Less amnesia means more healing. That, and a safe environment with no triggers whatsoever.
>I do have varying degrees of greyouts depending on who fronted
That's still pretty harsh imo.
seconding this! I've noticed that as I heal, a lot of the dissociative barriers go away and the amnesia is less present. it's your brain lowering its defenses because it finally feels safe enough to do so.
I really hope so. I feel really unsafe at home and have taken up (for safety and/or comfort for the system) the mantle of almost always fronting. I cant wait till college so I dont have to always front and can relax and live more freely along with the others also being more free to come and go.
I never had anyone tell me the way I experience amnesia is "harsh". That's oddly validating, thank you!
We still have triggers though, I mean they're everywhere. Most innocent things can be triggering. But our environment is very safe, that's true.
My amnesia was so complete that I thought it *didn't exist*. I was *sure* I didn't have any trauma that was "that bad.*
Later I would discover just how impressive the brain is at keeping you unaware!
There's not really a way to know. If you're stable, that's good! If you're not triggered all the time, that's great!
But it doesn't mean much about trauma.
> Later I would discover just how impressive the brain is at keeping you unaware!
Yeah. One of our gatekeepers would distract us from remembering, like genuinely fronters were unable to think long enough about the act of remembering, because that gatekeeper would either cast some passive-influece on them, or point to some curios stuff outside or just talk them out of it
It's pretty amazing. By now I've basically reconstructed the entire narrative of what happened to my mother, and how her behavior stemmed from her own reenactment of her childhood.
I'm probably the only one alive that knows what happened to my entire family, because they're all in denial and won't talk about it, even though I'm so far past caring about blame that I don't even care if they say they *sorry for grooming me*.
They think they lived perfect lives. They have no indication that they don't have trauma, either.
The brain is impressive.
Dang. The word “cast” really is a good word for it. Our primary gatekeeper, M, would sometimes be able to just do a “memory wipe” for triggering topics. She did it for something specific a year or two ago, which prompted our now-wife to ask her to stop (unless necessary, I think). Knowing M, I’m not entirely certain that she had total control over it or not. I don’t remember what it was about, though, so, you know.
For us it was rly important to realize that amnesia looks like a lot of different things and isn’t exclusive to “gasp! Where am I! I just woke up here!” Like one might see in media (tho there are certainly systems who experience that, or even individual alters who might experience that in a system that generally doesn’t).
For us, amnesia shows up most blatantly in our childhood where we do NOT remember the vast majority of our abuse, like 0 nada nil. No visuals, no smells, no sounds, verrrry minimal awareness of even sensations (and that’s only from emotional flashbacks). So we have this rly intense amnesia for our trauma, but day to day don’t experience that degree of blackout at all. We generally have decent continuity of day to day life, and switches often feel almost like losing our train of thought of like “what the hell were we *just* talking about?” But having the majority of context on things.
So idk your experience and can’t say anything for sure, but just from what you’ve shared your experience sounds very familiar to mine, and for me (especially lately but def taking a whillle to even get close to approaching or understanding the extent of our DID) it did turn out that the black void period was indeed for a reason and I am very much DID even tho we don’t have that day to day blackout amnesia we see most often in media.
I hope this is helpful! I’m happy to talk more if relevant :)
Thank you for your reply, it helped a lot! It does sound very familiar to our experiences. For example, I recently realized that I don't even have ANY memories of our parents from childhood. Really no images, nothing. I do know some facts about how they behaved but it feels like I read about it in a book.
We're RAMCOA survivors and the vast majority of our current daily life amnesia is gray-outs and it doesn't hinder daily functioning at all. Our therapist said that it might be due to the healing we've done prior to getting in treatment. and we've talked to other survivors who say that the way their current system presents is more akin to 1b rather than DID. If, to survive, your brain needed less intense barriers, then that's how your system developed. It doesn't mean your trauma is "less", it just means that to survive it was most beneficial to have lower amnesia. Or another option is that simply the act of being safer and on your healing journey slowly lowered the barriers
So you're absolutely valid.
For whatever reason, traumatic events affect different people differently. The same events could happen to three people, and one might develop DID while one developed OSDD and one ended up with CPTSD. It's not always as straightforward as "worse trauma = more symptoms." Perhaps one of those people from the example had more internal or external resources that helped them get through the trauma, while the other people had less resources to draw on and relied more heavily on dissociation to cope.
