#an incredibly complex disorder or illness

[maespri]

(eye twitching, white-knuckling the bathroom sink after reading a tumblr post misinterpreting the actions of a fictional character) correlation does not equal causation correlation does not equal causation correlation does not equal cau

[fruitsofhell]

WE HAVE TO FUCKING NORMALIZE PEOPLE WITH PERSONALITY DISORDERS AAA (runs into oncoming traffic)

[musical-chick-13]

.

[juicedaloe]

Mithrun and brain damage

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in this, but I wanted to make a post talking about why I think that Mithrun has brain damage from a traumatic brain injury instead of him being a representation of other neurological disorders or mental illness. I'm not that involved in the dunmesh fandom so I don't know how common this headcanon is, though I've seen a few people mention it here and there.

This is just my own opinion so if you disagree then that's fine. Some of this is just speculation and I can't say what Kui's intentions were. This post isn't meant to be that serious. I just wanted to talk about it and hopefully inform about how brain damage can affect some people in a way that I hope is interesting and relevant.

This will be kind of long because I like to talk so it will be under the cut. Apologies for the length and how much I ramble. Feel free to give input especially if I got anything wrong or if this is too confusing.

Okay let's go

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is incredibly complex. The long-term effects of a TBI include a wide array of symptoms. Each injury is different, and some people can completely recover rather quickly while others can become permanently disabled, even for seemingly "minor" injuries. What I'll cover here isn't a definitive representation of the experiences of all those who have long-term effects from TBI, nor do I speak for everyone with brain damage.

Here are some long term symptoms relevant to this post:

Alexithymia (inability to process and name emotions)

Inability to process and name physical perceptions

Mood swings and emotional regulation difficulties

Communication difficulties

Social impairment

Apathy about caring for oneself

Lack of motivation

Alexithymia and inability to process physical perceptions

This one is rather obvious. While Mithrun is shown to feel emotions and have physical sensations (for instance, describing his location when he gets lost in the dungeon as "a cold place"), he is also apathetic to how this affects him. This means that his physical and emotional perceptions are reduced in some way. He says that becoming lord of the dungeon will leave someone "empty", showing he is aware of his dulled emotional state.

A good example of this is can be seen here in a bonus comic where he doesn't give much of a reaction to burning his mouth on hot food.

(I love these two a lot, by the way. Pattadol is really under appreciated.)

He is also not able to recognize bodily signals, such as hunger or when he is tired. Despite collapsing from exhaustion and not eating for long periods of time, he still insists he is not tired or hungry.

Mood swings

Mood swings in combination with alexithymia can be an especially disorientating experience. Those who struggle to perceive their own emotions can still feel them even if they don't know how to recognize it.

Individuals with brain injuries often experience drastic mood swings, particularly anger. To those around them, they can appear to go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

This is more speculation/headcanon on my part, as the strongest emotion Mithrun has for most of his appearances is anger. However one could interpret this as being unrelated as he is seeking revenge for a traumatic experience.

Communication difficulties and social impairment

Not only can naming personal experiences be incredibly difficult with a brain injury, but other areas of communication are often affected as well.

Mithrun is not able to set boundaries for himself even if someone is doing something he would not actually want them to do, which can leave him in a vulnerable position.

People with brain injuries can sometimes have a paradoxical experience when it comes to communicating with others. They can go from being very quiet to speaking at length about one topic, seemingly without regard for the importance of each bit of information. (I see it like Newton's first law of motion. It is hard to start speaking and it can be just as hard to stop.)

I really like this aspect of Mithrun's characterization. Usually, he is very quiet because he has no reason to speak. However, once he starts talking he is shown to be overly specific and goes on for long periods of time. Kabru has to spend multiple days figuring out his story.

In a side comic, Kabru tells Mithrun he should condense some of the personal details that Kabru finds irrelevant to the topic of the dungeon.

Mithrun shares many details about himself because his desire not to do so is gone. This mirrors the experience of many people who have brain damage to overshare and not understand how their words will come across to others. Sometimes they say or do things that are insensitive or inappropriate for the situation.

Caring for oneself and motivation

In the dungeon, Mithrun becomes reliant on others for self care. He also seems especially incapable of motivating himself to take care of his body when he is particularly focused on his goals.

