Seeking Help with Blackouts

Hello everyone,


My name is Allison and I’m seeking advice and guidance for my partner. She is 26 years old, a PhD student, and she has been dealing with some difficulties with something we are calling blackouts. We are writing this post together as an attempt for us to reach out to find what good next steps would be since they are causing her a lot of distress.


The blackouts started a year and a half ago and occur irregularly, averaging 2-3 times a month, and we are still trying to identify their cause. She doesn’t use drugs, and hasn’t drank alcohol since this began. They happen at various times of the day. Sometimes they seem to be triggered by a stressful interaction with another person, but other times they come out of nowhere. During the blackouts she continues to do normal things: she eats, talks with people, and on one occasion she even wrote herself a reminder and apparently drove to pick up dinner. Despite that, she does not act like herself during the blackouts. She varies in how she acts: sometimes quiet, sometimes talkative. In general however, she tends to say things that she would not otherwise. Sometimes they are harsh or out of character. On a few occasions she has even been hostile.


These actions alone are distressing for her but following the blackout she has no memory of what happened. Anything she said, wrote, or did is completely lost to her as though she has amnesia for that period of time. These have all been isolated incidents and she has thankfully been able to function normally outside of these blackouts.They seem to occur outside her school and work times and to mainly occur when she is interacting with people she is intimate or close with.


She has been to her general practitioner doctor, a neurologist, and a neurosurgeon, and had an MRI and EEG, all of which confirmed there is no neurological cause for the blackouts and they suggested it might have to do with stress. She has also confirmed with her gynecologist there are no hormonal issues. She is on a waiting list for a psychiatrist but the timeframe for it is uncertain. To make matters worse, she had a very unhelpful experience with the therapist she’s been seeing for the past year. Her therapist said she was “stumped” and at a loss on how to proceed. She was really hoping that therapy would provide guidance and hope for her with these difficulties. She also recently visited a local general mental health support group which was full of kind people, but it wasn’t very helpful for her particular problem.


We are hoping for a few things here. Firstly, it would be nice to hear from others who experience something similar to blackouts. My partner is feeling very alone with what she’s dealing with and the lack of assistance from medical professionals has made things very daunting. Secondly, suggestions on next steps or good resources would be very appreciated. At this point, we are in a bit of waiting game for the psychiatrist and it would be good to have more immediate steps.


Any help, insight, guidance, or advice is much appreciated. Thank you very much from both of us.

Im sorry but we really cant guide you on what you should and shouldn't do, only a treatment provider can do that. I highly suggest your partner find a mental health treatment provider.

as for black outs and .................in general ………………

there are many kinds of black outs that happen with many different mental disorders and physical health problems. (so what you posted could be just about anything in this whole world. pick up any diagnostic book for mental disorders, physical health problems, you name it, memory problems and amnesia will be part of the symptoms, even medications and normal things like sleep deprivation or wrong foods for ones body can cause what you are posting about.

if you read diagnostic manuals you will find that dissociative disorders have a diagnostic criteria that "blackouts" disqualifies a person for having dissociative disorders. Im not saying your partner doesn't have DID or does, just stating a fact of what you will find if you research/ google dissociative disorders.

on the other side of things dissociative amnesia and DID are different than having black outs. its more than just not remembering and doing things during the times you don't remember. Im going to use your post and show you what I mean.....

when I didn't remember things and I did things during the time I didn't remember it would be accompanied by the same type of trigger and the same behavior patterns would happen. this is called continuity / consistency or as the DID diagnostics call it "sense of agency" each alter with DID has their own things of what they can and cant do, what triggers them to take control a whole bunch of things.

each and every time during a rain storm or any storms, since very early childhood and from the moment of that alters creation I would have my dissociative symptoms and then Rainy would deal with what triggered me to dissociate.

my point in general any time someone tells me they blacked out and did things they couldn't remember, my first thing is to suggest seeing ones medical doctor who can refer them to a mental health treatment provider, between the two professionals they can do some tests and rule out all the millions upon millions of kinds of black outs, and diagnose the problem.

then I tell them if its dissociative related you can trace it back and if its something that has just started happening then you can rest assured its not something that begins in childhood like DID. that usually takes a lot of stress off of my friends since the worst of the bunch (DID) is a disorder that is a lifer, the problems associated with it are there through out a persons whole lifetime not just out of the blue one day like the flu or a cold.

