Lonely system, looking for friends

[its-so-did]

Are you faking DID?

Last year, I was officially diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and let me tell you that I was shocked.

After getting misdiagnosed with almost everything out there, I was diagnosed with something that I never thought I could have, ever.

A couple of months later, I started going into the self doubt spiral.

This is my advice for systems doubting themselves:

Doubting yourself is completely normal. DID is meant to be covert and hidden, it’s a defense mechanism after all, almost every system out there doubted their experience at some point, it’s okay.

NOT EVERY SYSTEM IS LIKE SYSTEMS ON TUMBLR. Oh my god, I WISH someone would have told me this last year. You don’t have to have a bed in your room for each alter. You don’t have to have perfect communication with your alters. You don’t have to talk with them on a daily basis and switch 1000 times a day, just no. My communication with my alters is terrible. I sometimes go months without fully switching, days and even weeks without alters talking in my head. My alters mostly work through passive influence and that’s okay. You really don’t have to have a system like the ones you see on here to be valid, please remember that.

Not everything’s “you’re valid uwu”, no. Sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes doctors make mistakes and it’s okay. There are a lot of disorders that might have a similar presentation to DID like BPD, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. You need to be completely honest with yourself about your experiences. You really don’t want to get misdiagnosed and get treated for something that you don’t have “terrible idea, believe me”. If you’re honest with yourself about your experience, then there’s nothing to worry about.

Please don’t obsess over labels. There was this time when I was almost always co conscious with my protector and I kept wondering if I actually have OSDD, and it made me really depressed. It does not matter whether you have DID or OSDD, they’re almost the same thing and the point is, you have gone through trauma that fractured your identity so it really doesn’t matter what you have. Doctors treat symptoms, not labels. It’s okay to be confused for a while ❤️.

Yes, alters can go dormant for a lot of time and that’s completely normal. No, that doesn’t mean that you’re faking.

Sometimes you can switch without knowing or noticing the switch, so don’t obsess over why you aren’t switching too often.

It takes A LOT of time to have a good communication with your alters. It really isn’t as easy as tumblr makes it seems to be.

You don’t have to have obvious and overt symptoms of DID to be valid. I haven’t had so many proofs of my amnesia, only 4 times or something. I have also never experienced dissociative fugue, and that’s okay.

Amnesia for your own amnesia. Sometimes you don’t even notice that you lost time or that you said something that you have no memory of until someone points it out. So again don’t obsess over not switching too often.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT focus too much on your alters or your disorder. Do not go googling symptoms of DID and reading tons of articles for hours. This is just gonna make your self doubt much worse. It’s okay to learn about your disorder, just don’t do it too much because everyone experiences DID differently and that might increase your doubt.

Always keep in mind that DID is different for everyone. My best friend has DID and our systems are completely different. He switches much more often and he has no idea how many alters does he have, doesn’t know their names or anything about them, however my amnesia is much worse than his. Seeing systems acting differently doesn’t mean that you’re fake.

Since I brought this up, it’s okay not to know anything about your alters. I have around 16 alters and maybe more, I only know and have communicated with 6 of them. Again, it’s not as easy as tumblr makes it seems.

It’s okay not to feel like you’re a multiple. It’s okay not to refer to yourself as “we”. I personally never refer to myself as we unless I’m talking specifically about me and my alters.

It’s okay to have more overt symptoms after getting your diagnosis, and it’s also okay for your symptoms to be less after diagnosis. It’s really common that alters start being much more visible after diagnosis, that doesn’t mean you’re faking. Despite being less common but it’s okay to have less symptoms after getting diagnosed. Your alters might be just scared, I have experienced this and it made me feel like I was faking it all, but it doesn’t. Sometimes, your alters are as scared as you, maybe even more.

I wish someone would have told me this last year, so here I am, telling you why you shouldn’t worry, this too shall pass, trust me.

Also, feel free to add your own advice.

If you need anything, don’t hesitate to message us, we’d be more than glad to help!

