Okay so I've been delaying making this post for quite a while but I feel it's only right to explain what happened.
First of all my mental health has gotten SO MUCH better over the course of these years and therapy helped a lot, I cannot stress this enough.
I am very glad of where I am mentally rn.
That aside: I am not a system.
I came to this realization about a year and a half ago if not more but other circumstances in my life didn't make it optimal for me to clearly talk about what happened and my experience with my mental health so there I am now.
I'll keep the rest of my story and thoughts under the cut.
I was 18 (2020) when I started believing myself to be a system and so I believed for almost a full year.
That said it was real for me at the time, I was depressed and deeply delusional. Everything felt real to me because I was just that deep in the delusion I had created for myself.
I've always had an internal dialogue instead of a monologue and more than once in my life I have gives said "voice" a name or a face but that, ultimately, is still just the voice of my thoughts.
In the mental state I was in in 2020, when systems were becoming more known as a factor on the internet, it only felt right for me to question whether said voice was really another person, and so I did. And then I started believing it and nobody dared to question in.
The thing about affirmation culture on the internet, and I may be controversial on this, is that it almost feels criminal to question things. So I never did and with time I just fell deeper inside my own delusion. As teens we are extremely gullible and in a fucked up time, like the arc from 2020 to 2022 was, it was extremely easy for me to hide in made up identites to make up for the holes that life was poking through me.
I have a diary written by my "alters" and I can confirm it was real when I wrote it down. Every switch, every conversation, every action was real. It wasn't, in a technical and medical sense, but it FELT real. I don't believe I was ever consciously acting, I was just following what my brain said was real and everywhere I looked on the internet it was all real. People reassured me it was real, posts did, memes did, and I just believed it.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do believe affirmation culture to be important and people should always be supported and not shunned but at the same time I feel like as teens we lack the self awareness to figure out the lies we tell ourselves. Which isn't terrible on its own but can really fuck you up if you don't realize it in time.
Anyways I digressed.
My time as a "system" was not a bad one though. I had support from a lot of people and even if it was all ultimately a lie it felt good, I felt accepted, I felt understood, and maybe at the time that was what I needed. I thank all of the people I was in contact with at the time, deeply. I don't think it makes much sense to apologize for having "lied" about being a system because I myself was not aware of it at the time. What really matters is the time I spent with with these people, even if I may never hear from them again.
When my own lies fell apart I was left with a blank state. I genuinely do not believe I have ever felt more devoid of identity. I was no one because everything I had been had been a lie made up by my brain behind my back, to cope, but still a lie.
It was horrible and what followed was the deepest my depression had ever been. I do not wish such an experience on anyone, ever.
That said, delusions are a terrible thing, and as mentally ill teens (I mean that in the most genuine sense possible, not as a mockery) it is easy to fall pray to our own brain to make up for what we lack in our life. And it's okay, it's okay to stumble and maybe realize that things were not as you think but please.
And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Please be careful about yourself. The backlash of my delusion was deep and recovering was extremely hard. Be supportive of yourself and your identity but never give it for granted. Seek help if possible and be open-minded about it. You may be wrong but there is nothing wrong with that, it's okay, it's a process, you can be wrong and that's okay.
And I think this goes for everything, from self dx to gender and or sexual identities. There are so many factors in our life it's easy to be tricked by our own minds. And sometimes we do get tricked, it's important to not fossilize on ideas we believe MUST be true but question things in a healthy way to find out the truth out brain was shielding us from.
Identities change, we make mistakes. But that's okay: we are not diagnoses, we are not labels, we are deep and complex human beings. Do not make your identity a label or and idea, be you, or yous (if you happen to be plural). Discovery is a journey, label and names just cut that journey in its tracks.
This is my experience based on my mistakes so I understand it doesn't need to be true for everybody, still, I felt it was only right to share.
A lot of people online follow a sort of "template" with DID, including making parts lists, using pluralkit or otherwise always having it known who's fronting, and being very openly a system all the time, among other things.
And this isn't wrong! But it's also far from the majority. Many people with DID, myself included, treat our DID differently. However, since the folks above are the ones most actively and openly posting online, it can feel like that's how everyone experiences DID. That was really overwhelming for me when I first got my diagnosis, because I didn't relate to the way a lot of people acted and thought.
