Welcome back to the Den, Warriors! Today I am writing about something deeply personal. Today, I am writing of many things: The events of the last several years, what we’ve been dealing with and how it has affected us. It is the story of why I haven’t been writing much the last several years, and it it the story of the Greatest Warrior I know.
I’m going to tell you in advance that it was requested that I write this story. It was requested that the truth be told, because in order for us to heal, we must stop hiding, and second, it is time that the story be told.
Ask anyone who has suffered real, severe childhood trauma, the pain runs deep and can take a lifetime to learn to live with, much less overcome. It can cause problems in relationships, jobs, friendships, etc. Some days, it can make it seem impossible to perform even the simplest task.
Normally, I try to keep a distance in what I write. I try to not use specific names, places, etc. Today, I am sharply bending that rule. Today, I am writing much more specifically. Again, this is by request. Today, we are facing our trauma and bringing it out of the shadows. Today, I am writing the story of my husband, and my wife.
Yes, you read that correctly. But it’s not what you think. I do have a husband, and I have a wife. You could even say I am with “they/them”. But it’s not multiple people. I am married to someone with multiple personalities. I have a husband, and a wife, but there is only one physical body.
That’s correct, Warriors. I may have come from a dysfunctional family, but what I went through was mild compared to what my husband went through. I know that there are those of you who will disbelieve what I am telling you, so let me first explain what it takes for such an extreme condition to exist:
The only way for multiple personalities to be created is that a small child must be exposed to such extreme emotional/psychological trauma that the still forming psyche fractures and creates a separate personality to deal exclusively with the trauma. It also creates a separate split that remains the child at the age that the trauma first occurred. Just one extremely traumatic experience can immediately result in a minimum of three distinct personalities: the stunted child personality, the personality formed as a result of the fracture, and the original personality which eventually grows to adulthood with little to no knowledge of the psychological damage buried in the psyche. And with multiple occurrences of trauma and abuse, even more fractures and personalities can occur.
My husband’s case is one of the worst I have ever heard of. Even with as long as we have been married (over a decade), I still can’t tell you exactly how many personalities that I have experienced. And his case is also not entirely normal either, as there are personalities that defy the norm, and don’t match anything in psychology texts or the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM5). As you can imagine, with our combined dysfunctional backgrounds, our marriage has been, at times, extremely difficult, and sometimes an absolute roller coaster, but with love, patience (sometimes), perseverance and a lot of dedication, we reached a point where things were good, really good. Then 2020 happened.
Our 2020 started off amazing. It really was a “Happy New Year” for us. We were in a great place emotionally, were attending Spiritual classes, events and started attending a Spiritual Church where many of our friends were. But before the end of January we were already getting hit with life trauma. Then we got hit again. And again. We made it through the first few hits, then our trauma reactions started to come back. We were getting back on our feet from those first rounds, and getting better. Then came COVID. Even though I worked in an essential business, in an essential location, I still lost my job. But my husband worked in ICU at the local hospital. And if that wasn’t bad enough, then he was put on the jury for a child murder trial.
If the trauma reactions to what he was going through at work weren’t bad enough, the trial put him over the edge of what little sanity he had left. I was barely holding myself together over losing my job to no good reason, and trying to help my husband keep his sanity at the time time. Our life couldn’t hold, and it didn’t. Our reactions came out in full force, and every bad thing that we could do to each other, we did. Then in 2021 my husband disappeared. I now had a wife who had no life skills, no emotional skills, no coping skills. She had one purpose, and I wasn’t capable of helping her, or dealing with it. We were two strangers forced into a relationship by circumstances that never should have existed., and we didn’t know how long this would last, if it could last, or if my husband would ever come back.
I knew the “free” money from the government wasn’t going to last, and I was tired of being at home. At the same time, my husband/wife was illegally pushed into medical leave, and forced into a system that he knew was corrupt and only harming the patients they claimed they were trying to help. After a few months, my spouse got a return-to-work letter and returned to the hell that was the COVID unit. The un-requested time off hadn’t helped any, and in fact had made things worse. Our trauma patterns were still in full force, and even with both of us being back at work, nothing seemed to help. We had some ok days, and a few good ones, but mostly things just weren’t getting better.
