[WeAreTheBroken]

i am 19 ..so i have dissociation with parts but i don't have DID . so i kept asking a lot of questions . i don't remember what i had asked exactly . but i remember her saying " its theory. you didn't need to know" . oh wait i remember what i had asked . i asked how many parts i have and who are they ...should i change my therapist ??

[Perna]

Everyone dissociates, it's a continuum. When you get engrossed in a book so your mother has to yell at you multiple times to do some chore (been there, done that :-) that's dissociating, you don't hear your mother because you are "somewhere else". When you drive or ride somewhere and are "suddenly" there and don't remember the trip, that's dissociating. If bad things or things you don't want are happening around you and you "tune out" that's dissociating. Some people have really hard/bad things happening so they split off an alter side of themselves to deal with being there and that defense works well so they get kind of stuck. It's all the same person, just a defense the mind has used to help deal with really really bad stuff. I use to live in a fantasy world when I was your age, sort of a similar thing; I was too anxious to deal with the actual world around me and my mind "preferred" making stuff up. However, it took me 40+ years to work my way out of fantasy and back into my actual reality/day-to-day life. Defenses can be difficult when we no longer need them but have been using them so long they are like bad habits. We don't have the knowledge or wherewithal to replace them with something else that works better for now.

Why do you want to change your therapist? Why are you in therapy? If you want to learn to deal with your past and be present for your present :-) your therapist may or may not be able to help you or you may or may not feel you work well with her or not; but I would not necessarily change because their theories were different from my own until I had worked on things their way (since I was in therapy because my ways did not work well anymore?) for awhile and understood what I wanted and how might be a good way to get there, etc.

[BlessedRhiannon]

I think I'd be a little offended at my therapist saying "it's theory, you don't need to know." That would feel demeaning to me. I'd want a better explanation than that.

However, as far as dissociating...it's really something everyone does, it just depends on the intensity of the dissociation and why one is doing it as to whether it's a problem or not. I frequently dissociate when I'm extremely anxious. Basically, my mind checks out of the situation, it feels like I'm viewing the world through a fog and sounds become muted. I'm present enough to respond to a conversation, but I'm not emotionally or really mentally present in the moment.

As Perna said, dissociation is on a continuum. There's the mild dissociation such as daydreaming or getting lost in a book and there's the severe dissociation of DID, and then there's everything in between. You probably fall somewhere in between, which means that you might mentally check out of certain situations. When a therapist is talking about "parts" they are usually referring to certain parts of your personality, not distinct personalities or alters. Being dissociated with certain parts might mean that you can't connect to your feelings as a young child or maybe the part of you that is caring and nurturing or maybe the part of you that is able to handle crisis or whatever.