Tag Archives: Healing from trauma

Dissociative identity disorder

The meeting with Mark

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So this morning I met Mark our OT. We had a long discussion on a number of different topics. First off, we discussed the upcoming meeting that he is attending about us going back to college. The manager rang him and set up a meeting between him and the college psychologist. Basically they want to know if we have enough supports in place outside of the school supports, if we’re able to manage our mental health, and what they should do if a crisis arises and we need extra support. Mark said that he’s going to reassure them that if we need extra support we will initiate it by contacting either our therapist or psychiatrist. He’s also going to let them know that we’d like to keep our mental health issues separate from our schooling and issures arising from that. They will be meeting on August 11th, and Mark said when he’s finished with the psychologist and on his way home he’ll buzz me to let me know how it went. We decided to meet again on the 13th of August…and when we meet we are doing a session around my anxiety going back to college. He said he’d be using a strategy called anticipation and preparation. basically, you anticipate what issues will arise for you, then you prepare for those issues. Sounds simple but it probably isnt. Still I’m looking forward to that session. Putting things into perspective will set my mind at ease. We also talked about me doing voluntary work and I said for now I’d rather wait a while. I want to start college and see how that goes, what the work load is like, if I’ll be tired in the evenings etc before I commit myself to doing extra voluntary hours on top of that. Mark had looked into me volunteering for friendly call, which is a service where vulnerable people or older people can request a daily check in, and someone from the friendly call service will ring them and chat to them for a while, checking in with them to see how things are going for them. I would love to volunteer my time there. They expect their volunteers to commit for a year, and work I think a four hour shift a week. I think if I still want to do it after xmas then I will. The other thing mark had been looking at for me is singing lessons. We looked into me going back to the stage school I attended as a child. Its pretty expensive though for private tuition. There is an adult choir which I could go to but even doing that you have to pay by the simester. I’m going to think about it. Again I can always wait until after xmas to join. Since I am also thinking of joining spinning classes in september I’ll need to set time aside for that. And two evenings a week I’ll be seeing eileen and Dr Barry. So my evenings are already pretty full on. It was a good appointment though and Mark said if I get anxious during the two weeks I can phone him and we can meet sooner than two weeks. He also said once I go back to college that he would still meet me just maybe not as often. I am lucky to have him because he is not dr barrys OT he works in the locked secure unit as their OT but some years back he was my old psychiatrists OT and that s how I got refered to him was through her. Then he kept me on as a client once I switched over to Dr Barrys team. He’s a really good OT though…very thorough.