When does DID become DDNOS?

The title says it all.
Is it still DID when there is no more amnesia?
What if there is only occasional amnesia when one particular part wants to be on her own?

K

Good question! ...I don't know the answer but I'd be interested to know!

I had a stroke and initially just thought I was a single person with 'imaginary friends' or something. I was embarrassed to tell anyone in hospital incase they kept me in..once I got home I started to find stuff and ended up here and found I'd been here before but there had been more of us more active on here who I've been unable to communicate with or see the inner world since the stroke.

None of them have been triggered out though some I have been able to communicate with who had been near the front and one I can function co-consciously with but they've never fully fronted and taken over the body, so we're now functioning more like OSDD (I think).

Yuna

YunaTheSummoner wrote:Good question! ...I don't know the answer but I'd be interested to know!

I had a stroke and initially just thought I was a single person with 'imaginary friends' or something. I was embarrassed to tell anyone in hospital incase they kept me in..once I got home I started to find stuff and ended up here and found I'd been here before but there had been more of us more active on here who I've been unable to communicate with or see the inner world since the stroke.

None of them have been triggered out though some I have been able to communicate with who had been near the front and one I can function co-consciously with but they've never fully fronted and taken over the body, so we're now functioning more like OSDD (I think).

Yuna

I'm very sorry for your stroke, so please do not take it the wrong way when I say that this is interesting. That the stroke changed the fronting/inner communication. It's not surprising, but still interesting.

Do you think they could be fronting and you simply are not able to co-con with them when they front?

The new term for DDNOS is OSDD or other specified dissociative disorder which has its own subtypes. To answer your question though, I would say that it would be when there is no amnesia between alters. OSDD has a subtype that specifies there are alters who can take control but have no amnesia between switches.

What confuses me is that in my case, I don't have blackouts/time loss with alters, but my sense of time and memory recall during and after gets very confusing. I will be aware in the moment, but it's over time that I lose details of things, so a few days or a week later, I will know that the dissociation was severe and alters were around, but I won't really remember a lot of what happened during it. It just disappears. Other times, I have a more clear recollection and am co conscious with them.

I'm not sure how much it matters though what you call it because the treatment is still the same.

BritPlus6 wrote:
I'm very sorry for your stroke, so please do not take it the wrong way when I say that this is interesting. That the stroke changed the fronting/inner communication. It's not surprising, but still interesting.

Do you think they could be fronting and you simply are not able to co-con with them when they front?

I don't think so ..the ones that were present from after the stroke stayed in the background like invisible friends advising me there was originally two (i could communicate with) we didn't know each others names but there was a what I can only call a 'strange familiarity' about them.

Then another arrived (after I'd got home) she appears to be my twin she initially couldn't reach me but seems to have been 'on this side' (nearer to front) of the broken connection. She had said she was on her way here realising I was out front and the body was having a medical emergency when she was hit with a wave of sudden (but temporary) confusion about who she was and where she was trying to get to...I'm guessing thats when the blood clot happened and temporarily cut off circulation..we were fortunate enough to get a clot dissolving treatment fairly quickly...still it has left a little damage,though by no means as serious as some people are left with.

There seemed to be two hidden at the front who I did find out about much later (more recently) but they seem to have been able to get back inside ....(some of our system are spirit-like non-human entities called 'Changelings' who can take on any form but can't take full control of the body unless 'hosted' by a human alter).

The ones I have been unable to find or communicate with have been the past human hosts. I couldn't see or imagine who they were or what they looked like or remember them until reading past journal entries. Neither can I imagine where they are inside or what the 'inner world' looks like where they are.

I knew my legal name but did not initially know what name I had previously used on here or who the other members of my system were. I was not the one who created the last account though or made up the names for the system members who had previously wanted to come on here.


I guess I shouldn't be surprised, there is a guy in the stroke group I'm in who has lost over 30 years of his life, he's not DID and wasn't before his stroke but doesn't remember getting married or having his kids and is having to get to know them all over again! Fortunately I still remembered my sibling, and that our parents died many years ago, but there are other chunks of memory missing.

I do know that I've been constantly up front and in control of the body since the stroke though and that its currently just myself and Juno (my twin) co-conscious and hosting.

Yuna

Purplesky wrote:. OSDD has a subtype that specifies there are alters who can take control but have no amnesia between switches.

Juno and I share memories, we can blend to function as one when having to deal with RL others. Now the brain's multi-tasking ability is improving we can do stuff like one watching tv while other is drawing or doing puzzles or typing. or control two seperate joycons (switch games controllers) to move 2 different characters in a game.. we used to be much better at this and had to re-learn this trick after the stroke.


As far as I know no other previous hosts have been able to do this and they all functioned as 'singletons', so if any others did slip out the host was previously unaware.

Though we were totally unaware of the term 'DID or Dissociation' and what it meant until the last 5 years or so (I think..I had to re-learn about it after the stroke but apparently some hosts/alters did know before!).

Juno and I seem to be an OSDD pair within a DID system??? ..or maybe we will always only be able to communicate with the ones that were up front after the stroke now so become a little sub system?..saying that..some have gone back in and I can't see where they are and have received no communication from them since they left...when I do it has been via dreams at night when asleep.

According to how I understand the criteria, as long as you have some form of amnesia it counts as DID. Blackouts are rare and you do not need them to check the DID criteria.

