Im curious to know how you all deal with 'memories'. Specifically, the new icky thoughts / sensations that were never there previously. How do you know what to believe and what to put down to imagination? How do you know what is real / not real?

Cheers

[healingme4me]

I don't have personal knowledge, however, it's my understanding that memories are one of the most complex topics with dissociative disorders. Hopefully, your T is skilled in helping you navigate the process.

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I'm too impatient i think! My head is just spinning and i wish I knew what was real .... right now!

Originally Posted by Justagir1

I'm too impatient i think! My head is just spinning and i wish I knew what was real .... right now!

What's the matter hun?

I barely have memories. I never have a "flood" of memories unless it's from an alter containing them all. For instance, I lived in the Ozarks for 20 years. I barely remember any of it. Peoples faces are blurry, everything in a dream state. Few memories are snapshots, and I got to work for them. Now the other day Hillbilly came front and then everything was crystal clear, real. Now it's faded again.

Memory is a shared thing here. It's limited and fuzzy.

[Ruftin]

(((justagirl))) I'm sorry you're feeling so confused right now. Do you think it would help if you wrote these thoughts and memories down, that way you can review them tomorrow and look at them from a new perspective? I know it's maddening, not being able to tell the difference. I hope you can sort it all out. Welcome to Psych Central!!! I'm glad you're here!!!

Thanks guys I have a real hard time saying, hearing, or writing the actual words of everything going on in my head- Bare with me please!

A few months ago I was experimenting with my head after a therapy session. My T had said a couple of things that made me think he thought I was DID - although he won't diagnose anything. I thought he was crazy, but Im open minded and so this one day I experimented to see if I could assign genders and ages to my moods. Instantly it was like a reshuffle in my head and all these characters became clear and then... Well... Flooding I guess. Its all fuzzy and chopped up in to senses, but essentially I got a 'scenario' from my childhood which I had had no 'memory' of previously. Since then bits and pieces of memories have joined it. Im really struggling to believe I could experience what I saw in these thoughts, and not remember it. Ive experienced quite a lot of trauma as an adult, and so I want to believe that these 'memories' are just thoughts Ive created to deal with the (adult) trauma. But theres this bit of me which is saying 'no! This actually happened'. And my head is just spinning with all the pro/con arguments for believing / not believing these thoughts. I can't stand it. I just want to know one way or another whether these are thoughts, or memories. But I get the feeling Im never going to get that certainty and that drives me mad. Mostly I just want these thoughts gone gone gone.

[lifelies]

Autohypnosis sort of help(ed) me; maybe ask your T for hypnotherapy?
Tom

LOL I kind of tried that one. I asked him once if he 'could hypnotise the **** outta me so I can't remember these thoughts' .... He said no I don't think he does any of the hypo stuff at all - said it doesn't work

[Ruftin]

Originally Posted by Justagir1

LOL I kind of tried that one. I asked him once if he 'could hypnotise the **** outta me so I can't remember these thoughts' .... He said no I don't think he does any of the hypo stuff at all - said it doesn't work

__________

I get Ya hun, on a not so implied dare I revisited some early trauma thinking that it would go okay....well, I spent the next few days disassociating and depersonalizing so much that I ended up in the psycho fridge for a few weeks. That taught me a thing or two about rehashing old trash unprepared. Nvr again, I say.

[amandalouise]

justagirl

I know this thread is a few months old but thought I would add my point of view. when ever I had new memories and didnt know whether they were real or not my treatment provider told me to trust my gut, you see with dissociative disorders reality remains intact. , meaning the person having dissociative problems .....knows whats real and what isnt, knows whats imaginary and what isnt. its not like for example schizophrenia, bipolar and other mental disorders where a person may lose touch with reality sometimes. with dissociative problems sometimes things\I ......feels.....unreal (depersonalization/derealization symptoms) but a person with dissociative problems ....knows....whats real and what isnt. if after being reminded of that diagnostic criteria I still cant tell the difference between reality and imaginary, reality vs unreal my treatment provider calls the symptom a psychotic one associated with my depression\bipolar disorders.

directly related to new memories suddenly coming on my treatment providers called this having flashbacks, recovering repressed memories (which is different than having an alter share that memory, alters only share memories when a person with DID is healed enough to handle having that memory back, part of this happening is called integration where I live, its not usually a traumatic thing here when someone regains a memory that their alters have previously held back because when it happens its just like remembering any other memory a person already has with in their own memory. for me it was like ....oh wow I remember now, so thats what happened, (no sense of unreality) just a bit of ok now that I can remember that crap what do I do now? then for a bit just like any other memory it is on the surface of my thoughts for a while, sometimes I had some nightmares and flashbacks associated with what happened, but eventually just like any other memory based nightmares, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts (which are PTSD symptoms) things got better.

I see by your post you said your treatment provider has not diagnosed you with DID and wont. if you were here in my location that usually means you dont fit the new diagnostic criteria (you can read those in my link at the bottom of my post), my suggestion is go according to what ever your treatment providers have diagnosed you with.

heres a tip that may help you sort out things. DID is a mental disorder where you dont just think about something and it happens. it takes many years of therapy to sort out whether a person has alters, what kind of alters they are (there are many different kinds with many different mental and physical health problems) ....its not as simple as one day thinking Ill try and assign gender and names to feelings and it happens. here in my location we have a psychaitric name for when this happens...creating false memories, creating false mental disorders, creating false alters. (not that thats what you are doing, just stating thats what, you tried would be called here in my location)

my suggestion is dont try to name and genderize your feelings, even if these are alters with DID most times DID alters already have their own genders and names from the moment they were created to handle the extreme trauma's that caused the person to become DID to begin with. if they have names and genders through therapy and your healing process that will become clear. it may take time (sometimes as much as 10-20 years of therapy) before that happens but it will happen if these feelings are DID type alters.

just take it one step at a time and follow your treatment providers, and if you still feel you have a dissociative disorder you can ask your treatment provider for actual diagnostic evaluations for mental disorders.its a long process to get diagnosed with DID that involves mental and physical health testing along with meetings with a psychiatrist.

Hey Amandalouise - Thanks for the reply

Things here have progressed a fair bit over the last few months. Not as much as I want, but re-reading this thread reminds me just how much things have moved on.

My T won't diagnose anything - its not a criteria thing, he just doesn't like labelling people and doesn't find doing so useful! However, he is now definitely following a treatment pattern for Dissociation. Its become way to obvious for me to ignore - like when we were walking along and he said 'Ive not met you before', and I was completely, like 'no, you haven't. And that was the truth. And then five minutes later I was, like 'wooooooaaaaaahhhh - WTF' cos Ive been seeing him nearly a year! I still don't have any names for anyone inside me, so he is naming them for me

But - Im still really struggling with the memories. Because they don't feel like my memories, I just can't trust that they are true. Your comment about 'gut instinct' really rang true to me. I think if it was a memory of falling down and hurting my knee, I would know that I could trust these memories. Because they are memories and I do know that. But because I can't relate to them at all, and it doesn't feel like it happened to me, and if I accept that they are true --- it will just tear the family apart and I would absolutely go to the police --- I can't just go 'oh alright then, I believe them' - because the consequences would be so huge. I have to be 100% sure that they are real. And they just. Well, they just don't feel real, even though I know they are. Its really really confusing. I don't want to accuse anyone of anything so awful without being sure, and even though Im sure. Im not sure. URGH. I just wish I could think of something, anything, else- other than this.