what??

Questioning DID system of 10+ // currently undiagnosed, seeking diagnosis // body is 15 // please send asks!! It would be super helpful to us // header is part of our inner world // main blog: that-time-I-was-weird (just where we like and follow from, don’t bother checking it out)

[lesbianmasterchief]

any adhd kids out there that loved long (3+ hour) car rides because it gave you an acceptable excuse to stare blankly out at an ever-changing background and listen to music on loop / daydream extensively please raise your hands. i wanna check something

[tlirsgender]

You ever have those like, autistic coded characters that are your faves because You Too and someone says they're annoying and you're like. Oh Okay You Probably Hate Me Too Then, Cool Cool

[tlirsgender]

My fave: acts how I would if I wasn't actively hiding a lot of things about myself because I'm scared of being annoying

People: god they're so annoying

Me, just sitting here, listening to this: Ah.

[the-hiraeth-system]

What just happened:

- I accidentally stepped on a heat gun my grandpa had left on the ground, right in the way (but where he thought was out of the way)

- grandpa and mum got kinda worried and calmly told me to go dunk my foot in the pool for a few minutes

- everything was fine, no one was upset, all is good

What was going through my mind (not even saying out loud, just in my head): fuck, I’m sorry, shit, it’s my fault, I’m so sorry, my bad, they’re angry at me, fuck I’m such an idiot, I’m so stupid, now I’m in trouble for getting hurt

I got mildly hurt and was scared to the point of having a break down the moment I got behind closed doors. Not scared of the injury or any of that, but scared of being punished for it. Scared of being yelled at or hit for accidentally stepping on something that someone else had put in the way and not warned me about.

This is what trauma and abuse does to people.

I’m so tired.

[homunculus-argument]

a child with an undiagnosed mental illness: I think I need help. I struggle with things nobody else seems to be struggling with.

a parent who never got diagnosed for the exact same mental illness: Oh sweetie. EVERYONE struggles with that :)

[dan-mcneely-deactivated20210328]

this sort of kind of reminds me of this class i had a few years ago where we talked about boundaries, how to keep them, and how to make sure people near you are safe too. probably because i think about it most of the time lol

the instructor was this big tall kind of imposing man who commented on how this exercise was one of the only times he thought that was a good thing. he asked for a volunteer and had them stand a few feet away from the wall on one end of the classroom while he walked over to the one opposite them. it was a big room so he was pretty far away

“i’m going to walk towards you and talk to you about my son,” he explained, in a totally friendly and disarming way. “im just going to talk and maybe gesture a little and walk towards you, just talking! and when i get too close, all you have to do is tell me to stop and i’ll stop. its ok! really! i wont be upset at all and this is just a class, i’ll stop on a dime!”

and then he did exactly what he said he was going to, but very loud and walking kind of fast. the room echoed and everyone was watching. he hadn’t lied at all, but it was just kind of a lot. the volunteer immediately took a step back and looked more guarded but didn’t say anything until he was basically on top of her. 

he stopped, and then he asked her “when did you WANT me to stop?”

she admitted that she was a little uncomfortable about how fast he was moving from the start, but halfway across the room is when she really didnt want him closer.

“yeah, i know! i was paying attention. i saw your nonverbal cues right away, but a lot of people who preface their actions with a speech like mine won’t. by constantly reassuring someone they can tell you to stop, the responsibility falls on YOU instead, in their eyes, and also makes you second guess using that to begin with! because you knew i didnt want to hurt you, or thought you knew that, the idea of telling me to stop, of suggesting i wasn’t safe, made you second guess your gut and worry about my feelings. it’s good to check in like i did, but it doesn’t mean you can stop being perceptive, and you have to keep in mind that just because you give them this tool doesn’t mean they’ll feel comfortable using it. once you understand that, there will be a lot fewer cases of people “blowing up” at you”

[dan-mcneely-deactivated20210328]

good evening, gamers

its 3am and i just wanted to say that this post has 10k notes now and its the only self-helpy people-decodery post ive made that spread this far without people twisting it into absolute garbage, so thank you so much for that alone

but the thing that really makes me feel emotional about it is that with most posts like this you see around, picking at how manipulation works and how abuse can bloom, they’re either presented or taken as things to watch out for in others, as things to look at and go ARGH, THIS EXPLAINS MY EX!!! and there is some of that! a lot of that! and its good and i love that people might be a little safer now dealing with others

but a significant portion of the tags and replies are from people who realize they do this, or even that they might do this. and of those, people have seemed embarrassed, mortified, scared, saddened, sure, but every single one has had an underlying current of “well, now i know a thing i can get better at”. you want to treat people better, and thats amazing. it also says that even if it feels disgusting to see this in yourself, that somewhere on some level you know you can improve. and its true!

thats so fucking cool i cannot get over it. 

