sup

system discourse / advice blog thing

[systemdiscourseiguess]

I sent you an ask a while back saying I was a cult survivor who might be a system. I’ve figured it out and I’m definitely single, but I still wanted to thank you and this entire community for helping me realize that it’s okay to heal from trauma and that doesn’t make the trauma any less valid. I’m a lot happier with where my mental health is now, and it’s definitely at least in part thanks to you ❤️

This is such a wonderful message to get. I’m glad that we and others were able to help you and I’m so happy for you that you’re in a good place. I hope that 2020 ends up even better for you!

[systemdiscourseiguess]

you have brain damage you were dropped on the head as a 2 month old baby your mother drank vodka and huffed paint when she had you jesus christ

yeah, probably mate

[systemdiscourseiguess]

(previous anon) my friends persecutor isn't really demeaning unless really upset, they are just colorful with their language. I'm not all for that to be honest, (I have my own trauma with curse words). Which is why I try not to do anything that would make the persecutor front. I'll make sure to talk to my friend though. Thanks for the advice

Yeah in this case I would definitely talk to them. If you have your own trauma and are being triggered you have ever right to establish boundaries.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

imo if someone of the same awareness level as yourself can't confirm that they do have a disorder, then yall also can't confirm they don't. While you don't think someone has the right to diagnose themselves, you cant diagnose them either. ( btw im not saying you as in the direct you, its just a general you shdjjf )

Yes this is so true. Someone can’t disbelieve in self dx and at the same time claim that they can decide whether or not someone has a disorder when they are also not a professional. I especially can’t diagnose or “undiagnose” anyone who messages me or people they know.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

So I'm not a system, but I'm friends with one. And the other day the persecutor kinda came out and chewed me out, that was fine, I have thick skin and all but as far as I know, I didn't touch on anything sensitive so I'm just worried I did something wrong. Do persecutors normally go off out of nowhere? Thanks. Love the blog btw

Persecutors generally have a reason for coming out but that doesn’t necessarily mean you did or did not do something wrong. They can come out because of someone genuintely hurting the system or because of something not inherently bad but that reminds them of an abuser or something similar. The best bet would probably be to ask the system and see if they know or remember what the trigger was. If whoever you’re talking to doesn’t remember that conversation, ask if you can tell them about to identify that trigger and discuss what to do in the future. 

Also, I’m not saying they’ve done anything, but it’s important to remember that you also deserve to be treated well, even when your friend has DID. They don’t have free reign to hurt you. It sounds like maybe they just were a bit stern to you but if anyone is ever really hurtful about that you’re allowed to not be ok with it.

I hope that all made sense. Lemme know if you need any more advice on it!

[systemdiscourseiguess]

Could you briefly explain the word polyfragmented?? I've never heard that particular word before, even in talking with our therapist, and I'm curious!

So polyfragmented has two meanings. The main one I see more often is simply having 100 or more alters & fragments (alters that are less developed) in your system. The other is having many subsystems which on it’s own can also mean a few things.

Subsystems can be alters having their own alters or groups of alters that can communicate with each other but not the other subsystems. So alters in group A can all talk to each other but they can’t talk to any alters in group B or C.

Usually, polyfragmented systems have both of these things. In the general sense polyfragmented systems are large, have fragments, and usually also subsystems of some kind.

Hope that helps!

[systemdiscourseiguess]

i feel like my friend is faking her system. the way i see it you need a diagnosis for this sort of thing, but she hasn't been diagnosed in the slightest and her excuse for this is that her dad won't let her get checked out(she is a minor). adding on to that she's trying to introduce her alters to me and they all seem like some crappy roleplay. i know her system is fake so how can i let it down to her gently to stop this bs?

This question makes me quite uncomfortable. While people do fake, your presumption that your friend is 100% for sure faking bothers me because you cannot know for sure. Your first point about not being diagnosed doesn’t make much sense, since people have the disorder even before getting diagnosed. Your friend saying their dad won’t let them get checked out doesn’t sound like an excuse, this is a reality for some people, especially abuse victims. 

In the past our system has seemed fake to people because we were young and misinformed and tried to fit into things on tumblr. People said endogenic systems were real so we said it too. People said system hopping was real and it was used to abuse us so we believed in it. We are also an overt system (the less common kind of system who often cannot hide their switches or the differences in their alters) and this has made us seem fake. What I’m saying is that you can’t know because you are not in their head.

