first fig

[merisms]

Late 20s ; They/siya ; Nonblack POC ; Deaf ; Intersex

Cripple with PF DID ; on govt disability

➥ FT wheelchair • hearing aids/FM sys

♡ : Fountain pens, journalling, reading, plants, rabbits, deer, etc.

Ko-Fi ; Wishlist ; Therapy/DID resources

[merisms]

can't be fucked to look for if I've talked about it before but I'm on track to finish the yr at 100 books read and a "lifetime" stat of 50/50 nonfiction and fiction. kinda a big deal bc for a while I couldn't read more than a paragraph or so bc of tbi related symptoms (mostly the nystagmus + blepharospasm combo ft The Nausea) so for several yrs I exclusively read studies bc they're so much shorter than a book and nonfiction was easier bc tryin to keep a plot together one paragraph at a time is a lot. anyway. 2022 was 23 books, 2023 was 25, 2024 was 37, 2025 was 90 (but there were some short ones that yr). and in every year I got to read fiction

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[merisms]

have you read project hail mary? i read it last weekend over a Long Car Ride and i'm obsessed with it, i'm into anything with Extensive Worldbuilding especially when it involves anything not human, like eridians. i'm personally fascinated by the linguistic implications of chords being words, considering that eridians have five vocal chords, but their language still only uses tone to indicate mood? i don't know how good the actual science is but the speculative biology is Really Fun. and it isn't just with the Quirky Alien Friend, specbio is way more important with the "cure" for the sun and such.

idk if the movie is good becauee i haven't seen it but i really enjoyed the book in case you can't tell

I added it to my TBR 4 yrs ago bc I had multiple friends sayin I'd like it. haven't gotten around to it bc my TBR is a bit over 300 books. I wanna read it at some point this yr

I watched the movie though and the science of the movie is one of those things where it's like...the stuff that's right outweighs the stuff that's wrong? the astrophage is kinda like a cross between a phage and an extremophile but it wouldn't exist the way it does. but that's fine bc if it did then it wouldn't be cool to think about. I'm not really sure if you wanted me to go into that? but For Me that's kinda the sweet spot for scifi where there's reasonable enough stuff in it that it don't piss me off but stretches stuff enough to be entertainin

the movie was really fun. weir's whole "I never did social commentary you're just makin it up" thing is really funny conceptually but I hope it's not too apparent in the book

[merisms]

pseudointellectuals w an approach of "if I cite enough shit they won't look right?" reminded me I kinda got into it w someone recently bc they were sayin patently Wrong shit (in a space that was not about DID) so I was tryin to gently correct and they got pissy w me and sent me a big ass list of article titles. got confused bc the article titles weren't even about the discussion at hand. noticed there was a specific name. went 🧐 wait...it couldn't be...and looked and lo and behold they had just copy pasted kat's bibliography off did-research.org. incidentally how I found out kat finally completed that master's. did not have the heart to tell the person that kat would've prob gotten them harassed if they said that shit to her in 2016 instead of sayin it to me

[merisms]

how do you go about finding online communities or spaces for people with DID? this diagnosis feels so isolating, my therapist has recommended trying to join forums of fellow people with DID to normalize what i am dealing with but… a lot of the online spaces i see are overwhelmingly teenagers and/or filled to the brim with misinformation.

short answer: you don't

long answer: preemptively I am big on community and am a big staunch defender of "communities aren't perfect but you don't abandon them you make them better". that said. you've p much hit the nail on the head w your assessment of "these spaces are full of teenagers and/or misinformation" although you've crucially missed "fully grown adults who are so unrecovered that they are actively detrimental to other peoples recovery and/or use their mental health as an excuse to be shitty to people" alongside a hefty dose of "bc the DID community insists on bein white-suburb-nice we still got straight up abusers who the community knew were abusive anywhere from 10 to damn near 20 yrs ago runnin around except now that there's new people there's a lotta folks that don't even know about it anymore"

part of this is due to DID now bein mainstream knowledge and there simply bein more people in the community. any time a community gets bigger even if you maintain the ratio of asshole per person there'll be a higher number of em. the other part is that as people recover, they don't feel the need to continue bein in support spaces. what you end up w is that people who have learned to navigate this have largely either Entirely left or they're still around but don't focus all that much on DID. which means the community is made up of a lot of freshly diagnosed/self diagnosed people, extremely unrecovered folks, and people who wanna take advantage of either group. there are no online DID spaces that don't have this issue