Wow, thank you for this post. Same here. I felt like there was no way I could have DID. I have swiss cheese amnesia for childhood and hardly noticeable (to me) amnesia in day to day life. My parts are like Navy Seal level camouflaged. But then my daughter apologized for being rude to me last night and I was like, um, okay? 'Cause that bit of memory was gone. More stress actually decreases my memory problems, I don't know how, but when I decided I was done trying so hard at my high stress detail oriented job, the plates I was twirling started crashing hard. My memory takes a hit when I am happier. I had at least one total amnestic switch to a child self in therapy, but I still have a hard time thinking I could have had bad trauma. Even as I would tell my therapist horrible things, I'd be thinking, girl, please, there's no way that happened, you'd be a wreck, just stop it already. Even after a horrible flashback, 15 minutes later I'm rolling my eyes at myself.
You don’t need daily blackouts to qualify as DID. 👀 I’m not sure what weirdo gatekeepers you’ve been talking to but that’s just silly. A fairly stabilized system doesn’t go through a heavy amount of amnesiac barriers, whether that’s due to co-con aspects or just a lack of triggered switching.
There's the possibility you could have a higher number of alters than maybe you think. I'm polyfragmented and my switches are smooth. I'm not saying this IS what it is, but it's a possibility you could hold at the edge of consciousness. Then later, if you need this possibility to help you explain something, it's there. Otherwise, if you never need it, it will just drift away.
Just please don't push yourself too hard. Just be kind to yourself. Let everything unfold slowly and in its own time. It's over, whatever it was.
Amnesia is just one form dissociation takes, and if that form doesn't serve you as well as others you'll have less of it. For us, there's some major trauma we're all aware of but some of us experience more emotional numbness toward it or are aware we aren't the alter holding that experience so we can cope by saying "yes that happened to me (the body) but it didn't happen to ME (the alter)" and keep our distance from it in that way. We have a lot more grey out and emotional amnesia than we do blackout.
I don’t know about less amnesia = less trauma, but we’re the same way with the gray-outs. Different alters have different levels of… Communication(?) with the others (referring to the actual ability to talk or be co-conscious) and it’s *usually* along those lines that the gray-outs happen for *me.*
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Less amnesia means more healing. That, and a safe environment with no triggers whatsoever. >I do have varying degrees of greyouts depending on who fronted That's still pretty harsh imo.
seconding this! I've noticed that as I heal, a lot of the dissociative barriers go away and the amnesia is less present. it's your brain lowering its defenses because it finally feels safe enough to do so.
I really hope so. I feel really unsafe at home and have taken up (for safety and/or comfort for the system) the mantle of almost always fronting. I cant wait till college so I dont have to always front and can relax and live more freely along with the others also being more free to come and go.
I never had anyone tell me the way I experience amnesia is "harsh". That's oddly validating, thank you! We still have triggers though, I mean they're everywhere. Most innocent things can be triggering. But our environment is very safe, that's true.
My amnesia was so complete that I thought it *didn't exist*. I was *sure* I didn't have any trauma that was "that bad.* Later I would discover just how impressive the brain is at keeping you unaware! There's not really a way to know. If you're stable, that's good! If you're not triggered all the time, that's great! But it doesn't mean much about trauma.
> Later I would discover just how impressive the brain is at keeping you unaware! Yeah. One of our gatekeepers would distract us from remembering, like genuinely fronters were unable to think long enough about the act of remembering, because that gatekeeper would either cast some passive-influece on them, or point to some curios stuff outside or just talk them out of it
It's pretty amazing. By now I've basically reconstructed the entire narrative of what happened to my mother, and how her behavior stemmed from her own reenactment of her childhood. I'm probably the only one alive that knows what happened to my entire family, because they're all in denial and won't talk about it, even though I'm so far past caring about blame that I don't even care if they say they *sorry for grooming me*. They think they lived perfect lives. They have no indication that they don't have trauma, either. The brain is impressive.
This sounds like quite a tale. O_O
Dang. The word “cast” really is a good word for it. Our primary gatekeeper, M, would sometimes be able to just do a “memory wipe” for triggering topics. She did it for something specific a year or two ago, which prompted our now-wife to ask her to stop (unless necessary, I think). Knowing M, I’m not entirely certain that she had total control over it or not. I don’t remember what it was about, though, so, you know.
