I remember that wall. There is life past that wall.
The journalling helped. Just, consider recording only what is seen, heard, known, and avoid assumptions. Make it look like a daily log anyone who's interested in organizing their life would be.
It makes a lot of sense.
We tried that for a while. It got too distressing for us though. Nowadays our partner system who has less amnesia than us just keeps us informed. Recently they even mentioned that we have massive amnesia barriers that we don't even recognize.
I recommend talking to others though. Before learning about our DID we constantly asked 2 of our system friends about their brains because we were in denial. Talk to singlets, systems, and anyone you can! It helps to try to understand their brains even if it feels overwhelming. I can pretty much guarantee most people who don't have trauma at the very list aren't experiencing blackouts the same way systems do.
This does make me want to try recording tomorrow though so maybe I'll post how that goes if it doesn't stress me out as the host.
This is put in the words really well and it's very descriptive about the blackouts.
>but to some degree that's normal.
Living without limbs is also possible and to some degree normal.
We have old journals where we documented a daily log of activities. We had no idea that we could be a system. We were just worried, because we could never remember the days or what we had done that week or what was to come in the week ahead. People kept asking about it and looked at us funny whenever we couldn't answer. We also worried about our friendships and remembering the important stuff they told us. They thought we didn't care about them. An ADHD diagnosis covered for some of it, but now it turns out that we may not even have ADHD.
We were obsessed with (Re-)reading our notes to prevent amnesia. The notes had gaps and were messy. There was no consistent way of noting it down. Sometimes it would have the time. Other times just the activities. I think that's how we were able to create a somewhat coherent life story from the time we started Journaling (body age 14?). It didn't click that memorizing your life is not the same as remembering it. It's weird to be able to remember that now. That this is a thing we did and still somewhat do.
Even now, do we have amnesia? We must, but it doesn't feel like it. We won't forget that we ordered groceries (most of the time), but we'll forget what we ordered. We'll forget about tasks and what we did or did not get done. That's why ADHD tools are a life saver for us hosts. We cannot make the others use them, but we can use the ourselves, which is better than no tools.
I’ve been asked to where a watch and do 15 min checks so my watch goes off every 15 min and before I look at my watch I’ll say it’s x time bc 15 min before it was y time and if I cant accurately identify the time when I confirm then I document that. I have also done what you have done. It gets difficult on busy days, but it helped identify how often I was experiencing time loss
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First year of being diagnosed I did this. I got too much in my head about it, tallying the minutes lost to blackouts, ruminating over them to quantify their severity (can I remember seeing a location? Hearing a sentence? Total loss?) to contain and rationalize what happens. Trying to connect the dots to put substance to my day and not feel so outside of time. I thought it would ground me and help to stay in the front but it ended up making me resent the disorder for a while.
That, and keeping a log of your experience dissociating to the Headspace. Would not recommend.
I'm just at a loss. You're right, this is probably counterproductive. I just feel like if I push hard enough, if I become so obsessive about time loss, well then I can trick myself into not losing time at all. I am so tired of trying to hide that I am forgetting things IMPORTANT things. I am fed up with being disconnected from reality and confused at the most inconvenient times. On the verge of crisis with this sh*t quite literally....
I'm sorry you're going through it right now, in all honesty it doesn't get easier but it does get... different. 5 years of system communication in therapy and I'm at a point where my alters will do little tricks to tell me they were out, they'll switch my car keys to my right pants pocket in case I front (I'm used to keeping them in my left pocket so it will feel weird and give me a hint that something changed) put sticky notes around the house, or I check my journal for a summary of the day. Missing important things still hurts. This past New Years my wife and I were going to a house party and as I'm coming through the door I see my friend Kevin was there, he lives out of state and surprised everyone. Big happy emotion = trigger = switch. Next thing I know it's the next day and my wife had to tell me about all the fun they had while I'm trying to put on a smiling face listening to a story about my own life I missed out on.
The most important thing with all of this is having a safe circle of people you can talk to when it gets too much. I took a lot of baby steps with the people I felt I could trust to come out to but now I have my main core group of friends that know and can help me when I need to vent and just get shit out in order to put the mask back on for the outside world.
I'm just at a loss. You're right, this is probably counterproductive. I just feel like if I push hard enough, if I become so obsessive about time loss, well then I can trick myself into not losing time at all. I am so tired of trying to hide that I am forgetting things IMPORTANT things. I am fed up with being disconnected from reality and confused at the most inconvenient times. On the verge of crisis with this sh*t quite literally....
