Can dissociative identity disorder be caused without trauma?

Or is every case caused by severe trauma before the age of three but the mind can not recall it. And can someone really have a traumatic experience especially if they were younger and completely block it out and forget it ever happened.Could someone have DID and not recall being abused but rather having a happy childhood.

Also, do you guys find this kind of thing happening to you. A couple of days ago I was asked by my father to make him a cup of tea and I immediately went in the kitchen and put the tea on the stove, however I completely forgot about it since and to the extent that the kettle started burning. Now I was in another room after approximately 30 minutes I smelt something burning and thought it was our neighbors so I went to my mom and asked her if she put something on the stove she said no and I figured it had to be our neighbors but then 6 minutes later I walk into the kitchen and realise that it was me who put it there but I had no memory of putting it there and yes I received a good piece of yelling from my parents. Does this happen to you often and if so, what is this called. Can someone please explain to me what happened there.

**Might Trigger**


Well the whole point of DID is to survive. In order to survive living in the severely overwhelming situation, it is necessary to forget about any or most of the overwhelm that you were put through, so it's kind of normal for people with DID to initially have no recollection of whatever made them DID. Also what happens many times is that people know (part of) what happened to them, but they are so used to it that they consider it normal instead of considering it abusive.

And yes it is also possible to have DID without being severely abused. It's about resilience. Young children all have the ability to dissociate, it's one of the most basic and universal coping mechanisms. Some people are born with more inborn ability to dissociate than other people, and the younger you are, the fewer other coping mechanisms you have, so it becomes more likely that you will rely more on dissociation. Necessary for DID is a sort of neglect so that 'having parts of your identity not associated to each other' can go unnoticed by those people who are supposed to help you associate them. Neglect, intentional or not, is also necessary because; usually good parents can teach you better ways to cope, but some people are not a 'good enough parent', and they do not teach their kids other ways to cope with life, they possibly have been going through life dissociated to some extend as well.
And of course the age; to develop DID, you should be young enough to not yet have developed an identity before needing to rely on dissociation heavily and/or repeatedly, so that the dissociation becomes intertwined with your identity.
So you might also get DID from having to go through one or more scary surgeries at young age and your parents not being supportive, not recognizing that you need comfort.
This is barely a nutshell, many books have been written about the recipe for DID and dissociation.
But I hope I have made some of it a bit more clear.

Yes this exact situation you describe has happened to me, with the sandwich toaster, with the fryer, stove,. It happened more often than just once. I don't know what it's called, though it's obvious that there is some memory loss going on. I make it a point not to multitask (especially with possible dangerous activities) because of the risk of forgetting what I was doing.
Excuse any weird writing, not feeling okay today.

********trigger warning**********

The answer to your question is no. Also, the age can be greater than 3. I have DID and I do forget I'm cooking. In fact, I proved to msyelf just recently that it IS possible to burn soup! There are other medical conditions and psychological factors that may contribute to forgetfulness, but it certainly does happen within the context of DID.

One does not experience disordered amounts of dissociation without trauma and you don't have trauma without dissociation. I say disordered amounts of dissociation to make a distinction. Daydreaming and spacing out while driving doesn't count; These are common examples used to help explain DID to non-disordered persons.

It must be recognized that trauma is subjective. What is traumatic to one person may not be considered traumatic to the next. Why? It is now known that a Disordered Attachment with one's primary caregiver leaves an individual predisposed to develop DID. Trauma resulting in DID must be sufficiently traumatic to the particular individual and there has to be an inability to process it emotionally. Consider that due to the disordered attachment with the individual's primary caregiver, there is little support and therefore less likelihood the traumatic event will be psychologically assimilated and therefore, subsequently dissociated.

Must the trauma be severely traumatic to develop DID? There are statistical parameters surrounding what is generally considered severe enough to develop DID, such as persistent child sexual abuse. Well, It's usually pretty bad.

