Would love your guys' opinion on this

Hello. Sorry about the huge amount of text but I hope at least one person can help me out with this. Thank you.

I want to preface this by saying that I (along with two different psychologists) highly suspect/am sure of that I have BPD or at least have severe symptoms of it. So maybe the experiences I'll talk about here could somehow be linked to that? Or other mental health issues I have like depression, anxiety and dissociation.

Also, I strongly believe that I don't have DID or any disorder related to it. But, I have experienced what seems like something similar which makes me very confused and left wondering why I have gone through such things. I'm just curious if there's an explanation for it but I simultaneously find it difficult to take it seriously (because again, I don't have a disorder like DID).
One of the main reasons why I don't think I have parts/alters, for example, is because the experiences that I've had have only occurred a few times in my life so it's definitely not a regular thing and I don't think it will happen again since I feel like I'm in a very different headspace right now.

However, those are just my own thoughts and maybe you guys have something to add or disagree with. Please let me know your opinions.
Btw, I'm not asking for anyone to tell me exactly where this may have been coming from. I simply want some outside input to see if I could learn something new of value about myself.

Let's begin:

- Earlier this year, I, at different moments, had experiences of different people being inside of me. For example, one evening two girls appeared within me and they even had their own names (don't remember if I named them based on what felt most fitting for them or if they had named themselves. But if I recall correctly, I actually asked about their names and they told me). They were called Lisa and Jane. Lisa immediately felt like a best friend, or soulmate even, and I wanted to be together with her forever (she made me feel less alone). But later that night she disappeared without a word and I felt genuinely betrayed and pissed off despite me knowing that she was just a "person" in my own head; not someone real.
Jane was different. She wanted to hurt other people (not me though) and I felt as though she was trying to take over my body in order to accomplish her desire. She didn't manage to do so because I insistently wouldn't let her. I have not felt the presence of Jane or Lisa ever since.

- One night, probably the same month, I was laying in bed as I felt like someone was trying to take over my body -- someone very scary. It was terrifying not only because this "thing" felt evil but also because of the idea of losing control of my own body. Btw, when I told the psychologist and psychiatrist I had at the time about all of these things, they thought it was psychosis, ha. I definitely disagree that I've ever been actually psychotic and later on I got evaluated by psychosis specialists and they concluded that I have no disorder revolving that. But I digress..

- On September 17th this year I wrote something which I normally wouldn't share if I weren't anonymous since it sounds very messed up and makes me seem crazy (so, beware and please don't report me to the police.... >.>). I wanted to put it under a spoiler but I don't know how so you can just mark the white text to see it better:

"there's [insert my real name here] -- and then there's anna. anna is f*cking outraged and sadistic. if you're hurt, she laughs, she enjoys it. [my name] is also sociopathic at times, but it's never in a joker-type of way -- it only comes from extreme anger. this can be the case with anna too though. [my name] is more human -- except when she's not. every now and then there are times when she hits the core of her childhood wound and sees herself for what she is: fundamentally broken. now *that* is painful. this awareness is where her humaness comes from. anna doesn't feel this -- ever -- she is entirely disconnected from it. granted, [my name] and anna also exist on a spectrum and they can mix together at times. no matter how many times [my name] feels human, she will always come back to her lust of torturing and killing others. people, as usual, will act as if there is nothing wrong with this -- it's normal, of course, considering [my name] is a young *woman* so she couldn't possibly be *actually* f*cked up, no. even if it may never come to practice, anyone who doubts [my name] like this will be killed in her mind -- or in anna's."

- On October 4th this year, I wrote a journal entry where I felt the presence of a couple of people inside of me and wrote down their thoughts. One in particular was very hostile towards me and wanted to basically murder me, and another was more neutral but neither mean-spirited nor necessarily "nice"; just very matter-of-fact. I should also mention that I was very upset about a situation in my life which I think is what sparked that whole thing.

- I remember one time when I was 18 years old (am 21 now) and I couldn't sleep. Instead I stayed up and wrote another journal entry similar to the one above where I felt the presence of just one other person. That was the first time I had ever experienced something like that. The person was aggressive towards me and wrote mean things.

- I don't find that these things affect my life in a real way. Basically, it's not a severe thing (if it's even a thing to begin with).

- In my day-to-day life, I experience nothing of this kind. However, I do dissociate (derealization and depersonalization) and have done so consistently since I was 14/15. My sense of self is very poor and I often feel empty or like I don't know who I am. Sometimes I imitate other people's personalities to just to feel like a real person and not a hollow shell. This is probably a BPD thing in my case.

- Even when I have felt these "people" inside of me, all my mental health issues/diagnoses plus just other deeply rooted issues of mine have still been very present and not really faded. Maybe that's not uncommon though. But it's not like I've felt that one of these people have been exempt from any of the mental health problems I have. They have still suffered just as much though probably not all as consciously due to different levels of denial. But I, in myself, can go back and forth with my denial as well.