In these panels, thus far he had been fairly receptive of Kabru trying to take care of him. However, he could sense that the demon was close and was too focused on that to care to eat.

Refusal of care and treatment is often an effect of traumatic brain injury. This can be for seemingly no reason, even if the person knows that this will help them. Sometimes people will lie about receiving treatment or doing things to take care of themselves, either so they can avoid it or avoid having someone take care of them.

He knows that eating regularly and not pushing himself too much will help him - he's been told multiple times on-screen - but he still has to be continuously told by others to give him that motivation to take care of himself. He's very apathetic to his physical state, even if it seems his only desire is for revenge and he should be doing anything he can to achieve that.

Other things of note

I wasn't sure where to put this, but while Mithrun's sense of direction is speculated by Kabru to be left over from his time as lord of an ever-changing, confusing dungeon, having poor sense of direction in the way he does could also be indicative of brain injury as well.

While the dungeon is confusing and illogical, he is known to have a poor sense of direction and to get frequently lost by those around him, even trying to exit an entrance he just came through. He is shown to be very intelligent, but memory is greatly impacted by brain injuries which affects a person's sense of direction and location.

Something that really stands out to me about Mithrun is how much the things that help him are particularly helpful to those with brain damage. He is physically capable of performing tasks, but he needs an outside source to remind him and get him started. He relies entirely on routine, and when that regularity is taken away he shows extreme difficulty taking care of himself.

Sometimes, the care that some people need is simply someone else to encourage them or to tell them when to do things. The care that he needs is pretty consistent with a person with a brain injury who does not need a full time caretaker and would prefer to have some independence.

Also, healing magic is specified to not work with brain injury unless the person is killed and revived. Mithrun had not been revived after his injuries, so it is entirely possible for him to have sustained a TBI. I don't think this matters that much because one is still allowed to have headcanons even if there is a magical explanation or isn't really possible in canon, but I thought it was an interesting detail.

In conclusion

Because of all this I don't believe that his lack of self care is due solely to mental illness. While mental illnesses like depression or PTSD can cause a decline in self care, the reasons why the affected individual is avoidant of these tasks differs. These disorders can also cause cognitive difficulties and emotional regulation issues, but not to the same extent or in the same way that brain damage would. I think that he does have both depression and PTSD (both are common after a TBI) but those are not his only disabilities.

And on a personal note, I just think that having a character with brain damage is really cool. Most of the time I've seen it the characters are not given very much respect and they are treated as comic relief and a joke. Regardless of whether you agree with this post or not, it is still nice to see a character with a disability like this.

Thank you if you read all of this. I hope it was easy to understand and I did not ramble too much. I don't have anything else to say but I've been wanting to write this out for a while.

Okay bye

[trans-axolotl]

(Described in alt text)

“I found out that I was intersex several years before I became more disabled by my other chronic illnesses, so my intersex identity felt more relevant to my life at first. When I was first diagnosed in 2015, I had an incredibly hard time trying to discover any information about intersex community. It took a lot of research in archives of primary sources just to find out that intersex people did have a powerful history of activism.

Embracing my disabled identity was a parallel process in so many ways. As a wheelchair user, it’s really important for me to define my own disabled identity outside of the medical system or ableist ideas from an inaccessible society. For me, one of the most important parts of my disabled identity is the powerful community we build to fight for justice. In both the intersex and the disabled communities, we get really good at caring for each other. When you're part of a community that's been excluded from accessing knowledge about your body, your health, and your needs, it’s meaningful when we can redistribute power from medical authority back into the hands of intersex and disabled people.

Even though there are many similarities and solidarity between the intersex and disabled communities, sometimes I still feel complicated about whether I want to consider my intersex variation a disability. “In an environment with so much pathologization through Disorders of Sex Development language, it can feel difficult to publicly talk about our intersex variations as disabilities. [Like many intersex people, I have felt] like we have to be the representative of every intersex person ever, rather than having the space to exist with a lot of complexities. For a while, I wondered if I would be betraying intersex activism if I also acknowledged the fact that part of the reason I was losing my mobility was because of my intersex variation.”

In an intersex and disabled future, I want us to have space to celebrate all parts of ourselves without feeling like we have to hide. Not only do we exist, we’re out here existing joyfully, and I want our intersex and disabled futures to reflect the power of our liberation. By Elliott L.”