My biggest advice for folks who either are diagnosed or are considering whether they have a dissociative disorder, or any other disorder really, is to take time for yourself first. Figure out independently what works best for you and your system. The internet will still be here. The community will still be here. Peer pressure isn't always a conscious thing. You can feel the pressure all by yourself.
I've been studying cognitive functions lately and I found out that, technically, you are born with a set of functions that you may display in different ways but that are essentially the same all throughout life.
So that got me wondering; let's assume (and I say assume because I am still confused about my type) I, Felix, am an INTP (Ti Ne Si Fe).
Now, are these my actual functions or is this just my way of displaying the functions the body has? Can alters have different functions even tho they can't be changed?
How do cognitive functions work with DID?
Cause, for example, Jess (co-host) acts way more like an ENTP and our caretaker, Vlast, has more of an ISTJ behavior.
So are these just different ways of displaying a set of functions we all share or can functions actually change between alters?
Please feel free to correct me if I got anything confused and let me know what you think.
Lots of people have noticed (and myself included), that at the end of your At Dead of Night playthrough—especially end of episode 6 and the start of episode 7—that you have stated that Jimmy, the main antagonist of the game, has DID.
Unfortunately, your statement also implies the stereotypes and stigmas of DID widely known: a mental disorder that makes people have different alters, and always entitled that some of the alters, if not most of them, are evil.
That, however, is NOT DID.
I have stated from some sources of what DID actually is;
Wikipedia:
Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a mental disorder characterized by the maintenance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps beyond what would be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. The personality states alternately show in a person's behavior; however, presentations of the disorder vary. Other conditions that often occur in people with DID include post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders (especially borderline and avoidant), depression, substance use disorders, conversion disorder, somatic symptom disorder, eating disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and sleep disorders.
American Psychiatric Association:
Dissociative identity disorder is associated with overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse that occurred in childhood.
Symptoms of dissociative identity disorder (criteria for diagnosis) include:
The existence of two or more distinct identities (or “personality states”). The distinct identities are accompanied by changes in behavior, memory and thinking. The signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.
Ongoing gaps in memory about everyday events, personal information and/or past traumatic events.
The symptoms cause significant distress or problems in social, occupational or other areas of functioning.
In addition, the disturbance must not be a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. As noted in the DSM-51, in many cultures around the world, experiences of being possessed are a normal part of spiritual practice and are not dissociative disorders.
People who have experienced physical and sexual abuse in childhood are at increased risk of dissociative identity disorder. The vast majority of people who develop dissociative disorders have experienced repetitive, overwhelming trauma in childhood. Among people with dissociative identity disorder in the United States, Canada and Europe, about 90 percent had been the victims of childhood abuse and neglect.
I would like to bring this up in here: some people and systems has pointed out your statement. Now I know that you've never meant to harm anyone, BUT that statement is very harmful.
Here are some screenshots that I brought from Twitter.
Now, the developers of At Dead of Night has stated that Jimmy, in fact, does NOT have DID. What you may saw with the "Jimmy and DID" tab in the game probably means that you haven't read it—which is unfortunate, and have lead through this catastrophy.
Here are some resources (links and information) that I found on Jupiter's thread, and added more:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9792-dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder (this one uses the old term, but the point still stands)
Now I'm sure there's a lot, a LOT more info of DID that you can found online. As said above, the DID system are NOT EVIL. I'm friends with two or three of them in this community, and they're very nice!
I hope you can educate yourself on this, and refrain from making similar statements in the future.
is it unsupportive of people dealing with mental health issues + trauma to like. want to distance yourself from someone who’s trauma causes them to interact with others in an unhealthy way? i know that sounds like it should be obvious but. someone close to me has been in multiple toxic relationships and had a really rough childhood. because of these things they tend to have really bad communication issues and get upset over mistakes. i know it’s not necessarily their fault but at the same time it’s really stressful. i struggle a lot on my own but i know they have it worse than me, so i try to be patient but i don’t know when the line should be drawn with this kind of thing. i really do care about them which just makes this harder
No. Regardless of what we've been through, we all have a responsibility to not take it out on our loved ones - and if we aren't able to avoid doing that, people have the right to distance themselves as needed. No matter what your friend has been through, it doesn't justify treating innocent people badly - and even if it isn't their intention to hurt you, your hurt still matters and it still deserves to be taken seriously. You don't have to put up with toxic behavior just because your friend has been treated badly. You're allowed to put yourself and your own mental health first. You don't owe anyone endless patience.
