Healing Image Hi With Eva May – Dissociative Identity Disorder And Childhood Trauma

Hello, I'm Eva May, and I'd like to welcome you to this broadcast in my Healing Image High series for the Women's Radio Station. Healing Image High was a project that was about helping me as someone who suffers with mental health issues and has done for most of their life, trying to get some help for myself. With my image, with how I looked, how I felt about myself and the way I looked, so about clothes and makeup and hair, and how I managed to reach out and get some help from these people. I wanted to raise awareness that in— within the beauty and fashion industry, that they can help people with mental health illnesses or other issues, um, because I think feeling good is quite important. And if you're struggling with something that's long-term, to suddenly be able to access a world or learn a tip about how you're going to make yourself look and feel better is actually a nice thing to do, and it gives you more things to think about rather than the sameness of every bad day that you've ever had. So that was what Healing Image High was meant to do. It was just a project for me, but it was so successful, and the group of people that I had to help me— it's not a situation that's going to happen again, though, where we can get somebody to arrange the fantastic team that I had that, um, has helped me on my Healing Image High Journey, but it's more than about that. I wouldn't have needed to ask for this help if I hadn't, um, experienced severe trauma during my childhood. So tonight I am recording this on my own, it's just me, I don't have a guest for this session. And this is my third go tonight because I'm broadcasting from home. I'm sitting in the study, which is quite a cold room, to be honest. It's not somewhere you want to sit any longer than you need to. And I nearly finished the broadcast on my second attempt when my husband decided to walk in, kick several things in the process in the hope of trying to find a piece of paper to write me a note to let me know what time dinner would be. Well, it's quite clear on the door that I have put that I'm recording, please don't come in, keep out, and I also did verbally go and pass that message on and have it same— repeat it back to me, so he knew, but Sometimes people don't think, and that's how I feel now, actually, because during the time of recording number 2 attempt and having to boycott that, this being number 3 attempt, I didn't have enough time to do this, so I had to stop and have supper with my family, which my daughter very kindly has cooked, and this is so appreciated sometimes, just to have something like that done instead of me cooking, um, on a Sunday. And there's a lot going on with Christmas, um, I have one of my children who doesn't live at home has got COVID, they're not feeling very well, a bit worried about her, um, the decorations need doing, and at the moment I just don't really feel that I am up to doing it. I need to go at my pace, and thankfully my family recognize that. So thank you to my husband who has gone and put up the outside lights, and they look great, and to my husband and my daughter for doing my inside decks that they did last weekend because they look fab too, and they look even better I think because I appreciate that this was done for me this year. It's probably the first year I've had off. So from trying to attempt broadcast number 2, which we had to abandon and then we restart because I can't edit this, this goes out straight as it is recorded for 60 minutes. I went and sat down and actually put my feet on a footstool and picked up a magazine while I was waiting for the last few minutes of cooking And it's a magazine that comes with our paper that we have delivered every day. Now, I get the paper delivered, I have done for as long as we've lived here, which is over 20 years, and I don't necessarily read it every day, but sometimes I do the puzzles and then I pass it on to my parents who tell me that they don't have time to get their own newspaper because they're too busy, but actually when they get mine they read it front to back, and if I don't take it round pretty quickly after the day of publication, then they're asking for it. So I think they actually do manage to find time to read it. So I sat down and I picked up the magazine that was in my newspapers today and started with the editor's letter. Now I feel really quite sort of stirred up in a bit of a negative way since reading it because this lady, her name is, um, Jo Elvin, maybe she'd like to come and speak to me one day for a broadcast, but she has put in her editorial that it's easy for us to get bogged down in all the bad things that happen around us every day, and that bad news sells, which is why the media bellows at us about lying politicians, abused children, and all manner of unspeakable misery. And I feel quite hurt by this because Politicians choose to lie, children don't choose to be abused. And in particular, in the past— over the past couple of weeks, there have been some terrible cases about child abuse with extremely young children who have suffered the most horrific times in their lives, which have resulted in their deaths. And I don't see how somebody who is meant to be a responsible editor, whose magazine goes in a newspaper which constantly publishes about politics, could actually say this, because she's trying to promote an article about 21 trailblazing women. Well, so I don't know whether to do this broadcast or not, to be honest, because I'm a survivor of child abuse. Um, I can't swing a tennis racket