#but ngl i have always been baffled by whole identifying with character thing

[perelka-l]

rules: tag 9 people with excellent taste  no

tagged by @sazandorable ye they have a good taste 

color(s) i’m currently wearing: light gray, dark grey, black 

last band t-shirt i bought: I don’t own band shirts

last band i saw live: Gary Numan and Skalpel and I loved both of them so much, Skalpel did amazing show so different from their usual jazz-infused stuff with music going in all different directions and I genuinely wish I could relisten to all that and Gary Numan was crazy awesome and I danced and screamed a lot with his music vibrating in my bones and it was amazing 

last song i listened to: “Break In” by Skalpel, actually. Hello everyone. I would like to take you on an imaginary trip.... Part after 2:50 is especially nice....

lipstick or chapstick: chapstick but that only when I’m super cold

last movie i watched: Blade Runner, final cut. 

last 3 tv shows i watched: uhhhhh???? It was super long since I watched any shows, I mostly watch movies nowadays... Sorry, no.

last 3 characters i identified with: ??????????????? I’m gonna use this moment and say I never in my life identified with any characters?? like, ever??? they live so far far outside my life, sometimes i can relate to certain situations or aspects but characters? Nope. Not even my OCs, which are commonly said to be people’s reflections but..... no??? That never happened. OC or not.

book i’m currently reading: Trying to finish “In Search of the Immortals” by Howard Reid which is a really cool book about mummies across the world history (Scythian mummies! Egyptian mummies! Takla Makan mummies! South American mummies... yeah didn’t finish that part yet...) and also frankly I am a bit busy nowadays sorting through all AO3 fanfics I downloaded once upon a time and I’m slowly moving them around my ebook reader and Calibre... There is a lot of them, welp. Trying to finish “The Lost Empire of Atlantis” by Gavin Menzies which.... is not the worst book I ever encountered about this subject.  “The End of Atlantis” by J.V. Luce is much better. “The Lost Empire...” reads too much like yet another conspiracy theory books while Luce had everything scienced up....

no tags bc I am falling alseep on keyboard and since when I am tagging anyway but feel free to be tagged if ya want 

[cyanpeacock]

considering My Functionality again? 

i can’t, uh, explain how i actually work any other way than... well, i’m... there is... we’re (pronouns???!) a system, but a reasonably well hidden one, one that can function and broadly pass as One Person? 

as in, i don’t require a diagnosis of DID to navigate the world, so i’m not talking about DID itself here. but yeah, it’s not infrequent that my body is walking somewhere having a whole conversation, that i’m not consciously creating every part of. 

used to feel like the whole, Voices In My Head, Uncontrollable Speech And Actions thing made me, you know... Dangerous, Insane, the whole stereotypical shebang. and, yeah, ngl, i was more than unpleasant to be around for a while, before i done went and learned Emotional Regulation Skills, and stuff like that. appreciative that those are increasingly accessible to whatever the hell the rest of my brain is doing. still work to do, but that’s okay, there always is.

so now i’m like... damn, who is it hurting? this way of understanding the functioning of my brain has been very helpful to me, actually. it’s interesting, now i’m increasingly comfortable with the undeniable (in terms of Human Averages) weirdness of it.

there are just, entities in here that i don’t consciously control? some are even friends! they just... Speak And Act Through This Body. i didn’t consciously make them. they just sort of, show up, and grow and change with time, go dormant, wake up again, sometimes respond to being prodded. 

the characters i consciously make? turn out weird, and flat. they’re just Designs, pretty pictures, shells really. the people that just Show Up? i’m like, oh, man, if i think hard enough i see sort of how you got unconsciously made, but... i didn’t choose to do that. it just fucking, Happened. ok. alright. 

it’s... perhaps frightening, to some people, who happen to see my body apparently Crazy(tm) in the street, or gesticulating wildly to thin air through my apartment window? but then, that’s societal prejudice against obvious neurodivergence and/or mental illness talking, and i know i’m not going to physically harm them, my body is just... Doing That Thing Again. they might be frightened, but they’re gonna walk past physically unharmed, and emotionally uninjured except for a bit of a scare, which, many things can scare you. 

i don’t mean to frighten anyone! but i’m aware it’s gonna happen regardless, even if the only cause was my appearance and not my Odd Behaviour - e.g., some people are going to experience fear of my body alone, even Acting Normally(tm), because i’m a white man in a tracksuit, who is inevitably going to cross paths with women and folks of colour when i take walks at night. 

