[Englander225]

How has it gone telling your friends and family? I think I'm gearing up to tell the people around me, and I have a little trepidation about not being understood. Did you all have that experience?

 

[coolwhip27]

You can tell them, you can tell anybody. But there’s one thing you can’t do without conflict, and that’s expecting to be understood. If you do desire to be understood and you fear not being understood, there will inevitably arise conflict. With that being said, feel free to say anything you’d like without fear. Just so long as it doesn’t serve to provide validation from anybody else

 

[Trith]

How has it gone telling your friends and family? I think I'm gearing up to tell the people around me, and I have a little trepidation about not being understood. Did you all have that experience?

I have had good experiences mostly with people who have other mental illnesses, or those who have already had some dissociative experience. I guess it is even possible to ask them if something similar has already happened to them. I can talk about it to one coworker who has serious illnesses and has had DPDR episodes and takes me very seriously, and it's always a pleasure to exchange stuff with him. Some other people are compassionate but also I think they don't really understand how it feels and it is a bit frustrating for them but they are sincerely suportive and helpful. My sister is like that.
I have also had bad experiences with people who did not understand and were invalidating ("it's all in your head, it doesn't exist"). This kind of happened with my brother, but he rahter brushed it off in a humoristic way rather than accuse me of anything, and I like my brother and his sense of humor. A friend has done that in an aggressive and condescending way, and he is out of my life now for that reason. Two other people have done that and I don't see them anymore, and ironically they were therapists, and so was that friend. I don't regret telling them because I wouldn't want to have someone in my life who behaves like this anyway. But if it is a family member and I feel I need validation from them, I think it is a bit risky, as coolwhip said. My mother is an invalidating person and I would never talk about it with her.

 

[NoDevils]

My mother had to read about it to understand. Some people won't read about it because their personalities are uncurious, at least pertaining to matters of other people.

 

[Englander225]

That's interesting you got the whole gamut, Trith. I can see it going that way for me too, cause everyone's different. I feel like I have a sense of who will be understanding, dismissive, confused but caring, invalidating. I just gotta try to pick who I let in best I can, and maybe some will surprise me, and maybe some will fall by the wayside. Like you, I'm not inclined to talk about it with my mother. At least not right now. I know how she'll be. Shit, that's where this all started for me. As far as I'm concerned, she's lost her right to my vulnerability.