
My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was - sz4kerto
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-night-my-girlfriend-forgot-who-i-was-944
======
csense
Whenever I hear about stuff like this, I wonder: Is there anything the failure
modes of the human brain allow us to deduce about the software architecture?

Maybe memories are stored in some partitioned database, and one of the
partitions is always stuff relating to "my identity", and somehow this
partition can get unlinked and temporarily re-linked to a blank one, which is
discarded after a few hours.

Hmm, maybe this is actually a feature, not a bug. In ancient times people
often had to deal with being abused, enslaved, etc. Maybe being able to blank
out really unpleasant experiences helped young slaves tolerate their abuse
without becoming totally insane or going the route of suicide or rebellion
(assuming the latter's success rate was negligible, rebellion would basically
be the same as suicide from the standpoint of evolutionary pressures). Which
ultimately helped them survive and reproduce.

Then once the mechanism exists, it can still get triggered naturally in modern
humans if they're abused, or artificially by drugs.

~~~
api
Hacker News: where a very human story of empathy and healing immediately turns
into a discussion of what this can tell us about the brain's computational
architecture.

~~~
driverdan
That's how problems like this get solved.

~~~
normloman
I get that, but you gotta think about how it comes across. A bunch of computer
nerds treating a mental disorder like a math problem. It's seen as insensitive
to dive into the problem like that, without a little acknowledgement of the
human side of the equation. That's how it comes across to an outsider reading
this.

But don't get me wrong, empathy won't always lead to better treatment. Science
will. And we should ask these questions. Although you're comment "that's how
problems like this get solved" is too optimistic. HN is not a forum for
neurologists. I doubt a bunch of programmers on a comment section are going to
to make a breakthrough in understanding this disease.

~~~
hueving
Empathy won't lead to a discovery, period. This isn't a forum to discuss our
feelings about articles like this. The entire point of the 'hacker' culture is
about fixing and changing things through action.

~~~
normloman
1\. This is a problem that hacker culture doesn't have the resources to solve.
2. I'm not saying you need to have empathy. I'm saying if your first reaction
to mental illness is to turn it into an engineering question, don't be
surprised if you come off as insensitive to outsiders.

~~~
soylentcola
Perhaps that's why that avenue of discussion was brought up here (and not at a
meeting of DID sufferers or with a loved one currently in a dissociative
state).

I think that while empathy and support are incredibly important with regard to
topics like this, it can also be productive to consider new outlooks or
avenues of discussion that may contribute to the greater understanding of the
problem.

I think a "hacker" centric discussion forum is an appropriate place to
consider possibly novel ways of approaching these sorts of issues precisely
because it exists as a place to address problems analytically.

I wouldn't find it appropriate or in good taste to start such a discussion in
a DID support group or with a family member who suffered from that disorder
but that's the whole point of more "academic" discussion forums. They're a
place to talk about things that might be seen as gross or improper in polite
conversation but that nevertheless may be useful in tackling the underlying
issue.

------
mst
You ... get used to it. Familiarity, is, as mentioned, the key - narrating the
location and why it should be familiar and when they moved there and ways they
can prove it's theirs (e.g. keys fitting the front door) tend to help quite a
bit. A dissociated mind still wants to believe it should be where it is and
that that makes complete sense, it just doesn't have the data available.

Eventually, with luck, you can get them to remember who you are reasonably
quickly, and things get a lot less complicated - having the intelligence to
call her ex as a substitute was a brilliant move on the author's part.

~~~
m_mueller
Wouldn't something like polaroids be a good strategy, you know, like in
Memento? When she forgets everything, have her grab photos from her bag, one
together with every person she trusts, one of her in front of her building,
one of her in front of a street sign for her neighbourhood. Also, a pocket
mirror if she really forgets who or even what she is.

~~~
mdisraeli
Disassociating doesn't always work like played out in films or TV, sadly. It's
terrifying, and often find it hard to trust what's in front of you.
Familiarity is needed, as it acts to ground you, and a key part of this is to
feel safe on a number of different levels. Simply having photos alone may not
be enough, unless those photos are something you regularly examine and
experience.