Stay safe ❤️

[straightpeoplereceipts]

you are absolutely getting blocked because i have no interest in giving this a platform here but: okay. let’s work with that. why would it not possible to simultaneously hold the opinion DID is a delusion caused by something else (ex: trauma, the most basic agreed upon cause of dissociative identity) and a categorisable subset of mental illness? 

more than one mental illness is recorded as causing delusions. schizophrenia and bipolar, for example. yet we do differentiate between these two diagnoses, though given a different psychiatrist or psychologist the same person could be separately diagnosed with either. mental illnesses as defined by the DSM are groupings of patterns of behaviour, and they tend to overlap.

*additionally, the reason ableists would like you to believe otherwise is to separate yourself from individuals you perceive as “crazier” (and therefore lesser) than you. it’s not particularly helpful to claim there’s no overlap and further stigmatizes mental health. 

within the DSM there are mental illnesses that are delusions. they are defined by belief, but are prevalent and recognisable enough patterns of behaviour (!!!) that they are still their own diagnoses. they are not simply Schizophrenia Lite.

DID is caused by trauma but trauma doesn’t negate its validity or existence. it is a processing and result of trauma! trauma can be a factor in all mental illness. no mental illness exists separately of material experience, instead relying on it. your brain is a beast of internalisation and how you learn to internalise.

the narrative that mental illness is only valid when it is the inexplicable misfiring of chemicals or brain wiring lends credence to the idea that anyone experiencing anything else is doing something wrong. or lying, or undeserving. 

@santorumsoakedpikachu (i hope you dont mind my tagging you!) also brought up the point that the opinion presented here has a well-funded foundation in pedophilia. people would like you to disbelieve trauma survivors for a reason. (cw: for talk of CSA through the link.)

the reason we’re looking to make a podcast discussing DID is because i’m not particularly mad at this opinion! i think its misguided, or that it was a bit intentionally hurtful, but i also think it’s something worth talking through. let’s have open, honest and productive conversations about mental health everyone. :) 

(everyone should also keep in mind psychiatry has historically been used to make the angers, fears and trauma of marginalised groups look irrational and dangerous. schizophrenia as of the 1960s was used against black men in response to the growing civil rights movement. female hysteria was use to abuse women and while no longer a diagnosis, there’s an entire list of disorders that are still considered “women’s diseases.” there is a reason society is inclined not to listen to mentally ill people, or people it “clinicizes” for lack of a better word lol.)

[maemaybe]

In addition to that, they are most likely talking about Sybil. I only found this out recently, but apparently a lot of very ignorant people think that Sybil was actually the “first documented case of DID” or some kind of supremely important case in the study of the psychology of DID. 

I’ve always wondered why people bring Sybil up so frequently. Like I know who she is and everything, but I’ve never understood why non-DID folks talk about her like her story is so important. Well apparently this is it. Somehow some of them got it in their head that Sybil was the first person with DID or something. 

So here’s the truth. Sybil was not the first. She was not even important or special in any way. Sybil is only well known because someone wrote a book about her and she got a ton of media attention. That’s it. There is nothing unique or special about Sybil. 

Thinking that Sybil is extremely important to psychology is like thinking that someone is extremely important to psychology because they went on Dr Phil. 

Sybil has NOTHING to do with the validity of DID as a diagnosis. Anyone who thinks it does is just showing their ignorance. 

Also, it was never actually “confirmed” that Sybil was a fraud. I’ve heard this claim made many times (along with the claim that Sybil was the “first” which is why I assume that’s who they are talking about), but the case remains controversial, but not considered a fraud except by some. 

[violetnospiral]

People who try to invalidate or discredit the existence of multiple systems based on their own lousy understanding of psychiatric literature (which, by the way, is not the be-all and end-all of our existence) honestly infuriate me.

The most frequent nonsense I see looks something like: “In the DSM, it says that there HAS to be some amnesia/lack of awareness/coherent memory between alters or system members for it to be DID. THAT TOTALLY PROVES THAT EVERYONE ON TUMBLR IS FAKING cuz if they really had it, they wouldn’t know they had alters at all!!!! Obviously, that means people with ‘real’ DID don’t know they have it!!!! I’m such a fucking genius! Everyone drop their identities immediately and praise me like a god!”

