Deja vu?

I was reading someone's post the other day and thought "wow this person is such a plagiarist!". I had clearly read those exact words before. Then it dawned on me that maybe I had read those words just not as me.

This got me to thinking about Deja vu. We all experience it. Sometimes though mine is more like I know I had a dream about the exact situation. It is waaaay to real. I then took it a step further. what if it wasn't a dream? What if I had actually experienced it before? My train of thought was this: if I am co conscious maybe an alter was experiencing it as well. Then they let it "leak" through so quickly that it felt like a memory of a dream. Does that make sense? Has anyone else had an experience like that?

On a slightly different subject I am so tired of my husband asking what's wrong! I am just lost in thought! That's why I am quiet. There is always so much going on in my head that I have to just sit and think/listen. And when will it ever get quiet?!

Yes, I have had very specific, literal, blow-by-blow deja vu many times and have wondered whether it was a dream I had. I can't remember what it was about, but I know it would happen when I was a kis too (like something about a camping trip, at the little general store, I'm being shown). If I were anyone else in my family, I'd think I was psychic, but I always assume there is some more scientific/psychological explanation, whether related to DID or not. Now that you mention it, it is similar to memories that aren't mine...knowing something is true, but being disconnected with the sense and context...that's "a fascinating alternative we will have to consider and observe in the future."

Yes, too many times than I can actually recall. I always wondered about it. Although, it hasn't happened as much since my DX last year.

Snuffthroostr wrote:My train of thought was this: if I am co conscious maybe an alter was experiencing it as well. Then they let it "leak" through so quickly that it felt like a memory of a dream. Does that make sense? Has anyone else had an experience like that?

Well this is quite interesting for me. I used to have it so often as a kid, up to about age 10, and it was so unsettling to my experience of reality -- along with all the massive reality disturbance of losing time -- that I made myself think of this one hole in a tree in our yard where a colony of ants lived. I called this specific image to mind so I could focus my attention on something I was quite sure was real.

I've heard a convincing explanation for deja vu ('already seen' in French): it occurs when an event is supposed to get stored in short-term memory but instead gets sent to long-term memory. Moments later, as you're "recording" the event, a match in long-term memory is suddenly found and retrieved. So something being experienced gets sent to and pulled back from long-term memory, which is memory for things which happened in the past, hence the experience of the exact thing in the present you're experiencing having happened before and the eerie suddenness of that awareness.

For my own self, I strongly suspect the deja vu I experienced was DID-related, because I don't recall having deja vu after mid-childhood, when my alters went inside. I had never been to places before that my alters had, so the experience of "I've been here before" could indeed have been leakage from their long-term memory.

I've also had jamais vu ('never seen' in French) where something you know should be completely familiar suddenly seems entirely unfamiliar.

Me too. When the Deja vu is so real it is soooo eerie!

I am very interested in your following comment about being quiet. You wrote:

On a slightly different subject I am so tired of my husband asking what's wrong! I am just lost in thought! That's why I am quiet. There is always so much going on in my head that I have to just sit and think/listen. And when will it ever get quiet?!

I almost go bizzerk sometimes bc of noise. My SO doesn't like quiet & my system does not like noise - especially in the a.m. Seems our system needs quiet time to wake up? Idk, but I think that I would be perfectly content going days & days without talking if I lived alone & I wouldn't be lonely.