I do kinda feel bad for newer people bc *takes drag* back in my day the community was small enough that even if you hated somebody you knew what was goin on in their life. it was a lot easier to figure out who you wanted to be around. but honestly I actively tell people new to dx or who are lookin for people who understand not to join system discords or chats or groups bc I haven't met anybody who WASN'T in some way harmed by these spaces. I think a better option to not feel alone is group therapy for complex trauma referred by your therapist bc *at least* a therapist is there presumably guardin against issues like people gettin way too attached too quickly in ways that are unhealthy etc

side note, do watch out for folks that make their whole presence about lookin well-read. I think I unfortunately contributed to this. not tryin to be big in my britches about it, just many of them have name dropped me or implied they know me when I often haven't ever heard of em. but there's a subsection of people who will cite shit constantly but have admitted they've never read it or have admitted they ctrl+f for key words w/o understandin the shit they're citin. I've only ever included citations bc I want there to be a lvl of "you can go look at the data yourself" bc I don't expect folks to trust me, not bc I think I'm smart or think me bein smart is a reason I should be trusted. for some reason this has turned into whatever fiasco we wanna call that. I don't know how you combat this w/o readin the sources they cite and bein scientifically literate enough to parse issues like small sample size or whatever. but ig just ask yourself what they generally seem to gain: is it attention, is it admiration, etc. also be wary of anybody who tries to get close to you in a short amount of time bc best case scenario they got attachment issues you don't wanna engage w and worst case scenario they are targetin you

[merisms]

Do you have any experience/advice with the not knowing how to believe that people are telling the truth about what they say your others did/said/are like/etc. aspect of DID? I was diagnosed in 2011 and still absolutely none of ours have any amount of shared knowledge or memories, co-front or cocon, passive influence, internal communication, internal awareness of each other, or switching awareness/control.

When I’m in settings where the same external observers are around us all the time (hospitals, shelters, etc.) I get told all about what everyone is like. Their personalities, what they sound like, what they did in the days prior, and so on.

We do have designated notes spaces that our first tx team told everyone to maintain & what to write in them, which most still seem to, and I believe what people say if it correlates with what I’ve read before (like so-and-so likes bug science and I’ve seen a lot of stuff about bug in their handwriting even if I don’t understand most of what they’re saying even means.)

But I still have a very hard time with believing what I have absolutely no info or external clues about, like what someone’s actually like. I don’t really know how to believe whatever anecdote staff tells me. It’s not something I run into outside of facilities since I have never met anyone else’s friends (don’t recognize people who approach me and act like we know each other) and don’t disclose anything to my own…but we spend most of the year in these places and it’s so confusing and frustrating.

Sorry for the long ask but is this normal? And how do you make yourself believe that sorta stuff?

— Full-blackout-only OEA sys who does not!!! know who to believe

rough place to be in for sure. it's not "normal" in the sense that full blackout amnesia isn't common, which also means that most people w DID don't feel as lost as you do. within people that have blackout amnesia though I'd say it's a pretty standard problem, incl for me. before my dx I used to get capital p Pissed if somebody told me somethin that didn't match what I remembered bc they "lied," and after my dx it just became more confusion and uncertainty

this may have barriers for you dependin on certain factors, but you could straight up ask parts what they're like in your notes spaces. explain that you don't know who or what to believe and it would help if they gave you a brief summary of what they feel like they're like. I'd also take this time to ask them about their friends, specifically name, contact info, context of the relationship like where you met and what the dynamic is like, any key dates like birthday or whatever. it's kind of a catch-22 where bc you don't remember, you don't talk to them, but if you don't talk to them you kinda reinforce those dissociative barriers of "this is my person that's your person." helps to start somewhere by startin to blend those worlds together by at least talkin a bit when you can. also, personally I keep a daily journal that's a summary of the day's events incl social interactions. you prob already keep somethin similar but you could expand to include stuff that you often have issues w havin to believe others about. perk of this approach is you straight up don't have to trust what other people say

other thing I do is just recognize patterns. is this 1 person sayin this, is this 2-3 people, 5, etc. if a few diff people from 2 diff facilities/friends outside those facilities say the same thing then it's prob at least semi-accurate to how that part is perceived. if it's only one person, do they have a motive to lie about this, in this exact moment? if no clear motive to lie, then I'd just keep in mind that people can perceive the same exact action in many different ways. things don't gotta be as stark as "this is either true or not true" it can be true without bein the Only truth. aka you don't have to believe this is the 100% grade-A truth accurate within a microsecond type retelling, you can just believe this is how they, personally, perceived you. if you switch p regularly you could then, after the interaction, write in your notes spaces askin them to share their half. if you don't regularly switch then you could just kinda. leave it at that

hope that helps, lmk if you got more questions or some shit I can clarify

[merisms]

how are you faring with world politics? 🫂

look I appreciate the sentiment but this is prob like. the fourth? fifth? time somebody's sent me this over the past year or 2. and like I said I do appreciate that one or more of you think about the impact of geopolitics on your local blogger w global southie flavored trauma but I am fine. please focus on the people who aren't fine and who are directly impacted

[hazedxg0]

If you participate in the C-PTSD or DID communities online, please learn the difference between abuse and torture before you make posts where you throw around the term "torture" as if it's just a metaphor for how painful it is to be abused.

