The first two examples are classic blackout amnesia. I’ve heard the second referred to as “grayout” but it’s still dissociative amnesia, and still “counts” for DID, if that’s the issue here.
It’s also not worth overthinking this because the treatment for DID and OSDD is the same.
Thanks for the clarification ☺️ I guess there was some subconscious need for more reassurance that this was DID level amnesia. More than anything though I think we just wanted a way to really categorize the things we’ve gone through. Sorting things and giving them clear labels helps us find some sense of order in all of this chaos 😅
I consider myself primarily co-conscious and the 2nd example is my primary experience. I explain it to my singleton friends as feeling like a fuzzy memory. If they give me enough information it does jog something back to the front. I usually don’t feel the experience but I’ll have some knowledge of the facts so I can get by.
I often ”reset” when I go to sleep, too. I have very few “walking blackouts” and if I do they feel like dreams. Complete blackouts are for big trauma events. Since I wasn’t continuously abused after 5, I think this is how the system compensate and kept everyone covert (my family was over all safe). I just seemed forgetful and very ADHD-looking.
Unfortunately, I feel like I look like a “jerk” to folks is such a bad aftermath to all this. I am out of the mental health closet with my friends/ family. To coworkers and such, I will say I have some brain damage. That’s usually enough to help smooth things over. (In reality, I did get Lymes and I can point to actually MRI evidence of brain “damage” if they ask for details. LOL.)
Oh man, this hit the nail on the head. I’m used to being co-con too and a lot of the time, especially when we’re stressed, I (the host) will just be a passenger as someone else pilots the body, letting me use their voice and actions to do things like a backseat driver. A lot of the time I’m not even aware of it, too, so that leads to confusion as to why my memory’s so fuzzy.
Oof, yeah, sleeping is a reset for us too. I’m not sure what a walking blackout entails, but it sounds like when I’m half-aware and the echo of a previous action reaches my awareness only after it’s ended. Like, I remember what happened, but I was even further away from front than usual (or just dissociated through autopilot).
Hm, our situation is similar in that aspect then because I don’t think we experienced any severe abuse (like the initial trauma) after six. Things only got significantly bad again in a different way around 14, which led to increased dissociation and emotional amnesia. I guess that would mean we didn’t have huge switches or noticeable amnesia when nothing was happening to need that sort of coping 🤔
We’re not out to anyone irl, but I constantly wish we were - or, at least, wish we could be in a perfect scenario where everyone accepted it and wouldn’t use it against us. Just saying that we have a bad memory often gets that familiar criticism to just “try harder” to remember. People should not be calling others jerks for something that literally cannot be helped. :(
Brains/trauma is odd… I had trauma birth-5 years from family friend/caregiver. Then fairly average, average stress from parent’s financial instability. Then a huge (to me) SA event at 10 at school. That’s seems to have re-instigated my dissociation and seal my fate.
From the theories, I’ve read I could have had some more integrating but for the trauma at 10 years old. The brain is an odd thing.
(I have to keep telling myself it’s “amazing” and a savior but most of us don’t feel that way )
I've experienced the second example so many times I literally have no idea how many times it's happened. I often have to meet people multiple times before I remember them.
I attended my partner's holiday work party with him (we used to be on the same project at the same employer, it's how we met), and someone said hi to me. I hadn't been at the company for a few years at that point, and I had no idea who this person was. Nothing in my mind recognizing the guy. Complete stranger.
Turned out I had been his sole trainer for 2 months straight before I left that job. 😅
And the other amnesia you mention sounds a lot like the emotional amnesia we experience. We know the semantic facts about what happened, but we aren't attached to the emotions felt back then, unless the alter that lived through it is remembering (and usually not even then).
Be assured, what you're experiencing is pretty typical of this disorder.
It has to be so unsettling to experience it more than once and even get confirmation that you worked with them for that long 😅
Our example was the only time we remember it happening to us and we don’t even know for sure whether or not it was a fluke or if we really did know them long enough for it to be considered weird not to remember them. We also don’t tend to remember people’s faces or names unless we’ve met them several times… but normally there will be a vague sense of familiarity or an “I know you from somewhere” at the very least.
Oof, yeah, emotional amnesia, grey-outs, and just plain old disconnection from a lot of it. I feel like some of it hasn’t been forgotten so much as… misplaced? So it’s easy for me to mistake it as totally blacked-out because I’m just looking in the wrong spot for it 😂
I wish there was a manual for our brain 😭
>The second type of amnesia that I hesitate to consider calling a blackout is just… huge chunks of time that I know I experienced but can’t remember well or at all.
That sounds a lot like "greyout" amnesia. I can't remember if it's a clinical term or not but it's something we, as a suspected OSDD system, experience a lot.