This is a very dangerous path to go down. To decide whether or not a system is “real” based on arbitrary things. If you think you are, for instance, being abused by someone faking a system then that’s one thing, but just asking me, a person who doesn’t know you or your friend to advice you on how to tell them they’re a malingerer when I have no evidence either way is not something I’m comfortable about at all. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

1. @ anon alters can be a diff race frm the body, even POC alters in a white body (as long as alters dont claim 2 be diff race from the body) uwu 2. i forgot what i was about to type. have a good day/night!

That anon was in reference to an ongoing conversation about race and DID that I (and a few others in the community) have been attempting to have with the community for a while. Check out This post (an in depth explanation from another blog) and This one (a short vent post i made here about the topic) here to know my opinion on all this. Basically it boils down to how your alters are and will always be the same race as your body and white systems attempting to get around this is alienating to many people of color and can be extremely harmful. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

ugh ok look the whole alters can't actually be another race thing is annoying (to me). i'm a white alter, almost all of us are white... the body is asian. am i supposed to identify as asian? ??? what,,, ok just needed to say that and if anyone can tell me if i have to id as asian. i feel very uncomfortable having to id as such when it's not my culture. would that be cultural appropriation?

That’s not something I can directly answer with a 100% sure right/wrong answer for you. It’s definitely a different relationship with your body/system being a POC and you identifying as a white alter, since that balance of oppression is way different than if it were in reverse (what with white privilege and such). But my personal advice is to think about why most of the system identifies as white and if it could possibly be internalized racism or feeling like being asian / a poc didn’t feel as safe when the alters formed, etc. And that’s not me saying that’ necessarily the case, but it has been the case with us, being a black system. We’ve had alters see themselves as white in the past because of how awful a lot of the racist bullying we experienced was. But now even the ones who do look “whiter” in the inner world all identify as black because they know we experience the world as a black person and always will. 

And if you did decide to start identifying with being asian then it wouldn’t be cultural appropriation because your body is asian and as such does not and will never have white privilege, just as a “poc” alter in a white body will always have white privilege. 

But really in this specific case it’s a bit more complicated than just “white person says they have a black alter who’s ghetto and in a gang” which is what I usually see. this is more complicated by far given the nuances of it.

Feel free to message again or pm if you wanna talk about it more and i hope this all made sense. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

we are a polyfragmented system. we're in a discord server with endos. many of them are beautiful, lovely people. but many of them claim exotrauma and that their alters are in fact poc, despite their body being white etc. we still have issues with race terms surrounding alters (we're white) and we're trying our best surrounding that as well as our pseudo memories. they treat us well with helping us through difficult pseudo mems but 1/2

2/2 they treat tulpas, and endo, and spiritual alters memories as real traumatic things. i understand it may feel that way. we love every1 there, they're really great friends but theyre not just against ppl who are anti-endo, they're also against transmeds as well. we don't want to leave bc these people are supportive and mean a lot to us but we want to be in traumagenic discord servers that we could better relate to. we're also really doubting our validity atm and it isnt helping. what to do??

I mean. I’m gonna leave the transmed thing you mentioned out of it cuz that’s not really pertinent to this blog and I don’t wanna start a big fight about completely unrelated stuff.

But on to the rest of it. I totally get having friends where you disagree about stuff a lot and having these issues. If you want to stay friends with them despite all this that is up to you and I won’t tell you to stay or leave but perhaps you could also join some traumagenic-only servers without leaving the other one for now and see how that feels. Then later down the line you can decide if you still want to be in both groups or if one is making you feel better than the other. 

I also think being in a traumagenic server could help you with your feelings of doubt because the way you’ll interact with that, because of trauma will be completely different than a system who claims to have no trauma. Hopefully a server with DID/OSDD systems will help you find people to connect with on all levels, because every aspect of DID/OSDD is affected by our trauma unfortunately and people in the traumagenic server could probably help more with it imo. 

