people who maybe are able to work and, um, and see this as sort of money in place of full-time employment. But many people are like me and we actually can't work, and my treatment also dictates that working for me would be extremely difficult. Um, and I'm not— I know I'm not up to it. I do dissociate quite frequently. I mean, quite recently, probably only 2 weeks ago, I had a very bad dissociative episode. I actually can't remember it, but my husband certainly can, and it left him, yeah, feeling, um, pretty pretty frightened, and I've heard from him about it and it's actually left me pretty frightened too. On Monday the 10th of October, so for me from now that's, that's actually tomorrow, this is the 9th of October, but you won't hear this until the 17th, it's World Mental Health Day. And I've seen it, um, on social media. I, I've also been reminded of it from the radio station because the women's radio station and the men's radio station, we are all about sort of talking about mental health issues, and we like to try and really talk about it and really be open and honest. With things, and that's what I try and do. But I'm also mindful of what I say and how much detail I give. I think there's a level of appropriateness to this, and there are certainly things that I don't want to say to people. I don't actually— because I don't know who's listening and how they're feeling. And I know as somebody who's suffers from a severe mental health illness, that what people say can have a big impact. But I'm also aware that what I don't say isn't actually, um, informing people about what actually goes on, because 30 years ago People who worked in the medical profession didn't really expect that there would be as many as up to a million people in the United Kingdom who have experienced abuse. They thought there'd just be a few hundred, but there's not. There's 11 million, maybe more. That was, uh, the figures up to 2018. So, and I find that pretty massive to take in because I haven't— I've never met anyone else. I don't know. I mean, I've met people when I was in America who've gone through trauma, and some of those have been, um, abused, but that's because that's what they were helping people with. But in the UK, I've actually never met anyone who's gone through abuse. Um, so it's sometimes it's hard-hitting to know, but sometimes I need to know I'm not the only one. And the way that it's impacted on me is not because I'm not capable or I'm weak. In fact, I'm pretty strong because of what I have gone through, but it's only now that I'm actually realizing that. So I'm hoping that by talking through my lived experience that it might just help get Dissociative Identity Disorder sort of on the map in the UK. The, the only parallel that I can think of, I was being following, is the, the tragic suicide of Molly Russell That was 5 years ago when she was a 14-year-old girl in her family with her 2 sisters. And they thought they were, you know, a nice, happy family and that everybody was doing very well. And they didn't know that Molly was actually being able— but online was accessing material about suicide and self-harm. And, um, I mean, it's loads. It's only now that we're actually finding out from her father in particular, because he's been given access to the social media content that Molly was receiving. A lot of it was generated using algorithms to, to show her more of what she was looking at. I mean, I like to watch— I absolutely love, um, planes landing. Like, um, I really, really like that. And, you know, I watch videos of planes landing, um, and they pop up now when I'm not even wanting to view them because the way that I'm accessing information is generating this content that's familiar and that the algorithms are seeing that is something that I might want. So I'm not actually actively seeking it in the same way that Molly was getting images that were produced by algorithms. I don't know how that content— they, they're trying to— the coroner has said that social media would have had a negative impact on her mood and her well-being. But, and, you know, they're naming this, so it's a, it's a massive, massive thing. And I really hope that the good comes about it. There is a Molly Russell charity that I think wants to help people who do have this. I mean, it is so difficult to know what is being seen on, on the internet. Is the responsibility of the people who run these platforms, or is it the possibility of the people who make this content? I don't know. It's, it's a really, really difficult one. The internet is always, uh, it's a little bit of an unknown. It's access to the world, but that means access Access to good and access to bad. And when I was, um, you know, my, my background is that I'm a teacher, and when I used to teach children, um, when we would go into the computer room, if they were sort of looking for things— and we had security on this, on the school internet, it's, it's got all the safety filters that you should think possibly imaginable for children. I'm talking 7 and 8-year-olds. But we always said to them, if you're looking for something— quite often they'd be looking for images of things to import and put into, you know, a document or piece of sort of a topic or project that they— we would be doing, and we would use information technology to support it. And we would say to them, "If you see something that you don't want or that you don't like, put your hand up, and if it's really distressing you, put two hands up." So, and it was up to them to regulate what was one hand and what was two hands, and quite often during, you know, a 50-minute lesson, We would be constantly going to see children who had got things on the screen that they didn't really want to see, or it wasn't what they wanted. So I think we used to discuss it with them. What, what don't you like about this? Or, um, I think you might not like this because— is that right? And maybe that wasn't quite the thing to ask, but I couldn't— it wasn't— they used to get quite frustrated that they couldn't get what they wanted because there's so much out there. And even with all the safety filters, as I say, we were pretty much rushed off our feet going from child to child. And I— it wasn't a huge class size like some of the