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My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

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Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#61

Post by jsprogrammer »

csense wrote: post #46

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…

1) Why do you imply this is a 'failure mode'? You're imposing a very rigid perspective by using that term.

2) People are being abused at this very moment, it's not something that has only occurred in 'ancient times'.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#62

Post by bhayden »

protomyth wrote: post #57
6d0debc071 wrote: post #37

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.

I was going to go with "record [edit: on her cellphone] her talking to herself explaining who I am and who she is". I would be really worried about the reaction of a stranger or some security-guard-trying-to-be-a-hero.

I would guess the issue with this is a lack of working short term memory. You could show her but she's not going to retain the information. By the time she saw photos in the story you just read, the worst of her episode had passed and she was returning back to normal. The issue is likely more to do with confusion and not understanding surroundings more than it has to do with not knowing who he is.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#63

Post by pbz »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #37

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.

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.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#64

Post by saganus »

csense wrote: post #46

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…

I think (I'm no neuro-*) that one of the things that make the brain so hard to understand is that a lot of the things that a brain is capable of doing could very well be just a side effect or emergent behavior, instead of something that's actually "architectured" (if that even means something..) or designed to do that.

Maybe that applies here and so only the emergent behavior was disrupted instead of actually a "piece" of the system?

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#65

Post by protomyth »

bhayden wrote: post #62
protomyth wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to go with "record [edit: on her cellphone] her talking to herself explaining who I am and who she is". I would be really worried about the reaction of a stranger or some security-guard-trying-to-be-a-hero.

I would guess the issue with this is a lack of working short term memory. You could show her but she's not going to retain the information. By the time she saw photos in the story you just read, the worst of her episode had passed and she was returning back to normal. The issue is likely more to do with confusion and not understanding surroundings more than it has to do with not knowing who he is.

Its really not a video for her benefit. I hope it will keep her attention and calm her down, but I really believe there is the possibility of getting shot by some bystander and believe a video on her phone might calm the situation an allow people time to think.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#66

Post by pbz »

MrJagil wrote: post #14

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…

You can think of schizophrenia as a hardware problem and of DID as a software issue (not bug, but maybe mis-configuration?). With high enough trauma (and applied early enough, while the brain is still developing) anybody could develop DID; some are more prone than others of course.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#67

Post by stickfigure »

outworlder wrote: post #39
kazinator wrote: post #36

I would just move on. A flaky person like this is poor relationship material, especially if you see children in your future. "Where am I? What are these kids doing here and why are they calling me Mom?" Like, no thanks!

That is an horrible thing to say. She is not 'flaky' as a spoiled socialite would be, she has a mental disease. One that only seems to crop up from time to time. 'Poor relationship material'? She is still a human being in need of support. I'd say you're poor relationship material.

This isn't quite fair - it's not so much that it's horrible to say, but that it's easy to say when you aren't emotionally invested in the relationship. Nobody would criticize someone who jumped ship if this episode happened on a first okcupid date. There's a reason this subject didn't come up in their conversation for eight months, and I don't blame her for that.

On the other hand, I know a guy who was about to break up with girl when she got a cancer diagnosis. He stayed with her for years, miserable, because he didn't want to be that schmuck.

Relationships are complex. It's poor form to criticize someone who stays, but also poor form to criticize someone who leaves - there's a lot more going on than just one issue, even if it is a big one.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#68

Post by drinchev »

pbz wrote: post #53
csense wrote: post #46

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…

It most definitely is a feature, not a bug. We all dissociate, but to a much lesser degree. When it happens repeatedly and to extreme degrees of trauma it allows the victim to continue functioning (surviving) without being overwhelmed by the past trauma. It's (somewhat) similar to how ships have compartments that prevent the entire ship from sinking in case of a collision.

Can you give more specific examples of "We all dissociate, but to a much lesser degree". Looks interesting to do more googling on that, but I have no keywords.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#69

Post by Dylan16807 »

jonalmeida wrote: post #13

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…

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.

Re: My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was

#70

Post by scott_s »

outworlder wrote: post #39
kazinator wrote: post #36

I would just move on. A flaky person like this is poor relationship material, especially if you see children in your future. "Where am I? What are these kids doing here and why are they calling me Mom?" Like, no thanks!

That is an horrible thing to say. She is not 'flaky' as a spoiled socialite would be, she has a mental disease. One that only seems to crop up from time to time. 'Poor relationship material'? She is still a human being in need of support. I'd say you're poor relationship material.

She has a mental disorder. Steven Novella, a clinical neurologist, explains quite nicely the difference between disease and disorders: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/adhd-is-real/
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