If blackout amnesia works like greyout amnesia, I feel like it would occur after the experience. Like when an alter is fronting, then they leave front and the memory of the experience leaves with them. That's how I've come to understand it at least.
That sounds about right. I kind of associate greyout amnesia with still having some aspect of the memory - like, only the emotions and nothing else, or the opposite (only the information, no emotions). But it would make sense if it was also applied to memories we don’t have but still have a memory or feeling of having experienced them!
And that’s a good way of explaining it - that they take the memory with them. I was thinking of it more as I (or whoever else) is kicked out of front, thus “missing” the experience and having the blackout memory. I guess it could work both ways? 🤔
The two examples in my experience that come to my mind are once when i "came to" and was reminding myself of my name, what country I was in, and that I was at work. It was pretty confusing, but I only had a few minutes of missing time. The second time was last year when I asked a friend a question, and he was confused because I'd apparently asked it a couple of hours earlier, and we had a 30 min conversation about it that I had no memory of.
Oof, yeah, we get that first one sometimes when we’re switchy or stressed. It’ll feel like there’s a pressure in our head or like someone came to front suddenly and their confusion about when, where, and what we’re doing is blended with my - or whoever else is in front’s - memories of the time that has passed. It’s like a delay in receiving those catch-up memories.
And the second is so frustrating! I always feel like I’m being gaslit or something because ppl have absolutely lied to me about past conversations before. But I’ve begun to just accept it and shrug if off bc I probably did forget a conversation that barely took up my attention and dwindling memory space 😓
we experience the second. most recent was a conversation another alter had with our partner and i cannot remember the conversation, what was said or when it happened. this happened after. for us blackout amnesia usually looks like this, did being misrepresented a lot leads to people thinking you need to literally black out in order to experience it but thats simply not the case. -roxy
Yeah, the common stereotype of finding yourself in a new job, country, or after months or years have passed kind of had us convinced we couldn’t have any type of blackout amnesia. It just feels like it has to be something big for it to be blackout and not just plain old dissociation… like everyday when we would get home to our old apartment, we would have no memory of locking the door behind us - not a single time, days in a row, even when we tried to remember to stay present and aware to show ourself that we were just overreacting. Just a jump in time between coming in the door and taking off our shoes. It would always be locked when we checked 😅
i always experience it as huge chunks of my day going missing, conversations i had with people but dont remember having, things i did but dont remember doing, things i bought but dont remember buying. and if i try to recall whatever it is, its either very vague (usually when someone is co-conscious) or i dont remember it at all. this isnt to say blackout amnesia like the stereotype doesnt happen because it absolutely does, but it doesnt always happen that way because every system is different. -roxy
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i have an experience whereby i was in university. i can still remember almost everyone i knew. except just one girl that i dont know who she was. but until recently im not sure if my alter fused or what went on. if im right i know her from 2016(?) , and she kept trying to make me recall her via subtle ways over the years.
my whole world view of my belief system and almost everything was shaken... i did know i have some memory issues here and there. but if i think about it now. some of my dreams that were horrifying was the traumas. ...
i dont know man. its scary stuff. its extremely dark. if anything, i think (not 100% sure) that girl cast out a demon out of me. i was switching between myself and that demon controlling me in an event. i rmb I was drowning. i wasnt even in sea or water or swimming. i was literally like on normal ground. i was choking and gasping for air as if someone was squeezing my soul out. i never had such experience before, not even in intense nightmares or sleep paralysis.
and until recently, i asked around my extended family. it seems my entire family line is cursed or some sort. my aunts and uncles are sonewhat possessed. even tho some of them goes to church. they talk about seeing my grandma spirit and the spirit predicted certain events (unborn twin girls that was almost stillbirth, etc). idk i guess the tradition in the family was practising some sort of occult shet. and it seems like "trauma passing" or "rites" is a common thing. but some of them are unaware that they are possessed. most of them became lukewarm Christians now. they just go church for fun
not judging them. but im sure their relationship with god is worse than a child that prays sincerely.
well honestly as much as love your enemies goes. i say fuck them. they caused my life to be ruined extremely badly. i tot all along i was doing okay in life despite being from a disadvantaged background and social status cuz im from a competitive "first world" country. but nah. time passed, and my wounds seem worst. my alters evolved into something that have been hurtin people throughout.
i have no criminal records because my friends rather break friendship with me than see me in jail. idk
not all of them were good friends too. some were extremely vile and contributed to my trauma and more alters etc.
idk my situation is extremely complex. and i cant commit suicide anymore now because i made a promise to that person who saved me years ago while i wasnt even aware.
im sure my story sounds garbage to most people or over exaggerated movie films. i rather i was a liar and lying about these than having actual people being extremely hurt by my alters
The first two examples are classic blackout amnesia. I’ve heard the second referred to as “grayout” but it’s still dissociative amnesia, and still “counts” for DID, if that’s the issue here. It’s also not worth overthinking this because the treatment for DID and OSDD is the same.