The DSM-V-TR explains things better and gives more examples of what DID amnesia is.

I quote:

DSM-5-TR pages 330 and 331 wrote:Dissociative amnesia is characterized by an inability to recall autobiographical information that is inconsistent with normal forgetting. The amnesia may be localized (i.e., an event or period of time), selective (i.e., a specific aspect of an event), or generalized (i.e., identity and life history). In dissociative amnesia, memory deficits are primarily retrograde and often associated with traumatic experiences (e.g., lack of recall of third grade when the individual was kidnapped and held hostage). Although some individuals with amnesia promptly notice that they have gaps or a sense of fragmentation in their remote memory, most individuals with dissociative disorders are initially unaware of their amnesia or minimize or rationalize the deficits. For them, awareness of amnesia occurs when they realize that they do not recall their personal identity or when circumstances make these individuals aware that important autobiographical information is missing (e.g., when they discover evidence or are told of past events that they cannot recall). Generalized dissociative amnesia with loss of a major part or all of the individual’s life history and/or identity is rare.

It does not mean if only some alters / dissociative parts have amnesia or of all of them have amnesia. It does not matter if the memories "glitch" or go "on / off / on / off" like Christmans lights. Amnesia is amnesia. Dissociative amnesia is more mundane than the stereotyped blackouts.

Purplesky wrote:The new term for DDNOS is OSDD or other specified dissociative disorder which has its own subtypes. To answer your question though, I would say that it would be when there is no amnesia between alters. OSDD has a subtype that specifies there are alters who can take control but have no amnesia between switches.

What confuses me is that in my case, I don't have blackouts/time loss with alters, but my sense of time and memory recall during and after gets very confusing. I will be aware in the moment, but it's over time that I lose details of things, so a few days or a week later, I will know that the dissociation was severe and alters were around, but I won't really remember a lot of what happened during it. It just disappears. Other times, I have a more clear recollection and am co conscious with them.

I'm not sure how much it matters though what you call it because the treatment is still the same.

Thank you for the definition.

And yes, it gets like that for me sometimes too.

k

ArbreMonde wrote:According to how I understand the criteria, as long as you have some form of amnesia it counts as DID. Blackouts are rare and you do not need them to check the DID criteria.

The DSM-V-TR explains things better and gives more examples of what DID amnesia is.

I quote:

DSM-5-TR pages 330 and 331 wrote:Dissociative amnesia is characterized by an inability to recall autobiographical information that is inconsistent with normal forgetting. The amnesia may be localized (i.e., an event or period of time), selective (i.e., a specific aspect of an event), or generalized (i.e., identity and life history). In dissociative amnesia, memory deficits are primarily retrograde and often associated with traumatic experiences (e.g., lack of recall of third grade when the individual was kidnapped and held hostage). Although some individuals with amnesia promptly notice that they have gaps or a sense of fragmentation in their remote memory, most individuals with dissociative disorders are initially unaware of their amnesia or minimize or rationalize the deficits. For them, awareness of amnesia occurs when they realize that they do not recall their personal identity or when circumstances make these individuals aware that important autobiographical information is missing (e.g., when they discover evidence or are told of past events that they cannot recall). Generalized dissociative amnesia with loss of a major part or all of the individual’s life history and/or identity is rare.

It does not mean if only some alters / dissociative parts have amnesia or of all of them have amnesia. It does not matter if the memories "glitch" or go "on / off / on / off" like Christmans lights. Amnesia is amnesia. Dissociative amnesia is more mundane than the stereotyped blackouts.

I always thought dissociative amnesia was a standalone dissociative disorder and that the time loss/amnesia meaning in DID was only when alters switched so wasn't the same thing? Because in my case, like I stated above, I am aware during dissociation and when alters are around, but it can vary with my awareness (from say fully aware to 1 to 2% aware without a full black out situation), and I can lose details after it lessens. I have some memory loss/amnesia related to some traumas though which is also part of just the normal dissociation that happens during trauma regardless if someone has DID or not.

In the new DSM, dissociative amnesia is a dissociative symptom, just like depersonnalization / derealization. It might be a standalone, but it is one of the criteria for DID now.

I guess it is easier to list DID criteria as "dissociative amnesia, DP/DR, two or more separate identity states" and a few other things, rather than re-explaining what dissociative amnesia and DP/DR are.

Dissociative amnesia is what you describe as having memory issues around traumatic events. Blackouts between alters are very rare and are NOT necessary to qualify for a DID diagnosis.

I guess that a person with "just" PTSD can have dissociative amnesia around the even though I havent checked the new criteria for PTSD (and given it's late in the evening I'm kinda too lazy to check). Amnesia happens more often in DID. As an example I have a lot more micro-amnesia during the day, a lot more memory issues regarding my past, than most people have. It is not a complete black hole, more like some "lagging" or "glitching", but it is kinda annoying. Example: standing up with an empty cup to get more tea, forgetting why I am standing up with my empty cup, and needing 5-10 seconds to remember what I was doing. Or in some cases, looking around, staring at the empty cup, and deducing that I was about to get a tea refill. It's not a blackout, more of a "zoning out and back in". But it happens often enough so that it checks in for DID. (Less and less as I progress in therapy, though. I'm looking more and more like OSDD and less and less like DID.)