My Psychiatrists on Trauma in DID

- Michael, Original, 17 -

So, I've had a couple of psychiatrists I've spoken to about DID. They both said that the trauma had to be something you clearly remember and is very bad and intense and repetitive. I told the one I am currently seeing how I feel like I have memories that I cannot access, or just can't fully bring to light as it would hurt us if we did. I'm sure some of my alters know more than me on some of these memories. I don't want to ask as it might upset or hurt them. Should I?

I'm wondering if what they say is true. Does it need to be, by adult standard, super intense? Do you have to remember it all? It worries me and I feel really fake because I struggle to remember so many things in my past. Does anyone else worry about this either? Thanks guys <3

LucyTate wrote:Does it need to be, by adult standard, super intense?

Trauma can't be estimated by what happened, it is a reaction in a person to what happened to them. If you have trauma symptoms, you are traumatized, and then it was traumatizing enough. It has to be unbearable to the one it happened at the time it happened, unbearable feelings of fear or shame. But those, of course, are feelings of the one who went thru that trauma, it can't be opinion of an outsider. Your survival instincts don't tell you as a baby if something is severe enough if asked from an adult, and your defense mechanisms only activate if adults agree. Survival mechanisms activate when child needs them to, and no one asks about it from the child either. It just happens.

There even isn't such thing, than super intense by adult standard. Those are only third hand personal opinions.

Some people go thru a lot and don't get DID, some do. It's not only the trauma itself, but if the child was able to process the feelings it caused when it happened or right after and live in safe environment. Some people also have tendency to dissociate more easily than others. Little kids aren't able to process trauma on their own. And safe is a feeling too, child's feeling. They need an adult that is safe.

So a child with no safe adults who cares about child's feelings more than their own feelings for example (parent with mental health issues) is a possible trauma cause.

LucyTate wrote:They both said that the trauma had to be something you clearly remember and is very bad and intense and repetitive.

Repetitive or long term and causes feelings that are too intense to bear. Like been bullied by other kids regularly with no adult support or not enough adult support. Parents with mental health issues. Parents with addictions. Parents who fight a lot. Those are cases when the overall feeling of the safety is never there, although there can be safe moments. You may sometimes have a good parent, but on the other hand they can suddenly just stop being that and there's nothing you can do about it. It means child can not trust to the safety being there long term, when needed, but needs other coping strategies.

Remembering part is BS. In order for you to have DID you need to have amnesia. It can be any kind of amnesia, amnesia of what happened, amnesia of past in general or present day amnesia, or all of it, but in order for it to be DID, there needs to be amnesia. Trauma memories don't go away for ever, they are too intense to do that, but not all parts of personality have access to them.

Some alters are trauma holders and they remember what happened, because they were there when it happened. That part of personality who goes on with normal life is either not able to remember what happened or doesn't connect with the feelings of what happened, in other words, it doesn't sound or feel that bad to that part. Why? Well that's the whole point of DID, to be able to seal trauma or feelings connected to it away, to be able to continue with life like nothing happened.

In DID trauma is emotional. Child can also have physical trauma if they was hurt physically, but the trauma is emotional. Child doesn't need to be hurt physically.

LucyTate wrote:I told the one I am currently seeing how I feel like I have memories that I cannot access, or just can't fully bring to light as it would hurt us if we did. I'm sure some of my alters know more than me on some of these memories. I don't want to ask as it might upset or hurt them. Should I?

No, you shouldn't. And it's not just to avoid upsetting them. If they show you what they went thru, you experience the unbearable as well. Then who is gonna take care of normal life? It's not safe, you do it in therapy with someone who understands DID, piece by piece when those things arise naturally to the conscious mind and those things get healed when they arise. They do that, when there's enough safety in your life overall and in that therapy. Digging trauma feelings or memories on your own is dangerous, and you gain nothing by doing it.

DID diagnosis is based on the symptoms of the client NOW. But what makes you think you have DID?