-7 Disabled Intersex People Explain How They Embrace Their Identities, Teen Vogue, Courtney Felle

[dark-audit]

Things I wish more writers understood about PTSD

Traumatic events don't always lead to PTSD. Two people can experience the exact same traumatic event, and one can go to work the next day shaken up but otherwise alright, while the other still has trouble functioning normally two years down the line. This is a fact that's been studied to death in psychology, but we're still no closer to figuring out why this discrepancy exists. So no, that character who experienced a very traumatic event and wasn't traumatized to your liking wasn't actually 'unrealistic'; they just didn't live up to your preconception of how trauma is supposed to effect people.

There is no flaw or 'weakness' in a person's temprament or personality construction that will make them more likely to develop PTSD, and likewise, people who don't develop PTSD are not inherently 'tougher'. PTSD is not the kind of illness you can blame on the person who suffers from it; human beings are more complicated than that. Furthermore, people who don't develop PTSD from a traumatic event exist, in fact they're very common, and while they don't develop that precise, largely arbitrary set of symptoms, they are still likely to be deeply affected by the event/s. Their experiences are no less real than those of their counterparts.

Sometimes, a person who experienced a traumatic even didn't develop PTSD afterwards - because they already had it. There are lots of people who go into therapy following a traumatic event only to discover they've been experiencing the symptoms of PTSD for years, following a previous unrelated traumatic event. This is especially common for people who had C-PTSD beforehand. Since PTSD can often manifest in very subtle ways, and since people are likely to 'mask' symptoms as a way to keep judgement or prying at bay, this scenario is not particularly uncommon.

PTSD doesn't always develop immediately following the traumatic event. PTSD can take any amount of time to develop. For most people, it takes around 3 months for symptoms to appear, but for a lot of people, the symptoms of PTSD do not appear for many months, even years after the event/s. This usually has something to do with the memory issues that can arise after trauma, and also might be affected by how a person conceptualizes the 'threat level' over time.

People with PTSD are not 'broken'; people with PTSD can be treated. Human beings aren't inanimate objects; we're living beings, graced with this incredible ability to adapt, grow and change. While there is no 'cure' for PTSD, there are loads of types of psychotherapy and medications that help to alleviate symptoms, and many people with this disorder are able to live fulfilling lives despite the diagnosis. Recovery is never out of the question, no matter how severe a person's symptoms might be. PTSD or not, I for one have yet to encounter anyone I would ever consider irrevocably 'broken'.

People with PTSD don't all experience the same symptoms. I feel like it needs to be said, because there is a bit of a 'type' in fiction, isn't there? And this can be incredibly disheartening to read for someone whose PTSD doesn't align with the way it is constantly shown to 'normally' manifest. In reality, PTSD is a very complex disorder, which might express itself in a wide breadth of different ways, and people handle their symptoms using a wide breadth of different methods. You'd be hard pressed to find two people who are completely alike in this regard.

Perpetrators of violence are just as likely to develop PTSD as their victims. This is one of those things I learned though my torture research escapades, and I've found it applies to other violent crimes as well, such as violent assault and murder. It's not a particularly nice fact to know if you want to maintain your straightforward good-vs-evil worldview, but alas, the real world is grim and complicated. There is actually a name for this type of PTSD, and it is Participation-Induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PI-PTSD), or perpetrator trauma. PTSD does not discriminate, and you're not safe from it just because you're not on the recieving end.

People with PTSD aren't automatically more violent. I don't know why this myth has to be so prominent with every single mental illness ever, but like, yeah, its not true for this one either.

[they-them-that]

The mishandling of Jinx's mental health/illness

Trigger warning: s*cide, depression, ableism, ptsd

(edit: I did a bit of rewriting to make the post more cohesive but the same points are made for anyone looking back and seeing changes)

There were a lot of issues with the Arcane season finale. Writing quality aside; discarding the Undercity storyline in favour of an apolitical conflict (Viktor and Ambessa), the "we just need good cops" agenda, the unaddressed abuse that transpired between Cait and Vi, the questionable difference between how Ambessa (an older butch black woman) and Caitlyn (a young feminine wasian) were treated committing the same offences, the overall disjointment of the black characters' storylines, the poor portrayal of physical disabilities and prosthetic limbs, and probably more... What I want to focus on right now is Jinx's storyline and the absolutely harmful trope of "redemption through sacrifice".

