#I guess this does count as syscourse though

[thefeathercollective]

seems we do share that opinion! just goes to show the importance of having both shared and separated spaces.

I will say though that lurking in traumagenic tags has really helped us deal with our trauma and that we've watched disordered systems discover some of the joys of being plural and even find resources to help with the disorder part through the endogenic community! most of what comes to mind is DID systems using tulpamancy guides to improve communication and build innerworlds.

the overlap between the communities makes all of us stronger, I think. plenty to learn from each other :]

thesis statement: given the information about your experiences that you have shared in your post, i think your statement of "[we] fit the DSM-5 OSDD criterion" is false. HOWEVER, i think that you should be able to explore the OSDD label anyway, whether that means that you are just using it as an identity label or using it to better understand how to treat your trauma symptoms better (this does not mean treating your plurality! this means treating your reactions to triggers and the type of dissociation that impairs your life).

but i said i was here to give you info about OSDD diagnostic labels, so let me start there first.

you might already know this, but the thing about diagnostic labels is that "clinically significant distress or impairment" is a very important, but also vague criterion that is put onto all disorders in order to label them as a disorder. even with all other criteria of a diagnostic label met, without this criterion, an individual cannot be said to fit that label. that being said, i think diagnostic labels are a very tight box that are used for very specific purposes (insurance, mainly), and can be wholly irrelevant to how a person identifies and what their personal experience is.

another thing about the OSDD diagnostic label is that it kind of is a "miscellaneous label" for clinicians to diagnose patients with a disorder when they dont totally fit the criteria for DID or something else. the purpose of the OSDD diagnostic label is for people to be able to tell their insurance, "hey, i have a mental health problem, but clinicians can't explicitly say DID, so here is a catch-all diagnostic code for you so i can prove that i need medical/mental health care." the label is specifically for disordered people to still get help, essentially.

or, it originally was. now, people have kind of taken it and made it into a sort of identity label, which, while understandable (wanting a label to understand your personal experience makes sense), makes things a little confusing as the CDD community (a population of people seeking mental health help for their disorder) collides with the endogenic plurality community (a population of people who have similar experiences regarding plurality and want to celebrate this identity)

i dont think "[your] experience fits the DSM-5 OSDD criterion, given that [you] do not experience clinically significant distress or impairment" is necessarily an accurate statement, and i think your post is a little misleading on that point.

BUT, i also think that you should have the freedom to explore the OSDD label and see if your personal experience can be fit under the OSDD umbrella, because who am i to say who can and can't claim that their experiences line up with those who have OSDD? i don't know anything about your experiences beyond what you've shared about them on one post. (1/2)

ohh I get what you're saying. yeah, I think our post (here for anyone confused) wasn't worded that well.. it does sound really weird if you take it as "we fit the label that needs distress and impairment but we don't have distress and impairment". would be like saying, I dunno, "I'm a fork but I don't have tines"

the intent of the post was more like "huh, we could be calling it osdd if not for the distress and impairment criterion"

but disorders are called disorders for a reason, I see where you're coming from.

ty for encouraging us to explore the label anyway :D! and feel free to share your views on our stance, you've got me interested :]

[misscammiedawn]

When you tag as #dawnposting or #cammieposting, is that like the difference between top/bottom posting? Or am I totally wrong there?

I have long feared the day I would need to explain this. I knew it would have to happen, even if I put in my quick explanation in my Masterpost.

The last time I had spoken on this topic on Twitter I got some severe anon hate for it and it did a little bit of harm to me. I would prefer not to emulate that experience. It was discomforting.

I shall post the easily digestible short version here and then a long version under readmore.

Quickly spoken, yes. That's correct. When I type from the perspective of a somft sweet morsel who yearns I am Cammie Posting. When I am posting from the perspective of someone who likes to pull hair, bite necks and listen to a partner whimper against me as my lips brush their earlobe and I order them to BEG. - That's Dawn Posting.

Then there's Camden Posting which could easily be renamed BPD Posting.

But I guess we have the long version under readmore...

So let's talk dissociative disorders and "plurality". With the caveat that I still consider myself a pwBPD with mood swings that happen to have easily definable names and behaviors.

I am no expert and though I have plural friends, I distance myself from the plural community and their resources because I refuse the label. I find it a complicated relationship and the syscourse does me more harm than any amount of external acceptance, which my brain would reject as bias, could ever do.

So... I 100% have BPD. That's TRIPLE confirmed at this point. BPD is on the dissociative disorder spectrum. It doesn't matter if you're using DES-II, MID or the interview. BPD is there.

