#[stops what I'm doing and realizes i am. in fact. extremely dissociated]

[deservedgrace]

How am I dissociated, numb AND dealing with allodynia at the same time. What are bodies.

[scapeg8ats]

(Sorry for this being a long post, it became a rant/vent and a lot of thoughts. Someday I'll shut up about this I SWEAR lol. There's a TL;DR at the end.)

Maybe I'm not even interested in syscourse outside of learning more about plurality and its connections outside of CDDs and why someone may see themselves as plural or really any way of not seeing oneself as One Singular Self (whether it has to do with a disorder or it's a cultural/religious/etc. reason). Or I guess that does make me interested in syscourse. Just not echo chamber syscourse.

Like I'm sorry but y'all are fucking mean. I LOVE having discussions where I can learn and understand other perspectives. I guess to steal SAS's label, I'm very pro-syscourse conversation (though—and this isn't to bash SAS AT ALL—to me that feels redundant because syscourse is supposed to be conversation anyway. But it's not so the label is necessary). I want to learn. I want to be educated. I want to discuss this, even with people who disagree with me, because I want knowledge of other perspectives.

But it is so hard to find syscourse spaces that AREN'T echo chamber syscourse spaces. The desire to attain knowledge is stomped out by attaching inherent morality to labels that can be boiled down to one argument: Do you or do you not believe that plurality is exclusive to CDDs?

And shockingly this has more nuance than "endos are/n't valid". What may cause someone to see themselves as plural without a CDD? And the answers are vast and could be a FASCINATING discussion. Not even necessarily a debate, just learning more about people. And yet the answer to this question isn't even considered before so many people just go "[extremely loud incorrect buzzer noise]" and shut it down.

Maybe, ironically, this is me struggling to understand perspective. But I don't understand the lack of interest in wanting to understand, despite having experienced it myself. And even that, I want to understand. But I know that the fact that because of the nature of my opinions, I would be marked pro-endo, and shut out of that discussion. And it's INFURIATING because I respect the fact that they don't want to interact with me but I just don't understand!

There is endless room for discussion that's shut out and it's frustrating. It's heartbreaking. I want there to be discussion. But there won't be until the echo chambers start to open their fucking eyes.

I remember the moment for me was when someone in the Twitter dissociatwt community who I really respected, who always provided good resources, who was reliable and kind and honest...was pro-syscourse conversation. And my knee-jerk reaction was almost betrayal. How could someone that I respected be a pro-endo??

But I realized that they didn't stop being reliable because of this. Some of y'all will discount doctors who have been studying plurality, trauma, and dissociation longer than some of you have been alive because they're a stinky smelly "pro-endo". Therapists and doctors and the like who go "Why isn't it possible" get discounted because of this when they, too, just want to understand. Because with all due respect and in the most positive way, they're a bunch of nerds. And I don't understand. I don't understand how you can do that.

And that's really the thing. I don't understand and I'm not given the space to understand because my stance is somehow morally wrong. I'm not virtue signaling right. Sometimes for both sides. And it's awful.

TL;DR, I don't understand and am frustrated by echo chamber syscourse. That's it. That's all this long-ass post is saying. I don't get it. It didn't need a post but a lot of me just started Talking and did not stop.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #66

Today's letter is maybe a little early, I know. But my mind is all abuzz with various things. In light of the realizations I've been having, it has occurred to me: though I am skilled at taking care of everyone in my general vicinity, I have no idea what taking care of myself really looks like, outside of a purely theoretical sense. And theory alone is difficult to follow through on.

So, whenever I try to imagine whatever it is that I might want and need at any given moment, my mind typically comes up with a big huge blank. If you asked me what I want right now, or what I need right now, I wouldn't be able to tell you. Most likely, I'd just stare at you, utterly baffled and looking stupid as I keep opening and closing my mouth, trying to come up with an answer and receiving only what effectively amounts to static noises and TV snow:

There are a lot of reasons for this. First of all, I've been trained to basically discount my own needs; saying that I'm hungry or thirsty or sleepy, for example, was a great way to get screamed at or smacked around in days past, so my mind has had to learn how to automatically ignore most sensations of discomfort that my body is trying to tell me, before I even consciously perceive that the discomfort is there. Especially if I'm focused on some task, I typically don't realize I'm hungry, thirsty, tired, or in pain until someone else tells me I'm being a crabbypants. My sense of interoception is very poor, and I'm not sure if that's the autism or the fact that I've had to learn from an early age to dissociate even from extreme stimuli.

Even for the pain from the rib injury, too; in an effort to protect itself from those who would get violent with me if I complained about pain or was slowed down from pain in any way (these people no longer exist in my life, and yet…), my mind automatically pushes the brunt of it out of my conscious perception (even though I no longer want it to do this; I'm working on it…), and what I'm left with is a sensation that's not… exactly pain as much as it is kind of a vague, dull, heavy cloud of general and poorly-defined unpleasantness that has settled itself into the upper right quadrant of my torso. And while this is an amazing skill to have (even if the price to get it was steep) because it allows me to mostly function through it, this also comes at a significant and ongoing energy cost; dissociation doesn't come cheap.

…So that's an obstacle between me and the whole "self-care" and "treating oneself gently" thing. Other obstacles include fun stuff like executive dysfunction (starting tasks is hard even if they're fun; stopping tasks is hard even if I hate them, and being reliably able to plan and prioritize multi-step tasks effectively is nothing but a distant fantasy for me) and impaired object permanence (this is why I forget that there are vegetables in the crisper drawer of the fridge until they start to smell weird). Then there's the rib injury itself, which limits my mobility and ability to do things in a given day, and the fact that my body does not tell me that I've done too much until it's too late (combination of dyspraxia and poor interoception), and then I gotta spend the next day paying for it.

Caffeine helps a little with the executive dysfunction, but it also makes me more prone to getting flashbacks, so I have to be very careful about how I use it. But I'm often not careful about how I use it, because I want to function. So by the end of all this, the general flow of my life looks kinda like this:

…And it's only taken me like 12 years, but I'm FINALLY starting to actually realize that this is very much NOT sustainable. I'm a squishy mammal, not a machine. And I can't exactly be hanging out over here, imploring you to take care of yourself while I'm over here being kind of a dumpster fire, right? Something about rocks and glass houses. So something has to change. But I'm not exactly sure what yet.

On Tuesday, my therapist asked me to chew on the question of "What does taking care of a Lumine actually look like?" And so far, all I've come up with is a list of obstacles that stand in the way. But it's better than the nothing that I had previously, right? I can build from something that is not a nothing; I can work with that.

One of the things I think I need in order to not feel overwhelmed is "not clutter". But we are a neurodivergent house, and all three of us tend to set things down in weird places and then immediately forget that they exist. Today, in an attempt to try to remedy this, one of the things I came up with (don't laugh at me too hard for this) is to try to treat my house as though it's yours and we're just watching over it and waiting for you to come back home (silly, impossible, and ridiculous for a variety of reasons, I know; but hey, whatever keeps me motivated, right?).

I don't know how sustainable this will be in the long term (for a variety of obvious reasons), but I suppose the process of trying to learn how to keep myself motivated to tend to myself and my space properly will involve me making a lot of mistakes along the way to try to figure out what works and what doesn't. Better to start from shaky ground than from no ground at all, and to try to build a solid foundation from there.

Another thing I came up with is to try to be alert and mindful about myself in the same way that I am alert and mindful about the people I care about in my immediate vicinity. To be fair, this "alertness" and "mindfulness" comes about as a result of the hypervigilance that the C-PTSD leaves me with, but I wonder if I can learn to take a more wholesome approach to it, and then learn to turn that lens inward upon myself in a more merciful fashion than I have in the past. I don't really know what this will look like yet, but maybe I can start by setting an alarm to check in with myself at least once an hour.

