Dissociative fog? Amnesia? Switching?

I am trying to understand my memory and how it works. After waking up this morning and having several sudden revelations about what has been going on since we left T on Monday it occurred to me that this patchy memory reminds of of what happens after drinking too much alcohol.

I hasten to add that I do not drink very much alcohol or drink it very often.I have not drunk any alcohol for several weeks as far as I remember. I do know from past behaviour that after drinking too much alcohol you can wake up in the morning and over the course of the day memories of what happened the night before can come back in patches. You hear people saying things like 'my god I remember doing this' or 'I didn't do that did I?' There are times when a person might loose whole chunks of an evening......so back to this morning, I wake up and find that somebody obviously in this body has been doing something that 'I' am deeply ashamed of and feel responsible for although I wasn't aware of it at the time it was happening.

This differs slightly from bumping into my neighbour who will say 'Where were you off to when we saw you this morning' to which I draw a blank, but then she will describe where I was i.e. you were walking with your dog and carrying a Sainsbury's bag' I can then grasp onto the fact I went to Sainsbury's but may or may not remember much more detail about it. Or having no recollection of having spoken to your SO on the phone the previous day when she mentions it. Or finding oneself in a shop but having no idea what you are doing there.

Are these all different or all part of the same thing and what is 'normal'?

From the events you describe it is two things: dissociative amnesia and identity alteration. In a person they can occur separately, or together. If they occur together, even if only rarely, that is DID.

I relate to this. you draw a really excellent parallel between alcohol fog and dissociative fog. i used to drink a lot and chalked up ALL of my fogginess to it, but when i got sober it kept happening. that is part of what led me to investigate and eventually get diagnosed.

i've been sober almost a year and a half, but i still have those moments of "wait..i didn't do that did i?" or someone mentions something and i get a flash of memory but it's sort of blurry and unattached to anything else i can recall. sometimes it's just a total blank. zero memory for things people tell me i said or did.

i realize now that i was having a lot of switching and amnesia for years, but i kept rationalizing it as "just drinking". it's scary that it still happens, but removing the booze variable from the equation makes it easier to pinpoint actual triggers and figure out what is going on within.

Thank you for your replies. It has clarified a few things for me. Thought I had everything under control and everything just seems to be falling to bits. Can never really work out whether it is always falling to bits but sometimes I just don't notice it.

LittleMie wrote:Can never really work out whether it is always falling to bits but sometimes I just don't notice it.

that really sums up my general feelings lately too. my thoughts are with you! <3

I have this problem too...
i've been trying to understand how my memory works too but its confusing

like, i went to rehab for 31 days and just got out yesterday but i dont feel like i did it
i remember some things from the experience but its all in a foggy box like looking through old magazines and being like oh yeah i remember reading this magazine... what was in it again?
and you try to flip through the pages but some of them are old and crumbly and not readable...


i think i do have dissociative amnesia... and my personality changes...
im never completely here, im just stepped back watching the whole story unfold as my personalities take care of buisness... but i dont know if i have DID or not because im not diagnosed...

i think i have borderline personality though even though i dont have explosive relationship problems... but i think thats a key component to borderline right?

Completely relate to this. Like, we (especially me) usually end up doubting ourselves for a while because a couple of us come together and seem to be relatively in tune with each other's actions (mind you, this is just a few main fronters.. or as our therapist calls it, 'the A team') and then all of the sudden thing will go to sh*t and memories will feel like a flashing, short circuited slide show for a long time and can't seem to even remember things that happened moments ago. Sometimes I or someone else (usually me lol) will get really upset and start running away somewhere, and then look up midwalk and not even know where we're going, decide to go somewhere, and then end up in that place but not really remember walking there... however at a different time little bits and pieces (sometimes really unimportant ones like a leaf scratching up against the sidewalk) will resurface. weird, but normal for people like us i imagine!!
-miranda