[randomslasher]

You know…I’ve seen this post before but it didn’t hit me until this time. Especially the idea of “just because someone has a tool doesn’t mean they’re comfortable using it.” And it goes in both directions, too, because I’ve seen people who feel bad about not using tools–people who say things like, “well, I should’ve said stop” or “if I really felt strongly about it I should’ve said something, that’s on me” and while maybe there’s some truth to that, there’s also a lot of truth to the fact that we should never stop sharing the responsibility for one another’s safety and comfort. Yeah I’ve said “hey you can tell me if I’m making you uncomfortable” and you’ve said “I can speak up if I need to” but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect your non-verbal cues and it also doesn’t mean you are at fault if you weren’t able to use a tool you’ve been trained to be afraid of using

anyway OP this is mind-opening and I appreciate you lots

[awbrainno]

I love seeing those posts where people are like “if you have headmates or whatever you should be on meds because that’s not okay” posts. Like neurotypicals just think that there’s some magical pill out there that will ‘cure’ anything they don’t consider ‘normal.’ Meanwhile, in the land of reality, my shrink thinks it’s pretty healthy that I’m finally getting to know my headmates, and has no intention of putting me on magic pills, because as long as I’m not hurting myself or anyone else, who cares what neurotypicals think is ‘normal?’ Actually, let’s be real: who cares what neurotypicals think at all?

[tenaciousberry-deactivated20200]

It is not a magic pill, it is called “Therapy” and you can even do it in groups!

[awbrainno]

i… literally mention my therapist… right there… in the original post…

did you not actually read this… do you honestly believe telling someone who has already admitted to being in therapy… to go to therapy… is a “gotcha” moment???

[earlgraytay]

Okay, so there’s a relevant quote from Slatestar Codex here. (The link is to the source; attribution is a Thing.)

Basically, this one obsessive compulsive woman would drive to work every morning and worry she had left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house. So she’d drive back home to check that the hair dryer was off, then drive back to work, then worry that maybe she hadn’t really checked well enough, then drive back, and so on ten or twenty times a day.

It’s a pretty typical case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but it was really interfering with her life. She worked some high-powered job – I think a lawyer – and she was constantly late to everything because of this driving back and forth, to the point where her career was in a downspin and she thought she would have to quit and go on disability. She wasn’t able to go out with friends, she wasn’t even able to go to restaurants because she would keep fretting she left the hair dryer on at home and have to rush back. She’d seen countless psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors, she’d done all sorts of therapy, she’d taken every medication in the book, and none of them had helped.

So she came to my hospital and was seen by a colleague of mine, who told her “Hey, have you thought about just bringing the hair dryer with you?”

And it worked.

She would be driving to work in the morning, and she’d start worrying she’d left the hair dryer on and it was going to burn down her house, and so she’d look at the seat next to her, and there would be the hair dryer, right there. And she only had the one hair dryer, which was now accounted for. So she would let out a sigh of relief and keep driving to work.

And approximately half the psychiatrists at my hospital thought this was absolutely scandalous, and This Is Not How One Treats Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and what if it got out to the broader psychiatric community that instead of giving all of these high-tech medications and sophisticated therapies we were just telling people to put their hair dryers on the front seat of their car?

I, on the other hand, thought it was the best fricking story I had ever heard and the guy deserved a medal. Here’s someone who was totally untreatable by the normal methods, with a debilitating condition, and a drop-dead simple intervention that nobody else had thought of gave her her life back.

It is not a therapist’s job to make you normal. It is a therapist’s job to give you your life back, on whatever terms are acceptable to you. And if your therapist can’t do that, you need to find a new therapist.

For some people, having headmates and/or alters is a debilitating condition. They’re losing large amounts of time, having trouble going to work and/or school, or hurting themselves or other people. In that case, they probably do need help, but I think most people who are getting fucked up by their headmates that badly are willing to seek out help on their own anyway.

Other people who have headmates and/or alters find it to be a neutral thing, or even a positive thing. 

