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system-of-a-feather · 1 year ago

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Alternative System Mind Mapping Method for Communication

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a professional or scientifically or anything really backed method, this is something coming solely from peer / personal experience.]

In regards to an anon ask earlier, I was thinking about it and one of the ways we've approached improving communication - particularly internal - in a way that is a lot less prone to flooding or dealing with trauma or anything too overwhelming - is by approaching it following the concept of Memory Webs

I haven't read up on them recently, but "Memory Webs" were a thing that our AP Psychology teacher in highschool made us do because the AP Psych test was term / jargon heavy. Memory in the human brain has been shown to be HEAVILY associative and the ability to remember and connect things tends to rely on following a "web" of connected topics, ideas, concepts etc from one idea to the next.

So in our AP Psych class, she gave us these GIANT books for Vocabulary Webs that we had to slowly work on, each of which required 6 other vocab words / related concepts, a summarized definition, and an image to represent it. By doing this, you added 6 cues to recall the word (increasing the chance you'd remember it), a visual cue, an episodic memory of working on it, and a definition - all in all improving how connected the word is to other concepts in your brain and making it easier to recall it.

I personally like to look at DID and our parts in a similar manner sometimes where the large issue is that a lot of the nodes in the web of associations are either disconnected or connected through a hard-to-find and/or small chain. In that sense, parts struggle to be held together because they are not associated concepts. It's hard to reach other parts because the dissociative walls (which in our unsubstantiated opinion is less a 'wall' and more so a lack of reinforced neural connections, so I would call them dissociative caverns) keep associations from forming

As a result, alternative to more traditional ways of mapping your system and parts, a method I've liked to internally visualize systems and navigating system dynamics is through a memory web manner. (I actually have never done it physically cause the Ray part of my brain - also the most prominent part writing this rn - rarely liked to front if he didn't have to and did a lot of stuff internally)

Here's a bit of a breakdown using six of our parts if any of you want to try it out.

We personally like it because it strips a lot of trauma and stress off of it and makes it a lot more of a positive and present engaging activity. For the purposes of this, I'll be using the free online app of Milanote cause we've used it before for OC associative webs and I think it'll do fine enough. (Honestly it actually might just be a good way to log alter information now that I'm looking at it if you are at a place in recovery where keeping track of that physically helpful)

So we can start by dropping down the parts we want to include in the form of boards

So from here, we have a bunch of disconnected parts. However, we find that a lot of these parts have things that mean a lot to them, that illicit a strong emotion or reaction from them.

Some parts may lack it more than others (often in our case trauma holders and/or trauma locked parts) and that's okay and to be expected. This is a visualization method and if there isn't much connecting a part that is 100% okay.

For demonstration sake, I will now add bubbles around each part of things that were pretty early apparent that each individual liked.

Also for the purposes of how I know our system works and how I plan to do this, I am actually moving Riku to the center and you will all see why Riku is such an S tier center point with this model

So you can see some connections forming.

Some key things you can take from this visual that also applied to earlier stags of how we connected

Lucille and Riku are and have always been pretty darn connected, they go back as one of the longest duos and were split almost as a pair to deal with academics

Chunn and Ray have a very shared interest of "I don't want to do anything leave me alone"

XIV literally was just a piece of shit early on and didn't have any immediate HARD connections with anyone largely because he never was interested in actually engaging in things he liked in a positive way as his "favorite emotion" at the time was "being pissed off"

Lin - an originally trauma stuck / loop - is very very poorly associated with anything that isn't overtly trauma related (and that is saying something cause Vocaloid is trauma related) and thus has very few connections to other parts

So looking at this though, there are a few things that have some similarities between parts. What you can do is make plans to try to foster the interests that you do have and try to generalize it a bit more to also encompass what interests other parts have. So lets engage in hobbies a little more - explore a few concepts that mean a lot to parts independently - and find some more generalized version of those hobbies

(forgot to add easy listening to Ray's and "only wearing monochrome*" to XIV's earlier) (*there are a lot of nuances and caveats)

Damn, look at that. It's messy and ugly to have in a 2D form. I absolutely hate it, this would be so impossible with our whole system. But HEY, it's very connected - and that's the goal.

Compared to the previous one, you can see how easily it can be for one part's interests to start to drift into another. Because they are largely and strongly associated features to each part, they are a lot more accessible when engaging in their shared / associated connections and interests which makes it easier for the them to stay together near the front, stay associated with one another, and work with and communicate with one another.