Let me know if this isn’t the kind of advice you were looking for and feel free to pm instead if you want. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

hey, in an older post you mentioned religious abuse? what would that entail exactly? for reference, I'm a cult survivor trying to figure out if I'm a system, and I want to know if what I when through might be considered traumatic enough

to clarify, i mean specifically in relation to did. i know i was religiously abused, I just want to know how bad it was and if it was bad enough, i guess

If it hurt you then it was traumatic enough to be considered trauma. And any repeating / chronic trauma is enough to make a child develop DID or OSDD. There’s not a certain level it has to get to. Everyone has a different brain and because of that the same amount of trauma could make one person develop DID, while another wouldn’t. Whatever happened to you, it was abuse and therefor could have caused DID. Good luck on your journey to figuring out if you have a system. Just know that no one kind of trauma or abusive act is worse or less bad than another. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

Hey! I don’t have DID but is it okay to ask how to help my friend that does? I just don’t wanna make mistakes or misstep or anything, and I don’t know much about how best to help him if he needs it! Feel free not to answer but what would you suggest that I do to make sure I’m being as good a friend as possible? :)

It’s hard to say exactly. It depends on the person. The main things are to respect all the members of the system and don’t treat the alters as secondary or less important than the host. Also try not to be hurt if some alters don’t feel as close to you as the host. Overall I’d say 1. ask them what would help them most personally and 2. look up some DID youtube channels because they have videos on being friends with someone with DID. I don’t want to say anything too specific because all systems are different.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

@voicechanges yeah exactly. Like they’ll happily talk about how their child alter suddenly grew up or a persecutor is now a protector but once I say “you might be able to change your alters internal appearance to not look like another race” suddenly I’m a liar despite the fact I have done this myself. We used to have alters that look like something other than our race (so alters that didn’t look black or white) and we have completely eliminated that in our system. Those alters are still there, they just don’t look like that anymore. And even if we find some old alter who looks that way we wouldn’t post about it or use a faceclaim of another race. We just wait for their appearance to change and it always does.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

If you (not just meaning hosts but the system overall) have DID/OSDD it is absolutely 100% your responsibility to make sure that your system doesn’t abuse people. This includes persecutors coming out and abusing people. You need to figure out a way to keep people safe. That’s on you, not the people around you. You can’t just say “they’re my persecutor. They’ll abuse you, be careful”. You need to figure out a way to make it stop. Whether that’s a gatekeeper stopping the alter from being near people other than a therapist, working to rehabilitate said alter, or even keeping yourself away from people in general if you truly feel you’re unable to control the situation. There is NO excuse for abuse, and that includes DID.

[discoursedingo]

My 2 cents-its okay for alters to “appear to be another race” in the headspace, however not for them to identify as. Systems need to address a lot of internalized racism that can cause alters to draw on stereotypes, and not try to “reconnect” with the “culture” of the alter (which I’ve seen a lot of systems do). D*ssoc*D*Ds description made me very uncomfortable, and another system did something similar. Even if an alter is problematic, you have control over what you broadcast on the internet.

That is basically where we land on the issue too. You have control over what you broadcast on the internet and how you interact with society. We all need to have some awareness of how our behavior may harm others. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

This is precisely what I mean when I talk about it. People will go online and say “my alter is black” when they have the complete control to just ... not say that. I understand alters can look like different races (but I do still think that needs to be extremely carefully handled) but they simply aren’t actually another race and I am so tired of seeing people say it anyway.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

@babiephace

Yes I totally relate to this. (We are mixed though). We have had many alters change over time or even just change easily and it’s so frustrating to see people say it’s literally impossible.

People acknowledge that alters can change from persecutors to protecters, why can’t they acknowledge an alter could change from looking like another race to denouncing that identity? It makes no sense. It just speaks to how little some people want to be held accountable for their actions.

[systemdiscourseiguess]

Not to come back to this blog after leaving it mostly vacant for months but D*ssociaDID having an alter just say in a video “I am black” “I am native” “I have a wide nose and big lips” “i love feathers and beads and turqoise” and joking about how she can’t say it “too loud” and saying all these black and native stereotypes in it is so hurtful. It hurts so fucking much. Hearing a white person describe exactly what it is they think black people can be boiled down to (big lipped, wide nosed and “afro hair”). It’s unbelievably racist. There was no reason to say she was black. you can leave that bit out. like just don’t fucking say you’re black and native and talk about “”””your”””” culture. it’s not your’s. It never will be. 

[discoursedingo]

I saw this post after I replied to your other post. I don’t watch their videos so I wasn’t aware of this sort of thing happening. This is obviously very hurtful to POC. 

While I still think that parts/alters can’t choose or change what they are, I think they do need to be sensitive to how they speak and how they behave and be aware of how they can potentially hurt others with their behavior. 

We have a part in our system who we are aware might hurt others if they talked about details about how they see themselves, and so they simply don’t. They just don’t talk about it publicly. It’s part of how we experience our system privately and it isn’t something that needs to be shared with other people. 

[systemdiscourseiguess]

These are the things I am talking most about, not the simple act of the alters existing.