very well, and I can't design a handbag, but I, I have survived an awful lot, and I was hoping that through my series that I could help other people. Um, and not really just be associated with something, a topic that sells newspapers. So sorry, that's where I'm at right now. So being just me today, I wanted to speak to you about my mental health and why I am presenting this radio series for you, um, and I hope that this, um, maybe Joe Elvin will listen to this and have a little bit of a think, because there's nothing flippant about abused children. Now, I've been ill, mentally ill and physically ill, for many years of my life. I've been in the mental health system for 35 years as a service user, so that is in the UK, in the US, with free treatment on the National Health Service and also private, as a private paying patient, for inpatient and outpatient treatment. I'm, as I said, I'm 56 years old. I am the mother of 3 adult children. I'm a wife, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm an auntie, I'm— I've got friends, you know, I have all these different roles. I was also a member of a, you know, a professional body when I was working, but because of what has happened to me, like namely child abuse, I actually lost my job, and I will talk to you more about that as well. Today. Um, I wanted to call this episode Wish I DID Didn't because I really wish that I did not have Dissociative Identity Disorder, so hence Wish I DID Didn't. Now, I'm not sure many people know what Dissociative Identity Disorder is. Or if they have heard of it, what it actually really means for people who are suffering with it or experiencing the impact of it, not just for the person themselves but for the friends and the family of those around them, because my lot have had it pretty hard and I've had it pretty hard too. So this is part of discussing that and seeing if maybe what I can say can help people find the, the correct support that they need without having to spend 35 years trying to get it. So what is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Well, it is a condition where Usually it's mostly people who've been abused as children suffer such severe trauma that it's at the sort of top end of the scale from trauma and PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder, and so it goes beyond complex PTSD, it's right at the end, and obviously there are varying Not everybody's DID is going to be the same. Um, it's, it's got to be relative to what happened to you. And my trauma, I now have been told, was particularly severe. I know it shouldn't have happened. No child should be abused, but my abuse apparently was really an awful lot, and it went on for a very long time. I don't know if that actually is all that helpful to me to know that, because that all I know is me. I don't really know what it's like to be anybody else in this situation, but my abuse started when I was very young, so sort of around 5 or 6, and it continued for, for many years. It's impacted on all the stages of my brain development, so I actually don't really know what sort of person I would be if this hadn't happened to me. So it's not a pleasant topic to talk about, which I guess is what this, uh, editor's letter was meant to be about and to celebrate women who are successful and pioneering. Well, I would like to hope that I could be considered as somebody who is kind of successful, and I don't think the word inspirational is right, but I hope that I can certainly just help and explain how acts of kindness and empathy and listening could actually help somebody like me in my situation. But printing that abused children are bellowed from newspapers just to sell, I'm— doesn't sit well with me at all. In fact, it's made— it's really riled me, actually. So I need to stop about this and focus on my broadcast. So Dissociative Identity Disorder is something that has been identified now as being very difficult to recover from because it starts at a very early age when trauma is beginning or ongoing. And the child doesn't have the vocabulary or the— or is in the environment or with the correct adults to be able to express what's happening. Um, for me, my abuse was, um, not just sexual, it was physical, it was emotional, There was some sort of ritual stuff and torture, so pretty dreadful. In fact, sometimes even now I can't actually believe it, and to be actually saying it on a broadcast is even sort of more unbelievable, but I believe in being honest and I hope that— so I need to be honest, and I want to be honest too about the way that it has impacted so badly on my life. I, in June this year, so June 2021, I had to have an 8-hour operation to have my jaw joints replaced. They had basically crumbled. I've had a series of minor operations to try and keep my jaw joints going as long as possible, but I lost the cartilage in them several years ago, and we run out of options. So my jaw and I are getting along quite well, but we've only been together now for about 6 months. And both sides of it are metal, and it's bolted down to the bottom of underneath my, my jaw, underneath my chin. So I'm still struggling a little bit with some pain, not liking the cold weather very much, and also it does make speech a little hard for me. So I hope you forgive me if you think that my speech is a little bit slow and awkward. So DID is an absolutely normal response by the back of the brain, which is the part of the brain that keeps us living, that keeps us surviving. So that would have been the same way, way back, our ancestors, and even now. So it's not a conscious thing, it is made to make you survive, and