Of course anyone following this blog goes "Where tf is Birds" and that I left out because it would ruin the point of the web as it actually is one of our traditional "you are around the system a lot? okay pick a bird" which serves to 1) be a fun system culture thing 2) be a means of welcoming a part in and 3) helps establish a foundational connection; we do the same with music but with music its a lot more elaborate and I probably wont explain it for other reasons.

But overtime, by fostering interests that were already present and encouraging parts to broaden and generalize their specific interest a bit, you end up with a lot of overlapping associations that can greatly improve internal communication, co-fronting ability, and just general fluidity and easy of moving around the brain web.

It becomes a good way of trying to figure out what you can do to encourage and help build connections and associations between parts by seeing where things are similar / could have more overlap (combat and martial arts, different types of fashion, different types of music, different appreciation for arts, taking over the world, yada yada yada)

And you wanna know the coolest thing? When you step back from the whole web you can see certain things appear that stand out the most and have some of the most connections.

If you ever intend to go to Final Fusion, those are the things that will likely be the most prominent traits of your whole self

For us? [REDACTED BIRDS for the point of the demonstration], Music, Fashion, Taking over the World, Recovery and Healing, Buddhism, Martial Arts, Arts in general - they're all some of our largest traits that persist in almost all forms as individual parts, partially fused parts, and fully fused parts.

And the BEST part? Doing this didn't require us to touch trauma at all.

Of course in recovery that will come up cause PTSD doesn't ask permission, but its a very low stress way to help improve internal communication and engagement with one another.

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system-of-a-feather · 9 months ago

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Only skimmed cause Im busy atm but I also want to say as a system who DOES have a lot of parts that appear pretty distinctly, this is basically what weve historically done a lot as well ESPECIALLY for fragments and subsystems so I do want to also just boost it to say its a helpful resource for those that do have that distinction cause this shit can be a bitch fr fr

Finding Your Identities: Figuring Out Your Alters When Your Alters Aren't "Distinct" "People"

I have been wanting to make this post for a very long time now.

I have talked countless times on this blog about how a lot of the "how to figure out your alters" lists do not and cannot apply to me, or systems who may be like me, for a variety of reasons.

We do not have distinct senses of selves, we don't feel like our own distinct individuals, in any way whatsoever. There is no specific, unique, distinct "cue" or feeling or anything that tells me I've switched, or tells me that a specific, distinct alter is fronting who is different from any other alters. There is no specific, distinct THING that tells me "okay yeah that was very obviously and specifically and undeniably a different alter."

It's easy to deny you have alters when your alters are not distinct individuals who know they are their own unique, separate selves. It's easy to deny you have alters when it always feels like "you."

If you don't experience your alters as distinct 'entities' where you can obviously and distinctly refer to them as "that is (that specific alter) and that is not (these other alters)", it can be nearly impossible to figure out your alters at all.

This has been a horrible aspect of my denial since essentially the beginning. I mean, when everything online tells you that DID involves a distinct sense of "not me" to it, how can you know if you have it if it doesn't feel that way to you?

Now obviously I DO have that feeling of "not me"... It's just not described using those specific words. I was taking it all way too literally (thanks, autism NFKDSFDKJ).

It's more like "I don't really feel that way anymore" or "yeah I felt that way, but not anymore."

Or "I don't really relate to that anymore" or "I don't really like this as my identity anymore" or "I don't like this name anymore."

Or "this feels like someone else's life" (but more of a feeling, it's not like I just suddenly don't know anything in my life anymore. I know my girlfriend and love her still and I know I live in this house, etc.)

I'll feel like I am attending therapy because I have to, or I'll feel like I'm relaying information that I know factually, as if I was told a story of things that happened and I have to relay that information to someone else.

Or just generally a weird feeling that something is off.

And that's the thing - dissociation (for me personally) is less like "things aren't real" and "I'm not real" and more like just a vague feeling that something is OFF, and you don't know what, and you can't explain it.

I remember as a kid feeling like I'm the "only conscious being" or "feeling like I'm in an anime" or "acting out a dramatic scene in a movie." Now all three of those descriptions still fall under "feeling like things aren't real/etc." but I never interpreted it that way, because of how literally I take things, I didn't make the connection, because I never used the SPECIFIC wording of "feeling like I'm not real/feeling like the world isn't real/etc."

