Christ on a cracker I was gone for less than 24 hours!!
24:00
According to Chloe, either her parents nor Chloe herself knows what trauma caused her "DID."
Two points from the video I found interesting: At one point, she describes feeling like she didn't have control of her arm, which from what I understand is an actual symptom of depersonalization. It's specific enough that it feels legitimate, but I honestly don't know enough about the dissociative disorders to tell whether depersonalization can be localized like that or not.
Another point is their discussion on abuse. As pointed out by a few people in this thread, they seem to have this feeling that just because they have amnesia there must have been abuse. Chloe specifically talks about having a memory and blatantly assuming that it must have been real just because she can't remember.
That's a really good point. She mentions somewhere in this video that she remembers having a happy childhood, but that that is the DID tricking her, that it's a part of the disorder. One of the main signs of DID or suspected DID cases is nearly complete amnesia over an extended period of time before the age of 10. Extended meaning YEARS beyond what is considered typical for children. DID doesn't give you a false happy childhood, and any false happy memories are planted very sporadically, and briefly, and they don't feel real.
This video really just proves that she's making everything up: she claims DID can occur when you experience trauma before the age of 7-9, and you need bad relationships with your primary caregivers.
She also claims that she has a bad relationship with her parents, as that leads to DID, yet she says her parents love her very much and want to desperately know what happened, and they want to support her. She also says that (if I remember correctly) physical flashbacks usually happen when she's doing stuff around the house, but implies her parents weren't her abusers.
The way she talks about her parents is that they are very supportive and loving when she's spitballing, like in the referenced video. This is not how you act when you've had a shitty childhood with shitty parents. Your relationship with them is just as damaged as the relationship you have with yourself. You also don't continue to live with them and enjoy nice trips and things that they pay for. She's spoiled with love and support of all kinds from her parents.
This is terrible. It makes me almost physically ill how selfish and narcissistic it could be to say something like this to someone suffering from a grave, potentially terminal illness. I don’t want to TMI, but I’ve been admitted to a psych ward when I went to the ER. It wasn’t glamorous, I didn’t feel good about it and I would never in my wildest dreams think my problems outweighed someone who had a medical emergency to remove a cancerous tumor growing by the hour. What a fucking twat.
This is one of the reasons why I'm not sure I believe she was ever held against her will in psychiatric care. They don't just have people chilling in a psychiatric hospital. They have a lot of various types of therapy, and medication is given out on a very rigid schedule per patient, and they ensure you take it. Being held against your will only happens when you are a danger to yourself or others, and they need a court order to do that. You can only be held on a 5150/5585 (not sure what it is outside of the California in the US) for 72 hours. The social workers will literally do everything in their power to ask you to consent to being held to receive treatment. You might be handcuffed to a hospital bed after a suicide attempt, and they will be the kindest people, pleading with you to let them help you. And if you tell them you want to leave, they tell you that they will get an emergency hearing with a judge to hold you against your will and again, very kindly plead with you to not let the state take control over your future.
Unless you're completely incoherent for your 72 hour hold, AND if they believe you are truly a danger to yourself or others, you aren't held against your will.
My sister drank gasoline, but texted someone her exact location along with how much she had drank, making it clear her actions were attention-seeking, and she was not held against her will, nor admitted to a psychiatric ward. She was referred to a
therapist. Not even to a psychiatrist.
I do wonder if Chloe has been in a psychiatric hospital. She's talked about being hospitalized after suicide attempts, and something a nurse mentioned is what made her suspect she had DID. (Thanks a lot random nurse.) But afaik, she's never talked about being hospitalized in a psych ward. Which would be odd. I don't know how things work in the UK, but suicide attempts (especially if you're telling people openly that's what it was) almost always result in mandatory hospitalization. Health insurance or no, you're going in for a week or two and they'll bill ya later.
Nurses in psychiatric hospitals don't toss out diagnoses. They don't talk about your mental health to you at all, other than to ensure you are taking your meds, going to your therapy, showing up for your doctor visits with the psychiatrist, and checking your vitals and general wellness. They do not engage in any sort of camaraderie or other inappropriate relationships with patients, even the high-functioning ones. In fact, if you try to buddy up to a nurse, they will report to your doctor that you were, and they typically view that as some kind of manipulation.
Orderlies (or nurse's assistants) sometimes buddy up to patients, but if the relationship is caught, they are transferred really fast.
All of these folks see all sorts of things, way beyond mood swings and identity instability, let alone dissociation, which is fucking indistinguishable from perfectly
typical dissociation. I mean, I've seen a third-trimester pregnant woman climb on top of a lunch table and scream that the floor was on fire because Satan was trying to kill her baby from God. When I asked what she had, do you know what they said?
NOTHING. Just like the fucking ultrasound technician cannot tell you you're pregnant or not, none of these staffers can speculate or diagnose any mental health disorder.
Just want to say, I think Nan is actually suffering from severe mental illness. Her sneezing fetish aside. This woman is demonstrably unwell and deserves proper treatment.
I agree. She also had a traumatic brain injury, and to hear it like she says her family tells it, that is a point where she started having severe problems.
At the risk of TMI, they took me up there and it was more or less out of my control at that point. They woke me up for blood samples in the middle of the night to make sure I wasn’t under any influence. Then the next morning, if you’re sober and competent, the psychiatrist makes their rounds and individually reviews each patient and their medications and takes them on. But there’s a lot of bullshit bureaucracy from that.
This is precisely how it goes. There can be differences from hospital to hospital, of course, but the general procedure is the same. For a short period of time, they give you medical care - again,
not without treatment - and once you're coherent, a process to get you admitted to a psychiatric hospital or released starts.