In the first arc, Vi believed Jinx had to die and told Caitlyn to "take the shot" when the opportunity rose, essentially consenting to Caitlyn killing her sister and not considering peaceful alternatives (as if that's her choice to consent to). When Jinx calls out Vi for turning "blue belly" and gassing the Undercity, Vi responds that "she's not taking responsibility for Jinx's actions anymore" even though these are Vi's actions. She also tells Jinx that it's Jinx who "killed her sister".

In the second arc, Vi calls Jinx "delusional" and says "at least our parents will never get to see what a psycho their daughter turned into". She also refers to Jinx's psychosis as "fantasies" and treats it like an annoyance rather than a real mental illness Jinx can't control.

I get that Vi doesn't understand the complexities of Jinx's mental illness, she's mad with her and it's understandable, she's not gonna forgive terrorism. Jinx also ended up putting Vi through an abusive and traumatic experience at the end of season 1 so there's no reason for her to be sympathetic towards her. However, I did find the way Vi talked to Jinx to be... triggering as someone who has experienced gas lighting and made to feel like my own mental illnesses made me delusional or bad.

The language Vi used was ableist!

It ends up feeding into the harmful idea that mentally ill people are dangerous and need to be eradicated rather than victims of circumstances who need support, resources, and human empathy. Although yes, everyone is responsible for their own actions and human empathy can only go so far, associating a lack of morality with mental illness and seeing it as an individualistic moral failure is ridiculously harmful! I've been constantly seeing the internet diagnose random people with narcissism, bipolar disorder and even schizophrenia because they act in ways that aren't considered socially acceptable or they do something problematic (not all being intrinsic or only explainable through mental illness!). Even worse is that none of these diagnoses come from a place of concern or well meaning, it's an insult and it's to justify bullying and devaluing these people because of the idea that mentally ill people are too "far gone" to be worth compassion. It's an incredibly dehumanizing and ableist stigma that still persists. Mentally ill people still deserve to be listened to!

If Vi was gonna be mad at Jinx, she could've just stuck to the terrorism and her working for Silco, actual tangible actions worth holding her accountable for. Weaponizing her mental illness isn't that, it's just plain ableism!

Finally, we get to the end where Jinx and Vi can finally properly heal and rebuild their relationship but Warwick loses control and Jinx ends up sacrificing herself to save Vi. The s*icide ideation song picks back up as she makes the sacrifice...

At the end of the second act, Jinx loses Isha and Vander and we end up spending the entire third season seeing Jinx lose the will to live and it's incredibly distressing. We see depression eat her alive, we see her harming herself picking at her nail bed, we see her asking Cait to kill her already. We get a soundtrack literally about accepting death while Jinx attempts to take her life in slow motion with artistic visuals. Then we see her pull the pin multiple times as Ekko rewinds time. Big yikes! This isn't the first time Arcane portrayed s-cide attempts/ideation (Jayce, Viktor, Marcus) however the way it's done with Jinx felt far more brutal and romanticized that genuinely distressed me.

What keeps Jinx alive for a little longer is... joining a war. Prior to Jinx's s-cide attempt, Vi tells Jinx she can essentially redeem herself if she helped Piltover in their war against Noxus. Jinx very clearly heads off to k herself instead yet Vi interprets it as Jinx refusing to risk her life to protect her oppressors as if that's a crappy thing of Jinx to do. We later end up seeing Jinx helping in the war, redeeming herself again to Vi, as if she has to make herself useful to be of value.

I hate this ending, it doesn't even matter if she possibly survived in the end. What's insinuated is that her s-cide was inevitable and even necessary for her to be redeemed and find peace. The "Sacrificing yourself for redemption" trope is already bad enough as is but the fact that we've seen Jinx want to escape life makes it far more upsetting because it ends up being posed as the ideal ending for Jinx. This also perpetuates the idea that our worth is in our value to society; Jinx, a mentally ill impoverished hazbin with no one left, needed to be sacrificed for Vi, someone who's already met her potential to society with a partner, career, and patriotic conviction.

