#blackouts and greyouts

[exorsysm]

does anyone else have issues with misremembering things other alters did?

like. you have the memory but its Wrong?

for example, i have a memory of spencer changing our sheets, but in the memory the bed is on the other side of the room. it couldnt be that it was moved and i forgot because that would put the bed in front of our closet and there would be other stuff to move around too.

along with this, several memories that i have from other alters have been changed to be in our house that burned down??? its to a point where i cant tell which happened where.

i also remember these things in third person, so maybe its some kind of grayout? im not sure. help appreciated!

-grey

[multiplicity-positivity]

Dissociative Amnesia

Our thoughts and experiences, and some resources to learn more.

Hello everyone! We’ve gotten a few asks recently wondering about amnesia in dissociative disorders, so we’ve decided to put this post together. We will cover as much as we can about amnesia, and talk about our experience with it.

What is amnesia?

Amnesia is partial or total memory loss that is more severe than common, every day forgetfulness. People may experience amnesia for a wide variety of reasons, such as experiencing a head or brain injury, being inebriated, having an illness or disease that affects the mind, lack of sleep, and extreme stress/fatigue/brain fog. Amnesia (specifically dissociative amnesia) is a really big part of many dissociative disorders (with the exception being OSDD-1B). In dissociative disorders, alters may experience full amnesia (blackouts) or partial amnesia (greyouts).

What are blackouts?

A blackout is when a person or alter experiences a jump in time, or finds that they cannot recall key events from the past. Their memories may feel fragmented, incomplete, or literally “blacked out.” Coming back from a blackout can be overwhelming, scary, and disorienting.

For us, blackouts look like: seemingly “snapping awake” suddenly with no recollection of what we had been doing. Coming to in odd places, like the grocery store or the park or the library, with no idea how we got there or what led up to that point. Feeling like we are jumping forward in time (it’s Monday today, but I blinked and it’s Thursday now). Large gaps in memory, especially memories from our childhood. Fragments of memories may remain as factual information (EX: “I know we went to the store yesterday, but I don’t remember anything we bought or any of the details”), or there may be no lingering information at all (EX: “I can’t remember what happened yesterday and there’s food I didn’t buy in the fridge”)

What are greyouts?

A greyout is an experience of partial amnesia, and the term covers a broad range of experiences. It may mean that a particular aspect of a memory was forgotten, or that you feel emotionally, physically, or otherwise detached from a memory. The memory may exist, but it feels hazy or incomplete when you try to recall it.

For us, greyouts look like: feeling emotionally or physically detached from memories. Able to recall the past but it seems shaky, foggy, hazy or unclear. Retaining some details in memories but not others. Memories feel like a film, or like something that we heard about in a story, but not something that actually happened to us.

How can I tell the difference?

Telling the difference between blackouts and greyouts can be quite tricky! In general, for our system, if we’re able to recall events with some clarity, there isn’t any amnesia. If we can recall only pieces, or feel like the memory isn’t ours at all, it’s a greyout. If our mind is just blank regarding a certain memory, or we can only recall what others have told us, rather than the events themselves, it’s a blackout.

Can I experience amnesia without knowing it?

Yes, and we actually thought we had a pretty good memory before learning about our dissociative disorder and the amnesia that comes along with it! This is because our mind tends to fill in the gaps that it can’t explain or understand. These pseudomemories, or projections, led us to believe our memory was healthy and normal. We’ve since learned that many of the memories we took for granted were just projections from our brain trying to fill in gaps and help us function to the best of our ability. It’s something we had been oblivious to for decades, but at this point we are very aware of how unstable and unreliable our memory is. It is a part of having a dissociative disorder!

Can dissociative amnesia heal/Can my memory improve if I have amnesia?

We think so, yes! Our therapist has assured us that memory can be repaired and healed with treatment and time. Patience and self-compassion can both aid in this process! We ourselves are trying to heal, and our hope is that as our system becomes more integrated, we will be able to recall more memories and recover details as a result. It is a difficult process though, and one that we are actively pursuing through therapy! Some may be able to heal their dissociative amnesia without therapy, but for us, having outside help and a support team is essential to our healing journey.