Grounding is a common method of dealing with anxiety and other mental health
issues. The idea of finding your place, finding familiarity, centring
yourself. Something you are very used to doing normally and when safe is
important, as is having that also associated very strongly with being safe.

For some people, photos will work well for this - they might capture moments
with strong association with safety and happiness. Some people may be able to
instead use an object, a talisman of sorts.

For others, or for when the disassociation is worse, a single grounding method
may not be enough. It's about building the complete story - getting home and
watching something familiar. The grounding only happens from weight of
evidence.

Finally, there's something you don't hear talked about much. Coming back
around from disassociating can be utterly terrifying in it's own right. Both
as one tries to return, and after coming back. Having multiple entirely
different means to ground helps with this.

~~~
m_mueller
Fascinating, thanks for your reply. I can imagine photos to not be enough. For
me the association is strongest with scents and noises/music - this gets me
back to a memory the fastest. I guess this is similar with this disorder?

What's hard for me to imagine is how this disorder works physically, at least
with the primitive model I have on how the brain works. The synaptical
connection are still there, otherwise the person would have a permanent memory
loss, right? So my guess is it has to do with brain chemistry? If that's the
case, couldn't it be medicated?

~~~
pbz
Everyone is different; scents, music, words, touch, observing the
surroundings, listing the colors they see, focusing on breathing, holding a
familiar object (like a rock), etc. can all be used -- whatever works.

You can use drugs to help with the symptoms, but you can't "fix" it with
drugs. There's nothing physically wrong with a DID patient (although they do
tend to suffer from various "side effects" that are linked with the disorder).

As far as how it works physically, we don't know for sure. Yes, the memories
are stored and can later be accessed. Part of the problem is that these
memories are stored without being processed or are "stored" with a part that
is unable to make sense of what happened. So instead of dealing with what
happened the patient relives the trauma over and over again. What's
interesting is that one part can "share" a memory with another part. When this
happens it's like "remembering" something you've never experienced.

~~~
m_mueller
Because I'm a computer engineer I naturally tend to look at the brain in terms
of how computers work. I hope I'm not being disrespectful, but this thing
sounds eerily like memory corruption. I mean like corrupted pointers that lead
to a garbage addresses. If it's something like that I can well imagine why
it's so difficult to deal with - after all you can't 'reinstall' a person's
mind. Maybe in the future, if/when we get more precise model's of someone's
thoughts, patients could be trained to not go to these corrupted places in
their minds? Say, with some sort of neurological videogame that reassociates
the paths towards these memories with something bad, and paths that branch off
and don't lead to a corruption with something good? I'm most certainly a fish
out of the water here, but I like to throw ideas around and keep sort of a
childlike naivety about it, if you don't mind.

~~~
pbz
Like I said in a previous post, it's not a bug, it's a feature. Think of it
like a kernel driver that monitors the currently running application. If it
detects that the application would overheat the CPU it swaps it out to disk
and runs another one that could handle the situation better. Now, this is a
very bad analogy, but at least it should give you the sense that it is a
coping mechanism, not a flaw. I'd suggest to avoid comparing the brain to a
computer. That analogy would hold you back more than help you.

~~~
mdisraeli
For the record, I'm completely in agreement with "feature, not a bug". For
myself and many people I know, mental health stuff makes more sense when
looked at like that, and it also matches up with core concepts of Cogitative
Behavioural Therapy. At some point your brain needed certain bits of code to
survive, but unfortunately the brain can't be cleanly patched once those times
have passed (which is also an awful analogy, but works enough for this).

------
pavel_lishin
> _She 'd wake up with no memory of what had happened, and wouldn't want to
> know._

This was probably the most painful part of that whole story. Naturally, I was
thinking of my wife and myself as the main characters throughout the whole
story, and while it would be incredibly difficult to go through this, it would
be harder if she woke up the next morning and didn't want to acknowledge or
know about what had happened the night before.

(Unless I'm totally misreading that sentence, and the author is saying
something different.)