All of this ends up telling me that being mentally ill causes the suffering of people around me and that their suffering is on my conscience. That I should be expendable for them to make up for it. It's fucked up, I hate seeing Arcane perpetuate these ideas from the perspective of Vi who's values are portrayed as absolute. Joining the war and helping Piltover was the "right answer". Let's just forget there was supposed to already be a civil war between Piltover and the Undercity where Jinx was on the "wrong side", the thing that catalyzed Vi's ableist.

I needed a story of someone like Jinx, someone so misunderstood and traumatized, to find happiness and not just in an alternate universe or some hint that she might be alive. It was so painful to watch Jinx be robbed of any meaningful connections and relationships in a way that felt like she was being punished for how she turned out. When mentally ill people are socially isolated and vilified, we desperately need stories that allow them to bathe in the sunlight. I'm so deeply upset and heartbroken that Arcane ended up following an immensely ableist troped "fate" for Jinx...

[doomsdayradio]

this is mostly a problem i see on tiktok, but coming from someone with bpd and other cluster b disorders, some people with bpd cannot fucking stop with the trauma and mental illness olympics.

i came across a video where a guy was talking about 5 of the top hardest mental disorders to live with, and besides the fact it's unproductive to quantify diagnoses that way because everyone will have different manifestations of symptoms and it's not helpful to declare someone's struggle harder to live with than another just because of the diagnosis they were given, there were so many fucking people in the comments being like "what about bpd?" because it wasn't on the list.

may i remind you, this is the same bpd community that i see literally constantly demonizing and downplaying the struggle of other disorders in the cluster b like npd and aspd (not even to mention hpd is entirely forgotten).

there's just this idea that bpd is the worst, most painful disorder you can have and nothing else is comparable, and it's not to say bpd isn't incredibly hard to live with. trust me. i know bpd is extremely hard to live with. but this type of comparison and putting that pain on a pedestal like that isn't healthy or productive in the slightest, especially when it shares a lot in common with other disorders like npd and cptsd.

your pain isn't worse or more valid just because you happen to have bpd, and someone has like bipolar disorder or major depression. some disorders and presentations commonly require more complex and extensive treatment than others, but that's not a quantifier of validity or how much pain someone is in.

[scrawnym4]

not really fond of situations where disabled/mentally ill people get scrutinized online and folk immediately go “well i have this disorder, and i don’t do that!” like mental illness and people as a whole being incredibly complex and diverse aren’t the most widely known facts ever about the human psyche

[discomplex]

DISCOMPLEX : discourse complex ✦.

Discomplex is a discourse blog, mostly centered on syscourse though we will pretty much talk about whatever! Common fields may include DID/OSDD, queer community stuff, and disability/mental illness topics. Our main ideals are: accessible information, realistic down to earth representation, good faith education to stop the spread of misinformation, and real life/living centered conversations aka recentering online exclusive takes.

Syscourse stance :: none. We don’t think CDD systems and endogenic plurals are comparable in any way really. Planes and helicopters both fly but they are completely different in nature, presentation, and function. Helicopters have their own launch points and airplanes have their own airports, there is shared airspace, albeit it has limits. Endos exist one way or another; spiritual beliefs such as thought forms, other beliefs of naturally occurring plurality (though this can be debated in our opinions), or tulpamancy/similar practices. Our stance is simply that these are beyond different to the experience of pwDID/OSDD, simply identifying as a multiple does not give you an intrinsic access to communities/resources made for people with CDDs. This is completely /nm it also isn’t an accusation of saying ‘endogenics are invading our communities!!!!!!!!’ So please do not misinterpret it as that at all! A not as important stance is that we believe there should be both shared and separate language : ) We are also incredibly opinionated on the RAMCOA terminology and the ISSTD in general in ways that would be far too complex to get into here. TLDR non-disordered plurals are welcome here, this blog is not a debate of your existence mores the fact that your experience and dissociative disorders are not alike and should not be categorized together.

Mod intros under the cut!

