Trigger: Categories - Ego States or Alters

boopsy26 wrote:Tylas, I want to respond briefly to your question without hijacking this thread. But it is important to the original question at hand as well.

Johnny-Jack wrote: Johnny-Jack wrote: DDNOS (dissociative disorder - not otherwise specified), a dissociative disorder diagnosis for a condition like dissociative identity disorder (DID) but with ego states rather than alters...

tylas wrote:I was hoping someone else would address this so I don't have to. I am confused. My thinking was that DDNOS-1 and DID both have alters, but there is less of a dissociative boundary between the Alters in DDNOS-1. The time loss happens when there are two or more Apparently Normal Parts, which is absent in DDNOS-1 because there is always just one Apparently Normal Part, but there can be numerous emotional parts.

What you wrote JJ makes sense in that the dissociative boundary causes Alters and thus DID, but ... I am not sure alters are exclusive to DID. Could someone straighten me out please?

Now Complex PTSD is different. I think this is where you find ego states - but I am not sure. I never thought of it as you wrote it before JJ.

Am I wrong?

More
"A person who felt she had alternate personalities but in whom those personalities were not fully developed or autonomous or who was always the personality in control might be diagnosed DDNOS, as might someone who suffered depersonalization episodes but not of the length and severity required for diagnosis"
http://www.palace.net/llama/psych/diag.html

DDNOS-1
Symptoms: Dissociated and compartmentalized parts, but the major hallmark symptoms of DID such as current time loss are not present. This means time loss in a present day, not an inability to remember childhood. In some cases this can actually be harder to treat than DID.
Etiology: Similar to DID etiology
Structural Dissociation: 1 ANP and 2 or more EP



More info..
http://dx-dissociative-identity-disorde ... ative.html

This is a great description of DID Etiology:
Merek Manual - "Children are not born with a sense of a unified identity; it develops from many sources and experiences. In overwhelmed children, many parts of what should have blended together remain separate. Chronic and severe abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional) and neglect during childhood are frequently reported by and documented in patients with dissociative identity disorder. Some patients have not been abused but have experienced an important early loss (such as death of a parent), serious medical illness, or other overwhelmingly stressful events. In contrast to most children who achieve cohesive, complex appreciation of themselves and others, severely mistreated children may go through phases in which different perceptions, memories, and emotions of their life experiences are kept segregated. Such children may over time develop an increasing ability to escape the mistreatment by “going away” or retreating into their own mind. Each developmental phase or traumatic experience may be used to generate a different self-state."

boopsy26 wrote:All the terms of "ego states" "ANP's" "hosts", etc. are all conceptualized theories that are not actually tangible things. As much as alters may feel like real people, they are, in actually, still part of one person. I think most of us can agree on that. These concepts are based on different scientists and patients' perceptions of a phenomenon that is nearly impossible to accurately describe. There is not enough hard research out there to definitively decipher any true hard line between PTSD, Complex PTSD, BPD, DDNOS, DID, and often times Schizophrenia (psychosis and loss of reality can occur with any of these disorders and are quite common). These are all on a similar continuum with many overlapping experiences that most often are based in trauma, extreme stress, and early loss. Getting so hung up on the specifics will certainly cause confusion and might drive a person bonkers, because so much of this is not hard science and is not actually conceptualized well. The different terms are often used differently by different people. Much of the research I have read considers all alters to be ego states that are just further dissociated from awareness than in the normal person. Personally, I find this to make the most sense, especially once you get into the neuroscience of it.

I fully expect and look forward to a rebuttal by Una on this one...

tylas wrote:It's fascinating and might change the way you look at this.

ashesoflife wrote:Does it matter how Boopsy, or any of us, looks at it? Really?

Most of us are here just trying to figure out what is going on with us. I find it amazing, after years of thinking I was alone in these kind of DID-y experiences, to find out I'm not the only one in the world like this. These kind of confrontational threads make me not like this place as much. Does it really matter what other people term things?

Caecandy wrote:I've seen so many expert opinions who have gotten things shockingly wrong.

"Children are not born with a sense of a unified identity; it develops from many sources and experiences. In overwhelmed children, many parts of what should have blended together remain separate. Chronic and severe abuse (physical, sexual, or emotional) and neglect during childhood are frequently reported by and documented in patients with dissociative identity disorder. Some patients have not been abused but have experienced an important early loss (such as death of a parent), serious medical illness, or other overwhelmingly stressful events. In contrast to most children who achieve cohesive, complex appreciation of themselves and others, severely mistreated children may go through phases in which different perceptions, memories, and emotions of their life experiences are kept segregated. Such children may over time develop an increasing ability to escape the mistreatment by “going away” or retreating into their own mind. Each developmental phase or traumatic experience may be used to generate a different self-state."

tylas wrote: Even those with PTSD have EP's, but Gwens's system probably does not know what they are to be able to tell if they have them or not. Often the host is an ANP. But there is so much more to it than this. I agree they are not the end all of everything, but those experts have a dang good grasp on things. Those with DID know their system, but they are not experts on DID by any means.