I straight-up told one of the first therapists I saw for a DID diagnosis that I "don't really dissociate at all" because I don't really experience the "nothing is real/I'm not real/etc."

This, too, brought me a lot of denial, because people only describe dissociation as "things don't feel real", "you don't feel real", "you feel like you're floating", "you're watching yourself", "you're watching the world through fog/glass", etc. And because I never really used those specific words to explain my feelings and experiences, I figured I wasn't really experiencing any dissociation, or at least just very rarely and mildly so.

That's a key thing here - the WORD CHOICES being used to describe alters, systems, CDD experiences, etc. don't really match up with my experiences at all. I take things extremely, extremely literally, and when everybody describes their alters and refers to them as distinct, different people, it's hard to feel like your experiences are the more common experience, especially when people around you might continue to reinforce that denial, by assuming you must not have alters, or you have a different disorder, etc., because you are "always awake and present no matter what alter is fronting", etc.

Your personal interpretation of your experiences matters a LOT when it comes to CDDs, figuring out if you have a CDD, and it also plays a large role into how your system might present/feel/look/what alters you have/etc.

For example, many people interpreted their alter experiences and switches as creating characters. That, then, might become a huge aspect of figuring out your alters - you might realize that many of the characters you've made (or all of them) through the years were actually alters. With that lens, you might, then, be able to have a lot of knowledge about your alters based off of that alone - those "characters" might have specific characteristics, lore, designs, etc. that you then realize were all a part of that alter.

You might also, then, find that each time you find yourself making a "new" "character", it's actually just a new alter forming/splitting (or perhaps them just finding out their own identity).

The way you personally interpret your experiences, your feelings, your life, memories, etc. all impact your alters and your system - the way your alters identify, the way it FEELS when alters front, the way your system presents, etc.

I grew up believing I was making things up and lying for seemingly no reason, for attention, because I liked being cool and special. Or that I was purposely acting out a fake, dramatic movie, just to add more drama.

In reality, I was experiencing alter switches and dissociation, but because I interpreted it in those ways, we now have a very difficult time trying to accept and believe that these are real feelings, real experiences, outside of my control, instead of me just saying things for attention and acting dramatic just because.

I also very much grew up feeling like "nothing ever sticks, so why bother taking anything seriously." Now, pretty much all of us still have this attitude, this feeling of "why bother coming up with a name, why bother taking (my feelings, etc.) seriously when it's just gonna go away and not come back."

I would feel confident in a decision or an identity or a name change and so on, only for me to change it the next day, or the next week, and so on.

This made things like questioning my gender identity and wanting to change my name extremely difficult and impossible because I could never be sure if it was going to actually STICK or just be a temporary, fleeting "phase." I became upset (and still become upset and distressed) every time everything turned out to just be a "phase" instead of a real, actual thing. I still have trouble with this. If I want to cut my hair or dye my hair or get new clothes, I will never be able to know for sure if I'll still like it in a different state. If I want a name change, I don't know if it'll be long-term or if I will change my mind the next day.

DID is more like this, and less like "I'm a totally different person with a distinctly different personality and a different name and I am not ("host")."

And if this is relatable to you, this post may very much help you figure out who your alters are.

A lot of things online that try to give suggestions and ideas for figuring out your alters in a way of "ask (your alters) these questions."

For me, I can't really do that, for a variety of different reasons - our dissociative barriers are too high, there's no inner world, and there's no kind of "distinct voices" that I "hear" speaking to me that are coming from a distinctly different "person." And since we as alters do not experience ourselves as distinct individuals where we just know who we are and know we are our own distinct individuals, it's less like asking my alters these questions, and more like asking MYSELF these questions. I want you keep that in mind going into this post.

When it comes to figuring out alters, what helps me is trying to keep track of patterns of changes in my behaviors, likes, dislikes, hobbies/interests, and more.

The following is a TEMPLATE of things you can ask yourself at different times, during different moods, modes, self-states - whatever you wanna call it.

I tried to make them as general as possible in order to hopefully make the questions apply to a general audience/a wide variety of people, instead of being too specific where they might not apply to most people.

You do not have to ask yourself all of these questions! If you don't know the answer to a question, and/or you don't want to answer a question, it can be important to write that down too! You can skip any questions or change them in any way you like.

If a question feels unhelpful to you, feel free to change it into something that might feel more helpful to you personally, and/or just remove it altogether.

