CPTSD and DID

We’re individual people, we have our own views on things

I struggle with this a lot so I know others probably do, and I want you guys to know this. 

People with DID who have absolutely no memory of what the other alter did, or having alters that act completely and totally 100% different from you, are rare. 

Yes, the diagnoses for DID is that you have problems remembering what you’re doing while dissociated. It explains that if you have trouble identifying simple things about yourself (name,age, address, where you’re from, etc.) and that you seem to have voices or thought streams that don’t at all connect to each other, and that you often have large gaps not just in your everyday (dependent) memory but also in your past (remote) memories, then you have DID.

However, what people often forget, is that the DSM-V addresses TWO TYPES of switches: Those where the alters are so drastically different that they’re completely different people (”possession-form”), and those that are less obvious and hard to detect but are still noticeable to the individuals within the system (”non-possession-form”). 

If you don’t experience dissociative fugue (”coming to” in random locations), don’t really experience finding random items, and still have some vague clue as to what the other alter was doing but no actual memory of it, that’s non-possessive-form. 

If you don’t remember a single thing, if you come-to in random locations, and people tell you it’s like you’re a totally new person – if your alters take on their own actions and you don’t have a clue what they did until later, that’s possessive-form, and it is VERY RARE. 

The point of DID/OSDD, is that the system is trying to be covert, for your survival. Even if you have no active communication within your system, sometimes you’ll have some vague “we went to the doctor” kind of idea, but when, how, and what actually happened/was said may be completely beyond you. That’s normal. 

In overt possessive-form DID, a second alter could literally go on a vacation, hit it up at a night club, and then switch, and the first alter has absolutely no clue what happened, just that they’re now in a night club and holding a drink when the last thing they remember doing was driving to work. (Bad example but you get the idea.) This kind of memory lapse and abrupt difference is RARE. This is NOT HOW ALL DID SYSTEMS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE, but it’s how some of them are..

Does it happen? Absolutely, yes. But the DSM-V recounts that most of non-possessive-form systems, and some possessive-form systems, don’t actually have clean cut “this is obviously a different alter” behavior. 

“In many possession-form cases of dissociative identity disorder, and in a small portion of non-possession-form dissociative identity disorder do not overtly display their discontinuity of identity for long periods of time; only a small minority present to clinical attention with observable alternation of identities. … Possession-form identities in dissociative identity disorder typically manifest as behaviors that appear as if a “spirit,” supernatural being, or outside person has taken control, such that the individual begins speaking or acting in a distinctly different manner.” 

It’s okay if you can just barely ‘know’ what your alter did, but have literally no visual or cognitive memory of it. That’s extremely common. 

If you’re capable of visually remembering what your alter did (i.e., like you’re in the “backseat,” not co-con but still able to know what’s going on, can remember what they did even after leaving front, don’t have to discuss with them what they did, everyone seems to have a “memory pool” that most of them can pull from), that’s a form of OSDD. 

If you have sudden switches where you come to in random places, people tell you you behave so differently they can’t figure out who you are, you’re faced with actions and consequences you have no recollection of doing but you clearly did them, or that people sometimes say (or you feel like) you were possessed – that’s possession-form, and is rare. 

(Psst. Both of them are 100% valid.)

my system members:

Then she got serious for the first time since the conversation started, it lasted only for a few moments, but I will never forget the one sentence that she said without smiling: “I’m going to die before I let that happen to me again.”

There was also this one rape victim whom a relative of mine represented in court. The rapist’s lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out that she’d laughed while giving her testimony. She was eighteen years old on the witness stand, telling a judge and a room full of people about what had been done to her. She giggled because she was embarrassed about having to describe the graphic sex acts, and she nearly lost her case because of that.

I have classmates who laughed while telling me about old men who stole kisses from them. Who made jokes out of stories about their boyfriends screening their messages and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do. I have known girls who were molested and manipulated for years, who shake their heads and snicker at their own past selves, how could I have let him do that to me, I was so naive, hahaha. This one woman reenacted for me, complete with dramatic gestures and voice impersonations, how her ex-husband who was under a Temporary Restraining Order scaled the gate of her house with a gun, and how she’d locked herself in her bedroom and screamed at the police over the phone to come NOW. Both of us were in stitches at the end of her tale, clutching our stomachs in mirth.