Have you ever been in a roommate situation where different people do different chores, because, (say) Kate loves to do the dishes, but can’t stand to vaccuum, and Toby’s the exact opposite? If Kate and Toby are headmates, they can wind up doing the same kind of thing. Headmates can also comfort you when you’re sad, remind you that your depressive or intrusive thoughts are not true, or help you deal with difficult people. 

So, if you’re in that kind of situation, where your headmates are helping you to be more functional than you’d otherwise be? A good therapist is going to treat it like the hair dryer on the front seat of your car. 

Sure, it is a Weird Thing. It makes you look a bit eccentric, and it’s not normal. But if having headmates keeps you from having repeated nervous breakdowns, helps you hold down your job, or makes it so that you can deal with your abusers? Then it’s a win, and a good therapist won’t try to ‘fix’ that. 

[funereal-disease]

It is not a therapist’s job to make you normal. It is a therapist’s job to give you your life back, on whatever terms are acceptable to you.

[remakingthisblog123456-deactiva]

As an addition to this post, neurotypicals just assume that all medications work, and that everyone responds the same to medicine. It can sometimes take someone months to find a medication that works for them, and even then the side affects from medication can often times be worse than the benefits. For example, I took a medication for my anxiety that while it did help the physical symptoms of my anxiety, and occasionally lowered it, it made me so depressed I was close to killing myself. 

And even if you do find a medication that might work, it can still take weeks for the medication to kick in. 

Medication can help a lot of people, and for some people medication is the right option. But for some people it is not the right option, and it is not some magical “fix all” solution. 

[emeraldembers]

While I was working in the local hospital a few months back, part of the training included a dementia awareness course, and one of the stories I thought was very telling regarded a woman who had kept stealing towels from others in her residential home and leaving them to soak in her sink. After talking to her and her family, they found out she used to make a living doing laundry when she was much younger, so the residential home invested in one of those old washboard-and-bucket setups for her, and would leave some clothes by it in her room for her. The stealing stopped, and she became much more lively and talkative now that she had something to do that felt familiar to her.

With disabilities and mental illnesses, the reality of it is that many of them won’t go away, not with medicine or therapy or wishful thinking. Treatments are there to manage the conditions. And if the condition is being managed in a way that doesn’t cause harm to the person with that condition or their friends and family, then why should anyone look down on that management?

[averyroundbird]

This just tells me what I’ve known all my life; neurotypicals don’t often care about mentally ill/cognitively disabled people living to their fullest, they just want them out of the way. Out of sight and out of mind. Sure, a person with headmates who deals with them healthily might be living to their fullest and without repression or discomfort, but then neurotypicals would have to suffer them. Stimming might help a dyspraxic or autistic person express themselves and soothe anxiety, but its annoying and embarassing! And we can’t have that can we?

[clatterbane]

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton: “Treatment” isn’t a penalty cage you put crazy people in until they’re not crazy anymore

[the-dissociated-bones]

I know this blog is about memes and positivity and not about calling out misinformation and opinions, but I thought this was really important.

What matters is that you are safe, happy, and healthy. Expecting your mental illness to just go away is really unproductive. Find what works and is comfortable for you.

You are no less a person just because someone else thinks you should be “normal”. Don’t worry about that. Be safe.

[thestarseersystem]

Unless you are in pain or suffering, you don’t necessarily need “treatment”, like I want medication for my ADHD because executive dysfunction is a pain in the ass and causes me to suffer.

Yes people with DID and OSDD deal with PTSD and need help through that, but the goal isn’t necessarily to make you one person again, the goal is working together as if you were one person. Dealing with multiple wants and needs, and helping each other through that.

So there isn’t necessarily medication or a pill for DID/OSDD, as there is not a singular thing or necessarily something that needs fixing.

It’s a system, a process, a coping mechanism. Not really a problem or a hinderance.

[raven-system]

@ all of our MHPs :)))

[the-hiraeth-system]

Hey! This is the Mage system, specifically Puzzler! A member of our system is named Hiraeth, so it was pretty cool to see this blog in our recommendeds. Anyways, thoughts on endogenic/quiogenic systems? Might wanna put your thoughts on 'em in your blog bio, so those with an opposing view don't follow you without knowing.

That’s so cool! Tell Hiraeth we say hi!

