The professional question

Clinical hypnosis had made me curious about dissociation.

Ordinary people sometimes become absorbed enough in an activity that they lose awareness of time. A person may drive a familiar route and arrive with little memory of the journey. Under extreme stress, disruptions in memory, identity, or one’s sense of reality can become far more disturbing.

Dissociative Identity Disorder was considered the most extreme and controversial condition within that family of experiences.

I did not consider myself an expert.

That was precisely why I wanted education.

As president of the local clinical-social-work chapter, I was responsible for identifying opportunities through which clinicians could earn continuing-education credits. A workshop on dissociation could address my questions while providing useful training to colleagues.

Organizing the workshop

Through my connection with the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, I met Louise Coggins, an LCSW with experience in the subject.

I asked whether she would come to Wilmington and conduct a workshop.

She agreed.

Louise planned to bring a client whom I will call Grace, who was willing to discuss her lived experience of DID. That required courage. Grace would be speaking before professionals, some of whom might be skeptical that the disorder existed.

My role involved making the event possible: finding a location, coordinating the continuing-education component, notifying clinicians, and ensuring that the workshop had an audience.

This was leadership in a form I could recognize.

I was not merely holding a title. I was creating an educational event for professionals in my community.

Approaching the newspaper

A small calendar announcement in the newspaper might have been sufficient to publicize the workshop.

I wanted to see whether the Wilmington Star-News would do more.

I contacted the paper and described the event. DID attracted curiosity because it was difficult to understand and controversial even among mental health professionals. The newspaper decided that the subject warranted a full article.

I do not remember every detail of the interview or the finished story. I remember seeing my name associated with the event and my role as president.

For someone who had spent so much of his early life afraid of attention, the experience was extraordinary.

I was visible in the newspaper not because something had gone wrong, not because I had been accused of anything, and not because someone else was defining me.

I was there because I had organized a professional workshop.

The visibility represented success.

Becoming findable

The article did more than announce the workshop.

It associated my name with dissociation and DID. My private-practice website made it possible for readers to locate me afterward. People searching for a therapist around Wilmington who might understand dissociative symptoms could find the article and then find my practice.

Some people contacted me because of it.

At the time, that seemed entirely positive. Individuals who felt misunderstood were discovering someone willing to listen, and my practice was becoming known for addressing difficult trauma-related experiences.

Later, John F. would telephone my office.

He would say that he had found the article online and then located my website. He presented himself as a support person trying to help a woman in my area find treatment.

That later story belongs elsewhere. It could fill a book of its own.

What belongs here is what I knew at the time.

I had organized a workshop.

I had brought continuing education to other clinicians.

A newspaper had considered the work significant enough for an article.

People who needed help could find me.

I believed visibility meant recognition.

I did not yet understand that becoming visible also meant becoming reachable by people whose intentions I had no reason to suspect.