DID without voices

Is it possible to have DID without hearing voices? My mood can change in an instant, almost intrusively. I often go into a dissociative trance when triggered and will completely change my personality briefly
with my therapist whilst trying to get out of it, being very jovial and laughing, before being ‘normal’ again. I have around 5 memories prior to the age of 13 but that’s it. I thought I had dissociative amnesia with depersonalisation but I’m wondering if there is something else.

Thanks

Hey Alwaysrachel, welcome to the forum.

Yeah its possible to have DID without hearing voices. Lotsa people with DID don't hear voices. I think if other parts are really separated with dissociative walls it'd be hard or impossible to hear them.

We never heard voices either. Not the way it's usually like, depicted or described or whatever.

For us it was more like 'other' thoughts along with our own. Previous host never really made the connection tho she was deep in denial. Like she knew sometimes she'd "have thoughts" that didn't feel like hers or whatever, even like two-way arguments and stuff.

But it wasn't "hearing voices" as such. It was just... like the way you think to yourself, only you also get thoughts back. Even now probably like 90% of our ongoing communication is just like that, other-thoughts instead of 'heard voices'.

Viola

What Viola said. Except there's tone and different emphasis depending on who's "thought" it is. But overall they're all coming out the same one brain into conscious awareness.

I agree with the others. I dont hear voices either they are thoughts but not my own thoughts. When my alters are out they dont speak either.

Welcome Alwaysrachel!

Yeah, some people with DID don't report hearing voices. As far as I can recall, I didn't during the decade or two before I realized I had DID. Or if I did hear anything, I quickly forgot it or I assumed it was just me in my normal thinking process.

I do recall that when I put myself in the hospital for depression ~25 years ago and was asked by staff many times if I heard voices, I said no. At least part of that was so I didn't get diagnosed as schizophrenic, a decision based on my misunderstanding about hearing voices. But I recall thinking I wasn't telling the whole truth at the time. So maybe I had a sense I had heard them before at some point in time, I just don't remember.

When I did start hearing voices and starting to interpret them as "not me" was in 2010-11 when I came to realize that absolutely no other diagnosis than DID had ever come close to explaining the oddities in my life, no other therapies had acted as anything more than a band-aid.

Your reference to the mood or personality change sounds familiar. I, John, am the one who normally handles therapy and I tend to be serious and subdued. But in past therapy when things became too heavy or we were (I now understand) triggered, our social host Johnny might slip forward and do just that, chat with joviality and laughter.

Like others have told already, it totally is possible to have DID without hearing voices. What you do need to have is two or more distinct personality states with amnesia between them. That's it. If there is no amnesia between them, or there is but they're not that distinct, it's called OSDD, but they're both (OSDD and DID) severe dissociation disorders, kind of DID on a spectrum, and it doesn't really matter which one you have. Since you already have dissociative symptoms from more than one DD, it is very reasonable to think there's more going on than a simple dissociation disorder.

Parts, alters, personality states, how ever you put it, is the meaningful thing in whether you have severe DD or not. All other symptoms CAN be there, but non of them have to. Some people have huge amount of symptoms, some not that much, and two people with DID can have totally different symptoms, except for having more than one identity.

..and then the "hearing voices" part, which is not that simple than it sounds. I'd say I don't hear voices, but still others can communicate with me using spoken language. They couldn't or didn't want to, before I started reaching out to them, about a year ago, bit over a year. We've lived in same body for about 35 or more years before that, but things started to change only after I was sure they're real, not my imagination like I used to think.

How can there be communication with words without hearing voices in one's head? Well, the information about who says what doesn't happen like talking. That I would be there listening and they'd say what they have to say word by word. Instead of that, the information about what are they thinking/saying comes all at once. I just know what the content of it is, when it arrives. I also know from whom is it coming from and what is the emotional state linked to it. All that information just appears in my mind. I understand it all when it comes, but I can also kind of open it by thinking about what their thought was word by word. If I do "imagine" myself hearing it like it would be spoken aloud, I can "hear" their voice. Sometimes the information about the voice also comes at the same time when all the other info linked to it. For example that Little Leon is saying something with very exited voice. All that, but it's just information I know, and the actual voice is not there, if I don't imagine how does he sound like, when he's exited. How do I know that? I don't know, it's just information I have, and had before I knew he was real. There can be some exceptions to this, but this is how it mostly happens to us. Does that count as hearing voices? I don't think it does. I think hearing them is more like when you talk to any outside real life person. You need to be there quietly listening when they tell word by word what ever are they gonna tell, and you find out what it was about when they've talked enough. For us, it's like all-at-once delivery, with our defender it can be so fast I didn't even finish thinking what I'm gonna think about, when there's already respond to it there. It's like I'm "I don't know what to" - OPINION about what I was about to think, but didn't have time to think it thru yet, and I'm just.. "OK.. you have a point, but" OPINION. And because he usually DOES have a point, it's likely to be a done deal at that point. He doesn't bother to have opinions on things that aren't his concern, so usually it's wise to listen to the one who knows what they're talking about.

But all this is AFTER 40 years without communication I could recognized as such. Afterwards you see many things differently, but beforehand.. it's many times not that clear at all. To some people getting a diagnose is like finding home, finally something that makes sense, and when I started learning about structural dissociation, I understood that was about me, about us. It's not perfect theory, but there's something to identify with, when nothing made sense for so many years. For some people, it's huge shock to find out, cause they had NO clue what so ever. We're all different. If someone tells something about how their system is, yours don't have to be same kind. We are all uniquely formed to circumstances that required special ability to be able to have flexible mind, that's why we can be very different.