If this is the kind of logic you use to intimidate, bully, harass, and erase people over the internet, please consider the following points:

1.      Amnesia between alters or system members does not automatically mean no awareness that other system members exist. It simply means that there are some things you should remember but don’t, and the things you don’t remember cannot be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. It can work in a number of ways like:

a.       Amy blacks out when Sarah comes out, but once Amy returns, she is capable of asking Sarah to fill her in on what happened.

b.      Amy, Sarah, Jane, and Tom all have a shared memory bank they’ve created through cooperation. Emma is a new alter who has not started to cooperate with them yet, meaning that if Emma comes out, people have no idea what happened during that time.

c.       Amy stays conscious or co-present when others come out, BUT she loses time if something dangerous or abusive is happening to her or to her system members.

d.      Amy, Sarah, Jane, and Tom all share memories but none of them can remember what happened to the body between ages 6 and 15. That time is just left blank or feels very blurred out.

e.       Other ways I’m not even thinking of right now (feel free to add yours).

2.      Some people who have DID used to have much messier, more complicated lives than they do now. For all you know, the happy/stable looking system you see on Tumblr is the result of years of work or is the carefully cultivated image they choose to put forward to avoid attracting negative attention. Someone “making it look easy” doesn’t mean they’re faking.

3.      Some people who say they are aware of their alters are people who had help becoming aware. For example, maybe Amy thinks she has no social life, but then her friend tells her “hey, how come last week when you were downtown on Saturday night, you were asking people to call you Rachel?” Amy might have no idea what her friend is talking about, but the suggestion may prompt her to dig deeper into what might be going on. Alternatively, maybe Amy found out in therapy. Maybe Amy had a dream in which she connected with an alter. Maybe she found writing in her journal that wasn’t hers. There are many ways that a person who is 100% unaware that she’s multiple can find out about her alters.

4.      Not all diagnosable multiple systems have DID. Some have OSDD (formerly called DDNOS). Some varieties of OSDD/DDNOS come with alters (just like DID) but do not feature time-loss (or feature significantly less of it).

5.      Not everyone who’s multiple is claiming to have DID or DDNOS or OSDD. Some people simply have minds that work differently than other people. Unless these people are jumping onto DID boards screaming “I BELONG HERE EVEN THOUGH I DON’T HAVE DID!!!!” or coming into your space and going “BECAUSE I’M MULTIPLE, THAT AUTOMATICALLY ENTITLES ME TO YOUR ATTENTION!!!!” then you have no reason to accuse them of trying to take space away from DID or of trying to get attention. Simply posting about their own experiences on their own blogs (or challenging you when you post hate in their tags) does not amount to them committing a violence against you or against people who have DID or other dissociative disorders.  

There are actually a TON of people with diagnoses who knew they were multiple long before a psychiatrist billed their insurance for it. If you cannot listen to the experiences of people without diagnoses (who are totally legit – it is actually very hard to find a doctor willing to diagnose DID or experienced enough to do so, and it can be prohibitively stigmatizing and expensive), at least listen to the people who have diagnoses that simply confirm what they already know.

[porcelliolaevis]

💜sys ask meme💜

are you an older or newer split?

are you a human or non human alter?

do you enjoy your role in your system?

who are you closest with?

who would you like better communication with?

who do you not get along with so great?

do you handle issues or avoid them?

what’s a fun fact about yourself?

what’s your go to thing to wear?

what are something positive you’ve done lately?

do you like personality tests?

what’s your zodiac sign?

who would you consider an artist in your system?

have you changed much from when you first became active?

do any of you share interests?

who do you prefer to co-front with?

have any members recently come out of dormancy?

how do you handle stress?

are you a people person?

how many alters are active in your system?

do you prefer fronting or hanging around the headspace?

do any of you keep notebooks?

preferred method of system communication?

do you have a hard time sharing belongings?

do any of you have different favorite foods?

[the-crimson-union]

Not sure if anyone would be keen to ask us. Our tumblr’s ask box had been empty for a long time. 

