DID Is In Your Office with Dr. Adrienne Fletcher

0:00This is Dave Roberts. If you're heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, you're taking a risk most people don't think about until it's too late. Summer colds linger and can turn into sinus infections at last for weeks. Getting sick right before vacation can derail everything and we are traveling, finding a doctor and pharmacy is stressful. That's why I ordered medical emergency kits. It's like having an emergency care and a pharmacy right at home. It includes essential prescriptions like a moxasillin and generic z-pack to treat a wide range of common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick at home or on the road you already have what you need. No waiting for your doctor, no hours at urgent care, no pharmacy lines, no copays, just match your symptoms to the right prescription in your guidebook or call their telemedicine doctor standing by. Start on your med sooner and feel better faster. Every home needs at least one medical emergency kit. 40 years online in minutes and it's shipped to your door and say $45 with promo code blue at urgentcairedkit.com slash blue. That's promo code blue at urgentcairedkit.com slash blue. Hi this is Dave

1:02Roberts heading into summer without a medical emergency kit. That's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick at home or on the road you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcairedkit.com slash blue urgentcairedkit.com slash blue. Welcome to the Trauma Thippers podcast. My name is Giming Furson. I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping those who've been impacted by trauma. Big thank you to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show. So five, four, three, two, and one. Our folks welcome back. Very excited to have us my guest today. Dr. Adrian Fletcher. Dr. Fletcher, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. All right. So Dr. Fletcher is a psychologist, author, speaker, and survivor

2:03whose life and work sit at the intersection of trauma, healing, identity, and transformation. After more than two decades in the mental health field she now speaks and writes about the realities of complex trauma, dissociative identity disorder, post-traumatic growth, and what it means to build a meaningful life beyond survival. Her unique perspective comes from both sides of the therapy room as a clinician who spent years helping others heal. And as a survivor who has navigated her own journey of integration, loss, resilience, and reinvention, her upcoming publication, what integration actually felt like. A psychologist lived experience of DID, offers a rare perspective from someone who has walked the path, appealing both personally and professionally. All right, Adrian just a little bit about you, but before we get going, share with our listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. Yeah, well I love that. It's kind of a full circle moment for me. So I actually grew up on the East Coast and I left the East Coast to obtain a doctoral degree in the state of Arizona and I have lived

3:06in Arizona for 18 years. I'm actually just here temporarily. I relocated to California, but I'm in Scottsdale kind of wrapping up my 18-year life here in Arizona. It's a full circle moment for me because Arizona is where I became Dr. Fletcher. And I'm actually in the process of changing the spelling legally of my first name to the more feminine spelling so that I will be going by Dr. Adrian. So it's been quite an evolution of healing. We can speak more about that later, but yes, so I'm continuing on in California, but I am here temporarily in Arizona. And again, full circle moment because this is where I started my career. Well, I did work in mental health back on the East Coast, but in terms of obtaining my doctorate, completing a residency and building a career, Scottsdale, Arizona is where I have the honor to do that. Okay. Alright, so how does all this start for you? Take us back. Yeah, that's a great question. So I struggle immensely in school when I was young and there was a lot of abuse going on behind the scenes that I wasn't necessarily aware of

4:09because I live with DID. So dissociation blocked out the atrocities and the horror of my childhood, which has been a long journey started therapy in 2012 and have been on the journey ever since a path of discovery. But what started my interest in the field of counseling and psychology was an amazing high school teacher who basically saw that I was going under. I started to fail classes. There wasn't much hope for me to finish high school. I was expected to be a high school dropout. In fact, my therapist at the time back then was like, you might want to consider your GED. But this teacher saw something in me and she said, Adrian, you have so much compassion and so much empathy. Have you ever considered a career in counseling? And I hadn't. She saw a gift in me and I didn't want to just go for counseling. I wanted to go all the way. But my desire to understand pathology really started with trying to... Alright, hang on, hang on, Adrian. We're two minutes in here. You're ready at your PhD. Hang on. I got to slow you down. Yeah. What you said,

5:10there was abuse going on in the background. Is that abuse towards you towards siblings? No, abuse towards me. So my father was involved in organized crime and I was a victim of his from the ages of four to seventeen. I was trafficked by him. And so you can imagine why I wasn't doing hot in school. And I couldn't focus, couldn't pay attention, was disrupted. I spent a lot of time in detention. And I was a miserable kid. I was miserable and nobody really knew what was going on with me. But I was labeled as the bad kid, the oppositional, defiant kid, and just spent a great deal of time not doing so well. Drugs and alcohol. And this teacher really saw something in me and she sort of took me under her wing. We had a lot of after school conversation. She's still in my life today. We reconnected after 20 years. How old were you when she came into your life? Entered my life. It was junior year of high school. She was my US history teacher and I was failing.

