#syscourse unalligned

Diagnosises: What are they actually?

Some people truly need to understand that diagnosises are used to describe commonly occurring symptoms that exist alongside each other. One does not have a disorder because they are diagnosed with it or self diagnosed with it, they have it because they have those symptoms.

The line between those symptoms is not clear cut. Let me explain in the context of CDD systems.

OSDD is the diagnosis that is provided when someone does not meet the full criteria for DID. Whether or not someone is diagnosed with DID or OSDD or even CPTSD depends on the system, the psychologist, and a bunch of other circumstances.

The best example I have of what I mean is someone who was diagnosed with OSDD for lack of memory gaps became diagnosed with DID after finding one alter who they had amnesia with. DID is, by all accounts, the best diagnostic label for their experiences. As DID is a disorder formed in childhood, you cannot acquire it later in life*, they have always had DID and not OSDD. Even though they, for the most part, have no amnesia between alters.

I know of systems who are either fully diagnosed or self diagnosed with OSDD due to lack of memory problems who actually DO have amnesia. This is typically because of very minimal amnesia, slow switches never causing a "IDK where I am" moment so they don't recognise they don't remember much if any of the day, other memory based disorders so the pattern of worse memory between alters is unrecognised, or just one or two alters who front basically all the time so there's never a moment of switching out for the memory gaps to happen.

Same can be said for how distinct alters are. We have a couple alters with the same voice, very similar mannerisms, and despite having a lot of differences like names, pronouns, and sources, they are INCREDIBLY similar. If they were the only ones to front during testing as to whether or not we have DID, we might be given an OSDD diagnosis due to lack of distinctness between alters.

OSDD-1A is not just memory problems. There are several distinct states, they are just not as distinct as DID. Usually it is things like all associating with how the body looks, identifying as different emotions, identifying as the body at different ages. The line where that stops and DID starts is not clear. Depending on a psychologist, the same system could receive DID or OSDD or even something else.

There is a difference between research about the disorder and the diagnostic criteria. A major, major difference. The diagnostic process is not to see if you have a disorder, not really, it is to see if a disorder describes your experiences and, if so, which one does so the most accurately.

That is all to say that diagnosises and diagnostic labels are not what causes a disorder to happen. Diagnostic labels are just there to help describe a person's experiences and get them help.

(*About the age thing.

OSDD specifically is stated as a diffential diagnosis for DID. The mention of it being a differntial diagnosis focuses on OSDD-1.

There is OSDD-2 which is the part of the diagnostic criteria that specifies identity disruption due to things like torture.

The line between OSDD-1 and OSDD-2 are both a) not actually specified in the diagnosis and b) blurry just as with DID.

Someone cannot get DID later in life, according to research (although there is something to be said about whether or not that actually matters in the diagnostic process). With that said, if someone were to perhaps fall down a certain community rabbit hole that convinced them they could make their own system, they could potentially develop something like OSDD. That is because, in the case of OSDD specifically, there is a LOT of subtypes. Specifically a subtype entirely around having a disorder that has the core features but is not actually DID, and another subtype about coercion causing identity disruption.

And if they do not qualify for one of the other specifified diagnostic labels, there's another diagnosis (unspecified dissociative disorder) that they would be given if they had heavy dissociation (such as identity alteration) that is not better described by another disorder.)

((Reminder that me saying symptoms could meet a diagnostic criteria is not me forcing it upon you or anyone else. It is me explaining how diagnostic criterias work and that certain symptoms could meet it. I do not care if you believe your symptoms to be benign or if your psychologist/therapist does. The conversation is about people who have CDDs, not about people who do not, and therefore is not applicable to everyone who considers themselves plural. If you do not have a CDD you can interact, plural or singlet alike, but be mindful we are talking specifically about CDDs here.))