#partial did community

[pdid-safe-space]

the lack of resources on p-did is really annoying. i wish there was more public accounts and other stuff

that aside, does anyone ever feel like they're just a filter through which other alters' emotions pass through? or a medium for other alters' emotions and intentions if i'm making sense

yeah, it's really unfortunate,, i'm lucky to have been able to find some resources in my native language but they're also few and took multiple hours to find since most things are just the icd entry for p-did (i've actually found it to be harder to find p-did resources in english than my native language which is. wild)

and yeah, i do feel like that sometimes! especially since if alters want to talk with someone outside the system i usually have to write/communicate for them. or sometimes i'll start being annoyed by or hating something that i normally really like (e.g. the other day i was feeling pretty confused when i was getting really irrationally angry over bird chirping despite normally loving bird chirping, turns out it was feelings from another alter who was really annoyed from high-pitched sounds)

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Shout out to people with Complex Dissociative Disorders (parents edition):

If your parents genuinely changed and improved overtime

If your parents were absent when you were a kid because they were sick / ill / working / otherwise indisposed

If your parents were not your abusers

If your parents would have acted differently if they knew you were being abused

If your parents didn't have the resources or knowledge to help / understand you

If your parents were loving and yet still neglectful

If your parents inadvertently invalidated / didn't believe you, but now do

If your parents weren't your primary caregivers when the abuse happend

If you weren't abused at all and your trauma was medical / environmental / etc

Had emotionally and physically present parents but you still had disorganized attachment with them as a kid because of your delusions / paranoia / etc.

If your parents regret how they treated you

If your parents loved and love you but acted the way they did because of substances / mental illness

If your parents are not completely bad people, or bad people at all

If you still get along with your parents regardless of what they did

If you ever invalidated your own traumatic childhood experiences because your parents were "too nice"

Your trauma is not less valid if you get along with your parents today. Sure, you needed disorganized attachment to your primary caregivers as a kid to develop a CDD. But that can take plenty of formes, and they don't all include your parents being monsters.

Edit: any other emotions regarding your parents are also valid and okay, and I couldn't mean that more. Childhood trauma survivors go through so many rough emotions, and self-invalidation is sadly way too common. Your feelings are a direct result of what happened and that makes them normal.

[botanical-garden-system]

Someone drowning in 6 feet of water is as equally dead as a person drowning in 20 feet of water.

Please stop comparing trauma and making it a challenge. It’s trauma. Not a competition or medal.

[neuroticboyfriend]

shoutout to systems with only a few members that front, even if that's only one member. no matter how big or small your system is, no matter how you count how many of you there are. your experience is real because you experience it. our brains are very complex and weird and there's no reason your experience is "wrong" or "invalid." you don't have to live up to anyone's standard. you can just exist. all of you.

[echoes-in-the-multiverse]

"So, which alter is the real you?"

Written whilst the system was blurry.

This is a personal post with educational explanations.

This question insinuates a few misconceptions about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Firstly, the word 'real' in this context implies that the asker believes only one dissociative identity truly exists, while the others are either fabricated or hallucinations. This misconception is not only dismissive but also reinforces the harmful stereotype that DID is not a legitimate condition. It perpetuates the false belief that individuals with DID are simply experiencing psychosis or should be misdiagnosed with a different disorder, such as schizophrenia. This misunderstanding can lead to a lack of proper support for those living with DID, who have distinct and valid identities formed as a response to trauma that initially began in early childhood. All dissociative identities within an individual are real. In DID, multiple dissociative identities have the ability to take executive control, allowing them to interact with the environment. However, the ability to take control should not be the sole measure of their reality. Disorders like OSDD and PDID also involve alters who may not be able to or reluctantly take executive control, yet they are equally real. The existence and significance of a part is determined by their role and presence within the system. 

Secondly, the question mistakenly separates the different parts of a person with DID as if they are distinct, individual entities. In reality, each part is a fragment of the whole individual, meaning that every part is the “real you.” This ties into the outdated concept reflected in the name "Multiple Personality Disorder," which suggests that a person with DID has multiple, fully-formed personalities. In truth, DID involves dissociative identities, each representing a fragment of one complete personality. When integrated, these fragments come together to form the singular personality of the entire individual.

This misunderstanding also leads to the belief that the main host is not an alter, and that only the other identities are. The host is an alter, there is no single "core" or "original personality". Many try to explain this through the analogy of a shattered bowl, asking, "If a bowl breaks, which piece is the original?" However, this metaphor doesn’t accurately represent DID because it implies there was once a whole, unbroken personality that fragmented. In DID, there was never a singular, intact "bowl" to begin with. The system’s personality remained divided due to amnesia and trauma and was never able to form one personality. 