As for endos etc. idrk. The reason we haven’t really talked about it publicly is because we don’t know how we feel about them. We’re not professional, we don’t really know anything and therefore don’t feel comfortable saying anything on the topic or posting opinions about it. We follow systems both for and against endogenic etc. systems. We’re not really on either side of the argument, at least for the time being.

[the-dissociated-bones]

hey did you know that having a disorder or disability doesnt make you dumb or worthless???? i KNOW man i almost didnt believe it either but its true!!! omg crazy right???

[musingsofbooboothefool-deactiva]

WOAH REALLY

[the-dissociated-bones]

yea man apparently your illness doesnt determine your worth and never did?? amazing

[thesolarsystem]

“You don’t SEEM like you’re autistic” Yeah bc I’ve actually also got undiagnosed OSDD/DID wherein I have conveniently compartmentalized all my stereotypical autistic traits into these tiny little fuckers in my brain to the extent that I can for the most part afford to be Neurotypical-passing because I had to be that way to survive but yeah you’re right, no autism here, must be making it up

[the-hiraeth-system]

So uh. We chose a system name.

Hiraeth (here-eyeth); a nostalgia or homesickness for a home or a time to which you can never return

[galactixmlm]

You ever just feel like tv static

[the-hiraeth-system]

(to the host) how did you find out the names of all your alters? I'm questioning whether or not I have DID (i scored really high on a diagnosis test) and I can FEEL it (if that makes sense) and I KNOW there are others there (not many, just 3 as far as I can tell) but I can't figure out their names?

Unfortunately, I don’t know that I can help you here. For me, the other’s names usually just popped into my head with them. I just know. With some exceptions, of course.

It might be that the others in your system don’t have names yet? We’ve had this happen once so far, with Ella. I could feel a gentle fairy alter but could never find her name. Then one day I think we were co-con and she started looking for ‘fairy names’ online and saw the name Ella on one list and it just fit.

That said, it’s also entirely possible that you’re just not getting the names. Unfortunately, I don’t have any advice for this. Sorry :(

don’t ever feel bad for asking me to tag a trigger

i do not care what the trigger is

i will tag it for you

you have legitimate reasons to be triggered by it

and i am not one to question those reasons

so just send me an ask

anonymous if you’re scared

and i will tag it all the time in future

your wellbeing is worth twenty extra seconds of my time at least

[the-hiraeth-system]

um hi there,im sorry if this is personal but what are your alter's names and pronouns?

Hi! Not too personal! We’ve been trying to make introduction posts for each of us but... idk. It’s just not really happening?

As far as I know, we have:

Solar, they/them

Ella, she/her

Salem, they/them or he/him

Sophie, she/her

Sasha, she/her

Maria, she/her

Holly, she/her

Sean, he/him

Toby, he/him

Ash, they/them

Mabel, she/her

I’m also still trying to figure out the stuff with Jake/ Kyle/ Kay (???) but he/ they all go by he/him I think

[the-hiraeth-system]

Your inner world looks beautiful! It’s quite nice how people make their inner world like a fairytale. For me it’s just a simple house haha. Trying to expand it but I can’t big oof.

Haha yeah. What I’ve seen looks really pretty, but I haven’t got a chance to explore much, since I usually can’t get in and am kept out of a lot of it :/ host problems

Ella seems to come forward whenever I think or talk about the inner world, and she definitely knows more than me, but I can’t quite get to what she’s trying to tell me, which also sucks

A simple house is cool too! Having a whole village and forest and stuff is kinda overwhelming tbh. But hopefully you can expand yours to something you’re happier with!

[the-hiraeth-system]

Is there a possibility that my “imaginary friends” might be alters? I know that you create imaginary friends but that isn’t the case with me they just popped up and I was like okay cool. They also don’t feel fake they feel very real. Another thing is that some imaginary friends shouldn’t really hurt you so...(they don’t hurt me anymore).

Possibly? I’m not super knowledgeable here, sorry :/ But I guess it’s not out of the question? Idk how likely it is. Only you can really know what you’re experiencing

[the-hiraeth-system]

How do you know if you’re an endogenic system? Cause if I am I’m just gonna yeet myself haha

I have no clue. I honestly don’t even know where I stand with my opinion of endogenic systems, so... I’m just gonna try to answer this as neutrally as I can.

All I can say is not to worry if you’re not aware of having experienced any childhood trauma. The whole point of DID is to not remember the trauma. Just because you’re not aware of any trauma doesn’t mean you’re endogenic or anything. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, I guess? Idk, still trying to find my stance here, like I said