I'm tired of it being the case that I either break myself from not doing enough for myself, or break myself from trying to do too much in one sitting. In service to the goal that is trying to build a routine that isn't unreasonable in light of my limitations, I'm going to try to set hard limits on how many things I do in a given day. So for example, maybe I'll wash 10 dishes. Maybe I'll fold 10 clothing items. Maybe I'll vacuum one room. And even if I can "technically" do more, maybe I'll just leave it at that, because doing any of these for any amount of time causes a lot of pain in the affected side of my body.

Up until now, I've swung wildly between "doing nothing" and "doing all of it at once", and… this doesn't work. So I think I might have to try to start small by building a very gentle routine (the ADHD despises routine, while the autism desperately craves the structure, so this is a fun dynamic to have to try to play with…) and adding to it as I grow accustomed and comfortable. I think it's time to work with my neurotype and physical composition instead of punishing myself for the fact that neither of these things exist in a way that's considered "normal".

I might ask my friends for ideas, too; when the task at hand is difficult, you're supposed to ask for help. Humans are social creatures (yes, even if developmental trauma can sometimes make people think like they're "born solitary"). Maybe they'll have some ideas about what I can do, and about what proper self-care ought to look like; it'll be educational. To be sure, I have no idea what I'm doing, and there's a lot that I don't know.

But I'm going to try to blaze the path forward anyway and write down what I learn along the way, so that when you decide you're ready, you won't have to start from scratch; I don't know what good any of this will do, but I would almost rather stop breathing permanently than see you get cut down again, so I have to try something. Anything. Even if it means I gotta do something I'm terrified of doing (like acting as though I'm worth my own effort and compassion) in order to model for you how it's done.

In the meantime, while I'm trying to figure all this stuff out, I've done a few things around the house and poured myself a lovely cup of the biscuit tea (I know I said before that it's unremarkable, but it's growing on me nonetheless). I'll share with you a few of today's highlights, just on the off-chance that any of it might give you even a small reason to smile today.

Here is the biscuit tea I made for myself, before and after stirring:

Here is some salmon, before and after steaming. It's important to get your omega-3s while trying to build new neural connections.

Here is some rice, before and after cooking. Remember the jar of rendered chicken juices from my 64th letter to you? That was used to make this rice.

Sliced fresh carrots, steamed as the rice cooked:

Here's the balanced and wholesome meal that I made out of all this. I wish more than anything that I could hand you a bowl filled with these same contents.

And here's a freshly-made bed! Bubbles, my giant lovely orca plush, is having a marvelous time chilling out on a bed that has THREE blankets on it!! I'm gonna be so warm and toasty when I go to sleep!! It's gonna be great!!

You deserve all these things. You deserve a good tea, a wholesome, balanced, delicious meal, and a toasty, comfy bed all to yourself, where you can feel safe. Because all humans deserve these things; you're not an exception. So I'm gonna keep trying to help you. I'm gonna keep trying to call you back to yourself so you can build for yourself a life in which you can have this. I'm gonna keep trying because I love you in the same way that anyone loves a friend, and because there's lots of other people who love you, too.

We don't wanna see any more bad things happen to you, but really, only you have the power to make the kinds of choices that will lead you to peace and safety; all we can do is try to encourage you and cheer you on from here. I'll pray to every deity in my world that you might hear us and turn yourself around. So make good choices. Take care of yourself. Don't go so far away that the light of all the things that are beautiful and good cannot reach you. Sephiroth... please?

I'll write again tomorrow. I will always make the time to write to you, regardless of what I'm doing and no matter how tired I am. I'll always be right here.

Your friend, Lumine

[unfortunatesal]

Anis Magirevo is a mentally unstable mess who lies to herself and that kinda rules because I am too

Yo, Allison here! Sally was gonna make a MagiRevo post but I have way more interesting things to say about it so I'm gonna take it from here

So, near the end of Magirevo, Anis goes from being someone fixated on her magicology and who is happy to give up the throne for it, to someone who feels like she's nothing if she can't be queen and that her entire identity relies on that. And that kinda bothered Sally!

"Like, all that talk about how she feels like being a princess is all she has going for her... Wasn't she satisfied with her magic before? why and how did that stop being the case?" my headmate said. But... I get it. I absolutely, totally get how that makes sense.

Consider this: Anis went through really traumatic shit with her brother, for one. Then she's told she needs to take the throne, thus giving up her entire life's work and the one thing she values and loves more than anything. She's being scrutinized by old fucks who tell her she better stop doing magic shit and pop out babies. She is extremely, extremely not okay, and the show makes that super clear.

So, what she does is try to cope with it as much as possible despite being extremely distressed and suffering a lot. She tells herself she can do it, she wants to do it, she needs to do it. So she lies to herself about wanting it, about needing it, because she has to? She's powering through it as well as she can and her mental health is extremely fucking bad, of course she's going to think and say things that make no sense, that contradict everything previously established about her, because that's what mentally ill people do in these situations.

When Euphie, someone she fucking loves, says she'll sacrifice herself for the throne, Anis fucking panics and decides that she's worthless if she can't be queen, that her magicology is worthless. And maybe, in the moment, she believed that, but I dunno if it's true! Maybe she lied to herself to give everyone a reason she would to be queen! I know because this is absolutely shit Sally has done when under that kind of pressure. I know what it's like to be in a situation where you want and needs to justify her actions and feelings, but being in such a bad mental state that you don't actually fully know. So you have your brain scramble to latch onto something that isn't true, but that you can tell yourself so that you at least have something to say. You lie to yourself so that you can lie to others, basically!

But maybe she was being genuine, in that moment! Anis is not mentally healthy, she never has been mentally healthy. Throughout most of the anime, she's acted confident, reckless, sure of herself and what she wanted, she acted proud and passionate. You know who else did that? Me! I was like that! I was so much like that that when I first showed up, I used her as my avatar for a while! And one day... I fucking collapsed. I realized I kinda hated myself, that I saw myself as worthless, that none of the magic I professed to be excellent at was actually worth shit, that it was all fake, that my confidence was fake, that my enthusiasm was fake, that I was fake. And maybe Anis broke too. Maybe the trauma of fighting her brother made Anis realize that... all of her confidence was just a facade, just a lie she told herself to cope with the fact that... she finds her magic to be fake and meaningless. Of course she does! That's what everyone told her, that she can't do magic, that any magic she does can't be real, that she can never truly reach her dream no matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard she buries herself in her magicology, that it could never be the real thing, and she had to dissociate from that, ignore it, push it away, drown it in fake confidence because the alternative is too fucking painful. In reality, to her, her magic is nothing. Especially without the approval she genuinely craves, the approval whose absence caused her to, deep down, hate herself for not being capable of real magic. At right at the moment she realized how worthless she feels, she was given another opportunity to find self-worth : if she became queen, she could become something. And she clinged onto it because she felt like she had nothing else. Because she had no choice, she had to, no matter how painful.

I see Sally in Anis, I see myself in Anis. I see the same fake confidence and energy that exists to hide a deep insecurity, a deep feeling of fakeness, a fake hiding another fake. The real Anis isn't the brash, confident, flirty girl we see take Euphie away and seductively suggest she share a bed with her. The real Anis is the insecure, easily flustered girl who is in denial about having being kissed by Euphie, and can barely bring up the courage to kiss her on the cheek. Much like the real Euphie isn't the girl who is obsessed with fulfilling her role as a noble and can't handle Anis's flirtyness, but the girl who passionately fights for Anis's happiness against the wishes of the royal family, and makes out with her while pinning her down.