it is also made to expect the worst. So it will keep on trying to keep you alive by whatever means it takes, because that is how humans live. So for me— excuse me— I was having some things done to me. I do feel that my, my jaw, one of the reasons that it's probably given up is because of stress. If you have gone through some stress, you can start clenching your jaw together, particularly at night, which isn't very good, and it can wear the joint out. It also The physical abuse that I had too, also sort of, well, blows to the head, which I really don't believe, um, has done my jaw any favors at all. So I don't know, but the more people talk about this and we find out, then the more we can know and help people overcome trauma and the ripple out effects that can happen. So if I have my back of my brain has been trying to survive through all these years of abuse and living in fear, which is another thing that happens, being controlled and trying to find a way to live. So I've developed different identities, different personalities that split. They're not together. Some of them don't even know each other. I don't know them. I know some of them, but there are some of them that try to protect me when I'm triggered, and then they go into survival mode and take over. These pieces of me have not learned that we're out of danger now and that we don't need to do it. It's an intrinsic response now to a trigger. It could be anything, something that somebody says. One of my worst triggers is when somebody does or says something to me or about me that I just can't make sense of, because I cannot make sense of what someone or or what some people did to me all those years ago. So the front of my brain is the brain now that I need to try and control to organize and plan how we're going to teach the back brain that we don't need to save ourselves and go into survival mode and dissociate, which means sort of taking yourself away from reality and going into a place of safety that can cope, because it's actually not helping me at all. It's keeping me pretty sick. The good news is that you can recover, but recovery is, is going to be quite slow for me as it would be for anybody. I have spent 35 years in the system. I've been treated for various things, diagnosis keep changing, things like that. But as a child, you're just not taught how to manage distress. And then from that, because it was adults that hurt me, I have a dilemma around trusting adults, which all makes the recovery a little bit slower. I've been through an awful lot of therapists. I put this partly down to the fact that, um, some of them you only get so many sessions. Some I've moved clinicians, some have left, some I've gone privately for, some have— it's just gone on and on and on. And because this is such an unknown thing and it takes a lot of time to even build up any trust with somebody, then I believe that's why I've had so many people. I've also had to end up in hospital quite a few times because DID, um, can make me split and have a personality, an identity, a part of me take over which actually tries to get at the pain that I still have inside me. And when it does do that, then it results in acts of self-harm or actually in acts of attempted suicide. There have been many occasions— one wasn't really that long ago, to be honest— where I have come round in an intensive care bed or a critical care bed not knowing what's happened to me. And also, when I— it's explained what has happened and what I have done to myself, although I have not been aware of it at all, it's still got me in danger, and they're not able to tell me whether or not I'm actually going to survive. The last one was particularly bad. And, um, I was found, thankfully, by a family member, which was very distressing for them. And they said if it had been another 20 minutes, then I wouldn't be here talking to you, and I wouldn't have been here reading this sort of article about selling newspapers and child abuse. So I've got to get that out of my head, haven't I, really? It's not going to do me any favors. So, um, DID is a severe psychiatric condition. It causes confusion, memory problems, my concentration's not that great, um, but it was my way of— for my mind to shield myself and so to not really experience the actual real trauma that was going on at the time, but I still hold that trauma in this back part of my brain with all these different personalities that I have. Now, I've been given, um, a card by a therapist that I keep with me in my phone case, so it's with me all the time, and it explains about DID. I've never actually had to show this to anybody, but in, in a case of an emergency, I'm not sure I would be the person who'd be able to be in a crisis and then suddenly go into my phone case and sort through all my cards and driving license and goodness knows what else in there and find it and say, this is what I have. But I'll tell you what it says on here because I find it quite helpful reminder to me of what I have and that I'm not mad and that this actually is a real thing and there are real reasons for it. So it explains that I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. It says I'm not mad, I'm not attention-seeking or time-wasting. My history is of severe childhood trauma, and DID is a coping mechanism, and for this I'm being treated with psychotherapy. I have different parts or personalities. These may present as being of a different gender, age, and developmental stage. We may be very frightened and traumatized and have difficulty distinguishing between the past and the present, so we may find it really hard