~~~
pbz
It's difficult and unpleasant to acknowledge what happened. By doing so they
would have to acknowledge and deal with what happened in the past (that caused
DID in the first place). Part of therapy is to take them on this road. They're
able to cope with reality because they're able to compartmentalize their
history. Hearing about it, while necessary, weakens the coping mechanism that
helped them survive. So you can imagine why they wouldn't want to hear about
it.

~~~
crazypyro
I've seen that "exposure" therapy is often used in the treatment of OCD,
another form of anxiety disorder. Patients with OCD often have an anxiety
about something and use their quirks and rituals to avoid/ignore the anxiety.
To help them cure their rituals, they must actively try to experience the
often very extreme anxiety that some situation puts them in. Is the treatment
similar in cases of DID?

~~~
pbz
No, that would be too much for a DID patient and could lead to further
splitting (creation of new parts). First step is to teach them to stay
grounded, to stay present and not take the easy path and dissociate (i.e. go
away). When struggling to stay present someone with DID may exhibit OCD
patterns -- scratching, grabbing, fiddling with fingers etc. -- all without
realizing. However, when this happens there's usually some level of co-
consciousness with a part that is suffering or has OCD. So in this case the
OCD behavior would "belong" to that part while some other part is "out"
(they'd actually both be "out" at the same time). It's a very complex
disorder.

~~~
crazypyro
Hmmm, interesting. Thanks for the response.

------
hga
Echoing others, this is very real. I had a girlfriend who did this a few times
when we were together for a couple of years, although she never was as bad as
this, she for whatever reasons (being brought up early by a couple of loving
grandparents?) trusted me. The "parental" role thing is pretty much how it
always started, and it ended in exactly the same way, after going to sleep
she'd wake up normally and not remember any of it. She did always regress to a
previous point in her life, at least at one time associated with a very
stressful past event. No drug of any sort associated with it, and I suppose
it's good it only happened when at home. There was no obvious trigger.

------
spiritplumber
I'll believe it because I had to be "that person who drives people home after
a rave" a few times in my life. There's "I forget my name" drunk, but that's a
joke, then there's people who are having a semi-bad trip who literally forget
who their friends are. It never got as bad as this fortunately.

Use dissociatives responsibly, be in a familiar environment etc.

~~~
o0-0o
I do not agree that having a semi-bad trip makes you forget who your friends
are. In fact, I wouldn't call that a semi-bad trip, at all. If someone forgets
their friends while tripping (and I assume you mean on acid) they actually,
likely, never liked that person enough anyway. Breaking down the barriers and
lies is what it does.

~~~
Squarel
I would assume as the poster is talking about raves, they are referencing
ketamine or MDMA, and both of these are more than capable of making you forget
who you are, let alone who your friends are.

~~~
anextio
MDMA is not capable of making you forget who your friends are, except maybe in
serotonin-syndrome inducing doses.

Primarily it is an empathogenic[1] drug, not a hallucinogen.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathogen-
entactogen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathogen-entactogen)

~~~
Squarel
MDMA absolutely is. I am well aware that it is not ordinarily associated with
hallucinations or disassociation. I can also absolutely say that you do not
need a serotonin-syndrome inducing dose to forget who your friends are, who
you are, or have no idea why you have are sitting on a bed (your own), or who
it belongs to. It can also make you hallucinate and "disappear" into your
hallucination for several hours, before you pop back into reality. Finally,
and not really disassociation and more hallucination, it can make the faces of
your friends morph into other peoples and even appear featureless.

Or so I have heard.

~~~
yarou
I'm sorry but that is complete bullshit. Granted each drug has a subjective
and unique experience due to the nature of your biochemistry, but by and large
the _experience_ of MDMA is relatively harmless. [0]

The serotonergic effects are a completely different matter.

