Eva May returns to the Women’s Radio Station to discuss her personal journey with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a complex mental health condition that remains largely misunderstood and under-diagnosed in the UK. Drawing from 33 years as a mental health service user and her own lived experience, Eva explains how DID develops as a survival mechanism in response to severe childhood trauma, and why accessing proper treatment and diagnosis remains a significant challenge for sufferers in Britain.
Through candid conversation, Eva shares how her breakdown following a police investigation into her childhood abuse forced her to confront the accumulated trauma stored in her mind and body. She discusses the fragmentation of identity that occurs with DID, the dangerous internal conflicts between different parts, and her current specialist treatment journey—predicted to last 5-6 years. Eva emphasizes the urgent need for better funding, NHS guidelines, and trained practitioners to help people living with this condition move from mere survival to genuine healing and recovery.
Main Topics
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) exists on a spectrum above complex PTSD and develops as the brain's survival mechanism in response to overwhelming childhood trauma
DID remains largely undiagnosed and untreated in the UK due to lack of NHS guidelines, trained practitioners, and public awareness, making it difficult for sufferers to access appropriate care
Eva's childhood abuse led to dissociation and fragmentation of identity into different parts, allowing her to survive unbearable circumstances while being unable to process or communicate her experiences
A major police investigation into her childhood trauma triggered a complete breakdown that cost Eva her career and forced her to confront decades of unprocessed trauma
Living with DID involves hypervigilance, periods of dissociation (feeling disconnected from body and environment), and dangerous scenarios where conflicting internal parts may cause self-harm
Eva's specialist treatment is projected to last 5-6 years and focuses on learning to work collaboratively with her different parts rather than dissociating as a survival mechanism
Better funding, NHS clinical guidelines, trained mental health professionals, and public understanding are urgently needed to prevent continued suffering and enable effective treatment for DID
Full TranscriptHello, this is Eva May, and I'm speaking to you from the Women's Radio Station for another in my Healing Image High seri...▼
Hello, this is Eva May, and I'm speaking to you from the Women's Radio Station for another in my Healing Image High series. So Healing Image High was something that I, um, as a project for myself, that I asked some image professionals to help me with how I looked and with to learn about how I could do my makeup and things like that, which was came about at a time in my life when I'd had a pretty major breakdown. It wasn't the first one, but it was at this one that I realized that I needed some help with how I looked for myself so that I could feel better and for me to, to go out and try and make a step along the way to recovery. And this certainly helped me. So from there, I made this project Healing Image Hai into a website. I didn't really expect it to go anywhere. I thought it was just for me, but it was good learning how to build a website, working with somebody. So I've learned an awful lot more than I ever thought that I would when I initially set out to do this. So now I am speaking to you as a presenter at the women's radio station. This is only a recent thing. I've only been doing that this year. So it's a role that I actually really like and something completely different to what I used to do when I was working full-time, which I did for many, many years. Unfortunately, due to the, the fact that I am somebody who lives with Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, uh, for people who can't sort of quite understand what that is, if you think of PTSD, so post-traumatic stress disorder, then complex PTSD, so it means that there's been more trauma repeated, um, maybe in different forms, but that would give you some complex PTSD. With dissociative identity disorder, it's going up above there. So the thing about it for me, um, and other people who live with it, especially in the United Kingdom, is that it's not easily diagnosed. There's not a lot of practitioners who are trained in it. The NHS don't have any guidelines set out by NICE, the N-I-C-E. I'm sorry, I can't remember what that stands for, but they are the organization that set out protocols and policies for different medical conditions, and there aren't any in the UK at the moment. I really hope that that will change because it would mean that people could get diagnosed quicker and get effective treatment and, and not have to live with Dissociative Identity Disorder because It's not easy living with it at all. I've been living with it without really knowing or, or how being able to understand it myself for many, many years. It started when I was abused, so that was trauma as a young child, so I'm now 56 years old, and I have spent 33 years in the mental health system as a service user, either in the UK or in the United States. I also actually got elected as a public governor on the board of an NHS trust for mental health and social care, and I was really like proud to apply for that role. I had to write a piece about myself, what I thought I could bring to the trust in that area, and also like the outcomes that I wanted to help work towards. Well, I didn't actually— I resigned. I resigned I hadn't been there that long, but it didn't take me very long at all to realize it really was not something that I wanted to be associated with. Um, I