a universe of complexities @loriensystem - Tumblr Blog

Redoing my intro post!

At this point we probably followed you from our side blog @these-wings-are-porcelain

We talk about trauma and DID stuff there. This blog is more lighthearted though we will talk about DID here as well. If folks other than me post they might tag what they say if they want to.

#actually did #dissociative identity disorder

loriensystem

River Tam holding a stick like a gun for main blog since we're being less triggering over here

loriensystem

Also blog makeover with the cover of the first edition of when rabbit howls.

River Tam holding a stick like a gun for main blog since we're being less triggering over here

lustcannibalism

they should invent a way for me to do tasks without the mind torture

un-monstre

In hindsight being a “gifted kid” is so funny. You have substantial difficulties with socializing and fine motor skills, but we’re going to ignore that because you’re really good at reading chapter books

what-even-is-thiss

A lot of feminists even intersectional ones seem to assume that all afab people have a kinship or something and as an afab person I know that I don’t. Not because I’m a trans man or anything but because I don’t like being grouped together with Ayn Rand.

Daily reminder that your experience of DID is never the universal DID experience.

Just saw someone saying DID is never being multiple people living in one body and like uh... that is how it is for us. I am NOT Eli and Eli is not Kat. And any time we're pretending to be each other we fail abysmally and our spouse can tell. We sound different, we kiss different, we have different opinions. If Eli was just a part of Kat then he wouldnt get frustrated about not being able to live our life his way and I wouldnt get frustrated about the ways he's changed the body.

DID is having multiple distinct and differentiated personality states, alters, identities, whatever you call them. To have DID you need a decently high level of differentiation. If you feel your alters are just parts of you then you might actually have OSDD or Patial DID. And theres nothing wrong with recognizing that. I heard someone chatting about having diagnosed OSDD and feeling like there were just different versions of her that did different things.

In contrast, we are so differentiated that we have to consciously decide to tell each other we exist. A HUGE portion of memories and experiences that happened to the body did NOT happen to me, as an alter. I was not here for them.

Unfortunately there are as many ways to be dissociated as there are ways to abuse a child. Therapeutic language does not capture lived experience. If you dont wanna have a host you dont have to. If your therapist wants to talk to "the original" and you'd have to pull up a zombie girl with no eyes and no voice and you dont wanna put your dead original child through that shit, you dont have to. This is your healing, not theirs.

-Kat and a bit of Jay at the end

#dissociative identity disorder #actually did

I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck with scheduling fronting time and/or using a planner system to manage multiplicity. We have been struggling with alters wanting to front and do their own thing during times when we are required to complete necessary life management tasks and would like to build ways for them to have their time.

We've previously used a hobonichi cousin and are currently in a weeks and finding it to be lacking in space. We're curious about the Jibun techo but unsure about the lack of open ended pages. We are unsure if we have adhd and our schedule requires a lot of flexibility. Just doing some out loud thinking.

#dissociative identity disorder #functional multiplicity #planner #hobonichi #jibun techo

With great inspiration from Dr. Jeni Haynes and The Troops we have elected to ditch the term host and adopt the term front-runner to refer to the most frequent fronter at any given time.

Being polyfragmented we have never felt that host suited us as a term. Our "host" has never been "the original" or the one whom everyone "should" fuse into. If we have an original child that person would likely be under 3 months old.

#dissociative identity disorder #polyfragmented

loriensystem

Justice for alters with real bad accents

loriensystem

9 times out of 10 that is a 10 year old's idea of what a particular accent should sound like and no we're not "doing a voice"

Justice for alters with real bad accents

#dissociative identity disorder

I was just diagnosed with Autism level 1 yesterday. I've suspected I have autism for around 12 years. During those 12 years I've been able to use my ability to connect with autistic people to build a successful career working with people who have disabilities.

I've not spent tons of time in the online late diagnosed community lately. Its grown a TON since I first thought I could be autistic. And with that growth there are things that have changed or increased that I'm less fond of.

We joined a support group through the company we got our diagnosis from and there was a discussion on there about not being comfortable calling autism a disability. And something about that rubbed me the wrong way.

Those of us who are autistic and verbal really need to be aware of how our experiences are different from those who don't speak verbally. To me the impulse to say "I'm autistic but I'm not disabled" is very ableist. It feels like people are trying to say "I'm not like those other autistics."

In my experience autistic people who do not speak are significantly more likely to deal with exploitation and abuse. They're also more likely to be diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Intellectual disability is a complex umbrella diagnosis that has been used to discriminate against people and justify exploitation. The way IQ is determined is ableist. Many traditional IQ tests don't take non-verbal individuals into account. Many evaluators have outdated ideas about what being non-verbal means. Many governments, schools, and other systems see intellectual disability as making a person less than human. And it should not be this way. [This paragraph was edited to provide more clarity and nuance]

I don't have a big point or end goal. I just want to say that non-verbal autistics and autistics who use AAC and especially autistic people who are unable to use speech or AAC deserve to be centered in our conversations about autism. The autistic people need to be centered and not their caregivers. There's so much messed up about how guardianship and conservatorship work and I wish people could understand how challenging the system is to navigate. How sometimes a person does not have options.

So yes, I am disabled. I am differently disabled from many other disabled people. But my diagnosis says more about what I have in common with those who have obvious high support needs than what is different between me and them. I don't want anything to do with shame around disability anymore.

#actually autistic #late diagnosed autistic #adult autism #nonverbal #intellectual disability #disability #disability pride

Apparently I do indeed have autism.

Over the past two weeks we have been undergoing an autism assessment. Tomorrow morning we have our session to find out the results. I've been incredibly nervous about hearing them. We've conceptualized ourself as autistic off and on since 2014, over a decade. We very much believe that self diagnosis can be a powerful tool for understanding oneself. But professional diagnosis has always been incredibly validating to us as well.

I dont know how we will feel if the outcome is that we are not autistic. I don't know if we will choose to let go of the label or try to get a second opinion. I know DID is a profoundly complicating diagnosis to differentiate anything from and can end up being an explanation for a lot of symptoms. We chose to mask our DID throughout the assessment process. If only because its incredibly uncomfortable to reveal ourselves to strangers. I'm worried that will lead to the evaluator trying to say we don't have DID or recommending another interview to rule it out.

I know people have extremely strong opinions about armchair diagnosis and self diagnosis. But we've never been wrong about a diagnosis we've speculated someone has in the past. We suggested bipolar 2 to two of our friends from college as an explanation for their struggles and both of them were later diagnosed and able to get the correct meds and get off of ssris. I just don't know if we have the same level of accuracy for ourselves.

Well, tomorrow will either confirm what I've suspected for 12 years or it will provide clarity that our struggles originate primarily from DID and complex trauma. Or I'll be left to decide whether to pursue differential diagnosis through a complete neuropsych eval - an option that's been on the table for a while. We asked our therapist this week to write us a diagnostic letter so that we have documentation of our current diagnoses and she agreed. We deal with so much doubt and the chunk of time where we regressed on system discovery was not helpful for that. Unmasking ourselves is such a painful and difficult process.

#dissociative identity disorder #autism #diagnosis