Magical Revolution is framed as a story about Anis helping Euphie grow and realize who she truly is, but it's actually about both of them helping each other grow and be true to themselves, and that's why I love it so much!

[mothmanriley]

so i stop flooding the fucking. backup.

uhHh yea anyways !!!! shit sucks and I can't really talk to my partners about it because they're just sort of. not well-versed in trauma and I'm gonna be real here mine is extensive (I have recently had an increase in a certain amount of intrusive thoughts triggered by a weird line from my belly down, and if it is similar to the ones I've had before, it could be pointing to the source of my hemophobia), I know how I sound so I try not to go too deep into detail when I talk about the Bad Times.

in addition, a lot of moments I associated with supernatural phenomena I've come to realize was just . me, as a kid, having flashbacks. sucks that I've been having them since 4.

you know it's actually weird I distinctly remember coming into consciousness on my fourth birthday. I can't remember the date but I remember waking up in that double bunk bed that only I slept in. my sheets were pink and blue and I was so, so excited because I remember it was the Day I Got To Be Alive! the world was so fucking vivid and bright and it was all hope and childish glee. everything before that is like. gone.

but I was always scared, you know?? I had a few things that terrified me - reflections, small, red lights (which I eventually realized reminded me of a camera. which. uh. rough implications), sleeping alone - I would see shadows twist and hear whispers in the walls.

I never felt safe when I was a kid, not really. there was always that underlying tension, a background radiation that had seeped into the fibres of me; I could ignore it, I could act out, it didn't matter. people noticed, of course - it oozes from me still. part of me wanted (wants - hence why this blog is public) to acknowledge it, but no one ever did, and despite the severity of our current state, it's unlikely our partners will until we are professionally diagnosed (a process i am looking to undergo regardless; however, it will take months of saving up, and I Don't Know If I Can Do Months).

part of me is extremely grateful for the peace the 'weird little sad person' persona has gotten us, despite the reducing our collective anger and grief to 'just kinda sad for no reason'. it just .. makes it hard to talk about the depth of it all.

like. c didn't 'trick' me into thinking I had this. i've always known there were others. my entire life has been shrouded in this haze and I know its fucking name now. I've reached the point where I can't deny its effects on me, its presence. a forbidden truth, locked in some deep fucking part of me - and it's so fucking frustrating because no one in my day-to-day seems to give a fuck even when it's visibly fucking with me.

(there was one time our friend was making magic cards out of everyone in the house. when he showed me mine, it had "if you have lost four or more life this turn, put a counter on Joey. sacrifice 5 counters: transform this creature." the transformed creature was a eldritch energy thing, and it had the same effect in reverse: gain four or more life, etc. it was a silly joke, and maybe a lil insensitive, but the fact that two of my alters were acknowledged in a lighthearted way that wasn't inherently invalidating .. it was really really nice.)

so I just do what I always do - isolate, stay up, spiral, lament and just generally divorce myself from the idea of ever being fully loved (dissociation included); hope that I'm able to scrap together some form of intimacy from people who very clearly do not love me as they love each other (which is fair, and something i thought i would be able to grapple with - and maybe, if I weren't living with them, but as it stands--). which is ungrateful of me, because they've shown me a kindness I didn't know was possible. I just wish like ... I don't fucking know. I'd like for them to stay up with me once. one of them used to, and it made things easier a lot of the time, but our girlfriend didn't like it so much so now he pretty much always goes to bed with her.

it's like ... little things like that? they do things for each other that I crave but I don't think I've ever really had. not long-term.

and im supposed to somehow wake up without any of these things floating through my head and triggering a spiral so I'm not as much as a burden to them.

[soullikethesea]

My doubt is so clearly linked to the clinic.

Deep inside, I trust my experiences. I know that DID therapy has worked for me. I love the alters I came to know and was able to realize are a part of me (in the same way that I am a part of them).

The clinic experiences feel like a stain, like an attempt to break that down. I learned some important lessons from it and it made me a whole lot less naive.

So what happened?

Treatment with my T at the time was stagnating. We figured out that my current daily life was far from safe, and yet we'd done intense trauma work in the midst of it. My T was in way over her head. I asked her to specialize so we could continue treatment, but she realized that it was too much for her and not worth it to her, because she was likely not going to treat another person like me in her career (as she was seriously considering retirement).

During the overwhelm, she had unwittingly also harmed me. Because she was not being supervised and guided properly, she had focused a lot on individual alters and was mostly "fascinated" and convinced we had to come up with our own treatment because we had to pioneer like that.

When I confronted her about the fact that there *are* treatment guidelines and when the weekly sessions became mostly her reiterating that she couldn't help me and that I asked too difficult questions... we started to look into potential referrals. There was this trauma centre that worked with the Coping book and I liked the idea of more structured learning.

So I was referred there. I had never been in a big place like that rather than with a private T, so everything about it scared me. So many people and procedures. Administration that took ages. No one remembering or knowing your story. I only had three appointments with them.

Online questionnaire, indicated possible dissociative disorder. Interview. The interview was so bad... they just went on and on and on until they made me cry. Then it suddenly stopped and I was sent away.

Then the diagnostic interview, which was so so so terrifying. Then the meeting in which they said that I probably had some sort of personality disorder with an extreme amount of dissociation and also C-PTSD. But they couldn't be sure. Either way, I was not welcome. Oh, and should stop reading the Coping book.

And looking back I'm so glad I wasn't welcome. They were forced to close less than a year later, so I would have been left with nothing. And by now I've heard about many more bad experiences with them.

So it was a blessing in disguise, even though they contributed to the breakdown of the relationship with my T back then. They were extremely sceptical of her. They thought that we were both mislead, mistaken, wrong. I was stereotyped as a typical med student thinking that I had all diagnoses I read about. (They could only see the "competition horse" side of me, the successful high-achiever). And when I don't know people or don't feel safe with them, I very skillfully and unconsciously hide every potential speck of emotion. I avoid vulnerability like a pro. I talk around questions, make everything vague so that I don't have to come close to my emotional truths.

So yes, I brought it upon myself. Not by choice, though.

I just can't get the feeling of their judgment out of my body. So much fear. Old T told me at the first or second appointment that she thought it could be DID. Then she repeated that it *was* DID a lot. And then, by the time I had accepted it, she didn't want to specialize. And then, after the clinic thing, denied that she'd ever said it was DID, or had ever treated me for it. When clearly she had focused so much on it, and on working with parts (who she treated as completely separate people).

So what did I take away from this?

Make sure that your T knows what they are doing, or at least make sure that you know what they are *supposed* to be doing. Specialize, become as knowledgable as you'd want your T to be. If only so that you can recognize when things are going awry. There are decades of research and scientific literature. Of course every approach has its limitations, but you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Psychology and psychiatry are very powerful disciplines and hurt their patients. (Naivety spell was definitely broken).

It also reminded me so much of the gaslighting I've been through. I think that's what it made it traumatizing, combined with the trust in my T that it hurt so deeply. It negated all that treatment. It made me so scared that I'd trusted the wrong person.

So yes, it was traumatizing even when for most people it probably wouldn't have been.

It also made a big impression on me that much of the process was handled by an intern and I could tell she wanted something else for me, but she didn't have the power to change anything about it. It made me feel afraid for my own future as an intern somewhere and I think it steered me away from clinical psychology forever. I know she had to write a report about me. She sent me like 8 extra questionnaires after they'd rejected me, which likely showed more suspicions of OSDD/DID because I'm much better at giving clear answers to questionnaires. It's just less scary to me than people are. Writing is also less scary than talking is.