class sizes we have. So, you know, even under my supervision and the, the people that I had who worked in a support role in the classroom, they were still having to— we were all busy trying to sort all of this out. In fact, it got in the way really quite a lot with what we really wanted to move on with. But it was a lesson well learnt, I think, for those children to find things they don't like and to have adults right in the room and discuss it. I don't know, maybe we should look at really bad content with them, but you don't want to bring that into their lives if it's not there. But then it is there because it is just there. I mean, once you— somebody posts something, it's there. It's, it's— yeah, it is pretty much there. It's also one of the reasons why I'm, I'm a bit careful about the depth of information that I provide, because what I say when I send this over to the radio station it's out there, and I don't want to cause anyone distress, sort of, and to put one hand up or two hands up. So, you know, I— and I also need to put myself first when I'm searching for ways to cope. So I certainly don't want to re-traumatize myself. Now, as I'm, I'm away, I've brought a couple of books with me, and the book that I wanted to talk about today is, um, for the rest of this time, is, is by Valerie Sinason, and it's called The Truth About Trauma and Dissociation: Everything You Didn't Want to Know and Were Afraid to Ask. And Valerie Soinson, she has been, um, doing work about dissociative, um, identity disorder for, um, for many, many years. In fact, she's in the medical profession, um, as a psychotherapist. She's, she's now sort of in her, her 80s, and she also is the founder of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, which is where I'm seeing. But our center is supporting about any one time about 50 people across the UK. So there are many, many more people who need this help, and I'm extremely fortunate to have got there, although it's taken me all this length of time. If you add up all the time that I've had from people who are working in the mental health sector who aren't trained to help me with what I have, then that's an awful lot of money and time spent on me when it's actually got— hasn't got me anywhere. And, and dissociative identity disorder has nearly— when I've dissociated, I've done things to myself which now several times have nearly cost me my life. Um, so this is absolutely so important. It's not just me, there was an awful lot of people who aren't getting this help. So this book, it's published by— I can't read that— Corner, Corner Books. It was published in 2020. And really is a— it covers a lot about living in a world where we're all living under threat with— of the virus COVID-19 and the way that that has changed our sort of access to our normal activities and how we are in, in society pre-COVID. So, um, It's a really good book, it's not too long, um, there are some things that I find that are quite difficult to take in and understand, and I think it's just bit by bit and slowly, slowly that I'm going to, to understand this, but it, it's a really, really useful book and And this made me sort of understand things the more I read, because there are books about this. There aren't— there's not a huge amount of literature, and it's not something that everybody's got in their home, but hopefully we're going to raise more awareness about it, um, because too many people are diagnosed too late. Um, when I looked at the NICE guidelines for PTSD, it states that, you know, there should be transition from childhood mental health services into adult services and that patients aren't discharged from the child services before the care plan is put in place for the adult services. And that, that is happening. Care plans are put in place, but in a lot of cases they're not implemented for 2 or 3 years. And there are children and young adults who aren't going to school, and there aren't the facilities for them to do anything else. There might be some sort of provision for, um, going and doing some art, um, or some discussion groups and things, but it's pretty limited and it's not enough. And for people to have to wait 2 to 3 years because there just aren't the resources. So NICE want to put science and evidence at the heart of every health and care decision-making policy that they do. They've been established for 22 years and We, we need to make sure that the work of people like Valerie Sorensen is something that they really take seriously. She has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, which she received in 2016, and she's worked with extremely severely traumatized individuals with dissociative identity disorder for over 30 years. So she's really rubber stamping it that it's, it's, it's real. And, you know, the, the voice of trauma not only hurts the speaker, but it can also hurt the listener. And she does identify that, you know, professionals need to have emotional resources themselves to be able to deal with severely traumatized people. One change that I think sort of links in a bit to the Molly Russell and the social media thing is, you know, many, uh, well, all of us, I suppose, now, majority of us who have phones use them to access different information. So your phone, it can, you know, it can be like a friend. You can have, if it's dark, you have a torch on there so you can put some light to help you, make you feel safe. You can, it sort of has like, um, a brain, a heart, a memory. It can be like a guardian angel. You can use it to call safe people. It doesn't close. It's available 24/7, or as long as you've got your, um, internet coverage. But in general, it doesn't close, and it can sort of accompany us at different difficult times in our lives. You can put on there— I, I have, um, and I call it Healing Image High. I have a playlist. So I use, um, an app for music, and every time I hear something I really like, but it makes me feel good or makes me think in a good way, then I add it to my playlist. And that I know is safe. It's not going to bring any any music that might trigger me at times when I need— I feel a bit more vulnerable. So, and I also have my photographs. I absolutely love taking photographs. I always have since I was a child. And now, I mean, it