felt that the provision for mental health care in general was just not something that I wanted to be a part of. And by just going along and attending meetings as a public governor and listening to it and watching PowerPoints and things, it wasn't going to do— I didn't feel I was going to have the best use of my time there. I mean, when I— it just wasn't run very well, and when I did resign, nobody actually acknowledged my resignation. So I think that kind of gives a little bit of an indication as to how things were going with that one. And, um, and, and also an indication as to, you know, I think that's really poor. I think that's really rude. I, I gave up my time for free, and so nobody— I filled a space, but when I resigned, nobody actually thanked me. So yeah, well, here we go. So Dissociative Identity Disorder is It's taken me such a long time to even try and understand it. I've been given various bits of sort of literature, books, pamphlets, which I— it's taken me a very, very long time to read them and be able to concentrate on it, and actually to have someone to to discuss it with as well, because it's not really something that you can discuss with people that you meet, or your family, or your friends, or people you see on a sort of normal day-to-day basis, because it's just not really understood or discussed in this country. So in a way, it's taboo, but because there's not the understanding. In the NHS, our National Health Service, they don't have psychiatrists and therapists who are trained to deal with this yet. So let's hope that we can get rid of the 'yet' and one day that this, um, it'd be something that it would be an option for people. There have been so many studies and/or cases that have come to light where, you know, children or young adults are abused, and still we don't have the treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder. So I hope I can just explain a little bit about it today as a person who lives with it, because if you saw me or met me, I don't think you would probably know. If you lived with me, you would, and certainly if you were my therapist, you would. And also, um, I have been through the police investigation into what happened to me and that really didn't help at all. I would dissociate and I just couldn't take it all in and my brain just wouldn't allow that to happen. It was too— well, I've got books where they call it the unsayable and I was having to speak the words about something that really should be unsayable, it shouldn't have happened, but I could not take in as an adult what had happened to me as a child and the subsequent impact on my, my brain development and basically my whole life. So now I, I am in care for specifically a specialist place for Dissociative Identity Disorder, and my, my treatment is predicted to last 5 or 6 years. So it's not like if you're going to have— you need a new knee, not that I've had a new knee, but if you were needing something like that, then and you have surgery where they put in a new knee, then you know when you come out— well, pretty quickly, probably when you just come around from the anaesthetic— that the operation's gone well, and it won't be that much longer before you're told that, yes, it's been successful. So being told that I've got 5 years of treatment, I can't really see right now where that's going to put me in 5 years when I'm like 61. So that's a really long time to have been trying to live with this and to be safe with it and to be stable with it, which is what I'm doing at the moment, because I— there are times when I dissociate, so it's like leaving my body or leaving my environment, so my brain will shut off from that and take me somewhere else. It's a little bit like having an out-of-body experience, where there are times when I can see the things that happened to me but not feel it, So, um, it's, it's very difficult to know that that's how I've been living and that I shouldn't really have been living like that at all, because this just shouldn't happen to me. But in a situation where a child is being abused, you can't talk to the people who are doing this harm because they're causing the harm, so there's no narrative about it. And then other people who you thought would keep you safe, who didn't know about it, then they're not discussing it either, so it just goes silent and then it impacts on your brain. So to survive, my brain took me away from these things, but now all these years later when, um, accumulation of things I think, my children getting old enough to leave home and become more independent adults, I mean they still need their mum but not quite in the same way and they don't live at home, Going through the police investigation process was just like nothing I had ever, ever imagined it would be like. It wasn't really explained to me what would happen, and this went on for many months with, you know, interviews recorded for hours and hours at a time. And I had a complete, complete breakdown. I don't think I really knew what a breakdown was, but I certainly do now. And I lost— I actually lost my job, a job that I was— well, I think I was very good at it. I certainly— I loved it. I made sure that every single day, gave my best, and then to be so ill that you can't carry out that job, and that the people that you work for, rather than asking or making some, some sort of adaptations to try and help you through that period of difficulty, just didn't happen. And, um, uh, yeah, it— so anyway, the, the job went, and I won't be going back to that, that job. So Dissociative Identity Disorder happens when your body is just overwhelmed by trauma. So you are living with all these symptoms of unhealed suffering. You know, if I sort of bang— I did actually cut my head open in a swimming pool when I was a child on the