#cdd vent

[unstablemotions]

DID is such an annoying disorder. Do you know how fucking horrible it is to have ab unreliable memory and being in flashbacks all the time? Not knowing who you'll be at any moment? Being misdiagnosed your entire life because you change by the minute? Not having any treatment options available in your entire country? Not being able to be open about who you are since no one understands and will be afraid of you? Being haunted by things you don't fully remember? Having to drop out of your education and leave your job because of your amnesia, ptsd and fatigue? Losing friends because parts of you are so scared to be ridiculed and rejected again that they isolate? Being retraumatised because parts of you think that their only worth and purpose is to please others?

I could have had a masters degree and a full-time job by now. I could have been married with the love of my life and raise cats together. But I am so fucked up because some people like hurting children and some people don't care to stop it

[chemicalcarousel]

so funny being honest about having DID with my home support guy bc he was like "so, I've only met one of you" lol i know i've switched in front of him multiple times, i just don't tell him bc that's scary. it's very funny bc he noticed once, but he didn't clock it as being "switching alters" but as "oh this subject we talked about made you act different"

people dunno what DID is and it's kinda rough trying to explain that it's not this extreme and obvious thing in most cases. like for ppl who know us, us switching looks like one person having different moods and maybe sometimes an anxiety attack. we all try to use the same name and pronouns. we try to go by one collective identity and we do our best to mask. i told my home support that i got DID bc it's my main disability he needs to know about to help me in my daily life, but otherwise i've only told a few people and only my closest friend knows the names of some of my alters. like it is super vulnerable and triggering to bring up my DID and alters bc they represent my trauma. also because most ppl dunno what DID is and dunno how to react to it. usually i just say i got cptsd if they need to know i got a disability and that's enough really since it's basically the same thing anyway and ppl are less weird about cptsd

i think ppl need to know you probably won't notice a system switching. most systems are covert!!! also a lot of us can mask pretty well! like if someone notices something off about me i'll just say i didn't sleep well last night and i need my coffee and they'll accept it as a valid explanation. everyone has a complex, multifaceted personality - mine is just fragmented and dissociated more than the average person!!

[calico-constellation]

[just-another-alter-blog]

I doubt I'm the only person who's dealing with this, but I'm feeling quite lonely in being an alter who formed as having an internal age being much older than the body (mid-late 30s), but I formed in our late teens and went dormant in our early 20s? maybe 20-21? And only resurfaced again a few months ago now we are 28.

I feel simultaneously like a depressed teenage girl and a 30-something y/o man. It's very confusing, especially because I'm a fictional introject and I don't really feel like many people would understand how different I am to my "source"? I see myself as looking similar, but this character is a ruthless military commander and I'm the manifestation of teenage girl depression 😅 Like, I remember we used to be extremely depressed and were attempting or at least planning our suicide all the time and we felt like we were the worst person in the world. Uh, I still feel that. I hold all those old feelings of guilt and shame like I'm just "wrong" for just existing. I guess this character had a part of his story being that he hated himself for causing his dad to die by accident and he felt like he could never atone for his sins as he lead people to die on the battlefield as a military commander and had a lot of survivor's guilt. Like, I get why we introjected him, I guess? But I'm feeling so embarrassed by being such a failure of an alter. I guess my whole point as a part is to hold all of these feelings of shame and survivor's guilt from our trauma, but it's hard. I feel like I was supposed to be a big, strong man, but I'm weaker and more fragile than our parts that visually look like children. Or that's how I feel. I think being dormant through some very important years, including me last being host/co-host when we still lived in our abusive home and were wrongly diagnosed/medicated, has made me more "immature" in many ways

I'm actually genuinely shaking right now writing this 😅 I feel like crying. It's so confusing and weird surviving trauma. It's so weird being an introject and not matching your source that much. Idk what to say, but I just need to let some of this out

Anyway, I'm gonna try to be brave and talk more and let myself exist if I can. This healing journey is scary, but uh... I'll do it scared 😅

[botanical-garden-system]

Everyone tells you “communication is key” to every problem you have in life. Whether it be with friends, family, or partners, “communication fixes all.”

But when you grow up in a house that doesn’t communicate.. When you only know aggression and silence.. When you only know how to bury it all down into separate pieces of yourself..

You don’t know what communication is. You don’t know how to communicate that something bothers you. You just bury it all over again, not understanding why you’re so angry and so upset about things. You feel like shit but you don’t know why you feel like shit. You can never piece it together, but you just feel like shit.