It is absolutely normal to "forget" trauma. I have personally witnessed adults experience trauma (sports accidents, seizure during a large gathering of colleagues, etc.) followed by amnesia for the experience. None of these adults made a conscious choice to forget what happened, and when they became aware of their amnesia they were very disturbed by it.

Should have stated *Disorganized Attachment" not Disordered Attachment

To answer your question, I don't believe that DID can occur without trauma of some kind whether it be physical, sexual, violence or extreme neglect. And it has to have been on -going and not just a one time event to cause the mind to fracture so to speak. You see, our brains are developing at those young ages of (birth-5 yrs. old) and we do not yet have the ability to reason. Inherently some of us can be predisposed to dissociating more easily than others base on heredity of mental illness. A great resource you might consider looking into is the ISSTD which stands for the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation at: www.isstd.org and books by Dr. Colin Ross as well as my personal favorite: The Dissociative Identity Disorder Source-book by: Deborah Bray Haddock
It does not surprise me that you cannot yet recall your trauma. In describing "dissociation as an unconscious defense mechanism in which a group of mental activities split off from the main stream of consciousness and function as a separate unit. The purpose of dissociation is to take memory or emotion that is directly associated with a trauma and to encapsulate, or separate, it from the conscious self". - DID Sourse-book
I have only come to remember the specifics of my trauma in the last couple of years but I have been diagnosed with DID since Spring of 2005.
Please keep us updated on your story and questions. I am curious.

Is it possible to recall and remember trauma that happened before the age of three?

Thanks for the replies, but even if there was trauma that happened before the age of three , in that age you'd be too young to have developed a sense of self so how could you learn to dissociate at such a young age.

Also, do hosts periodically change as one gets older or do they remain regardless of time. And if they do, doesn't that affect relationships with people especially if the new host doesn't like the current spouse.

Sweet_berries wrote:even if there was trauma that happened before the age of three , in that age you'd be too young to have developed a sense of self so how could you learn to dissociate at such a young age.

Dissocation is an innate response that everyone has. In that sense it is not learned. What happens in a traumatized child is: the child becomes accustomed to use dissociation rather than cope in other ways and subsequently fails to learn other ways of coping. Also, there is the idea that an integrated singular self comes relatively late in development, that everyone starts life with fragmented cognitive states. So DID reflects a failure to complete normal development on the usual timeline. This is why treatment is so effective; it helps us catch up.

Sweet_berries wrote:Also, do hosts periodically change as one gets older or do they remain regardless of time. And if they do, doesn't that affect relationships with people especially if the new host doesn't like the current spouse.

It varies from system to system. In my system I have been the host throughout (as far as I know). But in other systems I know there have been hard switches to new hosts with complete amnesia that last for years. Yes, this is a relationship nightmare. Even when a host is not replaced there can be dramatic changes in the system and this definitely changes the relationship. (For the most part my husband has enjoyed the experience.)

Sweet_berries wrote:Thanks for the replies, but even if there was trauma that happened before the age of three , in that age you'd be too young to have developed a sense of self so how could you learn to dissociate at such a young age.

Also, do hosts periodically change as one gets older or do they remain regardless of time. And if they do, doesn't that affect relationships with people especially if the new host doesn't like the current spouse.

Think of dissociation as an altered state of consciousness, kind of like sleep if we wanted to compare it. Even babies can dissociate. The mind shuts down from being overwhelmed, and the way information is stored changes since the brain now processes information very differently. How DID comes to form is much debated, their are a lot of different theories. I dont exactly with the theory we are all born with different states of cognition and that DID is a failure for these to integrate since if you look at a normal child as appose to one in a non supportive environment the difference is huge. And even very young children dont appear to be a salad of various states of consciousness. However keep in mind thats just my opinion on one theory. I could be wrong.


Hosts can do anything in terms of staying or not. In DID every system is different, and everyone functions differently.

Hope this helps a bit.