...and therapists just... don't seem to ever give folx with BPD a test to see where they are on that spectrum for some reason? Despite Identity Disturbance and Dissociation being 2 of the 9 criteria. I suffer both. Unambiguously. That I know.

Dissociative Experience Scale rates between PTSD, cPTSD, BPD, OSDD and DID. There is so much more to these things than just "multiple personalities" (there's somatic experiences, amnesia barriers, fugue experiences and so much more) and I'm not about to go sharing my physical symptoms because it's none of anyone's business and I hide that shit from people I live with. But I am aware of the depths of this thing... even when parts of me insist otherwise.

And the cause is known, too... Regardless of where on the scale I land, I am on that scale.

So the question is. Do I count as OSDD-1 on top of or instead of my BPD? I do not know. I have expressed as much as I am able to my therapist and they are monitoring me. But they refuse to talk to me about it, likely for fear of shifting the results. I refuse to chase up on it because, plainly spoken, it near about broke me to raise the topic once. I am not going to force myself to talk about it again.

An issue with it is though that it's a covert illness and fights to keep itself hidden. 80% of the time I think I am an attention seeking monster who deserves to be exposed, hurt and exiled. I hate that I indulge in this delusion and just want my therapist to say "YOU ARE FAKING." And be done with it. Luckily I'm presently in that 20% sweet spot and intend to do everything in my power to not delete the post once shared.

So, if I am so defensive and in denial, why am I having myself checked up and utilizing tags which seem to imply I have decided I am?

...and that... is a question that most of me is still struggling with. However, the long story short is, someone I love removed my ability to run from it.

I beg indulgence in not going over the childhood stuff. The earliest signs. I cannot even tell those I trust half of these things and I surely would not care to introduce them to the zeitgeist.

What I shall say, starting in my early 20s, is that I am, as a human being, TERRIFIED of sex (I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why) and I was married in an apparently cishet relationship with an allosexual for 11 years (my journals and a surprisingly large stack of evidence suggests. I was quite aware of my transgender and asexual labels even that early, but I hid them from myself and my partner. Which--- given all I am typing, sounds familiar).

Now here comes the complicating factor that not even my therapist knows how to navigate around. The reason I don't enjoy talking about this stuff and avoid the plural community. HYPNOSIS FETISH PERSONALITY PLAY.

It is so easy to type "I have never had sex outside of an altered headspace". It's so easy to type "My first hypnotist was an abusive asshole who developed entire headspaces for me to inhabit in order to serve him and one was a demure submissive gentile girl and the other was a firm and bold dominant who was unstoppable and he kept me in those headspaces for 7+ years, programming switches to keep my "normal" self unaware of my activities." It is easy to type "I taught my wife how easily and readily my brain can and will switch into "character" headspaces and so in order to have sex with a partner who was incapable of doing it, we worked together to summon our tabletop characters from my soul for kink purposes"

It gets complicated when I try to take those things in the past and apply it to Out Of Scene stuff. It's important to bring it up. I think the fact that I have no memory of engaging in sex with my partner over the course of our 11 year marriage is a VERY IMPORTANT THING to bring up in these discussions. But it was self-inflicted. So...

To put on my educator cap for a moment, I shall remind that this is why one must practice safety when engaging in physical or psychological edgeplay and perhaps you should, as a traumatized person, avoid abusing loopholes to trick their way into doing things that regularly would cause them to completely shut down. Heavens the younger version of myself was a stupid child. But she loved her wife. She wanted to be the person that she needed to be. She was willing to literally cast herself aside in order to do that.

Now, outside of scene, well? Was I fine? Was I rigid and firm and knowing who I am?

No. I had already mentioned Identity Disturbance, remember? I have journal entries from 2003 where I say that I "play myself as a character", I have ones from 2005 where I equate the idea of a voice in my head having the scent of lavender and my mother's voice... and while dating and married I had a soft and sweet affectionate mode "Kitty". It's what she called me. The immature and silly little girl. Nothing like the firm and hard boss who existed at work where I ran a market and handled a staff. Miss Manager, as a friend referred to her as.

Then you have me. The one who has an insatiable hypnosis fetish while dealing with a fear of sex. Someone who wants too pin people down to beds and hear them whimper when the very thought of doing that elicits such shame that I collapse in on myself and try to delete my accounts. I shamefully admit I have succeeded more times than I care to count.

Incidentally the existence of journals going back to 2003 offers some mild evidence of its own. Especially the huge gaps where I had deleted chatlogs and entries and pushed things away.

Sad to say I am hardly the healthiest or most adjusted human.

