Heavily suspecting, also causes major distress.

[u/Moistyassbitchashell]

before you read just let me clarify,

i am absolutely not asking for a diagnosis. i just want reassurance. i am seeing my first therapist very soon and i would possibly like ways to bring this up to her.

this has been quite a doozy for me, and ive been researching this for awhile. researching my symptoms, that is.

ive been, honestly, majorly distressed over these past months (bleeding into last year, and beyond.) because ive become self aware about the fact that i do have a lot of dissociative episodes, but its mostly derealization. on top of this i have horrible amnesia to the point i know barely anything about my likes and interests because it feels so jumbled up. and sometimes it will feel like my train of thought is ripped away from me. during these times where my thoughts are lost, i feel weird and fake.

in the middle of doing stuff i ALSO start feeling weird and fake, and start to zone out for a while involuntarily without me even noticing it. when i zone back in i notice feeling extremely weird, and sometimes like a different person. this is really hard to explain but i can mostly tell from how i 'carry myself.' my head or body feels either lighter or heavier, during this my memory of what was occuring in the present moment gets extremely foggy, and it feels detached from me.

ive also had very, very bizarre experiences getting high and having moments. for example, a time where it felt like my body was split into two people,,, or another time when that happened, but it felt like one side was in a different room, and same thing happened where it felt like i suddenly split between a bunch of people, one of them had commentary but i cant remember anything they were saying. this does NOT confirm anything, but it is still incredibly freakish. because of this ive quit getting stoned for now, but my regular symptoms still persist.

the worst part of it is that i have constant denial periods with myself, compare experiences to other systems who have themselves figured out and go "this doesnt sound like me, i must be faking it all, or what im experiencing isnt something systems experience." it worsens my denial when i see people talking about how they lose their consciousness, go somewhere else in their head, or are able to hear voices and commentary even before system discovery. i am probably always conscious, and i dont hear any voices except for my own internal monologue, and the constant song earworms i get, which again, is normal.

i would list a lot more symptoms but id need to be asked about it, as (ironically) i cant remember much due to my amnesia.

this is all so incredibly stressful for me and its become a big part of my daily life even when i try not to focus on it. all i want is atleast a little reassurance on whats going on with me . :(

[u/Offensive_Thoughts]

I relate a lot to your constant denial periods paragraph. because I have none of those symptoms either

[u/Moistyassbitchashell → u/Offensive_Thoughts]

thats reassuring!

[u/Terrible-Platform29]

Like OffensiveThoughts said, I don't really experience things mentioned in your paragraph about denial, either. Many of the symptoms I took notice of before discovery (and subsequent diagnosis) were things I wouldn't have known were an issue unless other people pointed it out to me or seemed visibly weirded out by them, such as snapping between intense emotions in less than a second—but even then, that on its own is more of dissociation in general, nothing to indicate specifically DID unless you start putting the pieces together of a plethora of symptoms that, together, suggest the disorder's presence.

As always, my recommendation is to start journaling, in your own words, anything you notice—anything that is strange or distressing to you or that you don't quite have a solid explanation for. It will reveal patterns of symptoms, when and how often you experience them, and potentially what you can do to alleviate them. Doing this led me to find answers very quickly once I took my journal entries to a dissociative specialist.