#actually dissociative

[co-fronting]

Something that always bothers me in mental health spaces is the fear of relating too much to each-other across the lines of different disorders. Too many times I've met people who are not dissociative systems, but have dissociative experiences (such as from BPD), and they trip over themselves saying "no no, I mean, I don't REALLY understand what you go through, my thing is totally different," and it makes me a little upset. Disorders are just clusters of symptoms packaged together in a certain way, that's why the names and criteria often change across DSM and ICD editions, and viewing them as entirely exclusive clubs where only they could possibly understand anything about each other isn't a particularly healthy way of seeing it. The lines between disorder labels are blurrier than you think. You are not being a bad person or overstepping for relating to symptoms of a disorder, or people with a disorder, without having their specific label. Very rarely (if ever, frankly) is there a symptom that can only occur in one disorder, or even one type of disorder. Psychosis can occur in countless circumstances. Dissociation and identity compartmentalization can occur in countless circumstances. It's better to focus more on your specific symptoms and building community with your fellow neurodivergent people, using the resources that help you regardless of if they were specifically made for your diagnosis, over worrying about whether or not you're "allowed" to relate to something or experience something similarly to someone else.

[hazedxg0]

It really does say a lot about how romanticized and theatricized alters are online when people go into denial or feel isolated for displaying the most textbook DID/OSDD symptoms.

Not knowing who's fronting, not knowing how many alters you have, not knowing when you switch, not knowing alters' names or why they formed, alters not having names, having no internal world or a very vague one, having no internal communication, struggling with external communication, experiencing alters as different overlapping states of self instead of separate people, hell even just experiencing amnesia.

These are all extremely common symptoms of DID/OSDD, especially when you're untreated or early in treatment. And yet they're all common reasons for why people feel like they don't belong in this community, because the reality of this disorder somehow doesn't conform to the online expectation.

How bad is the state of CDD awareness, even among those who proclaim to have it, that the most common manifestations of DID/OSDD are so underdiscussed that the majority of people with these conditions cannot find understanding even in a community meant for their disorder? When anything that doesn't play into the "alters are separate people and friends in your head" narrative is ignored and erased?

[starryk1sses]

I hate delayed amnesia so much. I’ll go through a whole day thinking I’m “fine” and fully present, and then hours later it hits me like—wait… I don’t remember anything from today. It feels like my whole day just slips through my fingers.

I’d like to think I’m staying relatively co-conscious with our other alters/fragments, but then once they leave, I lose nearly—if not all—of the memory afterward. It’s so disorienting.

[274th]

Don't know what else to add. Here.

[faesaint]

DID sucks because in the morning you think "maybe I'm actually normal and I should stop overanalyzing my experiences and just enjoy life" and in the evening you get possessed by the ghost of yourself from 2018

[mindwrms]

if you need someone to tell you this let us be that person: yes you can still be a system if your parts are just different versions of you. yes you can be a system if you have trouble communicating or cant communicate at all with your parts. yes you can still be a system if your parts dont have names of faces, but are just feelings and states of being. yes you can still be a system with no set host, or frequent fronter(s). yes you can still be a system without being able to tell who’s fronting at all times or if youve switched. plurality looks different for everyone, dont just assume that because your plurality doesn’t look like someone else’s that what your experiencing isn’t plurality.

[blakesreefium]

for those out there who feel like their dissociation 'isn't enough' and feel like they're faking because of it, hey. maybe it's because you lived your entire life with this experience and got too used to it. but here's the thing, dissociation isn't just 'suddenly blacking out and having no memory of the entire past day' no matter how much its painted as that. not all dissociation is sharp and obvious.

forgetting passwords, forgetting names and people, forgetting your dreams, having too vivid dreams, insomnia, brain fog, face blindness, remembering your days like a blur, struggling to remember your schedule, school/work day gone too fast, forgetting to eat, forgetting to drink, derealization, depersonalization can all be caused by dissociation. i know its hard to accept but it is, just because you don't black out doesn't mean you don't dissociate; if you sit on your computer stopping for a second doubting your password or if you wake up feeling like that was a trainwreck of a dream then suddenly it stops being visible is caused by dissociation. if you're awake, looking around but having the feeling that something with the existence of the surroundings is wrong is also dissociation. if you suddenly remember that you forgot to eat that day, that you forgot to drink that day, the time is 3 am and even though you never blacked out and you were always there, is still dissociation.

if you grew too used to constantly living these little things, then you are probably ignoring your symptoms. so please stop the doubting. you're not fake, your dissociation is real, your amnesia is real and you are not lying. please remember this. you are a system, and it's okay to dissociate. it's not your fault.

[caintooth]

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that’s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!