Struggling with Identity: Am I a System or Not?

Try looking into Structural dissociation. Google "The Treatment of Structural Dissociation in Chronically Traumatized Patients". I would link it but it won't let me. It talks about parts. **From my understanding as a non-professional** Ptsd is more of a primary Structural Dissociation only being split in 2 the "apparently normal" part (ANP) and the trauma response part. Bpd and cptsd are secondary structural dissociation due to having more trauma parts. So 1 "ANP" and multiple active trauma responses( fight, flight, freeze, submission, and cry for help). DID (Tertiary Structural Dissociation) is when those parts are more elaborate and autonomous. There is also typically more of them. It's a really amazing read. It's everything I tried explaining for years put into words lol. I can feel and hear the trauma parts so loud and individual. I use to say I have multiple "me" in my head. I have memory issues due to being dissociated almost always but no amnesia like you would experience in DID. That being said idk your experience but hopefully that article could help you figure out what's going on. Also it's kinda controversial due to the language they use and the goals they set, so it could be triggering but I found it helpful as someone with bpd, I can't speak from a DID perspective.

Endos arent fake, there’s even longstanding traditions that involve being a system. That aside, we’ve met several BPD systems. There’s this dissociative phenomenon with BPD where you can dissociate so hard you don’t recognize familiar things as familiar, sometimes even yourself. From what we’ve heard from BPD systems they became systems when that was a prolonged or very frequent experience, and then additionally trauma and the desire to be anyone else led to them splitting (in the dissociative disorder way, not the BPD way. I.E. become more people or more versions of a person)