If you don't know me yet - I go by Ethan, I use he/him and they/them pronouns. I am 21-years-old, I like to draw, I love Pokemon and I suspect I have DID. I've been questioning for a few years now, I can't remember what year at the moment, but I've been doing a lot of research and self-searching over the years and I'm finally at a point where I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable accepting this label.
Today I found a research study that really validated me and really made me feel more confident that I have DID.
(I have removed the cited works in parenthesis after each thing cited just to make it a bit shorter to read, but the source is linked below. The underlined parts are parts that feel the most validating to me because they directly explain the way I've been remembering my previously repressed memories).
"For more than a century clinical observations have been reported that, contrary to memories of non traumatic events, the initial recall of traumatic events occurs in a fragmentary, sensorimotor, and affective way, often without presence of a clear narrative. These observations have been confirmed by several systematic exploratory studies. Using the Traumatic Memory Inventory first studied the quality of the memories of traumatic events compared with emotionally significant but non-traumatic events in 46 participants with PTSD. In contrast with memories of non-traumatic events, memories of trauma initially were fragmented. They occurred as waves of intense feelings, and as visual images, olfactory, auditory perceptions, and bodily sensations. With passage of time participants gradually constructed a narrative of what had happened to them that could properly be called an autobiographical memory. Similar findings have been found in other populations such as adult survivors of physical and/or sexual assault, and people with “awareness” during anesthesia."
"Among the 28 participants who had not recalled the target traumatic event for some time, none recalled this event initially as a story. Rather, all of them re-experienced it along one or more sensory dimensions, with or without associated emotions: in the form of visual images, affective reliving, auditory reliving, kinesthetic reliving, somatic sensations or physiological reactions, as a smell, and as a taste. Flashback-like images were usually reported “images,” without any related narrative. Frequently reported combinations were visual and/or auditory or affective reliving, and auditory/affective reliving. In summary, all participants reported that initial recall occurred as a sensorimotor experience."
"This study with DID participants, in conjunction with a pilot study, confirmed the previously reported phenomenon of initial fragmentary sensorimotor and affective recall of traumatic events found that, over time and with increasing awareness of various sensory dimensions of the memory, participants reported beginning to be able to construct a narrative that can properly be called a “memory.” In this study, DID participants also reported gradually evolving narratives, but this development did not necessarily mean that participants felt that the abuse was something that had happened to them personally at some particular point in their pasts. Van der Kolk and Fisler’s (1995) PTSD participants developed a complete narrative memory of trauma far more frequently than did our participants (89.1% vs. 64 JOURNAL OF TRAUMA & DISSOCIATION 45.6%). This suggests that for DID participants find it difficult to construct an autobiographical/narrative memory of a traumatic childhood event and integrating this memory. This study is the first to report fragmented initial recall of emotionally significant but non-traumatic events among DID patients. PTSD patients have not previously been reported to recall emotional yet ordinary events at a sensorimotor level, even when questioned in detail about their personal experience of recall. This would suggest that there are fundamental problems with the integration of sensory input into one’s autobiography in DID, as is manifested in its core symptom, i.e., “the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states”"
"This study documents that the memories of traumatic experiences in patients with DID return initially as sensorimotor fragments, encompass more sensory dimensions over time, and gradually acquire a narrative component, which does not necessarily become “personalized.” Compared with PTSD patients, the development of a narrative memory seems to proceed more slowly in DID participants. Contrary to PTSD patients, DID patients may also have amnesia for emotionally significant but non-traumatic events. Memories for these events also tend to be retrieved in fragments in most cases, but the sensorimotor component (re-experiences, dreams/nightmares, and intrusive thoughts) is less pronounced than in traumatic memories."
SOURCE: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7610816_Memory_Fragmentation_in_Dissociative_Identity_Disorder
As I've spoken about in one of my other posts, sometime last year I had remembered that my father had sexually abused me. The memories have been coming back as small, vague fragments and I've dealt with a lot of denial, not just that the memories are true, but denial over DID as well. Which, of course, is all a part of the disorder. It's really difficult, but this study helped me a lot. It makes this all feel a bit more real, even if it's scary. Reading this makes me feel more... Normal? "There's other people like me who are remembering their trauma memories in fragments and such and I'm not just someone who has completely lost their sanity and am making this stuff up?"
Anyways this post got long, but I really wanted to share this! Welcome to my journal!
At least that is how I feel.
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