[finalfantasysystem]

Student is trying to study, but is getting extrmely easily distracted.

CinnamonRoll is trying to get her to not feel bad about herself because of this.

Bully is enjoying the female killers documentaries, and is just a tad worried they will trigger Student.

Yes, this is Student further procrastinating by posting on social media. Shut up.

[spiralthorns]

How to tell if that new DID/RA survivor friend of yours might be manipulating you.

I’ve seen a lot of muckraking happen in the DID community surrounding one or two individuals who have been called out on their abusive behavior. I’d like to just say “thank you, everyone who has worked hard to document the abuse these individuals have committed against the community,” but I can’t. Not entirely, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad people are brave enough to speak out. That said, I think we need to address this issue from another angle as well. 

When I first saw people sharing screenshots of abusive and/or manipulating things that the original sprite-wings did, I was hopeful that the conversation would broaden and people would start to take a hard look at who becomes popular in the survivor world and why. I was hopeful that the Kimi situation would launch thoughtful discussions about the fact that there are actually a lot of abusers online who pretend to be survivors. There are also a lot of people who technically are survivors but who are not “on our side.” This is especially true in the ritual abuse survivor community, where some survivors may still be cult-loyal or even running “errands” for active cult members.

I was *badly* abused by a popular RA survivor a few years ago, and sadly I don’t have screenshots. I don’t even know the full extent of what happened thanks to whatever method they were using to make me forget things. This happened to me long before I had ever heard of sprite-wings. Getting rid of individual abusers in communities is a positive step to take, but considering how much harm these abusers can cause, I really think we need to talk about the warning signs. What kinds of things did people notice about sprite-wings before programming triggers were hit off and screenshots were published? What signs can we look for in the future to keep ourselves and our communities safe?

I have some ideas.

If you are trying to evaluate whether or not a new friend in the survivor world is safe, ask yourself these questions:

1.      Did you feel like there was something “oddly familiar” about this new friend or like you had known him forever when you met? Did you feel more in-need of his approval or more desperate for his compliments than you ordinarily would be with a virtual stranger? If you are an RA survivor, be wary of people who feel “so familiar.” It’s possible you just made a fast connection or have a lot in common, but it’s also possible that the person is familiar for a reason – either you actually have met him before, or he’s emulating the behavior of an abuser you don’t fully remember. Be careful with sudden, unexplained familiarity.

2.      Does this person seem unusually fixated on you in spite of the fact that you just met and she has tons of friends already? Does she say things like “you’re the only one that gets me” or “you’re the first person who has ever really cared about me” even though she has 150+ followers who she seems to really enjoy talking to?

3.      Did/does their trauma have a shocking amount in common with trauma you’ve blogged about or shared on forums – down to the abuser’s hair colors, specific abuse dynamics, age ranges, alters created from it, etc?

4.      Does his DID system bear an uncanny resemblance to yours? Is it common for him to copy parts of your system by “suddenly remembering” or “suddenly discovering” new alters every time you introduce one of yours?

5.      Is she constantly revising her trauma story every time you share new information about yours? Did she suddenly grow a ritual abuse history the second you said you went through ritual abuse? Note: Sometimes being around other survivors can trigger memories to the surface, but abusers/manipulators, particularly those who copy other people, tend to go through this every time anyone says anything about their own abuse.

6.      Do her details seem a bit “all over the place?” Is it common to hear her say she was held hostage all through 2005 only to get on Facebook later and share fun vacation photos from that very same year?

7.      Is she constantly playing “hot potato” with the abuser label? Did she come to you in tears three weeks ago, claiming that your mutual friend Karen was an abuser only to change her mind the next week and insist that your mutual friend George manipulated her into believing Karen was an abuser only to change her mind yet again this week to suggest that she was “just upset” when she said all those things and none of them are/were true, then take that back and claim that your mutual friend Sarah is the true abuser, then take that back and accuse you of being an abuser?

8.      Does he fluctuate between candidly giving these intensely triggering, photorealistic details of his trauma and becoming suspiciously “foggy” on details whenever you notice logical inconsistencies in his story?  