edge. I was about 4 at the time, and I got like really good care. I got, you know, care from my parents, care from the people who are by the pool, care from the the medical people there, and then eventually I had to have some stitches put in it. So all that is, you know, there's a hut and then there are adults, caregivers, who provide the care that you would expect that would happen, not just for me but for anybody. But when harm is happening that people can't see, and as a child you can't have the vocabulary for or the understanding of it. Like, I can remember at times sort of looking at people and thinking, 'What? What? Why are you still allowing this to happen?' But they did not know. So that's how we managed to live, with myself fragmenting off into different parts to get me through different things. And then when I was able to be like how I should be, then that was another part as well. I don't actually know how many parts I have. I know I've got a lot of parts that I don't like, and what makes DID unsafe is when some parts don't like some parts and actually try to kill them off. And I've had quite a few, um, experiences where I've dissociated and my body, or somehow, has hurt itself, or like harmed itself, but severely, in, in ways that, um, there are quite a few things that have happened, different things They're not planned, they just suddenly happen and I have no awareness, no memory of them, but I've ended up coming around in intensive care, like critical care, and not knowing if I'm going to actually survive or have some long-term health problems because of what basically my body, a part of my body, has tried to do to another part. So it's a, it's a serious thing, which is why I sort of do keep saying that I think in this country we need to put more funding into this and get people the right treatment. So it is a trauma, it affects everything on such a big big scale. And I do live my life being hypervigilant. I am really, really aware of every single thing, and that— even that can become overwhelming. So I usually like live and run pretty fast, but then when it all— I can run out of steam, then I can come like stuck and really stand still, and then things can really take over and overwhelm me. I think during my, my time as a kid growing up and going to teenagers and becoming an adult and becoming a mum, there were always things that I was doing. I was busy, I had things that I liked, so I had these really good distractions. So once all of those went then this big massive breakdown really hit, and recovery from it is incredibly slow. And I need to have some help, which I am now getting from a specialist therapist, to change how I manage things, how I think about things, how I think about myself, and how I can try and work together with my parts. Because we don't need to dissociate anymore. There isn't any trauma going on now, but it was so stored up that once it came out, it came out, and it's been pretty disruptive and destructive. So, um, if, um, there, there is, um a trauma is being experienced, then, um, you know, this dissociation or being quiet— I mean, I was described, um, as a quiet child. In fact, my grandparents wrote to my mum and dad to say that they found that I was really quiet. But I don't think— like, that's the sort of thing that parents take offense over. And also the people we're talking about, they live quite far away from us, so we didn't see them very mine, very often. So I, I, it just all sort of went unnoticed. Um, the trauma, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. It's so difficult to understand it because it's like, how did it start? That there like wasn't a beginning or a middle or an end, and there are just these sort of fragments of things that I can remember that can come back to me at any time when I'm not even thinking about it. So, you know, there can be sort of sounds or smells, or I feel spaced out. I do lose a lot of time. You can have these sort of micro amnesia episodes where I'm not sure where I've gone in my head for a while. Sometimes I can lose a few days. It affects basic things like eating, sleeping, it can make relationships difficult. I actually— sleeping is, uh, it's been always been a problem for me And I obviously, some part of me doesn't feel safe a lot of the time when I go to bed, and I can during the night get up and down, up and down, and in the morning I wake up and there are any number between 8 and 12, like, bottles of water all set up sort of randomly, a bit like Skittles, by the side of my bed. So I built a sort of barricade just around me on the floor, so if anybody came near— which it doesn't make sense because that's not going to happen, no one's going to come and harm me now, it stopped— but there are still parts in my, my body that are so strong, powerful, and are still operating in this way. So it's trying to learn how to shut those parts and safely. Well, actually, with sleep, we've also— I do have some medication for that too, so that does help. But another thing that happened about, about a month ago, someone that I know knows that I struggle with sleep, and they very kindly gifted me a weighted blanket. So I had read about them, but I hadn't really looked into it, um, in a way that something that might help someone like me. So I've now got this, uh, ditch the quilt, get rid of that. I've now got this weighted blanket. It's not very thick, but the weight and the way it's all stitched in is, is even, and then it has a nice cover on it. So I sleep with that. It's not like ultra, ultra heavy, but it does just provide some— for a feeling of, um, being sort of wrapped up really and tucked in And I've been sleeping really well with that. So if anyone is having sleep problems, then mine is from someone called REMY Sleep. That's R-E-M-Y. And I