Alters being gone when you're feeling good?

This is all very interesting. I don't know what's true or not. I only know my experience, and I think it's better that I have lots of other people talking in my head to me and between themselves than calling myself by a different name and thinking its just who I really am and none of my previous thoughts and experience ever mattered. Denial is a scary thing. If I reach a point where I'm feeling like I'm only one person though, as long as I don't forget about or deny the others then I'm probably okay. I think there's still a lot to learn.

...sorry for the verbiage, I'm stupendously bored at work...

I guess what I'm getting at is: if a person does not subejectively experience themselves as having DID, does not exhibit any symptoms of DID and is not seen by others as having DID (such as was the case for me for most of my life before my DID crisis), then how fair is it really to say that they haveDID? It is not like a virus that is empirically detectable in the body no matter if its activated or not. It is something the brain does at certain times and at others it doesn't. We might have a heightened potential for our brain to do this at certain tiems due to physiological changes to do with trauma. But that doesn't mean that "once you have it, you have it", like HIV or herpes.

I'm just concerned that the concept of denial (although it certainly applies in some cases) could prevent us from recognising progress. i.e. if we have subjective experiences of "one-ness", like the OP, we assume we must be denying a condition that has been there all along, rather than assuming that the condition itself could be transient. We might be thinking ourselves back into fragmentation because we do not consider that it may be relative.

We may too readily accept 'expert' opinions (uusally from people who don't have this experience) that tell us it is a long-term condition that we 'have' and that can only be treated a certain way. We may overlook actual evidence to the contrary because it does not fit with the medical model. I'm not saying anyone who has posted here does this, but its a possibility. And of course I have a personal axe to grind with this issue atm

Sounds exactly like how I'm feeling about my 'alcoholism' at the moment! That's supposedly a ling long condition, yet I had severe eating disorders when I was younger that just cleared up without treatment.. It is interesting this question of denial.
I wasn't aware til recently that I was experiencing dissociative symptoms (or when I did, I wasn't aware it was a problem) and nobody else thought I was either, but I think that was just because either my system has been good at hiding itself or other people just aren't aware of DID. Everyone around me just accepted when I decided I had a new name, along with a big personality change. Some people still call me by that name!
I don't know if DID is a life long condition or not. But maybe it is a bit like the alcoholism and eating disorders in that I should not forget.
I did read that childhood trauma causes the brain to develop in a different way, so that it is neurologically different from people who had no trauma. But I also read that the neuron paths can be changed by treatment and certain methods eg. meditation.

-- Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:08 pm --

I meant 'life long condition'

@ Rubyscarlet:

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has discovered that

Twenty years after onset of alcohol dependence, about three-fourths of individuals are in full recovery; more than half of those who have fully recovered drink at low-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence.

About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab) programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment.7

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Contro ... sease.html

You're pointing out an important fact: "denial" isn't actually a psychiatric category. It has trickled into therapeutic jargon through the recovery movement (i.e. Alcoholics Anonymous etc) who I have an even bigger axe to grind with. As for psychiatry, you can either be delusional or not, so maximum you could have a delusional belief that you don't have DID when you do. The definition of 'delusion' then would be that your perception is at odds with epirical evidence (or at least other people's perception). But if no one sees something, including yourself, how can it be delusional to deny it?

Thanks for this info tribeofone, I'm also starting to disbelieve a lot of what the recovery movement says. This is interesting that that the statistics show dependence is not a life long condition. It was obviously necessary for me to stop drinking and taking drugs in order to find out the real problem, which is trauma, but I don't believe alcohol dependency is a problem I have to deal with the rest of my life. It was an effect of the trauma, the same as the PTSD and the DID, but maybe none of them are problems which last forever.

*trigger*

A topic close to yours was brought up a while back tribeofone. Interesting thought but doesn't fit with current theory. Do you reconcile this with current theory or do you not believe in it? I'm sincerely interested and curious because you have a way of thinking I really enjoy hearing about

@tribeofone: I am wondering how you feel this compares to specific/simple phobias. As long as you don't run into a trigger for the phobia, you aren't anxious. Does that mean you don't have the phobia at that point? Also, a lot of people never seek treatment for specific/simple phobias and never get diagnosed because it isn't a problem really for them. As far as I know, the key for diagnosis of mental disorders is having impairment and/or distress because of the symptoms, including DID.

That makes a lot of sense. I overcame some of my phobias through exposure eg. Trains and underground. I actually love traveling by train now, so this phobia no longer exists. But others, such as spiders and making phonecalls seem to get worse with more exposure, so those are real problems. Then it doesn't really matter whether other people see the dissociative symptoms or not, for me they are causing a lot of distress and interfere with my ability to function in a way that would make my life feel at least ok. So that would make it a problem that needs treatment. I think maybe dissociation is something that worked well to help me function in the past and has become a noticeable problem now because I'm finally living in a safe environment.