Cookie-cutter DID? I must not have DID because...

There is so much misunderstanding about what DID needs to look like, what needs to be present or absent for someone to have DID, I think a thread might be useful where some of us list reasons we have thought we didn't have DID. Or maybe reasons you see in others' posts that assume a particular piece of evidence, like a certain type of alter or behavior, is needed to have DID. Or reasons that keep coming up for you, even though you generally know you have DID.

For me:
I must not have DID because...I don't lose time.

In fact, we don't think we have in adulthood, just snippets and even that has been rare. I lost all sorts of time in childhood but had no memory until recent years that that happened. Aaagh, stupid past versions of the DSM! If only they had mentioned that losing time was not required in the present to have DID, I would have pursued whether I was multiple or not decades ago. Or if they had mentioned that you can have amnesia about your amnesia.

Oh yes! For over a decade I overlooked a dissociative disorder as a diagnosis because I "don't have amnesia." (facepalm) I'm just constantly misplacing things and losing bits of conversations. I can easily zone out so I don't even hear people talking to me. I wish I had known the significance of such "absent-mindedness" sooner.

I think it is OSDD because my system seems less dissociated than DID. We don't get offended calling ourselves "fragments," "programs," etc. The switching seems to work a little differently. With OSDD it's kind of like you snap a different tool onto the handle. With DID you get a different tool altogether.

reason followed by (current insight)

1) i don't lose time (though I understand the concept of a ledger now where things are recorded for others to know and that the feeling of being dropped into a situation, is not a normal experience for singletons)

2) i have been quite "successful" in my career and personal life (a "major mental health illness" would require disruption of normal day to day living therefore I must not have this LOL x100 if they only knew how to measure disruption compartmentalization can lead to success for some things)

3) there are times when I feel like a complete singleton (this is accompanied with complete outward looking perspective (No introspection) and with the immediate need and desire for the outside world to see us as "normal" or as a single person - which is a foundation of covert DID; for us this is necessary to maintain #2)

I could write a list of a thousand things!

1.) Past age 20, I never had florid "living different lives at the same time" (i.e., this one is a house painter who calls himself Sid, that one is a mathematician named Harry) thing happening in my life. Even when that was happening, it wasn't dramatic like in the movies.

2.) I was a very "self-aware" kind of person with a lot of psychological insight. Surely I would have noticed something as big as DID. We had had a lot of therapy on and off and six months prior to diagnosis, a therapist we'd seen regularly for almost three years estimated we would be totally healed within six months. A main reason we discovered our issue was that we decided to explore our episodes of "gender dysphoria" in depth.

3.) As others have said, amnesia was not usually for big events, but for skills, and feelings. Usually more absent-mindedness than anything overt. Overt amnesia explained away by "tiredness." Wasn't really aware of the extent of amnesia until post-diagnosis.

4.) When parts of me sought out therapy for DID as a young person, our self-assessment was refuted. Parts of us were very aware of our condition. Others were totally unaware.

5.) We are very covert--the main goal is not to be discovered. Our occasional periods of florid switching were written off by others as "that's just how Nondescript is..."

6.) I didn't think anything very traumatic other than a "rough childhood" had ever happened to me. (Yikes!) My therapist at the time said, "I don't think you have PTSD symptoms." I was completely unaware.

7.) We are getting better. That must mean that nothing really bad was wrong, it was all just an act, we're not "good" enough to get better.

To to be continued...

because we didnt switch while in the presence of other people.
didnt the diagnosis criteria back then say that someone has to observe different alters...

i later realized that we did switch, just not to child alters. i always thought that DID meant that child alters were all over the place messing up life, being embaressing.

a very bad T once told me that i cant have DID beacuse i remember great chunks of my life, enough to tell a story where nothing seems to be missing. he somehow thought that with memory gaps of 2.5 months but some happy memories of childhood you cant have DID.
turned out that others could add to that memory...

everything else that i have told myself qualifies as denial, not doubt.

