How would you describe your daily level of dissociation?

1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?

2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?

3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?

4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?

5. How does DID affect performance at work?

6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?

7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?

Very curious about everyones answers! Thanks!

1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?

On a daily basis I do not dissociate. I did dissociate severely and on a daily basis during my DID crisis, which lasted a few years but my crisis has long since ended.

2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?

No. I do not space out. People tell me I am alert when others aren't, I notice things others don't, etc. Even when severely dissociated I generally did not space out.

3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?

Rarely. I can go years between incidents of lost time.

4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?

Yes.

5. How does DID affect performance at work?

It tends to enhance my performance. I get a lot of comments about my being exceptionally calm and high functioning in high stress situations. One reason I am calm is that I know I am not alone and the others are watching my back.

6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?

No. Even when I described classic symptoms of DID no one ever said anything like that.

7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?

Yes. I have been diagnosed by multiple professionals.

1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?
Several of us front in different times of the day. Pi handles work and cooking. Andy socialises for his own around noon. We have school in the afternoon and I (Mia) usually front on my own while there or people will cocon. After we get home it depends who fronts but I usually just dissociate into youtube videos and fall asleep because our days are so tiring lol

2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?
Not really bc when I'm dissociated someone else is usually fronting. Sometimes when I'm stressed I dissociate more and people have told me in the past that they've realised that.

3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?
Because I'm stuck in front like a mask, while an event happens I will be aware of it but after I won't remember what happened because my own memory holding space isn't very big. I will only remember momentary stuff visually. Otherwise I need to be shown or told what happened so that I can tell other people these are what I've done.

4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?
Yeah! We're quite good at communicating and cooperating with each other.

5. How does DID affect performance at work?
If it wasn't for Pi I wouldn't be able to do the work LOL Pi is the dentist of the system

6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?
No. People have pointed out sometimes that I sound weird/laugh weird/this is not how I usually talk etc. which is directly because someone else have been fronting

7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?
Yes my psychiatrist has diagnosed me

walden wrote:1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?

it affects my ability to connect with things. myself, the world around me, other people, emotions, my own memories. it makes it hard to function and often leaves me feeling depressed.

walden wrote:2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?

yes, very often. before i knew what dissociation was, people around me would say i "blanked out" a lot when i was younger. people still say it now, though if i'm able to i'll explain what's actually going on.

walden wrote:3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?

in general, my memory recall is poor due to constant dissociation. i also don't remember a significant amount of my childhood (everything before 17-19 years old is very patchy), and i don't remember anything after certain traumatic moments (the memory suddenly cuts off at a certain point). in addition, when alters front and i am not aware of it (so when i'm not co-conscious), i lose time. this can be anything from a few minutes to several hours. if i am aware / co-conscious, i can lose little patches of time when i stop paying attention, but it's usually only for a few minutes at a time.

walden wrote:4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?

yes, i am. i have records of me questioning it many years ago, but i forgot about it. my current awareness of the others goes back to 2017.

walden wrote:5. How does DID affect performance at work?

for various reasons, i am unable to work. this is due to both physical and mental health issues. if myself and the rest of the system worked well together, and the other physical & mental health symptoms were more manageable, i think we would handle working part-time at the very least.

walden wrote:6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?

that's a little difficult to answer. my mum used to say i became a "different person" during arguments, that my opinions and behaviour would suddenly change before shifting back. my best friend of a decade or so reacted with "that makes total sense" when i admitted to her that i dealt with DID. my partner had suspicions about it for a while. my current therapist was the one to broach the topic with me.

walden wrote:7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?

again, that's a little difficult to answer. my therapist has formally acknowledged my symptoms, based off her personal experience and the context of nearly 2 years of sessions with me. a psychiatrist saw us recently who took notes about our symptoms, which we are hoping leads towards a formal diagnosis at some point.

1) On a scale of 1-10? I feel like I'm always at a 3-4. There's always a low level of dissociation going on for me. I can remember a few times where I was extremely grounded, but they're far and few between. My natural state of being seems to be "two-inch thick glass window between myself and the world."

2) I know I space out a lot, but I don't think anybody's ever told me I do or described me as spacey. Even when we're dissociating violently, we're very... ugh, I don't like functioning labels much, but "high-functioning", in the sense that we're responsive and talking and active and engaging with people. So I think that tends to ward off the "spacey" adjective.

3) I have a lot of amnesia for past events, namely my childhood. I still have spotty periods, but certain eras of my life (i.e., high school) are becoming clearer as we discuss memories/the experiences we had back then. It also really depends on which part's out. Some alters I have excellent memory recall with (my father, for one), but there's quite a few parts I have little to none with.

4) Yep, I'm aware of other alters. 25 in total, but I know there's more.