used to be that you'd go and get your packet of film from where you got your photographs developed and bring it home and pass photographs around physically to to look at what you'd taken with your camera, not a camera on your phone, an actual camera. But now we don't share them, or we don't look at them in quite the same way. I mean, there were always some that didn't come out very well that you didn't keep. Now I don't even get time to delete my things. I've got thousands of photographs on my phone, but I always look every night at the photographs that I've taken during the day. And my phone does a very nice thing of collating my photographs and putting them to music and sort of slide transitions. So it's a really nice way to view them, but I don't share it with other people in the same way that we used to leave a packet of photographs out so when somebody came home they would go through them. So that, I feel, is a bit lost. So we now live with COVID which is— it's an invisible enemy, but we know that we have that. And, you know, we, we've all missed things. We've missed medical appointments, weddings, meetings, get-togethers, sporting events, birth of a new baby in some families, a walk, a holiday, or, or traveling. And you know, these are all things that form our identities, and you know, they, they help us deal with issues, and they also enrich our lives. Not having to access these things, we've been limited and restricted on the amount of sort of touch, human touch, that we can have. And this is the most basic need that we have for intimacy, and it's been compromised. Some people unfortunately have caught COVID and haven't survived it. So, you know, people who were once our friends could have become— and family members could become sort of enemies and pass this on to us. So we've had to learn how to be separate. We've had to live in isolation. So I think it's so important now that what we— we take some responsibility for what is being viewed and have some discussions about what might harm some people, because, um, normal people are sort of facing worry about staying alive with something like COVID, um, and I don't think we're out of it yet. And then We also have other vulnerable members of society, whether it's children or people who are unwell or everybody really, that can get distressing scenes through their phone, and that's coming straight to them. It's not being screened by anybody who knows them. It's just— and it's having a massive influence. I don't use Instagram very much. I used to just post pictures about what my radio broadcast was going to be, but I don't want to be a visual influencer. I wanted to be having my influence. I want to be through speaking, because to me speaking is, is the most important thing. We had some friends over just for a pizza the other night, and it was so nice just spending a few hours sitting and, you know, talking to them. It's, um you know, they're friends who, yes, I can probably message them, um, when we're not available to meet, but nothing beats actually sitting down and being together and having a really good chat. So I've been reading The Truth About Trauma and Dissociation. Um, one thing I learned was that trauma comes from a Greek meaning for wound. So it's when our body— there's an external stressor that we're not prepared for and we can't adequately process it. Your body has a physical response to this as your breathing, your heart rate, vigilance. Um, there's extra brain activity going on. That's something that scientists have brought up to us. And there's a— with trauma, there's a, you know, there's a need for survivors surviving and making sense of it. I blame myself so much for what happened to me. Um, I, I just thought it must be me. I thought I was born bad, or, you know, I must be, or, um It's just— but I've got this far, so I must know that I'm, I'm pretty, pretty strong. And that's how my body has reacted. It's certainly never given up. It tries to destroy itself because that's what somebody sort of did to me, really. Well, not somebody, there were a few people, but Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, really difficult. Um, you know, that for people to live well, you need something called FREDA. F-R-E-D-A. You need fairness, respect, equality, dignity, and acceptance. But you can often, if you're somebody who's experienced some trauma or an external stressor, then your body can react in, in ways that can lead you to the wrong service. So you can go mad, so then you end up in psychiatric services. If you go bad and you turn to crime, then you're in forensic services. If you're sad and depressed, that gets you medication. And if you're sick, so your body becomes physically unwell, then you get medical treatment. And then there's another thing that can happen is that you end up with an addiction, so like drink or drugs, and then you end up with addiction services. So it just— trauma-informed therapy is just really, really well Um, there's another danger for which I certainly found was that in disclosing, so actually saying some of what happened, the start of it, and when you start that process, it's very difficult. You can't turn back. It goes, it goes. You, you're then dealing with, um, the police and the law. And it's probably— it's the most awful thing I've ever been through, apart from being abused, has been this process. Because there's always a fear of reporting that, you know, the perpetrators can deny your behaviour, attack you, reverse it, so they become the victor. The victim and you become the offender. So in a way, you're being asked to be a whistleblower and, and stand it all alone. Um, and that's, that's really, really hard. Um, I mean, whistleblower comes from sort of the 19th century when, um, policemen used to blow whistles and it would be over the sound of traffic or over crowds when there was something that people need stop or listen to, to get information to help. And it's also used by sort of referees in sport, um, and in training animals. So it is something that can be clearly heard. So if you're suddenly a whistleblower, it's a massive thing to undertake, and I wasn't equipped for it. Like, I wasn't equipped for, um, what— learning about what happened to me, or indeed what happened to