It's interesting to read my journals from the era of my divorce. There are so many obvious signs of it. Moments I was in "flow state" and was the person I wanted to be for a little bit, or the moments I got a sudden rush of Power and used it to control someone I was flirting with.

Within my marriage, I was well and truly hidden and any attempt to step outside of the bounds of the relationship was to be treated internally as cheating, shameful, awful. Outside of my marriage it was freeing, liberating. It was exploration of my new found ability to interact within fetish communities, my new found comfort within my gender expression and as that comfort grew, my ability to do what I do grew.

And so ignorant of my circumstances, I, collectively, began to rely on "me" - in plural terms "Camden started wanting to be Dawn". And that isn't how any of this works. I would soon find out I couldn't just activate what, at the time, I called "Strong Mode". It doesn't just turn on when I need it to. It needs to happen naturally when the mood and vibes are right. But I was growing closer to Sleepyhead and she had a way of drawing it out of me so I was starting to get comfortable doing that. Being that. Becoming that. Not via a hypnosis scene, as would happen in my marriage, but just by intention. Internalizing that those characters were me and I am capable of doing what they do.

Incidentally I have chatlog from that abusive hypnotist who turned me into his recruitment doll. My typing style shifted when I was "in character" and it matches how I present now. Which was truly terrifying to recognize, particularly as decades had robbed from me memories of the shady depths of which he had pushed me in that arrangement.

There had been so many reactions of "wait, I could do that?" Even in the early days. I do not understand how abilities that only exist in one headspace work, but I also know I lost my ability to run a movie theatre a lot. But surely I was just tired, or distracted or having an "off" day.

Any time I was struggling against it I simply rationalized. When I ended a fun evening with my friends and realized how much of an immature and playful idiot I had been the entire night I would be flooded with shame for how I had acted. I would often complain that no one got to see who I am in an empty room because once other people are there I "turn into a completely different person"

Which, again, is just BPD. That's BPD. I'm describing BPD.

Which brings us to the Acceptance Arc, where I stop hiding behind BPD and start accepting that I may be fractured.

I had started dating Daja this year. I have enough knowledge at this point to be able to predict myself. So when setting boundaries, warnings and limits I discussed heavily and openly the bounds of my, then diagnosed, BPD and how my moods change at random.

Because the mood shifts are something I had internalized by this point. I knew that I would just become emotionally disengaged from a scene at random. I was inconsistent. Unreliable. Dare I say "broken".

I warned her that during a scene I was topping I could lose "that energy" and just disengage and that it wouldn't be her fault. It just happens.

When we met and had started play, our friendship was at least 11 years old, she took care and attention to watch me in my different "Modes" and she had not just recognized them but she could see the differences. When and where the shifts occurred. How it impacted me to be called by different names at different times.

There had been moments in the proceeding years where Sleepyhead had accidentally gotten it right and it made me giddy. Moments where I noticed myself acting "In a mood" while driving and needed to have myself "pull the breaks".

But this was the first time someone looked in my eyes, saw what was happening in my head and commented on it for me. During a scene with Dawn, Daja reached out and brushed her cheek tenderly and the emotion melted as a shift in tempo occurred and she knew before anything was said that I had "lost" myself and was in a different place now.

That weekend she paid attention and learned me in ways I honestly feel undeserving of. It seems unfair to rely that heavily on another person. But no matter my mood, no matter my manner; she SAW me. Called me by my name(s) and... suddenly I couldn't hide anymore.

How can you tell that feeling that wells in your heart when what's happening inside is what's seen outside? Up until then I just felt insane. The incongruity was just part of being alive.

When I am in a certain headspace, I am consumed by self-doubt and paranoia. I know myself to be delusional. Irrational. Manipulative. Thus I cannot trust myself and if I cannot trust myself I trust everyone else and go with their views of me. Which fits in with the BPD catalogue, anyway. I adapt to my surroundings. Become what I am perceived to be. Because I need other people to perceive me in order to be.

So... I try to mirror someone who holds a mirror to me? I can't escape what I see and what I see is contradictory and it is pleased to hear its own name and it wants things which it knows it cannot have.

...and that makes things tough. Because now here I am, slowly accepting myself as a fractured individual. Someone who compartmentalized her sexual desires vs her fear and hatred of sex. As someone who yearns to be cared for vs someone who has experienced homelessness and refuses to allow ourselves to rely on another person in order to survive. As someone who wants to push people away vs someone who wants to hold them close. As someone who wants to die vs someone who wants to live. As someone who wants to live openly and embrace the term plural vs someone who wants to repress it and reject it and hide.

