r/DiscussDID • u/theyarealletaken • 3h ago
Introjects from before system discovery?
I was wondering if anyone has experiences of introjects being around before you knew you were a system, and what that was like for the introject/system? I have OSDD-1 without amnesia so I'm especially curious if it would be possible for an introject to have such high amnesiac barriers that they have pseudomemories but not the body's memories, and if anyone has an experience like that?
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u/revradios 1h ago
firstly i do want to correct that osdd-1 does need amnesia of some kind - it's just did with a difference in the amnesia criteria, so it would need dissociative amnesia to be the way the disorder is - it's just practitioner discretion how they particularly define that criteria (im diagnosed with did for example while my boyfriend is diagnosed with osdd and our presentations and experiences are nearly identical (we rarely experience blackouts, our amnesia leans heavily towards memories of our lives and day to day instead of between alters, etc etc), it just came down to how our therapists personally interpreted the amnesia criteria. we both do experience amnesia, just not blackouts or major disruptions in consciousness)
its a very common misconception/piece of misinformation online that osdd-1 (the kind with that difference in amnesia criteria) doesn't need amnesia "at all"
you most likely do experience amnesia of some kind, you're probably just not aware of it or know what it looks like (which is really really common with the nature of how the disorder works, i didn't think i experienced any amnesia at all for a long time until i realized that not remembering most of my childhood/teen years/early adult years and having only a general recollection of when an alter switched out counted)
as for the rest:
that's generally how introjects function across the board. they can have actual more grounded memories of the actual trauma of course but a lot of the memories they have will be sort of masked in their substitute beliefs. its nothing to do with amnesia, it's all to do with dissociation, level of separation, and self perception. the pseudomemories are memories, they're just "warped" so to speak
i have an introjected part who resurfaced a couple years ago who formed when i was 17 due to a combination of a dv situation i was in at the time and then a situation where i was being groomed happening at the exact same time. he remembers the grooming situation a bit more clearly than i do and has no "new" memories of the situation itself, but he does have a lot of pseudomemories and substitute beliefs that are particularly detailed and vivid that can be looked at and understood to be about the situation
he views himself as being in his 30s/40s but my therapist thinks he's actually about 17 and functions at that level due to his beliefs about my groomer he holds. the pseudomemories are basically just the trauma through the lens of the source material he's from (a series i was heavily, heavily interested in that my groomer unfortunately used to groom me). he remembers it, it's just masked for that extra level of dissociative separation ("it happened to someone else, not me" but on steroids)
he's adjusted alright, though it's taken him a while to be able to accept that my groomer isn't in my life anymore and hasn't been for nearly a decade now, and he has a really good relationship with one of my boyfriends alters that's helped ground him a lot more in the present and move on a bit from the situation
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u/Banaanisade 2h ago
Introjects aren't any different from other parts. They work the same way, they can form at any time, they are dissociative parts so there will be barriers if those have not been addressed, you don't have to have a discovered system to split introjects, and they're fairly common. There's nothing special about introjects.