#i've been showing more dissociative symptoms recently

[squishe]

god i'm so confused

[misscammiedawn]

Intentional, Accidental and Allegorical representation in media

CW: Suicide, stigmatizing language, homophobia/transphobia mentions.

Spoiler warnings: Mr. Robot, Deadly Premonition 1 & 2, The Missing: JJ Macfield & The Island of Memories, Star Trek DS9, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

So... today's essay is going to focus on less ideal bits of media representation. Some of the discussed media may have insensitive depictions of vulnerable groups. Please read with care.

One of the things I've focused on since starting Media, Myself and I was finding overt pieces of representation that I felt did a good job of taking issues of chronic dissociative disorders and putting them to screen or page.

I've covered memoirs, I've covered stories written by former social workers about generational trauma, I've covered games that explain the concept of derealization and characters diagnosed with DID.

Every entry so far has been clear and overt in their presentation of mental illness and in telling I've tried to explain the ups and downs of how the material was presented and what they got right vs wrong.

Our latest entry in the series was a memoir, written by a person diagnosed with DID. Though I cannot speak to the personal lives of the authors for Night in the Woods, The Incredible Hulk, Mr. Robot and Umineko; it is not apparent that they experience the conditions that they write about.

And that's okay. Not all fiction must be written from a personal perspective of lived experience.

The issue comes in when even well meaning creatives want to write overt representation without the proper level of experience and sensitivity reading.

As I covered in my Mr. Robot write-up, Sam Esmail wrote Elliot's DID to fit the split personality trope (in way of copying Fight Club) and needed to apply the real world condition to the plot. For the most part it is successful and deserves praise for being that rare piece of mainstream media that overtly explains part roles with the correct terms "protector" and "persecutor" and how these functions relate to the system's origins.

Then it finishes with the discussion of "The Real Elliot" and includes a heartbreaking scene where the Elliot we have known the entire show tells his sister "I love you" and that sister, Darlene, wanting her 'real' brother back, leaves the room without a word.

Many people, myself included, felt hurt and alienated by this complete misrepresentation of our condition and did not appreciate a hurtful piece of stigma being launched into the public psyche for further misunderstandings. If you hate the show because of this mishandling of the topic then I would not blame you.

On a recent rewatch, though, I saw this moment from the final episode of season 1:

When I first saw this scene I felt a deep well of comfort in seeing something true to my experience displayed in a way no fiction had ever attempted to display before. Every part is equal. We are all part of the same system. There's no part more valid than the rest. One part acting against the system will breed dysregulation.

The child part of Elliot even says that Rami Malek's character is "hurting the family" by forcing the rest of them away and denying them.

It is clear now that the show is over that this was not intended to be a piece of representation but instead a way of obfuscating the final episode twist that the Elliot we follow is actually an alter and not 'the real Elliot'. He was "hurting the family" by sealing away 'the real Elliot' not by rejecting the system.

It hurt to see a moment that resonated so strongly be overturned at a later point.

It is presently believed, though study is always ongoing, that children who experience CPTSD in their formative years do not develop the stability to create an integrated sense of self. This truth is relevant in the formation of chronic dissociative disorders and personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The root of all of these symptoms being tied up in CPTSD. There is debate in the psychological field on if personality disorders are worth diagnosing as they tend to lead to stigmatization and self-pathologizing in ways that distract from treating the root trauma, but that is a topic beyond the scope of this essay.

Without a stable sense of self the child grows up with an "disintegrated core" that shifts and changes to help gain the needs for safety and comfort based on what will work in any given environment. In DID there is a layer of shielding from PTSD triggers involved that makes it so ego/personality states can form dissociative barriers between one another which leads to the parts forming. With Borderline these fluctuations tend to be less stable and lead to Identity Disturbance, where a person feels alienated from their own identity.

BPD and DID have a lot in common and it leads to debate in the psychological field that they may be different presentations of the same condition. In my experience labels are only as effective as they serve the person who holds them and anything that can forge connection and understanding should be cherished.

But going back to the original point, Mr. Robot had accidentally provided me solid representation that I latched onto. It was not intended to be a representation of what the creators understood DID to be but it did hit something which matches the lived experience of at least one person watching.

It can be powerful when you see a piece of media reflect parts of your experience back at you. Even if it was never meant to in the first place.

Before we continue with this essay I wish to state firmly that everyone is entitled to every single message and emotion that they have ever gleaned from fiction. No one should be told that their sense of comfort and warmth is wrong to have just because it was not authorial intent. I never want my words to ever strip something that is a positive from anyone's lives. I hope that never happens.

But that's the topic of this essay. Accidental representation and Intentional representation and what the benefits and detriments are.

As we see above, intentional representation that is made by creators who does not have lived experience can lead to misinformation, misunderstanding and harm. Even the most well meaning creatives are prone to this.

In way of example, let's talk about a creator who clearly means well and has included topics of gender and sexuality in the heavy majority of his works.

SWERY 65 (Hidetaka Suehiro) is the creator of Deadly Premonition and head of White Owls studios. In 2018 SWERY's team developed The Missing: J.J Macfield and the Island of Memories. It's a short game that displays the following message each time it is booted up:

The game starts with a pair of women, JJ and Emily, on a camping trip on an island and Emily attempts to engage intimacy with JJ before being rejected. The next morning Emily is missing and JJ must find their childhood best friend and potential love interest while memories from their past appear in the way of text messages. Towards the climax of the game we understand that Emily had left clothes in JJ's room and her mother had found them and had sent her to conversion therapy. The game is fairly vague about the circumstances and it's easy to read this as JJ's mother finding out that JJ is a lesbian.

In the final chapter of the story we find out that JJ is transgender. That the entire game is a dream sequence after she attempted to take her own life during a university lecture. The game makes it clear that the JJ we play as is who she wishes she were and that in reality she has not yet begun transitioning. In the reality section of the game she speaks with her developmental voice and is not wearing a wig. We still identify her as JJ and the game even includes a New Game + mode where you can play as the JJ from the reality segment complete with every voice line read in her developmental voice.

It is a fairly good piece of representation particularly as the game and the development are Japanese and Hidetaka Suehiro does not apparently have lived experience with transition. Albeit it heavily fetishizes the suffering inherent to transition with the body mutilation gameplay mechanic feeding into the nature of the subtext.

Unfortunately, like the Mr. Robot example above, it can be easy to focus on the negative aspects of the representation and feel hurt/betrayed by the good that The Missing does when compared with other projects by the same creator.

In 2020 the same creative team released Deadly Premonition 2, a sequel to the cult classic game that itself had some slightly problematic depictions of gender and sexuality. Both games the culprit is explicitly LGBT and their motives are rooted in the abuse they received for living as their chosen identity. A topic included in The Missing also.

It's makes it difficult to accept the good representation experienced when the very next game involves a sequence that had to be patched out of the game with an apology from the creator for insensitivity.

It's up to a member of the audience to take what they like and leave what they don't but it's a good example of how overt representation can lead to missteps by even the most well meaning creator.

But let's step into accidental representation because the Deadly Premonition games can easily be read as representing CDD, even if it is not intentional. The main character of the game is Francis York Morgan. Throughout the game he seeks guidance from "Zach" who he speaks to constantly both when he is alone and when around other characters, though when people ask he informs them that it is a private matter which he does not discuss.

It is easy for those playing the game to think of Zach as the player themselves. Especially as York entrusts Zach to handle all of the combat segments of the game and we are prompted to answer questions when York asks for Zach's opinions on the investigation. It's also easy to ignore all of the comments the NPCs make about Francis Morgan's huge scar. York has a scar on his face and an odd patch of missing hair after all.