to calm down. Please be careful about touching us. Be gentle and patient. Alter personalities may not be aware of what we have done, e.g., self-harm or attempted suicide, or where we are. We may be very disorientated and amnesic for what has just happened. Please try to understand our behavior in the light of our past experiences. Now, I think that does really sum it all up. I mean, my children, my family, people that know me, they've all seen my behavior that certainly presents as mad or certainly like inappropriate And I actually don't have control over that when I'm in a— if I am triggered. I can usually get by on my own fine, and I have a routine which is extremely important to the way that I live my life, to try and avoid triggers. All my known triggers I plan to avoid. Sometimes this can't be helped. I have a particular problem with, um, scent. In particular, there's a, a perfume that seems to be that a lot of people wear. It's extremely popular and it's been around for a very long time. Well, it was also something that I was made to wear, um, while I was experiencing trauma. So I got through most of my childhood and through schooling without anyone knowing. In fact, I was still under threat then, but I wasn't really achieving what I perhaps could have done. And it wasn't until all my children had grown up and left home and my role of sort of, of very busy mum went, that my world sort of came crashing down. And this also coincided with the time that I had disclosed the nature of my trauma to a therapist who, um, then set in motion the police investigation process. Now, that for me was the worst thing that I think I've ever done. Um, I don't know, it's just a dilemma whether you tell someone and it's a relief and it might be the start of really getting to grips with the help that you need But going into the police process is not something that you can be prepared for. I, I'm not sure people fully understand the police have an agenda, and they also have a certain amount of resources. And for saying that they will make sure that you're sort of cared for under their safeguarding umbrella, doesn't really explain exactly what's going to happen. For me, this didn't go down well. I was working in a job that I had been loving and doing and putting my all into and worked extremely hard to achieve. They would told— the police told my place of work as part of safeguarding that I was going through the police investigation process, and that, that would mean after work I would have to travel quite a distance actually to go and have video-recorded interviews that were done under oath. I was asked questions that I never dreamt I be asked, um, and I had to answer them. It was the first time that I'd ever uttered the words for some of what had happened to me, and this went on for quite a few months. It was extremely traumatic. So the support at work didn't happen. At all. In fact, the reverse. I was— I think the word would be shunned. I certainly wasn't ever asked about how I was. I wasn't ever told that, you know, I know that you're going to be out doing 6 hours of interview after work, so, you know, just come in after morning, you know, mid-morning or something like that, there was nothing done at all to help me. In fact, the, the subject was just completely not spoken about, and, um, I was— some managers, the managers had to know, and nobody knew what to do. And nobody wants to work somewhere where they're unpopular, so that was the end of work for me, and that was 6 years ago. I didn't even get a goodbye. Colleagues that I worked with that I thought were my friends, they have stuck together. There's only been one that's actually reached out to me, so nobody knew, and I thought I was doing the right thing and then I find myself out of a job. I'm still out of a job. I'm doing this radio series but the series, each broadcast is either sponsored by a guest or else I pay myself because we're not-for-profit. This is to cover the costs to send this out so I'm meeting those myself because I want, I want to try and help someone. I want to try and get some understanding out there and a discussion around trauma because, you know, DID can happen, or complex trauma can happen to anybody, particularly at the moment. We've been living for the past sort of 2 and a half years in with pandemic situation, there are articles that I've read and some results from studies where therapists themselves are feeling overwhelmed and extremely anxious because they're now having to deal with situations that they didn't have to deal with in the past because people are suffering more with negative impact on their mental health. And we have bereavement, you have long-term illness. Now, one of the reasons that, um, Dissociative Identity Disorder isn't really a known about thing in this country is because the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, which is known as NICE, N-I-C-E, in the UK doesn't have any guidelines for the treatment of DID, so it's, it's very difficult for people to have this diagnosed. There needs to be an assessment done which is called a SCID-D test, and that has to be carried out in a specific way, and it's taken me 34 years to get to be having that assessment. So I ended up in hospital during— about a year ago now, and that was my admission where I was extremely close to losing my life. Um, it's a terrible feeling waking up and being told what has happened to you, what you have done to yourself. Without knowing that is so serious, so, so severe. I've had emergency operations that I have not been aware of. I have ended up on dialysis. I have ended up just