would like really, really recommend looking into one of these because, well, certainly when I had my children, when they were little and I was having to get up in the night, and eventually they did sleep. I think if you can have a reasonable amount of sleep and get some quality sleep, then it actually can help you cope with more things. So yeah, top tip from me today is a blanket, a weighted blanket. So, um, we don't have a lot of research in this country about DID, but other countries do. The Netherlands, they seem to have quite a lot of research and information about it. I think their funding is more— it's a priority or it's a higher priority and the amount of money that has been available, and I think they did some studies and some research and then from that it sort of propelled it. So there is information there, but we just haven't quite got it yet. But their research does show that you can recover from Dissociative Identity Disorder, that it is— it's a— it's going to be a lengthy process. And Things like, um, I mean flashbacks. I get flashbacks of things that happened to me, and the thing about a flashback, it's actually very terrifying because it feels extremely real, and they can last quite a long time, so that there isn't really like the beginning, the middle, and the end. It could last over a long time, a lot longer probably than the actual trauma of what you're seeing as a flashback. In reality, it probably was over a shorter length of time, but when it's a flashback, it's kind of like being in it and looking at it and exploring it and getting completely enveloped in it. And it's just not really helpful. So at the moment, for, for me in therapy, and I'm only in the first few months of this 5 years, I'm trying to learn and work with my therapist to keep, um, stable. So yeah, we've got a long way to go, but I don't want to live like this anymore. I want to, you know, it's a fight every day. I just really want to learn more and more about it, and if I don't understand what's being said to me or I don't understand what I'm reading, then I will say that I've now got somebody who can help me think about another way of approaching it, another way of reframing it. We can use props, um, you can use art, we can use drawing, journaling, and we can use, uh, you know, different sort of analogies and try and recover from this. Think, as I said before, about having a knee replacement, like recovery from severe mental health issues or any sort of trauma, it's really hard to quantify. So, you know, it— and to feel safe with it, because I can't do the same thing every single day. I do need to go out and about and do things, and I need to try and plan that so it's as safe as possible. But ultimately, there's going to be things that can become triggering in the here and now, and I might not understand why, why that was a trigger. And then I can— well, I do, I don't want to, but it seems to happen that I can start to process this, and somewhere usually I can come up with a, "Oh yeah, I know why that happened. It's because such and such happened, and it's really reminded me of that," although it's in a completely different format or context. So It's not all sort of negative for me. I can't wish it away. There's no magic or pill that's going to wish it away, but there are some things that living with Dissociative Identity Disorder sort of gives you that, that can get you through. So you've developed this most incredible, amazing survival technique. As a child, so without being instructed on it, your body's gone and done it. So you can look absolutely sort of normal, but then you also can look like an absolutely crazy person, and that's not really a part that— or parts that you want people to know about or see. And when that does happen, I find it very difficult to go back to those people if they were friends or not. A lot of these people I don't need to see anymore, but you know, I don't know what to say, um, and I've had to apologize for my behavior so many times because people just don't understand, and to be honest, it's just better to apologize for it and then limit how much you see those, those people. There's, um, my, um, people who live near us, so, so, so, you know, our neighbors, right? Let's, let's put it straight, it's our neighbors. Now, there is something that triggers me that they started doing, or rather someone who was coming to their property started doing, and it was getting to the stage where I couldn't actually leave my driveway. I couldn't sort of go on to the pavement because of this issue. Anyway, I asked, um, really nicely and framed it in a way that that sounded sort of reasonable and, you know, because they're quite logical and there's a neighbourly request. And I got this response which was, 'Absolutely, yeah, we will, you know, do that. That's no problem.' So I thought, 'Great, that's brilliant. I'll be fine now. I won't have to sit for 20 minutes.' wondering whether or not I can leave my boundary of my property. But unfortunately, the, the, the visitor to their property didn't see it quite the same way and thought it'd be quite good to, to do it even more, and to the point where I, I just lost complete control. Acted, behaved like a crazy person. I sounded like a crazy person. I was crying, I was doubled over in pain, not like their 56-year-old, you know, wife and mother of 3 adult children neighbour. I was like a crazy, crazy person, and they then later came round to make sure when I wasn't here to speak to my husband and to tell him how nuts I am. And that's quite a few months ago, and they don't have anything to do with me anymore. That is how, how bad it is and how I wish Yeah, I, I don't understand it myself because if it was reverse situation, I definitely would not antagonize somebody like that, and