Feel free to expand upon these questions! For example, if a question seems helpful to you, you might have further ideas to expand upon that question into further, more specific questions. I actually totally encourage other people to expand upon these questions and come up with more questions that could help others! Definitely share your thoughts in reblogs if you want.

I want to make it clear, first, that this post is NOT trying to make people OBSESS over this!!!! These questions are meant to help figure out alters, but don't obsess over it!

The purpose of these questions is to simply try and keep track of possible patterns of behaviors, etc., not to obsess over figuring out your alters, not to obsess over figuring out what alter you are, not to obsess over making sure your alters are "consistent all the time" or something. It doesn't matter about knowing "who" you are so much as it matters to let yourself exist as you are, at any given moment. It's to allow yourself to exist and see if there is a pattern of emotions, opinions, preferences, likes, dislikes, interests/hobbies, behaviors, and more that crop of every so often - this is what alters are for a lot of people. Like I said, it's less like "distinct, separate person" and more like a recurring pattern of the same/similar emotions/behaviors/traits/etc. that crop up every so often, oftentimes in response to things, such as topics that you may find triggering (for example: feeling like an angry wolf every time the topic of physical abuse comes up, or feeling like a scared child when you feel like someone said something upsetting), or even positive topics, such as feeling like you become a girl whenever the topic of fashion gets brought up, or feeling like you're 13 when the topic of a childhood beloved TV show comes up.

While "feeling like (xyz) in response to (xyz)" does not necessarily mean you have a CDD, this post is specifically about those experiences under the context of having a CDD. If you relate to anything I wrote in this post, it does not necessarily mean you have a CDD! Similarly, if you DON'T relate to anything in this post, it also doesn't mean you DON'T have a CDD! I am sharing this post with the assumption that the people reading it already know they have a CDD, and/or strongly suspect it.

Questions to ask myself for figuring out alters:

Month day, year. Time (or whatever way you want to write down the month/day/year/time).

What name(s) do I like?:

This doesn't have to be names of specific alters (by that I mean, you don't have to go through your list of alters with specific names to figure out if you like one of them). You can write a vague idea of what name/names you might like (such as "a name related to plants" or "a name that reminds me of the ocean"). You can write down multiple names. You can write down no name. You can write down that you're indifferent. Anything!

What pronouns do I like?:

Again, you can write down anything. If multiple sets of pronouns vibe, write that down! If nothing vibes, write it down! If you don't have any strong feelings/if you're indifferent, write that down too! If you don't know, write that down!

Are there any particular labels I feel drawn to/feel I identify with?:

It can be an LGBTQ+ label (bisexual, demiboy, aromantic, lesbian, etc.), or a label related to something else

What kind of color(s) am I drawn to?:

Darker colors? Pastel colors? Neon colors? Light colors? Etc.

What do I want to do? What would I do if I had the resources (time, money, 'skill', motivation, energy, etc.) (for example, maybe you wish you could play guitar, but you can’t play guitar, don’t have a guitar, etc.)?:

Similarly, is there anything that I might normally be interested in that I find myself no longer wanting to do?:

-- Listening to music: What songs? Am I singing along? What are the songs about? How do I feel about the music? Are there any songs I dislike? Any particular common genre/theme with the music I find myself liking right now?

-- Art: - What kind of art (Digital art? Doing makeup? Sculpting? Knitting? Painting? Woodworking? Photography? Any art counts.) - What is my art style like/what tools am I using? (If digital art, what program am I using? What brushes am I using? Etc. (Different alters might prefer to use different art programs and different art brushes!)) - What does the artwork depict? (Vent art? Are there themes of trauma? Dissociation? Fanart? Something else?)

-- Playing a game: - What game? - What am I doing in the game? Are there different game modes? If so, what mode am I playing? Is my character customizable, and if so, how does my character look? (Some alters might prefer to change the way the character looks to match how they might feel inside!) - Are there any games I don't currently care for?

-- Watching YouTube: - What is the topic of the video? (Is it about a hobby I like? A TV series? A video essay? Something else?)

-- Playing an instrument: - What instrument? - Am I trying to learn a specific song/songs? - Am I making my own music? Are there lyrics to go along with it? - If it’s a specific song (either writing your own, or trying to learn how to play a certain song on an instrument), what is it about? Any specific themes that stick out?

-- Writing: Poetry? Working on a book/short story? What is it about? What genre? (Romance? Non-fiction? Etc.) Is it fanfiction?

-- Reading: What am I reading? What is it about? What genre? (Romance? Non-fiction? Etc.) Is it fanfiction?