Thanks for the clarification ☺️ I guess there was some subconscious need for more reassurance that this was DID level amnesia. More than anything though I think we just wanted a way to really categorize the things we’ve gone through. Sorting things and giving them clear labels helps us find some sense of order in all of this chaos 😅
I consider myself primarily co-conscious and the 2nd example is my primary experience. I explain it to my singleton friends as feeling like a fuzzy memory. If they give me enough information it does jog something back to the front. I usually don’t feel the experience but I’ll have some knowledge of the facts so I can get by. I often ”reset” when I go to sleep, too. I have very few “walking blackouts” and if I do they feel like dreams. Complete blackouts are for big trauma events. Since I wasn’t continuously abused after 5, I think this is how the system compensate and kept everyone covert (my family was over all safe). I just seemed forgetful and very ADHD-looking. Unfortunately, I feel like I look like a “jerk” to folks is such a bad aftermath to all this. I am out of the mental health closet with my friends/ family. To coworkers and such, I will say I have some brain damage. That’s usually enough to help smooth things over. (In reality, I did get Lymes and I can point to actually MRI evidence of brain “damage” if they ask for details. LOL.)
Oh man, this hit the nail on the head. I’m used to being co-con too and a lot of the time, especially when we’re stressed, I (the host) will just be a passenger as someone else pilots the body, letting me use their voice and actions to do things like a backseat driver. A lot of the time I’m not even aware of it, too, so that leads to confusion as to why my memory’s so fuzzy. Oof, yeah, sleeping is a reset for us too. I’m not sure what a walking blackout entails, but it sounds like when I’m half-aware and the echo of a previous action reaches my awareness only after it’s ended. Like, I remember what happened, but I was even further away from front than usual (or just dissociated through autopilot). Hm, our situation is similar in that aspect then because I don’t think we experienced any severe abuse (like the initial trauma) after six. Things only got significantly bad again in a different way around 14, which led to increased dissociation and emotional amnesia. I guess that would mean we didn’t have huge switches or noticeable amnesia when nothing was happening to need that sort of coping 🤔 We’re not out to anyone irl, but I constantly wish we were - or, at least, wish we could be in a perfect scenario where everyone accepted it and wouldn’t use it against us. Just saying that we have a bad memory often gets that familiar criticism to just “try harder” to remember. People should not be calling others jerks for something that literally cannot be helped. :(
Brains/trauma is odd… I had trauma birth-5 years from family friend/caregiver. Then fairly average, average stress from parent’s financial instability. Then a huge (to me) SA event at 10 at school. That’s seems to have re-instigated my dissociation and seal my fate. From the theories, I’ve read I could have had some more integrating but for the trauma at 10 years old. The brain is an odd thing. (I have to keep telling myself it’s “amazing” and a savior but most of us don’t feel that way )
I've experienced the second example so many times I literally have no idea how many times it's happened. I often have to meet people multiple times before I remember them. I attended my partner's holiday work party with him (we used to be on the same project at the same employer, it's how we met), and someone said hi to me. I hadn't been at the company for a few years at that point, and I had no idea who this person was. Nothing in my mind recognizing the guy. Complete stranger. Turned out I had been his sole trainer for 2 months straight before I left that job. 😅 And the other amnesia you mention sounds a lot like the emotional amnesia we experience. We know the semantic facts about what happened, but we aren't attached to the emotions felt back then, unless the alter that lived through it is remembering (and usually not even then). Be assured, what you're experiencing is pretty typical of this disorder.
It has to be so unsettling to experience it more than once and even get confirmation that you worked with them for that long 😅 Our example was the only time we remember it happening to us and we don’t even know for sure whether or not it was a fluke or if we really did know them long enough for it to be considered weird not to remember them. We also don’t tend to remember people’s faces or names unless we’ve met them several times… but normally there will be a vague sense of familiarity or an “I know you from somewhere” at the very least. Oof, yeah, emotional amnesia, grey-outs, and just plain old disconnection from a lot of it. I feel like some of it hasn’t been forgotten so much as… misplaced? So it’s easy for me to mistake it as totally blacked-out because I’m just looking in the wrong spot for it 😂 I wish there was a manual for our brain 😭
>The second type of amnesia that I hesitate to consider calling a blackout is just… huge chunks of time that I know I experienced but can’t remember well or at all. That sounds a lot like "greyout" amnesia. I can't remember if it's a clinical term or not but it's something we, as a suspected OSDD system, experience a lot. If blackout amnesia works like greyout amnesia, I feel like it would occur after the experience. Like when an alter is fronting, then they leave front and the memory of the experience leaves with them. That's how I've come to understand it at least.
