"OSDD" stands for Other Specified Dissociative Disorder. Personally I don’t think having any form of a Dissociative Identity is a disorder. I’m very critical of this term, as it seems to say “there’s something wrong with you”. When the truth is that it’s a very natural response to abuse/trauma in early childhood. What is wrong is what has been done to the child.
However, together with the older term "DDNOS", it’s the only official label to differentiate my condition from that of "DID". Usually I talk about having a Dissociative Identity, because most of the time it’s not necessary to go into more detail. Nevertheless it’s frustrating when health professionals automatically paraphrase this as "DID", making a subconscious assumption. It feels like a lot of what I go through and identify with is made invisible in this society, which just perfectly matches my experience of abuse. The term alone, apart from the disorder label, seems to be express dismissal or disinterest – the “other” form of dissociation. As though there was a right and proper way to have a Dissociative Identity, and one that was just something else. It seems very marked.
With that in mind, there might be other people out there who have the so-called "OSDD" variation of a Dissociative Identity, and maybe they are also frustrated at the lack of talk about "OSDD" in particular.
That being said, I can only talk about my own experience, of course. So it will be about "OSDD 1b", as some people call it. It means the kind of Dissociative Identity that has different personality parts, but without amnesia. There is also "OSDD 1a", which means amnesia, but no or only very slight differentiated parts. But as these aren’t official labels, the definitions are pretty vague and don’t represent people’s experiences very well.
For me, I neither have amnesia of traumatic events (though some are very suppressed) nor between my parts. That means that all of my parts are co-conscious and aware of each other. Switching, in my experience, means that one part is taking over the “steering wheel” of consciousness and speaking/acting. Although I don’t have amnesia, it can happen that one part or a group of parts dissociate, meaning that it feels like they disappeared or are collapsed. Dissociation can also mean that there is no or only a very frail emotional connection to one of my parts. This might be a very suppressed part and it might be difficult to sense what they are feeling.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a lot of articles or blogs on the internet that talk about the different kinds of Dissociative Identities and thus the different challenges that people with these face. As most is about "DID", a lot of sources talk about how to manage amnesia and dissociative fugues. I know reaching a state of co-consciousness is usually a goal of "DID" trauma recovery, but again, I miss sources that talk about how this actually brings its own problems.
Co-consciousness means that my adult part has to try and pay attention to the different needs of the different parts at all times. These needs can be at conflict with each other a lot of the time. Child parts have different needs than teenage parts, parts who hold more trauma have different needs than parts who hold less trauma emotions/memories. It means that I have to try and find compromises all of the time, but sometimes there can’t be a compromise, or I can’t think of one. Taking turns might be an alternative. I also have a general rule of thumb that I don’t engage in activities that are very triggering for one or more parts, but this is also difficult, because I just have so many triggers.
This brings me to another problem – my child parts and other trauma-holders get triggered a lot, simply because I am an adult. That means, just reading something that is aimed at adults or being in a group of adults (which only happens online, due to my extreme social anxiety) can be re-traumatising, because of topics or comments that are not age-appropriate for children (and because my child parts already have Complex Trauma, of course). Mostly, however, this isn’t only about something not being age-appropriate. I noticed that a lot of the time when people talk about “adult” things, they actually mean abusive or unhealthy things, without being aware of that. These things seem to be synonymous for a lot of people, which I find worrying. Usually it also means having a cynical attitude. I think this shouldn’t be so normalised.
Of course I learnt grounding techniques to self-soothe triggered parts, but regulating my emotions is still elusive for me. Maybe it’s something that just needs much more time than 3 years of counselling for someone who has been as abused and traumatised as me, but it certainly is extremely frustrating and restricts my life enormously. I feel very much like an open wound most of the time, because my trauma is always there. It might not be activated through triggers all of the time, but it controls my life, and intrusive thoughts and the abuser voice in my head are always an issue too.