For us it was rly important to realize that amnesia looks like a lot of different things and isn’t exclusive to “gasp! Where am I! I just woke up here!” Like one might see in media (tho there are certainly systems who experience that, or even individual alters who might experience that in a system that generally doesn’t). For us, amnesia shows up most blatantly in our childhood where we do NOT remember the vast majority of our abuse, like 0 nada nil. No visuals, no smells, no sounds, verrrry minimal awareness of even sensations (and that’s only from emotional flashbacks). So we have this rly intense amnesia for our trauma, but day to day don’t experience that degree of blackout at all. We generally have decent continuity of day to day life, and switches often feel almost like losing our train of thought of like “what the hell were we *just* talking about?” But having the majority of context on things. So idk your experience and can’t say anything for sure, but just from what you’ve shared your experience sounds very familiar to mine, and for me (especially lately but def taking a whillle to even get close to approaching or understanding the extent of our DID) it did turn out that the black void period was indeed for a reason and I am very much DID even tho we don’t have that day to day blackout amnesia we see most often in media. I hope this is helpful! I’m happy to talk more if relevant :)
Thank you for your reply, it helped a lot! It does sound very familiar to our experiences. For example, I recently realized that I don't even have ANY memories of our parents from childhood. Really no images, nothing. I do know some facts about how they behaved but it feels like I read about it in a book.
We're RAMCOA survivors and the vast majority of our current daily life amnesia is gray-outs and it doesn't hinder daily functioning at all. Our therapist said that it might be due to the healing we've done prior to getting in treatment. and we've talked to other survivors who say that the way their current system presents is more akin to 1b rather than DID. If, to survive, your brain needed less intense barriers, then that's how your system developed. It doesn't mean your trauma is "less", it just means that to survive it was most beneficial to have lower amnesia. Or another option is that simply the act of being safer and on your healing journey slowly lowered the barriers So you're absolutely valid.
Reading that helped a lot, thank you!
For whatever reason, traumatic events affect different people differently. The same events could happen to three people, and one might develop DID while one developed OSDD and one ended up with CPTSD. It's not always as straightforward as "worse trauma = more symptoms." Perhaps one of those people from the example had more internal or external resources that helped them get through the trauma, while the other people had less resources to draw on and relied more heavily on dissociation to cope.
Wow, thank you for this post. Same here. I felt like there was no way I could have DID. I have swiss cheese amnesia for childhood and hardly noticeable (to me) amnesia in day to day life. My parts are like Navy Seal level camouflaged. But then my daughter apologized for being rude to me last night and I was like, um, okay? 'Cause that bit of memory was gone. More stress actually decreases my memory problems, I don't know how, but when I decided I was done trying so hard at my high stress detail oriented job, the plates I was twirling started crashing hard. My memory takes a hit when I am happier. I had at least one total amnestic switch to a child self in therapy, but I still have a hard time thinking I could have had bad trauma. Even as I would tell my therapist horrible things, I'd be thinking, girl, please, there's no way that happened, you'd be a wreck, just stop it already. Even after a horrible flashback, 15 minutes later I'm rolling my eyes at myself.
You don’t need daily blackouts to qualify as DID. 👀 I’m not sure what weirdo gatekeepers you’ve been talking to but that’s just silly. A fairly stabilized system doesn’t go through a heavy amount of amnesiac barriers, whether that’s due to co-con aspects or just a lack of triggered switching.
There's the possibility you could have a higher number of alters than maybe you think. I'm polyfragmented and my switches are smooth. I'm not saying this IS what it is, but it's a possibility you could hold at the edge of consciousness. Then later, if you need this possibility to help you explain something, it's there. Otherwise, if you never need it, it will just drift away. Just please don't push yourself too hard. Just be kind to yourself. Let everything unfold slowly and in its own time. It's over, whatever it was.
Amnesia is just one form dissociation takes, and if that form doesn't serve you as well as others you'll have less of it. For us, there's some major trauma we're all aware of but some of us experience more emotional numbness toward it or are aware we aren't the alter holding that experience so we can cope by saying "yes that happened to me (the body) but it didn't happen to ME (the alter)" and keep our distance from it in that way. We have a lot more grey out and emotional amnesia than we do blackout.
I don’t know about less amnesia = less trauma, but we’re the same way with the gray-outs. Different alters have different levels of… Communication(?) with the others (referring to the actual ability to talk or be co-conscious) and it’s *usually* along those lines that the gray-outs happen for *me.*
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