[0]
[https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal109...](https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal109.shtml)

------
MrJagil
I was curious with the difference between schizophrenia and DID, since most
mental illnesses overlap tremendously. If anyone has a better source, you're
welcome to elaborate:

"Schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are often confused, but they
are very different.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness involving chronic (or recurrent)
psychosis, characterized mainly by hearing or seeing things that aren't real
(hallucinations) and thinking or believing things with no basis in reality
(delusions). Contrary to popular misconceptions, people with schizophrenia do
not have multiple personalities. Delusions are the most common psychotic
symptom in schizophrenia; hallucinations, particularly hearing voices, are
apparent in about half of people with the illness."
([http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-
dis...](http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-
multiple-personality-disorder?page=2))

~~~
lizard
You might think of it like this:

DID: Alice is talking to Bob. At some point in the conversation Bob
"dissociates" and is replaced by Charlie. Charlie is in the exact same place
as Bob and sees all the things Bob was seeing, but Charlie wasn't here before
so no idea where here is, how he got there, or who is talking to him. Alice
doesn't know anything's wrong at first but Bob (now Charlie) seems
uncomfortable and doesn't know things Bob does, like where they are, how they
got there, or who she is. Sometime later the dissociative episode ends and Bob
comes back in place of Charlie. Bob has no idea what transpired during the
episode because Charlie was there instead, but recognizes Alice and remembers
things they had done together.

In this case there is no difference in Bob's or Charlie's ability to perceive
the world, nor are either of them perceiving something which Alice could not
(barring other conditions). There are no hallucinations or delusions; Bob and
Charlie appear to "know" different things, as if they were different people.
Of note, Bob and Charlie identify differently but its debatable whether they
are (or should be treated as) different persons, hence the change of name.

Schizophrenia: Alice is talking to Bob. Bob is talking to Charlie. Charlie
isn't really there, but Bob is either unaware or doesn't mind. Bob's
conversation with Charlie may be benign or it may involve plots to take over
the world, in either case from Alice's perspective Bob experiencing something
which isn't real.

This of course is just a possible scenario for schizophrenia, and if Bob is
being treated for schizophrenia he may be better able to control or cope with
Charlie. In schizophrenia cases Charlie does not exist to any third party
observation; Bob is not identifying as Charlie nor is Charlie an alternate
persona. Bob believes he is himself and that Charlie is communicating with
him.

~~~
hessenwolf
Ah. Good explanation.

So that's why my ex didn't remember things. I read about it, but I could never
quite put my finger on what the dissociation stuff was.

------
will_brown
It does not sound all that unlike certain types of Alzheimer's episodes.

In addition to seeing my Grandmother completely forget who I was from one
minute to the next, more bizarrely she would time warp and believe she was 16
years old and seemingly remember everything/everyone at that time of her life
very accurately. Not until now, granted I was very young then, did I ever
realize that at times she may have not known who she was, but sitting here now
I am sure she would have experienced that as well.

~~~
MollyR
That's very interesting. Alzheimer's and this kind of disassociation disorder
could be affecting the same "pathway" or something. Thanks for this comment!

------
ChuckMcM
There was a novel[1] about a woman with DID and a psychologist who tied that
to suppressed memories of sexual abuse. I wondered after reading it whether or
not it was a thing or just a creative fiction. I found at least one paper [2]
which indicates that DID can be a symptom of prior abuse.

[2]
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/01452134939...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014521349390088M)
was cited by a

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Memory-Greg-
Iles/dp/1441808183](http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Memory-Greg-
Iles/dp/1441808183)

~~~
duaneb
Note that the concept of 'suppressed memories' is not very well accepted by
the psychological community. People can be convinced that they remember
something they don't, so it's extremely difficult to tell between a
'suppressed' memory and a false one.

------
Nanzikambe
A touching story, props to the author for his measured response -- the
experience has to be difficult not to internalise or freak out from.

I wonder if the DID experience is the same as "ego death" as described after
ingesting large amounts of psychedelics?

~~~
oofabz
There is a whole class of drugs that induce disassociation, including DXM,
PCP, and Ketamine. They are more confusing and disabling than psychedelics
like LSD.

------
sjtrny
Does anyone have an explanation for why she can tell a dissociatve episode is
about to happen? It strikes me as really odd.