especially when I knew it was trauma-related. That feels a bit unkind, but people are people and that's how it goes. But these people, they haven't been there very long, they're probably wishing they never moved, but They, um, they have, they have little children, and at Christmas— so we're now in February, aren't we— and I bought them, you know, gifts. I didn't see them when I took them around. I think I sent one of my children around with them, and that was it. But they won't contact me. They messaged a thank you and a photograph to my husband, and apparently, um, they are very traumatized by me. Their children aren't because they didn't see it, but that— I hope that gives you some idea. But I feel so awful, so embarrassed for something that is the outcome of something that happened to me, you know, as a child. And to have someone see you in that state of distress, which would be— I mean, I don't think I've ever seen anybody in this sort of state, how it was. But to then just feel shunned and that people are scared of you, it's really, it's really not helpful and it's really not necessary. Um, I don't know, maybe it's because I have, um, you know, suffered from trauma that I've got more of an understanding and compassion, as I, I don't have compassion for myself in an awful lot of situations, but I certainly do in this one. And, um, I, I think that it's very sad that this is, um, how it ended, when I was just a person with trauma trying not to be triggered, when I've only got one option for an exit from my property, and they wanted to do something that was going to make this terribly hard over such a long time that I could not take anymore, and, and I literally had a breakdown. So the other thing that I find really hard too is friends knowing, and how much do you say? Um, my therapist is actually very good at advising me on what to, to do and what to say and how to think of things. So at the moment, the neighbor issue we're not doing anything about. That's just not something that I'm up to tackling at the moment. But with my friends, I want to go out with my friends as me who's okay, um, although it is all right to not be okay, but I don't want people seeing DID as the only thing that I am. I also have slight dilemmas when I go to places like for the dentist, um, that can be quite triggering for me, so can other medical procedures, but I don't always want to say to people it's because, you know, I've— I experienced severe trauma, so therefore I might Could you, I don't know, well, I usually take something in my pocket so that I can sort of squeeze onto it. I've got a small sort of wooden fidget toy that I sort of hang on to, but you know, other people have problems going to the dentist, it's not just me, so I'm not sure whether this is trauma-related or it's just that Eva May does not like going to the dentist. So I did have one thing which I, I'm still terribly, terribly hurt about, and I'm sure it's— if it's happened to me, it's going to be happening to other people— is that I had to have some surgery on my, my toes. So I had like claw toes, bunions, that sort of stuff, and so my toes needed sort of breaking and straightening and pinning and things like that, and this is quite— it's quite a major thing. I mean, they do explain it to you that it's going to be major, but it is major, and something happened when I was a child being abused where, you know, feet are— if somebody wants to harm somebody or harm themselves, then feet seem to be a place because it's not something that people look at very much. And I explained to the consultant that I had, well, PTSD, I think he managed to understand. And also I gave him permission to talk to a private psychiatrist that I'd seen as well, and he then set up a meeting with my husband, so not with me, and said he didn't want me anymore as his patient, and I I just couldn't believe it. I was sitting there like, when I was told this news and told that I was going to be moved to someone else because I've been honest, because recovery for me after medical procedures can— seems to take a while. I also— pain relief is really, really important. I've experienced a lot of pain as a child, and that's what made me dissociate away from that pain. So I need medical practitioners to understand that maybe I might need a little bit more. Let's just try— pain is a trigger. So in being open and honest and trying to get two professionals, one from mental health and one from physical health, to communicate, I literally like shot myself in the foot because I was then moved to a different foot surgeon, and there's no way that I can go back and correct that or it— unsay it. So, it— there's this line of confusion about how much do you say to somebody, whether or not you say it, or whether you suffer in silence, or whether you do talk to friends and family, but then I don't really want my friends and family to think of me purely as a— somebody who has mental health issues. I want to be someone else, too. I want to be the person, like, who I am now, talking— talking to you. And then, on the other hand, My family know, my friends know, a lot of my friends and family were all involved in the police investigation because they were around at the time and in some respects, you know, I hated that, seeing the people that, you know, you really love, their world like blown apart, probably blew it apart more than mine because mine had already had a few blows in it anyway, but now they don't ask, they don't ever talk about it, so it is like this great big elephant in the room, so I have to take on a— I can't ever feel that I can really be myself I couldn't really go through my family. I mean, my family at home, yep, more than the others. Say I'm having like a really bad time at the moment, can someone just help me? Or can you