It was a good thing that I slipped through the cracks. It was a good thing. But man, the whole thing was painful.

[lesbianfreyja]

Did you ever identified as bi? If so, how did you get to the conclusion that you were a lesbian? i've been questioning for a while and I'm not sure what I am. I also have a hard time differenciating between I have a crush/I want to be like her/I want to be friends with her. help a confused person pls

i’m not sure i’m the best person to help you due to my personal story but i’ll tell you and then offer some advice that may 100% conflict with your situation

i wouldn’t say that i “identified” as bi so much as i was bi for nearly 2 decades of my life. granted i didn’t know i liked women until pretty late on and there were instances of comp het as a kid but there were genuine times when i liked men and in fact i was in love with one when i was 19 although the circumstances surrounding him are extremely murky and complicated and difficult to explain so i’m skipping past it, but it’s not rlly relevant

sexuality is fluid which is TRUE but you only really ever hear it when men are trying to “turn” lesbians. and i don’t often say this online because i know it would get misconstrued and i get why, but it’s true anyway: i used to be attracted to men, but i’m not anymore. i used to be bi, but i’m not anymore

anyway i also recently came to the conclusion that i have an unhealthy relationship with sex, so thats where this story is going. in college a lot of the times i slept with someone it was less because sex was fun and more that being a partygirl and a slut was fun, which is still true. so anyway, there came a time around age 19/20 when i started to question if i still liked men. to help decide this, the most obvious solution (to me) was to sleep with men and women and compare the two. so, tinder.

anyway it took me nearly a year of experimenting to come to the conclusion, and i remember the moment exceptionally clearly when i looked up and thought “i’m a lesbian” and the experiment was over. also it was the middle of the night and i wasn’t going back to college until three days later, so i kicked this couple out of my room and stewed in this realization for several days. my family was working, and i wasn’t, so i spent those three days chanting “i’m a lesbian” to myself in the mirror trying to get it to stop feeling so horrible in my mouth. i knew other lesbians, and that was totally cool for them, but i didn’t realize how much internalized lesbophobia i still had until those 3 days, and the following three weeks after when just thinking about it gave me panic attacks. this felt dumb since i already knew i liked women, so i really wasn’t prepared for how scary not liking men was. i was also going thru some trauma the summer before and this brought back some dissociative episodes that hadn’t happened since i’d started therapy that fall! so that was fun

so i’m DEFINITELY not endorsing any of this for you, ‘cause like i said, this isn’t a super healthy relationship with sex. it was fine for me but it’s probably not fine for a lot of people. so what i’m going to say to you is something that didn’t really click for a long time, but makes sense now: if the question’s come up, it’s probably true. straight kids don’t sit around questioning their sexuality, and neither do cis kids with their gender. they should but they just don’t wonder about it. they just don’t. also, this post rang very true for me.

now, i know that bi people also often are subjected to so much bi erasure that they forget it themselves, and find themselves oscillating bt feeling straight & gay depending on the day and who they’re looking at, etc. so that could be what’s happening! or, you could be experiencing the fact that being a lesbian is so much fucking scarier than you ever thought it would be, because you were fine with it until it was applied to you.

i’ve actually had this conversation with a couple of friends and ended up helping them realize that they were in fact lesbians experiencing this very thing! i happened to only have gay guy friends and wasn’t out to my parents and my siblings lived far away, so i had no one to talk to about this. so that’s part of why i like being there for other people going through the same things! so feel free to DM me and we can talk if you want, sorry this is so rambly but i can help you more if i know more about you/your experiences. and theres nothing wrong with being a lesbian, and you’re allowed if you want to! i know this is a scary time, so i’m sending love too.😊🏳️‍🌈 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[patchdotexe]

So, I have a character who is a system, and I wanted to know before I develop them further, how does DID work, from a personal account? I really really really don't want to accidentally create yet another TOXIC misinterpretation of a real condition (because I know how horrible that can feel), and I hope I'm not saying anything wrong even now. (P.S. I love your blog, but I'm too shy to come off anon.)

hey anon!! it means a LOT to me that you sent this message :D theres a lot of really messy-bad potrayals of DID in the media so seeing people actually going to the effort of asking systems abt their experiences is really heartwarming for us. (plus the fact that ppl keep asking us in specific abt system stuff omg,,)

im gonna preface this by saying that, in the end, i can only really talk about my own experiences with full confidence. systems can work pretty differently from each other, but this is how we function and also some details ive noticed from system friends + general discussion over the years

so, to start off: Dissociative Identity Disorder is, at its core, your brain trying to respond to trauma in a pretty severe way. that being said there ARE systems that didnt experience severe trauma and still developed, and im not really sure about the mechanics behind that but i find it really cool and it totally exists. im gonna focus on trauma-based systems bc that’s our ~tragic backstory~ and also tends to be what most people opt for when creating system characters anyway, but the only real difference from what i can tell is, uh, a lack of trauma.

I HOPE YOU’RE READY FOR ME TO SAY THE WORD “TRAUMA” A WHOLE LOT JFC

(system friends are welcome to reblog with corrections or added info!!)

anyway. the way your brain responds to things is really weird. if something happens where you’re just, like, completely unable to handle it, like you dissociate yourself so hard because there’s no way you can manage this, your brain has a chance of going “uh… well, fuck, uh” and generating somebody who can manage it. or it might decide to be a dick and take all of the fucky internalized garbage and turn it into a person whose sole existence is to be an asshole. (they have the potential to get better, i think… ours didnt.) honestly theres a bunch of reasons and a bunch of “roles” that could lead to an alter/headmate* forming.

* we use the terms interchangeably depending on mood and whos fronting. i think its supposed to be “alter” is DID, “headmate” is implication that theyre non-traumatic? we like using “headmate” because it brings this fun mental image of us being a bunch of roommates constantly starting shit with each other and goofing off which is pretty accurate about 75% of the time

i keep getting distracted bc my cat is here. this is gonna be fun to go back and edit.

whatever the original situation is, you’re suddenly not alone in your own brain. and it’s REALLY WEIRD. communication was VERY hard. Icarus, our system original, used to do a very “cliche” thing of sharing a journal with their early headmates, where theyd write a sentence and then theyd write a reply (although back then they didnt realize that was a system-related thing and just thought they were having a fun conversation with their ocs. which… they were, just. Actually Talking.) they didnt have any inward perception of themself or their headmates either, so that kinda built up over time (with some help) along with the appearance of our headspace so that there was… actually a location for people to interact in. once they had a better awareness of things, mental communication got a bit easier– its sort of like background chatter really, when everybody’s awake. sometimes i get weird out of context things from Mae yelling at somebody, or sometimes ill be talking to a friend and someone’ll butt in.

when talking out loud, this usually leads to us suddenly stopping and then laughing or going “no!!!”. when on discord and around people who know who we are… well.

speaking of Mae, she’s pretty much my sister. not like… biologically? because i don’t think thats possible for me, but shes kinda literally my “other half” which ill get into later. headmates can have strong attachments to other alters! friends, best friends, family, dating, whatever. they can also do that with people outside the system, and itll be different for each headmate. there’s like 4 people dating Jorb but i just see him as one of my best friends. we’re people and we have complex social interactions that can get to be kind of a nightmare when you’re around a bunch of people who don’t know that you’re Not Leo and that youre suddenly not super up to existing around people in general.

plus even if like… so Jorb’s dating 4 of us like i said, but his relationship w/ each of them is different? Ica is very clingy and likes rambling to him, Summer’s pretty much just always happy to hang out, Mae makes fun of him a lot but in a loving way, and Leo is… kinda “all of the above” because that’s his gimmick. plus even tho a few other alters have a sibling-ish relationship with Mae like i do, usually its just me and Mae that do the “chaos siblings” bit.