6:11So up to that time to manage this. You were obviously, as you said, kind of acting out, labeled the bad kid, drugs and alcohol. When did that start for you? I started abusing drugs and alcohol around age 12. And what about siblings? I do have two half sisters. I usually don't talk about them in an interview. They're 10 and 11 years older than me and they share a different father. But just for their own privacy, for the family. Of course, yeah. What do you feel like comfortable talking about is fine. Yeah, they were influential in my life, though. They were, you know, because they were 10 and 11 years older, they had already they were already off to college and building their lives. But when they were around, they took very good care of me. They were they were a solid, you know, I've never really thought about this before, but I probably wouldn't have made it very far if I didn't have them in my life. And your mom? My mom. Yeah, this is a hard one.

7:13My mom has to wait in 2018, a pain-credit cancer, which is really the catalyst to change everything because more of my parts came forward and it was finally safe for all parts of me to start sharing the reality of my history when I was young. My mom basically was a single mom. She left my father when I was three. They had joint custody. He wanted custody of me and she thought that that didn't happen, but he still had access to me. I'll never really know how much my mother knew and didn't know. It's hard for me to believe that she knew nothing, but it's also hard for me to think that she would have done nothing to protect me. So that's a hard one. But the loss of my mom, we had a very conflictual relationship. But she did believe in me, but my mom kind of used reverse psychology. She would make you think you weren't capable of doing it, but believed in you at the same time, almost to instill this sense of you want to prove her wrong. So she even, one of my sisters,

8:13this is an incredible runner and she made my sister believe she'd never be a marathon runner and my sister qualified for the Boston Marathon. And actually she chose not to run it. I can't remember if she was pregnant at the time or not, but we're all hardworking women. And my mom really showed us, despite all of the dysfunction in the chaos, my mom, she did have a work ethic because it was about you never want to depend on anybody but yourself, which you know, you can imagine this message, right? It can go both ways. You got to learn how to depend on yourself because no one's going to, no one's going to do it for you. So she really, all three of us turned out to be really hardworking individuals and I myself have obviously struggled a great deal, but the desire to, when my high school teacher saw this empathy and compassion in me and encouraged me to seek out becoming a counselor, I was like, well, I'll become a psychologist then because I wanted to go all the way and nobody around me believed me except for this teacher at the time, that I would be

9:18capable of that, you know, to go from failing high school and barely graduating, but graduating by the skin of my teeth to making it to where I am today is I don't know that I always slow down to respect the journey. As you caught me, I breeze by all the things and I'm just like here I am today, but it's important to talk about all the hoops and the struggle to get to where you want to go. Well, it's not only important to talk about it and I believe it's important to share it because look at you, how friggin inspiring you are. Oh, thank you. We're five minutes in and you're already like so inspiring. So can we, you're welcome. So do you want to say this teacher's name or whatever, maybe the first initial of his or her name? Oh yeah, I speak about her regularly, Miss Heather Allen back. Yeah, she's been at. Heather Allen back. Heather Allen back. Yeah, she's an incredible. Amazing. I love people like this. Yes. She's get going here. You're inspired,

10:19you want to become, as you say, go all the way. What do you do when you go into college? What are your thoughts? Yeah, well, here's the funny thing. So Heather Allen back was my US history teacher, right? So senior year, I took psychology and I wasn't assigned to her and she taught psychology and I told my mom, I was like, I need Heather Allen back as my psychology teacher. Like, I don't know how, what you're going to do, but I need you to make this happen for me. So she called the school and I was able to get in Heather's psychology class. And my first paper was on adult children of alcoholics. I really had a desire to understand my father. It's like I knew there was layers to him, but I didn't quite know what yet. And so that was my first paper. And then I went to undergrad at New England College in New Hampshire. Well, I'd actually toured a couple of schools and some of them were too large. I got very overwhelmed. I had a little meltdown in the parking lot of Southern Connecticut State University. One of my sisters had earned a master's there. So I thought I might really like the school. And I went there and I just, I told my mom, I'm like, I can't do, this is too