The final chapter of the game reveals that when he was young Zach witnessed the horrific death of his parents and was so traumatized that he was sheltered by an inhabitant of an extra-dimensional plane of existence who protects him from all the dangers in the world. Which sounds a lot like the formation of a protector alter to me. York fronts pretty much all of the time but keeps in constant communication with Zach and does his best to live their shared life in a way that will one day let Zach take control, which happens at the end and we get to see the protagonist as all of the NPCs saw him up until that point.

(York on left, Zach on right)

The epilogue sequence for Deadly Prem 2 even gives a heartwarming depiction of plurality in having literal IM messages from York appearing on Zach's desktop during a video call.

It's arguable over whether or not this is accidental representation or not. The circumstances of Zach and York's partnership do meet the typical standards of overt CDD depictions but there is no pathology involved in the depiction whatsoever.

Which is a big difference between Overt Representation and less overt kinds.

When Mr. Robot discusses dissociative identity disorder or Night in the Woods discusses derealization the story needs to take time to have characters explain the concepts to characters within the fiction and the audience. At the heart of all things, this form of representation is aimed at people who are not in the know about these conditions.

When it vibes with our experiences and makes us feel seen it is doing that as a side effect of presenting the experience to an audience. Generally the expectation would be that the majority of the audience do not happen to share these experiences and need help in being able to relate, particularly when the creators do not experience the condition for themselves.

In intentional representation cases where the creative team do have lived experience then the art of making an emotional connection with the audience is a matter of someone trying to convey that which they feel and experience, which makes those who resonate to have a higher chance of being and feeling seen.

Even that doesn't always seem to work out as expected though.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical romantic comedy TV Show which holds the interesting record of managing to complete its full TV run of 4 seasons despite being consistently drawing abysmally low ratings. It is arguably one of the best intentional representations of BPD in all of media, even sitting higher than works adapted from biographies such as Girl, Interrupted.

Well... part of the argument is that it was never intended to be.

The main character, Rebecca Bunch, is a Jewish woman with a highly religious family who makes rash and impulsive decisions that lead her to live in LA County restarting a highly successful law degree so she can chase an ex-boyfriend. She is played by the show's creator, Rachel Bloom, who is a Jewish woman with a highly religious family (her cousin, a rabbi, peformed the ceremony for her wedding). She was born and raised in LA County and she has an outspoken history with mental illness including OCD, Anxiety and Depression.

Rebecca Bunch is not Rachel Bloom even if they share many elements and initials. Rachel Bloom once said she is 80% autobiographical

(2 examples that showed up when I searched the topic, top from TheWrap and bottom from Chubstr)

But Rachel Bloom does not have BPD. Rebecca Bunch didn't until Season 3. But... she always had BPD. It just... wasn't intentional.

When starting work on season 3 the creative team spoke with therapists to determine the direction of the show and it was decided that Rebecca's diagnosis based on her actions in the show and her behaviors would best fit BPD and the final 2 seasons of the show were tailored around this to show effective therapy can help benefit a person in need. It leads to a positive ending for the show.

But even when Bloom was autobiographically placing her own symptoms on the page, enough that the story about Harvey Guillen having to play a person based on himself, the narrative and drama of the story required the character take actions that lead to a depiction of BPD rather than OCD/Anxiety.

Even though the intention did not kick in to the 3rd season, which only exists via miracles and CW refusing to give up on the show, Bunch is often listed as one of the best fictional depictions of BPD in TV/Movies, alongside Anakin Skywalker, Catra and Clementine Kruczynski. None of whom are diagnosed with BPD or seen to be struggling with mental illness. But they all fit the bill remarkably well. Enough that should a therapist be introduced into the plot of Star Wars, She-Ra or Eternal Sunshine they could easily take their existing characters and make the diagnosis intentional by giving it the label.

The same can even happen with gender and sexuality. Whether it is asexual representation from Jughead and Todd Sanchez from Archie Comics and Bojack Horseman respectively; Morph being genderfluid and using they/them pronouns in X-Men '97 or Halo/Violet in Young Justice coming out non-binary having a discussion about their preferred pronouns; or Korra and Asami's bisexuality in the Avatar universe.

All of these were not part of the blueprint when the character was brought to the stage, they just seemed a natural evolution of the character as the story progressed or, with situations like Umbrella Academy's 3rd season adapting Elliot Page's real life transition into the plot, it was necessary for the fiction to meet reality.

And this is of course ignoring the more important factor.

We live in a day and an age where we can have Viktor Hargreeves as a leading man in an ensemble superhero show. We can dedicate storylines to people discovering and exploring their non-binary identities and preferred pronouns.

That wasn't always the case. Which brings us to our final type of representation.

Allegorical.

When I say "this wasn't always the case", I do not intend to imply that allegorical representation has gone anywhere. It still remains with us and is as effective today as it ever was. But in the past, particularly the 90s, it was necessary.

Where intentional representation (and accidental that becomes intentional) has the luxury of using the correct language and educating an audience, allegorical representation speaks directly to the group in question without regard for the mainstream audience.

This can also happen in intentional and accidental forms. The quintessential example for trans people is The Matrix, a story where people who reject the reality that we are sold by the dominant culture and seek to find community of those who exist outside of that system and to wake up to their true reality and their chosen names after taking a pill. To those who know the feelings that Trinity and Neo discuss in the first 20 minutes of the movie, who see the forms of intimacy displayed in their romance and acknowledge the villain deadnaming as an insult; there is no question that it is superb representation of a lived reality. To a cis individual who has never had to ask those questions and do not know the violence of being denied a name, they would not even approach the questions the movie constantly asks to anyone who can listen.

But there are numerous examples of allegorical representation that are there to allow the content to exist in spite of censors and editors.

Garnet from Steven Universe is intended to be a wlw couple but their romance could not be overtly displayed in a children's show. Famously the show creator had to trade in all of their good will and bargaining power for the show they created in order to depict the wedding of Sapphire and Ruby on the show. Until then the concept of Fusion was introduced to show soulmates intertwined and working in unison. Itself a little bit of accidental plurality representation.

Of course, symbiosis appears to be a common point for such depictions.

Anyone who lived through the 90s would know it was the wild west for representation where the allegories could be paper thin but could never be confirmed. We were simultaneously accepting as a culture and absolutely terrified to commit to the retaliation that would come from actually using the words and being positive. The 90s was a time of cowardice and cruelty. Punching down was always allowed. Friends, the most popular show of the era, included a main character whose ex-wife left for another woman as a show long punchline and they included more transphobic jokes in some episodes than BIPOC characters in the entire run of the show.

We could laugh at the gays in Will & Grace but we couldn't celebrate them by allowing Xena and Gabrielle to be overtly gay. Just heavily implied.

And transphobia was the worst at the time.

Star Trek Deep Space 9 stepped around the stigma when they introduced Jadzia Dax. Dax may not actually be trans.

But she is a trans allegory.

Dax is a trill, a symbiotic entity that needs to bond with a host to live. Up until the events of the show it had been bonded with a male host, Curzon, who was Cisco, the main character's, mentor. The show often depicts the familiarity Cisco has with Dax despite Jadzia Dax (and Ezri Dax) being different incarnations of the same entity. As shown above, Jadzia is her name now.

The people of the era certainly were aware of the allegory at play and starved of any positive depictions in media they firmly latched on. Here's a 1997 magazine with Dax on the cover, celebrating Gene Roddenbury's show going "where no trans had gone before"

Allegorical representation is important. Especially as many pieces of media are shared globally and overt representation is often banned from territories where people are still starving to see themselves reflected in media.