the basic system.. thing… is that there’s “front”, which is being in control of the body– so, like, i’m currently fronting/in front, because im the one currently active and using our computer and staring at our cat.– and then theres the headspace, where everybody hangs out when theyre not in front. the headspace itself can differ in style & functionality for each system, and i think theres some systems that dont really have a location at all? but for us its like a full on location where we have individual rooms, places to visit if we get bored while away from front, etc.

theres also like, being at/near/away from front? so currently im in front, but Leo is pretty much always lurking nearby if he’s awake (we have individual sleep schedules that dont always sync up to the “irl” one, Trust is almost always sleeping), Ica’s somewhat in the back talking to Rookie so i cant really make out what theyre saying (its probably about either a youtube thing they both like or about a comic they want to do), and everyone else is either asleep (in which case they could be nearby but i cant currently “ping” them, so id have to actually take a sec to ground myself in headspace more) or in a different room. communication is easier if im in front and somebody is nearby, or it can be like with Ica rn where im like “well, theyre talking, but i have no idea what theyre saying and am making a guess based off their usual interactions”, or i could pass off front to go talk to Ica and come back (in which case my memory would be kind of vague and weird because information doesnt always properly translate), oooor i could actually go bug them while still in front. which.. im not gonna do rn bc then id get super distracted.

switching front differs between systems a lot! and even varies from day to day. like there are days where we wake up and we have absolutely no idea who we are bc we went to bed as one person and woke up as another. or we could be talking to somebody and then realize “wait, i stopped being Leo a bit ago, who am i”. or we could pass off front to somebody, like if Summer really wanted to front sie’d run up to me and let me know and we’d swap. or if something critical happens (usually a breakdown), Leo or one of the other headmates that’re more built to handle stressful situations will literally drag somebody out of front to make sure they dont hurt themself. or sometimes we throw front at people unexpectedly, like either mid-breakdown where we go “okay i dont wanna be here anymore, tag youre it” or sometimes because we think its funny because its the metaphysical equivalent of getting clonked in the head with a dodgeball, except the dodgeball is “being in control of our shared physical form”. usually mae’s the one that does that lmao

there’s a couple major categories of how alters come about. there’s “walk-ins”, where they kinda just… appear externally? like they just show up. sometimes we get a feeling of “huh. i think somebody might be here? or somebody might be showing up soon.” and have to rummage around for a while until they approach us or we find them. our walk-ins aren’t like, inherently aware of system stuff at first, so they usually get a crash course before they first front (if they choose to front at all) and it can be kinda entertaining. Rookie’s a walk-in! also Hiro, from a couple years ago. most of our walk-ins are fictives (fictional characters, usually appearing in response to us getting extremely attached to something or somebody) but a couple of our trauma splits are also fictives so that’s not like, a Rule or anything. i think these are mostly associated with non-traumatic systems but we get em fairly often so man idk

theres also… uh, i dunno what theyre actually called? we used to call them “constructs” but that sounds kind of mean. these alters exist to fill a specific role! and we usually dont talk about them on here with the exception of one major one, they just kinda hang out. Dhe exists to keep the system stable and manages the “backend” so to speak. Imp is kind of a mix of our intrusive & impulsive thoughts that came about from us trying to separate ourself from them so that we had an imaginary entity to go “nope!” at, which… stopped being imaginary, and is now a gremlin that lives in my brain. they can show up in response to trauma but arent split off of somebody, they kinda just pop into existence to help manage things.

the more… well-known, i guess? alter origin is “trauma splits”. rather than “just showing up one day with no real connection to the system origins”, trauma splits are formed when somebody in-system, uh, splits. it could be in response to a single situation or something built up over a long time, but somebody just kinda breaks and somebody new that has a bit of the original alter’s identity (if kinda influenced by the situation) shows up.

this can vary. All is a trauma split off of Leo himself, who got saddled with all of our brain hell about our ex and their insystem appearance is influenced more by eir than by leo which is… something they struggle with. Mae has a trauma split from a similar situation that is “Mae but from 2 years ago”, so basically her old identity before she reworked herself after getting put through total hell. and then uh… then there’s me and Mae! Icarus quite literally exploded into several people, with Pat (me) and Mae being the most distinct ones. we’re STILL finding out alters used to originally be a part of them that later evolved into their own people, like Summer and Toby. my identity is shaped pretty heavily not just by who Ica was at time of splitting, but also what they wanted to be jumbled together with trying to rationalize what was happening to them (they’re a pretty big fan of megaman star force, which has a media-typical system in it, so they leaned into hard “its like pat and rey from mmsf! i like pat, i wouldnt mind being like pat, its scary but im like one of my current favourite characters” and so i ended up being like, half-weird shapeshifter, half-green-haired prettyboy. and yeah thats where my name comes from!)

(Ica got put back together w/o anybody needing to integrate, which we were all very scared about, and it’s still kind of surreal to me because… me and Mae used to be able to stick ourself back together and thats how we found out about what happened to Ica in the first place? and we havent tried that since bc we have no idea what would happen. Ica 2: Ica Harder?)

despite their origins, trauma splits can be way more than… being a split. :V;; Toby’s not just a tiny splinter of Ica, he’s a quiet guy that gets stressed out and isn’t totally sure how to interact with people. i’ve existed for like 7 years at minimum and im a totally different person than i was when i thought i was still Ica, ‘cause ive had time to grow and change (and a problem Ica keeps running into now that theyre back is… they kinda Didn’t change because they were MIA for 6 years.) like everything else though this is variable– there can be “temporary” splits that dont develop properly and might get integrated back in, which has only happened to us when we were at the lowest point in our life where we were stuck constantly splitting to try and cope with whatever the hell was going on.

so Ica was gone for 6 years, which meant our system was without an original or main– there wasn’t anybody to be head of the system, basically. for a while i was operating under the assumption that i was Ica, so i filled in that role for a few years before i made the realization. eventually i kinda… stopped being able to, though, bc of stability issues, and then we were back to not really having a proper main anymore. to make up for it, we started going by Leo collectively and kinda… trying to pretend to be a single person? and so that ended up creating a construct to fill the role of “system main and the person we pretend to be when passing as singlet/not a system”: Leo himself! he’s kinda the most prominent traits we all have in common rolled into a single guy, which means that not only is he a pretty good system representative but we can also pretend to be him pretty easily (unless it’s someone like Toby who acts totally different). i dont know how common this situation is, i think normally it’s just “if system original is gone, another alter steps up” like originally happened to us before i had a severe case of problems disorder.

uhhh this is very rambley bc there’s a Lot to cover and now im trying to figure out how much of it i HAVE covered. systems are complicated and weird! OH WAIT okay i have one last bit.

so like, for us, first realizing we were a system was total hell. we fought a lot. as more alters showed up through various means, there were times where Ica felt like they were completely out of control of their own life bc of having to manage everything. there were a lot of panic attacks of people fronting and not being sure they were even REAL, despite… being in front. but we still felt like we were deluding ourself. this was in, like, late 2011, so systems weren’t a THING. they were a very fringe community that everyone hated. we got constantly harassed, which only fed into Ica’s panic hell and our identity issues. interpersonal relationships became a nightmare, especially because we have BPD as well which varies in severity for each of us but… for me it’s pretty bad! there were times early on where every day was another fun new breakdown from us arguing with each other or our friends or not being understood or… etc.