11:25big of a campus for me. Like, it's just too overwhelming. I can't do it. So a friend had recommended New England College and we went to visit and it was a small little liberal arts school in New Hampshire. And I just fell in love and I met the faculty at the open house and it was a fit. And I had some lovely professors there. They ended up coming to my wedding decades later. Just incredible people. And again, there in college, I was like, I'm not sure what I want to study. I'm sure this won't surprise you, but I went to my professor and I said, I'm thinking about being a forensic psychologist. Of course, right. Again, trying to understand my father, but not really understanding why, right? So he's like, Oh, Adrian, I don't know that you want to be a forensic psychologist. I took aggression, violence, prevention, like an undergraduate class. We went and we toured the prisons. I was like, wow, this is really neat. And he was like, Adrian, in order to be a forensic psychologist, you really got to get into the mind of a criminal and understand why they do what they do. And he goes, I just don't know that that's the fit for you. And he's like, what about clinical psychology?

12:27He's like, I could see you doing clinical psychology. And I was like, I don't know. I was kind of disappointed, you know, like, what I wanted to kind of do for forensic. But I think he knew I had a big heart, I'm super sensitive. You know, I can be tough, but underneath all the layers, I'm like an Uber sensitive person. So he knew he protected me in a way, I think. And so I started studying like abnormal psychology and I thrived in college. And my mom said, so I didn't do so hot my freshman year, I had like a two five, two seven GPA. And it was an expensive school. So my mother said, listen to me. If you want to continue going to this school, I need you to get your grades up because this is expensive. And you got to, you got to put more in. I was also planning a sorority at the time, which contributed to those grades, not being where they could be. But I ended up graduating a Dean's List student, you know, honors program and gave my commencement address. But I was tariff, I did not want to come home because going away to college meant I was escaping my father. And I never really understood that that was, that was my great escape because if I did not go off to college, I don't know what my, what turned my life would have, would have taken. And I had some

13:29struggles in college. That's where DID can be a brilliant superpower. So even though I didn't know that I had DID, I had very intellectual parts of me going to class and a couple of out of control teenage parts, you know, getting involved in college parties and sororities and things like that. But I had this one very specific card. Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, let's take an engine. So up to this point, I mean, you just started, you just started mentioning the idea. But up to this point, were you aware of mental health issues, challenges, present? No, not really. I did, I really struggled, well, I had mental health challenges. Let's just keep that real. I mean, I was depressed. I was again, abusing drugs and alcohol. And I think I saw the college counseling center for eating related concerns. I think I filled out a question area when you go to college and they ask you questions. And I think I got called in to talk about eating, eating related concerns. So I had a pretty bad eating disorder.

14:30I'm not sure exactly when it started, but it got pretty bad in high school around junior year. It's almost when perfectionism started to take over and those great started to get better to get me into college. So I had struggled with depression and anxiety and some eating related concerns, but no awareness of trauma and dissociation or anything like that. Okay. So let's go back to when did you understand that there were parts, quote, unquote? Oh, I didn't understand parts until while I was told in 2012, because when I started, we'll jump around a little bit and it's fragmented, right? And that's the life with the idea anyway, but and I say that with love. It's I smile, but it's a hard life. It's been a hard life. With the awareness, I didn't understand I was told in 2012 I had DIDs when I started residency. I wanted to be a top notch trauma therapist and I knew that if you don't work on your own

15:34shit, that you're going to repeat that in the therapy room and I always have a thing about do no harm. And so I wanted to be the best that I could be, the healthiest that I could be. So when I was on residency, I started therapy here in Arizona and the therapist started some EMBR with me and opened up a sexual assault that happened in college, but then it started to unravel and different parts started showing up and so she bridged the conversation around associated by identity disorder. And I left that therapist. I was like, no way. Okay, hang on, hang on. Were you aware? Had you been aware of that sexual assault? Yes, but I didn't refer to it as a sexual assault. Okay. In my mind, it happened the night of my senior formal and it's when I talked about it in therapy, she was like, you understand what that is, right? That's rape. And I said, let's not how I've ever thought about it before. So that opened up, what that ended up doing was opened up some other trauma that I was not aware of, you know, a lot of denial in my life. And I ignited that