me. So I suffered from organized ritual abuse, which it adds to the complexity of the disorder. Um, it— there's a, a really great depth of fear and a feeling that if you're at some level, you know, that you're doomed if you don't obey. It— organized abuse is often sort of structured and It can involve sort of torture methods, and it can be some skepticism around it. This has been seen in high, high-profile convictions in the United Kingdom and the United States. And I know through talking to sort of my— some of my guests, in particular Judge Rosemary Aquilina, the victims certainly who've gone through her court, they have gone through an awful lot to get there. The process is extremely difficult, and they also have then the external stresses of outside people who think they're making it all up, and they get an awful lot of, um, terrible, uh, impact on what they get said about them and things through social media. It's It's pretty— it's extremely destructive. And all of a sudden we need to be prepared now for this too, because it's having a massive, um, impact on people. And then we need to have, um, special treatment, because for me, going through the police investigation process, they promised that they would support me. They promised that there was support and I would get everything I needed. What I got was like 4 to 6 hours at a time of video interviews and then having to go through written transcripts and sign so often. I don't even sign my name the same anymore. I couldn't bear to look at that signature anymore, so I've actually changed how I— what I write. And I didn't get any help. What I got, and I hope that I'm the exception rather than the rule, but I don't think I am, I got a victim support letter. It didn't even have my name on it. It's just a generic letter that can go, I don't know, for people who have had any sort of crime, whether it's— well, we actually had someone throw a bottle through one of our windows in, in the house, and we got 2 victim support letters for that and a phone call. If you've been through the process and police investigation into abuse, I got a letter that wasn't even addressed to me from Victim Support, but we'd known about trauma for, for decades, many decades. We have, um, sort of Vietnam veterans who are still suffering with PTSD after more than 20 years. Um, there's also attachment with trauma as well, and people do talk about Stockholm Syndrome. Well, that comes from 1973 when some people went and raided a bank and kept hostages for up to 6 days, and they developed quite a strong attachment to the people that captured them. So trauma is— it's not fair. It destroys, um, innocence, and it also brings sort of social and professional doubts because I can certainly see why that would be, and it destroys assumptions of a fair world and of a natural justice. So I have huge concerns about, um, how people are going to get help and support, particularly now at the moment when we have a new government and One of the main things that they are looking at, obviously, is all the money it takes to support all the services and the needs of people in this country, both financially and medically, education and public services. It's everything. And the cost of this just escalates and escalates. We've also got cost of living crisis that we, we're all going to have to face this winter. For various reasons that are without— out— not— they're outside our control. And the government are saying that— I think it's about £20 billion they want to— I mean, this sort of amount of money, I can't even imagine. Um, not many people have to imagine £20 billion. And they're talking about trying to save money by— one area that was pointed out was services within the mental health sector, when every bit of evidence and every sort of Panorama documentary or anything like that that you might see or hear, those services aren't meeting the needs of people they've already got. So if you project what the needs of people are going to be, then we're just going to fall massively short and we're going to keep doing this. So if we want to have a National Institute for Care and Excellence, we need to address every problem. And yeah, it is going to take a massive amount of money, but if it helps people like me who've been in the system for well over 30 years, then I could have saved 30 years' worth of money. So my treatment at the moment is predicted to last, uh, 6 years. I've nearly completed my first year, and I could have done— maybe I wouldn't have needed 6 years if I got the help a lot sooner, but it just was not available. It really was not there. And I have a very long history of, you know, severe mental health issues. And I've, you know, got put in the medical care, the psychiatric care, all this stuff, but it didn't come together to give me the therapy that I actually need. And I feel quite cross about it. I think I have a right to be cross about it. But now I've got what I need, I want other people to have the same and get the help, because I tell you, It's making, like, the world of difference, and I want healthcare professionals to know this. You can't manage someone effectively if you've not had the training. That's not anybody's fault at all, and I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to manage it who hasn't been trained. And I now have a consultant psychotherapist who is trained either with Europe or in America. That's where these people have received their training, um, and it, it's extremely different seeing someone who actually understands the words that are coming out of your mouth rather than saying them and looking at somebody who is there to help you in a professional capacity who just doesn't get it. So I think it's— so any— somebody is physically ill and their symptoms aren't really properly diagnosed until they've seen several people or had several tests, and then to finally get the diagnosis correctly and the treatment is a massive relief. So that's how we need to approach mental health too, and even like dare to look at things like dissociative identity disorder. So I'd like to thank you for listening. Um, I'll be interested to hear what happens tomorrow on World Mental Health Day, and I look forward to speaking to you from my next broadcast. Thank you.