Confusing appointment

Una, could you further explain the difference between dissociative amnesia and lost time?

-Jeff

Rubyscarlet wrote:Alcoholic blackout was always the best explanation. In fact I blamed pretty much every strange or unexplainable symptom on alcohol or stress, or a combination. It's only since I stopped drinking I see more and more how many symptoms were not actually caused by alcohol, just that the alcohol was a very good cover and amplifier of symptoms and time/memory loss.

Exactly. This is very often the case because before getting a diagnosis and appropriate help so many of us have tried to self-medicate with alcohol. Richard Kluft has mentioned in several of his publications that one of his best sources of new DID clients is a counselor who runs alcoholism recovery support groups.

Jeff @TGFSmith wrote:Una, could you further explain the difference between dissociative amnesia and lost time?

When a host part loses time while some other part is out front, this is not amnesia in the usual sense because nothing has been forgotten. The apparent "amnesia" that the host has is a side effect of there being a wall, sometimes called an "amnestic barrier", between the parts. Often the barrier is one-way: the host loses time while alter X is out, but when the hose is out alter X is still aware, just on the inside. The lost time is not amnesia in the usual sense because the host did not experience that interval of time as it happened, so has not forgotten anything. Lost time is more like a coma than amnesia.

Dissociative amnesia on the other hand is where the host (or even a singleton without any kind of dissociative disorder) is aware for a period of time but later cannot remember it or some aspect of it.

Here is an example of dissociative amnesia that I experienced. One morning I had an intense conversation with my husband about a former significant other (SO) of mine, then the evening of the same day I was unable to remember the conversation. My husband noticed my amnesia and told me it was there. Then he helped me find the margins of the gap. By margins I mean what I did remember before and after the conversation. When I concentrated on the margins suddenly I recovered the missing memory.

In hindsight I know why the dissociative amnesia happened. Given what I learned that evening, it was quite disturbing that I had that conversation in the morning. You see, that evening I received an e-mail from the very same SO's wife, informing me that he died that morning. She even said exactly what time he died. As he died thousands of miles away, at that moment I began talking about him, and then crying, and then I said I hoped he learned to live before he died. I had not spoken to this SO in over 25 years, and rarely ever spoke of him or even thought of him.

That evening when I told my husband I just received sad news about this SO, that he died at X hour in the morning, my husband was stunned and said "Wow Una you must have had another one of your psychic events." I didn't know what he was talking about. I did not remember talking about the SO that morning. At first despite knowing I had talked about him I could not remember, and then all of a sudden it came back to me.

I hope this helps.

That was a great explanation, Una. I, sort of ironically, can remember instances of both.

I once forgot an entire day, but thankfully most of it was internet chats with some co-writers, one of whom I felt pressured into revealing the alters to. I still have some trouble remembering most of that day.

For losing time, that happens very often. Like if an alter has a conversation with someone, and they remember it but I don't, that's losing time, right?

-Jeff

Well I'm very glad my drinking got so bad I had to stop altogether. It would've taken years longer to realize what's really going on if I still had alcohol or drugs as a 'cover'.

Thanks also for the explanation of time loss and amnesia. So it seems to me losing time is like the incident I mentioned earlier about the supermarket, that an alter was obviously there buying the things and I had no recall straight after because 'I' wasn't there.
Dissociative amnesia is when it's remembered at first then forgotten, or the details quickly disappear? I notice that in three written records I have of the same traumatic event (recorded over a few days) the first record has far more detail than the second, and there are still more details missing in the last record - with memory blocks already present in each record.