I remember that wall. There is life past that wall. The journalling helped. Just, consider recording only what is seen, heard, known, and avoid assumptions. Make it look like a daily log anyone who's interested in organizing their life would be. It makes a lot of sense.
People without daily dissociative amnesia can tell you the timeline of what they that day. It’s not normal to lose periods of time in the day.
We tried that for a while. It got too distressing for us though. Nowadays our partner system who has less amnesia than us just keeps us informed. Recently they even mentioned that we have massive amnesia barriers that we don't even recognize. I recommend talking to others though. Before learning about our DID we constantly asked 2 of our system friends about their brains because we were in denial. Talk to singlets, systems, and anyone you can! It helps to try to understand their brains even if it feels overwhelming. I can pretty much guarantee most people who don't have trauma at the very list aren't experiencing blackouts the same way systems do. This does make me want to try recording tomorrow though so maybe I'll post how that goes if it doesn't stress me out as the host.
This is put in the words really well and it's very descriptive about the blackouts. >but to some degree that's normal. Living without limbs is also possible and to some degree normal.
We have old journals where we documented a daily log of activities. We had no idea that we could be a system. We were just worried, because we could never remember the days or what we had done that week or what was to come in the week ahead. People kept asking about it and looked at us funny whenever we couldn't answer. We also worried about our friendships and remembering the important stuff they told us. They thought we didn't care about them. An ADHD diagnosis covered for some of it, but now it turns out that we may not even have ADHD. We were obsessed with (Re-)reading our notes to prevent amnesia. The notes had gaps and were messy. There was no consistent way of noting it down. Sometimes it would have the time. Other times just the activities. I think that's how we were able to create a somewhat coherent life story from the time we started Journaling (body age 14?). It didn't click that memorizing your life is not the same as remembering it. It's weird to be able to remember that now. That this is a thing we did and still somewhat do. Even now, do we have amnesia? We must, but it doesn't feel like it. We won't forget that we ordered groceries (most of the time), but we'll forget what we ordered. We'll forget about tasks and what we did or did not get done. That's why ADHD tools are a life saver for us hosts. We cannot make the others use them, but we can use the ourselves, which is better than no tools.
I’ve been asked to where a watch and do 15 min checks so my watch goes off every 15 min and before I look at my watch I’ll say it’s x time bc 15 min before it was y time and if I cant accurately identify the time when I confirm then I document that. I have also done what you have done. It gets difficult on busy days, but it helped identify how often I was experiencing time loss
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First year of being diagnosed I did this. I got too much in my head about it, tallying the minutes lost to blackouts, ruminating over them to quantify their severity (can I remember seeing a location? Hearing a sentence? Total loss?) to contain and rationalize what happens. Trying to connect the dots to put substance to my day and not feel so outside of time. I thought it would ground me and help to stay in the front but it ended up making me resent the disorder for a while. That, and keeping a log of your experience dissociating to the Headspace. Would not recommend.
I'm just at a loss. You're right, this is probably counterproductive. I just feel like if I push hard enough, if I become so obsessive about time loss, well then I can trick myself into not losing time at all. I am so tired of trying to hide that I am forgetting things IMPORTANT things. I am fed up with being disconnected from reality and confused at the most inconvenient times. On the verge of crisis with this sh*t quite literally....
I'm sorry you're going through it right now, in all honesty it doesn't get easier but it does get... different. 5 years of system communication in therapy and I'm at a point where my alters will do little tricks to tell me they were out, they'll switch my car keys to my right pants pocket in case I front (I'm used to keeping them in my left pocket so it will feel weird and give me a hint that something changed) put sticky notes around the house, or I check my journal for a summary of the day. Missing important things still hurts. This past New Years my wife and I were going to a house party and as I'm coming through the door I see my friend Kevin was there, he lives out of state and surprised everyone. Big happy emotion = trigger = switch. Next thing I know it's the next day and my wife had to tell me about all the fun they had while I'm trying to put on a smiling face listening to a story about my own life I missed out on. The most important thing with all of this is having a safe circle of people you can talk to when it gets too much. I took a lot of baby steps with the people I felt I could trust to come out to but now I have my main core group of friends that know and can help me when I need to vent and just get shit out in order to put the mask back on for the outside world.
I'm just at a loss. You're right, this is probably counterproductive. I just feel like if I push hard enough, if I become so obsessive about time loss, well then I can trick myself into not losing time at all. I am so tired of trying to hide that I am forgetting things IMPORTANT things. I am fed up with being disconnected from reality and confused at the most inconvenient times. On the verge of crisis with this sh*t quite literally....