Sources/Links to Learn More:

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions, or to share corrections or concerns! Thank you so much for reading, and have a great day!

(Image ID:) A pale orange userbox with a cluster of multicolored flowers for the userbox image. The border and text are both dark orange, and the text reads “all plurals can interact with this post!” (End ID.)

[yellow-computer-mouse]

Our "I have IRL/DA's" to "Oh I'm just a system without amnesia" pipeline was CRAZY 😭

YES SAME 😭😭😭 we Realized eventually but sigh ,,,

[omegalawliet]

I think what took me so long to realize/accept that i have DID is because I thought you could only have blackout amnesia but there other types of amnesia

[deargravity]

so tired of the evil alter trope. if you’re still writing stories (thrillers, mysteries or otherwise) where the plot twist is Dissociative Identity Disorder, i’ll show up to your house and kill you

[boneless-mika]

“OSDDID is…” *proceeds to only describe DID*

[systemofuncertainty]

Fuck. Well if today didn't prove it to her/ anyone still denying... idk what will

[brokenmachinemusings]

having a complex dissociative disorder sucks cuz on one hand. what if im faking? on the other i feel like im constantly stucj in a cirlce of trauma responses (fight or flight but also fawn and freeze). and i forget stuff about my favorite media months. if not weeks or even days after indulging in it. yes i have more “pressing matters” abojt my amnesia but using media is a way to cope for me and forgetting about said media feels like im forgetting a part of myself? or how to cope? its odd. i dont know

[rin-and-jade]

Types of Amnesia

Diagram created by me

General criteria for amnesia:

Memory loss

Confusion

Inability to recognize familiar figures/places

Difficulty recalling names or places

Not remembering where you went

Worser ability to remember things that had happened Post on how to handle these kinds of amnesia: click here!

Generalized Amnesia Where a person completely forgets everything about themself and have no recollection of what, where, and who they spoke to. This can describe a blackout switch and may still recognize who they are.

Localized Amnesia Where a person is unable to recall a specific/series of event from the whole, which creates an incomplete picture of the situation. For example, remembering childhood but not the abuse.

Selective Amnesia Where a person only lost some and retain the rest, forgetting parts yet not all of them. This can describe greyouts as it grasps some information/sensory yet not enough to tell what exactly happened. One example is playing the phone and unable to recall what occured, only to jump its memory right to being at bed.

Emotional Amnesia Where a person has an intact memory and it's details on what had happened, but do not remember what the event feels like (e.g. was scared, happy, etc.). One description is that you're watching something that didn't happen to you, because you don't feel like being in the scene itself.

Continuous Amnesia Where a person fails to retain full parts of the event/day, for a set period of time (can vary from minutes to days) and create an accumulative, small bits of selective amnesias, continuously, leaving many gaps in a chronological timeline. This usually happens in times or stress, or abuse.

Fragmented Amnesia Where a person has an unrelated, and/or disjointed memories that does not go with the timeline's order, creating confusion and difficult to grasp the cohesive picture of what truly happened. Emotional amnesia may be present in this type. Bonus for systems:

Amnesia barriers Where a person fronting is not able to recall other alter's memories, which is a form of retrograde amnesia and compartmentalization. Because the fronter will only retain any information before switching out with the next one, the rest experiences anterograde amnesia as it cannot form and remember those memories, unless being coconcious or cofronting (even though, this is not always guaranteed).

Take notes that amnesia can still happen outside system things due to comorbidities like anxiety disorders or depression, this does mean systems are bound to experience more amnesia compared to non-systems folks out there.

Do you have any discussions about this? Or would like to describe your own way of seeing these different types of amnesia? Or have more to add? Feel free to tell them here!

- j

[thecatspasta]

LMAOOOO

Oh god I was just reminded of the fucking amongus sustem with imposter syndrome joke me and some friends have UHHH

Every now and again I think about Jon having dissociative identity disorder and I think that just needs to happen. Please he has the childhood trauma for it (Im not talking about Mr Spider I mean his grandmother and parents deaths). I fucking need this. For me specifically and noone else

[syscultureis]

Sysculture is realizing you've been relying on other systems' word for accurate information rather than science.

