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I would just like to add:

I don't know what my diagnosis was, or is. I've never had the faith to go that far into therapy or with a psychiatrist to find out. My bf is the only person I have ever trusted.

But, my experience is this, and I don't know whether it would be considered borderline or DID or what...

I repressed memories for most of my life, until about six months after I met my bf and was stable with him. Sometimes I have floods of memories that are triggered by events. This has been going on for about 4 years, but has settled down a lot. I had a work/school mode that I went into as soon as I awoke. It had no recollection of any events from the night before. I would get up and go out in the middle of the night, do stuff with friends, and then sometimes wake up in different clothes, thinking that I had slept the entire night. But I was so busy, that I never stopped to think about what happened, and if I did, I just wrote it off. I sometimes went out and did stuff and remembered being there, but didn't remember the details of being there. If something happened I couldn't explain, I just ignored it. It has taken me this much time to integrate the memories from the past into my "white" side. That side I consider the "dark" side, and actually did name it "Blackie" when I was in the dark mode. I realize now that sometimes I did remember things from that, but that I thought they were dreams I had had, because they weren't vivid enough to be memories. Now I realize that they were. All of that time with no recollection of the night before, except for sublime things that gave me enough memories to carry me through. But anything I didn't know how to deal with or that caused extreme emotion, I just forgot. That's how I got through college lol. And I think that when I remembered them all and realized that I was absolutely taken advantage of in a BIG way, I didn't trust myself to take care of myself or them or anyone. I saw a lot of inhumanity. During my life, I was a sub to the nth degree, as in, I wanted to be directed. And they used that to their advantage. They would command me to forget things, and I would, because I realize I wanted to. I didn't want to deal with the horror of it all. I didn't trust the people in my situation enough to allow myself to change it. So that kept me in the process...

Also, my "dark" side was doing things my "white" side couldn't accept that I would do, like breaking and entering, stealing, casual sex, chasing men, groupie activities, etc. I remember a guy next door in the mall next to the store I worked at opening the door to my store and helping me steal a bunch of stuff. No recollection at all of this, and if some of it ended up in my possession, I just figured a friend had left it there, as I had a lot of friends around. I would forget days at a time, and then just think I didn't know the date. "Oh, I thought it was Tuesday, weird." But I think I was afraid to allow myself to integrate it. I just didn't have the environment or support to handle it.

I dissociate, but in a different way. I don't have alter personalities or anything like that. When I was 12 years old I was in the school auditorium. All of a sudden I couldn't move, couldn't speak and couldn't hear. My sight was fuzzy. This weird sensation came over me, like a strange tingling. To make a long story short, I never knew what it was or what caused it. The doctor didn't know or anyone else. It took me years and years to find out what it was. I was in a state of dissociation.

I still get those sensations, but not as bad as the first time. I think back then my body was just shutting down due to traumatic events in my life. Now when I feel threatened or scared, it happens. It happens a lot when I drive, especially on the highway. It used to happen at work - I would be typing and couldn't feel the keys on the board. I couldn't feel my body. I felt as if I was outside of myself. I pinch myself when this happens, just to try to feel myself.

Sometimes when I'm in therapy and we're talking about something that really freaks me out, I'll sort of zone out and it'll happen. I'm there but I'm not there. But I never lose time or anything like that. It still scares me. When it first happened in school, I was scared to go back to school. I went into an avoidant mode, not going places where I was afraid it might happen. I still can't drive the highway because of it.

I know this is different than other ways people dissociate, but I may just be on one particular point of the spectrum.

Thank you for sharing, Aqua! I don't know what "they" would call that...but it certainly would have been pretty disturbing. Sounds like there are some things it's just as well you don't quite remember.