Torture refers to the intentional and systematic use of significant physical or psychological pain and suffering for the express purpose of breaking the victim's will. It is a legitimate category of abuse that requires unique interventions on both a legal and clinical level, and it is severely underdiscussed and misunderstood.

People are not invalidating your trauma by pointing out the difference between abuse and torture. People aren't even necessarily claiming their trauma is worse than yours either. While torture will always be severe by nature, that doesn't mean that abuse can't also be just as severe, or even more severe, while still not meeting the definition of torture.

This ignorance leads to serious consequences for torture survivors, please do not contribute to it in an attempt to validate your own trauma by using "torture" as a metaphor.

[merisms]

that makes alot more sense ^^ thank you alot for the clarification!

also I'd like you to know you've helped me in knowing where to start looking at more academic sources than before :) i appreciate your blog alot!

no prob 👍 happy to help

[merisms]

hello.. i hope this isn't weird but i love your blog alot and i check in with it and id like to ask why / how polyfragmention is only for ramcoa systems? we think we might be polyfragmented (various subsystems including nested, uncountable number of fragments, etc) so i want to know if that term would be wrong for someone who hasn't gone through ramcoa?

it's not about the specific word. the average alter count in most modern studies is 14-16, and there are a SIGNIFICANT number of people w DID who have well below that average--"dual personalities" were considered the stock standard DID presentation for a while, and amab people w DID tend to have a lower average parts count (thought to be due to how child abuse can be gendered but ngl there are so few of these studies that who really knows)

if everybody w DID has chronic, prolonged trauma (and bear in mind the stereotypical form of trauma for people w DID is chronic csa so it's not exactly light shit), the average parts count is 14-16, and many have below that average, how do we get to polyfragmentation? there's a whole mess of numbers between 14-16 and 100+. havin 10x as many parts as average has to occur for Some reason. and sure you can throw in different thresholds and different factors in there but ultimately: 10x as many parts as average is a lottttt more and not really likely to stem from personal differences from the same/similar situations. statistical significance if we're going by p-value (for simplicity) is 5%. so even if you had certain factors going for you that made you cope differently etc to the point that you were actually pretty significantly different from the average person w DID, it wouldn't just jump from "average" to "over 10x more"

the evidence we DO have about polyfragmentation shows that polyfragmented DID is correlated w extreme, chronic forms of abuse. not to mention, there are a lot of people who survive extreme forms of abuse incl of the organized variety and DON'T come out of it polyfragmented. there are no studies that correlate autism (or really any other condition) w polyfragmentation...the whole "if you're autistic you're more likely to be polyfragmented" is a game of telephone type of misinfo that came from when, about 10-12 yrs ago, people were discussin amongst themselves as people w DID (not as researchers) whether it would be plausible that autism could lower your threshold to cope w certain experiences

so tl;dr no I wouldn't say polyfragmentation can only occur within oea/ramcoa. I would consider it plausible for somebody who went through what academics term "severe sadistic abuse," but not oea/ramcoa, to have polyfragmented DID. but it would be pretty difficult to convince me from a scientific perspective that people without extreme trauma histories would have 10 or more times the average alter count for no other reason than that they're built different. DID is a very personal disorder and there's a lot of different ways to survive. but ultimately, we tend to not be drastically different from people in the same categories as us. call me a biased collectivist but I simply do not buy into the idea of there being a fuckton of very very extreme outliers for no other reason than that they're the 4 millionth exception to the rule

[merisms]

could i ask why you dont rec treatment of did and got parts? for pwDID?

