seeing that post by sophie was one of the biggest pieces of evidence that sophie doesn't know literally a god damn thing about DID.
she hasn't done enough research into DID to know that the last literal leading theory for how DID develops before the theory of structural dissociation was that children had imaginary friends that they dissociated and projected their trauma and trauma-related feelings onto to cope with the trauma they received, where these imaginary friends later became alters.
this right here is, by itself, one of the biggest reasons you should never take anything that sophie says seriously. she is a pseudo-intellectual who doesn't care about scientific fact, she just wants to sound smart, seriously.
she also (and the anon in the post) just don't know what the fuck self states even are. they're not fully formed separate identities without amnesia between them, they're states of being. self states are activated in certain situations, such as when the person is in distress or in need of comfort, or in need of mental stimulation and play, for example. EVERYONE has self states, from children to adults. "work self" and "home self" are self states that adults have, and children may have "school self" and "home self" self states. the difference in children is that these self states are less stable and less well regulated because the child is still developing, (which is how we can get to fragmentation where self states become full blown alters down the line if trauma is introduced), while in a healthy adult without a CDD, they tend to be more stable/consistent and are integrated.
even this is a very simplified explanation, but it should get the point across. you don't "remember" having self states as children because you're not supposed to remember having self states. they're certain action systems and sets of behaviors activated under certain circumstances, not necessarily something you actively choose to do.
when a young child is hungry, they may go into a self state that focuses almost exclusively on food and becomes distressed when it cannot be accessed for whatever reason, be it neglect or just an inappropriate time for the child to be eating. adults can regulate their hunger self states much better than children because their whole sense of self is much more well integrated and stable than that of a two year old.
you people would know this if you'd read the haunted self.
she kept posting screencaps of the DSM's entry for DID, which doesn't mention a trauma requirement because people with DID often don't remember their trauma or downplay it, it has vague wording like "associated with" instead of "directly caused by" because that is the nature of clinical language. in the DSM (and the clinical literature on DID itself, for the record), it mentions no other cause for DID than trauma, at all. if there were other causes people knew of, then it would be listed. if DID could just *happen* then it would be mentioned. but it can't, so the DSM says all of this instead.
people criticized her for posting these cherry picked and intentionally misread screenshots of the DID entry in the DSM, so she then took to posting the comorbidities section of the entry for PTSD instead, which says that the [visible] onsets of DID and other dissociative disorders could be preceded by a traumatic event. not that the disorders can be caused by single trauma, but rather that the symptoms could be visible under stress. this is another intentional misinterpretation of a cherry-picked part of the DSM, which is the only clinical literature sophie has read on DID.
oh, and, trauma primarily before the age of 2 can in fact cause DID in some cases. need i remind people that one of the lowest age range for the development of DID was up to 4 years old. not at all an agreeable age range, but there is a reason for that, and the reason for that is that things like newborn abuse and young toddler abuse can and do occur and cause DID in people. specifically, the kinds of DID it tends to cause are DID with comorbid BPD and polyfragmented DID because of how impactful the trauma is/can be at that age.
i follow more than one person on social media whose DID was caused by trauma and abuse and neglect from before the age of 5, some people even with mostly infant/young toddler abuse, like diagnosed and everything. so the notion that DID can't be caused by such things is just... wrong. sure, that's more than likely not the only factor that went into developing the DID of these people (trauma is never the only factor that goes into developing DID), but that doesn't make it any less wrong. while i can't say that these things are commonly the result of newborn/infant/young toddler abuse, or that these forms of abuse themselves are even especially common, i can say that this does happen.
all this to say: sophie is a pseudo-intellectual who has no business talking about DID the way she does, when she has barely scratched the surface in regards to reading clinical research on DID. first claiming continuously that DID can be caused by something other than trauma and citing nothing but the DSM (proving she hasn't read anything else on DID other than the DSM entry for it, because literally all the clinical literature on DID says it is inherently a traumagenic disorder, all the way back to its MPD days; the other sources saying it's not traumagenic are also saying that it's not real, i.e. the fantasy model. the DSM itself doesn't list another cause for DID than trauma, so anything she posts about DID not being inherently traumagenic is cherry-picking, intentional misreadings, and hypothetical based on clinical language that sounds that way for a reason), to this nonsense.
also, conveniently, she never lists what exactly can cause DID outside of trauma, or what would cause a person to dissociate to such an extent that they develop fully autonomous dissociated parts with amnesia between each other other than trauma. dissociation is inherently disconnection, and while dissociation is nowhere near DID-specific, dissociation to the extent of a disorder, and especially to the extent of DID, has no reason to happen without trauma. don't give me that "brains are complex" bullshit.
i'm saying this to everyone regardless of syscourse stance: sophie is not a reliable source on DID whatsoever. she has not read the literature, rather she pretends she has, and speaks on DID as if she knows anything about it when in actuality, she doesn't know what in the actual, gluten-free, home-grown fuck she's talking about, and just makes shit up 90% of the time, all basing it on pretty much nothing but poorly done endo studies and the DSM's entry for DID.
sophie doesn't care about being right, she cares about cherry picking, intentional misreadings of clinical literature and being intentionally obtuse, and doing whatever she can to save face and look right.
there are a lot of reasons not to listen to sophie and her bullshit, but her dedication to be as wrong as possible while posing herself as some kind of misunderstood high-brow academic. she continuously says the most wrong shit you've ever heard, and then doubles down as much as possible. nobody should be listening to her about anything, let alone DID.
and for reference, not to have a dick measuring contest or anything, but here is a portion of my personal library on clinical research on DID:
this isn't even all my papers, and doesn't get into the books i have on the subjects of trauma & dissociation.
to be clear: if you use this post to send hate or harassment to sophie, you are verifiably worse than her and her misinformation. do not use my post as an excuse to send some random internet assholes anonymous hate. doing so only fuels the dickbaggery of these people. i made this post specifically so people know not to listen to her.