So... with that said. Let me sum up my beliefs on the topic.

Intentional Representation often is in dialogue with the whole audience. It often intends to speak directly to those who are not part of the populations being represented, assuming a lack of familiarity. This is not always the case but is the assumed.

Accidental Representation begins a dialogue with the populations being represented and typically do not become aware of the fact that this dialogue has begun but can come to take it and make it part of the fiction's DNA.

Allegorical Representation is in constant and meaningful discussion with the populations represented and those sympathetic to them. It knows exactly what it is doing and does not need to conform to the expectations or understandings of the broader audience.

It's why I love allegories so damned much.

-

For more essays like this please check out our Media, Myself and I tag, we typically focus on dissociative disorders there.

[scaryarcade]

i hate this damn post so much and it showed up on my dash recently so i need to rant a little bit about the parts that bother me the most lol. putting it under a cut because it's not the prettiest or most well-constructed argument i've ever made, i mostly just want to be a bitch about it.

almost cult-like in what way, lmao??? all the preceding sentence describes is...someone being attached to a community they like and feel valued in. following that up with "eww, culty, right?" is just weird fearmongering. also, why wouldn't this hypothetical person look any further? in what plural circles are you witnessing anybody be anything less than wildly supportive of self-exploration??? really the fearmongering about cults is what squicks me out here though lol you can't just say shit like that without an actual argument to support it

this conjecture is so fucking stupid i don't even know where to begin. where is proof for any of this? do you actually think endogenic plurality research has more funding than research on dissociative disorders? do you think even if that were the case that would be endogenics' fault or responsibility??? i dare you to point out anything, anywhere, indicating the endogenic community has any kind of collective opinion on how DID treatment should work. it would sure be weird if they did because most people who do not perceive their plurality as disordered therefore aren't looking for treatment for it!

i mean, yeah, you're just describing an unwillingness to work on a symptom, you've very nicely made it look like there's a correlation with iding as plural here but there really isn't. if someone who IDs as plural thinks they can get away with "my alter is just an asshole" then that person would be just as likely to use the logic "i'm just an asshole" if they didn't. "well, somebody COULD use [x] to avoid working on their problems!" is not an indictment of [x] because people can use literally anything to do that.

ok im just going to be a huge bitch here and get on my antipsych high horse a little bit but LOOOOOOL. LMAOOOO. oh noooooo...ND/MI people supporting each other and creating resources for each other instead of revering the psych industry above all else...ahhh so scary!!! Somebody do something!!!

could not disagree more! i'm diagnosed with DID, i experience complex dissociation and posttraumatic stress symptoms that inform literally every area of my life, AND I STILL find a lot of common ground with endogenics/nondisordered plurals and have learned a lot from them and been helped significantly by what i've learned :thumbsup:

anyway this post sucks, i think it's full of fearmongering and bad faith arguments. i also think fearmongering is something this particular user is really good at along with sounding like they're making clever and insightful points when what they're saying doesn't actually have any weight behind it, and their determination to villainize endogenics (and their attempts to paint them as a group with some kind of significant societal power???) is alarming. don't like to see that.

[malikselfindulgence]

Hello! Not a request but a question. I hope I won’t make you uncomfortable, sorry— but you could please explain to me what systems are? Or sending some links explaining? I have saw it sometimes but never could understand it well… I just want to get informed since some of my moots are and I want to support and learn more about them.

No worries, this doesn't make me uncomfortable at all, and I'm glad you asked!

First things first, every system or person with DID is different with different experiences. I'll be describing some of my own here, but just know it could always be different for others. The best way to support someone is to ask them questions, see what their experiences are like, and try and educate yourself outside of that as well!

Anyone feel free to correct me on anything I got wrong! DID is still seen in a horrible light where I live, which is hard for me, but I've been trying my best to learn

DID/dissociative identity disorder is usually caused by traumatic events in childhood, where the child proceeds to try and distance themselves from this trauma by dissociating, or pushing the events and memories onto another self, thus creating a fragmented sense of identity. This usually causes amnesia as well, due to repressing memories

A system is a body that has dissociative identity disorder/other specified dissociative disorder. There's usually a "host", the core of the body, and "alters", other personalities who diverge from the host

"Fronting" is a term usually used to describe which alter is in control of the body's actions at the time, or most present in the moment. Not all people with DID have such distinct compartilzations, though. Sometimes multiple alters might be fronting, sometimes you might not know at all. Remember that DID is a dissociate disorder!

Alters have a wide range depending on person to person- sometimes they have different interests, names, genders, ages and the like, and sometimes they're a lot more foggy and unspecific than that. People can have even up to 100 alters, or just the one. For me, it's only me and my alter Blaze! He's only chosen a name for himself pretty recently, though.

Remember to ask, if they're comfortable with it, more about alters and their differences. And, again if they're comfortable with it, who's fronting right now so you can differentiate between them. It's a nice way to show you respect their identities and that you care!

Here are some links that go a little more in-depth about the symptoms of DID!

Link 1 ☆ Link 2 ☆ CARRD made by someone w DID!

I talk a bit more about my own experiences with DID down below, but you can skip this bit >.> TW: mentions of childhood sexual abuse past this point

While I am not medically diagnosed with DID, I've had 3 therapists say I have a dissociative disorder and it's highly likely to be DID/OSDD, but since a medical diagnosis like that would literally wreck my life in this backwards ass country lol I don't want it on any of my records [same thing with autism! I was asked to get a formal diagnosis but my mother literally refused]

I formed my alter Blaze due to repeated sexual abuse at school from a teacher, and grooming from an older woman. Blaze was there to help me manage my emotions, and take over when I was too overwhelmed to even speak let alone move or function properly. I know I speak about it in a fairly casual and friendly manner on here, but DID has heavily affected my life. There's things neither me or Blaze can remember, and it scares us. There's days where I feel so far away from my body and I shut down completely because I don't feel like I really exist in the physical world. There's days where I or Blaze look in the mirror and we can't see ourselves, and it's very distressing.

I've been getting much more comfortable talking about it online! The community is very loving and open, and it's helped me and Blaze feel more comfortable. Nobody irl knows this part of me, despite the fact our mom notices the changes in behaviour sometimes, so it's nice having somewhere to talk about it

Me and Blaze been trying to manage our symptoms and relationship better! Things are much much better than they were in the past, especially now that we're far away from our past sexual harassors.

I think that's about it! I hope this helped at least somewhat, and feel free to ask more questions if you've got any! ☆

[schizopositivity]

recently i've been going into stupors for like 20-40 minutes where i'm just completely absent from the world and over the past week i've done a lot of reflecting and researching and OOPS does it turn out I have a lot of catatonic symptoms...

but no matter how much i surf the web i can't find anything on coping with them aside from taking meds (and i'm in like the three month long waiting period in getting referred to a psychiatrist. ugh.)...is there really nothing else that can be done with them? i have physical education next semester and i have no idea how to explain my symptoms to whoever my teacher will be. im thinking of going to my guidance counsellor but no matter what they can do to accomodate me im still just going to not be able to function normally in that class.

do you have any resources on how to deal with catatonic symptoms aside from meds, or at least how to explain them to non schizospecs?

to me this sounds more like dissociation. cause ive experienced both dissociation and catatonia and theres a distinct difference for me (and accounts ive read of others). this is purely my opinion based off this ask, i am not a mental health professional, just someone with experience.