just hold me? Or can you just tuck me up in bed? Can you just— there are some things that are helpful, but other people don't know that, and other people, sort of family members, they were all ears when it was, uh, you know, first came out and the police investigation, and people wanted to know and, and wanted to help. But I think in some ways it's a little bit like when someone suffers a bereavement and you have a lot of people around you at the time, and initially they're of a lot. It's almost draining having so many people around, but then afterwards, give it a couple of months and there aren't so many people about. And with this, I, I do understand that it is a difficult subject to, to discuss, and some members of my family know that I'm in therapy now for 5 years, but nobody asks how it's going or anything. So I don't know whether that would change in time because it just makes me feel a little bit ashamed and uncomfortable to be my, myself. So, um, and what I need to focus on now is my therapy. Um, research shows that talking therapy can really, really support and aid recovery, because that's what we're talking about, is to recover. Um, I— a lot of, um, what is on offer for people, um, if you're not paying, um, is you might get offered 6, maybe 6 sessions of talking therapy. So, so, so with a therapist. Well, I'm not quite sure who comes up with the 6 sessions because we don't have the screening process that, say, like if you were living in the Netherlands, have for Dissociative Identity Disorders. So and you would get who you were given. So is that necessarily the right therapist? You're not— and how do you know? It's difficult. I don't think you are going to know. It's just maybe go for those 6 sessions and try. But if that's not enough, like I now— I've done all that sort of thing, and I've had private therapists as well, and that does give you more options to you have access to more people, but it's still very difficult to know whether or not they are going to be the right person for you. And especially, as I said, in this country, many practitioners, they've just not had any training for Dissociative Identity Disorder. So yeah, my— I'm, I'm, I'm upset that it's 5 years I'm quite angry that it's 5 years. I don't know what on earth I'll be like in 5 years because this wasn't my fault. I didn't ask for this, but there are things that I can do. And even if you are sort of in the holding situation, which I've been in for years in the Mental Health Service, then I think there are some parts you can do for yourself, for your own healing. So journaling, whether or not it's just writing or drawing or using stickers— my journals are quite heavily illustrated, and I don't write and write and write. I write something quite short for a purpose and then pick out a few key words and then write some more sentences about those. I do want— well, I have been working on through lockdown a journal, so it's more sort of guided-based with examples for short and specific targeted work that you can see has an outcome. I don't want to write out the whole thing that I did in my whole day. I don't think that that for me, that's not aiding my recovery. So I need to just try and keep myself stable and learn more about Dissociative Identity Disorder. And I think I am doing quite well with this because in the beginning I didn't understand it at all. I really— it just wouldn't go in and make sense for me. So now it is making more sense, so that's good. There's other things like Dissociative Identity Disorder, if it puts you into a survival— you become quite an expert at survival in certain things. So not, you know, many people are able to work pretty well, hold down, you know, successful jobs while they have this, because it's not— I mean, your brain's not sick, it's just, it's just been made and it's worked for you in a certain way for survival, because that's what your brain does for you, it keeps you in us to survive. But so brain isn't sick, but what happened to you was sick. So that was living in a hugely traumatic environment for years, um, you know, a lot of years and a lot of instances. So now I need to learn to live in a non-traumatic environment, even though, like, with the, the neighbors and the— can we have a bit of help getting in and out, please? I kind of made myself a little bit of a traumatic environment there, which I don't think there's any other way really we could have done that one. And I hope in time— well, we'll see what happens there, I'm not sure. So I— my brain always did what's best to try and survive, so now I've got to try and integrate doing what's best to recover. So it's adding that in but still having the brain there that is in all these different parts that got us through all these different situations. So the key for me is to keep stable. I do need a lot of rest, and I do like having time on my own. Sometimes because of DID, my family are not so keen on me being on my own, but they now have to learn to trust me that if I say, "I really need to be on my own," "I need a coffee on my own, I'll see you later," or I'm not coming out at the moment, I'll meet you, or I don't want to come out today, no thank you, then they are now starting to accept that and to trust. But I can understand why it has been so difficult for them, because I look at them and think, I just told you I need to be on my own, so what's wrong with that? Well, they're pretty scarred with, you know, the situations that I've been in where you know, I have been very close to losing my life. So I— because I'm not aware of those things when they happen, I'm not aware of the impact this had on my family, but it's massive, because if I put myself in their situation, then it would be pretty massive for me. But, and the other thing is— well, not the other