And sure, shared experiences are helpful—but we've listened to too many systems talk about the difference between blackout, greyout, and emotional amnesia, and even asked for resources from these systems, and nobody seems to have a reliable source. Not that we can't believe other systems, but we really don't want to be relying on knowledge we quite literally only got from the internet.

(the best thing we've found on our own is DIDresearch.org and it is NOT very reliable)

I used to have sources, unfortunately I have forgotten what I used when I was researching ;-;

Eventually I'll find them again and share them here in just never front any more

[apollortaylor]

So these tags were on my post about amnesia. And I want to address it. Short answer, no you do not. You need blackout amnesia (assuming that’s what you meant by full amnesia) in order to have DID.

DID is not the only way to have a system, OSDD 1-b has very little or no amnesia and still has alters, so does p-DID.

Though I do want to differentiate between the different types of amnesia.

Emotional amnesia: where you don’t remember any emotions that you were feeling during the event.

Greyouts: when you remember what happened but have no memories of it, as if someone told you about the event but you weren’t there.

Blackouts: when you don’t remember anything about what happened, and you often don’t remember that you missed something.

I’d also like to mention that amnesia often doesn’t happen in the moment, often the memory will fade over a short period of time until they’re gone. At least that’s what I experience.

Anyways, here you are @sprites-your-cal

Hope this helped

-Apollo

[multiplicity-positivity]

can blackouts happen after the memories been made?? like i dont blink and suddenly its 5 hours later, but i do forget pretty much everything that happens, except for plain information like i went to a mall, and ill remember nothing else about that event.

hey, we’re not sure what this question means entirely.

if a memory was made, and you have access to that memory, it’s probably not a blackout.

if a memory was made, and afterwards you don’t have access to that memory anymore, it could be a blackout. in our system sometimes memories remain, but they’re held on to by certain alters. for example, i might start playing video games, then suddenly realize i’m in bed with teeth brushed and chores finished. i might not be able to remember doing the chores or brushing our teeth, but a part of our system (likely ralsei) would have that memory. in this way, the memory remains, but i still experienced a blackout.

we can also have events that happen where, afterwards, we can recall some factual information about what happened without being able to recall any sensory details. this sounds kind of like what you’re describing? and we’ve also called this a blackout in the past.

we’ll link our post on dissociative amnesia here, which has some of our experiences with blackouts vs. greyouts:

honestly that post ^ is going to have more in depth info about blackouts than we can really describe right now. sorry about this.

🐢 kip and 🦇 alucard

[thaltro]

Can i ask what an osdd 1b system is? And does that mean youre a system as in a DID system? /genq

OSDD-1b also known as other specified dissociative disorder is basically DID with less full black out amnesia.

Most people with OSDD-1b still have mental greyouts, emotional amnesia, and selective amnesia- but not full blackouts most the time

Technically we are officially placeholder diagnosed with UDD (which means “unspecified dissociative disorder” which is an emergency diagnosis- it can mean different things for everyone but for us it means our psychiatrist is figuring out which type of system we are because we do blur the lines of DID and OSDD-1b and my amnesia has to be fully evaluated and recorded to determine that)

but some of us just personally prefer the label OSDD-1b? For them It feels safer not acknowledging how extreme our amnesia is- but I don’t really relate to it personally so I might just change our descriptions to say “system” instead because we do experience blackouts- and from the medical professionals I’ve talked to they lean heavier on us having DID instead of OSDD.

-

But yes we are a system because we experienced a verity of extreme traumas as a child before our ego states could fully integrate. DID and OSDD form the same way through childhood trauma. important to note that it’s important to look at the other variants of DID (poly fragmented, HC-DID, P-DID) just as it’s important to look at OSDD/1a/1b

but yes systems within secondary or tertiary dissociation have many ways to present.