dissociation you are not aware of your body, or viewing yourself from the outside or through an altered perseption. its common for people dissociating to feel absent from the world. i think its great that you are able to tell how long this goes on cause i know for me and plenty of others we cant really tell how long it goes on. spacing out is even a form of dissociation that falls on the less severe end of the spectrum. and that form is extremely common, i dont think ive met a single person who has never spaced out or lost chunks of time doing so. and dissociation is pretty common too, it comes in a lot of forms and is brought on by many disorders, trauma or stress. for me i have OSDD, so i dissociate very frequently and severely as a result of my childhood traumas. as far as treatments go, it usually is some sort of therapy to adress the cause of the dissociation. for me that was EMDR therapy that i found very helpful. as far as accomidations in school go, id advise you to go to your student resource center. for college there is usually an ADA office, for middle/highschool there is the counselors office. both usually require a formal diagnosis, or a letter of recomendation from a professional for you to show what your disorder/symptoms are and then you can tell them what accomidations you need for it.

catatonia in my experience is very different. i am very aware of my body. i am seeing the world as clear as i normally do, and i just simply cannot move at all or can only do one motion over and over again. for other catatonics they can appear agitated, be in strange positions, speak in echolalia and other symptoms that arent shutting down completely. for me, i feel trapped, and i tell my body to move as i usually do and it just cant. its extremely distressing, i feel broken, and im screaming and moving on the inside, but totally quiet and motionless on the outside. and if i am able to move one joint, ill move it over and over in an attempt to get some sort of help. catatonia usually occurs in disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar, autism spectrum disorder, and in many medical conditions. it is seen as a pretty severe symptom because it literally stops all physical functioning. and yes sadly there isnt much treatment besides medicine and just waiting it out (like ive done every time ive had it). from my experience it doesnt matter what people say or do around me, ill understand them perfectly, but it still wont snap me out of it.

from the outside these two symptoms can look the same, someone not moving and staring blankly. but according to the DSM, catatonia is not a form of dissociation. and although there isnt many public accounts of how catatonia feels, i have never heard anyone describe it as "completely absent from the world". but i have heard countless times people describe dissociation like that.

its also worth noting that not being able to move the body at all even if you want to can be a symptom of a medical condition, and if you have the chance i think its worth bringing up to a dr.

but if it really feels like being completely absent from the world i think thats something that a lot of people understand the experience of. spacing out is extremely common. and many people i know, people who do not have dissociative disorders, have experienced times where they spaced out and lost chunks of time. im not trying to downplay it or say its not cause for concern, but if you think the words fit, i think explaining it to other people as "spacing out" or "dissociating" will have a lot more people understanding what it is and how to work around it.

sorry for this very long answer, its just an intresting subject, and i have lots of personal experience with both and i want more people to understand the difference. once again i cant say for sure if you do or dont have catatonia. but i think dissociation is something that would be worth your time to research. and articles comparing the two are lengthy and talk more about underlying causes, while sadly i couldnt find anything comparing how they both felt, i do have my own experiences to talk about and hopefully explain it from the pov of the person experiencing it rather than the dr observing it.

[punkstylerecovery]

Hi, I hope it's okay to ask this. If not, feel free to just ignore! I have recently (like the last year) remembered trauma from age 14-17 ish. I am 20 now. I feel like it keeps getting worse as I haven't really gotten help with processing it. Very recently (like the last few weeks maybe? hard to remember) I have been dissociating a lot. I always felt like there was more, as I, as far as I can remember, was exhibiting trauma responses/symptoms already before the teenage years trauma. However, I have no real memories of anything happening before the Teen Trauma, and even those memories are few. I don't have many memories at all before 13 years old, just a handful spread out from 4-13. I am wondering how I could go about feeling better? I currently have difficulties getting help through the healthcare system (its slow here!!) and would like advice on anything I can do on my own, if you have?

It's absolutely okay to ask me! Thank you for trusting me to answer.

Oh, remembering trauma can be really hard, fuck. So is dissociating, I deal with that a lot when I get triggered, it sucks. I'm sorry you're dealing with all that-Especially paired with the memory issues, that sounds scary.

Okay. My healthcare system is so slow (and backed up) here too so I get that, it's so hard to wait for shit like that. I definitely have some advice!

Firstly: don't try to force yourself to remember more. Don't try to trigger memories and if it's giving you the same sort of existential crisis over your memories and your life in general that my trauma remembering gave me: try to do your best and don't crisis too hard. No matter what you remember, or how little you remember, your life is going to be what you make of it, not what happened, not what anyone else did, none of it. It's gonna be hard to deal with but it's not impossible, I swear.

Now, the dissociating is the trauma response you mentioned, I assume you have more you're struggling with but I only know about the dissociation so here's my tips for that: dissociating isn't necessarily a bad thing. Try not to let it freak you out. It's your brain trying to protect you. It's safe; the only issue is, it can be uncomfortable, get in the way of other stuff, interrupt your plans, ect, ect.

So, if you know any of the specific things that trigger it, try to avoid them if you can. While all of this is still hitting you pretty hard, you need to be careful with yourself. As you said, this is trauma you haven't processed and you don't know how far back it goes or all of what happened. Take care of/comfort yourself. And, if you have trouble pulling yourself out of dissociating, what usually works best is grounding yourself.

For me, if I'm really harsh on myself, or freak out a lot, that usually makes me dissociate more, so I try to concentrate on breathing: I count my breaths and try to take note of how the air fills my lungs, how it shifts my body as I do, how that changes as I exhale, ect. It helps pull your awareness back to your body.

You can also try other things, like touching things with different textures, running cold water over your hands (even taking a shower), holding a piece of ice, petting an animal, playing a song or a show you know really well, comforting textures/scents/sounds can really help. Having someone who knows about your dissociation and can help with things like that can definitely be an asset as well. I can list more options if you want.

Something else I'd suggest is trying to write down what you remember and when you remember something, or making a voice note or something like that. I've found sometimes writing it down makes it feel more solid for me, if that makes sense, and even if that makes it all that more clear what happened actually happened (and makes me more sensitive to being triggered over it for a bit), it helps me process it better.

I hope something in this helps (I know it's long, sorry abt that) and feel free to ask me for more specific or different (i've tried a LOT of shit, so really, i know a lot of options) advice/further explanations or whatever, it's perfectly fine. 💚

[mt-lowercase-m-derogatory]

{typical tumblr discourse disclaimer: trying for a chill vibe, I'm just taking an aside to peddle some of the nuance OP was talking about. This post was probably not addressed at whatever collagenopathy mutation "never before documented in the literature" I've got, and I'm not trying to imply OP wronged me somehow}

What is medically/legally considered "schwerbehindert" here might be different, but I really urge caution around thinking someone isn't severely physically disabled because they walk and move perfectly well using light/no mobility aids

Personally, in the health state when I actually present to the world, there are very few non-exercise activities an abled person could do that I cannot also do for a bit, albeit with some pain and uncertainty. The trouble is that something bad is happening while I do things or sit/stand upright for longer, and all I'm sure of is that it's not my respiratory or (probably) my circulatory system.

I'll be at a rare and cherished social gathering for a few hours, just seeming a bit loopy and dissociated in the latter half, then I'll safely arrive home unaided if the Vienna underground is in sight, not even using mobility aids! (I've tried a few but my physio found none to be safe for me). I'll manage to change clothes and go to bed, and then... I'll manage to be awake around 60-70 hours the following 7 days, mostly out of my mind with more brain fog than brain.

The only answers my doctors have feel more like questions: it might be an unrelated hypersomnia that just didn't show up on the polysomnography, it might be post-exertional malaise, it might be some kind of comorbid kleine levin syndrome, it's so odd that it's not POTS, it might just be a symptom of "whatever is going on, let's call it Ehlers Danlos Syndrome because that was the original diagnosis", or my blood-brain barrier might just not work right with whatever third-grade materials my body made it of.