~~~
mapt
Because there is a self-aware, behavioral component to not just dissociative
events, but to most maladaptive psychiatric disorders. This component may be
small or large - the fact that we've medicalized the disorder simply says that
the overall pattern of behavior is causing severe problems, nothing about
cause or self-awareness. The people afflicted with them are not simply normal
people who are possessed by a random event, like a lightning strike; Their
expectations, moods, and desires play a role in the onset of crises. The
temptation is to split their agency, their consciousness and their
participation into a boolean and say they either have it or they don't have
it, that psychiatric disorders must be entirely out of someone's control
before we give them a pass on "But it's their fault" and "Just snap out of
it!". But allocating problems this severe to the realm of personal
responsibility and purely voluntary deviancy is not very helpful to anyone.

The most infuriating thing about having a family member with a personality
disorder, my own dive into ab-psych, is that they can turn it on and off in
certain contexts, they can be triggered and they can avoid being triggered,
but not in a context where you need them to, where you beg them to. It is a
way in which they are acting, an unhealthy coping mechanism and pattern of
thinking that colors all their thoughts - but it is not something that they
_can 't_ control or observe at all, only something that they don't usually
control or observe well enough to avoid causing problems. There is no clear
line between their disorder and their voluntary behavior and their
personality, it is one unified whole.

Do we hate them for that? What's the use? Who does that help?

Before we started medicalizing these things, we relied on public shaming and
ostracism to control them until the person's behavior got so out of control
they became a danger. While it's a cruel way of doing things that we have
_wholeheartedly_ rejected, it was surely at least somewhat effective, because
of this voluntary component, because telling yourself "Keep it together" is
not a 0% effective treatment technique. The country did not suffer from a 26%
mental illness rate in times past, and I think it's foolish to assume this
represents pure underreporting. Mental illness at least partially conforms to
the outlines of the society which defines it - immigrants to the US find
themselves substantially healthier than the US on arrival, but develop
statistically average rates of US mental illness over time; Symptoms shift
from whatever is recognized in their home country to symptoms more in line
with US-recognized disorders.

We have decided, rightly or wrongly, that classifying these things according
to an insurance-industry handbook, and doling out pills like candy, and
pretending these people have no control whatsoever over their disorder in
order to relieve them of social responsibility for it, is the correct
approach. While the truth is more complex, I tend to find this more humane
than some other national attitudes towards the topic, and I have no better
approach to offer.

Edit: The problem is, when you acknowledge that these things are maladaptive
and problematic behaviors that someone presently does not control well, rather
than some kind of seizure that completely robs one of consciousness... you get
people popping up who want to go back to the boolean definition again and deny
there's any problem whatsoever, claim that they're doing this for attention
and faking it and horrible hoaxers who are sucking the precious fluids from
our society... There may be too many douchebags out there for a nuanced view
to prevail. I see this post already has one,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9147386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9147386)
. The problem is the boolean: A 100% controlled premeditated affectation must
represent a malicious manipulator, the theory goes, while a 0% controlled
mental illness strikes a victim, all victims, like a bus hitting an innocent
pedestrian. But the mind isn't so simple, and the onus of personal
responsibility is not a cure-all.

~~~
Klinky
Such rose-colored glasses of the past you have. The handling of the mentally
ill in the past was atrocious. Hiding mental illness away is very convenient
for society, but it doesn't fix the actual problem.

People who suffer brain trauma often end up with it affecting their
personality. It is quite possible that many personality disorders have a
physiological basis, one that is not as simple as someone "just stopping their
behavior".

~~~
mapt
Yes, we hid them away, we ostracized them, we caged them, we lobotomized them,
we murdered them. I'm not downplaying that by any means.

The physiological and the psychological and the sociological interact to
produce psychiatric problems in the forms and rates we see. The fact that
we've diagnosed a person with a disorder means that the person is failing to
control their condition as well as we desire; It's wishful just-world thinking
to believe they have no control whatsoever on the one hand, but on the other
hand condemning them for failing to control their condition is needlessly
cruel. Some of it is in our head, because the place we exist is in our head.
There is still a person living in that head, and they deserve our empathy
regardless of why they're behaving the way they're behaving... no matter how
much our normal interpersonal script demands culpability of them at times.