My whole life has been directed by my trauma and my triggers. I am the opposite of a “high-functioning” person, who is so disconnected from trauma-holding parts that they can have a career and social life - I am tragically “low-functioning” (another term I am not fond of, as functionality sounds utilitarian – something that pertains to machines and tools, not persons). I never was able to spend a lot of time around people, because it drained me too much. Today I might call my energy level Chronic Fatigue, if I didn’t know that it was Complex Trauma. At age 25 I had to tell my three “friends” that I wasn’t able to meet them all at the same time any more, because it was just too exhausting. I never was able to have a paid job, because of my extreme social and performance anxiety. I always was socially isolated, because this was my role of the Lost Child in my abusive family. Nowadays, with my trauma fully unleashed, I have no other social contacts than my counsellor (with whom I’m ending at the moment without having found anyone new yet) and it is difficult for me to leave my flat at all. I think my situation is due to a mix of having "OSDD," the survival technique of hiding that goes with being the Lost Child (within the dysfunctional family roles), and probably my natural inclinations as a highly sensitive introvert (INFP, for those who know MBTI).
Another issue of having "OSDD" is the blending of parts. Parts can be really undefined sometimes. I still find myself in the grips of Impostor Syndrome every now and then, doubting whether I really have a Dissociative Identity or if I’m just making all of this up. I felt particularly weird one day when I tried letting my different parts write and draw something to each other. It didn’t feel very authentic, because I could tell that my adult mind was in there with the child parts trying to speak. The handwriting was my adult writing, the drawing was my adult drawing. It felt really fake, trying to express myself like a child or drawing like one. When all parts share the same consciousness and knowledge, things just get mixed up like that all of the time.
By now I can mostly sense my different parts though. Before I started therapy they were much more blended and some of them were completely suppressed. It’s good to have more clarity now about which feelings belong to whom. As my parts were blended before, so also were my needs. This meant that I never could really provide for my different parts, because I wasn’t aware of all of the different things I needed. It was all very murky and undefined. Even though there still are a lot of needs that I cannot provide for nowadays, I’m still glad I know at least to which part they belong. That way we can interact and the part gets a chance to speak (if they can speak).
Sometimes, when I’m dissociating a lot due to a trigger, depersonalisation can happen, meaning that I don’t know who I am any more. I don’t know which part is at the “steering wheel” or what any part is feeling. This is always re-traumatising. Sometimes it also happens that I don’t know which part said something or which part is crying or feeling something, although I’m not triggered and my adult part is fronting as usual.
It is also more difficult to tap into the emotions of parts that presently are fronting or who used to front in the past. This is because these are the parts that learned to appear unemotional on the outside, suppress their feelings, and never express any needs or interests. Subsequently these parts now feel like they don’t have a lot of personality, they feel “thinner”, because they learnt not to take up any space. On the other hand, the parts that were suppressed are understandably the most emotional and their intensity can sometimes “drown out” the fronting parts. When everyone is there the whole time (which is wanted of course), it is difficult to make sure that everyone gets the space and attention they deserve.
I don’t know if this is more common among people with "OSDD" rather than "DID", but I define myself as one person with parts, rather than several persons. It’s something that’s very important for me personally, being connected to my core values. Just thinking about this gives me a strong sense of identity. I’m at my happiest when I feel like “one”. This is very different from parts blending. It feels like the damage that abuse has done to me hasn’t happened for a short while, like I’m as whole and complete as I was meant to be. This only happens when I’m in the flow, which is a term that psychologists and neuroscientists use to describe the brain state that someone is in when they are completely immersed in an activity. Usually this goes hand in hand with a person’s skills and talents. It means no or only very little thinking, mostly just acting on intuition, flowing from one moment to the next. For me this can happen when I’m drawing, painting, singing, dancing, storytelling, writing, or going for a walk in nature. Sometimes even just when I’m listening to music and imagining some sort of visual narrative that goes with the music (usually I do this in the bus, when I can’t sing or dance). I can still be aware of my different parts and they can contribute in different ways to the activity, but they are more connected than at any other time.
I hope this has been an interesting read for other people with a Dissociative Identity or anyone being curious about what it’s like to live with "OSDD".
Comments