And all I personally know is that... I have the full physical and neurological capability to move, I can manage the pain, I can manage the psychological aspect... But any given activity still comes at a high cost beyond all that, and neither any process I can observe nor any version of god damn spoon theory can adequately explain it.

It's more like my mind is a bottle of water, and every few minutes I stand upright is a spoon of milk dropped into it. I lose full clarity basically immediately, and then it just becomes harder and harder to tell how far I'm gone until I stop being able to talk fluidly or make decisions.

And this is not something I just realized when it set in - like any good child used to being gaslit about their body-wide chronic pain, I didn't even realize I had any health problems when I started waking up disoriented, unsure whether my alarms had rang already, with me having decided to skip school and go back to sleep without remembering any of it.

It was only with covid lockdown that the physical attendance I was forcing myself into naturally tuned down, leaving my "free time" lucid and awake enough to become sure that I had a health problem beyond migraines, with my first few doctor's just leading to a psychologist suspecting schizophrenia

... Lockdown might genuinely have saved my life. I- I hadn't processed that before now.

I think I had something more in mind about this vague group of conditions science is recently getting much better at diagnosing. Especially how the problem in figuring them out is that the causes (and the most informative and dangerous symptoms) are physical issues outside the brain, but the signs that cause most of the Leidensdruck (the pressure of suffering a patient's diagnosis and treatment is in service of) are more classically studied and discussed in psychiatric disability.

... But I've been trying to write a coherent tumblr post for 3 hours now and my brain is trying to erase all caches so I think I'll just hit post.

Also the term "severely disabled" is getting stretched pretty thin too, I see a lot of people who are like... talking about how severely disabled they are and how their body is rotting and they're a total lost cause who can do nothing for themselves, and then I look at their blog and they're like... a cane user or something similar.

I really hate to be like "that's not that bad" when someone else is suffering, but it makes it really hard to find people who are in a similar boat as far as being nonambulatory and who need constant care from others. It's taken me a long time to find a precious few friends who share those experiences and that I can relate to and it certainly doesn't make it easier when the definition of severely disabled is stretched so thin.

I really don't think it's helping the impostor syndrome some people face either. There are a ton of people who are in constant pain with mobility issues and stuff like that who are on the fence about calling themselves disabled at all because they see people talking about how their glasses that correct their vision to 20/20 are a disability aid that makes them Visually Impaired and Disabled and want to avoid looking or sounding like them.

There's a lot more nuance to this than I could put into words because holy cow I don't want to hurt people that don't deserve to be but also I want to be able to find and talk to people who are also disabled without sifting through 10,000 "I'm severely disabled because I need to eat microwave meals when I don't have the spoons to cook" people first. I don't have the capacity or ability to do that sifting, it's almost like I'm severely disabled or something.

[dried-bones]

what you described in your recent post sounds more similar to specifically dissociative PTSD, CPTSD, or BPD!

i think you could benefit a lot from looking up resources for CPTSD and about structural dissociation, since it shows that there's actually several disorders that can present pretty similarly to DID! (even with percieved "alters", which people tend to forget isn't JUST an indication of DID, and is actually a symptom of trauma-based dissociation in general)

also, you should probably stay away from DID communities or unverified sources (carrds, tumblr posts, etc.) since unfortunately there IS a lot of misinformation out there and vague language that can make people think they have DID when in reality a lot of those symptoms can appear both in CPTSD and BPD, among other disorders. researching it on your own can also convince your brain to fill in gaps with symptoms that you didn't have previously, so you really need to be careful! i suggest writing down all of your symptoms regardless of if they fit the mold of DID or not, and bringing those up with a professional.

i personally thought I had DID for a long time because of places like tumblr and discord trying to convince me of it, when i actually "just" had CPTSD. being on DID tumblr and discord actively made those symptoms worse, and i wouldn't wish that on anybody. (i'm just worried cuz i see people fall down the exaggerated symptoms pipeline all the time on here!!)

definitely seek out a professional, and don't feel discouraged if they say you don't have DID, because either way they're gonna find a way to help you manage your symptoms, and that's what's important!!

Ah, I see! I have been looking into those as well as DID, and I wouldn't dare get my information just based on social media. I've been going through credible sources and I'm just kind of... confused? Concerned? Lost? Probably all three. Usually, I wouldn't think it would be PTSD, because I do lack one of the more common symptoms of having flashbacks, most memories, and nightmares. (Yeah, I could have PTSD without them directly [as in that is exactly what I'm experiencing] but it doesn't seem to be right.) But, BPD does rather make sense with what I am experiencing. Though, I will have to look into CPTSD more! I haven't really thought of it. And I know about the pipeline! I'm just kind of browsing through the experiences of others who DO have DID and looking through verified articles. And I will definitely bring it up with my therapist when we meet. I have a session coming up next week, so I'll ask about what we can do to verify/diagnose. (There are better words than those, but I can't remember them right now.)

[raincamp]

08 02 2023

ive been feeling like different people recently. i can never predict who i am going to be when i wake up in the morning. my values, likes, dislikes, priorities, mannerisms, beliefs, and feelings all change so frequently that i can never tell what's "me" coming through— who i actually am

its so disorienting to realize when something has changed- like, i can intellectually understand that yesterday i was not an anxious person, i didn't care what people thought of me, i was so self confident, i enjoyed talking to other people, i was able to do things without becoming immediately terrified at the possibilities of bad things happening. but that wasnt me, because today, i do feel anxious, i despise other people, im insanely self conscious and self critical, and the thought of going into public has me wanting to curl up into a ball and hide in the dark recesses of my bedroom for eternity. my entire perception of myself and the world around me has completely flipped overnight and its not like anything happened to trigger it??

even my perception of gender, sexuality, my own name sometimes feels so disconnected from who i am as a person, as an identity, i have to trust that what i have written down in my bio box is true (and, as far as i have experienced, it usually is once i'm stable again) because i can't deal with questioning it again, gods know i've had enoigh crises about it for a lifetime.

its times like these that i start latching onto someone else for stability, i know a lot of pwBPD go on to construct their identity around a favorite person but i've always been one to use fiction as a source of comfort and stability. not only can i be 100% sure about a fictional character's traits and values, but it also provides me with a sense of strength and protection, because i tend to subconsciously pick characters that i admire and that i believe are stronger or more intelligent than me.

since the new season of good omens has come out, i have once again absorbed crowley into the list of personalities i've stolen. i mean, he was always there, but ive noticed him pushing through more in little ways over the past couple days. from the music that i listen to, to the way i walk and hold myself, i find myself doing things that i know I will later look back at and think "wait what? thats not like me at all", or at least, not like the me i thought i was a week ago.

because its not like ive consciously made a choice to act any differently, it's just how i naturally act in the moment. it technically is still me, it's just completely out of character for me, as far as the people around me are concerned. and i know that, eventually, this period of needing to subconsciously become "someone else" will come to and end, and when im on the other side of it, who i am right now will be completely unrecognizable to that person, just as they probably would be unrecognizable to the person i am right now.

and, i mean, it makes sense why him, why my subconscious would choose crowley. we're both going through extremely similar things right now, we both have just lost people we love, our FPs, because they thought that leaving us would save us. maybe its safer if i pretend its only happening in a tv show. maybe its safer if i let him take over navigating my life right now because at least i know that he can. i know that hes strong enough, i know that things will end well for him. i don't know if its the same for me.

anyway, identity dissociation is weird, and it sucks that i got the short end of the stick having severe dissociative symptoms as part of my BPD presentation. i mean, sometimes i feel like im 3 steps and a jump away from an actual dissociative disorder like DID. i obviously dont have it but i can fully understand how you get from here to there, yk? i can 100% empathize with how it feels up until the point where theres two people in your body at once. but the dissociation, the feeling of your body and memories not being yours, not recognizing the people around you, the feeling of a headspace, the feeling of not knowing who you are, they're all things i experience at times, so its not difficult for me to be able to understand what it might feel like. and its absolute shit honestly.