so… how are we holding up ~7 and a half years later? pretty well, actually! we talk to each other. we do things for each other, like buy food or games we know specific headmates like. Ica is back and way happier than they were in 2011, and is thrilled to get to hang out with everybody that’s showed up since. we help each other through problems, because at the end of the day our system ended up being a support network. Ica couldnt function on their own, so we’re like… 10+ people working together to try and be a single functional person. and we feel pretty okay with that! we still fight, and we still start shit, but we’re not in constant crisis anymore. we’re still working through all of our trauma, especially the more “recent” stuff that kinda broke our system for a while until we were able to start rebuilding, but we’re doing it together. :D

so… yeah, it can start out as a stereotypical “nightmare system”, with constant infighting and toxicity and self-sabotage and etc. but we worked through it! it took a while, but we’re overall more stable than we were before. we got out of the bad environment that was fucking us up, we got mental help for our other brain hell (we havent been able to bring up the system to our therapists bc its literally a non-issue now and we focus more on other things like our depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc), we found people that support us for being us, and we were able to like… figure things out. and it was a mess! i still have issues about my own identity because of literally thinking i was someone else for two years. Ica’s still trying to figure out how to adjust to things, especially bc they missed our entire “cringe culture” phase so they came back to find that i’d dismantled a lot of their middle-school settings. and, uh, some of their friendships as well.

systems are fuckin weird

[the-amalgam-house]

Once in a while I like to take note in any physical form directly in front of my eyes on the slew of identities I have and trials I face just to get a whole picture of what's happening. It pretty much goes like my pinned post, but sometimes I still face to reiterate from time to time.

The reason I'm thinking about it rn is cause I realized that at this point in my adult life, I've actually NOT worked for twice as long as I did work. My last job was in 2014 after struggling for 3 years to hold a job post-hospitalization. It has gotten to a point where I was in so much pain on a daily basis that I was incredibly suicidal. I was already starting to transition at the time but I wasn't out to my family, which weighed extremely heavily on my mind, and by that point it would be still several months to a year before I actually sought therapy. I couldn't stand the thought of not being able to work, to "earn" my right to be part of a society, a productive part of my family. To this day I still struggle with the idea that I am worthless because of my disability. My body is broken. There's no level of wishing it wasn't that will fix it, and no way to access the help I probably need, for free. It all costs money, and I can't work.

To sum up physical limitations feels like I'm minimizing everything I experience when just listing them, but it's impossible for others to really understand otherwise. Even my own wife was harsh to me before she herself ended up with terrible back problems by her job's abuse and neglect.

In terms of physical health, I deal with:

Asthma, allergies, nearsightedness, eczema, possible lupus, possible fibromyalgia, chronic nerve pain, chronic back pain, cycling insomnia/hypersomnia, diabetes, GERD, chronic leg pain and weakness, post thrombic syndrome, pcos (resolved with hysterectomy), genetic obesity, carpal tunnel syndrome (that one's on me), and various sensory sensitivities.

As I already said, my mental state also was absolutely trashed by the time I stopped working. I refused to believe that I was disabled (despite the fact that I've always been disabled in more tolerable ways), and was fighting to recover from a major hospitalization 3 years prior that I never would have been able to do on my own no matter HOW hard I tried. My leg was irreparably damaged, my other leg began getting frequently injured from strain, my health deteriorating from passing way too hard. Therapy helped me figure out a few things, and with the things I learned there along with now decades of my own research and self understanding, I've overall gotten to a place where I can cope better with the mental struggles I have to face.

In terms of mental health, I deal with:

Chronic major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, ADHD, PTSD, dyslexia (dyscalculia), autism, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and at least one or more dissociative disorder, namely Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) in which alters/headmates are present with varying levels of amnesia between.

There are large swaths of my childhood I simply don't remember. I have trouble with both short term and long term memory due to both trauma and learning disabilities. The strongest and most reoccurring memories are of traumatic events. I've been depressed since before I even hit double digits in age. My anxiety makes it extremely difficult to make phone calls, and manifested as "white coat syndrome" aka anxiety attacks around doctors/hospitals. It was this anxiety that brought to my attention at least one of my headmates, Greyson, as someone who has been taking care of me when I have to face those kinds of intense anxiety experiences. Others came forth over time. My first traumas from an age young enough to manifest DID were due to severe medical and home trauma...

On top of all that, I also take many medications. I'm not going to list them cause meh, but a lot have various side effects that cause sleep issues and memory issues and energy issues. I'd rather deal with those than the intense pain I feel without them, but even so, all of these things stacked on top of I've another more or less keeps me in bed for all of my days. I rarely move around even in my own home because I simply can't. On the rare days I have any net gain in energy, I usually do way too much because it's the only time I have that ability, and then just end up putting myself right bank into bed for weeks, even months. The most simple of tasks to average people are monumental undertakings for me, when they didn't used to be.

I'm not typing this to have a pity party. I think that I'm taking stock and looking back at how much I've survived. And I still fall prey to sinking into the depths of despair fairly often, but definitely overall have a better understanding of my limits and my coping mechanisms and myself in general in these years having to be bedbound, having to accept the cards that have been drawn and having to figure out how to best work with what I'm given.

I just needed to get all that out of my head. I've often told myself a lot of "oh other ppl have it worse" type of demoralizing things before, and someone's still do, but with disability activism and sharing life experiences with those who've gone through similar, I know it's not a competition of who has it the worst. We're all entitled to mourn the lives we wanted but can no longer have and still celebrate the victories in the steps we've made to survive. There's no shame in asking for help, whether it's physically or mentally or emotionally or financially. Being disabled is not necessarily a death sentence. There is community And mutual aid and kindness and caring out here in the world. Sometimes I can't see it, but eventually I remember.

[the-official-account]

One more reboot cause too many people in the notes are like "OMG I'm glad I don't have *scary spooky DID* I just have [describes alters perfectly]" and I'm not saying you ARE systems ultimately only you can make that step and only you can decide if you are READY to make that step but just like many people explore gender before deciding how they really are even if that's cis! I would HIGHLY encourage some of y'all to do the same because...uhm. hm. So list of shit I realized is deeply systemic after I realized I am a system

Pro-tip! If this post is filling you with a mysterious sense of dread or you are getting bad vibes, that's probably a sign that regardless of the outcome, this isn't a good time for you to receive this information. Sometimes this happens! And please click off. If you're curious about the purpose of this disclaimer and are NOT getting bad vibes read on and I'll explain.

- having a ton of names one is indecisive about and considering asking friends to call us different ones in different situations

- a reoccurring desire to take on a new name or identification with a new name despite the current also being satasfying, e itemsspecially but not exclusively if names and pronouns tend to correlate

- fluctuating sexuality/abrosexuality

- fluctuating gender

(Singlets can have these too, especially gender fluid folk and plain old singlet abrosexuals and that's very valid, but in combination it may be a piece of the puzzle though not inherently evidence)

- distinct voices with different priorities arguing about things like whether to make a purchase/how to spend time/whether a behavior is beneficial or healthy

- a figure being in ones head with lore that was not purposely written or conceived, though their being discovered or based off a real/fictional person does not discredit this point

- wierd fears about identity i.e "what if I don't get to be me later on??" that doesn't seem to have logical basis

- the feeling that something else comes in and takes over a bit in periods of extreme stress/distress, in loosing control ones action or movement and existing in a space of observation, especially with consistent patterns of triggering such events.

- a similar feeling in periods of relaxation or elation, as if someone else is facilitating these, often in a parental manner experiencing these often in a childish manner

- gaps in memory/blackouts

- an affinity for taking on pseudonyms/pretending to be someone else for satisfaction, not akin to acting, which is developed and tweaked very certainly, but can coexist with acting as two separate expiriences.