16:41for protection. And that is like the number one, you know, I always, I have a really hard time with the diagnostic and statistical manual with the criteria under DID. One of the first things in there should be like continuously struggles with a pattern of accepting the reality of this diagnosis. I mean, it's just you're like in it and you accept it and then you're out of it and you're like, this can't be real. You know, it's a constant battle in your mind until you really do the work to uncover all the layers. But I and then what I had been trained and taught about multiple personalities. So when this therapist tells me that I had DID, I'm like, I don't have this. There's no way I have this. She doesn't know what she's talking about. And of course, I had an ego. And I was like, you know, she doesn't know what she's talking about, you know, so I quit that therapist and never returned and started with a different one who didn't discover it until I had a massive unraveling in 2016. Okay. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going. Okay. So the massive unraveling. You've taught you keep talking. And then when you mentioned the day new mom, you stopped.

17:43I know. I'm massive unraveling. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of it's a lot of vulnerability. Yeah. So in 2016, I was all excited. I had worked for a group practice for several years. I used to live my life. So you were you went through college. You got your degree? Oh, yes. I've got I got a bachelor's degree from New England College. I then went on to Columbia University to get a master's degree. Okay. I just care. You're working. Yeah. I went. So I completed my undergraduate degree and then went right into Columbia University for a master's in clinical. And my professor in undergrad said, I want you to start there because I want you to to take the master's in clinical psychology and then determine if you want to go all the way for the side D or the PhD. This program at Teachers College Columbia University will give you all you need to make that decision. He was such an influence in my life. And so he was right. I had a great time in New York. I struggled because I a lot of my peers that I went to school with were from Cornell, Princeton, NYU.

18:45And I just felt kind of small and insignificant from New England College. And the academics there were rigorous. They were hard. And it was interesting because it wasn't very collaborative or like people get together and study and like share like study guides and talk things out. No, it was you don't really socialize with your peers until after finals. You know, like if you think about it, like it would be nice to get together with peers and like study in the library just like we did in college, but at Columbia, no, it was head in the sand, do your work and you socialize with your peers after finals because it was competitive. And everybody wanted into the PhD program, which was only eight slots. I didn't apply to the Columbia PhD program. I didn't have the, I just, there's just certain people that are better qualified for that seat. So I sought out the the side D in Arizona, but I took two years after Columbia and worked in community mental health in the state of Connecticut. And I served as a co-occurring disorder specialist at the time and I worked

19:48with severe and persistent mental illness and like emergency mobile crisis. So I got two years field work before coming to Arizona to earn my doctoral degree. Okay. So you mentioned this crisis in 2016? 2016. Yeah. So I had already, so I went to the Arizona School of Professional Psychology. I earned my ID and I ended up at a private practice here in Scottsdale that treats people from all around the world. People come and do an intensive. Their primary specialty is sex and love addiction. Well, they treat trauma, but they're the one thing that they're known for is treating people with sex and love addiction. So they get a lot of high profile, clientele struggling with those issues. And it was the best training I ever could have gotten in my life. I worked with every level of trauma. And I decided I wanted to go on and start my own practice. And so in 2016, I left psychological counseling services and started my own practice with my mentor still in my life,

20:50guiding me, you know, encouraging me, telling me I had what it took to develop a practice. And then the first year that I opened my practice, I got flooded with a lot of fear. There was an incident where I was stalked. And it wasn't me necessarily that the person was stalking. We're trying to get to the to a spouse that was working with me. And it created a lot of fear in my nervous system. And they're ended up, I know what was happening to me. And I turned to my husband at the time, I don't feel right. Something's going on. I was just really, really overwhelmed. And I just, it was like a slow deterioration. And I ended up trying to think back because it was just so scary. My therapist at the time and a psychiatrist that she knew, they got me in right, oh, my husband at the time talked to his therapist. And she was like, she, what you're describing sounds like could possibly be psychosis and adraints, so high functioning, like you got to get her in somewhere

21:51like right away. So he found me a psychiatrist and we went, I stopped working. And she put me on some medicine to see if it would clear some overwhelm. I was saying very unusual things like fear of the FBI, which all makes sense now. By the way, my father's involvement in organized crime. But I was saying what would sound like psychosis. So the psychiatrist was like, I need you to take this medicine. And I'm like, this is for people that struggle with schizophrenia. Like I am not taking this medicine. She was Adrian, you're unraveling and you're really not well. Can you just take this for a short time? And then I promise you you won't have to take it forever. So she, she started some medicine for me and it cleared some of the overwhelm because I wasn't sleeping. So I'd like had insomnia. And my husband was like, I don't know what's going on with her. Like sometimes she seems like she's talking like a young child. Then, you know, she went from being able to handle everything to not being able to handle very much. I decompensated. That was for said decompensated.