- andrew (?)

[recklesswriter]

What do you think of the theory that Itachi is so successful at hiding his emotions because he's actually less emotional than most people?And that's partly why he enjoyed babysitting Sasuke so much. because it was pleasant for him to watch his bright, lively emotions, which did not work "as they should" for him. and so he was ultimately unable to predict the outcome of his manipulations of his brother. because he was good at predicting actions based on logic and could not predict actions based

This is an interesting theory! The short answer is no, I don't agree with this. It's definitely a fascinating perspective to explore and consider, but it's not how I personally see Itachi.

First, I should explain how I view Itachi's character. (Please keep in mind that this is only my personal view of him. Everyone has different perceptions of different characters and I don't think any of them can be strictly 'right' or 'wrong'. If you or anyone disagrees with me, cool. It's always interesting for me to hear alternate interpretations of characters.)

I don't view Itachi as being unemotional at all. Just the opposite. I see him as someone who, inwardly, is very emotional and passionate, even if the image he presents to other people is just the opposite.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the Enneagram? Basically it's a personality typology very similar to the Myers-Briggs' personality test. It's something I've recently been obsessed with when it comes to my favorite fictional characters, trying to figure out which enneagram type they fall into.

Itachi absolutely, one hundred percent, is an Enneagram Type 1. These types are known as "The Reformer" or "The Perfectionist." I'm not going to explain much why I think this, because that'd be getting too off topic, but if you want to know more about the Enneagram 1 and why I think Itachi fits it, you can find information on the personality type here and here. Tell me a lot of this doesn't sound EXACTLY like Itachi?

Anyway, to finally get to my point in bringing this up. Enneagram Type One's are described as people who "are usually seen by others as highly self-controlled, even rigid, although this is not how Ones experience themselves. It seems to them that they are sitting on a cauldron of passions and desires, and they had better 'keep the lid on' lest they and everyone else around them regret it." This is how I see Itachi. Inwardly, he is a very emotional person and feels things very deeply. But he views these deep emotions as 'wrong,' so he puts all his energy into never showing them, completely suppressing them in a fear of being imperfect, that the result is someone who appears unfeeling and detached on the surface.

That being said, I do think there's some truth in the theory that Itachi lingered close to Sasuke in order to be near and soak up some of the child's bright, happy emotions. if you've watched Itachi's filler episodes, then you know Itachi is a person who often felt emotionally numb and went through periods of feeling completely detached from people and the world. HOWEVER. I don't think these feelings of "emotional numbness" he experienced were do to his natural personality and emotions just "not working right for him." Like I said, I think naturally, Itachi is deeply emotional despite his lack of appearing so on the surface. I see the emotional numbness he experienced as a kid, and probably well into adulthood, as being a dissociative symptom - a PTSD response to growing up during war and being exposed to death so early in life. I think Itachi definitely tried to combat these numb, dissociative feelings by being close to Sasuke - his brightness, his happiness, his innocence - but because of the affect his trauma had on him, not because he's naturally unemotional.

Anyway, sorry for this rambling, long-ass answer. It's the fault of my ADHD brain 😂

[hellyeahsickaf]

I worded this the way I did for a reason:

"when you're in need of immediate treatment" "especially if you think your life is in danger or something could at least cause severe harm if untreated."

I didn't say make shit up. To be clear, do not make up symptoms you don't have. But if you need to cry to be believed, then fucking cry if you can.

Doctors often do not believe you if you don't appear to be in pain (many pw chronic illnesses are not looking like they're at a 7-9 when they are bc pain is their normal). Or sometimes they're unconvinced for one reason or another. This could have cost me my life on multiple occasions. I have a dissociative disorder so sometimes I can't play it up, it doesn't show because I'm so far removed from my pain. On top of that I'm allergic to NSAIDs. Sometimes addicts experiencing withdrawals say the same so many times I've had to wait hours for any sort of pain relief while they looked over to see if I seemed to be telling the truth. They often don't believe me when I do.

When I was 7 or 8, I fell off of my scooter and landed on the handlebar- directly on my orbital. Half an inch or so further and it would've gone right through my silly little brain. Had every symptom of a concussion but I didn't show the pain much. They just scolded me for not wearing a helmet (would not have prevented the injury). I told them I was in a lot of pain but it didn't show and they didn't believe me. Over a decade later I get an MRI for migraines and they pick up what they believe is a congenital defect or a sign of an old fracture. Essentially "this is probably just a defect but ask the patient if he's ever broken his face" (they didn't ask lol). Looking at the images I knew exactly the injury I was looking at. I was concussed, broke my skull, and they sent me home and told me I was irresponsible

Few days after that injury I passed out, and ate shit and paramedics had to show up. And still all they had to tell me was to drink Pedialyte.

In the post I also added, "This goes much extra if you're black, and doctors and staff have biases, sometimes awful ones. Some even still believe that black people have a better pain tolerance"

I can attest to this as I'm half black (a little less like 40%ish idk). I've been told that I should have a better pain tolerance but I must not have inherited that 🙄. I'm racially ambiguous in appearance (though sometimes if I flare up really bad I get so pale people have thought I was just white lmao) but it is a legitimate belief that some have, that black people just have a better pain tolerance. As mentioned this dates back to slavery. It was used as justification for beating slaves.

Hell my shitty ex even believed it. He was no doctor but he said he learned it in health class. Said some stupid shit about how I should have a better pain tolerance than him and he wasn't joking.

So yeah I agree with you for the most part. Be honest about your symptoms. If you think you have a stomach issue don't tell them you have chest pains if you don't. But if you're not being believed and you have reason to believe something serious is going on, you may need to cry, you may need to hold your stomach and double over. Medical neglect like this could've killed me as recent as last Summer. It wasn't the first or second or even fifth time it was that urgent and they treated me like shit.

Doctors think they know when you're lying and sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're not. I have a lot of experience with them being wrong actually and my first memory of that happening is when I broke my god damn skull. The most recent was when I was laughed at over the phone for asking for pain medication days after I was in the hospital for like 6-8 hours before I was given anything more for my pain than Tylenol

And to address your tags:

The situations I'm talking about is when you are the patient in need of life saving care. Again I'm not saying act like you're having a heart attack when your symptoms allude to appendicitis. I don't understand why you seem to have interpreted this as "pretend you're dying even tho you're clearly not lol"

Lying doesn't make doctors treat me better because I don't lie to them. They also already treat me like shit. But playing up my symptoms (when I can, sometimes I don't have the ability to) has saved me potentially several hours of traumatizing levels of pain and at times probably my life or severe consequences

It's not that I've been manipulated by the hating doctors website. It's just what I've had to do to survive or at least minimize the trauma of the experience

Play up your symptoms in the ER and urgent care when you're in need of immediate treatment. No I am not kidding. This goes much extra if you're black, and especially if you think your life is in danger or something could at least cause severe harm if untreated. Doctors and staff have biases, sometimes awful ones. Some even still believe that black people have a better pain tolerance but that was a lie created to justify American slavery.

[misscammiedawn]

Plurality Weekend

Hey all. This post is for anyone discovering my blog for the first time this weekend. My name is Cammie Dawn and I write a lot about DID and Hypnokink. Both of these things will be quite relevant this weekend.

