Staying In The Room: Managing Medical and Dental Care When You Have DID

Staying In The Room creates a new playbook for adults with DID and OSDD who experience fear, avoidance, or increased dissociation during medical and dental treatment. Written to support adults with dissociative disorders, it goes beyond offering an explanation for their distress, and provides practical strategies that make it easier to seek and receive the care they deserve. Psychotherapists and healthcare providers alike are frequently unaware of their dissociative client's issues at the dentist or internist. Staying In The Room will assist them in understanding the challenges that exist, and how to help their clients make change happen!

How to use this book if you have DID:
If you have DID and you or parts of your system are resisting reading about medical and dental challenges and finding solutions:

1. Use your stabilization strategies before reading, during reading, and after reading sections of the book. Do this regardless of how stable you feel at the moment, because dissociation and switching can happen quickly and without notice.
2. Connect with your wise adult self. This is the compassionate friend, the efficient employee, and the caring parent/aunt/uncle/grandparent/teacher inside.
3. Ask your system what it needs to feel safe enough to read. It might not be what you think, and it might be easier to increase their safety than you think.
4. Pick stronger moments in your day, week, or month. Pick the right environment as well.
5. Visualize what it could look and feel like to be done with a successful appointment; don't visualize being IN an appointment Think of it like advancing to the scene when you are far away from a successful appointment. You skipped the scarier scenes.

About the Author:
CathyAnn Collyer, OTR, LMT is a licensed occupational therapist with extensive experience treating adults and children in hospitals, outpatient centers, schools, and other settings. One of her strongest clinical interests is helping clients of all ages who have a history of trauma resulting from abuse or the consequences of complex medical treatment. She is also a licensed massage therapist. Cathy has lectured on DID for An Infinite Mind's "Healing Together" conference.

What's Inside?

Section I: Why Is Staying In The Room So Difficult?

• How structural dissociation complicates seeking and receiving medical and dental care.
• Why the fractured modern healthcare system makes getting good care much harder.
• Why solutions designed for adults with PTSD can complicate care for people with DID and OSDD.

Section II: Building A Bigger Toolkit

• How to expand the concept of stabilization skills to improve orienting to the present and grounding.
• How to hear bad news, describe symptoms to get results, and manage disagreements with providers.
• Which aspects of health literacy make a difference in health for adults with DID and OSDD.
• What makes new skills work well? Targeted practice!

Section III: "Staying In The Room" In Action

• Why being told to "relax" isn't always relaxing.
• How to manage appointments, including surgeries, ER visits, hospitalizations, pelvic/prostate exams, and more.
• What to do before and after appointments to reduce dissociation.
• How salon and massage appointments can be used as "practice labs".

Trigger Warning: Medical and dental treatments are described in some detail, therefore trauma survivors need to be aware of their potential to be triggered, and to use this material in a wise manner.

This e-book is intended as educational information, and does not replicate or replace skilled psychotherapy treatment in any manner.

Author: Cathyann Collyer
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 07/22/2021
Pages: 158
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.48lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.34d
ISBN: 9798542019512

This title is not returnable