MOD LEGOSHI

20, DID system, he/her exclusively. CN wasian and spiritualist- the Brian Griffin of syscourse

MOD MELON

21, DID system and thoughtformer, he/thon/any. German jew schizophrenic- resident freakourser

MOD AISHA

19, imaginary friend/sub personality collective, she/hir. Louno shipper- this accounts kindmaxxer

*We all have autism/bpd and are all OA survivors, don't really need to know more than that :)

*we in NO way identify with the term IQgenic, we have talked about it here. We are making fun of the term as it is so blatantly offensive, incorrect, and inconceivable that it is laughable how out of touch it is. All mods are in some way considered mentally and/or physically disabled

[ru-bwee]

/scheduled for night for me

i wanna doodle more. give me taocc character and proseka character duos pls pls pls @taocc-updates tagging the blog so more people see this :'3

click thing below for pjsk character stuff v

in order from left to right, top to bottom on img, some defining stuff:

also TW: haruka tldr tldr mentions eating disorders very briefly tsukasa: very loud . he world future star -- emu: she has enough energy to run around the earth and back. her family is rich rich btw -- nene: the social anxiety one who can be a bit cold but is very nice :) -- rui: he likes inventing stuff and sometimes does dangerous stuff . Autism.

kohane: Tiny Timid Creature -- akito: im gonna be so real. i know nothing about him. sorry akito. toya: he likes video games, can play violin (i think) and piano. very nice and chill --- an: she cool. good singer and is probably lesbian

kanade yay: savior complex.. implied she has a condition that makes her incredibly tired doing stuff for long periods of time i think --- MAFUYU YAY!: cant feel emotion (alexithymia implied ithink), parents are Not the best, has a persona she puts on as the golden student/child (< note i might pair her with simon) --- ENA!!: artist with anger issues. does not have a very good dad but is very determined

honami: shes very kind, plays drums and loves apple pie!! --- shiho: cool but sometimes cold to her friends (untentionally). plays bass --- ichika: main poster girl . loves miku and her friends, plays guitar --- saki: lovely girl who wants to enjoy everyday to the fullest, has an unspecified illness that made her stuck in hospitals for most her childhood

minori: clumsy girl who wants to be a popular idol and who is definitely not a lesbian --- haruka: penguin autism. has (or atleast had) an eating disorder because of idol culture --- shizuku: airhead but very sweet. always manages to get lost and is canonically very, very beautiful --- airi: tsundere girl who loves cats (she is unfortunately allergic to them

family relationships: saki, tsukasas (siblings) toya (saki and toya view him as a brother) shiho and shizuku: sisters --- ena and akito: siblings

[pumpkin-the-girlie-girl-vixen]

It’s incredibly difficult to navigate the complexities of a thought disorder while trying to maintain a relationship that can sometimes feel like it exacerbates those very struggles. Your feelings are valid, and it’s important to communicate them effectively to your partner so they can understand the gravity of their words and how they impact you.

First and foremost, you need to express that when they say hurtful things in moments of anger, those words do leave a mark. Explain to them that words are not just fleeting expressions of emotion; they carry weight and can leave lasting scars. While they may not mean what they say in anger, the hurt does not simply disappear when the anger subsides. It lingers, transforming into self-doubt and insecurity, especially for someone who already grapples with mental health challenges.

You might say something like this:

“I understand that when you get upset, you might say things in the heat of the moment that you don’t truly mean. But I need you to recognize that those words have a profound effect on me. My thought disorder amplifies the doubts and insecurities I already struggle with, and when you point fingers or use hurtful language, it deepens those feelings. It’s hard for me to separate your angry words from the love I know you have for me. I’m not saying this to blame you, but to help you understand that my brain processes these moments differently.

When you tell me I’m inadequate, or less than, it doesn’t just bounce off me. It stays and festers, making it hard for me to believe in myself or trust that our relationship is solid. I know you might feel frustrated by my doubts, but you need to understand that I am fighting a battle in my mind that is relentless and exhausting.

I want you to see that it takes me time to work through the pain caused by those words. It’s not that I don’t trust you or doubt your love; it’s just that I struggle to see the reality of our relationship through the haze of my mental illness. When you say you’re done or that you’re living a lie, it feels like my worst fears come true. I need reassurance that I am loved and valued, even when the storms of anger pass.

Please help me by showing me that your love is steadfast. Help me to believe that I am not the hurtful things I sometimes think I am. It would mean the world to me if you could acknowledge how your words impact my mental state and contribute to my feelings of inadequacy. I want to work through this together, but I need your understanding and support to do so.”

Remember, communication is key. Try to share your feelings calmly and clearly, even if it feels challenging. It’s essential for both of you to create a safe space where you can express vulnerability without fear of judgment. If your partner truly cares for you, they will want to understand and support you in your journey. It may also be beneficial to seek professional guidance together, as a therapist can help facilitate these difficult conversations and provide both of you with the tools to communicate more effectively.

