Emotional abuse involves repeated behaviors that harm a person’s sense of safety, worth, confidence, or emotional stability. It can include: insults humiliation criticism shaming threats intimidation manipulation gaslighting constant blame…
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines abuse as “maltreatment,” but for our purposes, which addresses many people who have complex trauma, we think about maltreatment that repeats over time. Abuse isn’t always…
Losing track of time is one of the most common signs of dissociative time loss. You may feel like much more or much less time has passed than actually has.…
Stress often increases dissociative thought loss and memory gaps because the nervous system shifts into survival mode. When the brain is focused on danger, overwhelm, or getting through the moment,…
Yes. You can have dissociative amnesia even if you remember that something happened. It does not always mean forgetting an entire event. Sometimes a person remembers that something happened but…
Yes. Dissociative amnesia does not always involve losing large amounts of time. It can happen even if you never lose hours or days at a time. Dissociative amnesia can affect…
Bracing for conflict is common after trauma, especially if conflict was frequent, unpredictable, or dangerous growing up. If calm moments were often followed by yelling, criticism, punishment, tension, or violence,…
Different parts react differently to the same person because they have different backgrounds. Parts have different memories, roles, fears, needs, and experiences. A part whose job was to maintain the…
If you experienced complex trauma growing up, you experienced harm at the hands of people who were important in your life. It makes sense that parts of you may be…
Fear of abandonment is common in Dissociative Identity Disorder because many people with DID experienced neglect, inconsistency, betrayal, emotional unavailability, or sudden loss in childhood. If important people were unpredictable,…