I'm confused.

Hi,
I am very confused about what is happening with my mind. I feel like I have 8 different personalities that periodically take over my mind. However, I do not meet the criteria for DID and no one else knows when my personalities switch because I never act like any of my personalities- I sort of act like a bland version of myself that I invented years ago because I didn't know who I was. The four main traits that differ between my personalities are interests, level of extroversion, taste in music, and gender.
Does anyone have any idea what I might be dealing with?
Thanks!

Hello chameleon: I see this is your first post here on PC. Welcome to Psych Central.

I'm not a mental health professional. (Most of us here on PC are not.) And we here on PC cannot offer mental health diagnoses. So I can't offer anything with regard to what may be going on with you. (Perhaps other PC members may have some thoughts they'll wish to share.)

I know you wrote you do not meet the criteria for DID. You didn't mention if that's your personal conclusion or if that is a determination that has been made by mental health professionals you've seen. (If you're not actively treating with one or more mental health professionals, that may be something to consider.) However here's a link to the Dissociative Disorders forum, here on PC, just in case you'd like to check that out:

https://psychcentralforums.com/dissociative-disorders/

And then here are links to 5 articles, from Psych Central's archives, that may be of interest:

What is Dissociation & Multiple Personality Disorder?

In-Depth: Understanding Dissociative Disorders

Dissociative Disorder: Not Otherwise Specified (NOS)

Dispelling Myths about Dissociative Identity Disorder

https://pro.psychcentral.com/complex...-dissociation/

I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

How old are you? Personality changes are completely normal for teenagers, and what you are experiencing might be something like that.

Thank you so much for all the resources!

I'm 16. That's so interesting, I'd never heard of it. Is there anything teens can do to stabilize that?

Just avoid drugs. Then hang on until you get older. I used to preoccupy myself by reading lots of science fiction books and planning my meet up with space aliens. Keep busy somehow. Work out a lot.

Thanks for the advice!

Sometimes, while in different groups, we change how we are acting in order to fit in better with each group.

As a result, everyone knows us a certain way which is slightly different from everyone else. All the common factors are there - say, if you love Bananas but hate Pears, every version of you would also love/hate those things.

But let's say....you experienced a trauma while using a specific persona and now you don't want to use that persona anymore - but there's that one common factor that all of them share. That one factor makes you think of the traumatised persona even while you're with a different group acting a different way.

Eventually, your trauma crosses platforms to the other personas, and you keep switching between them, trying to get back to the real you - but that common factor jumps in again, and being you doesn't feel right anymore.

What can you do? You're not DID but you also can't stop shifting between personalities.

The biggest thing you must realize: Every one of those personas is a different part of you. For some reason, you've compartmentalized different aspects of your personality, maybe as a protective measure to conceal the traumatic memory or event (most brains use repression, but people are unique).

FIND THE COMMON FACTOR

Once you find the common factor, you can isolate the trigger that causes you to jump personas, and you can find the root cause of the initial trauma.

...in theory, anyway.

Good luck!

Thank you for your insight!