-- Something else…

What am I thinking about?

What am I talking about?

How am I feeling?

Did something trigger me to feel this certain way?

If something triggered me to feel a certain way, do I know the reason(s) why? (For example, if you encountered something that brings up trauma-related feelings, etc.)

You might describe your feelings in ways other than a simple “sad”, “mad”, or “happy.” You might be more specific, such as “I feel like white noise” or “I feel like a dog” or “I feel like an ocean.” This is completely valid and an important thing to keep note of as well. You can even write down that you feel tall, or you feel a different age, or you feel like a certain character.

There are many more questions that you could ask 'yourself' to get to know 'yourselves.' This list is not exhaustive, and like I said, you can simply you this template to bounce off ideas of what questions you, personally, would find most helpful!

I'd love to hear anybody's input, and I hope this post helps anyone. :] If not, feel free to share around anyway, if you want!

#only skimmed it cause busy but i know this blog and theyre s tier #and the skim seems s tier #so s tier post #save #fave #fav #alter: fei

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kitsuneharmony · 10 months ago

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Inspiration struck me and I scrambled to make this ASAP.

Here's a blank version

#fate grand order #fate series #artoria pendragon #okita souji #mash kyrielight #jeanne d'arc #kiyohime #morgan le fey #florence nightingale #nagao kagetora #jalter #saber alter #ushiwakamaru #tamamo no mae #okada izou #mordred #astolfo

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starscatteredsky · 1 month ago

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Tips for huldrakin please? Thank you!

tips for a huldra!

pt: tips for a huldra! end pt

use pine candles or essential oils in your living space!

spend as much time out in nature as you can

get some charcoal to keep somewhere special!

be kind to those who treat you with respect!

grow your hair long if youd like!

recognize and reward politeness, and dont tolerate rudeness!

be a little coy or flirty sometimes (if everyone involved including you is comfortable that is)!

different myths claim huldra have different animal tails, so wear which tail you connect to (some examples are cow and fox)!

i hope these help! -mono

[ID in alt!]

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lazitoelgato · 7 months ago

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Friendly reminder that for me Kinako and Fei's mother are two completely different people. They look alike but that's all, the plot wouldn't be that altered. Asurei sent Kinako to watch over his son because he needed someone Fei didn't know. Fei's mother still dies here, all the same but Fei and Kinako are not related, Kinako just cares about people in a motherly way. (Which I adore she's so sweet)

#This is the best solution I could come up with #that doesn't alter the plot much #anyway I'll probably reference canon sometimes #to make fun of how absurd ans fucked up that was #inazuma eleven #fei rune #kinako nanobana #ranting

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system-of-a-feather · 8 months ago

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Honestly though this is such a sentiment that I get a lot. I honestly don't really have "good childhood memories" all that much other than when they come up in flashbulb moments like they were never gone (which is a really cool thing about our stage of recovery is every so often we get this really vivid positive memory and get flooded with joy we had long since forgotten, its like the angelic twin sibling to flashbacks), but I'm one of the parts that really really doesn't remember much of any of our past outside of the really fantasy-fiction absorbed lens I lived in and so while I don't have the "good memories" I have the "good experiences" that I'm really only able to have because I don't really know - not genuinely to an emotional real level - what we had been through.

A lot of the last two years of our recovery and my intent in the system has largely been trying to spread that to the angrier, scared, and sad parts that are around me because honestly... it is a really bittersweet and sad thing to have all this good and joy that you have because others really really ate the shit for you and I just wanted to pass the "same hat" over to you

That said, unasked for advice so if its unwanted, feel free to disregard it, but something I found that really helped in sharing and spreading it to parts that are really hestitant / scared to look at the positives and joy either due to distrust or the aforementioned "if that is true then is my pain invalid" kind of thinking but I think one of the largest things I learned from MY system's experience with it is that I think the best way to go about sharing it with parts that are a little more adverse (justifiably) to it is to readily bring yourself to their joys and kind of just make that joy something more.... poignant? for a lack of better words?

I think back when I was first trying to share it, I made the mistake of wanting to share MY joys MY memories MY experiences MY visions with them, and a lot of them just didn't trust it or feel safe with it, because those were things I developed for myself that only really worked that way for me, partially because I didn't know what they did. Inherently, MY joys, memories, experiences, and visions were threatening and unsafe because I was a "compromised individual" and a "biased person" and what works for me is unlikely sustainable / practical for a part that was not "so lucky". And I say that with " " because none of the parts (except XIV but thats cause XIV is special like that; though it was necessary for me to kinda realize how this was not working for us, so thanks XIV) that I worked with WANTED to say that, none of them really logically felt that way, but in their trauma brain, its what it was.