22:51I ended up going to an impatient psychiatric hospital which was horrible, by the way. The one I wanted to go to, I didn't go to because I had been a psych tech there for years while I was in grad school. So I didn't feel safe. I had an enormous amount of shame because I didn't know what was happening to me. And I was a respected clinician here in Scottsdale. So I was like, I don't know what I don't know what to do. Oh, sorry about that. No one knows. Okay. The book that's the book that's coming out is about this little puppy reno, but there's somebody outside the door. So hang on Adrian. I just want to say you coming on here and sharing this is I just want to thank you. I mean, it's a lot yeah gone through a lot and to be able to do that I feel is very courageous and you're really inspiring. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's been it's been a long time. It's hard to tell all of these these pizzas of the story. Yeah, I can imagine, but I really value you taking the time to do that

24:00and share this with the people listening, you know, because to hear you talk about your life and your journey and to see the success you've had and also your resilience is I mean, come on. It's really yeah, it's also yeah, I think it's you know, one of my best friends is a psychologist as well and show he says with the story about getting sick and being afraid to go to the hospital, because most trauma therapists don't want to send their patients to the hospital because we know they're not great places and you don't really get better there. There are some of them of course you do, but we all know there's a reputation in the field that the inpatient psych places are not safe. So you know, some I used to tell my patients like if you got to go, you got to go because it's if it's going to keep you safe from harming yourself, but I also understand that you're not going to get the best treatment there, but if you get some rest, if you get some sleep, get the medication worked out, that's what those places should be utilized for, right? You know, you're not getting like the best therapy in there, but it's a it's a holding place for safety, right? So I checked

25:03myself in to a different hospital. They were not respectful. They were laughing outside the treatment room. They were and then a tech was like, Oh, you're the psychologist on the unit. And I was like, Can we not call attention to that please? I'm just a human being here for some help. Can we not call attention to it? So it was awful experience. And then from there, I still wasn't better. I ended up going to Timberline Knowles in Chicago and the psychiatrist there because I was really guy I had hard time. I was like, we want to put you on this, we want to put you on that. And I'm like, I'm not going on this. I'm not going on anything. And he was like, Adrian, I know you want to get better. You know, and I promise you, you're going to return to your business, you're going to return to your practice, you're going to live to tell this tale, but I need you to really think about this now. And he's like, if you comply, you're not going to be here very long. You need to be here very long. So then, you know, a couple days later, like I didn't have an appointment on my schedule to meet with the psychiatrist. So I'm like, well, where is he?

26:04And so I saw him in the hall and he's like, you didn't want to take any medicine. So why am I going to have an appointment? So I was like, okay, fine. I'll take the appointment. So we met and he put me on some medicine. And he said, I promise you, like the other psychiatrist, you're not a person that needs to be on medication. We need to figure out what's going on with you. At the time, guy at the diagnosis was major depressive disorder with psychotic features. So, you know, they put me on medicine. I was there. I had a really cool therapist there, you know, but it was rough. It was rough, you know, and then here I was in an inpatient resident treatment center, witnessing all the things my patients have ever told me over the years, right? Like the intensity of it, not being able to have your belongings, you know, staff not treating you very well. And it's not like the Marline Knowles is a bad place. It just is what it is. And again, you don't really get the greatest treatment. But what they did have was dance movement therapy and art therapy. And those were the two things that I would do while I was there. I loved it. And so, you know,

27:06I spent a very short time there, came out of there. And my husband at the time was like, you got to get back to your life now. You can do this. You're going to return to therapy. You're going to slowly get back to work, you know, I wasn't ready quite yet. I took a few months continued in therapy, met with the psychiatrist, and then along the way, oh, my husband's therapist had helped us, and I had met with her and continued to see her. And I can't remember, I think it was after my mom died, where the additional parts of me started showing up in therapy and talking to her. The timelines are always a little jarring, like which therapist and when and all of those things. But she really helped me. My mom and I had spent some time not talking, it had been several years. And then when we reconnected within four months of that reconnection, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and then dead within four and a half months. It was a rapid pancreatic cancer, it moves very

