I ' m a counseling student but my partner is actually dissociative met him in the middle of school , one did not cause the other just really coincidental and made me want to specialize in it after seeing the way his therapist treated him , but that ' s something else entirely ! . A lot of my instructors through the years have stated that they are skeptics and I think that it isn ' t as addressed in the clinical setting because it is so stigmatized and one of the least tangible disorders . I know that with my partner , he didn ' t know what was wrong with him until he stumbled across the term and was like oh , that ' s me . A lot of clinicians , I believe , either don ' t believe that it exists or think that their client should be presenting along the lines of Sybil . Again , my partner ' s experience with this was them referring to alters as voices and approaching with more of a schizophrenic , you ' re just loony take . He also though normalized his neglect a lot and didn ' t see it as something potentially damaging until we went back and examined his childhood . Finally , I ' m working on research right now mainly looking at the university population on stress and dissociation because many academics believe that everyone experiences it in small amounts highway hypnosis , imaginary friends , a work self and a home self .