not knowing whether my organs are going to survive or pack up, and it's terrifying, it's isolating, and it is now since February 2021, so only a few months ago, that I have managed to get discharged from the local trust that I was with. They carried out some assessments on me which confirmed that there were no specialist services within the trust or any neighboring trust that could help me. I think that's partly due to the fact that NICE have got no guidelines for DID. And, uh, I then had to go through, um, more assessments which were face-to-face, and actually they were pretty thorough, and I did feel safe with those for the— at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London. Then goes in all the paperwork, and my GP was involved, and I'm so incredibly grateful for everything that they did, that I then have been given funding for my treatment for DID. My, uh, projected treatment plan is 5 to 6 years. So it's a very serious and complex therapy that I require. So the first part that I need to do is we have to establish safety and stabilization and a reduction in, in symptoms. So that I am then able to go and work through and to try and integrate traumatic memories, to make sense of them, and to sort of feel the pain of it rather than let my body take over and try and deal with the pain of it, which results in harming myself. I then need to learn how to sort of, um, maintain and organize attachment patterns. So my therapy now, and I have taken, as I said, about 34 years to get to this, is with a consultant psychotherapist for 2-hour face-to-face sessions once a week. In addition to that, I get another hour of support spread over the week, however I would like to use it. If I don't want to use it, I don't have to, but I'd be a bit silly not to, wouldn't I, being offered that? So I can either send an email— sometimes after a session or during a session, I might have a thought that I can't say these words, but I actually might be able to write these words down. So I just write it, it doesn't matter, I don't edit it, I just write it and I just send it. Or I can message and ask for a telephone slot so we can have a conversation about something that might have happened, or I can send, you know, like a text or a WhatsApp message, and I know that I will have a response, um, 24 hours Often it's much less time than that, and this is going to be for 5 or 6 years. So I really hope that people who do need treatment for this get it, because all the other treatments and therapies that I've had since I was 19 just have treated the symptoms that I was presenting. So if I was I have had, um, eating disorder, so obviously I was very, very low weight, so then that gets treated. I was diagnosed with clinical depression, so then that gets treated. But it's taken me absolutely years and years to get to a place where I trusted somebody and then was able to disclose what had happened to me. I do remember when I was talking about it that I didn't actually feel that I was there and sort of with it inside myself, um, so I can do this sort of low-level dissociating because that just protected me from the words that I was saying, so I didn't actually absorb the full impact. The other thing about the police investigation is that they have to go and talk to your family and your friends and people who had a connection, um, around everything that had happened all these years ago. Now, nothing can prepare you for this, the, the impact that it has on people who care for you, who have to know, well apart from the work lot, is, is huge, it's absolutely massive and it's devastating to see and I really didn't want all my friends to look at me and just sort of label me as this person who, who's a survivor of childhood there's historic abuse. I didn't want to be that. I still needed to retain the bit of me who I am. So this card that I have that says that I'm not mad because I have DID— well, I do. I know that I can behave in a way that people probably do think I'm mad, um, I can behave in quite inappropriate way. I think that in situations— I don't go out of my way to go and do this, it's when I'm triggered— but it's in situations where somebody is saying or doing something to me, or has done, that I can't make sense of. And also if I'm in a situation where I know it's not a good one, then the best thing for me to do is to remove myself from it, but that's not always possible. There was, um, for example, let's give you an example. I have 3 members of my family that live a short plane ride away. Now due to pandemic reasons, not being able to see them, so we have to follow the guidelines Now, we managed to get over there, and we needed to take all sorts of stuff, like clothes as well for us, but also gifts and things for them for Christmas. So that's 3 people, and there's 3 of us travelling. So the way that these airlines operate now is that, you know, you get your seat and then you add on whatever you choose, because they do offer a range of options for luggage hold and cabin requirements. So we took the Max one. We needed hold luggage, we needed hand luggage, we needed under the seat handbag, we needed the whole lot. I also have to carry a medical bag with me. Another thing that I have which I forgot to mention is something called detrusor failure, which is basically Detrusor is a muscle in— it's your bladder muscle, so the one that, you know, holds all your urine and then you go to the toilet when you need to. Well, mine doesn't work. It stopped working about 4 or 5 years ago. I just couldn't go to the toilet anymore, so I had to have catheters, I had to have some tests. And