28:09aggressively, and a good friend of mine at the time said, listen, my mom died of this. It's fast, it's aggressive, and if you want to see your mom, you got to go now. And I will be grateful to her for the rest of my life for telling me, if you want to see your mother, you need to get on a plane now. So I did, and I would travel back and forth from the southwest to the east coast to spend time with my mom in her final days, and then after that there was another unraveling. So I was drinking a lot of wine. I didn't know how to cope with the fact that I just had the horrific inpatient psych experience. Still people aren't figuring out exactly what's going on for me. I'm trying to get my life back together. I was so delighted to reconnect with my mother and try to figure out our relationship, and then she's sick, and now it's like the twilight zone, and my mother was not a very easy woman to communicate with, especially towards the end of her life. It was a lot, it was a lot, and I remember sitting across from her while she was watching a Judge Judy in the Recaliner,

29:12and I remember looking at her and thinking, well, this is what Dr. Ashley and I worked on all these years. My mom is not well, and the psychiatrist at the hospital, treating her for cancer, said, do you think there's something more going on with your mother more than a mood disorder? And I said, oh, absolutely. Of course, I didn't realize at the time that it was also associated with identity disorder. And therapists helped me put that together, and I don't have any documentation, right? I can't prove that my mom had DID. She's no longer with us, but I know my own truth. And so it all just made sense, but I remember sitting there going, this is why I had to take some space, because she's just, she can be intense, and of course, that generation they didn't get help. Like we had done some family therapy back in the day, but my mom was a tough lady. She wasn't going to a lot of fear and vulnerability there, like a fear of vulnerability. She always had to be the tough and strong one. So let's, if we can just with regards to time, let's, if we can jump to how your DID was diagnosed.

30:16Yeah, yeah. So with my, so my husband had observed all these things for years, you know, different mannerisms. He used to say it felt like he was married to different people. You know, there was an angry Adrian, there was like a little kid, very childlike, you know, a lot of fear sometimes, you know, I couldn't be in the living room sometimes at night watching a movie without a night light on, you know, different, different things. And the three of us put it together. So my husband at the time, myself and the therapist that was helping us, yeah, and a different part started showing up. And so she sent me an article by Caroline Spring. And at first I was offended. It was like 10 friendly tips to becoming an association-friendly therapist. And she goes, well, I sent that to you for, for an understanding of, of DID. And I was like, oh, I thought you were trying to tell me I didn't understand association as a therapist. And so the three of us spent some time putting things together. And then I would switch and show up his different parts to do therapy with her. And she was a big, big part of my life and

31:18helping me put those pieces together. My husband too, who also was on the autism spectrum. And that was an important piece because of his ability to observe and gather data. He had more data on the parts of me than I did myself. And I will be forever, I would not be where I am today without his help. All right, listen, I'm realizing I'm going to have to have you back to have this, to give your journey, the room to unfold, the room to breathe. But let me ask you something, what was there a question, a series of questions, a way of being that you wish a therapist had given to you or presented to you that might have helped uncover this sooner. Yeah, you know, well, I think that one therapist tried guy, you know, back in 2012, and I just wasn't ready to my understanding of DID was not what she was explaining to me. I was like, how could I,

32:23this is, you know, I guess I had wished the other therapist were more informed. I had wished that they, you know, they both treated trauma. And either one of them really had a clue about DID. And it's like you can't really fault them for it, but it's okay to be upset about it at the same time, right? Because there's such a lack of education training and knowledge. And I myself, here I was, a psychologist myself and didn't see it in myself and struggled to believe in the existence of it. Right? So it was, it's again, I can't really fault them, but I wish that had been trained to pick it up earlier because it could have prevented that inpatient psych hospitalization. It could have prevented the, the residential treatment, you know, there could have been, if there was a way, or even the psychiatrist and the professionals that saw me well before, right? Even on the inpatient unit. So it's, that's the disheartening part is that there's such a lack of training and education that it's often missed. They say on average, a human spends about seven years in the mental health

