Mental Illness Labels

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, Sue over at My Loud Bipolar Whispers wrote a very interesting post on mental illness labels. It is definitely very inspiring to read how Sue overcomes the stigma and self-stigma of mental illness labels. I must admit I’m still caught up in mental illness labels at times. I started this blog in part to help myself overcome this limiting mindset where a diagnosis defines me. As such, I thought I’d do a similar post to Sue’s.

Over the past nearly twelve years that I’ve been in the mental health system, I have accumulated a bunch of mental illness labels. I am too lazy o list them all, but they included adjustment disorder, impulse control disorder NOS, dissociative identity disorder, PTSD, borderine and dependent personality disorder and depression. These labels define me in a sense, but in a sense, they do not. After all, some of these diagnoses were not just given to me but taken away again later. As such, I’m not supposed to dissociate anymore, as DID is no longer among my mental illness labels. Well, here we are, all 25 or so of us. I hear my former psychologist saying that I make up the DID because of having read up on it too much. Ironically, she was the one most eager to give me new and exciting mental health diagnoses.

Mental illness labels have a function in getting insurance to pay for treatment. In addition, they may guide what treatment and support you can access. Self-labeling (self-diagnosis) may have the added benefit that you can access support without the approval of a mental health professional. That’s how I access support geared towards people with DID.

However, mental illness labels should not be limiting my experience of who I am. I am more than my mental illnesses. Here is a list of labels I’d like to be known for.


  • Wife

  • Daughter

  • Sister

  • Friend

  • Writer

  • Blogger

  • Creative

  • Introvert

  • Compassionate

  • Intelligent

  • Honest

  • Former psychology major

  • Disability rights activist

  • Mental health advocate

  • Survivor

What labels do you define yourself by?

Movement Therapy Yesterday

Posted on by Astrid

Trigger warning: strong language.

So yesterday we had movement therapy. We feel it’s really helping but we also switch a lot during this type of therapy. We’re not formally diagnosed with a dissociative disorder. Were formally diagnosed DID but that got changed to BPD five years ago. Our current mental health team’s opinion is that the “pieces” are allowed to be there but there’s no need for a dissociative disorder diagnosis or any form of specialized treatment. We do DBT individually with our nurse practitioner (not in a group because we’re autistic and would be overwhelmed by a group) and the movement therapist tries to incorporate some DBT too. We really try to fit our “pieces” into the DBT model of emotional/rationa/wise mind (we purposefully avoid the word “alters” as to not suggest we self-diagnose, as our former psychologist believed we made up the DID).

The thing is, Astrid is rarely out. That is, always when we think we’ve found the core or “real” Astrid, we realize it’s yet another alter. We don’t mind as most adults can present as Astrid and act pretty much normally. However, yesterday in movement therapy Katinka was out from the start (she’s one of the main fronters). Then for some reason Suzanne popped out and the therapist called for Astrid to come back. Katinka came back with some difficulty and explained that she’s fine being called Astrid but she isn’t Astrid. The therapist insisted that she may be Katinka now but Astrid was out at the beginning. It was quickly time to end the session and we were still pretty spacey but didn’t say so. To be honest we didn’t feel fully safe to go home yet (one of us was having destructive urges), but we didn’t say anything and managed to go home anyway.

Now some of us are thinking of quitting movement therapy or the whole mental health treatment altogether. We’ve run into just a little too many disagreements with our treatment team. I mean, they’re overall good people, not like our former psychologist who just was one giant bitch. We don’t need a fucking DID diagnosis (we’re not fully DID actually). We’re fine calling ourselves pieces or whatever, but we’re not going away. Now we’re pretty sure we’re going to be taken out of movement therapy for it destabilizing us. Well, whatever. If the goal is to keep us acting apparently normally all the time, then we don’t need nor want no fucking mental health treatment for that.