Amnesia & Dissociation
Dissociation vs. Amnesia
Dissociation is a cognitive disconnect from yourself and your surroundings-- it is what causes dissociative amnesia to occur. When you dissociate, your brain takes that as not experiencing the event that is occurring, and basically throws the memories of it ever happening out the window. In the case of systems, the dissociation makes another alter experience the event for you, which usually ends up leaving the alter who experienced the event with those memories. If they don't have that recollection, another alter may, and if not, it's possible that the memory is buried away from the entire system. These memories can be recovered in therapy.
Types of dissociation
There are 2 types of dissociation, depersonalization and derealization. Depersonalization and derealization are both types of dissociation and are usually experienced similarly and are dealt with the same way.
Depersonalization is when you feel: a disconnect from yourself. If you are experiencing depersonalization, you may feel like your thoughts, feelings, or body are not your own, like you are floating above yourself, like you are out of control of your movement or speech, physical numbness, and/or like your memories have no emotions connected to them.
Derealization is when you feel a disconnect to the world around you. If you are experiencing derealization, you may feel: like you are living in a movie or a dream, emotionally disconnected from people you care about, a distortion in the passage of time, a distortion in the distance, size and shape of objects, and/or as though your surroundings are blurry, distorted, colorless, two dimentional, or artificial.
Depersonalization/Derealization can be experienced as it's own disorder, or as symptoms of other dissociative disorders.
Different ways amnesia can be experiences in systems
There are 3 ways amnesia is usually experienced: Localized, Selective and Generalized.
Localized amnesia is when you're unable to recall a specific event or specific events in a specific period of time, usually related to stress or trauma. Some examples of this could be forgetting months or years of abuse as a child, forgetting an entire relationship in any length of detail, or maybe even forgetting an entire grade of school.
Selective amnesia is when you forget only some events during a specific period of time or only part of an event. This can be something like going to class and only remembering certain parts of the lecture, having a conversation and only remembering a few things about it, or remembering going somewhere but not what happened there.
Generalized amnesia is when you forget your identity and life history, such as who you are, where you live, where you have been, your friends and family, who you've spoken to, and how you experienced, how you felt, what you thought, what you sair, waht you did, etc. Some people who experience generalized amnesia can lose the ability to access well-learnt skills or formerly known information about the world. Generalized amnesia is rare, but can be commonly seen in combat veterans, ||sexual assault|| survivors, and people experiencing extreme stress, conflict or other trauma.
Blackouts vs. Greyouts
Blackouts and Greyouts are both unofficial terms for types of amnesia. Blackouts fit under Localized/Generalized amnesia, where Greyouts fit moreso under Selective amnesia.
A Blackout is when another alter fronts for a period of time, and when you finally come back to front, you have absolutely no idea how you got in the situation you are currently in or anything another alter said or did.
A Greyout is when another alter fronts and you only remember bits and pieces of what happened when they were fronting. You may have a vague idea of how you got into the situation you are in, or maybe not. It's different for everyone.