- character voices lingering in the head and interacting with/commenting on the world. Not akin to "oh lol so-and-so would react like this" but moreso "so-and-so is reacting in X manner right now at this point in time"

- though not all systems have or use accents, switching to an accent unconsciously (not akin to code switching situationally) and not be able to stop or knowing why, especially on a regular basis

- the feeling that periods of ones life belong to someone else or having fluctuating memory of particular periods of time

- having a difficult time remembering stressful events after the fact, and/or forgetting that a stressful event occured at all, especially if friends mention events in a recent period of time one does not recall, especially if it is framed my moments recalled very well.

This list is niether scientific nor conclusive, and written from the perspective of a system who's had amnesia.

- a feeling of dread or discomfort when reading about dissociative disorders especially as if ones privacy is being invaded. Currently theory is that one of a few things are happening 1. An unknown alter/fragment's job is keeping the system in the shell 2. You're getting the sense that it's REALLLLLY not a good time in your life for this kind of revelation and would rather not engage with it right now 3. Internalized ableism, which, if you're going through, means your also qualify for point 2.

I think this article is relevant to a lot of the very stupid, wanky debate that I keep seeing going around my dash about TEENS SELF-DIAGNOSING WITH DID. It is a funny quirky article written by a literary fiction author about how one of her characters got into her head during the pandemic and started dispensing Wry Life Advice, disappearing as soon as the stressful situation ended.

there’s this bit that I think @pervocracy wrote, about how if your culture only had two words for ‘fear’, and one of them was “mild nervousness about passing a test” and the other was “the bone-chilling horror of being chased by zombies in a graveyard”, that keeps you from talking about a whole range of human experiences. if you have crippling social anxiety, or you have an uncommon phobia, or any kind of fear that isn’t ‘mild nerves’ or ‘IMPENDING PHYSICAL DOOM’? you’re stuck choosing between two words that do not suit your experience to describe what’s going on.

I think “the experience of having an entity in your head that is Not You” is actually remarkably common- way more than 1%- especially among writers/artists/actors/fandom folks, and especially among anyone who’s going through a severe physical or mental stress. an entity like this can exist in varying degrees of independence-from-you and interest-in-the-outside-world. Sometimes this entity is a comforting presence, other times it’s a malevolent one. some disappear as quickly as they appear, and others stick with you for your whole life.

A lot of historical cultures had a framework to explain this kind of thing. “This is your daemon.” “This is your guardian angel.” “You’re hearing spirits; you’re possessed.” Mainstream Western culture rejected these explanations, and in some cases, rightfully fucking so. But we don’t really have a framework to replace them.

So if you are experiencing this phenomenon, because of how our society has decided to handle it, you really only have two words for it- “imaginary friend”, or “DID alter”. in the vast majority of cases neither of these words are appropriate, in the same way that severe social anxiety isn’t Test Jitters or IMMINENT FEAR OF YOUR LIFE.*

there is a wide range of human experiences here being collapsed into 2 points. but people who are having that experience are going to need the words to describe it. if you’re a published litfic author and the experience is over, you can write an article about it and just come off as a Little Quirky. if you’re a teenager on TikTok, the experience is ongoing, and the only word you’re being offered is DID? you’re gonna take that word.

we need more words for this range of experiences. we need more people to be able to talk about this range of experiences- including DID, which is a very different experience from Brain Octopus up there- without getting tarred as Bad Psycho Crazy. we need to stop arguing whether or not you can only have this state of being from Severe Enough Trauma; we need to be able to accept it as a natural part of how humans are without judgement or shame.

*(Not saying that having alters is the same thing as ZOMBIES IN A GRAVEYARD; it’s the Wide Range Of Intensity And Experiences that I’m comparing.)

[free--therapy]

I've been looking for a "general" mental health blog and stumbled upon yours.

I'm not sure if there's even a concrete answer to this but... I know that co-morbid disorders exist, and there's even ones that often come together. And depending on your past, you could've developed different disorders from different experiences... But... I've been feeling that I have "too many"? as funny as it sounds.

Professional help isn't an option for me due to my environment and my own traumas/triggers, so best I have is looking into my symptoms and trying to find what disorders have them so that I can try use their coping tips... and so far it's been working well, I feel way better than I did before I started doing this and I know myself so much better and know how to help myself get through life...

But, the amount of symptoms is just... concerning tbh.

The more I look into the things I deal with the more I see that there's a lot of disorders which criterias I check off entirely, I started thinking maybe I'm just imagining things... stopped researching stuff and outright denied some self diagnoses because I felt like I was "collecting" disorders... But the symptoms stayed, every time it was clear that I was actually dealing with them and not making them up.

I sort of wonder if there's a disorder (or several) that have a chunk of those symptoms at once, that I instead confuse for separate disorders... Or if I really just... have an extremely vast co-morbidity.

.

(For context, and if it doesn't help your answer feel free to ignore this part but the things I'm currently aware of are and have had for over a decade at least: cycling between periods of mania and depression alongside anything that's included in bipolar disorder. Rumination, compulsions, skin picking and anything related to OCD. Altered states of identity, dissociative amnesia, switching due to positive or negative triggers, splitting due to new trauma and anything else from DID. Agoraphobia or at least very similar symptoms. Eating disorders, but these might stem from other things. Visual hallucinations and prone to delusions, but this most likely correlates with periods of mania. I used to be certain that I have ADHD but lately realized that my manic episodes looked to me like hyperfixation, so not sure about that one anymore. There's some others that I'm not even sure if they have names... So I'll just stop here.

I will add though that I have several PTSDs (if that sentence even makes sense grammatically) so the option that many of the things I experience are just extensions of them sounds plausible, in fact I've had the entire criteria of ASPD for decades but recently after starting to feel better about a specific trauma I've noticed that I no longer exhibit any of those... Meaning it most likely wasn't a disorder, but a coping mechanism that looked the same way.

And well, you most likely can see why I started feeling like I'm "collecting" disorders... And hell maybe I am, but I know for sure that I experience all these symptoms, even if they aren't caused by the disorders I associate them with...)

I'm sorry for the length of this ask, I wanted to give you all the relevant information in hopes it helps. Thank you for your time, and even if there's no real answer to whether I really have so many comorbidies or a disorder I've never heard about... Thank you for reading regardless.

Hey Anon,

I think I understand where you're coming from. A lot of symptoms of different disorders often seem to overlap onto one another, so usually having comorbidities is actually a lot more common than people realize. For example, if you have anxiety, you're likely also depressed and vice versa. You may also have OCD too if the anxiety gets bad enough. Almost everyone suffers from some sort of PTSD which is why anxiety exists since it tries to anticipate things happening based on things that have happened in the past. I also thing this is how some psychiatrists misdiagnose people too since a lot of disorders share the same symptoms. Me personally, I had dysthymia/PDD, but I was also anxious, had a traumatic childhood, and had trichotillomania and misophonia—but a lot of the skills I learned from dealing with my anxiety and depression helped me to get over all of them without feeling like I needed to address them individually.

At the end of the day, diagnoses can be helpful for informational purposes, but I think what helps the most is to be able to learn the proper coping skills for each symptom or disordered thinking/behavior patterns you're dealing with. That's pretty much why I've been trying to make this blog general since I believe the skills can cover a multitude of different disorders and the common aspects of disordered thinking/behaviors that occurs in each one. I also don't have experience or knowledge about everything that's out there, so I'm trying to cover all the things I know about or can help people understand some of the things they're dealing with.