9.      Does her story ever feel like a patchwork compilation of everyone else’s stories? Does she have a practical clone of your friend Karen’s trafficker, a system that’s nearly identical to your friend Rob’s system, and the same high school experience as your friend David?

10.  Does she seem to have no emotional connection to anything she’s talking about? Does it sometimes seem like as long as it gets her a lot of comments and “likes,” it doesn’t even matter to her if the words she’s writing are true or not?

11.  Does he frequently “accidentally trigger you? When he found out you were triggered by soap, did he randomly reblog 800 pictures of soap and claim you never told him that was one of your triggers or that he figured it wasn’t a serious trigger? Does he constantly post other people’s programming cues and then try to claim that that’s his way of “processing” something that happened to him?

12.  Was he a whole hell of a lot nicer and easier to get along with when you met him than he is now?

13.  Has at least one person told you that you need to seriously re-evaluate your friendship with your new friend or suggested to you that your new friend is an abuser/manipulative/deceitful/belongs in jail/etc?

14.  Do they tend to only talk about aspects of their trauma that are “en vogue” at the moment? Do they seem magically capable of only ever needing to “process” the same things that everyone else in your group of friends is processing so that their needs will always be compatible with the group’s, making it impossible for anyone to ever ignore them or miss one of their posts? 

15.   Does this person frequently make excuses for a “good abuser,” a cult member who has “changed” and should not be judged, a “kind” programmer, etc? Does this person expect you to feel comfortable spending time with or hearing positive things about their incestuous mother simply because she “sort of apologized,” their abusive ex who “changed,” or the person who trafficked them but “has a good heart?” Does it seem like your new friend barely knows the difference between a good person and an abuser? Is your new friend seemingly unaware that there’s even a problem with this way of thinking? 

Edit/Note: Many survivors deal with feelings of loyalty to abusers, and many survivors who *don’t* feel this way have at least one system member who does. The difference tends to be that survivors make “special exceptions” for their own abusers that they would never make for other abusers in general (ie: “it’s wrong to hit your kids, but MY dad had a good reason’ I’m sure none of your dads did though”), whereas the abusive DID community member will sometimes 100% acknowledge that a person is an abuser but then talk about how that doesn’t take away from how funny, cool, attractive, cuddly, kind-hearted, wonderful, etc their abuser is. Frequently, these “devotional” statements are made right after you’ve said something about not wanting to forgive your own abuser or having recently stood up to/reported/cut off your abuser. It’s meant as manipulation/guilt-tripping in a way. 

16.  Does this friend seem like he’s in a constant one-uppmanship battle trying to prove he’s the most damaged survivor on the planet?

17.  Is this person manipulating you into letting them stay at your house?

18.  Does this person or one of this person’s alters have a porn blog full of sadistic imagery that they constantly share with people without bothering to trigger warn or without adequately warning them that it’s a violent porn blog?

19.  Does this person ask for tons of details about your story but then never really respond when you share them? This is a particularly bad sign if you’re an RA survivor or anyone whose abusers might want “reports” on what you do and don’t remember. Avoid sharing your entire story with people who have not earned your trust.

20.  Does this person try to convince you that your friends are actually abusers when there’s not really a good reason to do so?  

This is not a complete list and these items may not mean someone is an abuser on their own. However, they should all raise red flags.

[spiralthorns]

Looking for friends.

We are a multiple system known as the El System. We need new friends. We’ll probably make another post looking for friends to talk about ligher subjects with, but we also really need people who can talk about the heavier things with us. But seriously if anyone out there wants to talk about the following things, hit us up:

* DID/OSDD-1/multiplicity/plurality (please be accepting of endo systems as we share a lot in common with endo systems despite mostly being traumagenic).

* Ritual abuse/trafficking/other “extremes” of abuse (note: we can and WILL be your friend if you don’t want to talk about this, but we’re asking because we’d really like people we can talk to about this subject).

* Trauma circumstances that most people discount including (but not limited to) inter-system abuse, abuse in a different reality/world, astral abuse, past life abuse, etc.