Lastly, remember that you are not defined by your mental illness or by the hurtful things that have been said to you. You are worthy of love and respect, and it’s essential to surround yourself with people who recognize and affirm your value.

[bunnidid-reviews]

is it frowned upon to wish that one could dissociate or have an alter take over in moments that are awful and stressful? genuine question

Hmmm, this blog is really more intended on reviewing and sharing media about complex dissociative disorders, or could easily be related to CDDs. Certainly not an advice blog for this or anything else > < I think any more general questions about DID can be forwarded to @sundropglass (main blog) if at all, just to stay on topic here.

But since you asked, I may as well share my perspective a little bit. I urge you to read it all.

Of course it's something anyone would want. Shut off and let the stress be taken care of for someone else? go off to fairyland a bit? It's actually an extremely sophisticated way of functioning in the midst of trauma; tuck it away, get through the thing that you might otherwise feel like you're dying from.

But where does that stress go?

Say that you had a very stressful day. Maybe one thing after another kept going wrong. And all day, there was absolutely nothing you could do because you had to carry on with a smile on your face and act like everything's fine, while more dismays pile on top of you. Maybe on top of that, you end up having an argument with a loved one and now you have social anxiety and no sense of safety or relief.

This is not out of the norm. People live very stressful lives all the time. It builds up though, all that stress is piled into your immune system if you don't have any release.(Expressing emotions in a healthy manner) It comes out in the ways that maybe you get ill, or spend all day in the bathroom, or get a migraine. This is what we call the body keeping the score (a book I should read tbh). What the mind doesnt handle(dissociates from), the body will.

This is what people with CDDs regularly go through. Trauma = stress that's beyond your range of coping. Chronic trauma means chronic stress, just stored away in pockets upon pockets where its never dealt with until much later in life. This is why I don't think I know a single system who doesn't have some sort of chronic health issues. The initial trauma may not have killed them, but maybe the health issues that come from all this chronic stress might just finish the job.

This isn't even addressing what the disorder implies mentally.

Look up the symptoms of PTSD, look into personality disorders, attachment disorders, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. Any trauma-based symptoms could come with a CDD, because there's nearly nothing special at all about DID or OSDD. They're not sectioned off 'incredible' disorders as much as media or people on the internet will imply. We are normal people who have been hurt. A lot.

We have this disorder because no one came to save us, so we had to turn to ourselves, sometimes at an extremely young age. There's no measuring the amount of hurt it takes for a young child to feel this alone.

Going off this ask alone, but because you wish you could dissociate to such the intensity as you're suggesting, tells me that you haven't actually. Daydreaming or spacing out is a very minor case of dissociation, but the level at which you're having alters would imply that you're hoping to dissociate much further than you actually think you want. Do you not want to recognize your own spouse, or be completely unable to be present in the best moments of your life? This doesn't shut off when you're happy again.

Say fine fine fine, yes yes yes to all of this, you could deal, because at least you'd be another person who would bear the responsibility for you.

I hate to tell you this, but that's not how alters work. They are, at the end of the day, still part of you. They don't magically whisk away all this stress they face, they'd still hold onto it, be strongly effected by it, and you're a lot more likely to have the same stress come back over and over again and go unprocessed because of the fragmentation involved.

If it's to ease off some of the responsibility of being yourself, then.. Well that's not what happens with DID either. Those of us with a CDD tend to feel overly responsible for everything around us, actually. It's not the escape you're hoping for.

In a short answer: Yes it is very believable to want this disorder, to want alters. That's understandable even!

But I'm also going to say this is frowned upon. There is a LOT more to these disorders than some spacing out and some cool characters. I hope you can understand a little more why this mentality is frowned upon; no one who has it actually wants it when it comes down to it

BUT i HAVE GOOD NEWS FOR YOU ANON!! Please listen

It's okay to want to be someone else to get through the stress. It's even okay to turn off your brain and space out. These are natural human things. Just.. They don't have to be a disorder. There are some recommendations for coping that aren't hoping to have a CDD, but might suit you if you struggle with this:

Try to analyze your life and see what it is that's causing you so much stress that it makes you want to not exist in such a way. If you're in a bad environment that you can't change, there are still little things you can do to make it better for yourself

