I wasn't properly diagnosed until a professional caught on to the missing time/memories issue, and even then at that point, it wasn't uncommon for alters to seek help on their own and get other diagnoses in the process. A lot of this is stuff that I realized and remembered in retrospect at a later time. Plus because my integration is still a work in process and sometimes backslides, it's not unusual even to this day to backslide for a time and lose that connection/fusion with an alter, and have it run amok in pursuit of other solutions and answers, and I wind up very disoriented.

When I was 15, for example, an alter that was severely distraught emerged. I didn't have any memory of this for a long time, and even now that I do, it feels a bit like a film. As a result of this happening, I was taken to mental health facility, where a different alter fronted for the duration of my stay there, about a week. The staff who worked there had no way of knowing that this is what was happening, so they thought it was a combination of anxiety and depression. Now that I have all of these memories, it's interesting since I can remember for example the confusion of one alter at the actions of another, but it's all my memory now. The alter fronting in the facility was unaware that the previous alter had self-harmed, and explained to a staff member that they don't self-harm. The staff member pointed out the self-harm on my arm, and that alter was genuinely surprised and at a loss for words. The way I remember that now is that I was confused and at a loss for words, but I can see it both ways.

The staff though could only go by what the details they had. A 15 year old who had a bout of screaming and crying, now seems numb and confused, and has a self-harming habit but is in denial about it. That is probably how they perceived it. I probably would have been diagnosed with BPD had I been older.

I really think professionals need to include memory / lost time in their assessments as a standard practice, the same way they almost always want to assess family history and other things. Cases of DID would likely be caught much early in sometimes.