I keep telling myself I am not allowed to openly "embrace" myself until I receive a diagnosis and my present therapist seems rather uninterested in exploring the possibility. They gave me a DES-II and did not even comment on the results. I feel toyed with by someone who refuses to engage or educate, as if I am stuck with a caseworker whose job is to report to insurance so I may get my surgery and medication. It is frustrating.

I use the tags because I know the joy I feel when Daja calls me by the right names. I use the tags because I do not want to feel like the actions and opinions of myself as Dawn should impact the way Cammie is perceived. I use the tags because it flies under the radar and lets me express without stating a truth. I use the tags because I like to know Daja can see me, even when I post online.

And to be honest? I wrote all of that above because I'd convinced myself no one would click the readmore and I'd be safe just pretending to be "Sub, Domme and Mentally Ill" tags.

Anyway. I shared way more than I'm comfortable with. I'll suppress the urge to delete it after I press post.

Update: Hey! I'm not ready to talk about it publicly but you'll never GUESS what I got diagnosed this year >.>;;;

[darklingduke]

Inspired by @/capri-suns-and-gushers and this post about how sys-meds shouldn’t get to write the narrative about endogenic/parogenic/tulpamancy/spiritual/etc systems on this platform. 

We wanted to use this as our official coming-out-as-a-system (on this blog at least) post, as well as answering some things. 

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask! Don’t send us syscourse or hate, please. (Long post, so it’s cut)

1. What kind of system are you?

We use several different terms to describe our system type, depending on how we’re feeling that day, who’s fronting, or who we’re talking to. We use endogenic, MaDD/paragenic, araisagenic, soul-bonding, and gateway.

Most of us are in here due to maladaptive daydreaming and escapism from the “core”, as well as projecting onto characters or having comfort characters. 

There are a few subsystems in here, though. One of our Remuses is a traumagenic OSDD system, Zak is a traumagenic DID system, Cadence has unknown origins, and Cleo is a paragenic system. 

2. How many of you are there?

Currently around 80 or so, counting subsystem member. But our numbers are constantly fluctuating when someone decides to leave or come back or walk-in. The highest amount we have ever had was around 120. 

3. How long have you known about your plurality?

Our “core” learned the first time about aer plurality in... I wanna say... 2018? Ae came out to someone as a system and it didn’t go well, so ae decided to forget all about it and procrastinated everything. We’ve been out as a system since December of 2019 now, though. 

4. Had you heard of DID/OSDD/DDNOS before you became plural/discovered your plurality?

Kind of? Someone at work approached us back in 2018 (see answer to 3) and whispered “hey. guess what. i’ve got multiple personality disorder. i’m not kyle.” then walked away. Star (”core”) went home that night and researched it and that’s how ae realized ae were plural. 

5. Do you have a wonderland/innerworld? If so, what do you call it, and what are some things that you and your system members do there?

We do, but it’s very difficult to see, due to the body’s aphantasia. Very few people are actually able to see it. It’s more along the lines of us “asking” the brain what it looks like and guessing things until the brain is like “yeah that’s right.” 

We call it our innerworld, or our headspace. 

A lot of people like hanging out in the living room (our “control room”, playing video games on one of the tv’s in here, or hanging out in the pond outside.

6. What do you call your system members?

Headmates. We’re not against the term “alters” but we don’t tend to use it too much. 

7. If you’re plural and don’t use the word “system” to describe you&, what word do you use?

We use the word “system” but we’ve been considering using different terms, just aren’t sure what terms there are to use lol.

8. What are some of the best things about being plural?

Probably getting to hang out with comfort characters. We are all aware that they aren’t their source, but they have many personality traits in common with their source, so it’s a source of comfort to get to hang out with and be friends with them. 

9. What are some not-so-great things about being plural?

The occasional blurriness we get when we realize we don’t know who we are/who’s fronting, and we have to try to figure out who we are. 

10. Do you have a spiritual or psychological view of your plurality?

We think it’s more of a spiritual view, because a lot of us, if not all of us, view it more as that person’s spirit coming to our headspace from a different dimension and hanging out here. 

11. Do you ever experience “switching” or “possession” or any sort of change in who controls the body? If so, what do you call it, how easy/difficult is it, and what is it like? Were you always able to do this, or did you have to learn how over time?

We do experience switching, but it feels different sometimes than others. Sometimes it feels as though whoever is fronting is more along the lines of Star (”core”) being in front and someone else backseat driving, or vice versa. 

