Just a couple of things...

I hope this is okay to post as I posted it in another forum on this site but it appears to be a much quieter one so hoping to get some feedback here.


Hi, I'm fairly new to this forum and only starting to accept a diagnosis of dissociative disorder. I'm just wondering about a couple of things I experience, and if they are things other have experienced as I'm not sure they are linked to the condition.

Firstly, I've have a couple of periods of quite bad confusion. The first time I was thinking about buying winter tyres, then I got onto thinking where I would store my other tyres. I then thought the answer was obvious, put them in the garage. It wasn't until several minutes later that I realised I don't even have a garage and the picture of the garage I saw in my mind was my parents garage (I have not lived there for almost 13 years).
The second time it happened, I was speaking with a friend who was talking about on of her friends from back on her island. Later that day I couldn't remember if I had ever met her friend or not. Then it seemed obvious that I had, as I would have met her at my friend's wedding. Again, this seemed obvious and I was glad I remembered. However, again after several minutes, I remembered that my friend has never been married, and I have never met her other friend.

The other thing that I have noticed, which isn't a huge thing, is that when my anxiety is bad, I am so thirsty but no matter how much I drink, the thirst never goes away.

Thanks for taking the time to read this lings winded post, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.x

I have a lot of co-consciousness, so whoever is in front usually has access to all the facts about my life, and fortunately I don't think I've had periods of confusion like that unless I'm just waking up from sleep. I've definitely experienced waking up feeling like a child, thinking of my husband as the dad in the family, and wondering where the mom is. Then I realize that I'm the mom, and it's kind of overwhelming until I switch fully back into a part that knows how to be the mom and likes it.

So that's the kind of thing I'm reminded of by your descriptions of confusion. It sounds like you're switching between parts that have different memories or experiences of past events. For example, between one that thinks you're still living at home, to one that knows where you live now. I'm less clear about how/why you thought you attended your friend's wedding if it really didn't happen. Perhaps that was a dream? Or maybe it really did happen and you don't remember it but another part does?

These experiences definitely sound dissociative to me. I know you've posted before that you are aware of several parts. You may want to try asking inside after one of those episodes so you can understand them better--for example, you may want to talk more to that part that thinks you still live at home, and maybe explain where you live now and show them around, and get a sense of how they feel about living in a different place than they thought they did.

I still struggle with accepting what's going on in my head. How can there be people in here!?! I thought they were just thoughts and moods--and it's not like I wasn't aware that DID was a thing. I just didn't think I could possibly have it (no obvious lost time in my life, no florid switching between parts, no prolonged sexual/physical abuse--although possibly before I was 3...). Denial is actually a dissociative coping mechanism (I'm just going to decide that what is real is not real), so it makes a lot of sense that it would crop up for us over and over again. Someone who is diagnosed with a serious physical illness might go through a stage of denial, but generally once they have accepted it as real, they don't suddenly decide that they were wrong and don't really have it. But denial is a goto coping skill for us whenever something becomes too overwhelming to tolerate knowing it at that moment.

Thanks for your reply, it makes a lot of sense. It kind of links with my therapy session yesterday where we were talking about lucid dreams. I have lucid dreams that involve me self harming. In the dreams, I can either be in a previous workplace or in my old school. I recognise the people in them too but they don't add up time wise. For example, in one dream I was in my old job in a call centre, but my manager there was a manager from a later job. My psychologist advised that it probably is some parts trying to tell me something, or come to the forefront. She has suggested that next time, I try to talk to the 'me' in the dream.