ross is a shitbag and treatment of DID is a self aggrandizing piece of work whose main sales are prob his own employees. treatment of DID is pamphlet sized and originally written to train mental health techs at his inpatient facilities (several of which have been shut down and he just keeps openin new ones), where he exclusively cites his own body of work and then proceeds to say incredibly blatantly incorrect shit like that if you don't know what somebody has just dx them w osdd. udd is literally the placeholder diagnosis for dissociative disorders, NOT osdd. when I read it I made a point to highlight all the incorrect shit--most of the thin ass book is highlighted. contextually: if you are a researcher you are not supposed to only cite your own research bc besides being self absorbed it also means that you don't know a single person who was able to replicate your findings and replication is what allows your results to be generalized. also requiring your employees to buy your shit ass book to work for you is just inflating book sales artificially

got parts? is a book meant for people who are new to the diagnosis. except atw presents a lot of things like they are The main or only way to do things and those things can 100% cause problems in others. the problem is...you kind of have to already know that it won't work for you in order to discard the stuff atw says, but to do that, you kinda already have to know enough about DID (both generally and your own presentation) to make the book functionally useless

[merisms]

alright I'm gonna say some shit

the way that the DID community protects abusers by doin the whole white middle class suburban "we all know but we won't say anything about/to the weird uncle about his beliefs/behaviors and will even act friendly w him and actually if you say smth you are the evil awful shit stirrer" and/or "yeah but he's my friend my bestie so you must be Lyin" is a perpetuation of the cycles of abuse and silence and for a bunch of people who talk incessantly about "breaking the cycle" it's kinda cornballish

people can and do feign DID and people can and do lie about their trauma history whether or not this is a thing you wanna acknowledge and whether or not this is a thing that fits neatly into your disability politics or personally makes you question yourself. no harassment's not the answer and yes they do still need help but tellin people that there are Zero people who do this 1) denies peoples experiences (see above) and 2) does actually, ironically, stigmatize folks who did feign it for whatever reason and does feed this idea that they Can't admit that they don't have a specific dx or a specific set of experiences esp for folks who are swayed by social pressure more easily

"ok but it doesn't affect the real world" yes it does. therapists and researchers are Also on social media--the majority of the world is. there's research about how socmed affects these things. DID specialists stopped listin their specialties esp wrt ra on their websites bc of this. we have legislation bein made bc of internet rumors can we please get over the idea that social media doesn't affect the real world

if you consider reality to be "discourse" that's you but personally I'm kinda sick of the way the community ignores material reality bc it clearly hasn't done shit for anybody the past decade

[merisms]

feels like every few yrs somethin comes out about some form of oa (usually of the csa variety) and people collectively lose their shit like oh my god. how could this happen for so long...and it happened here? and then in between these news stories they spend the whole time makin fun of oa survivors and callin us mentally ill conspiracists and lyin liars

[anifired]

DID and OSDD1 are not system disorders. DID and OSDD1 are not alter disorders.

DID and OSDD are DISSOCIATIVE disorders. The existence of a system/alters is a SYMPTOM of the disorders. They are caused by DISSOCIATION. OSDD1 is not the only valid type of OSDD, and other types don't have alters as a symptom-- they are still dissociative disorders.

DID and OSDD1 are not system disorders. They are not plural disorders. They are Dissociative disorders, always, first and foremost. Alters are a symptom, they are not the root.

[merisms]

in the spirit of me sayin shit that the community despises but years later I get people bein like "oh you were so right for this": when the tides turn and y'all suddenly start sayin pedophilia et al is bad again, you'll wanna bury your "phase" and claim that you've "changed," and for a select few of you that might be true but I want you to know that plenty of us will remember all it took for you to go fully mask off was the faintest smidge of social acceptance in fuckoff niche corners of the internet

[merisms]

I'd be interested to hear, what is your opinion on Alison Miller and her works/their validity? I see a lot of new-wave people in online DID spaces treating her works as their holy grail for their basis of what TBMC, OEA, etc. involve and find it a bit concerning.

she's fine from what I remember. some of what she says are things that I haven't found in any other research on the topic so I'd take that with a grain of salt, she also trends toward not contestin the stories given to her which means she's good at therapy in terms of how for the client, perception/interpretation > fact, but in terms of "is this a real factual literal sequence of events that physically happened to somebody" ehhh

it is kinda not great that people are openly sharing her work bc these aren't easy books and it's very very probable that people will end up fuckin up their own trauma recall bc they read these before they were ready/before they organically remembered their own trauma. these are books that are triggerin for everybody whether or not they got this history--even nonsurvivors w 0 abuse history of any kind get triggered by this shit. worse if you've gone through it and Real fuckin bad if you got tbmc history. but I've been tellin people broken record style not to read about abuse when you don't got any good memory of your own history or large gaps in your trauma history for damn near a decade and they don't listen so. not my circus not my monkeys atp