A more fitting metaphor is that of a stained glass window. Each piece of stained glass is meticulously crafted to fit with the others, just as each alter in DID is formed by the brain to complement the others. If all parts were to integrate, they would form a complete personality just as a stained glass window is whole when its pieces are assembled. This analogy avoids the implication that something is "missing" or "broken" and instead highlights how each part is essential to the survival and functionality of the individual as a whole. Even when not assembled a stained glass window is not considered broken and people with DID are not broken.

This is a personal post with educational explanations.

Written whilst the system was blurry.

[pdid-culture-is]

P-DID culture is part of me wishing we were a DID or OSDD system because we'd actually have a community that's talked about and the posts in that tag are actually relevant to it and we'd have more spaces for US.

Yeah so this is your friendly reminder to not forget about P-DID systems. We exist, please don't leave us behind.

[myths-of-creation-coining]

Soul Attraction

Soul Attraction is a form of Spiritual attraction where one is attracted to a person's soul as a result of being soulmates or the belief that one is tied to the subject of attraction through fate.

Flag colors meaning: Dark pink for feminine attraction, Dark blue for masculine attraction, white for neutral/non-gender specific attraction, and a red looped string/ribbon in the center representing the red string of fate.

-Angel

[degeneracyismylegacy]

I fucking miss my headmates. I don't even know where they are. My therapist thinks I'm "cured" but I KNOW, I can feel that there's still some of them inside but I can't hear them. I hate it, I spent the majority of my life with headmates, I love them to bits, and yes we weren't always functionnal and yes it was hell most of the time but I'd give anything for us to have the communication we used to, not being with them makes me want to DIE.

[magicbungelic]

Any tips on trying to improve communication between alters ? Or just trying to have any communication at all ? Especially as a p-did system host (which is what I believe is the case for me)

I can't access headspace (if we even have any), can't communicate with any of them at all, I just feel them when they're there with me and the changes they cause in my behaviour, but whenever I try to make any effort to acknowledge they're there they just retreat :(

I don't even know their names (besides an introject with a very strong presence), please send any tips if you have any !

DNI transharmful/transid and pro para

[spacedlexi]

the way the ericson group were at the outbreak just a bunch of troubled kids who made various mistakes or committed crimes and were judged by a system that punished and abandoned them instead of giving them the support and love they needed, are then nearly a decade later put into a situation where now they must judge a troubled child for the mistakes and crimes hes committed against them. and 5 to 3 vote them out 😭

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Just want to say: a, I admire very much that you've figured out a healthy way to work on your fics that allows you to have fun with it. And also b, am very excited to hear that you are getting there with pez! It has fully given me brain rot ever since I read it last year, there is just such a lack of content for the highly specific trope of using time travel as a device to explore extremely unhealthy levels of self loathing.

I just adore everything you're doing in it. Neither midoriya is anywhere approaching okay for any portion of the fic and I love rereading and mining into all the subtle characterization pointing to that. It's a bit like nhtycth in that some really goofy funny stuff is often hiding some really fucking worrying things, but the fact that characters DO do that stuff—that todoroki uses his teaspoon's worth of extremely stunted social skills to bludgeon his friend's door open and help him, that a rpf shipping war is an actual source of drama despite how goofy the sentiment seems on the surface, that about half of what jon says is deeply worrying and the other half is extremely funny and there's a lot of overlap between the two—really lifts the tension and brightens the universe. It's sort of similar to what you did with gerry, in that endless misery isn't nearly as painful as the ups and downs of a life that, when you step back and zoom out, has something deeply and horribly wrong with it.

(jon sort of reminds me of spider-man in that he uses human to deal with trauma and stress, except I don't think he at any point realizes how fucking funny he is. He's just there, in a home depot, gnashing his teeth because he's got so many bodies to dispose of and this cashier sure is taking her time.)

I really, really, really have had trouble finding fics that take everything midoriya has dealt with to task. It's a hell of a thing to live 14 years as a disabled minority, have it heavily shape your existence, and then one day you wake up and you realize you're...not that, or at least, nobody will ever acknowledge you as that again. You've lost all claim to it. Those experiences that shaped who you are? Dust in the wind. 14 years of pain and life might as well be buried in the ground for all the good they do you. Nobody's going to cut you any slack or quarter, you've gotta simply work harder, be better. And now when you do that you get the results you wanted, so that's fine, then. That's good. There was something wrong with the you before, and there's something right with the you now, and if the transition is a little rough, well that doesn't matter, you're the same as everyone else now, so it's your own job to fill in whatever gaps you need to.

I really can't get over how mentally fucked it must be for midoriya to run into quirkless people, run across quirkless issues, and be silently caught between, incapable of speaking his mind and too scared to do so anyway around those he can trust.

Also I should mention, I'm just very excited for bakugou to get back from the gym. He's been there like a year I hope he's getting a good workout in.