I think that as you start addressing some of the things you're dealing with, your symptoms will lessen overall. You can start to eliminate certain things one by one. I made a list of all my fears or disordered thinking and would sit with myself and figure out how to overcome them or ask myself why certain things bothered me and where the (core) beliefs stemmed from in my childhood. Think of it like a matrix. Try not to focus too much on what your diagnoses are and focus on what patterns need to be addressed, reversed, fixed/improved upon.

Let me know if you have any more questions of if I didn't address something you wanted answered :)

[aquarianlights]

I need you to know, you matter. Your posts have made me feel like I'm not alone in this world so many times. Please know that you make an impact on this world by just being who you are.

I...cannot even begin to describe how this made me feel. I am so goddamn discouraged right now and I just... the joint pain I am experiencing is unreal. But heavy doses of Lyrica impact my ability to function...I’m having anger-induced black outs which...apparently anger is normal when you first get diagnosed with a chronic pain disorder or anything that changes your day-to-day life significantly that you cannot fix. I read a whole book on it yesterday...how the anger is normal. But having black outs due to that anger is apparently not normal, so...Idk. And I’ve been feeling so much less and less motivated to get through the day. . .After I’m awake and I get up and get coffee, I’m okay. But actually waking up (if I take meds to go to sleep, otherwise I won’t sleep at all) is.....it’s... it hurts? Does that make sense to you or..anyone? When I wake up, all I want to do is writhe in bed and cry and fall back asleep, but I know if I try to go back to sleep, the second time I wake up, I will be nauseated so when I’m up, I have to get up to avoid intense nausea. It’s hurting to wake up and I don’t want to be awake anymore...but then I get going during the day doing things...and I start to feel better...But unless I’m studying medicine or doing “adulting”-esque things for the day that go above and beyond the normal. . .I don’t feel a passion or need to exist. But I don’t want to not exist either...maybe I do. I don’t know anymore...I kind of want to give up and die but then other times, I just say “Fuck this. Fuck everyone. Fuck myself and my negativity. I’m gonna do all of this and prove everyone wrong.” And I mean, I always succeed when I say that and I’m having to use less and less valium...I’m experiencing less and less panic attacks...I’m able to do so much more than I could even a year ago...But it’s not enough in my mind despite the fact I’m doing a neurotypical taskload everyday...sometimes even moreso than your average neurotypical. And some days it feels effortless...other days it feels like it’s the end of the world if I spend another 24 hours on this planet... I don’t know.. I feel... I feel hollow. I feel like my soul has been ripped out of my body and pinned against the wall and forced to watch me struggle to get out of bed (both physically and emotionally/mentally/psychologically) every day. I feel like I lost something....something very significant... Yet, I don’t feel like there was anything left for me to lose at this point. Everything just feels so...hollow. Like I’m neither living nor existing... I feel nothing or everything. Sometimes both simultaneously. And that makes no sense and no one is going to understand that but it’s...it’s...infuriating and frustrating and makes me feel this white hot anger bubbling in the middle of my chest. It’s hard to breathe sometimes. Physically hard to breathe. But not in a ...chostochondritis way. Or a pre-panic attack way. It just...it just feels like someone or something is ripping the air from my lungs piece by piece. It feels like someone poked a bunch of holes in my lungs and are now slowly siphoning the air from my lungs little by little through those holes every time I take a breath of air. And there’s this heaviness on my chest...all the time...no position alleviates it and Idk whether it’s physical or mental or both or related to my chronic costo...or what...

I feel passion and fire and drive and determination and all these wonderful things in such extreme doses......but I also feel defeated and dehumanized and demoralized and like maybe it’d be so much better for EVERYONE involved if I just fucking gave up and let go...

I feel like there’s this heavy weight attached to me following me at all times. Like. . .Like a balloon filled with lead that floats... Multiples of those balloons...tied around my throat and wrists and waist and ankles...just...dragging along behind me... giving me this feeling like something is going to happen...something very bad. I feel imminent threats and danger all the time...and I feel like something is pushing me towards a pool filled with tangible defeat. . .and like I won’t be able to stop them from pushing me over the edge and into that pool. . .and like tangible defeat is like quicksand where...if you struggle, you get pulled deeper and deeper in...but if you stay still and calm and accept your fate...you can eventually get out yourself or have someone help you out. But my fight or flight response is SO strong and in that situation, there’s no doubt my system would choose fight despite me wanting to choose neither. So I would struggle and struggle as this thing or person is standing on the precipice...watching me drown in tangible defeat... And it would swallow me whole.

I feel like that is destined to happen in this linear timeline...and that it is so soon. I have come back from SO much in my life...I have come back every goddamn time. I have struggled and made waves in this world... But... It feels ... It feels like that’s not enough. I’m doing something wrong. Or maybe there’s something inherently wrong with me and my mind? Maybe both.

It almost feels like psychosis. Like...Like I’m watching from the outside in... Not dissociation. It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m trapped in a room and that room moves with my tangible body............okay, I guess I’m not describing anything in any way that anyone can comprehend right now. . .

Everything is so conflicted in me. I think it’s just a major flare up of BPD like I’ve never experienced before because all psychs have said I’m a textbook case of borderline and that I am an extreme version of borderline..But I’ve never experienced ANYTHING like this.

This isn’t depression. This isn’t anything akin to depression. I know what depression feels like. I know what suicidal ideation feels like. I lived with both for 24 years. I KNOW this isn’t anything akin to depression/MDD. This is SO MUCH stronger and so much worse than that. Honestly, I would rather just...be straight up suicidal again rather than dealing with these extremely intense, overwhelming swings of passion to defeat. I can go from 0 to 100 back to 0 back to 100 in like...a second flat. I go between “I can do this! Fuck everyone! I’m a fucking demi-god, bitch. Positive vibes. I can do anything. LITERALLY ANYTHING.” to “I can’t do anything and I am the most worthless creature on the planet. . .but I can’t die...and I need someone to kill me.”

I genuinely considered finding a cop and approaching them and from a distance telling them I was armed and that if they didn’t shoot me dead, I would I stab them or threaten them in some way. And if they didn’t believe me, I’d whip a knife out or my taser or my brass knuckles or all three and charge at them. But then I realize I’m 5′2″ and white. . .and....they’d see me as female even though I’m clearly not... They wouldn’t take me seriously and would probably just taser me and cuff me and then either jail time or psych ward. They may not even taser me. They’d probably just throw me on the ground. . .which. . .I’ve had done to me before. I’ve had a cop pick me up with one hand and throw me on the floor in order to cuff me. I know what that’s like... Didn’t hurt at the time coz I had drank a whole bottle of Schol’s vodka and downed exactly 100 xanax. So I felt nothing. But...my friends made me aware I am white and 5′2″ and nonthreatening and even if I begged them to shoot me or did something genuinely threatening to make them have reason to draw their gun or shoot...they probably wouldn’t. . . Which is just... so unfair to everyone involved. All these wonderful, innocent POC being shot all the fucking time, usually to death...for absolutely no reason at all..... and then us saltine crackers not being able to be shot even when we’re begging or doing something threatening. All these people that deserve to live dying.......yet I’m here...still alive... and worth nothing and should be dead....

I’m in ramble-mode now and I’m losing focus because I’m trying not to cry.

Just know...this message......is exactly what I needed right now...

And I cannot even fathom how or why you would feel this way....how or why anyone would...or could... I can’t fathom why you would take the time to write such a wonderful, genuinely kind thing to me... I can’t...I can’t....

Thank you does not even BEGIN to describe the appreciation I want...NEED...to convey. I can’t... I can’t begin to express my appreciation for this... This is literally a life-changing ask. I’m not kidding you. You may very well have just saved my life with this ask.

Thank you. That doesn’t begin to cover it, but...thank you.