I don't completely lose time either unless there is a big meltdown within the system, it's more like watching "myself" from a distance and having a lot of "inside chatter" going on when different things are happening. I only remember my childhood in little snips, but I remember most of my adult life even though I remember some parts more clearly than others depending on who is fronting. I have a career, too, but it is the first time in my life I have had a full time job for more than a year - and it is about to change because the stress is way too much - I've been hospitalized three times in the past two years because of job stress.

OSDD 1b system right here. Let's cover some things that the DSM doesn't talk about.

We have no noticable amnesia of outside events, either, but we still have amnesia of things we did while "inside". I guess it's a defence mechanism to keep the bad memories from surfacing when our secret keepers come out and control the body. I suppose this caused covert switching, before we started to identify ourselves as individuals anyway.

My system also contains non-integratable individuals such as "fictives" and "soulbonds". Basically, they are people who were based on fictional characters of either my own creation or someone else's. The fictives and soulbonds seem to function very similarly to our alters, being able to "come out" and perform daily tasks. (Lol, they're better at some things than the alters are.) They have close relationships with the alters and work with them constantly to resolve our various issues.

(Of course, I don't think my living characters are what makes us OSDD 1b, but our system would not be the same without them. I don't know if the psychological world accepts the possibility or existence of such a mixed group as ours, but I can't deny what's happening here.)

Lastly, I find it frustrating that there are more resources out there for those with DID than OSDD, which I've heard is a more common diagnosis than DID. I know DID is more troublesome with the blackouts and lost time, but, beyond that, how similar are the two diagnoses? Can someone explain this to us?

1) i was always aware of voices/others from a young age. i don't know if they ever came out and interacted with others fully on their own. if they did, it might have been more a co-conscious situation as it is currently with me more in the back. i thought knowing about them meant that i was faking it, but then i also have thought i wasn't faking it because they were/are so real.

2) there has not been frequent black out types of time loss except during some traumas. time loss in general is different to me because that did/does exist in more subtle ways which affects my memory/recall of things past and present including prior days.

3) no alters are noticeably different than me from the outside. i thought that meant that it wasn't real because even though they can influence from inside and mix with me to where it does create differences (to me-which is not my normal range/way of being with emotions or ways of behaving), no one outside has ever had a clue or picked up on differences. even my therapist hasn't. but i believe that is because my system is covert, and hiding is imperative.

4) being mixed/blended/co-conscious, etc. and not blacking out/amnesia between parts when the others are closer to the surface/front. even though i can mix with them and other variations, i don't have ongoing active communication with them. i can gather bits and pieces of things about each one at times, but overall i don't have much access to more in depth knowledge about the system and each part. it used to exist though. they also don't/won't write or communicate in other ways. it sometimes makes me think again that i'm faking because they 'should' (to me anyway) 'want' to communicate.

i'm sure there are more, but these are the main ones i can think of.

I definitely don't have DID because even if I have no control over how my body is behaving or what is coming out of my mouth I have awareness of it.

I do not have DID because all my symptoms can be 'normalised' into singleville. One of the voices in my head repeatedly does this for me.

I definitely don't have DID because for the last 10 weeks we have functioned as a passable singleton whilst doing a job (the hours of mess in-between don't count)

I definitely don't have DID because I am a nice person and people seem to like me and if I had DID then I would be a scary person and no-one would like me.

I do not have DID because I do not acknowledge any trauma - although I can list a load of stuff that has supposedly happened to this body it did not happen to me and therefore it has had no effect.

I do not have DID, she is just a silly girl that makes things up.

I do not have DID, she has just been under a lot of stress and is depressed.

I do not have DID, she is having a mid life crisis because the daughters have left home.

I could go on all night with this.

Nice idea Johnny-Jack !

So... two things that still bring me close to denial are : I don't have amnesia (even if I have a lot of trouble with my memories) and we don't switch. We get co-cons and co-present, so I often feel like I fake everything.
I have a friend who's multiple and they switch and lose time etc. and at the begining, I couldn't help myself to compare both of our system, until I understand we don't have the same way to work at all.