The conversation happens, and you get into your normal position. You get ready to feel that corner against your back, and you get ready to growl and snap and bite. You feel like a feral animal being threatened and persecuted for something you didn’t—or maybe did—do. You’re ready to snap and fight back against anything they say.

But then you come into contact with what communication is supposed to be. Kind, caring, understanding, open. At first, you try to get into that normal position, but there is no corner. Even when you snap and lash, all they do is just put a hand on your head and tell you “I see you” without even saying the words.

I can feel that little scared animal within me melting away. I think I understand what people mean by “communication is key” now.

[didcultureis]

did culture is inconsistent at best and swaths of time where you forget you're traumatized and WAH-BAM! triggers

NO SERIOUSLY!!!! why does DID make me forget I have DID 🥀

[toxic-sludge-syscourse]

The pro/anti endo stuff is frivolous distracting bullshit.

Actual problems that exist in our community:

- finding educated/qualified healthcare professionals is fucking hard

- lots of healthcare professionals don't even believe in CDDs and/or still treat it as a form of schizophrenia

- CDDs portrayal in media is horrendous

- public perception of CDDs as either not being real, only occurring due to the most extreme abuse, and/or tons of other misinformation and misconceptions. (Ex: we are violent/evil alter bullshit)

- treatment due to how niche CDDs are can be hella expensive

- CDD communities are toxic trauma response cesspits and are not actually productive or supportive

Etc etc

Who gives a shit about how random internet strangers feel about/interpret themselves and their plurality there are bigger more pressing problems.

"BuT miSiNfoRmaTiOn" dude do you know how many armchair psychologists and misinformation spreaders there are among just "sysmeds"? The answer is lots. We are just as bad. That includes fakeclaimers btw pretending like they did a full psych evaluation with their bachelors degree straight from their ass.

Stop wasting time on bullshit debates. Actually help people maybe??

[c0rrupt3dfr3ak]

Why I'd recommend avoiding r/DID and r/OSDD

I have made a few posts on here already venting about my experience but I figured I'd make a bigger post discussing what happened and why I feel like the subreddits are no longer safe especially for polyfragmented and otherwise atypical systems.

We used to have pretty good function, we knew who was fronting and we had good communication since we felt safe and supported as well as getting therapy. Ever since we began looking at what other systems experience and comparing ourselves to them it has gotten a lot worse, we are now typically blurry and confused and we have a lot of alters who say "We're probably faking and I'm the only real one."

This is made worse by the subreddits, if you talk about anything that the person responding to you doesn't experience themselves they will fakeclaim you. You have a lot of fictives? Fake. You split from minor stress? Fake. You have an inner world? Fake. You have pseudo-memories? Fake.

It genuinely made our mental health worse to the point we are typically masking and our system has become more covert including to those inside it. While we are working on finding a new therapist who deals with DID since our old specialist moved it takes a while to hear back.

This disorder already sucks to have, you only form a system from childhood trauma and CPTSD so it's horrible that the communities that were once so supportive and loving are now simply people thinking "I am the only REAL system, the rest of these guys are faking!"

[sysventing]

Sometimes I wish we were a completely endogenic and nondisordered system. DID sucks actually. I’d actually love to wake up to find out that none of that actually happened but we’re still plural, just as a spontaneous system instead of traumagenic.

Mod Wolf 🐺

[iwillbreakyourfuckingskull]

i hate having to pretend to be happy because my intense emotional pain is a result of something 99.9% of people would find pathetic and laughable. yeah i felt like i was stabbed in my heart and i cried myself to sleep for a week because i am in love with a fictional character and also i am another fictional character from the same manga. no i can't just "grow up" or "touch grass" and become a normal person who goes on dates with real life people. i am mentally ill and it shouldn't be an insult or shameful to be

[unstablemotions]

I honestly do want final fusion, but also I kinda know I probably won't be able to do that bc im poor and can't afford specialised care, so like im trying to manage as a system bc that's my only option rn

But man.... I want to be one, coherent person. I want to be able to rely on myself and for others to rely on me instead of constantly switching between alters who have different personalities and skills. I want to not have nightmares every night and flashbacks all the time!!! I want to experience the world without dissociating because its too overwhelming. I want to feel completely safe and not constantly be on edge!!!!