- There have been several times when I've thought "we" instead of "I/me" when addressing myself since I don't feel like I exist on my own (though sometimes I do, like right now). But whenever I've caught myself doing that, I've basically just scoffed at myself thinking about how stupid it is.

- Despite having a weak sense of self, I still always feel like me (I know, it contradicts the above statement, but this is how I feel right now). Not like a different person or people. Oh, and at times I can have a pretty well-defined sense of self but it's fluctuating.

- I should also probably mention that I do not have amnesia (as far as I know, but I'm sure) in the DID sense. This might not be related to amnesia but I wanted to mention it: I have undergone traumatic events in my life that I usually don't feel affected by on a conscious level. I'm very dissociated from them most of the time to where I've many times in my life felt like I don't actually have any mental health issues.

- Besides BPD, I also relate to C-PTSD (I've read that they're similar so it might not be surprising) a lot and used to have what seemed like emotional flashbacks when I was younger. At the age of 17 I was also diagnosed with PTSD by only one psychologist but that diagnosis was never talked about again after I got new psychologists soon after.

Sorry, it keeps going. So much information....

- (Once again) earlier this year, I was talking to my psychologist at the time and afterwards I got in my car with my mom talking about what had been said during the meeting and suddenly I became sooo confused by why I had said the things I did to my psychologist; like my current self didn't agree with them at all. I felt absolutely perplexed and speechless thinking: "what the hell was that???!! Why did I say those things, I don't get it, where the hell did that come from??? That's not what I wanted to say at all". I felt as if I was someone else during that meeting compared to afterwards in the car. That might not really have meant anything though.

- In February this year I wrote some stuff about (yet again) feeling like different people or like I had different people inside of me. In one of the writings I said that I felt so dissociated from my body that I couldn't recognize anything about myself and that every action I performed felt like it was being done by someone else. In that moment I was also thinking "we" instead of "me/I".

- Excerpt from something else I wrote in February: "It feels like a person I don't recognize (someone scary -- maybe someone I'm imitating who has scared me before? <-- I don't remember what I meant by that) has taken over my body. I'm trying to get out of it but it feels impossible. Every time I try to remember who I am, I don't remember anything -- not even how it feels -- and my mind just shuts down. I basically don't remember what it's like being myself now that I am someone else, despite having been myself just a few minutes ago."

- After these happenings in the winter/spring this year I decided to pull myself together and stop with the "nonsense" and everything then stopped occurring except for what happened in September and October that I wrote about.

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I really want to emphasize once again that I really don't find these things relevant to my life anymore so I don't take them very seriously. My best guess is that all of this was a one-time thing for me or at least not enough to get me a DID/OSDD/DDNOS (whatever they're called) diagnosis.

Hi honestlywhatever,

In my opinion, nothing that you mentioned rules out DID/OSDD. You could take the DES (dissociative experiences scale) and bring the score to your psychologist to talk about. He/she could administer the SCID-D, which would give you a diagnosis. Feeling "people" inside you the way you described it does suggest DID/OSDD. I don't think it occurs in any other disorder. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:Hi honestlywhatever,

In my opinion, nothing that you mentioned rules out DID/OSDD. You could take the DES (dissociative experiences scale) and bring the score to your psychologist to talk about. He/she could administer the SCID-D, which would give you a diagnosis. Feeling "people" inside you the way you described it does suggest DID/OSDD. I don't think it occurs in any other disorder. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Thank you very much for replying! I'll check the DES out. I'm also in the middle of possibly getting a new psychologist atm so right now so I'll have to wait a bit till I can talk to a professional about this. But to be honest, I'm not sure I even will since I'm afraid I'll be sent back to the psychosis clinic I was at before but didn't belong in (since I don't deal with psychosis). Like I said in the OP, that's what happened the last time I opened up about this

Dissociative disorders are often mistaken for psychosis by professionals who don't know much (or anything) about them. If you have any say in choosing your new psychologist (not sure what country you're in), try to get one who knows something about this. Also, the SCID-D is a clinical interview that can diagnose dissociative disorders, so if you get a diagnosis it's harder for someone to just disregard it and tell you you're psychotic!

After many years on this board I can say that the general patterns you cover are very common in the major dissociative disorders before a diagnosis, and after: become aware of behavior that strongly suggests such a disorder (in hindsight, not necessarily at that time), discount it afterwards as silly, nonsense, pretending, just me being weird, attention-seeking, bizarre but just an anomaly, or something similar. Rinse, repeat.

Not to discount your unique confusion or the details of your life at all. But you owe it to yourself to get a valid diagnosis, as you know. What you wrote is very similar -- in pattern -- to many other first posts here. That's just to point out that you may well be on the right track.