#mod devyn

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

It's okay if the only emotion you're ready to feel right now is anger. Being angry doesn't make you dangerous or immoral. Anger is a normal emotion. It's usually a secondary emotion, meaning there are other emotions that are causing that anger. But sometimes anger feels like the only safe emotion, and if you're not ready to address the emotions that are the cause of your anger, that's okay. Being angry is allowed.

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

It's okay if you don't shower as much as people around you. You don't need to shower every single day to be clean and well-kept. Showers and baths can be extremely difficult or triggering for some people, especially when trauma and neurodivergency converge.

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

Ask Guidelines & Things to Know

Hello everybody! Welcome to supportivespaceforsurvivors. This is a trauma advice blog. We function primarily by asking questions submitted to us via the ask box. Because of that, we would appreciate if you would read the following ask guidelines before sending any asks. You can also read these policies on the Carrd. The Carrd also has a short informational blurb about each moderator.

We are not crisis support. Please refrain from sending asks requesting for us to talk you out of harming yourself. Here is an extensive, organized list of alternatives to self harm.

We are not professionals or a substitute for professional advice. We aren't able to diagnose anyone through this blog. Because we aren't professionals and can't diagnose, sometimes we will recommend you consult a professional if you are able.

Please specify in your ask what you'd like to see in your response. For example, specify if you want validation, advice, resources, or simply an acknowledgement of your vent.

Please list applicable trigger warnings at the beginning of your ask. This helps our mods avoid triggering asks, or prepare themselves before interacting with an ask if they can handle the content when appropriately warned beforehand. This ensures that we can respond to your ask as efficiently as possible.

Please avoid using the term "narcissist" or its derivatives, like narcissistic, to describe your abuse. We want this to be a safe space for everyone, including those with stigmatized mental illnesses. We don't believe people with stigmatized mental illnesses, especially cluster b disorders like NPD or BPD, are inherently more dangerous or likely to be abusive. Using the term narcissistic is abelist. A further explanation about the abelist nature of the term "narcissist" is here.

We won't publish inflammatory asks. This is a queer-friendly space, including towards a-spec folx. We aren't going to publish asks that are clearly meant to start drama or discourse.

Please remember the mods are human.This blog is run entirely by volunteers. We want to get to all our asks as efficiently as we can. At the same time, there might be some days where no mods feel up to answering asks.

You can request a specific mod answer your ask if you'd like, but please don't ask for a specific mod not to answer it. This includes stating any mod except one can answer your ask. We ask for you to do it this way because having people ask a certain mod not to answer their ask can feel very exclusionary and be upsetting.

A note about our tagging system: We use the terms "tw r" and "tw sa" as a way to lessen the chances of our blog or its posts getting deleted by tumblr's algorithm.

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

Sorry about the Mod Devyn. I hadn’t thought that through. I was the one asking for prompts.

The reason I didn’t specify what the roadbumps are is because they’re not exactly “me specific”.

This is a heads up for those triggered by sexual content to skip this blurb. The roadblock was that searching “trauma recovery writing prompts” on tumblr fed me into a community that fetishizes trauma. I don’t have the spoons to get into it other than that it was extremely upsetting.

If anyone has recs, they’re welcome to ask/submit/dm me on this blog, my primary.

Details that may help narrow prompts: I have long term trauma from caregivers and intimate partners. It’s a variety of types as well. I am indeed plural, but I feel as though we’re decently functional in that aspect.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you, and no worries! Publishing so others might assist.

@recoverywithanasterisk has a Sexual Assault Awareness Month prompt masterlist from 2021 that can be found here, but other than that I don't have any trauma-specific recommendations.

Mod Devyn

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

i kept this vague, so i don't think any cws are needed...

i'm a trauma holding alter, but i have my own memories as well. my memories are more... icky... than the body's memories. i'm afraid of talking about my memories with anyone, but... i want to get help. the memories are traumatic to me, even if the body didn't experience them. it's scary asking for help because i don't want to be invalidated, and no one that can really help me knows that i, and all our other alters, exist. we have our first counselling appointment this tuesday, and our host and a few other alters are planning on making it known that we're a system to them. maybe not on our first meeting, but eventually. it's so scary to me.

i think i mainly need some advice about this? but anything else the mods think would be helpful would be nice, too...

Hey anon. I'm sory this went unanswered for so long. You said you had a therapy appointment scheduled for two days after you sent this. How did it go? Please feel free to send an update!

I put off answering this ask because I couldn't really think of any DID-specific  advice and I was having an anxiety attack about flying to Colorado. (It went fine, by the way, I'm waiting at the airport for my plane back right now!)