Like ofc I also uhhh dont want to fuse or integrate bc I dont want to face my trauma, but fuck it i cant run from it!! I need to heal!!!!

Im half asleep writing this but yeah just a little DID vent

[calico-constellation]

Other polyfrag/complex DID systems, hey how the fuck do you guys do this? We're so overwhelmed. There's so much and we can't make heads or tails of any of it and we keep feeling so invalid because we're not as differentiated as smaller systems. How are we supposed to keep track of anything with our system? Like it's a genuine question how do we figure this out i'm so lost

[sysmedsaresexist]

Something about that last post just really fucking irked me.

Normalize asking questions about your experiences and things you're not clear on

Yesterday, I had to ask some friends a question.

Any uterus having people that have had the electro therapy on their back-- very specific but Google isn't helping

Can the electricity on the lower back cause a period???

Wow, fucking cringe, what a faker, doesn't even know how her own uterus works, how do you make it this far in life and not know this stuff, FAKE UTERUS

I was so embarrassed to ask. I was scared, too.

And yet, I got an answer that I hadn't been able to find on my own.

Yes, it can happen.

Nice!

Well, first off, A, thank God I'm not hurt or dying, that's a relief. B, no one laughed. C, this shit isn't common knowledge.

Even if you think it's obvious, it's not.

Things can be related in the weirdest ways, and sound totally strange at first, and they turn out to be totally normal experiences.

What is dissociation?

Doctors say it's super complicated to understand, don't worry, you're not alone.

What's the difference between normal and pathological dissociation?

Oh, boy, let's sit down for this one.

What's the difference between trauma and abuse?

Fantastic question, first, are you doing okay? Second, it's complicated.

Could these two symptoms be related?

FUCKING PROBABLY, let's talk about it.

All these overgeneralized, sweeping statements, made under the guise of "correcting misinformation," and really only trying to prove people wrong instead of educate, hurt other people with that thing.

"Your doctor is ALWAYS right," fuck you, no they're not. "They know you better than you know yourself." Ohhh, fuck no, that's dangerous. "You MUST fit the criteria 😤."

The criteria:

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO HELP?

Because you're failing spectacularly at doing any kind of good for the community you want to "help".

You lost the point so hard that your posts are now actively dangerous to people with CDDs that don't think clinically enough for you. You lost the point when you use papers that directly contradict each other over basic facts, and don't even realize it in your rush to be "right".

"Trust your doctor 100%," about any other disorder, would get you instantly canceled. Are you overweight? A POC? A woman? Trans? A combination? Well, you're fucked.

You, yourself, have probably never thought that.

So why did you say it?

Who cares what they're calling themselves, who cares whether the term is clinical, are they getting the help and support they need? Can we help clarify anything for them?

Using a people focused approach in therapy is totally fine, THIS HAS NEVER BEEN AN ISSUE. It may be a doctor-focused issue, but it's not a treatment issue. In other words, for every doctor that prefers a parts focused approach, there's one that'll use a people focused approach just fine, if that's what you want to do. Good job getting into therapy, congrats! That's what's important.

"Fictives," are so well documented that complaining about them is laughable.

Alters can take years to come forward after events, and may latch onto a character years after their actual formation. Who cares if the person can pinpoint the cause, or if they don't even care enough to try, are they getting the help and support they need???

Instead of saying, "that's impossible," let's start asking, "how can I help?"

Instead of saying, "your opinion is wrong," let's address actual misinformation. Talk to pro/endos about the trauma basis of DID. That matters a fuck ton more than whatever you're arguing about.

Instead of laughing at people who don't know things, learn to socialize and present corrections in a pleasant conversation. God forbid you're seen "being nice," to the other side.

As a very good friend said, better than I ever could, this whole "prioritizing research always over listening to others' lived experiences" is just the plural version of "academic theory on queer experiences is most important." You need both.

Many things can be true, all at the same time. Opinions are onions, they all make me cry or whatever the saying is. Single research papers should never be used generally. If you put all the papers together, anything is possible. This paper doesn't specifically talk about that thing so it's not possible.

Another paper, just a click away:

Are people happy, healthy, and feeling supported in their life?

Fantastic, that's what matters.

This blog is open to basic questions that people are scared to ask. I would also highly recommend sending @cdd-safe-haven those kinds of questions. It's completely unrelated to syscourse, hopefully the information will help more people.

[lemony-ink]

there's very little that feels worse than feeling like you made a close friend and having them switch up on you because of changes in the system.