What kind of worked better was me throwing out my interests and my concepts of fun and joy and just trying to nurture something of theirs that brought them comfort and joy and growing that for them. Because it's their thing. It's their fun. It's their domain. It's something that is made for them, works for them, and is suited for them. It is something that is good to and for them DESPITE the hell they experienced and inherently, that is much more trustworthy of a joy than my oblivious ass's interests and joys.

I dunno, just some thoughts on the matter that may or may not be wanted XD I just like talking and thinkin about this sort of stuff

There's a weird sort of sadness to being the version of me who holds so much of the joy and happiness in the system. I remember a lot of the good times from our childhood and so many of the happy memories from back then. How I used to play card games with my parents, or the birthday parties I had with my friends, or the fun field trips, and so much else. But then I turn and look at the other versions of me, full of anger and anxiety thanks all the horrible things I went through as a child. Things that I barely remember, or only know because I was told about those things and yet feel zero emotional connection to them because it doesn't feel like I went through them. But I know I did, because why else do these other versions of me exist who cry themselves to sleep and who lash out at the people around us?

I want to share these happier memories with them, but they seem so scared of these happy memories. I think... they feel like they don't deserve these memories. Or that remembering the happy times somehow devalues all the pain we went through. But it makes me so sad to see them constantly hurt by our past, I want to give them something kind and nice and beautiful. And I guess I also want to be less lonely in my own head, to have someone who can reminisce about the happier times and the good moments, not just lament about the bad times.

I dunno, I respect that our childhood was absolutely godawful... but there were good moments, too. Good moments that I don't want to lose and to forget, because they're important to me.

#alter: riku #alter: lin #alter: fei #advice #trauma recovery #recovery #healing

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system-of-a-feather · 6 months ago

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You know, I understand it is largely part of the nature of it, but I feel mental health communities and people in general don't really talk about the struggles of people with heavy avoidant attachment. Cause honestly, yes by nature of C-PTSD and DID, yes we technically have disorganized attachment and yes, it does fit us, but we identify as a very very VERY heavy avoidant attachment individual an, while I'm not trying to compare cause its different and not a competition, but I do wish there was more of a general understanding for avoidant attachment, how it presents and how to help people with heavy avoidant attachment tendencies feel safe and heal like I see for those with heavy anxious / ambivalent attachment folks.

Like I really wish we had more people talking about it, but like, as someone who theoretically could, I don't even know what Id say and if I did, I don't know if I would say it because #AvoidantAttachment

It's frustrating and if anyone has any input or even any topic points theyre welcome to share but man. All our trauma shit and roadblocks always circle back to this man

Why weren't my parents a little more inconsistently absent and abusive so I could at least be more balanced in my disorganized attachment and sometimes relate to people who have non-avoidant dominant attachment GOD woe is me (JOKING AND BEING MELODRAMATIC)

#alter: riku #alter: fei #feathers speaks #vent #vent tw #syscourse #discourse #discussion #avoidant attachment

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misty-metropolis · 13 days ago

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So here are some of my parts who've been around a lot lately :)

Reno ⚡️ - he/zap, 28, protector

Rude 🔥 - he/they, 30, symptom holder

Cloud ☁️ - he/sky, 21, physical protector

Zack 🗡 - he/they, ageless 23, avenger

Aeri 🌼 - she/fae, 23, healer & soother

Tifa 🥊 - she/they, 20, denial

Reeve 🏛 - he/him, 35, architect

Harper Melody ⛰️ - shey/nix/fey, 30, terraformer

#discerning viewers may notice a theme #personal #alter intro #update from cloud and zack:#i *always* get hm's pronouns wrong #fey not fae #aeri uses fae; harper uses fey

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system-of-a-feather · 9 months ago

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Firstly, I really love how you discuss this topic. As someone who used to (not as much these days just due to life being busy and DID being a lower interest of mine atm) read a decent amount of childhood trauma and dissociation literature for fun, this has honestly been my stance with the whole false memory / fictitious DID talks and all. I know the community at large scoffs and dislikes people bringing it up cause - as a community - we have a lot of collective historical trauma from how DID has been handled with complete invalidation that has previously been used to cover up actual abuse PLUS a lot of people with DID are prone to self doubt and thinking they are faking