We call it switching. It’s usually pretty easy. Sometimes we do it without even trying to or noticing. We’ll be sitting here playing a game or watching Tv and then all of a sudden realize we aren’t who was fronting before. Sometimes we have to focus on “handing over controls” in innerspace and there’s meatspace blurriness while that’s going on before it snaps into full control and the blurriness/dissociation goes away. it doesn’t normally take very long. A minute at most. 

We have been able to do it since actively being plural in 2019 (see answer 3)

12. How do you and your system mates relate to each other? (Are you friends, family, romantically involved, caretakers, etc)

All of the above. There are some people who were born in the system, and their family is in here. There are some people who are dating, who were related before coming here, who adopted each other in here as family, etc. It’s more of a whole world in here than anything. People have different relationships with each other. 

13. Have you come out to anybody in real life/in a singlet space about your plurality? How did it go?

We came out to our partner system’s dad (well they came out to him for us, but we gave them permission to do so), and he completely ignored the situation. And then we came out to the body’s mom, and she ignored us and told us she didn’t think we were safe with our partner system since they came out publically as a system. 

14. What kinds of forms and appearances do your system members take on?

We have some people in here who are human, we have some cat-people, demons, vampires, sirens, ghosts, and other monsters/creatures. We don’t all look like how people look like in this world, though. We don’t look how most people would say is “life like”. It’s more along the lines of video game animation or a more realistic version of pixar animation. 

15. What are you and your system members interested in?

Current interests are: Minecraft, Sanders Sides, Grey’s Anatomy, drawing, writing. Some people are interested in Don’t Starve Together. Some are interested in knitting and painting. Depends on the person. 

16. What is your life like in the meatworld?

Assuming meatworld is like... “real” world. Currently with quarantine, there’s not much to tell. We switch out every few hours if the body’s anxiety or depression gets too bad for us, we vibe with our partner system, and we pretend to be the core around the partner system’s dad (whom we live with).

17. What are your music tastes? Movies? Favorite Colors? Animals? List any other favorites as well. 

Ummm.... lol.... it really depends on the person. We have a playlist on spotify for each person. We don’t have much variety in favorite movies/shows, though. Most of us like animated movies or comedy or romcoms, or stereotypically straight movies (think Hallmark romance movie, or general romcoms, or raunchy comedy).

18. Does your system have a host/original? If so, what do you call them? Explain what role they play in your system. 

We have Star. Ae are the “original” person in here. We call aem the “core” when need be, but we usually just call aem Star lol. Ae are just another person in here, ae don’t really play too much of a “role”. Ae just decides what name the body goes by on default and ae have the final say on haircuts and tattoos/piercings and stuff. 

19. Do any system members have notable relationships outside of the system?

Yes! We have a partner system, @systemofthelostsouls . 

Star is dating Omen, Dee, Animosity, Logan, Regulus, and Story.  Virgil is dating Dee, Regulus, and Ceto. Remus is dating Omen, Dee, Logan, Emile and Story.  Roman is dating Emile and Logan.  Bee is dating Logan, Omen, Nyx, and Dee.  Charlie is dating Omen and Dee.  Denki is dating Jirou. Shinsou is dating Jirou. Kyle is dating Kay and has sort of a thing with Kenny and Stan.

And I’m decently sure there are more, but I can’t remember. I’m pretty new here, myself.

20. If you haven’t been plural for your entire life/haven’t known about your plurality until later in life: what was life like before plurality compared to life now. 

According to Star, life before plurality was a lot more... stable. Now if we want to finish a writing project, Star either has to backseat write, let someone else write for aem, or it takes weeks. We’ve been working on one chapter of a fanfiction for a week now. Before, Star was able to finish a chapter in a day or two. 

21. If you chose to become plural: why? What has changed since then?

We’re not actually sure if Star chose to become plural or not. Sometimes it feels like ae did (which fucks up with our imposter syndrome lmfao), sometimes it feels like Star chose to be plural and invited people here out of loneliness and wanting to fit in with our friend group at the time, but usually it just feels like people chose to come here, rather than the other way around. 

22. Is there anything you’d like to say to the plural community at large?

Don’t gatekeep, please. Let endogenic systems use the words “system” and “switching” if it’s what works for them. They aren’t hurting anyone. 

And please don’t fakeclaim. You don’t know what’s going on in someone’s head. You aren’t in there. 

23. Is there anything you’d like to say to any singlets reading this post?

Thank you for reading such a long thing. If any of this confuses you, or you’d like to learn more, our inbox is always open. But be warned, if you send us hate or something, we’re more likely to just delete your ask than answer it. 

Thank you all for reading! -Cyra