Elizabeth we cant tell you what your problems are. we cant tell you if you have any mental disorders. the only way you can find out whats happening to you is by going back into therapy and back to seeing a psychiatrist that can do diagnostic testing.

you are a teen ager so Im going to try and explain to you the dissociative disorders in a way that you hopefully will understand.

there are 6 of them -

depersonalization - thats when you feel kind of spacey, like you are moving in slow motion, not feeling anything, just feeling numb, not feeling like you are all there. the world around you feels far away and sped up.

Derealization - thats when you feel ok but it seems like the world around you is not real, like its going too fast or going too slow. like the world and people are strange to you. kind of like that feeling you get just getting over the flu, you feel ok but everything else feels different to you. you recognize everything you just dont feel like you fit in with how the world seems to you. we therapists call this feeling - feeling like you are disconnected from everything outside yourself.

Dissociative amnesia - have you ever seen these movies, soap operas and cartoons where someone gets hit over the head or in an accident, then they dont remember anything? dissociative amnesia is the same way only its a mental problem.

there are 4 kinds of these - the first one is called local dissociative amnesia you go through a traumatic situation and then you dont remember anything about that situation, what lead up to that situation or what happened shortly after it. this kind of memory loss sticks with you until you get treated for it. the way it works is that for example (using a fake situaiton here) if you were sexually abused on valentines day then every year as valentines day comes closer you have more and more times with having trouble remembering things, then you dont remember valentines day at all, then a few days later you are back to normal. it doesnt get better. it just keeps happening for your whole life until you get treatment for it. thats one kind.

the second kind of dissociative amnesia called selective dissociative amnesia thats where you only remember little bits and pieces of a traumatic event. its like remembering the day you were sexually abused and maybe something the abuser said but nothing else.

the third kind of dissociative amnesia is called generalized dissociative amnesia. thats when because of some trauma you forget your whole life and people you knew before the trauma. its like sort of waking up one day and for the rest of your life not knowing who your parents are, not remembering you go to this school and not remembering these are your friends. this sticks with you for your whole life.

the 4th kind of dissociative amnesia is not remembering things but it centers around one set group. like one day not remembering all your past and present memories about your mother.

Dissociative Fugue - thats leaving your life, family, friends behind and moving somewhere else. when you get there you build a whole new life as someone else. the kicker to this one is that you dont realize or even know you are doing this. just one day you sort of wake up and find yourself living in some strange place and people calling you by a strange name you never knew of.

Dissociative Identity Disorder - to explain this one think about your home you live in. you know how you have different rooms in your home. well people have different parts of their self inside that all work together to make up who that person is. just like all the rooms in the home is connected by the outside walls. each of the rooms in the house belong to each family member and shared by the whole family. example you can move around your home to go into the kitchen, the bathroom your room. its all open to you. a normal person has all these different parts to them - feelings, memories, their emotions what you like, dislike what your position in your family is. it all makes up who you are and what type of person you are.

With DID all things that make up who you are ends up mentally splitting off from all the other parts that make up the person. anger goes here, happiness there, memories about this over here, memories of that over there. its still one body outside but now everything that makes up that person is now divided and if those parts of a person stay divided they start acting like they have their own lives. Anger decided to dress is say yellow polka dots, eats only peanut butter and celery, swears and never combs her hair. Happiness wears red hearts, loves bagels, and roller blading, memories of grandpa reside over here and wears smelly gym clothes, will eat anything but never showers. most times when these parts of a person split off and decides to live a life of their own they name their self, usually the name represents some sort of key to who that part is and what that part represents. all this parts separating, and parts living on their own happens without the awareness of the person who owns the body. what causes all this splitting / dividing of parts is some sort of trauma happens before you are 5 yrs old. and you live this way your whole childhood losing track of things like not remembering people, places, things, important events. then when you are an adult these parts of you that are all divided up cant work so good anymore so things get worse when you are an adult until you finally go to therapy and work on things that will help all the parts begin working together again.

theres one more Dissociative Disorder called Dissociative Disorders Not Otherwise Specified. this is where you have some of the symptoms of two or more of the above dissociative disorders but not enough for a psychiatrist to say you have this dissociative disorder or that dissociative disorder. you are a mixture of some or all of them.

that said - normal people do go through times when they have memory problems and other problems that look like dissociative disorders. people with depression and other mental disorders also have times where they have problems that are part of the dissociative disorders or look like a dissociative disorder.

I also know medications, stress, age, medical problems, mental problems all kinds of things, can also look like and cause the same symptoms that fit dissociative disorders.

the only way to find out if you have one of these dissociative disorders is by going back to therapy and back to a psychiatrist. there are special tests that you can take that will tell you and your doctors if you have a dissociative disorder or not.