What we did at our first appointment with our current therapist was write up a list of questions to which the answers were non-negotiable. If she had answered any of them in a way we didn't approve of, we wouldn't have seen her again. Some of them were about specific stigmatized disorders that we have, including our DID. I very much recommend doing something similar if you haven't already or if you decide to try a different therapist. I will post the list under a read more in case it might be helpful for any of our followers.

Please note that I did not put any questions about insurance on our list, but if you have those questions, you should make sure to ask them. The reason it wasn't on our list is because we already had the answer.

I also want to recommend to any DID systems that if there are certain areas of DID syscourse (for lack of better word) like integration or the language you use to refer to yourself that is important to you, to bring it up to your therapist at one of your first appointments. If your therapist won't respect whatever you say, that is a huge red flag.

I hope this list of question helps some of our followers!

Mod Devyn

What is your opinion on controversial diagnoses like DID?

What is your opinion on stigmatized diagnoses like BPD? Do you diagnose people with these if they fit the criteria?

What diagnoses do you feel like you work well with? Which ones do you feel you don't work well with?

Do you have any lived experience with any of the disorders/mental illnesses/diagnoses you treat? (Yes, you are legally allowed to ask this.)

How long are sessions?

What techniques are you trained in besides EMDR? (This one may not be applicable.)

What made you decide to become a therapist that specializes in trauma?

What kind of clients do you usually see? (age, identity)

How do you handle copays?

How do you approach a client if you personally feel like you do not work well with them?

Do you bring your religion into therapy, is it something you keep completely separate, or does it depend on the individual to whom you are speaking?

Do you have any prevalent beliefs that may impact how you work with a client? (politics, religion, etc)

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

is weird that i dont actually remember parts of my trauma but know they happened, like an event that was described. i dont know any details but i know it happened

That's not weird at all! It's very common. It has to do with how traumatic memories are stored in the brain.

Mod Devyn

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

I guess my ask isn’t getting answered. And that’s fine and that’s your right but you should really communicate a bit more about that. Especially confusing when Devyn is making posts about how he misses asks and it’s like ?? But you’re not answering them? It’s very misleading

Alright. We either usually delete passive-aggressive anons or answer them with text posts, but I'm going to answer this one because it's been a consistent issue.

I understand that people are frustrated with our wait times right now. But I'm going to remind you all that we are all human. Usually if nobody has thoughts on how to answer something within a week, we publish it in case our followers have input. However, September has been a really hard month for all the mods, with lots of unexpected real-life situations coming up for everyone at the same time. Getting passive-aggressive, entitled anons doesn't make us feel any more motivated to answer something we haven't answered yet.

When an ask comes in, if someone wants to answer it but can't answer it at that exact moment, they claim it by putting their name in the answer field and saving it to drafts. Right now, our oldest draft is from the day we restarted this blog at the end of August - which was actually a fairly old ask on the old blog that we had a screenshot of. Someone is planning to answer it, but like I said, everyone has been extremely busy lately.

Yes, I made one post that I reblogged one time about missing asks, because I do. At the time I made that post, if I remember correctly, all of the asks that were not claimed had been answered, and we do not take other people's claimed asks without explicit permission from the person who originally claimed it, so there were none I could answer.

Like I said, we've all been burnt out and busy lately. Sometimes, too, an ask is triggering, and forcing ourselves to answer asks when we're in any combination of those states of mind is detrimental and we aren't going to do it. If you're upset or worried because your ask hasn't been answered yet, feel free to send something in asking about it, but you need to communicate in that ask without being passive aggressive and you need to specify which ask is yours. Just saying, "I guess my ask isn't getting answered," is the least helpful way you can communicate with us.

That said, which ask is yours? We will let you know where it is in the process of being replied to.

Thanks,

Mod Devyn

[supportivespaceforsurvivors]

Tw (CSA) i guess?

I found this blog and was just scrolling through, never intending to send anything in. But i saw an ask that just triggered me to send something.

I was molested by a priest as a child (like 4?). It was very brief but i remember it and he was very involved in our lives because my mom was super religious and involved in the church. I grew up always fantasizing about being molested by older men (which is super disturbing to me now). But..i feel like i was never emotionally bothered by it and therefore dont consider myself a victim etc. like obviously it impacted me subconsciously but idk. I feel like an imposter if i were to associate myself with victims of csa or whatever. Like what happened to me wasnt “that bad”. Not looking for a solution here. Just some validation maybe? Thanks :)

Hey anon.

You don't have to call yourself a victim if you don't want to. That's totally valid. I personally prefer to call myself a survivor instead of a victim, but it's all up to the individual.

Something that helps me when I feel like my trauma wasn't that bad is to remind myself that playing the trauma Olympics doesn't help anybody. Oftentimes, what causes an experience to be traumatic is a lack of support following disclosure. I know that was the case for me.

I hope that helps!

Mod Devyn