Are there things you CAN change? Maybe you can look into getting professional help or finding a new job, or even so much as regularly tidying up the space you're in

Look up coping mechinisms and grounding techniques

Take breaks and let yourself really unwind. Read a book or go outside and look at clouds or something until you feel calm. I promise this feels way better than dissociation

Fun Coping Tools That Feel Like What You Want Out Of Dee Eye Dee:

create a story in your head. If you come up with a world all your own to explore, it feels like having an inner world

Create original characters you can "be". By this I mean be imaginative like when we were all kids. >>Here's a really cool version of what adults can do if 'playing pretend' seems too childish for you<<

Have some staring out a window time. Just let your mind go for a bit

None of this has to be disordered to be helpful, and have nearly the same effect that you're hoping for.

If you are at a point where you want to not exist for suicidal reasons, I really urge you to get some help. There's always someone who wants you to be around, even if thats some time in the future.

[venranae]

Why is homelander so real in his mirror talk during herogasm like oh my god..

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYINGGGG 😭😭😭 like obviously he's the worst person you could come up with but also he has several severe mental illnesses so i feel like I am watching the worst parts of myself on screen sometimes. Like he clearly, CLEARLY has bpd and npd and more which makes his constant switch from being self degrading to having a god complex and his intense need for approval of people he doesn't even want to like + the unpredictable impulsive behaviour that he sometimes regrets later on and the voices talking to himself in his head (which feels like he has several personalities that he can't pick between) incredibly relatable. Also he constantly has one person he specifically seeks affection and attention from and ends up hurting them. This is the most untreated mental disorder mf ever and i fear thats what makes him so interesting to watch 😭

[actual-changeling]

Trauma and mental illness are interesting, complex topics that are challenging but also incredibly rewarding to explore and TLOU does it in a way that feels incredibly true to my own experiences. It's respectful, accurate, and they write it into the characters instead of slapping it onto them like a magnet before pulling it off again whenever they feel like it.

So if you take those characters and write your own stories and explore them your way, it should be a given to treat them and those experiences with the same respect that a) the writers have given them and b) mentally ill people in general deserve.

Apparently it is not, though, and that is a problem.

Ellie in particular has gone through several insanely traumatizing experiences that are horrible for anyone to experience, let alone a child, and those instances also happen to *real people*. If you take Ellie, a fictional character, and write about her trauma and abuse in general in a way that is fetishizing, offensive, inaccurate, or outright misery porn, actual people who went through those exact things will see it and they will feel like shit.

PTSD and other mental illnesses are not funny, they are not plot devices, they are not something you should write about lightly. There NEEDS to be a basic understanding of how those disorders function and how they affect a person, you cannot just write about Ellie's experiences with sexual assault and turn it into nothing but a disrespectful, warped portrayal of abuse.

Abuse of *any* kind should never just be a plot device to hurt a character with. Abuse is *not* funny, you should not *enjoy* writing about a character actively being traumatized. I enjoy writing angst because I love eliciting emotional reactions from people in a way that's consensual and safe, but I have never, not ONCE enjoyed hurting a character or writing about them being abused. I have first-hand experiences with how badly abuse can fuck you up, and I also know how horrible it makes you feel when those experiences are trivialized or fetishized.

If you do not feel confident that you can write about those topics in a respectful and accurate manner - don't. Do not write about it at all unless you know that someone who went through that exact thing can read it and not come out the other side feeling dehumanized and fetishized.

I am not saying this to be mean or insulting, I am speaking as both a trauma survivor and a fanfiction author about topics that are of personal importance to me. I have zero interest in participating in drama on tumblr of all places (or any website), so if my post makes you angry maybe just think about why you think it applies to you/angers you and leave me alone. I can and will block people without hesitation, this is my tumblr blog.

To those that DO write respectful portrayals: Thank you, I love you, keep doing what you are doing.

[multiplicity-positivity]

Do you have/Can you make positivity for systems w personality disorder(s)?

And also for systems on shizospectrum (I actually think that you already mafe one, but don't remember for sure)

-🌑👥✨

We have both of these already made, actually:

If there are any particular personality disorders or schizospec disorders you would like positivity for, let us know! We have made posts for many of these disorders in the past, and may have more specific posts we can link to you (and if not, we can always make a new one).