* Dealing with kink within a multiple system.

Thanks, Tumblr!

- Lilly

[finalfantasysystem]

Uhm, we don't know if we can deal with all of that, but we can certainly try. Some of us would love to be able to help, if you want to talk :)

[unwelcome-ozian]

Hey! every year around fall, one of the alters comes out, she's very paranoid and has hallucinations and always thinks we are being stalked around this time. She's always close to the front so there's no way to prevent her coming out if she wants. I know that we could indeed be being stalked bc our window always gets knocked on in a certain way and we hear a certain whistle when the window is open. This causes her to come out no matter what. (1/2 J)

tw- cult tactics

There was also once a man in our room one night, we fainted at the sight of waking up to him but it also felt like we were injected with something. I recently started to uncover RA memories and now I’m concerned that the cult is doing this, because of how these sounds can make the alter come out in an instant. Is it possible that the cult is doing this? Is this normal for a cult to do this once the victim has moved away from the family member who involved us in the cult? (2/2 J)Hello.  From what you have described, it seems possible that the cult may still be attempting to reconnect.  What you have described has been similarly reported in books I’ve read that contain stories from other RA survivors.  Do you have a support system that may be able to help out with safety issues?  These would be people like friends, a counselor, or others who live by you, with whom you can share your concerns and possibly create a plan for safety.  If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

~Josha

[finalfantasysystem]

I just handed in a written final exam. There was a teacher who was being very gentle and casual, calling me by my name and everything, as if I knew him. I asked him who he is, turns out he was my teacher in another subject, at a time when I was in a bad mental place. Someone else took charge of takings notes at class and I did all the work at home without meeting the teacher. At least everybody knows 'my memory is awful', so it didn't weird him out the fact that I couldn't remember him.

-Student

[firedrake]

every person who claims that their “past life trauma” gives them the right to speak over actual trauma survivors and access to our spaces owes every trauma survivor $500,000 dollars

[vampyredyke]

alter introduction: Asriel

name(s): asriel, rowan, sage

age: 5-10 age slider, tends to be on the older scale though

pronouns: its/itself

system role: original, trauma holder

personal sideblog: @divinedreemurr

how to tell I’m fronting: i type in all lowercase, with the exception of emphasis, use old idioms, accidentally use a ‘holier than thou’ attitude, and tend to slightly beg for attention

bio: i’m a nostalgia ridden non human who can’t begin to think i’m a decent person. i have an artistic streak about a mile wide and love mythology, urban legends, fairy tales, and ghost stories a hell of a lot. come talk to me about pretty much anything, i try my best to be friendly

how often I front: nearly every night, and whenever i can squeeze past the host, i’m also the alter my brain defaults to when we have a mix up and it decides to switch

do not tag as kin/me this is about DID ♥

[star-sailorr-deactivated2017100]

rejection sensitive dysphoria

[spiralthorns]

When abuse/incest survivors think their parents are/were good.

One of the hardest things for non-survivors to understand is the way that survivors of abuse defend their abusers. A common question I get asked is “How could you possibly think your parents were GOOD?”

To non-survivors, my situation looks simple. A father who plays pornographic video games with his seven-year-old daughter is a bad father. A mother who isolates her daughter from social support and starts physically punishing her and grooming her toward heterosexuality after she comes out as gay is an abusive mother. Parents who let cult members into the house and create cover stories to excuse ritual abuse don’t deserve sympathy when their adult children go no-contact.

Here’s the problem. People aren’t just born with an innate understanding of what love, intimacy, trust, goodness, and understanding are. Those things are supposed to be learned during infancy when a child is helpless but learns to trust that an adult will take care of them. Children who are abused by their primary caregivers have what is supposed to be their very first loving relationship marred with abuse. If the “care” a child received at their most vulnerable was infrequent, unreliable, or affected by shaming (ie: parents being disgusted with their baby/constantly angry at their baby for crying), then the baby never has anything positive to measure future relationships against or even to measure the parents’ behavior against. If the parents say “we love you more than anyone else in the world,” the child is going to believe that is true. If the parents say “other children get more love than you do because you’re worse than other children/more annoying than other children/less attractive than other children/less lovable than other children/etc.” then the child will believe that as well.

