Written by Fox.
A lot has happened since September and most of it is good! Keri now has unescorted leave (despite it being repeatedly taken away and given back after a period of time). We have also had a tribunal and a discharge plan which I'll talk more about in a minute. The dissociating has been all over the place. I haven't been well lately as me, along with some of the other alters, have been helping sort out Sally so that she doesn't carry on being a homicidal psycho. I've been self harming. Even though I've been encouraging Keri not to! I've found that if I'm writing blog posts or diary entries (separate to Keri's stuff) then things aren't so bad and I can distract myself from my head when it's spinning around.
We had a tribunal at the beginning of December. There was three members of the panel, our solicitor, Keri's brother, a nurse from the ward and the psychiatrist (which Keri gets along well with now, whereas in the beginning she wouldn't even look him in the eye!). They had a chat to begin with before Keri, Jamie and the nurse went in. There was no need for anyone to get nervous really as they'd already made their decision by the time we walked into the conference room! Keri wanted to move on to a locked rehab unit rather than wait until her CPA in March for things to start moving. The panel consisted of a solicitor, a psychiatrist and a social worker. They all agreed Keri was ready to move and that things should start rolling now rather than waiting until March. It was the outcome that everybody was looking for. Afterwards, to celebrate, Keri went out on her unescorted leave with Jamie.
Despite it being a good outcome, things seemed to deteriorate quite quickly with regards to us coming out and the self harm that was happening at those times. Keri had quite a chat with her psychiatrist and her therapist (a new one she started seeing in September as the other went on maternity leave). She gets along well with her therapist and after all the conversations, it was decided that if Keri stayed until June and carried on therapy to try and understand the switching of us coming out then the psychiatrist would look at the open rehab at our last hospital, rather than spending a year in locked rehab before moving to open anyway. We had a meeting with Pathfinders (an agency in our last area who get involved when it's time for someone to move on somewhere else) and it was more officially decided.
During Keri's CPA in March it was pretty much set in stone that we're all going to be moving back to the open rehab we had been in a couple of years ago at the previous hospital we were in. We weren't ready for it then with Sally being completely out of control but things seem to have calmed down a bit now on that front. As long as Keri continues therapy with her therapist then we can all go! In a couple of weeks we're being assessed again to go back to Alder Unit (the open rehab ward in our last hospital). It's quite reassuring for Keri as she knows both the psychiatrist and the ward manager who are coming. I'll be writing another blog post soon after we're assessed.
How is therapy going? Pretty good. Right now Keri is working with her therapist about understanding why we come out and why we do what we do. At first we were all dead set against Keri talking about this as we thought she wanted to get rid of us. Keri's therapist has been very reassuring though and has told us that it isn't the case we're being gotten rid of. That's not going to happen. They're just discussing why it happens. Some of the alters are still against Keri talking about us but there are several of us who understand it's not to be nasty or anything. It's just to try helping limit the negative behaviours when some of them come out, like with Sally and her homicidal thoughts. As long as none of my friends are threatened I don't mind Keri talking about us.
