DID or DDNOS - the perpetual question...

Please excuse the long-windedness and rambling nature of this post. For those who are willing to bear with me and get through it, any feedback or thoughts are most welcome.

I honestly don't know why I'm so hung up on finding out which one I am - DID or DDNOS. My therapist says it doesn't matter, and that the treatment for them is the same. But for some reason it matters to me. I want my experience to make sense. My life has never made a lot of sense.

My therapist diagnosed me as "DID". I have fought the diagnosis ever since, sometimes because of denial and sometimes because I don't experience the amnesia that's necessary for the clinical diagnosis. I know you all are not therapists and can't "diagnose", but I do feel like I could use some insight since sometimes I feel like my head has been screwed on backwards.

I think I remember less of my childhood than the average person. It feels like someone else's life. I've always struggled with feeling like there's something seriously wrong I could just never put a finger on what it was. I also have always felt that I have monstrous parts (or maybe just one monstrous part) inside me that feel completely separate from me.

I don't lose time, but I do have time distortions when I'm triggered or dissociative. I'll think ten minutes went by when it was really one or two hours. But I really don't think I have other "alters" operating during this time. I think I'm just spaced out and somewhere else. Like, the lights are on and no ones home, type of thing.

I have various experiences of other "parts". Sometimes I feel like me, but just a little different. Sometimes I don't feel like me but I am still very present and aware. Other times it feels like I get sucked into the background and am watching myself move and talk as though it were a movie or a dream. But I never go completely inside. The thought of that is completely terrifying. I wouldn't want to relinquish control (even though I don't have much control when I'm in the background sometimes).

The other parts of me - some of them anyway - have ages and names. They hold feelings about my past that I am not connected to. Katie for example - the little girl who came out after therapy last week - holds extreme amounts of fear and terror. When she was out (and terrified), I was watching from a safe dark place inside, untouched and unaffected by it. Other parts - like R - hold my rage. And yet I'm much more closely connected with R, so that usually when she feels rage, I feel it too. It's harder for me to separate myself from her feelings. Same with Coraline/BAD. We are closely connected.

The only real "amnesia" that I know of in the last few years (since I've been with my SO) is when she (my SO) was talking about a dinner we had had with her friend who had come to town to visit. I can't remember her friend, and I can't remember going to dinner with him (even though it was only a few months ago). The only thing I remember about the whole evening is him walking up the stairs of our house and being introduced to him. That's it. Even after my SO told me where we went to dinner, still no memory... This incident (of me not remembering) really freaked me out and triggered me big time cause I usually don't have gaps in my memory like that. I used to be shamed by my father when I was little for not being able to remember stuff he felt I "should" remember so maybe it triggered that, I don't know. But this gap in memory was definitely a one-time type of thing. And yet it did happen...

Thoughts?

~Confused and looking for clarity~

I know, this doesn't help at all, but...

Be thankful your T has actually given you SOMETHING to make the problem make the least bit of sense...so far my diagnosis is Adjustment Disorder, even with all the weirdness! I guess now that I have a new T she'll come up with her own schpiel, but I doubt it's going to feel like a name that fits the problem.

brandic wrote:But this gap in memory was definitely a one-time type of thing. And yet it did happen...

I feel the same way. I have "time loss" that occurred one, maybe a total of 3 times. June 13th of this year to be exact.

We just have to believe that the answers are there...it will take time to find them.

-- Thu Sep 01, 2011 6:58 pm --

Wait...no make that possibly 4 times.

Ugh. 4 AGAIN!!! And it was my 4th session with my T where I think I might have had time loss. Can't be sure though. I am starting to HATE 4.

Your therapist is correct that for you either diagnosis, DID or DID-like DDNOS, would make no difference. If you want to know where you stand, how you compare to others, you might fill out the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation (MID) and ask your therapist to score it.

