Hi, could you explain something to me about the tosd?/nf There's something I don't really understand. What's really the difference between DID alters and parts from primary and secondary SD? I know you said something about how the earlier trauma happens the less the parts "know" of each other, like neighbours that were separated by a wall, that makes sense. But what happens when a new alter is formed? How comes that after the cut off age you can still develop a new part as autonomous as others? Why don't people with DID just get the usual non-autonomous EP like people without DID would? And what happens when somebody has both DID and BPD for example? Do alters have their own EPs? Or are the BPD parts overridden by DID and become alters instead? Or is it something else entirely?
Join me on this crazy ride, and please keep in mind that I have BPD as I discuss the experience in an extremely blunt fashion.
Please also keep in mind that we're getting into unknowns at this point, parts of the ToSD that really are still theoretical. What I say here could one day be proven wrong and is debated in research.
I said in a previous post that an EP is essentially a flashback. You know the typical, TV show flashback? Fireworks setting off a veteran and they pull their gun and hunker down, lost in terrible memories?
That's an EP in PTSD.
It's PTSD from a car accident activating and making your heart race when you hear a car horn, looking around fearfully.
That state, that heightened awareness, that brief loss of connection to current reality, time and day, is an EP in structural dissociation.
Remember, dissociation is a disconnect.
But these states are commonly known as fragments in CDDs. Single use/purpose alters, there's not much there beyond the single event and train of thought. They not only don't care about current day events but they won't remember anything they learned the last time they made an appearance.
Let's move into BPD, because it's actually right there, next to OSDD on the scale.
Do you know anyone with BPD who goes into... any of the following: fits, rages, breakdowns, screaming matches, suddenly being terrified, and sometimes that person can and will acknowledge the event and sometimes the person can't and won't, but either way, they seem very disconnected from it in some fashion? They don't REALLY remember, it didn't feel like them, it definitely wasn't like them, and they're ashamed and embarrassed, and sometimes they're so early in their recovery that you know they'll just do it again next week?
That's the same thing, the same EP, sitting in the middle of the SD spectrum.
It IS still that same person, they DO remember, they are capable of accepting and acknowledging their actions, even if it made no sense to them.
Now imagine they had dissociative amnesia every time one of these episodes happened.
DUN DUN DUUUN
Now we have osdd 1a (obligatory not real).
Now imagine those states were out so often and had absorbed so much life experience that they were capable of more than just the single thing? They could hold a conversation, have opinions on events, remember things.
Now we have distinct alters, and we're straddling the amnesia criteria. Yes or no?
DID or OSDD 1b?
When you spend so much time dissociating as a child, you maintain this hold on the ability that you are LITERALLY GOING TO THERAPY TO TRAIN IT OUT OF YOURSELF.
That's the goal.
Stop it.
Dissociation has become so maladaptive and normal for you that you maintain the ability to continue to dissociate parts of your life away into pieces. It becomes second nature to do this at the drop of a dime, for anything or any reason. These parts gain autonomy more quickly, the system is gaining awareness, more alters are coming out of the woodworks, fragments are finding a sense of self--
Structural dissociation isn't just a spectrum, but so are the experiences that it encompasses. The states themselves are a spectrum, from EP to ANP, acknowledging the mixed parts found between the two.
For some people, genetics will keep them in primary and secondary SD, maybe others had more support. There's no telling where you'll end up on the spectrum, but what IS known, is that in order to reach tertiary SD, you must have started dissociating in childhood.
There are neurological biomarkers to CDDs, brain structures common across patients that are so established that they could only have come from childhood, during development of the brain itself, affecting areas of memory and emotional development.
You go to therapy to literally rewrite your brain to stop dissociating so much.
So what about people with CDDs and comorbid BPD?
Despite all the spectrum talk, BPD and OSDD are two distinct, different disorders.
Sometimes they're not, and this is where clinicians are still debating. Is BPD The Personality Disorder different from BPD The Trauma Reaction? Is BPD The Trauma Reaction another version of OSDD? BPD is one of only a few PDs with a known and accepted trauma basis, but it's also not always rooted in trauma, meaning it IS distinct, and it doesn't actually matter whether we're talking about the Personality Disorder or the Trauma Response, because it remains possible for BPD to be invasive and constant across the entire system, making it properly comorbid.
Look at OCD, well-known to be connected to trauma, and there's OCD and there's OCPD. The difference in those two disorders is greater but should be BPD be the same way? Are there secretly two forms?
No one knows.
And as for how that's experienced... I don't think there's one way and I don't think the same person will react/handle it the same way each time something comes up. I think the possibilities are endless, and any alter that sits closer to ANP is capable of having their own distinct emotional experiences and phobias, and therefore their own EPs.
But again, this is all theoretical.