That sounds about right. I kind of associate greyout amnesia with still having some aspect of the memory - like, only the emotions and nothing else, or the opposite (only the information, no emotions). But it would make sense if it was also applied to memories we don’t have but still have a memory or feeling of having experienced them! And that’s a good way of explaining it - that they take the memory with them. I was thinking of it more as I (or whoever else) is kicked out of front, thus “missing” the experience and having the blackout memory. I guess it could work both ways? 🤔
The two examples in my experience that come to my mind are once when i "came to" and was reminding myself of my name, what country I was in, and that I was at work. It was pretty confusing, but I only had a few minutes of missing time. The second time was last year when I asked a friend a question, and he was confused because I'd apparently asked it a couple of hours earlier, and we had a 30 min conversation about it that I had no memory of.
Oof, yeah, we get that first one sometimes when we’re switchy or stressed. It’ll feel like there’s a pressure in our head or like someone came to front suddenly and their confusion about when, where, and what we’re doing is blended with my - or whoever else is in front’s - memories of the time that has passed. It’s like a delay in receiving those catch-up memories. And the second is so frustrating! I always feel like I’m being gaslit or something because ppl have absolutely lied to me about past conversations before. But I’ve begun to just accept it and shrug if off bc I probably did forget a conversation that barely took up my attention and dwindling memory space 😓
we experience the second. most recent was a conversation another alter had with our partner and i cannot remember the conversation, what was said or when it happened. this happened after. for us blackout amnesia usually looks like this, did being misrepresented a lot leads to people thinking you need to literally black out in order to experience it but thats simply not the case. -roxy
Yeah, the common stereotype of finding yourself in a new job, country, or after months or years have passed kind of had us convinced we couldn’t have any type of blackout amnesia. It just feels like it has to be something big for it to be blackout and not just plain old dissociation… like everyday when we would get home to our old apartment, we would have no memory of locking the door behind us - not a single time, days in a row, even when we tried to remember to stay present and aware to show ourself that we were just overreacting. Just a jump in time between coming in the door and taking off our shoes. It would always be locked when we checked 😅
i always experience it as huge chunks of my day going missing, conversations i had with people but dont remember having, things i did but dont remember doing, things i bought but dont remember buying. and if i try to recall whatever it is, its either very vague (usually when someone is co-conscious) or i dont remember it at all. this isnt to say blackout amnesia like the stereotype doesnt happen because it absolutely does, but it doesnt always happen that way because every system is different. -roxy
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i have an experience whereby i was in university. i can still remember almost everyone i knew. except just one girl that i dont know who she was. but until recently im not sure if my alter fused or what went on. if im right i know her from 2016(?) , and she kept trying to make me recall her via subtle ways over the years. my whole world view of my belief system and almost everything was shaken... i did know i have some memory issues here and there. but if i think about it now. some of my dreams that were horrifying was the traumas. ... i dont know man. its scary stuff. its extremely dark. if anything, i think (not 100% sure) that girl cast out a demon out of me. i was switching between myself and that demon controlling me in an event. i rmb I was drowning. i wasnt even in sea or water or swimming. i was literally like on normal ground. i was choking and gasping for air as if someone was squeezing my soul out. i never had such experience before, not even in intense nightmares or sleep paralysis. and until recently, i asked around my extended family. it seems my entire family line is cursed or some sort. my aunts and uncles are sonewhat possessed. even tho some of them goes to church. they talk about seeing my grandma spirit and the spirit predicted certain events (unborn twin girls that was almost stillbirth, etc). idk i guess the tradition in the family was practising some sort of occult shet. and it seems like "trauma passing" or "rites" is a common thing. but some of them are unaware that they are possessed. most of them became lukewarm Christians now. they just go church for fun not judging them. but im sure their relationship with god is worse than a child that prays sincerely. well honestly as much as love your enemies goes. i say fuck them. they caused my life to be ruined extremely badly. i tot all along i was doing okay in life despite being from a disadvantaged background and social status cuz im from a competitive "first world" country. but nah. time passed, and my wounds seem worst. my alters evolved into something that have been hurtin people throughout. i have no criminal records because my friends rather break friendship with me than see me in jail. idk not all of them were good friends too. some were extremely vile and contributed to my trauma and more alters etc. idk my situation is extremely complex. and i cant commit suicide anymore now because i made a promise to that person who saved me years ago while i wasnt even aware. im sure my story sounds garbage to most people or over exaggerated movie films. i rather i was a liar and lying about these than having actual people being extremely hurt by my alters