See previous post re the MID here: dissociative-identity/topic68818-10.html#p579909

But here's the thing. Do any of the others experience time loss?
Either way, it sounds far more developed than DDNOS. Sounds like DID to me! Not that I'm the expert, even in this system alone, buuuut. XD
~Rage

Demon Lilith wrote:But here's the thing. Do any of the others experience time loss?
Either way, it sounds far more developed than DDNOS. Sounds like DID to me! Not that I'm the expert, even in this system alone, buuuut. XD
~Rage

HAHAHAHA!!! That is ######6 hilarious. I mean, who is to say who is an "other" and who isn't? Just because one is out most of the time, hell that don't mean $#%^!!! That's why I hate the term alter, no offense to anyone who uses it. But let's say I had an "alter" who came out tomorrow, thinking she was 15. Wouldn't that mean she had had significant time loss, 7 years to be exact? And let's say she came out only for 5 minutes. That means that I had time loss for 5 minutes, but she, 7 years. Lol so does that mean I have DDNOS and she has DID? Or does it mean that she just came out of a fugue?

dividedtruth89 wrote:

Demon Lilith wrote:But here's the thing. Do any of the others experience time loss?
Either way, it sounds far more developed than DDNOS. Sounds like DID to me! Not that I'm the expert, even in this system alone, buuuut. XD
~Rage

HAHAHAHA!!! That is ######6 hilarious. I mean, who is to say who is an "other" and who isn't? Just because one is out most of the time, hell that don't mean $#%^!!! That's why I hate the term alter, no offense to anyone who uses it. But let's say I had an "alter" who came out tomorrow, thinking she was 15. Wouldn't that mean she had had significant time loss, 7 years to be exact? And let's say she came out only for 5 minutes. That means that I had time loss for 5 minutes, but she, 7 years. Lol so does that mean I have DDNOS and she has DID? Or does it mean that she just came out of a fugue?

... I kinda meant others as in others in the body. Like, not you, the other people there with you.
Glad it was funny? ::can't actually tell if you were amused or offended::

I would say that's DID. Cause SOMEONE in there is losing time, so the brain has DID, right?
~Rage

That's my point exactly. We all are alters, including those of us who consider ourselves to be "the host". And if we are not losing time, usually that means one or more other alters in our system are losing time.

Demon Lilith wrote:can't actually tell if you were amused or offended::

no no no I wasn't offended!!! I am not one who gets sarcastic when they're offended. I would say...that kind of offends me or something.

No I really did think it was funny and it got me thinking! I agree with Una, if I have alters, well then that means I'm an alter too! Yay me!

Una+ wrote:That's my point exactly. We all are alters, including those of us who consider ourselves to be "the host". And if we are not losing time, usually that means one or more other alters in our system are losing time.

Actually, I'm more of the "We're all NOT alters, we're all people!" type. But I'm a crazy liberal teen, what do I know?

Well, a lot of us form a group that is almost always co-con and either fronting or ready to front. Some of us are always watching from the inside, or can chose to. Some of us take memories and information about the outside from others. Some are simply preoccupied with the inner world. But not everyone is like this. Tom, for example, is ALWAYS blacked out when not fronting. He can't know what's going on outside at all. Same with a few others. I kinda feel bad for them.

dividedtruth89 wrote:

Demon Lilith wrote:can't actually tell if you were amused or offended::

no no no I wasn't offended!!! I am not one who gets sarcastic when they're offended. I would say...that kind of offends me or something.

No I really did think it was funny and it got me thinking! I agree with Una, if I have alters, well then that means I'm an alter too! Yay me!

Oh, thank goodness! I got really nervous there for a moment. And we're not exactly known for realizing when we've offended someone, soo.

... if I'm an alter and therefor unreal, does that mean we don't have to pay taxes?
~Rage

I got a DX of DID today from my psychiatrist, which had been leaning toward DID-like DDNOS for the last several months.

There really is no difference! I feel no different what-so-ever!

But I will probably quit digging into looking so much at the difference between the two.


Time loss was a biggie, 17 very distinct alters plus me - although they are my emotional parts, and at least 2 apparently normal parts. The switching with the ANP's is where I get my time loss. I do this often even in my therapists office.

It took a lot of work to get here though and to know for sure on my part and hers! The biggest thing was I had to quit covering for my loss of memory and time loss. It is something I have practiced for almost 50 years. I am very good at it. I bet most of you are as well.

Knowing if you have 2 or more ANP's and if you loose time are NOT easy to figure out!