But from a clinical perspective and taking a perspective of someone not in the community, there is a non-negligible sociocognitive impact that plays on both people with DID and those without it and I really personally think its incorrect to assume that people are either 100% fictious and faking DID or 100% real and authentic because I do think a large number of people who have DID and participated in online DID communities do feel some sort of pressure to appear in a certain way and conform and emulate what they see others presenting as; whether that be for their own sense of being able to look to another and say "oh I have the same thing as them so they can give me structure to navigating this chaos" or if it is to seek comfort, community, or validation in their experiences - I have noticed this dynamic a lot

It's a large reason why I personally put a strong emphasis on how I curate and engage with people with DID as part of my 1) recovery journey and 2) my means of engaging with the DID community in a healthy and productive way. It's also a large reason why I don't really participate in system servers and why I tend to try to hold myself to a personal high standard in regards to what sort of things I put out on this blog as I feel - intentionally or not, overtly or not - the way I present things to people on the other end of screens may impact them in these sorts of ways.

I do feel a lot of the DID community isn't really the most ready to have that conversation and bring that nuance though, so I haven't really said much on it until now.

((Disclaimer: Also admittedly I may have missed something in your original post because I'm lowkey coming down from Overload and am using the computer to lower it, so my reading comprehension may be a bit shot without me noticing))

ALSO, on a second topic, I also do want to just share in solidarity to having false trauma memories and that being okay.

It's largely different for me than how it seems to have been for you, but the opening to your post had me thinking about it. For me, I was raised my entire minor-hood life molded and controlled by my oldest sister and because of the way It All Happened With Her, somehow we ended up in a situation where almost anything she said would be taken as fact with zero questioning (which led to hindsight hilarious things like us being fully convinced we have 2D vision, see extra colors, and have chronic migraines when we don't and never did, but we genuinely believed it)

But most importantly, she told us our early childhood and told us what our parents were like and what they were doing both after abusive episodes and during them. And that let her entirely color experiences by just having the full ability to write the narrative. So I grew up fully believing and fully interpretting a lot of my life events - some genuinely traumatic, others mostly mundane and harmless - as a chronic hellscape, because everything with my parents were given a horrendous narrative.

It's been years of therapy and trauma processing, but I can almost certainly say at least HALF of those, our parents weren't doing anything harmful if you removed the narrative that I was fed and blindly believed. That said, a lot of our more heavy trauma holding parts still remember and live stuck in the awareness we had as a child which was entirely molded by the narrative we were provided.

The things they remember are "real" in the sense they DID happen but extremely false in the sense that they were never EVER even a quarter as bad as I was fed. But in the moment, I fully experienced and understood those moments of mundane and harmless actions by our parents as horrific trauma.

That isn't to say our parents weren't physically abusive, emotionally abusive, neglectful, and all that. They were, we have a number of experiences we know were true and that were those. We had DID before our sister got our claws too far in I'm certain, but the intensity and extent to how horrible we thought our parents were was largely externally crafted.

And of course there is all the stuff our sister did that was horrible and all, but that's not a story for today anyways.

Point is, same hat with those "memories of horrible trauma that objectively was very likely not accurate".

I think its a really complex and underspoken about thing so thanks for starting the conversation on it.

I've tried to write about this a couple times now academically, then in a funny jokey way, but the problem is I'm trying to rationalise a personal topic to justify it and make it more general but honestly it keeps ending up being fakeclaimy, perhaps in a way that deflects from me so fuck it, here goes.

My trauma memories are wrong. And that's okay.

With all the talk about the false memory syndrome and the sociocognitive model I find myself in an interesting position where I wholeheartedly disagree with the False Memory Syndrome proponents attempts to discredit DID as a diagnosis whilst having false memories very much be a part of my diagnosis, with sociocognitive elements influencing both my false trauma memories and my presentation of DID (not it's cause, just how it manifested at times).

And the key issue is metacognition and world beliefs, a growing area of research in the trauma and dissociation field. It basically goes that humans are incredibly narrative in nature. Our memories aren't factual, they're stories we tell ourselves filled with meaning and metaphor and allegory. It's why we love stories so much, whether it's fiction or juicy gossip, interacting with others interpretation of events and finding meaning in them helps us to interpret and assign meaning to our own lives and create rich, nuanced world beliefs. When something happens that is incompatible with our world beliefs and we are unable to assign meaning to to integrate it onto our subjective narrative, that's trauma.

