The Only Remaining Move Is To Stop Engaging
Quick backstory: I am a 30-year-old, living around the Manchester area. I have been diagnosed with C-PTSD and OCD, and also have epilepsy.
Around 5 years ago, I started learning about a concept in psychology called 'dissociation'. Which is where the mind disconnects from itself and the body to manage high chronic [dis]stress. It blew my mind because I've been dealing with it my entire life and didn't know it had a name. For example, limbs feel very numb a lot of the time and I feel emotionally dull most of the time, too. After speaking with my GP and neurologist, we all think that my sense of 'disconnect' is dissociation from childhood trauma. I've had several rounds of therapies (like EMDR – which did nothing – and CBT). So my GP started an Individual Funding Request for therapy at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies.
This was around 2022.
After being made to go through 12 sessions of art therapy. Which didn't help, surprisingly. There has been no updates in about 2 years, and the handler of my case is not responding to communications. Meanwhile, I am in permanent suffering without any care.
Earlier this year, I drank a lot and became alcoholic. Which is not a new thing, I've always been addicted to things since I was an overeating child. And I also got fired for poor performance at work. Drinking has been steadily slowing, and I'm making good progress on it.
There doesn't appear to be a winning move here with the NHS. There's nothing more I can do than patiently explain and re-explain my dissociative experiences. I have even made videos, web demos, and 3D models to help convey it, but, nothing. It's clear that the issue isn't a lack of understanding, the issue is that they don't want to fork over my tax money to pay for my treatment.
Now I am just left without any path forward now, and still in a dissociative curse. What is the winning move here? There doesn't appear to be any, other than disengaging and dealing with it myself. The whole ordeal, especially being ignored, has been incredibly stressful and significantly worsened my health.