they're with electrodes and things and they read muscle activity. Well, I don't have any, it's gone, it's permanent, so I need to carry a medical bag around with me, so I use single-use catheters every time I need to go to the toilet. So I need a letter as well to get this stuff on a plane. I cannot possibly risk it getting lost or going in the hold, so I have the paperwork and I have to arrange it with the airlines and it's always fine, it's fine, but the other thing I have as well along with my DID card is I have a 'Please Help' card which says the holder of this card has a medical condition that requires them to use the toilet facilities urgently. Your cooperation and assistance would be very much appreciated. Thank you. So it has like a red strip at the top that says "Please help," and then it's got like a picture, you know, to indicate like a toilet, like usually the signs that you would see on the toilet. Now, during the pandemic, when stuff started opening up, a lot of coffee places they— although they were serving coffee, they didn't open their toilets. And I would show these card— this card and say, like, "I need to use your toilet." And I must have asked probably, since I've had this card, about 6 times and tried to explain why. And for 6 times, I've been told, 'No, you can't. We can't help you. You're not going to use the toilet.' I don't really understand why this card is given out as a card asking for help when it's not displayed on any toilet door, or— so obviously people are going to say no because they've got absolutely no idea what I'm showing them. Um, it's an internationally apparently recognized card, meaning all over the world people like me, or if you've got Crohn's disease or something else like that. I've got one, but wherever you go, unless that person's got the same similar card to you, they're not going to say, sure, understand, go ahead, you're going to be helped. So the fan needs helping too. So yeah, so it's not great. So the impact of this child abuse on me has been mental, physical. It's nearly cost me my life. It's, um, I've spent a lot of time in therapy that actually hasn't really been any good for me because it's not been the right specialist help. The best help that I ever got— well, no, the best help that I have got is now. That I am at the Center for Dissociative Studies in London, they totally understand. I can understand— I understand the process that is the 3 stages for my recovery. So the first one is the stabilization. Well, it doesn't go 1, 2, 3. It kind of goes 1, 2, 1, maybe 1, 2, 3, one. So we were— we always have to keep going back, which is why it's predicted to last 5 or 6 years. But that is still going to be an awful lot cheaper, although my trust are funding it, it's outsourced, than me being in hospital and taking up vital critical care beds, and also the risk of prolonged sort of conditions. So I really hope that, you know, people can start thinking about how, how to, um, help each other and be kind. And I was telling you the story about us going away with all our luggage, wasn't I? So because we'd done that, it meant that we got this like you know, queue, the queue where you're allowed on the plane first, let's call it priority boarding, um, quick boarding, whatever you like to call it. So our flight gets called and we're going home, had a lovely weekend seeing all my kids together, totally like loved it, and as a mum it's really important for me to have those times. And our flight got called, so we joined the queue, and I said to the 2 members of my family that I was traveling with, I think we can probably go around this queue and go up to the Get You On The Plane First. We paid a bit more money, Speedy Priority, whatever, it was to get on the plane. And the man next to me turned around— I wasn't talking to him at all— and started laughing, saying that: "Haha, you've spent all that money, you've wasted all that money, and you're standing next to me. Haha, this is hilarious. How much did that cost you?" And on and on and on. It's none of his business. It's rude, and I, I split. I mean, that's that situation. Like, I find airports quite stressful anyway, the whole thing with the going through security, being shouted at, taking this off. I have huge anxiety about setting off the metal detectors because, you know, my jaw is metal, my thumb's metal, my wrist's smell. I'm, I'm a pretty accident-prone person, to be honest. Um, I think that's also because I have DID, so I'm not always fully aware and, uh, conscious in the moment. So accidents, yeah, I am quite accident-prone. Um, you know, this guy, he just, he even took his mask off to keep on with the how funny it was that we'd spent more money than him and we're in a queue behind him, so I rather lost it and probably spoke to him using language that a sort of 56-year-old responsible mother of 3 shouldn't really do, but I actually had no control over that, so sorry for him, but he really I really need people to mind their own business. So, um, that's just a sort of a small example. Um, so I have to now live with these parts, and I, I totally understand it. My family have now been also given a little bit of help with, um, the center that I'm now at. They've given me a couple of handouts and a bit of stuff for them to read, just small bits. They do not need to take in a lot, they can't, and they do find it quite helpful. And my husband said to me, 'I am so sorry that you have this, that you are going to have to go through this,' and they are really, they're really it's helpful to have this because I can't support them, they need supporting, they