This reminds me of another point. In the psych unit they see alot of shit. People hearing voices isn't unusual at all and can be from a number of things including BPD, a severe manic episode, psychoschizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. DID isn't supposed to be diagnosed in the psych unit by doctors who see you for such a short amount of time so why would a doctor jump to such an unusual and rare diagnosis when Borderline or Bipolar mania are much more common and easily explain her symptoms at that time?
Bingo. A doctor won't even diagnose bipolar disorder right away. These diagnoses take observation of your behavior. And as I said above, they absolutely do not make suggestions of what it "could be" as doctors, let alone as nurses. The way she describes her experience, it sounds like talking to a
therapist, as they are the only ones in my experience to make stupid suggestions like, "It sounds like you have depression," when you've spoken to them for 15 minutes.
Chloe wasn't diagnosed in a hospital. It was a nurse that brought up DID, putting the idea in her head.
She paid to go to the Pottergate Center that specializes in DID. Chloe says the director of the facility, Remy Aquarone diagnosed her. I'm not sure how, though. He's a psychotherapist. i.e. a therapist with a fancy title. He's not licensed to make a diagnosis.
Yep, exactly. It's all a fucking lie.
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US even a lowly LCSW can diagnose. They tend to stick to the more common disorders but are hesitant to diagnose more serious conditions like personality disorders. For serious and debilitating mental conditions, in the US they'll refer you to a psychologist because they're the only ones who are licensed to perform actual psychological testing. Psychotherapist is an umbrella term for any mental health professional that provides therapy. A psychiatrist is a doctor that treats mental health through medication but does not provide talk therapy. Usually they work together to provide patient care.
LCSW's actually cannot diagnose mental illnesses in the US.
According to NAMI, the following roles are trained to evaluate, recognize, and thus, diagnose a mental illness (and can usually prescribe medication):
- Psychologists (can only prescribe medication in Illinois, New Mexico, Louisiana, in the military, and the Indian Health Service)
- Psychiatrists
- Psychiatric Or Mental Health Nurse Practitioners (in most states, requires supervision/sign off of a psychiatrist)
- Primary Care Physicians (which can mean an OBGYN, which believe me is fucking ridiculous)
- Family Nurse Practitioners
- Psychiatric Pharmacists
- Pastoral Counselors (wtf?)
Social workers, therapists, clinicians, and counselors can
assist in assessing mental health conditions. What does this means? It means they can
evaluate you and refer you to a licensed physician. And this is exactly what they are supposed to do. Most people who go to therapy just need to talk about their feelings. If you go in there needing a diagnosis, they do one of two things: share your case with a supervising psychiatrist or psychologist at their practice (fairly common these days, even better help has them), or if it's beyond what they are trained to help assess, they refer you to a psychiatrist and you don't carry a folder with their thoughts on what they've observed, it gets sent directly to the doctor.
That's likely based on the consultant psychiatrist they've got on their team. She also says in
this video she has a diagnosis from a specialist
and a psychiatrist at 4:13.
With that said, Pottergate is primarily a money making scheme and prioritises profit over integrity so I wouldn't value a diagnosis offered by the team there, psychiatrist or not. They diagnose the majority of the patients who pay them. These patients shop around for a specific diagnosis. Pottergate literally provide the materials for people to score highly on the test. Any malingerer could buy the guide from the
Pottergate shop and learn how to present as a DID patient before their brief evaluation at the centre.
Chloe mentioned that her diagnosis came after a few hours in a room filling in questionnaires. I'll have to go back through my archive to find the video where she discussed her diagnosis but it was similar to the blog post referenced above in that it was a few hours in a room with some questionnaires.
Oddly, Dr. Valerie Hawes is a consulting forensic psychiatrist. She has a chapter in a book called Treating Personality Disorder (ISBN 978-0415404808 ), and all of her reference cases are from the justice system, as her title would imply. It seems odd to me that she would be the supervising psychiatrist at a private mental health center, and yet every reference case she uses is from someone she saw who was jailed or in prison.
Also from her chapter:
Dr. Valerie Hawes said:
Other individuals may describe strange mental experiences and again the psychiatrist should pay attention to the manner of disclosure as well as to the content – the individual may be puzzled and interested in her own experience, or fearful that these experiences are evidence that she is ‘going mad’. In these situations, it will be important to take plenty of time to listen to the individual (several interviews and making verbatim notes if possible) and to reserve judgement about diagnosis. With time, The role of the psychiatrist 245 reflection back and further exploration with the individual, experiences that initially sounded like psychotic symptoms may be more appropriately ‘labelled’ as schizotypal perceptions or dissociative states.
In her own words, she says that
several interviews are necessary to make even a judgement about diagnosis, let alone a final diagnosis. This absolutely does not align with this idea of a 4 hour assessment for a diagnosis. I also can't seem to find any literature or interviews from her regarding The Potter Centre, it seems to absolutely run by Dr. Remy Aquarone, and I'm failing to see how Dr. Hawes is involved at all, other than on paper.
Aside from the fact that this assessment is clearly biased and lacks the proper data point depth necessary to determine cause and severity of symptoms that are self-reported, 60% being found to have DID, when that's the rarest of the spectrum of dissociate disorders is patently absurd. The majority of people suffering from dissociative events likely have either co-morbid low spectrum dissociative disorders, like depersonalization disorder and something like bpd, or c-ptsd. Or Malingering/Factitious/Histrionic Disorders
But, she has a spotty history of documented and inconsistent mental health treatment. It would be impossible for her to get to the level of mental control that "co-consciousness" and "forced switching" would require (in theory, if DID is even real) without intense therapy. As far as I know, Chloe isn't currently in therapy.
Chloe is not in therapy, and I believe she's mentioned that specifically, but then sometimes she talks about therapy in a strange disconnected way that feels like a fictional monologue like I've seen friends perform in improv classes.