I understand that it can be hard for singlets to process but making every conversation about how you miss a specific alter and how sad you are that the memories with them are gone...

I even comforted him the first times he brought it up but he won't stop, it's been 5 months.

[formidablefangs]

Honestly tiring that this needs to be said and reiterated so often.

A system is a defense mechanism created by the brain as a reaction to a traumatic even (typically multiple) during childhood development. It's the disruption of the development of self and a covert disorder.

So terms like system, multiple and (though we personally dislike this one) plural, are therefore medical terms in the context of a disorder.

Basic proper research should show this.

This is why the community tries so hard to defend its terms and repeats that being a system is a neurological and psychological medical matter.

This is why we hate the fact that there are people using our terms and claiming to have the expirience of our disorder without the required points of diagnosis that make it happen.

We're upset because there are people:

A) grooming minors and others with disinformation and misinformation into believing something either they dont have or that's the wrong thing they're experiencing entirely.

B) claiming to have a similar expirience to us without bothering to properly look into it

C) have something else but plaster pur terms over it to try and pretend to be like us.

Yes some endos might just not remember their trauma, that's normal and exactly how the brain will work with this disorder.

Yes sometimes they actually just dont have the disorder and instead have something else or multiple other things that are going undiagnosed because they believe in false information.

Yes a lot of them are just looking for a place to fit in because that is human and what our brains need when we're going through things.

But for God sake we know more about how the brain works than people let on, there is documented research and still more research being done and if this misinformation/disinformation continues to spread and people continue to try to pander to and normalize endos then it will halt that research and stigmatize the disorder so it will be even harder for us to get help than it already is.

And on top of that if they cant just find something else to further separate from us, stop using system terms and use something more disconnected than they need to halt what they're doing now and do something else until they can figure it out.

Alters are pieces of the brain, parts of a whole self that failed to develop properly, they form from multiple things outside just trauma and trauma can be anything. But that doesnt mean alters that form from sources unrelated to trauma arent still "traumagenic", the system itself formed from trauma therefore all the alters and parts of the system follow suit in the defense mechanism the brain has made to cope.

Parts of you cannot move to someone elses brain.

Parts of you cannot die, but instead change. Theh fuse, split into different parts, go dormant but they cant die because they're a part of your self, a facet of you in your brain, and you as a person whole or not can change.

Parts of you that function as the brain does.

Alters exist for comfort, managing symptoms, dealing with memories, organizing the system, calming other alters, helping with daily or work or school tasks, every aspect of your mind and life the brain has developed a way of dealing with it through the system. Relationships and the bad things like intrusive thoughts included.

I sincerely hope that those who call themselves endo, those who use "system" terms under the endogenic umbrella and their supporters understand this, understand how the brain works and at least try to accept it.

I know we hate being put in a box, that people hate when things are restricted to a box, but with things like this medical condition, a disorder related to the function of the brain and psyche, the box is there for a reason to help understand how said thing works. Trying to force it outside the box is only hurting those who have it.

Systems are systems because of what happened to them. The expirience is different for everyone but theres a template in place to guide the understanding of it logically.

The fighting is tiring, people have talked it to exhaustion and to the people who continue to refuse to listen and instead chose to perpetuate the ignorance, I hope you can take a breather from the internet for a while and find something better to get into than this.

Its genuinely exhausting.

[botanical-garden-system]

Can discord servers please stop infantilizing systems and treating us like we aren’t grown ups???

Just because a system has a little in it doesn’t mean that that system is LITERALLY a child. If the person is over the age of 18, please for god don’t treat us like we are like kids. Especially when you DONT fucking know us and you aren’t even remotely close to us. You DONT get that privilege to do shit like that.

I completely get people who have littles who have a LOT of trauma withheld that need their littles protected, but it’s really irritating to see a trend of system-related discord servers or “safe spaces” dictating when a system should and should not interact.

This even comes to picking and choosing what types of fictives/factives can interact. It’s really really fucking irritating and is genuinely making us fucking tweak out, AND WE DONT EVEN HAVE VERY MANY LITTLES!!! We just have littles that STILL resemble adults but relate closely to younger versions of ourselves!!!!

What’s even more fucked is it isn’t JUST the non-system owned discord servers, ITS EVEN SOME OF THE SYSTEM OWNED DISCORD SERVERS!!! This is why we only interact in 16+ to 18+ system spaces I stg.