(I’m trying to discourage myself from writing paragraphs on DID because FUCK it’s my hyperfixation)

[malformed-encephalon]

☆Debunking Fakeclaiming

I've been lurking around places like r/fakedisordercringe, r/systemcringe, and as a system we've been around many fakeclaimers. I've seen a lot of reasons systems get fakeclaimed, so I've decided to go and debunk the common ones I've seen to hopefully give some people who've been affected by fakeclaiming some peace of mind.

Reason 1: 'You can't have a high headcount/over 100 alters.'

Rebuttal: You absolutely can have a high headcount. There is no limit to how many alters you have. Some systems split far easier than others, and some systems split in large amounts. Systems who typically split in large amounts and split easily are polyfragmented systems, and are completely valid. You can have thousands of alters. There is no limit. The DSM-5, nor any other diagnostic tools, say there's a maximum amount of alters you can have.

Reason 2: 'You can't have non-human alters.'

Rebuttal: You absolutely can. Alters can genuinely be anything, and just because an alter isn't human doesn't mean it's not real. I'm not human myself and don't identify with the body in the slightest- neither does my insys husband- yet me and him are still here, aren't we? It doesn't matter if you have alters that aren't human, they're still real and you're still valid. Again, the DSM-5 doesn't say you can't have non-human alters.

Reason 3: 'You can't be aware you're a system if you're a minor.'

Rebuttal: This is false, you absolutely can be aware you're a system when you're a minor, and being a minor doesn't mean you're not a system. Whilst it's true OSDDID is typically covert and isn't normally diagnosed until adulthood, OSDDID forms in childhood. Also, the internet exists, and an increasing amount of young people are gaining access to the Internet, meaning information on OSDDID is publicly available, and meaning more minors are able to discover OSDDID and realise they could have it. Nowhere in the DSM-5 is there a specific age you have to be to get a diagnosis.

Reason 4: 'You're self-diagnosed, you can't be a system.'

Rebuttal: We've seen people say this about all disorders and disabilities, not just about systems, and in the end it's completely untrue. Self-diagnosis is entirely valid as long as the person does a large amount of research and fact-checks their sources. The DSM-5 and other diagnostic tools are also available to the public. There are many people who aren't able to get diagnosis due to a variety of reasons, meaning the only thing they can get is self-diagnosis, and this is completely fine. If you're self-diagnosed, you're still valid.

Reason 5: 'You can remember things from when other alters have been fronting.'

Rebuttal: Being able to recall things from when others have been fronting does NOT make you fake. In OSDD-1B, the main part of it is that you experience little-to-no amnesia. And in the DSM-5 of DID, it says you can experience both blackouts and greyouts (greyouts being where you experience amnesia from when others have fronted, but you can remember parts of it.) Nowhere in the DSM-5 does it say you need 100% blackouts 24/7. Even if you don't experience full amnesia, and if you can recall things that happened when you weren't fronting, you're still valid. We know people diagnosed with OSDDID who experience greyouts rather than blackouts.

Reason 6: 'Your switches aren't obvious enough.'

Rebuttal: OSDDID is a covert disorder. Switches aren't SUPPOSED to be noticeable, that's the whole point of the disorder. Switches aren't going to be dramatic things where the body passes out and wake up with a gasp once someone switches. Also, nowhere in any diagnostic criteria nor in the DSM-5 does it say you must have noticeable switches.

I might make posts similar to this one in the future, but i can't promise it. But it would be nice if people could reblog this to help out some other systems in need of this information, and to help remind people that fakeclaimers spout nonsensical bullshit that they shouldn't listen to.

if you guys have any of your own stories about fakeclaiming, or have any fakeclaiming reasons you'd like me to post more rebuttals to, feel free to send them in our ask box, and I'll get to them when i can.

[yellow-computer-mouse]

I'm the anon who asked about writing someone who's a system. I have another question.

Is it possible for a system to remember things from when someone else was fronting?

~🌕 < signoff in case I have more questions.

yeah! it all depends on how high your amnesia barriers are :) for example, we have "greyout" amnesia, so we remember some things from when someone else was fronting, but not everything! some plurals have "blackout" amnesia, so they can't remember ANYTHING, and others don't have any amnesia at all! you can also have different amnesia barriers between different headmates; i might be able to remember everything from one headmate, but nothing from another ^^