Floralie

Floralie expressed everything I would have said, much better than I would have said it. I just want to emphasize one thing:

LucyTate wrote:So, I've had a couple of psychiatrists I've spoken to about DID. They both said that the trauma had to be something you clearly remember and is very bad and intense and repetitive.

So, it used to be thought that the trauma had to be "bad and intense and repetitive" as viewed from the outside by an objective adult, but that is very outdated and just plain wrong. This is one of the reasons I was "sure" that I didn't have DID.

The part about remembering isn't even something people used to believe, so I don't know where they got that from. Amnesia for traumatic memories has always been known about--that's why there was all of that craziness in the 80s about therapist-induced false memories being believed as actual retrieved memories (leading questions asked of preschoolers in the McMillan preschool case, etc), which then led to some people thinking that ALL retrieved memories were false and therapist-induced.

Floralie wrote:No, you shouldn't. And it's not just to avoid upsetting them. If they show you what they went thru, you experience the unbearable as well. Then who is gonna take care of normal life? It's not safe, you do it in therapy with someone who understands DID, piece by piece when those things arise naturally to the conscious mind and those things get healed when they arise. They do that, when there's enough safety in your life overall and in that therapy. Digging trauma feelings or memories on your own is dangerous, and you gain nothing by doing it.

DID diagnosis is based on the symptoms of the client NOW. But what makes you think you have DID?

Floralie

- Michael, Original, 17 -

Thank you for your reply, it's entirety was very helpful. I've been conflicted and confused by a lot of these things. I won't bring it up to them, I'll definitely be working hard on it in therapy.

I'm unsure if it IS DID or a form of OSDD. I guess that's what I'm curious about mostly. I've struggled my whole life with mental illness and a variety of symptoms, it gets kind of blurry but it scared me because it did fit in with the symptoms of trauma and dissociative disorders. I did have abuse when I was a child, off and on I guess, for years. I've felt for a while I've had memories I can't get access to. Then I more recently learned the voices I'd been hearing for years really did have names and faces and personalities. They did come out and one was even co-hosting with me for a very long time.

I've been told to focus more on the therapy itself than getting a diagnoses, which I've been doing. It just kind of bugs me yknow? I guess I just like to have answers. I know Lucy would, too.

Thanks again <3

-- Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:46 pm --

TheGangsAllHere wrote:So, it used to be thought that the trauma had to be "bad and intense and repetitive" as viewed from the outside by an objective adult, but that is very outdated and just plain wrong. This is one of the reasons I was "sure" that I didn't have DID.

The part about remembering isn't even something people used to believe, so I don't know where they got that from. Amnesia for traumatic memories has always been known about--that's why there was all of that craziness in the 80s about therapist-induced false memories being believed as actual retrieved memories (leading questions asked of preschoolers in the McMillan preschool case, etc), which then led to some people thinking that ALL retrieved memories were false and therapist-induced.

- Michael, Original, 17 -

This makes a lot of sense. I was reading about the scare with induced false memories, and how much controversy surrounded that idea. Thank you so much for this <3 It really helps

LucyTate wrote:I'm unsure if it IS DID or a form of OSDD. I guess that's what I'm curious about mostly.

There really isn’t an important difference between them. You can think of OSDD as “partial” DID. It just doesn’t quite meet the arbitrary criteria to get that label, but it’s still a major dissociative disorder. There just isn’t amnesia, or there aren’t distinct alters. But often things like the extent of amnesia, and/or just how distinct and separate the alters are, are hidden when treatment starts. So something labeled OSDD at the start of treatment can easily become DID. And what about someone who had DID but now doesn’t have amnesia? You could argue that their diagnosis is now OSDD.

My T recently said that within the same system, some parts can consider themselves to be part of an OSDD system while others in the same system consider it to be DID. He said it depends on how connected they feel to each other.

So trying to figure out which one it is isn’t necessary in order to get proper treatment, and it can often be a distraction from working toward healing:

I've been aware of the DID for over 12 years now. And although I sort of always knew about the "very intense and painful trauma", simultaneously I didn't know.