don't really understand how something that happened so, so long ago can have this much effect on my life today as it did yesterday and as it could do tomorrow and it's been like that for years and years so I need to really, really work on avoiding my triggers. You know, airport man or someone like that's always going to happen. I'm a little bit sorry for probably the language I use, but then if I wasn't talking to him, it certainly wasn't an open invitation for a discussion. So I've got this, um, system really now where we're trying to avoid our triggers And if we can't, we step away from them. And if we can't, then I might be rude, but that's not— that's okay. Could— worse things could happen. I also, um, buy, buy gifts for my parts. So, like, it's Christmas, so my little me that got so hurt has got a gift. That is something that I would have liked at that age. And there are two other things that I've bought for other parts. One is for a part that I know is extremely angry and is in a lot of pain, and it's something that I hope will distract them from that pain. So I've done that, and I've bought, um, one for the part now that is me, that is getting stronger, that is achieving things, and that is trying to speak about mental health issues. And I mean, you know, this article I've read today, that's been a bit of a trigger. And I think you should be very careful about what you write, put in black and white. Um, I used to call it permanent in pencil, so I used to write my journal in pencil, and then if I didn't like what I wrote or didn't want to read it again, I could use an eraser and rub it out. But you can actually still see very faintly where that pencil has been, which is why I call it permanent in pencil. And that is why I feel, um, having all these different identities and dissociating, it's almost like being permanent in pencil. They're masks, they're, they're hidden, but they're still there quite deep. So that's also why for me image was quite key to get out, to look a little bit better, um, to look like I'd taken a pride in my appearance. And from that I've been able to do other things. So I've already mentioned that I have completed the London Marathon, which with 38,000 people was a rather an achievement in itself, let alone running all those miles. I've also completed an acting course and I go on residential boot camps. I've done an awful lot of work with horses, so equine therapy, and I'm actually looking at going to spend a weekend at a place in the UK that is a center for equine therapy, and I'm hoping I can then use that as somewhere to go, somewhere for a little bit sort of rest and relaxation, and just to do a little bit more recovery in that way, because I like being around animals. Um, in the same way that people might go on a retreat or a golf weekend or a spa break, then I think I'm going to choose an equine experience as well as my boot camp that I love going to as well. So all these things have sort of got me out and about. I hope that what I've said today makes sense. I, I'm sorry that it's probably been a bit grasshoppery because when I was doing my previous broadcast, which I hope was going to be the final one, I was feeling sort of quite calm and I got my, my notes and everything that I wanted to cover all written down and then going to read an article about how bad news sells papers and abused children and lying politicians should not really be in the same sentence and I'm afraid that really has has annoyed me, and, um, well, other things annoy me and I'm still here. So next time my broadcast will go out, I am going to be speaking with the lovely Karen Franklin MBE, who is the person who helped me, as my, my cousin put me in touch with her, they're friends, to help me with my image journey, and she's an extremely fascinating lady. She's very well known, I think, mostly for being on The Clothes Show and The Clothes Show live events. I never saw any of that, it wasn't on my radar really. I wish it had been, but She's extremely interesting. She's done so, so much work. If you have spare time to sort of look and research about Karen, you will find she's been involved in so many things, so many campaigns. I know she likes to call herself a sort of disruptor, and I think that I'm probably a bit like that too. I would like to disrupt discussion around impact of historic abuse, because I feel it's really important that people get diagnosed. Let's hope that NICE gets some guidelines so that, um, more people can get help. I mean, it is estimated that in the UK between 1 and 3% of the population, so that could be anything from sort of 700,000 up to 1.78 million people could actually have this and could really benefit from the right treatment, but it's not readily available. And even though I went through so many assessments with my actual national NHS trust, it still took months after that to finally get the funding. That I need. So I really hope this is helpful. Um, please listen to Karen's broadcast, which will be the following week. My previous broadcasts as well, I've got— you've got one of me on my own, and then you've also got one of me speaking with Arianne Poole, who is an international makeup artist. She's an absolutely wonderful lady. She's quite often doing live tutorials on Instagram, so if you have some time over Christmas and fancy looking up Ariane Paul, then I think that you would enjoy that and benefit from it. So I'd like to wish you all a very good evening and to thank you very much for listening to me. So this is Eva May speaking for the Healing Image Hi series for the Women's Radio Station. Thank you. Bye-bye.