I've been doing some reading, and there are some psychs who think that PTSD, BPD and DID are actually parts of the same spectrum of disorders. I've even read one or two papaers (that I can't find now because I'm looking for them) that DID may actually be (in some ways) a more severe form of BPD - except that the disturbance is more with identity than emotions. In some ways that makes sense to me. Both DXs dissociate, to varying degrees. Part of the BPD criteria is an unstable sense of self. It wouldn't be too far a stretch to take that further into a divided sense of self.

I know that I deal with some fragmented ego states. Not separate identities, but...a persona...When I started high school, I decided that I would become someone else because being me was just a never ending torture. I developed the tough, sexy party girl I affectionately named Minx, and set out to live THAT life instead of my own. As I slipped further and further into the alcohol and drugs and strip clubs, Minx became more real to me than I was. Eventually, I pulled myself out of that lifestyle and set myself back on a more "normal" path. Something funny happened, however. The need for that alternate me was gone, yet it remained and grew a bit more separate from myself. I don't dissociate all the way, I don't lose time and I always know what's going on, but I have found myself "in the back seat" so to speak. Watching myself do and say all sorts of things that I don't want any part of anymore, feeling powerless to stop myself and sick with shame at my actions. Even in my first few years of sobriety, I could feel this sort of thing, but it's gotten better as I come to accept myself more completely. I've even found i can "summon" Minx, if I want or need, and that there can still be power shifts if I'm triggered (usually by sex or violence).

I wouldn't dare compare this with anyone who truly suffers from DID, but I can glimpse the continuum of how this may happen. It's bad enough with someone I consciously created. I can't imagine it with identities I didn't even know I had.

What is or isn't dissociation seems to be a very hot topic. A friend of mine who had DID and did indeed have distinct parts (alters) was adamant that what I referenced as dissociation was not. Her reaction to my stating such was nearly anger. Some of the reasons I met such a strong reaction were:

a) she had been newly dx'd with DID and was trying to grasp what it meant to her/in her life

b) she was trying to grasp her own experiences with DID

c) she was trying to accept tha there was some dissocative parts that she was not / had not (yet) identified or could accept

d) she was running into online experiences wherein it seemed to be "THE" dx to have (ie everyoone would lay claim to it and having alters)


Myself, I had no other word for what I had experienced - an inability to verbalize what I was thinking tho I really wanted to put a voice to it; a slight 'fog' between me and what was going on around me; extreme emotions (tho I could not have identified what those were only extreme discomfort; hurt; confusion but so much more and felt so very deeply); a desire for the experience to be other than what it was.

I still believe, rightly or wrongly, that this was a form of dissociation but more properly (and clearly) stated as depersonalization, but not in the sense of being beside myself wherein I was watching myself - more in the sense of watching everyone/thing else, but not able to relate to all of that- I was outside the experience I was having/viewing... so yep there was a split in this sense.

This article here I find quite interesting because of this paragraph:

Quote:

Any of the dissociative symptoms may occur in BPD. Dissociative experiences are a hallmark of BPD.They are generally more varied, more complex, and often more persistent than the single symptoms that characterize many dissociative disorders. All people with BPD dissociate. Only some people who dissociate have BPD.

I wonder how others feel about the bolded sentence. Myself, I do feel that under intense emotion I experience a disconnect- not to the point of amnesia, but to the point that I disconnect from my surroundings and the feelings are the primary (only ! ) thing I am aware of. And as they subside I realize that how I presented myself during that time may be seen/felt very different than how I perceived such.

also I find this statement interesting:

Quote:

Discontinuity of experience is perhaps the single most defining feature of BPD. DID is an extreme version of this fragmentation. I believe that every person with DID also meets criteria for BPD. Only a fraction of people with BPD, however, experience the degree of fragmentation that occurs in DID. The spectrum of dissociative disorders therefore begins at one end with single dissociative events, moves toward BPD in which the tendency to fragment experience is fundamental, and finally to DID, which may be understood as an extreme form of BPD in which the dissociative experiences are complex and systematized.

I think what I described above of my own experience falls into the category described in the bolded section.