A person doesn't go through their whole life time free of stress and hard to handle things. look back at all those family childhood stories and see if at some point in childhood your partner had this same problem and what the doctors, teachers, and other adults in contact with her said the problem was.

these are all ways my wife and I figure out problems when we need to. but your first step like the disclaimer at the bottom of every page on this site says, should be contacting your own treatment providers, give that medical doctor who treats your colds, flu's, breaks, sprains and all that a call, they can help you both get pointed in the right direction.

Hello Allison: Thank you for bringing your concern here to PC. I'm sorry I cannot be of specific assistance with regard to your concerns. However I noticed this is your first post. So... welcome to Psych Central. One additional forum, here on PC, that may be of interest to you would be the Partners of People & Caregivers Forum. Here's a link:

https://psychcentralforums.com/partn...ivers-support/

Hopefully there will be other PC members who will be able to offer guidance with regard to what your partner is experiencing. In the meantime, though, here are links to 6 articles, from Psych Central's archives, on the subject of dissociative disorders:

In-Depth: Understanding Dissociative Disorders

The 3 Types of Dissociative Disorders | The Exhausted Woman

5 Dissociative Symptoms: Coping With Trauma | Caregivers, Family & Friends

How Childhood Trauma Teaches Us to Dissociate | The Psychology of Self

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/psych...tion-problems/

6 Warning Signs You Suffer From Depersonalization Disorder

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

Unfortunately, members here are not allowed to diagnose, even if it is obvious. However, since you are in a dissociative forum, we can assume you have ideas about the cause. I will say this: I have been diagnosed with DID and have had other psychiatrists and therapists rule out DID in our first meeting after reviewing my history and seeing that I have previously been diagnosed with it. Sometimes without even seeing me first (as evidenced by the date on their notes). The only way that can occur is that they staunchly refuse to acknowledge the existence of DID. Many mental health practitioners fall into this category and so... the fact that her therapist is stumped doesn't surprise me. If you're losing weight rapidly and no physical disorders can be found to explain it, and your therapist doesn't believe in anorexia (or eating disorders in general)...well, you might see where they could become stumped.

The above was mentioned as more of a cautionary tale based on a clumsy attempt to read between your lines, not an attempt at a diagnosis. I would just prefer finding a mental health practitioner who is not going to come to the table with a set of limiting ideas about the cause. If you have any choice in who she sees, I would suggest someone who is trauma informed at the very least. You're both smarter than the average bear (old cartoon reference) - use that and don't follow another's biases blindly. Trust your gut and know that my PM box is open to you.

Welcome to pc

Perhaps best while she is waiting....which always seems like forever!!!...she could not only do some research as suggested here, but also read some posts and see if anything fits or almost fits. It will become obvious that everyone is different but there may be some common threads or may help put some detail to her experience. We'd welcome her posting. Sometimes writing it out helps clarify details. Welcome!!

Hi and welcome.
Since you've made your way over here to the dissociative forum I am going to guess that you suspect some type of dissociation might be involved. Can I ask what your partner's therapist has said about this particular topic? Your description here does give off a lot of clues about a dissociative disorder (it reads like a textbook listing off things that rule out common non-dissociative causes of amnesiac blackouts), so I am wondering what the therapist has said about any dissociative symptoms... has she (or he) just ignored them or glossed over them?
Not every therapist "believes" in dissociative disorders. They may well be written about in the diagnostic bible but not everyone believes in the bible. Some therapists refuse to even entertain such ideas.

Please proceed to the guideline and pass judgement about how you normally communicate with folks of this nature. Communication style is apart of the journey of conditioning so please don't cry and whip moan about I'm not here for all the convo's