By early 2022 things had gotten so bad that I had moved almost entirely into my office. We were still trying to get along, at least on the surface, but the hell that we were living in, and creating, was taking it’s toll. We had small bright spots in that the therapy that my spouse had been forced into seemed to be helping, and things were starting to lighten up. Then the next bomb dropped.
Even after having been advised several times on multiple occasions issues that would trigger my spouse’s trauma, his therapist, case manager, counseling group and psychiatrist did exactly that. My spouse’s therapist purposely triggered my spouse at an appointment where my husband/wife were advised that they were being removed from the group sessions that were helping with the reaction traumas. The appointment was scheduled immediately before my spouse had to go to work, and they were given no time to cope or deal with the emotional hit, causing unbearable turmoil minutes before they had to walk into a high stress job in the most stressful unit in the hospital.
Furthermore, at the suggestion of their therapist and psychiatrist, my husband had become my wife, nearly full time, with the idea being that she could handle life situations, work, etc better than my husband could. So my wife asked their boss about the possibility of coming into work as herself. They were again put on medical leave, and a return-to-work letter was again requested to show that the psychiatrist was in agreement.
As requested, my wife went to the next psychiatrist appointment where the psychiatrist proceeded to scream at her about how she didn’t know who my wife was, that she wasn’t there for my wife, only my husband, and that she was only there to prescribe medications. Further, she refused to answer any of my wife’s questions, including refusing to acknowledge that she had suggested the very course of action that she was now seeing in her office. However, the psychiatrist did have her assistant write the return-to-work letter, demanding (to the clear shock of the assistant) that it include all of my spouse’s diagnoses included, which is a clear HIPPA violation.
Let me repeat that: The psychiatrist triggered her patient’s trauma, then willfully and purposefully violated the Patient Privacy Act. My spouse’s therapist told us in a session later that because my wife turned it in, it didn’t violate HIPPA. I disagree. When a medical “professional” purposely triggers a patient, resulting in that patient acting under duress from emotional and psychological trauma created by the therapist or psychiatrist, yes, I would say that HIPPA still applies.
As a result of that letter, two-and-one-half months later, my spouse was terminated from the job he had held in for over 20 years with an exemplary record. During a meeting with his case manager a few weeks later, it was casually mentioned that she “had seen an email going around” about that. In other words, my spouse lost their job due to collusion between his employer and his counseling group.
Less than two weeks after my spouse was terminated, the final bomb hit. A year prior, when my spouse was illegally forced into medical leave, he was also reported to the regulatory agency governing his license based upon provably false accusations. We find no coincidence that the instant my spouse was terminated, the regulatory board chose to proceed with their “investigation.” We spent the next six months fighting the regulatory board, not to keep the license, but to give it up! That’s right – over a license that was expiring at the end of the year, with a signed and notarized statement of surrender, the regulatory board refused the surrender and tried to insist on a full, public hearing where my spouse’s full traumatic childhood would be put on full display, along with falsified records from the counseling group. All of this because we refused to sign the regulatory board’s document that was full of blatant falsehoods and over-exaggerations that I almost didn’t recognize my spouse’s life story! Nor were we willing to sign any document requiring us to stay silent about their lies and emotional brutality. Not only that, but my spouse told me after the fact that the lead “investigator” in the case had been a former supervisor early in their career, and the investigator had created a toxic and hostile work environment nearly 30 years prior.
Since they lost their job, my spouse has put in more applications than I can count, and has gotten no callbacks. But they are still trying. We’re also trying to focus on making music and videos to fulfill their lifelong dream. It’s a slow process, but it is in process.
So, Warriors, this is what we have been grappling with the last few years. We are still dealing with the fallout every day. Some days are good. Some days not. But every day we still get up and try. And that is part of the essence of being a Warrior.
Blessed Be.
The Warriors Den 