Just muddling through. Doing the best I can.

I'm an early 30s white adult with DID, and collectively we go by felis (they/them). I use this blog to write about my lived experiences as a queer, trans, disabled, autistic person with DID. This is primarily a trauma recovery blog where we focus on our collective life with DID and our work towards learning about each other, growing with each other, and healing together. I'm a licensed mental health counselor and often post about my job and the complexities of navigating that as a disabled person with DID. I also like sharks a lot. And Jellycats.

Our username is a nod to Richard Kluft's OG paper on DID called "The Phenomenology and Treatment of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder." Throughout the paper, he refers to his research participants as "complex multiples" and that's a title we've jokingly and lovingly reclaimed for ourselves since our system is pretty complex and confusing.

Click the read more for more details about us, our system, our life, and our blog boundaries.

None of my usual strategies were working and my meds were way less effective too. So I was really hoping my PT could help. Well…he did lol. He found that I had some kind of rotational misalignment in my C2 vertebra. He did a(n) (extremely painful) manual adjustment thingy (very different from chiropractors; don’t panic) and…magically so much instantly got better???

I had been telling him that in addition to the occipital migraines, I also had been having this awful feeling that my head was too heavy to hold up for long…and I just always wanted it resting against something. I also mentioned that I’d been losing my balance a lot more lately, and that I was having strange pain in my right shoulder and tingling/numbness in my right hand.

Welp C2 affects all of that!!! After he got it realigned, my head instantly felt lighter on my neck and easier to hold up. The occipital pain was GONE. My tinnitus also felt eased. And I also was breathing more easily???? I’ve been having this weird-to-me symptom where it has felt like I keep getting congested or having a blocked nose but without actually being congested…and it’s been feeling hard to breathe through my nose/hard to get enough air. Now it doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore?? C2 affects sinus and respiratory stuff too???

Probably not news for a lot of my hEDS buddies but I’ve been fortunate that my joint instability generally doesn’t involve my cervical spine. My joints from the waist down are most affected (HELLO SI!!!!), and my shoulders and wrists are a bit janky too (oh also my jaw but ANYWAY). So luckily I don’t generally deal with spine stuff.

So yeah anyway come to find out that this C2 issue was caused by the unaliving attempt on May 10th which makes so much sense in terms of my massively increased symptoms and inability to resolve them myself. It also makes sense that my GP wouldn’t have picked up on it when I had my exam a couple days after the attempt. She was looking for major neurological symptoms and the stuff I listed above came on somewhat gradually and slowly got worse and worse. She’s also not a spine person and doesn’t know joints the way my EDS specialist PT does lol.

I’ve been feeling a ton of relief since the appointment and also very validated…like wow okay something was actually happening…it wasn’t just me…it wasn’t just my nervous system acting the fool, it wasn’t just emdr flaring things up…there was an actual physical thing going on that my PT had to actually fix. That’s so rare for me lmao.