While I relate to all of this, I dont classify myself as someone with DID, yet I was very surprised and welcomed the efforts of one T who seemed to be the first to key into the fact that I had a tendancy to 'leave' conversations and get caught up in the overwhelmingly intenseness of emotions that were hitting me.... she got to the point where she could spot me heading there and would encourage me to deal with it. This also helped me see that I not only cannot handle the intensity but that I was unable to identify the emotion(s).

My experiences are indeed very different than a few people I know that have DID. They do have distinct personalities some of which are the young child parts but that is extremely different from any of the 'inner child work' that becomes talk on this board so many times. Inner child work is, to me, integrating the child like aspects of ourselves- (our reactions, behaviors) with our adult aspects and chronilogical age (or least somewhere near).

Those I know with DID and child parts, do actually behave, talk, act and relate to those things children do. Someone, perhaps betty sue, made some general comments about this above that I relate to.

This article, is an easy read, not too lengthy, and discusses the criteria for DID (just above the Diagnosis paragraph) and the DX:

Quote:

The diagnostic criteria for the diagnosis of DID are (1) the existence within the person of two or more distinct personalities or personality states, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self, (2) at least two of these personality states recurrently take full control of the person's behavior, (3) the inability to recall important personal information that is to extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness, and (4) the disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (blackouts due to alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (APA, 1994). The clinician must, therefore, "meet" and observe the "switch process" between at least two personalities. The dissociative personality system usually includes a number of personality states (alter personalities) of varying ages (many are child alters) and of both sexes.

Smilin, this sentence struck a chord in me. I interpret it as the times I get so overwhelmed with emotions that I cannot and will not hear what anyone tells me. My emotions come at me with such full force that no amount of soothing helps me at these times. Is this similar to what you experience?

I never thought of this as dissociating though. I just think of it as being washed over by extremely strong emotions.

It does seem to me that dissociation does run on a continuum. There are those with different distinct personalities. Then there are those who disconnect from what is going on around them at the time.

I read a book that talked about different types of dissociation. Here's a link: http://strangerinthemirror.com/dissociative.html

Scroll down about half way to "Five Specific Symptoms of Dissociation". (That is, if you want to specifically see that. Okay to start at the top, of course). And then after that it talks about the 5 dissociative disorders. The book itself goes into more detail. (The website is for the book, so just go to the homepage for information on the book.)

Yes, I also think it is similar to what you describe as Minx. It's different personas, but one doesn't remember it, and it's more final and deeply concocted. There were no feelings of fear or caution on the dark side. Sometimes I had trouble being my stripper self, if I had too much of it. I would go in and be the white side, and drink until the dark side came out then (oblivious to exactly why I was doing it), and then wake up the next day with no recollection of any details from the night before (in that case, it was alcohol-induced, but it wasn't always that way). If I did something my white side didn't agree with, then I would split off to my dark side. That would trigger it.

I can also see how DID could happen, because when I split, I felt so good, like my mind was new, especially if I had not split for awhile. Instead of having to feel those bad feelings about what I did or what happened to me, I could just split off. If I didn't split for awhile, I would also get very edgy, as if it were a need. My two sides also hated each other, my white side thought my dark side was Charles Manson, my dark side thought my white side was a wimp, and that makes it incredibly difficult to integrate the two. In this case, I integrated the dark into the white, and sometimes, I got so paranoid, anxious, and disturbed by what I had done. I just layed in a room, fricking miserable for so long. My bf is like, why are you so disturbed over things a lot of teenagers do? Because my white side and now me are uber-cautious. It's like I had to feel all those feelings I had avoided all those years, and it sucked. My dark persona could be arrogant to the extreme, entitled, and on a power trip, I think now people can catch a glimpse of those things sometimes in me. And I loved being that way, it felt wonderful, but I couldn't handle what I was doing, nor did I have the control to stop her. I didn't like what she was doing, I just liked how I felt. I have to restrain those things in me now, and occasionally I am unsuccessful at doing so, but it's not nearly as extreme when I do so.