We suspend culpability _not_ because "It's the disease doing it, not the
person" \- the two are not easily separable - but only because culpability has
proven not to be effective at enhancing control in the past with this person.

~~~
Klinky
The harsher treatment isn't really what I was talking about. People were often
said to be "off" or "crazy", but no one talk about it much. Likely mental
disorders __were __underreported because there was less interest in
understanding them and more ostracization of those who were open about it.
Classifying mental disorders does not mean we 're letting people off the hook.

Like I posted previously, physiological factors with the brain can cause poor
emotion and impulse control. Abuse during the developmental stages of the
brain could also wire the brain in strange ways that, again, someone may not
be able to actually control.

Saying society is "soft" and these people are "weak" doesn't solve anyone's
problems.

------
6d0debc071
I wonder whether carrying a photo of you and her, perhaps several photos in
different situations with different people from her social circle, would be
useful.

~~~
pbz
Depends on the part/alter. Some have a different image of themselves and
wouldn't recognize "themselves" in the picture. Some may think you're trying
to trick them.

~~~
6d0debc071
Hmm, tricky. What about carrying a mirror as well; do folks retain the ability
to recognise themselves that way?

~~~
pbz
Depends on the part. The brain can alter what they see in the mirror. For
example if they think they're fat and you show them in the mirror that they're
not they still may not believe you. It's a fascinating topic.

------
chrischen
She should record a video of herself reminding herself so she doesn't have to
rely on George.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
Would she recognise that it was her in the video?

~~~
chrischen
If she can remember George, she can recognize herself. Otherwise, George
wouldn't work either, anyways.

------
peterwwillis
This has happened to me with two different people. Both times my face
apparently transformed into the face of the person's father - while we were
sleeping together. Only one of the times was after the person smoked pot. It
was scary to say the least, and scarier when the first one ran to the kitchen
and grabbed a chef's knife.

Life lesson: before you get in a relationship, ask about any history of mental
disorder or medications being taken. Some people don't tell you about these
things until they happen.

~~~
vertex-four
That is closer to PTSD than dissociating. Long story short, it sounds like a
flashback, and feels precisely like the trauma is happening again. They can
last anywhere from a few seconds to a longer period of time.

~~~
peterwwillis
You're right. It just feels like a similar scenario, and (contrary to other
posters' insistence) neither is faked nor dependent on drug use. As the guy in
the scenario it's also the same things going through your mind; dangerous for
both parties, no good solutions.

------
jonalmeida
Wow, such an amazing read!

> A few hours after she first told me, I took some time to read up on
> dissociative identity disorder.

Shouldn't he have read up on DID in detail when she first told him about
rather than when the episode happened? Seeing this mid-way through the event
makes it seem like he didn't really do his homework beforehand.

> at its worst, she said, she would not only struggle to identify who she was,
> but even what she was; unable to process the concept of her own humanity.

This is a really interesting state to study; not knowing your own humanity.
Are there any good references to DID that one without prior knowledge can
read?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for clarifying. I'm not sure why the down votes though,
it was genuine confusion.

~~~
Dylan16807
Downvoting doesn't always mean you did anything wrong, it can mean you have
incorrect information and the comment being gray is there to warn people.

~~~
jonalmeida
A comment should suffice in that case, shouldn't it?

~~~
Dylan16807
Comments are fine but take much longer.

------
DigitalSea
I think it takes a strong person to be able to handle a situation like this. I
would like to think I could be this strong if my fiancee suffered from the
same condition, but I think I would find it too heartbreaking to be
temporarily forgotten like this.

The part about his girlfriend calling her ex at his requst was a courageous
act from her current boyfriend. It must be hard knowing that your girlfriend
in her dissoaciate state can forget you, but remember her ex boyfriend enough
to trust him. That would be so hard for many people to handle.