5) Gaps in knowledge were really apparent at work. I went from knowing how to, say, make an espresso or make whipped cream (restaurant work, lol) to not even knowing the ingredients I needed pretty frequently. My performance would also go up and down, depending on who was out. I feel like it was pretty obvious that I was a dissociative mess, but I feel like it manifested as me being "flighty" or "ditzy".

6) Nope, never. People don't think it for us. We gained a reputation for being weird and kind of unstable pretty early on in life (I just talked about this in another thread, lol), and I think an alter (or a group of alters) leaned into that. It worked well as a shield for two-and-a-half decades; nobody thought anything was wrong, we were just weird and random.

7) We've been professionally diagnosed. It isn't on paper, though, because our T was worried about it potentially affecting our future if she did. She acknowledged our symptoms and met multiple alters, multiple times, and agreed with our personal assessment of DID.

walden wrote:1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?
2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?
3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?
4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?
5. How does DID affect performance at work?
6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?
7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?

1. It has the effect of making it hard to keep up with what I've done and not done, and keeping track of time in general. We use a bullet journal to keep up with things that need to be done and planned out to keep on track and make sure things get done.

2. Do space out? Yes, at times... sometimes it's just that. Other times it's being "almost away", sometimes it's when others are out and I am unaware of it until I'm back and realized time passed.

3. Daily for me. Several times in a day. I have periods of 5-15 mins short and up to an hour or two (seldom longer) at a stretch where I look over and suddenly realize I've been "out" for some time- someone else was out and I'm not connected enough to be conscious of them being active (yet).

4. I am NOW aware of them, as far as I know I am aware of them all. A few have little contact with me, some have NEVER had any contact with me... I have been aware of them for about a year.

5. I am unable to work due to a blackout disorder that was originally thought to be seizures, then thought to be a neuro-cardio disorder, eventually diagnosed as narcolepsy, but even that has been all but ruled out now... no idea what it is, but it causes dizziness and random blackouts (loss of consciousness, not loss of awareness and others taking over- Pixie says it's physical and even causes THEM a "hiccup" inside when we're unconscious from them).

6. We generally do NOT tell people. Only a handful locally and select few outside my local circle that were involved in it being discovered and I becoming aware of it know. There's a lot of fear and concern what others would think, say, and/or do that we just don't want to deal with.

7. Yes. Originally as suspected OSDD, then formally OSDD... a few months later with more therapy and observations by the T and the overseeing Psychiatrist, I was formally diagnosed with DID last August.

I am sorry your blackouts are continuing, but very glad you are no longer driving, so not risking having one while driving. Whew! I am not surprised the narcolepsy diagnosis is being ruled out. To me what you describe sounds like dissociative seizures. Some people go catatonic and "waxy", others fall over, etc.

Una+ wrote:I am sorry your blackouts are continuing, but very glad you are no longer driving, so not risking having one while driving. Whew! I am not surprised the narcolepsy diagnosis is being ruled out. To me what you describe sounds like dissociative seizures. Some people go catatonic and "waxy", others fall over, etc.

I have never heard of a dissociative seizure before... I will look into that. Generally I fall out totally unconscious and am like a sleeping person you can't wake up. Sometimes I have muscle twitching and spasm (sometimes a LOT of them), which is why they thought epilepsy to begin with when it all first began back in early 2002 (I have not driven since then).

1. So how does dissociation affect your life on a daily basis?

I think it's major thing. I started to realize how many of my behaviors are symptoms of trauma, and not my true personality maybe 2 years ago, and I think only after total recovery you can tell what all was trauma based. It has affected all areas of life, work, all relationships, the way I spend my days. With different background I would probably have totally different lifestyle than I do now. Biggest factor is how exhausting I find it to be around people, and that affects everything else. Also lack of mental energy in general affects big time.

2. Are you spacey/Do people tell you that you space out a lot?

Depends on how you define spacey. No one tells me about it, because I stay present and aware around people now that I can control how much I spend time with them. At home I am consumed by my own thoughts a lot.

3. How often do you have amnesia, be it brief or extended amounts of time?

Extended amounts of time, never. Short periods of time, I have no way to know.

4. Are you aware of other parts/alters?

Yes.

5. How does DID affect performance at work?

Not too much to actual performance, but I can't work full hours, or all daily functions like self care will collapse.

6. Have people ever told you they think you have DID/MPD?

No. It's not commonly known thing where I live in, so it is very unlikely anyone could think that. We also stay consistent from outside, because dealing with outside people is taken care of by one part only. If others do help, it's passive influence, they don't ever take over when people are around. Not even by pretending to be me. We are working on getting all our strength to use when around people and being/staying co-con, so I hope parts would be there more, not less.

7. Have you been diagnosed by a professional?

Yes.