Emotional support can help us to develop our metacognitive abilities and integrate traumatic events but things like disorganised attachment environments really fuck up this ability from a very young age and the creation of alters in CDDs can be viewed as attempts by the brain to protect those very early world beliefs (I rely on my caregivers for survival), by creating new characters in the story who can hold simultaneous contradictory world beliefs.

The problem is when traumatic shit happens young enough, memory just doesn't record properly. The emotional feelings of helplessness and threat to life or exposure and violation might be preserved, but the "factual" record can be lost forever. And once you start chronically dissociating it fucks with your regular every day ability to record and store non traumatic memories, even if by this point a traumatic memory can be "factually" and emotionally preserved whilst also being buried.

So when I look back on my childhood, and I have all these emotional flashbacks from very early childhood and these core beliefs that point to a really shitty life as a baby that I don't have actually memory of, and entire oceans of no memory, and also traumas that happened to me later in life that I do remember even if I've only recently admitted to myself are traumatic, AND a brain that likes to make up alternative subjective narratives through alter formation, AND a desperation to make sense of my life during a very confusing period (system discovery), yeah...my brain made up traumas that didn't happen to me.

When I was reading The Body Keeps the Score because I was dealing with a bunch of somatoform symptoms the early chapters talk a LOT about the prevalence of CSA by family members, and it was honestly kinda invalidating, because as far as I was aware that didn't happen to me so why was I so fucked up? It led to me imagining scenarios of trauma that might have happened to me until something latched on to an unprocessed emotional flashback. It became entangled with that flashback and, in a way, integrated itself into my subjective narrative. It gave meaning to my story, a distressing story, but a story that made sense. The only problem with that is, it doesn't actually make sense. It just isn't compatible with the other versions of my narrative that are contained throughout the rest of the system. I haven't processed and integrated the real trauma, I've just attempted to create a narrative that could serve me in that moment, it was reassuring, it provided a security in the meaning it gave me, but it's only a temporary substitute for real integration of the stuff that's still buried or inaccessible to me.

Maybe I was a victim of CSA, it's definitely possible, but that memory I've "had" just.. Isn't it. And despite community sentiments to believe trauma I would be harming myself to cling onto those memories instead of confronting the true traumatic events through therapy when I'm actually ready to face them. I would be deflecting because believing something I know deep down isn't true is safer than acknowledging what really happened, even if the fake memory is worse than what really happened.

I understand why papers on fictitious DID are concerned with patients freely offering up their trauma when previously DID patients would take years to open up enough to share it. When you get those confession stories of people faking DID there are these repeated elements that come up time and time again. They made up trauma that they freely shared to appear more valid, and despite no longer faking they still sometimes hear their alters. And I think what's happening in these cases isn't actually necessarily that they're faking DID, although obviously you can misdiagnose yourself, but quite possibly community exposure is reinforcing a sociocognitive presentation of DID. One where trauma is this thing that you MUST know about, where alters have deep backstories and a rich biography. This outward protection may very well be a reflection of a deeper but hidden inner experience that seeks to deflect the outside world with a decoy narrative.

This sucks, because from a clinician's perspective whether they affirm it or scrutinise it, if the patient refuses to let go of the decoy to reveal what's underneath therapy work is largely fruitless. Sar and Ozturk seem to be the only practitioner's to have correctly highlighted this in Functional Dissociation of the Self. They recognise the uncanny ability of the Dissociative system to deflect and divert therapy work through substitute beliefs and multiple realities and highlight the value of cutting through all that to get to the hidden psychological self that's able to create the cohesive integrated narrative that allows the system to truly recover.

So I have to ask myself, is the "version" of DID I believe I have and present to others an accurate depiction of what's going on? Or is it a convenient substitution of self that I use to deflect from what's really going on? How is the community influencing this presentation and my need to cling onto it to fit in? And is my participation in the online system community harming me in the long run because it helps reinforce my substitute beliefs about myself to fit in with them without putting in the real work to really understand myself?

I'm mostly making this as a self call out post for accountability, because I think I need to step away. If I keep posting them I've failed because honestly I feel kinda lost without it and that's scary. Hopefully, this will be the last y'all hear from me in a while so I wish y'all well. Or I'll see you tomorrow

#alter: riku #alter: fei #false memories #fave #fav

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