A really great story. It is great to see a story hit the front-page that isn't
neccesarily about programming (not in the software sense).

------
UhUhUhUh
Being late in the discussion, I wondered how many times in the thread the word
"unconscious" had been used. Well, it came back as "zero". This, I think,
reflects what happened to psychology/psychiatry over the past, say, 30 years
and at least in the US: the generalization of an homomorphism between the
brain and the current state of data computing. Although a very useful concept,
the "unconscious" has been dropped because it doesn't fit in this morphism. Or
does it? Low level processes are somewhat "unconscious" to computer operation.
There are memory leaks and odd stuff happening with memory blocks that one
could see as the expression of an unconscious. But, as some people pointed
out, this aspect is only a sort of malfunction of the system. The beauty of
the unconscious in the brain is that it is productive. Strictly whatever it
does serves a purpose: it can be protective (as in dissociation to tolerate
trauma), it can be optimizing (as in handling survival functions in the
background), it can be productive (by constantly scanning its database and I/O
for patterns, convergences, anomalies, etc.) and, I believe, it is the very
source of creativity. To the point that I wonder if data computing might not
benefit from emulating such a sub-architecture... As people pointed out, we
all dissociate, somehow, in our days and that’s because we have an unconscious
that does all that. It has been a huge loss for psychology to lose the
unconscious to the data computing model. And it might be a huge loss for data
computing to not try to emulate our unconscious.

------
ghshephard
What I don't get - if this girlfriend could remember an ex-boyfriend, why
couldn't she remember she had DID? And, if I could remember I had DID, I would
probably have coping mechanisms for dealing with complete strangers who
indicated they where my close intimates, and coping with physically being in
places that I did not remember. Think about Memento, and the person who
couldn't form new memories, but had a number of devices/systems for letting
him know who he could, and could not trust.

On the flipside, if I _couldn 't_ remember I had DID, and all of a sudden a
stranger appeared in my room, and said, "Gordon, you are having an episode.
Please check your wallet to remind you that we are close, and call your mother
to confirm." \- I'm pretty certain that as long as the person stayed calm, and
physically away from me, I would adjust to this new reality pretty quickly.

Trying to physically restrain me though, as the author did in this story,
would probably be a very bad approach towards de-escalating my freak out.

~~~
pdpi
Real life is not a film. We're talking about a disorder that's likely caused
by a traumatic event and is associated with _proper bad_ anxiety. You don't
necessarily respond to logic in those cases, you respond to things to which
you have a strong emotional response -- and which will, hopefully, comfort
you.

Reversely, when you see someone in that state rushing for the door, knowing
they'd be helpless to deal with actual risks, 'de-escalating' is the least of
your concerns. "I must keep her safe, with me" is the only thing in your mind.

------
theVirginian
This is an interesting story and if I were a psychiatrist I would be
fascinated to study how consciousness can be separated from the ego. In
addition, props to the writer; call me selfish all you want but I could
absolutely never love someone in a romantic way who had this kind of issue.

~~~
delinka
They say that you can't choose who you love. I'd suggest that whether to love
them wouldn't be an option. You might fall in love, later learn about your
SO's diagnosis, and decide you wanted to change yourself to continue to be
with them.

However, knowing that you're not personally equipped to deal with these things
and that the "object of your affection" might be better off without you is a
certain kind of wisdom.

~~~
theVirginian
Exactly, I think I might continue to love that person but I don't think I
would be equipped to deal with an event such as the author described and then
continue to be "sexually" attracted to them. (not sure that term quite
captures it but you get the point)

~~~
mod
I like imperfect stuff. It has more character.

I can't really see how finding a flaw in a person could change my attraction
to them (particularly sexually, though I know you said that wasn't exactly
what you meant). Especially this flaw--it's not a moral failing. Moral
failings are, indeed, distasteful.

If it's 3 hours per year, I can certainly handle that to be in love.

