#dissociation disorders

[plantwh1spers]

Wake up babe, new bingo just dropped

[madpunks]

we are so ableist about memory. people with good memory take for granted the fact that they can recall as much as they can, and use that to taunt, guilt and threaten people with memory issues. many neurotypes and mental illnesses cause memory lapses. traumatic brain injuries can cause memory lapses. brain cancer can cause memory lapses.

even if your memory is good, it's not right to guilt someone because they can't remember something. trust me, people with memory problems are desperately trying to remember: it's just that we literally can't. it is a very literal "i can't remember".

[the-toybox-sys]

reading the symptoms of autism as a now grown adult after being bullied for no explainable reason all your life

[met4lwhore]

yall are pro mental illness until they hallucinate

yall are pro mental illness until they dissociate

yall are pro mental illness until they self-isolate

yall are pro mental illness until they're paranoid

yall are pro mental illness until they split

yall are pro mental illness until it's too Scary for your comparatively neurotypical brain to handle

[feralkitten420]

"You need to relax"

Best I can do is dissociate

[rustybutterknife]

Microdosing polyamory by dating a system

[solidwater05]

Apparently this needs to be said so

Forgetting things is morally neutral! Memory issues are morally neutral!

You're not a bad person if you...

forget things quickly

forget people

can't remember entire stages of your life

can't remember important things

can remember some things very well and forget other things all the time

can't remember things (or anything!) about your interests

forget to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, etc

forget to reply to texts

remember things and immediately forget them again

can't remember birthdays, events, etc

frequently answer 'I forgot' to questions

can't retain new information

forget things you used to know

only remember things when it's too late

have vague, distorted and/or unreliable memories

depend on others to know how an event you were in played out

have other symptoms that are worsened by memory issues and vice versa

... and anything else I might have missed!

[caintooth]

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that’s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!

[worms-in-my-brain]

People with psychotic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with personality disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with substance abuse disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with tic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with bipolar disorder are neurodivergent too.

People with dissociative disorders are neurodivergent too.

Neurodivergence isn’t just ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression. (Plus those last two also get left out sometimes!) Neurodivergence is anything that affects your brain.

“Neurodivergent people hate loud noises” is actually just as valid as a statement as “neurodivergent people have delusions,” “neurodivergent people have tics,” or even “neurodivergent people have low empathy.”

[thattheater-kid]

Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.

Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.

Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.

Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?

Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.

Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.

Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.

There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.

This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.

[c-0-yote-teeth]

[powerrangersystem]

[keeplivingsystems]

If you’re struggling to stay alive, please don’t feel pressured to keep up with the news or current events.

You’re allowed to prioritize your own health and safety. You’re allowed to step back from social media or news sources in order to keep yourself from spiraling. You’re allowed to avoid certain topics which may trigger you or make you feel worse.

You’re not wrong or bad for doing this. You’re a person, and you’re allowed to do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe. Please don’t let others judge you for your decision to look after your own mental health. We promise, you’re doing nothing wrong by avoiding the news while you’re suffering.

[collectivewarmth]

one of the most important things about dissociative identity disorder and generally being a system that i wish people would understand is that it truly isn’t as cut and dry as it may seem for member count.

you’ll see people who say they have “six alters” and then immediately assume it’s six fully fleshed out equal individuals with no confusion or fuzziness regarding identity. that’s simply not true in a majority of cases, as i have seen.

most systems still VERY much deal with confusion regarding potential splits, go through dissociative episodes where they’re unsure of who they are, sometimes feel no attachment towards any identities, feel like they might have split and then suddenly that person is gone, unsure if alters they haven’t heard from often have gone dormant, not sure how to react when alters do come out of dormancy, etc.

it’s not a fun feeling and it’s genuinely unfair in certain situations to force systems to list every single alter to you with full certainty, as if it will never change. because it will. for so many different reasons, systems will grow, they will shrink, they will fuse, they will develop. you can’t expect the person with the dissociative disorder and lack of core identity to be able to keep up a perfected list of forever, it’s simply impossible. you may have alters who stick with you, but that doesn’t mean changes won’t happen.

and systems who may be reading this — please don’t feel bad. you are not a hassle, you are not a headache, and you are not an inconvenience for simply coping with something like this. it’s out of your control and the only thing you can do is continue to cope to find ways to help yourself retrain from these reactions. please don’t allow yourself to be harmed by others who don’t understand what you are going through. there are people who will accept and love you for who you are, all of you.

past, present, and future.

[thecorvidforest]

boy it would be nice to be able to google something related to personality disorders, psychosis, intellectual disabilities, autism, DID/OSDD, etcetera without finding majority articles that are like “how to deal with a person with X” “how to cope with your child with X” “how to spot someone faking X” “can people with X be cured?”

[littlest-bugz]

When you’re mid sentence and suddenly forget literally everything you were talking about