thing, another thing— is that I don't want it to impact on my family's life. You know, they have their own lives, they're going to face their own difficulties, and I want to be someone that can support them. And I think that they're pretty good at knowing that they could, even though they know what I've been through and they have lived with, you know, a mom for, well, my eldest child's case, uh, he is, he's 32, so he's had a mum who's not been very well for a very long time, um, and, and all my kids, I have 3, they are pretty good at knowing that they can come and talk to me about pretty much anything because I've been through so much that I don't actually have a line of what is taboo to talk about and what isn't. So if they have a problem, they do— they do come, and we manage to get on quite well with things. So anyway, I opened my emails today, and there was a really lovely one from the women's radio station, so which I'm talking to you from. And we've won another award, so, which is just amazing. I mean, I'd like to think that some of what I say might have helped get this. I don't know, but a part of the women's radio station family, and when I listen to the other presenters then I'm very proud that I can say that I also present for them as well. But they've won the best radio-based women's mental health support service UK, and that's with the— in the Global Health and Pharma Mental Health Awards. So I don't know if you, if you have looked ever looked up about the women's radio station, but they've won quite a lot of awards, and there are, you know, there's a lot of things that people can listen to now out there, not just radio stations, but you've got podcasts as well, and sort of Instagram and things like that. So this is, this is a great thing, and, and I felt really happy to to read that today. I have an Instagram which I only really put up about my broadcasts and I put it up under @healingimagehigh. Maybe I should have put it under @EvaMay but I don't think that as somebody living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Instagram is really the right platform. In fact, I don't even think there is a right platform because Instagram— there's a program out on, um, I think it's with the BBC about it, where it was originally meant to be so that you could show your best life Well, if I'm trying to do an open and honest conversations around, you know, severe trauma and the impact, then I don't see how I can go and sort of put a load of photographs up that aren't really a true reflection of being open and honest and living with trauma. And in fact, some of the, the photographs there were on these Instagram accounts where there were some absolutely beautiful pictures, photographs, beautiful people on there wearing amazing things. And then they were actually interviewing somebody who, who kept this up, that she ended up with so much pressure on herself She was pretty unwell and not eating, and this constant pressure of needing to have likes or comments and then putting up more pictures and trying to get more and more followers was actually making people ill. I think in this country— well, probably globally, one thing we're never going to run out of is influencers, and a lot of people now have, have a phone. Well, phone is quite a good thing to have with you even if you're, you know, a teenager, because it does offer quite a few features that you can use for safety. You've got your contacts and you've got some music and you've got some maybe some nice things to, to look at or watch on it too, but if you're being shown somebody's life that's not actually really true because they're trying to show their best life, but it's an Instagram best life, or whatever other platform you're using best life, then it can really— I think I'm trying to learn to live with my authentic self, and then there's people who are going out putting pictures, and that's not how they're living. They're not eating, then sort of skipping meals, or they have so many followers now that they have managers, so they want to influence but they can't unless their manager says, "Yep, you can wear that, you can promote that, you can put that picture, you can do that." So I think it's something that we need to be really, really aware of, and I hope that there are people, responsible people, professional people, and people in the mental health industry who can sort of be open to this, to what the impact is of following people that might make you want to achieve something that really is unrealistic. It's unrealistic for them. So I know my, my Instagram's pretty bland. So I'm afraid it's just me talking on the radio. I don't really want to put pictures up. I put some pictures up of all the bottles of water I put by my bed just to show you how, you know, that's how powerful the parts of me are and how hard they work to keep me safe. So I'll put things up like that, but when I do put things up, I think I'm going to make sure that they are authentic, they're not filtered, and that they're going to be real, because that's what I want to be, is real to myself and real, real to anybody who wants to listen to me or to see anything about me. So anyway, I hope everybody has managed to stay sort of safe and hasn't got too many damage from these storms that we've been having. Um, yeah, it's been pretty powerful, the weather out there, um, lately. So if you're staying in and keeping warm and listening to the women's radio station then I thank you very much for listening, and thank you to everyone who made it possible for us to win the Best Radio-Based Women's Mental Health Support Service UK. So that's always lovely to see emails like that coming in. So I'd like to wish you all the best and look forward to speaking to you next time. Thank you, and this is goodbye from Eva May.