I'm attending The Plurality Positivity World Conference (info in link) this weekend after our therapist sent us to last year's event and it went well. Unrelated to the event, I'm also a panelist for a talk on hypnokink and plurality tomorrow (Saturday 5/18 at 1pm-3pm CST - info in link)

Networking at the PPWC for my Media, Myself and I essays (one kind person has already reached out to us about them which makes me glow with pride and grateful to know my stuff is getting out there) and providing my links to the panel tomorrow, I imagine I may get a few first time visitors to my blog. I thought I'd do a quick "resources and links" post.

For Media Essays:

Recontextualized Memory and Unprocessed Trauma in Umineko - A visual novel about generational trauma goes over how a young woman goes over and over the events of a tragedy in her childhood and how adult knowledge will recontextualize our adult recollections.

Derealization in Night in the Woods and Metal gear Solid 2 - Describing the sensation of derealization where the brain stops connecting associations between the self and the things one perceives in their surroundings. One example displaying how this impacts a person living with DPDR and the other showing an example of a game attempting to make a player share the experience with the player character.

DID and the healing process in Mr. Robot - A run down of the experiences of discovery, exploration, rejection and healing within DID as displayed in each season of Mr. Robot, along with a disappointed rundown of why the final episode fumbled the ball.

Bruce Banner and the roles of his alters - A breakdown of the formation of The Incredible Hulk’s DID and what roles his many alters play.

Romantic relationships with systems - A look at the marriage between Bruce Banner and Betty Talbot-Ross Banner in Hulk comics and a frank discussion between Betty and one of Bruce’s alters about how relationships function in a system.

Personality Play in Penlight - A review of one of the routes for a hypnokink visual novel called Penlight in which the protagonist hypnotizes a woman to have an alter personality, along with some descriptions of how dangerous play like that works in real life and what the consequences could be.

For Hypnokink Resources (more in our Hypnokink Writings tag):

Hypnosis and Dissociative Disorders - A Rebuttal to a recent claim at a hypnosis convention that we shouldn't practice with those who dissociate as part of a mental illness.

Ethical Personality Play - A discussion about the real psychological damage that can and will happen if you play with personality play in hypnokink without setting safeties and grounding as part of your play.

Unreality and Hypnosis - A small note about how derealization symptoms mingle with hypnokink and why grounding and ensuring "reality remains in the scene" is important.

Anyway. Thank you all. For those who follow me normally, I appreciate you indulging the link spam.

[notabled-noodle]

(sorry if this breaks your ask rules) so I've honestly just been questioning my own sanity recently, I seem pretty fine on the outside besides some Autism & ADHD symptoms that I show, I know I'm likely the host of a system due to what I can recall of them fronting (+ screenshots I can find of their messages on discord + alotta trauma has been experienced here m8 + lot more that idk how to explain) but there's been these 'episodes' of sorts where it feels like anything hidden in shadows are moving (ex: objects, those fucking shadow demons that torment me mentally) and it feels like there's people touching me constantly anywhere they can plus some pretty heavy derealization and I'm just unsure what it is but that's not all, there's also random times where I just can't percieve myself as 'me' but unlike with the alters it's like- they're different, it tends to be fictional characters (2 in particular but that's not too important) and whenever I feel like them I just can't process things that aren't normal in their world that well but whenever I wanna talk about it I feel like people will say "maybe their fictives?" but ITS SO MUCH DIFFERENT FROM THE INTROJECTS IN THE SYSTEM, it isn't like someone else fronted it's more like I've become them yknow?? Like we've swapped our perceptions of reality in a way, it's hard to explain but it's been making me feel insane for a while now and I can't tell anybody about- frankly most of this (minus Autism & ADHD) irl so I have to stick to whatever's online to help me but google never helps so I'm Tumblr anoning hoping I can get answers- fuck this is a rant I'm so sorry this has been driving me crazy and I need answers because it's becoming more and more common as time goes on and I can't handle this I need answers.

I can’t say for sure, but this sounds like one of two things:

delusional attachment — a phenomenon where a person believes that they are a certain object or person, because of psychosis

special interests — it’s not uncommon for an autistic person to kin particular people from their special interests, especially if they’re experiencing dissociation

I don’t know a whole heap about delusional attachment, but I do know that it might be something to look into if you have other symptoms of psychosis.

that being said, it wouldn’t be unusual for the combination of autism and depersonalisation to cause you to feel as if you are someone you’re not. I feel like I take on personality traits based on whatever profile picture I have, and that’s just because I’m autistic and have a fairly malleable personality when I’m dissociated.

anyway, yeah. those are the two things that I can think of, but it may be something else entirely, I don’t know for sure. hope this helped!

[agirldying]

*Possible Tw for mentions of abuse and Sa, adding a warning just in case*

Hey Bun,

I wanted to talk to you or I guess maybe ask for your opinion on this. Do you think it's possible I'm actually going backwards in my healing?

It's a weird question but I will give you some background. I know you're probably familiar with my situation and a few weeks ago we had like a big response as to what my abuse actually was. After that I felt like I could really start accepting it because you gave me a name for it and that helped honestly to realize how serious what happened to me was.

For a few weeks I felt like I was dealing with the grief well and like actually addressing my feelings about it. I really felt like I was healing like a little bit. But now over the last two weeks I've been starting to like avoid it if that makes any sense.

Like I recently got a new job and im moving this week into a new apartment and I've just been like ignoring any thoughts I have about it. It's almost like I'm pretending it didn't happen. Like I don't want to call myself a survivor now. I don't want to admit I was abused. I don't want to think about getting hit. I don't want to call it trafficking. I don't want to think about what happened.

It's almost like when Ive been having flashbacks since I started working two weeks ago I see them and my brain is like "that's not me" like they aren't my memories and it didn't happen to me. It's like I'm trying to tell myself that it happened to someone else and that's not me. What is this?

I guess I'm just asking like is this regression in my healing? Is my personality splitting? Could I be dissociating from it because it's just too much for me to function normally? Honestly and truly I'm not sure what is happening.

It's just so strange because sometimes I will feel the anger or the pain or feel upset when I have the flashbacks and it's like I acknowledge the feeling and my brain just turns it off immediately, then I have those " it's not me" thoughts.

Sorry if this is a lot or if it's very confusing but I feel like something strange is going on and I don't really understand it so I was just wondering what you think about it.

Thank you so much for reading and as always I appreciate you so much Bun.

- DW 🍂

Hi DW 🍂,

Healing isn't linear, so it's expected to have some backwards steps.

It makes sense why you may be avoiding confronting your trauma and current situation because they're quite daunting and come with a lot of emotional... I don't want to use the word baggage but maybe weight? They're hard things to come to terms with so it's understandable why it can be hard to constantly accept.

It sounds like there are various changes in your life that perhaps make it easier to feel like you can put your experiences in the past and store it away like it didn't happen, even though it hasn't been completely processed.

Personally I feel this connecting with the year after I'd gotten out of my abusive situation - I went from long hair to short (cut off 10 inches of hair or so) and donated it. I remember the new look being this sort of pathway to feeling like I could pretend to be an entirely new person, free of trauma, unburdened (that being said I also remember having like 10 anxiety attacks in that month alone).

I also need to just say that I completely relate to almost othering yourself and being like "the person who endured that is not me". Personally I recognize that to be a dissociative symptom as I actively believe that I am a completely separate person from the girl who once inhabited this body (see my username). I have actually changed my name irl to reflect the fact that I am someone else now, and my deadname is triggering knowing what happened to her. Basically I'm saying all of this to kind of just show that this is just another way that dissociation can present, and this is one of the many elements of dissociative identity. Like, I will use first person when talking about the trauma, but that's more for convenience than actually identifying with those memories.