Mine wasn't that extreme, because they weren't that distinct. Both sides thought the same music was ok, although my white side usually preferred another. And I didn't really "become" the name, it was just a nickname. I still thought my name was what it is, if I thought about it, but Blackie did not want to think about it, because it would trigger the white side. But they definitely perceived differently, and related to the environment differently, and thought about the self differently. Today, I can still take on "Blackie", I'm just not as extreme when I do so, and I can remember it.

I was diagnosed with MPD at 16 and at the time I did not believe such a thing was even real. My mother believed the shrink that diagnosed me and told me that I needed to read about Sybil. I am nothing like that, though. Apparently I trashed the shrink's office (I don't know what he was since I referred to him as a "shrink" at the time and that is all I knew him as) and he refused to see me anymore. I remember him saying things to make me angry because that was the only way he could get me to talk (a child psychologist had used hypnosis to get me to talk when I was nine) but I have no recollection of trashing his office, except that it seems I was having thoughts along that line at some point before I lost it. When I found out, I was just so glad that I did not have to see him anymore that I felt a sense of achievement at having solved that particular problem.

Then at 18, after the name change and agreement to use just one name, I was diagnosed with Depression, chronic PTSD (due to history of trauma) and BPD (due to history of self-injury) while recovering from alcoholism. It is possible that the "black outs" were attributed to my excessive use of alcohol, much like Aqua described. At that time the PTSD/BPD diagnoses made sense so when I was referred to therapy years later by my doctor, I informed Mental Health that I had PTSD and BPD so the labels stuck.

It was not until my former therapist started bringing up my "fragmentation" and "dissociation" as my presenting problems that I realized that she suspected MPD/DID but she also knew that I did not believe such a thing was real. She is the one who told me that DID is just a severe form of BPD because the DID diagnosis freaked me out too much and I would leave therapy (even when it was court-ordered). I went to an inpatient program where the psychiatrist, psychologist and staff specialized in DID in order to rule it out because I thought I had BPD and not DID. I had even brought up my concerns about spiritual possession, although I was afraid that I would possibly be seen as psychotic and prescribed anti-psychotic medication, but the professionals who evaluated me over a 10 day period thought I had DID. I tried to keep my scores low on the dissociation scale because I was afraid that if I was too honest they would think I had DID but they figured out that I was not being entirely truthful somehow by "minimizing" my experiences. When they told me that they thought I had DID, I begged them not to put it in my chart because I was afraid it would be used against me and they agreed to put DDNOS down instead since they are so similar.

The past three therapists I have seen briefly have all indicated that they think I have DID and they have refused to treat me for anything else, although I have been able to get them to agree not to put DID in my chart. Even though I wanted them to use BPD and treat me for BPD, they have stated that I don't have BPD (nor is it likely I ever had BPD in the first place since they think it was a "misdiagnosis" even though it stuck for so many years). I have refused to continue seeing any therapist who thinks I have DID because I am not entirely ready to accept the diagnosis, although I have not stopped seeing this current therapist (I am meeting with her once a month for now since I wanted to drop out but it is not good to do so against medical advice as it somehow is translated as "lacking insight" which seems to be enough of a reason for hospitals to lock me up as a danger to myself). I am trying to learn more about DID in order to not be so freaked out by it.

I am still doing research on spirit possession because it seems there may be different ways of looking at the same thing from different theoretical perspectives. I had been involved in Satanic witchcraft beginning at the age of six but I don't remember much about it since it seems I made up this Little Red Riding Hood "alter" to get through that stuff. I do know that the owners of the in-home daycare I attended where stuff happened went to prison after the baby died and I am afraid I could have been involved in his death based on questions my parents asked me at that time. I do know that I have done channeling and I think it is very likely that the spirits I channeled may have ended up "stuck" in my aura somehow, perhaps because they sensed that I was "needy" and they wanted to help me. I don't think I made them up but it seems possible that I named them and used their names at times. I know my father named the first one before I was 2 years old (my mother was pregnant with my younger sister at the time) and both he and my mother went along with my thinking that my "imaginary friend" was real.