33:26system before they're given the correct diagnosis of DID. That's seven years of somebody's life. That's why I'm really passionate about appropriate training and education and helping therapists understand DID is in your office. And if you think you treat trauma and you're never going to see DID, you're wrong. It's there. You just aren't trained to understand it or to look for it. And so that, that's what I wish could have been different. And that's why I've taken the risk to speak publicly because one, a couple of reasons, I want other trauma therapists to know they're not alone and they should get their own, do their own work because that's what makes them better therapists. And I speak out publicly about DID, no matter the scrutiny, because I don't want other people to have to go through what I went through. And let's be honest, I'm privileged. I have more resources than the average person. And I don't want people with less resources to, to, they're going to struggle a lot more that I even did, you know? So there's just a lot of layers here and why I'm so passionate about it. But I sit in the hot seat, I'm in the hot seat of skeptics and all the things and it's been

34:29one hell of a journey. It's been one hell of a journey. As, as we kind of wind down here, Adrian, you in, in the bio, I mentioned the different ways you work and you kind of talk just now about speaking and so forth. Share with us what you are doing now, how you are working, how it's been most of your time. Yeah, so I, I was, so I've worked in mental health for about 24 years. I've been a licensed psychologist since 2016 and I decided in well before 2023, but around 21, 22 started thinking about winding down the practice and doing something different, but I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do just yet. So I stopped seeing patients, one-on-one direct patient care in 2023, appropriately winding down my practice and closed it out. And now I do public speaking education, so I have some continuing education classes on the treatment of DID, but really now what I'm doing is stepping into more of the public speaking space on the things that you're talking about, resiliency, vulnerability and sharing my story, not just about DID, but just who we are as humans because I

35:34believe anything is possible. So I'm more of an inspirational speaker now while I do keep one foot in the field of psychology so I can continue to educate. Yeah, I'm moving away from the field because you can imagine what it would be like for me to sit there and diagnose people and do treatment plans when I've learned a whole bunch more about mental health that has nothing to do with textbooks in the therapy office and the Western medicine model of the treatment of mental health no longer fits in my in my value system. Wow, that sounds like a whole other podcast episode. Yeah, we could have a series guy if you want. I'm down for it. Finally, was it hard? Is it hard for you to share this story, to be vulnerable given the fact that you are a psychologist, that you are a professional? What was that like for you? Yeah, well, it was extremely hard. My mentor when I came forward with him just, you know, so supportive and I was so glad it went over well

36:37because I worked for him for years, you know, but I was worried and he was like, no, he's like, this makes sense and I'm, you know, I was always a stellar clinician for him. He always gave me positive feedback. I was worried he was going to think I was like incompetent. He was like, oh my god, no, for the, for this thing from that, if anything, you're able to help so many more people. So he was supportive, but I'll be honest with you that my colleagues here in Scottsdale weren't so quite sure what to do with me. But I was also the president elect of Scottsdale Psychological Society and then stepped into president and I asked, I said, listen, there's a lot of things going on right now globally for the DID community and they need a lot of support and a lot of allies and if any of you are willing could use your help crickets, crickets. And I was vulnerable. I was at a big meeting of other psychologists and I was vulnerable, some were kind after the fact, but you could tell what I was doing was making everybody very uncomfortable. Like, you really probably shouldn't talk about these things was the energy in the room that I got. And I have not really spent time with

37:37those colleagues since because I don't feel welcomed and I don't feel accepted. Adrian, you are amazing. You really are. I love speaking with you. I definitely want to have you back. Absolutely. I think you have so much to share and how do people learn more about you? You're speaking and so forth. What's the best way? Yeah, the best way to find me is just on my website. It's DrFletch.com, drfleth.com. We just launched a new website. It's just kind of more of me stepping into, it's like, again, I'm still the psychologist, but it's basically me stepping out of the field of mental health and focusing more on speaking. I do offer global consultation to therapists all over the world around trauma, DID and associations. So I do still offer one-on-one consultations and packages for therapists that want to gain more understanding of the treatment of DID.

38:41So that is one thing I continue to offer the field, but that's where you can find me. Okay, we'll have all that length of year at the show on its page at the trauma therapist podcast.com. Adrian, my pleasure to meet you. I love you. All right, take care. Thanks. Yeah, you too. You Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have Exema. So I get how it can still your time. But why let Exema take over when you can talk to your doctor about Epglyce? Epglyce, lubricism, ABLBKZ, a 250-mg per 2-ml injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kg, with moderate to severe Exema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin, or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies,

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