So yeah ultimately this sounds like some dissociation is coming up for you surrounding your sense of self and identity as you're navigating recovery.

I hope I could help and provide some insight. As you know, please feel free to send more asks my way if you need to chat or if you want to add onto this.

[plenilune]

so here's the thing, and this is going to sound completely unhinged in light of a few posts ago, but this is my pretend insane secret diary to a billion strangers, and I don't have to perfectly explain myself* -- the thing is I stopped having most emotions some time ago, and the total absence of emotions in the spaces where emotions would normally pool to fill has made me, in my current insanity, unsure as to whether or not I have ever actually had an emotion or if all of them were simply me feeling what I was told or expected to feel in the moment.

[*I do actually. If I do not perfectly explain myself I will die.]

there was certainly a lot of my childhood in which I was expected to feel certain ways about certain things -- certain types of wonder or curiosity or religious fervour or empathy or loyalty, and some of the ways I performed those expected emotions were good and some were Very Incorrect and needed to Stop At Once, and also not to feel certain things, which other than crippling depression I mostly didn't, somehow* and somewhere along the way I became very numb and confused and frequently don't realise I've had an emotional reaction to something until significantly later, when I still don't feel anything about it but I seem to be experiencing symptoms of having had that emotion. generally this is one of the negative ones because if you have symptoms of having been excited about something or touched by something or whatever they don't tend to make themselves NOTICED, because they're ordinary things that don't stick out. I mean like -- dissociating through a time of intense stress and not really feeling a way about it and then a few weeks later I start having certain types of cycling thoughts or I stop eating or I become very paranoid or avoidant of something related to that experience or have sudden negative stabbing psychic pains when accidentally brushing against a memory related to that thing, but the original emotion about the experience still isn't something I can find or access. things like the time I tried to read a book I'd recently bought that wasn't related to anything bad that had happened to me, but when I opened it the paper smelled so intensely of my incredibly toxic bookstore job that it replicated the stress and mental gnaw of my shifts there in my little electrical feeling producers, which made me feel DEEPLY batshit, especially as over a year had gone by since I'd left that job. or just -- I don't know, this sort of thing happens all the time but my memory is so poor that I can't think of any of it. most of it's been much worse and much weirder but it's very difficult to explain.

[*like, I think I did have a lot of queer and trans feelings as a child, but I didn't process them or notice them and at the time it certainly didn't seem to be making me miserable, that those things were very bad and I shouldn't be them or go near them? they didn't seem to be relevant or connected to me at all. but they certainly seem to have contributed to, say, feeling completely alienated by the existence of my own body, slowly reconnecting to the experience of having a body in my fucking thirties and mostly then because of back and forth dysphoria, and me unable to tell if the previous period of me in my mid-twenties really liking how my body presented as feminine with a new ability to show myself off as potentially desirable was equally real, or something I only partially understood at the time, or me thinking I felt good about an experience I had all of the social structures present to tell me that I ought to feel good about it, and now that not all of those social structures apply to me I have no road map telling me how to feel so I simply don't?

the thing is I still like to be hot now too and I love to be desired and touched (in theory; if more than about five randomly chosen people touch me I will burst into flames, but I LIKE to be TOUCHED by people I LIKE) so maybe NO emotions are real and maybe I'm just an AI poorly and inconsistently programmed, which certainly aligns with my most prominent paranoid delusion, which is that I'm not Real in some obvious sense but if I let anyone find this out I will be Punished and it is the Worst thing that could Possibly Happen. also it could happen at any time because it's very obvious that I'm not a real person!]

[have I just repressed and de-realised all Forbidden Emotions for so long -- since very early childhood -- that I've never figured out how to have them because instead of having them and feeling ashamed or frightened or rebellious like most people seem to I simply deleted them? case in point: I certainly discovered I had some confusing issues about my attraction to non-men being seen as predatory and the existence of my sexual desire for someone inherently damaging and hurtful and a source of shame in a previous very toxic relationship, but in that case the cause wasn't any party's internalised homophobia, I think? but as far as I could examine it, it did seem to stem from a lot of repressed internalised shame from the first two decades of my life set off by the other party's incredibly specific control issues. but why did that shame never switch on when I was, say, making out with a woman I'd just met in a public bathroom years before?]

annoyingly this post seems to have become somewhat bafflingly about my sexuality when what I am trying to unpack is how I don't feel most emotions other than shame and guilt and keep feeling increasingly threatened by the knowledge that other people need and require me to have emotions about things but I don't know which ones all the time and even if I intellectually know what the emotion is I have no idea how to reach for it or perform it adequately and I also recognise that this is VERY INSANE, especially because it started with things years ago like me not feeling very connected to my family and now it's processed to me panicking at work constantly because everyone seems to have all of these feelings and loyalties and base compassions and the capacity for genuine curious interest in certain types of details about complete strangers and I have no idea what ones are being asked of me in an interaction but every time I get through one situation there's ANOTHER one and I'm so braced against someone getting angry at me for having wrong bad or no emotions that I have become hostile and paranoid and feel flickers of repressed electrical rage at perfectly ordinary interactions.

absolutely none of these run-on sentences are coherent. I'd better cut off here for now.

[unresolved-shock]

I get all worried that OSDD doesn't really affect me in day to day life so I shouldn't speak on it like I know what I'm talking about, or that I'm a system technically but a singlet practically.

And then a total of three medium-grade stressors show up and I'm thrown so off track that I get the double punch of having an adult autistic meltdown while a young child alter also has an autistic meltdown over some, like, lost house keys. Not getting juice right when I want it. Inability to regulate emotions over very simple things. Goes nonverbal, feels like body is too tall, mind turns simple, feels distress over "wheres my mom? where is she? 🥺" Not to mention the blurring and dissociative fog that follows. Nausea has also been a fun addition to switching signs lately.

I forget that due to my own active efforts as well as some luck and a bit of privilege, I've crafted a life that has as few stressors as possible, which means my brain and body don't see the need to switch or respond with dissociation most of the time. There's nothing to dissociate from! My life is fairly pleasant! Minimal social obligations, work from home job, livable wage, emotional support animal, supportive and accomodating family, medication that works which in turn allows me to have the energy to pursue hobbies, access to a specialized therapist...I have a lot of things to be grateful for, but laying it all out like this allows me to see the many factors that are in my favor and more importantly it EXPLAINS why I tend not to experience many of the symptoms that initially brought me to my therapist last year.

I have to remember that it's not how you are when you're at your best, it's the dysfunction you display at your worst (or close to it) that you have to pay attention to. And I can say without a doubt that when I have a million stressors on my plate, I'm almost textbook OSDD (if there were any textbooks out there about it). Depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, intense dissociation, resorting to childlike behavior to cope (aka child alters), mood swings that don't make sense and disappear as quickly as they appear, handwriting coming out different every time, "conversations with myself" on paper that feel too autonomous for comfort, significant and daily changes in clothing style, and sometimes even the loss of time if it's very bad.

I am writing this out to remind myself that just because there are times of peace and stability does not mean I'm "practically not a system." I can speak on it just as much as anyone else, but I do have to draw on past experiences rather than current ones. I have to speculate what my behaviors meant, but I have to do that with recent stuff too anyway since our communication is abysmal. I should rest easier, enjoy the peaceful life I get to live now. I once did not think I would ever have peace, so I will try to be more grateful for it and let system stuff come to me on its own time. This is lifelong, after all.