autobiographical vs factbased(semantic?) memory

Hi all

What type of amnesia is normal for did? My therapist was wondering if maybe i've split into different parts, since i'm already diagnosed with chronic depersonalization, derealization and dissociative amnesia, i have mostly amnesia for autobiographical things, i also have amnesia for other things as well, for instance how to solve a mathproblem, i can do it...but i don't always know how i got the answer right, i can't explain it, sometimes i don't understand math at all, etc.
When my therapist heard i could memorize pages og pages of information, he thought i might be suffering from emotional amnesia instead. So my question is, does people who have did, have amnesia for both autobiographical and factbased memories....?

riddle wrote:So my question is, does people who have did, have amnesia for both autobiographical and factbased memories....?

Yes. Sometimes we learn facts or skills in one alter and they are not freely available to other alters. This suggests you may have DID rather than merely dissociative amnesia plus DP and DR.

The two requirements for diagnosis of DID are recurrent identity alteration and amnesia. Often the host alter is not aware that either of these phenomena are occurring, or is somewhat aware but does not put it all together.

For example, for decades I was aware of having occasional episodes of "lost time" but it never occurred to me that while I was "gone" someone else was there in my place. I thought I was me but somehow I forgot. And then there were all those strangers I met who told me we had met before. Weird, right? I always wondered why people said things like that. One woman I met even told me a long and totally fantastic story about meeting "me." I was sure she must be a nutcase. Well... I never put all these weird experiences together until after I read about DID. When I did finally read about DID it all came together. So many odd things all made so much sense.

yes, it's very fascinating, that people seem to know you, but you don't know who they are. i've had that happen a couple of times, but that's pretty long ago, i don't socialize alot anymore.

i might not get any help though, the therapist asked me if i had thought about the possibility of not getting any help, and just live mye life as it is...when i said i needed help(i hate asking for help though) he said we could meet a couple of times, and if it didn't help, i should just continue living my life without any help of therapists....:S i find that strange...since i have a history of alcohol abuse, cutting, starving(because of controlling voice), and lots of other things...i wasn't even aware of my memory problems before december of this year..
but it seems that all the therapists i've seen...(quite many in fact..since it's just the past year i've gotten the diagnosis of dissociation related problems) don't know what to do with me...they all just scratch their head. the therapist i have now won't go into trauma treatment, he thinks it's too much work and too traumatic for me.

Those are weird things for a therapist to say. Hm. It is possible part of his behavior toward you is due to your projective identifications into him. Do you have similar experiences with different therapists? This is in no way a slam on you. Projective identification is just one of those natural human phenomena that do not get taught outside of clinical psychology doctoral programs.

In any event, it sounds like you need a different therapist, one who is qualified to treat you. You could try asking your current therapist to find one for you, one who treats trauma and dissociation. This might be a valuable learning exercise for your current therapist.

Good luck with this.

thank you
well...i've only had one session with this therapist, i got transferred to him by some other therapists who said they didn't have the knowledge or capacity to help me...
i've never had any similar experience with psychologists before, well..not as i can remember. my new therapist is a specialized therapist, especially in traumawork...which makes it all even stranger....i am just really confused. and he didn't like the idea of transfering me to a new psych either...just that i stop going to therapy alltogether...

I would discuss this with the therapist(s) who sent you to him. This all sounds peculiar.

For what it is worth, when my previous therapist had to retire due to poor health, she put me in touch with a couple of colleagues who had told her they were experienced in treating DID. Well, a brief interview was enough for me to establish they were in way over their heads. One was so triggered by one fairly ordinary detail of my history that he got out of his chair yelling.

Therapists are people too, and some of them are not healthy.