If I did make up these "characters" then I think it must happen much like dreaming of people who are not real and somehow convincing ourselves that they are real and that dreams are really memories. Sometimes things that really happen seem like dreams at the time so it makes sense that people can get confused and not know for sure if something is a dream or a memory. I do know that when I get triggered, I end up "leaving" and there is some sort of automatic pilot that takes over while I am not paying attention. Sometimes I get information about things I don't know but I probably just forgot that I knew it until there my memory was triggered to remember.

As a kid, I was always in trouble for not paying attention and for being stupid and not remembering things. I thought it was because I was brain damaged from being hit over the head too many times but there seems to be something wrong with my memory retrieval because my memory is actually quite good when it comes to learning and I have a high enough IQ that I should not act stupid. I think memory is sort of like a computer where you need to know how to search for information files before you can find them in storage. Sometimes things come out of storage when you aren't looking for them because a search takes you somewhere else and that is when flashbacks are likely to happen.

I am trying to learn as much as I can without thinking that the only way to fix the problem is to die. Thinking I have DID tends to make me feel suicidal - I was told that there are "programs" that can cause those thoughts to happen just like with the Manchurian Candidate so I work hard at staying alive when I feel like dying. Sometimes that is all I can accomplish but I am still alive so that is something. I don't want the demons to take me to hell with them by giving up my life to Satan instead of allowing God to take me at the right time. It is just hard to live being so messed up mentally that I would rather be dead.

I can't remember the question now but I don't want to look back because ignore does not work if I scroll through the replies below. Hopefully I have answered the question or I will have to try again another day. There is movement in my head that is going to blind me if I don't stop now.

I've been trying to follow this thread and it IS a confusing topic.

I was not diagnosed with mental health issues until I was about 26. My current T says there is a continuum of PTSD and even with dissociation. I have complex PTSD he says and DDNOS. what I experience is hard to describe because I mostly don't recall what happens. I think it happened once here on the board and it caused quite the upset. anyway, it is so confusing to even me. I don't consider my parts to be alters. they are just parts of me from different ages. they look like me at those ages. I do not have what others call alters. but I suppose if someone really dug deep, they might say I do. I don't.

I don't have memory of parts taking over. If say the 15 year old part of me takes over, i guess i start acting and sounding like a mouthy kid. when the younger parts of me are present, I have been told my voice is quiet, I am more sensitive, my language is that of a kid and not an adult. and I think I am in certain moments that really happened.

I guess my T says that he can tell if another part is 'taking over' (for lack of better words right now) because he says I hold my breath and my eyes just stare off. but I don't see colors or hear words or anything. sometimes I will sense that I am 'in my head' though.

I knew someone as a teenager who was told she had MPD and then years later she said it was all fake. scared me to pieces sometimes at what i saw. i definitely don't have what she 'had'. and the church I grew up in felt it was satanistic so I am really put off by someone saying I have DID or DDNOS even my T. it makes me feel like someone thinks i am possessed or something and i am not. I just experienced some deep traumas for a little kid. maybe not as bad as other people/children in this world.....which is what i don't get. how can someone who didn't have some of the severe traumas out there, have such a intense diagnosis? I guess that's where i have to say that its all on a continuum and for me not to compare my 'lesser' trauma to others. what happened to me was extremely traumatic to me.

i'm not here to debate over DID or anything. Just was putting in about my experiences. and I don't recall what happens til my T or my H have told me. I do lose time.

Roo

I'm not sure if I'm hosting this thread or Ellen is, but I would like to thank you all for sharing your stories. They are all so different. Obviously, dissociation manifests itself very differently and to many varying degrees.

Thank you for clarifying the details of an often all too vaguely described survival mechanism. It gives me a lot to think about.

Betty Sue