There's plenty of threads about if someone has DID or not in this forum. Lot of people come and ask all the same questions. Everyone's situation is unique, but the basics of DID are the same. If you read other threads like yours in here, you will learn a lot about DID easily. There's huge amount of text in here about that subject, to people who are just trying to figure out their situation. You re allowed to ask questions of course, and do if you're looking for contact to other people with same problems. If it's just knowledge you need, use what is already there and it can be helpful to see how many people are in same situation you are in.

Nobody can diagnose you in here, it is first of all against forum rules and most importantly, not possible to do even by best professionals. It's up to you to see the similarities and differences and if you don't know does some certain difference matter or does it vary anyway, you can always ask. Just remember, we wont be the ones who will diagnose you.

Hi Alwaysrachel,

I, too, thought my alters were just moods until about two years ago. And it was only when I felt safe enough to be curious about intrusive feelings, rather than trying to push them away, that they started speaking to me. Even now, I'm so used to assuming that everything my mind comes up with is just my thoughts, that it's hard to remember that much of what's going on in there is communication from alters.

Floralie wrote:Like others have told already, it totally is possible to have DID without hearing voices. What you do need to have is two or more distinct personality states with amnesia between them. That's it. If there is no amnesia between them, or there is but they're not that distinct, it's called OSDD, but they're both (OSDD and DID) severe dissociation disorders, kind of DID on a spectrum, and it doesn't really matter which one you have. Since you already have dissociative symptoms from more than one DD, it is very reasonable to think there's more going on than a simple dissociation disorder.

This confusion came up on another forum--the part I bolded, so that's why it caught my eye. Everything Floralie said is correct except that in DSM-5, any amnesia meets the DID criterion. It does not have to be amnesia between alters, in the present. This is what the criterion says: "Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events." So having only 5 memories before the age of 13 definitely counts as amnesia for a DID diagnosis.

Many professionals seem to think that amnesia between alters is necessary when it isn't. It's all sort of arbitrary, and like Floralie said, both OSDD and DID are severe dissociative disorders, and they have the same cause and the same treatment, so trying to distinguish between them isn't very useful.

I can’t tell you how relieving it is to hear your responses. The thought of someday understanding all this now feels closer and that gives me a lot of hope.

TheGangsAllHere wrote:
This confusion came up on another forum--the part I bolded, so that's why it caught my eye. Everything Floralie said is correct except that in DSM-5, any amnesia meets the DID criterion. It does not have to be amnesia between alters, in the present. This is what the criterion says: "Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events." So having only 5 memories before the age of 13 definitely counts as amnesia for a DID diagnosis.

Many professionals seem to think that amnesia between alters is necessary when it isn't. It's all sort of arbitrary, and like Floralie said, both OSDD and DID are severe dissociative disorders, and they have the same cause and the same treatment, so trying to distinguish between them isn't very useful.

Where I live in, we use ICD10, not DSM. The way I have seen it put down is something similar to saying person needs to be sometimes unable to tell who they really are. It's a big thing to ask from someone to have, because if others know who the host is, like they usually or at least very commonly seem to know, they may not identify with them, but usually they are very able to pretend they are the host. It can be that this is not the latest way to see it. In my language that is pretty much the only definition I can find, trying to Google diagnostic criteria offers Wikipedia. I don't actually know what "place" and where holds the information to diagnostic criteria to ICD 10 in my language.

In English I found
- A disorder characterized by the presence of two or more identities with distinct patterns of perception and personality which recurrently take control of the person's behavior; this is accompanied by a retrospective gap in memory of important personal information that far exceeds ordinary forgetfulness. The changes in identity are not due to substance use or to a general medical condition.
- A dissociative disorder in which the individual adopts two or more distinct personalities. Each personality is a fully integrated and complex unit with memories, behavior patterns and social friendships. Transition from one personality to another is sudden.

Then it would be "retrospective gap in memory of important personal information that far exceeds ordinary forgetfulness". It doesn't say about what and when. But that is kind of tricky, since all the information is in the system, present day and past, anyway. Just not in one alter.

" Each personality is a fully integrated and complex unit with memories, behavior patterns and social friendships." Now that's weird. Every part needs to be fully developed, there can't be fragments? AND they have to have their own social friendships? That's a lot, I don't believe any of us in here have that.

I read before Birdsong said the same thing. Still people with OSDD 1b explain it's like DID, but there's one part of personality who never leaves, so there's co-consciousness or main front alone, but never anyone else alone. Does it mean that in order for someone to have OSDD 1b they in fact can not have any kind of amnesia what so ever?

Or is it that the definition is still the same, it is in switching, but in DID one can switch fully to be different kind of person, but still have same sense of "me". I mean when you switch the way you become younger and think differently than normally, but maybe don't even realize it until it's over and you're back in normal you again? And in OSDD 1b you can co-front and be co-conscious without ever losing the touch to who are you and how you are like?

What ever the case with OSDD 1b is, that does sound way more reasonable to me, the way I've seen it explained in my language is so weird, it must come from someone who doesn't understand how DID works. It's very unlikely there's someone who doesn't know anything about present day realities. Or there surely many time is, like all trauma parts stuck in past, but I doubt they're there to take tests in diagnosing processes. They can be if things like that are a trigger to them, but usually it's someone who has realized there's something off in them.

It doesn't really matter what the definitions are in the end, because all people with parts do have same thing, some with higher dissociative walls than others.

Should have read it better.. it was AMERICAN ICD-10, "other international versions of ICD-10 may differ". I'd need the one used in Northern Europe. I didn't know there are different ICD-10 versions too.