Unlearning that kind of message, especially when the child started learning it in infancy, is not as simple as hearing “you didn’t deserve it” and then going “oh wow, that’s such a revelation! My life is fixed now, thank you so much!” Sure, survivors need to be reminded that they deserved more love and care than they got, but asking a survivor to implicitly understand that on a deep, core level just because you say it to them sometimes is asking a bit much.

Infants actually need to emotionally attach to someone in their lives in a secure manner. This means that even if a parent is rejecting, sadistic, or otherwise abusive, the infant will still try to attach to this person. The child *needs* love from that person to avoid being left with literally nothing.

This is part of why abuse survivors often date abusers when they get older. They desperately need someone they can connect with, and abusers are more likely to offer instant relief than good partners. Good partners will want to gradually get to know the survivor and let intimacy develop naturally. Abusers will push for immediate trust and intimacy, which initially feels like fresh air to a survivor who lacks it from other sources. Beyond that, stigma against people with mental health issues and traumatic backgrounds can make good partners reluctant to give abuse survivors a chance. This can mean that abusers are much easier to form bonds with than “good people” are.

In addition to manipulating attachment needs (deliberately or unintentionally), abusive parents are rarely abusive 100% of the time. Some abusers financially support their survivors to keep them dependent, and other abusers will buy expensive “just because” gifts for their children, which leaves their children feeling indebted. Some abusers say “I love you; you’re wonderful” on odd numbered days or exhibit “good” behavior just some of the time, leaving survivors thinking that the abuse is just their parent reacting to stress or some passing problem that can be eventually overcome. Many survivors think they can figure out a rhyme or reason behind the “good days” and “bad days” to ensure that only good days happen from now on. That’s rarely actually possible, so survivors suffer.

Survivors aren’t dumb for believing their abusers are good or right. Those are common beliefs that can take a lot of work to overcome.

[systematicsystems]

A lot of people assume that blacking out and/or losing time is a very prominent, sudden thing where you’ll wake up in a new environment and *know* it’s happened. And don’t get me wrong it can be like that, but a lot of times it’s… not.

A lot of times it’s going to listen to music and there being 10 new songs on your playlist It’s going to grab a dessert or food only to find it’s gone It’s waking up in the morning and finding your phone half way across the room, not charged It’s texting things you don’t remember and didn’t mean to people in your life It’s never being able to find things again because they’ve been placed somewhere else. It’s small breakdowns because it’s so frustrating sometimes and just…. not knowing

[finalfantasysystem]

YES

[real-did]

Are you a DID faker???

This post is for all the people that recently found alters, recently got diagnosed, are trying to get diagnosed- are you faking DID? 

There’s no reason to fake DID. It’s not fun, and you likely wouldn’t create a new issue like this for yourself. 

It’s normal to regain trauma memories later in life. 

It’s normal to not know you have DID in childhood/find alters later.

It’s normal to have partial amnesia, to think there’s no way your trauma was “enough,” to doubt alters, to think you’re just overreacting or being dramatic. 

Here’s the thing- fakers don’t doubt themselves. 

DID is made to keep you functional. The entire purpose of DID is to section off the parts that are affected by trauma, so the host can live as fully as possible. Because of this, you might not even be aware of it until adulthood- DID helps keep you functional in abusive environments. 

Your experiences are normal. Doubting yourself is normal, and in no way invalidates your experiences or diagnosis. 

Doubting yourself, diagnosis or no, prevents you from coping with symptoms you have. You have alters. You can’t control them. You might lose time, not be able to remember your childhood, forget little things day to day- that’s all valid. You might not have switched fronters in months- also valid. Sometimes alters don’t front for years. 

Exercise healthy skepticism when self diagnosing, but don’t ignore symptoms you experience. Cope the best you can with what you’ve got. 

You’re not alone in doubting yourself and your experiences are not as abnormal as you think. 

