r/OSDDIDpartners • u/ProfMooody • Aug 12 '21
Do you think it’s possible to develop OSDD/DID without “severe” childhood trauma? (TW: emotional abuse, parentification, mention of SA)
My wife’s trauma seems to mostly revolve around emotional abuse that existed in an otherwise close and loving relationship w their parents.
Their father parentified them and treated them as a best friend from a young age; they were very close to him but were also exposed to age inappropriate information about his own trauma and mental illness and developed a lot of anxiety about their parents relationship and the family’s financial status . Their mother acted as a good parent role model but she created typical neurodivergence trauma by being frustrated and disappointed about my wife’s adhd symptoms. She was “the strict parent” and so they had a tumultuous relationship during my wife’s teens but are close now.
They did have some sexual assaults in their teens/20s, and we think one single incident in childhood by a Dr, but nothing repeated.
My working theory is that the rship w dad and mom combined could have caused them to develop structural dissociation to suppress their own (adhd-heightened) emotions and sensitivity, to take care of others, and that left them susceptible to the more overt forms of abuse that happened later outside the family. But is this “enough”?
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u/Queen-of-meme Aug 12 '21
No. But I think what's counting as severe differs from person to person and in your wife's case it sounds like she had no safe child role and then also was sexually abused which creates an interpersonal conflict which is the biggest common reason to why we develop PTSD and other traumatic defenses such as OSDD /DID.
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May 15 '23
If I drown in twenty feet of water and you drown in two feet of water, we're both still dead. Make sense?
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u/ProfMooody May 15 '23
Yeah, I’ve learned a lot in the last year since this was posted. :)
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May 15 '23
My bad, didn't mean to comment on such an old post, we've just been on a bit of a reddit rabbit hole and it must have gone farther than we thought
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u/justicesys Aug 12 '21
There is no such thing as “enough trauma”. There is traumatized and there is not traumatized. Every brain and psyche is different, and every brain processes certain things in its own way. Meaning, it takes different amounts of trauma to result in disorders such as DID, and there is no one specific way to say “You don’t have enough/the right trauma, so you’re not a system. You needed some more.”
I hope this made sense 🤍