#obvs geared more towards systems than outsiders

[kkoct-ik]

kottik i think ive already said it before but i SO so appreciate your perspective and attention to detail with dissociative stuff. trying to wade through scattered info on the internet for reliable resources feels like an impossible task sometimes lol so having the DID writing guide + your alter worksheet definitely helps a lot! 

feedback on the guide itself: i loved it!!! the only parts i didn’t personally find relatable were the parts discussing later stages of healing/recovery (since im not quite there yet) and some of the functional neurological symptoms, but everything else felt like it was describing my own journey and experiences with DID perfectly. i also really appreciated the section on amnesia and different types of dissociation, plus the lesser known symptoms, since a lot of the time i see conflicting and confusing info on that + i feel like a lot of writers who try to write DID and describe how amnesia feels miss out on that stuff and just skim webmd or something for their info. and honestly even in online And offline discussions of DID ive seen other people try to describe how it really works and feels and its… not always described well lmao . but that’s a whole other can of worms etc

i think, though it’s just a writing resource, it was also very affirming to see it all laid out like that. like Oh shit yeah i do all of that. that’s my life on the page!!! the whole time i read it i was like ‘i knew this stuff already, but i never knew how to explain it properly.’ and it’s definitely the kind of thing i wish id been able to see when i first started noticing my symptoms. many years of misinfo and confusion have messed w my perception of myself n my disorder for a long time so it feels like a breath of fresh air to see someone else pushing against that and actually doing their research to try and clear things up. not to mention how clear your descriptions are + how easy it is to comprehend your explanations, while still being concise and to the point. so great work!!! 5 star rating, will definitely be recommending it to others :3 hope to see more from you + hope that it helps others write cool stuff!

i missed this ask!!!! sorry for missing this yesterday

thank you!!!!!! mwa mwa mwa. im so glad. so happy yaaaay

yeah, i definitely relate with the struggling to articulate experiences, being muddled by things online, and feeling like other people really dont quite get it when trying to represent whats going on. it makes me happy i can help with that!!

i feel like i'm in a good place that i've read a Lot of DID & CPTSD lit and i've been stabilising in treatment (processing some stuff, working on myself, getting a better understanding of therapy practice). i think it's given me a lot of perspective on my disorder that i wouldn't really have otherwise, and that a lot of people might not have either.

(rambling...)

cuz yeah. i think trying to understand DID on the internet is a monumentously difficult task. on one hand, you have personal accounts from people with DID, and on the other, you have doctors and generic websites. both don't quite give a full or reliable picture.

if you try to understand DID by listening to individuals, you're vulnerable to being incredibly confused and misled. and most of the time it's not intentional - it's hard to communicate what your symptoms are when you think half of it is normal and the other half is conflicted and fragmented - but it can give others very strange ideas about what the condition operates like at large.

it might also seem respectful to take everything we say at face value, but that ends up meaning that our flawed / misguided perceptions of ourselves and our symptoms become solidified as fact. we are mentally ill, we are not necessarily educated, and are a patient base prone to daydreaming and suggestion. we can get things wrong, and we can emphasise the wrong things.

when people take our unreliable accounts as fact (vivid recounts of psuedomemories, venting about feeling like seperate people, or expressing any number of mistaken symptoms), our experiences can start to sound like fantasy. suddenly DID sounds like a disorder you could not fathom having or ever truly understand, rather than a disorder that is simply inherently confusing to live with.

that said, if you try to avoid that by learning about DID soley through medical accounts and websites, you will only ever hear about reported symptoms, the most extreme & notable case studies, patient observations, and generic criteria, leaving a Lot to fill in the gaps (when you try to deduce what it feels like to live with it / be in our brains), that leads to other kinds of inaccuracies.

(for my health i'm not even going to try to touch on hollywood and online influencers that sensationalise the condition for clicks and thus dominate the algorithm. but obviously they are a factor too. pop culture is a powerful thing.)

the internet is a mess! and while not everything that is misleading is untrue, it can be very easy to just, not quite get it, or misunderstand things fundamentally, in any number of ways.

so yeah, it makes me happy that between my life experience, therapy, and obnoxious amount of pages read, i can actually make what goes on somewhat digestible. i want to help contextualise medical criteria, pull out relevant snippets, and point people to some really good resources.

it's not to say i'm a spokesperson or expert. i am very much just a huge nerd who happens to suffer from a disorder and is very invested in understanding myself. but the positive feedback does reassure me that i haven't gotten anything heinously wrong.

ty again :)) yaayy