[knifesys]

We really need to follow more blogs about systems, so please feel free to reblog or like this if you primarily post about did and/or osdd and we will likely follow you!

[finalfantasysystem]

I created this blog today so we can interact with other systems n.n

[queer-disabled-ill-boy]

To those certain about their DID/OSDD

I’m really fucking confused.

I don’t know if my alters are real, I don’t know if they’re endogenic, traumagenic, or what.

But please hear me out and help me understand what the fuck is going on in my brain because no one else will.

I’m going to start off with my earliest memories with my alters.

Crystal was an imaginary friend of mine that I had when I was little (2-5yo), someone separate from me, someone I could “see” if I chose to. After years of trauma I had realized I didn’t remember her name at all and had wished upon a star to remember, and later did remember (7-9yo). (I know this is cheezy and bizarre but its the truth and I dont want anything to be missed) After this I was capable of seeing her again and remembering who she was along with creating an older sister for her. But after a while they both disappeared from what I could see. I had gone through more abuse during this time (11-13yo). Once I turned 15 I met my current boyfriend and eventually I realized Crystal was still there, but now she was a part of me, she wasn’t someone I could see, but she had changed and became much darker in her personality. After she talked with my now boyfriend she had remembered things that happened before I was even born and so did my “host” Heather. Melody was the older sister I had created for Crystal and Heather before they were a part of me, and Melody had become a part of me too which I had realized later on. Melody has memories of past lives while Crystal and Heather only have memories from before I was born that oddly synced up with what my current boyfriend had explained to me at the time (as though I knew him before I was born). Until I knew what DID/MPD/OSDD was I assumed they were my “souls” and I still believe in some spiritual shit (even though I dont believe in one specific god or acknowledge that one may exist until it is proven to me) and I still am unsure of whether they’re “souls”, “alters”, or something I just made up.

I have been diagnosed with BPD, CPTSD, OCD and I suspect I have Autism, and possibly DID or OSDD1.

I have a lot of trauma and almost everything lines up with the diagnostics for DID/OSDD.

The only problem is..my experience with my “alters” is very different from what other people say.

My “alters” share vague memories of a lot of things as though they are all paying attention most of the time. I have really awful memory, and have a lot of repressed memories from the past I’m still trying to uncover.

I haven’t had complete black out experiences that I just dont remember aside from things that are normal for people with CPTSD.

My therapist doesn’t want to consider me having DID because he specializes in treatment for BPD and doesn’t want to lose focus for our goals. So I can’t go to him for a diagnosis.

I’ve read a lot about DID and OSDD, and it seems like I have it..but when I listen to others experiences I usually have trouble relating?

It seems to me that most people don’t have all of their alters vaguely listening on everything happening so they share memories. I’ve never experienced a full on switch, but I’ve felt things like it where my mood and how I react to things changes drastically as though Crystal is fronting but I can still hear and feel everyone else in the background, it’s just not as loud??

Also I can check on my alters and see what they’re doing in their imaginary home that is my brain.

I genuinely feel like the best metaphor for what’s happening is my brain is a broken spaceship that my “alters” cant escape and have limited control over because of my OCD and BPD

I’ve heard people say that some of their alters are deaf or have psychosis, but my OCD and BPD seems to effect all of my “alters”

The only “alters” that are different mentally are three infants/toddlers who go completely mute and have low comprehensive abilities and can only write/type in incomplete sentences and they front when I’m triggered in some way. It’s forced regression and I hate it.

also my body is 18. Crystal and Heather are supposedly twins and are 15 and 3/4s. Melody is a 18. And I have one other “alter” named Tyler and he’s 14.

Crystal and Heather haven’t aged since I knew who they were.

Melody has only aged 1 year since I knew her.

Tyler was 6 when I found him so he’s aged 8 years even though I’ve only aged 3.

I really don’t understand any of this, it’s super confusing, please help me out and let me know what you think ;;

Is this DID, OSDD, or am I just a system from some other shit

also I do dissociate at least a little, but that may be from BPD.

also I probably have other “alters” that I’ve repressed because my boyfriend couldn’t handle how many I had at the time…which is 7 as far as I know