i don’t know, part of me wonders, should i even be using the word system if i’m not, like, Professionally Diagnosed With DID? i’m aware lots of systems hide, i’m aware of iatrogenic systems with no evident history of trauma, i’m aware that some people contest the existence of DID at all and place it as a phenomenon created by psychiatry, i’m aware that some people with DID contest the existence of iatrogenic systems... it’s all very complicated.

if you ask this (iteration of?) me, self-determination is just as important as any external determination. people only self-determine, self-identify, self-label, self-categorize, because it helps them in some way. maybe not always a “healthy” kind of helping! but there are many stages of unhealth on the way to health, and health is extremely variable in presentation, so, who am i to speak against anyone’s identity and feelings of health, including my own? 

oh, boy, yeah, it’s confusing. 

my hypothesis (a bad one, because it’s untestable) is that this brain/body was already predisposed to strong emotions, “vivid imagination,” and a propensity for gathering information and making connections. it then went through a duration of traumatic experiences, and had to Really Use those functions in order to make sense of the experiences in order to survive (and ideally, Live). these factors in combination result in a brain that unconsciously went about creating compartments and structures that would eventually help the entire bodily unit understand some things about itself and Other People(tm)?

for the purposes of this post, one of those things being, of course there can be multiple, long-standing, truly discrete Selves within one body. and, of course there can be One Self in a body. and of course, there are many states in between.

uh, back to the concept of an engine, that’s useful for this thought exercise again, very imperfect, but useful to me.

so, lots of people are going to understand an engine as An Engine. it’s one functional unit. they don’t even know the names of the parts inside it, it’s just, An Engine.

me? baffled by engines. there are so many parts, and i’m always like, well, how does that bit work? isn’t that a separate machine? aren’t these loads of separate machines, with separate functions, that exist and perform independently, but also together? not exactly missing the point of the engine, but tending to look on a smaller scale...? so, yes, like, i understand, you put them together and it’s An Engine, it drives the car. but... that’s (also) a system. every engine can be regarded as a system. 

so, by my logic, what really matters is... well, whose engine is it, and how/on what level do they best understand it, how can you get it to drive the car as smoothly as possible? meaning, every brain is an engine (one Unit), or a system (many Parts). it depends how hard you look at it, and what helps you or the other person understand how best to make it function in harmony with the body it’s sat in. 

i mean... well. shy and tentative as ever, but i can talk about some of the other people in here. but it’s my blog. it has to stay that way. but i’m coming to realize i kind of need these guys for Happy Independent Functioning, even if i can’t talk about them everywhere.

mark has been around for YEARS. it has not always been a good relationship. he is a troublesome bastard. he says shit that absolutely embarrasses the hell out of me. he is RUDE. freaky bastard. he’s kind of a capitalist. Fake Posh (he is insecure about his scumminess). i hate him but i live with him and he’s not awful, even he thinks jeff bezos is a hoarding twat. and yeah, he doesn’t yell abuse at me any more, and i don’t yell back, because i Did That and Went Out There and Got Emotional Skills Up In The Brain. he was slower to pick them up than me, but it’s pretty good now. 

amy has also been around for years! less years than mark, but yeah, years now. amy is very bright, she doesn’t really give a shit about School the way i do, she just likes fun things like sunshine and flower crowns and (the idea of) being a Party Girl. she’s never even been a douche to me like That Other Bastard, Mark Fuckdick Mcgee. i hate him, lovingly, hatefully, etc etc. oh bastard fuck, fine, i’m in love with him now, gayly, and it’s embarrassing. disgusting man.

BUT YEAH back to amy. i’m aware i’ve found that in practice, parties like That are bodily sensory overload. so, yes, the nightclub Exists In The Mind. but yh... when amy showed up, she was Miles better than me at like, emotional support, comforting stuff? took me to an ATM i was like, beyond terrified of going to, lmao. i... suppose she trusted and integrated some experiences of positive, healthy interaction that i was still Super Suspicious of at that point?

like... yeah. in practice, shit, i run this operation, i’m realizing i’m kind of a control freak about understanding my brain/body, communicating things about it (and in general) effectively, and Getting It To Work BETTER (i.e. happier, more independently). it requires lots of thinking and lots of feeling and lots of practice, particularly in the art of When To Just Let Shit Go, which... well. these two help me with that, when i’m not able to help myself, usually because i got myself stuck in a thought loop.

there are others! dormant, or predominantly living in the world(s) within. also... well, it’s like, Younger Mes, that still exist, that can be triggered out in dire circumstances, but it’s best to let them rest. 

yes. well. i think very hard. maybe too hard, in some opinions, but exactly as hard as i need to think to reach a place of improved understanding and contentment. 

neurodivergence Wack.