------
mirimir
That is an incredibly moving story, and it's wonderful how well it turned out.
But the author acted irresponsibly. As soon as he realized that his friend was
dissociating, in the taxi, he should have called 911/999/whatever and informed
the driver of the situation. If this had been a stroke or heart attack, that
would have been the obvious move. Why not for dissociation?

~~~
hga
The girlfriend gave him very specific instructions about what to do if/when it
happened, and reinforced them just before it happened with " _Promise me that
whatever happens, you will not let go_ ".

I cannot imagine any scenario in which involving the authorities would have
improved the situation and not violated her instructions, which he implicitly
if not explicitly had agreed to follow. Most specifically "not let go", and
getting her back to familiar surroundings, which per the account and others'
accounts is important in stabilizing these events when they go that far.

~~~
mirimir
The situation could have gone to hell, and one or both of them could have been
injured or killed. Given that risk, his friend's "instructions" were plainly
unworkable. If she had run in front of a car and been killed, for example, her
estate might have come after him.

If she doesn't want the authorities to be involved, he would need at least a
medical power of attorney. And even that would not not protect him from police
responding to an apparent abduction. The only strategy to prevent that is to
involve them from the start.

------
jes
I searched this thread and didn't find any reference to "Internal Family
Systems" therapy. If anyone has any thoughts on IFS, I'd be interested in
hearing them. I'm currently reading a book ("Internal Family Systems Therapy"
by Richard Schwartz.

Additional info here:

[http://www.selfleadership.org/](http://www.selfleadership.org/)

------
fsiefken
When I was experimenting with polyphasic sleep there was a moment of around 30
seconds while waking up where I was conscious and aware but not knowing who I
was or where I was until I figured out I was lying in the gras instead of
standing somewhere. Them I wondered how I'd gotten there and my memories
returned.

~~~
lisnake
I used to experience same things after I lose consciousness (happened a lot
when I was a teenager). I remember one case, when upon gaining consciousness I
was pondering for a whole minute what kind of strange metal columns I see on a
horizon. After what felt like a mountain of memories falling onto me, I
realized that I'm lying on a floor of a lecture hall, and these columns are
just chair legs.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Online, I've met people with a different form of the same condition, or maybe
a related condition: they seem to have multiple persons in their head, and
will occasionally switch between them. Like many mental health issues it's
difficult for me to think about because I have no frame of reference.

------
sddhrthrt
> "I know you," she said. "I love you." It meant a lot to hear those words.

Was this moment as sweet as that when you hear the words from someone you love
for the first time? The anxiety of "will she remember that she loves me"
ending at "I love you" must be amazing.

~~~
thecatspaw
> Was this moment as sweet as that when you hear the words from someone you
> love for the first time?

I can only speak for me, and only hypothetically: It would mean much much more
in that moment. Someone you love for a long time, maybe your wife, finally
remembers you. Sure, its awesome to hear I love you for the first time.

Imagine you fuck up big. Really big. She still talks to you, but every time
you do, you notice she's still pissed. Not just a bit, but very pissed, angry,
and disappointed. She hasnt said "I love you" in a few days, since you fucked
up. And then you hear them again. Suddenly, unexpected.

The world isnt grey anymore. Its finally coloured again.

------
mukundmr
Very touching. I wish more resources were committed to understanding and
solving problems of the mind.

------
belorn
I thought dissociation was part of the symptoms of PTSD. Given the history of
being abused as told in the article, I am bit perplexed why doctors decide it
was DID.

Or is DID some kind of subset of PTSD?

~~~
mdisraeli
It is often difficult to get a diagnosis of PTSD when you've not been at war
or subjected to a singular catastrophic event. And even if you did, there may
not exist treatment pathways for those with PTSD from more complex or long
lasting situations :(

------
jacobsimon
Is anyone else wondering what movie they were watching?

~~~
bhayden
I will watch Disney movies with my wife who has epilepsy and suffers from not
knowing where she is or what's going on after a seizure. She's seen them all a
ton, for the first time a long time ago, and they're easy to follow and non-
stressful. They're also distracting enough she won't keep realizing she just
had a seizure and burst into tears (and then forgetting again 5 minutes later
and repeating the process).