Me realizing that it’s been a year since pez dispenser debris:

I feel like there’s just this very specific type of grief that Izuku has to grapple with in the span of pez dispenser debris that I’m just obsessed with. He’s sort of silently mourning who he could have been, when 1) he has to present like there’s nothing lost to maintain his secret and 2) the entire world is constantly inundating him with the message that there was nothing lost.

Like. I don’t want to get too deep into it because it risks spoiling things and I do have major plans to continue it (I’ve loved this story for so many years before I ever even hit publish), but the emotion that Izuku’s feeling right now is so much more complex than “I hate who I used to be and want him to stop existing” or “I just want to keep my secrets.” And I think the way he interacts with Mirio is the biggest evidence of that.

Izuku’s placed himself at the very center of the Quirklessness debate with his support of Mirio. He fights for Quirkless heroes, very publicly, to the point where he’s not even graduated yet but considered to be one of the most prominent voices on the matter. If you took a poll of Quirkless people as to which hero would be most supportive of them pursing their own career in heroics, Izuku would be right at the top of the list. When it comes to Quirklessness itself, he’s nothing but supportive.

But he didn’t tell Mirio the truth of his own Quirklessness.

Out of everyone, Mirio’s the one everyone expects to know, despite him being a relatively newer relationship compared to someone like Iida or Uraraka or Todoroki. And I tried to imply that he’s sort of the one who knows the most about Izuku out of everyone save All Might.

Like, we’ll get into how much exactly Mirio knows soon, so I won’t divulge what, if anything, Izuku has told him. But we know that Mirio knows, weirdly enough, that Izuku is deeply fucking haunted. He knows that boy has many violent ghosts in his bones. He finds it hilarious and will tell their realtor about it. Izuku told him about the discontent spirits who died in a violent passion and live on inside of him before he told him about his Quirklessness.

And I just feel like one of those things is a little bit easier to discuss than the other.

Izuku has decided to keep his own Quirklessness quiet in a way that surpasses secrecy about One for All. If it was just about OfA, he could tell people he didn’t get his quirk until the entrance exam, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. He’s purposefully obscuring his own past as Quirkless even as he takes a forefront of the Quirkless hero debate with his open support of Mirio.

And the fact that he’s at the forefront of this debate in and of itself requires a difficult dichotomy. He is the world’s most vocal proponent for the first Quirkless hero. He is a known figure in the Quirkless community now.

He isn’t considered one of them anymore. He’s an outsider coming in.

It must be such a strange, odd sort of grief to come to the people you were home amongst for most of your life and be greeted as a stranger. To return home, and to be welcomed in for the first time, and to not even be able to tell people that you’ve lived here all your life and don’t need a tour.

It’s a sort of death of self, I think. And I think Izuku never expected to have to grapple with his own ghost.

[pdid-safe-space]

the other ask actually reminded me of something; i'm curious, but did other p-did systems think they were osdd-1b before finding out about p-did?

we've known we're a system for roughly 10 years now and for most of it we said we were osdd-1b despite not really feeling like we belong because we barely had any switches at all, since the p-did diagnosis in the icd didn't exist until 2022 (i think?)

[a-place-to-exist]

i know a lot of systems form because of abuse but. i wish there was somewhere i could read about systems who didn't. and i don't mean non-traumagenic systems but just systems whose trauma wasn't mainly abuse. i want to find people i can relate to

[botanical-garden-system]

“Chat” but in a “My system is as big as some average numbers streamers get” way.

[burningsolarsystem]

Nah. How did I ever doubt whether these bitches were real? I can't even make up half the shit they come up with.

Saw a post on different things to call your headmates. I think it was something like "try calling then something other than parts" or something. And I was like, yeah I call them headmates. My mates. My buds.

Then some bitch says in my brain. "Yeah, my fuck buddies"

Da fuck? And then I can just feel and hear someone telling him no. No they are not that. Plz and thank you.

And I could feel his confusion. And somehow I both knew what was wrong with that and didn't. Weird. But anyways.

I felt dumbfounded. Utterly confused. How did I think I was making these conversations up? I don't even know what's going on.

Screaming, laughing, dying. Omfg.

Anyways...

[echoes-in-the-multiverse]

Truths and Myths: Pluralpedia Part 4, Alter Roles.

This is an educational post.

Written by 🤍. (Temporary emoji placeholder)

And at the same time

A part that is designed to hold trauma, known as an emotional part, may remain stuck at the age when the trauma occurred. This can be part of the process in which the individual part repeatedly relives the trauma or unconsciously reenacts it in their actions when taking executive control, even though the trauma has ended but they are unaware. As a result, they are unable to age past the age of the trauma. Later in therapy, trauma can be processed and this can relieve that part from their need to be fixed in time

Further discussed in Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele’s book (2006) “The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization”. The authors disscuss a patient whose child emotional part would reenact situations from the trauma in an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Additionally, they discuss that some emotional parts can experience severe nonrealisation therefore that part may literally experience themselves as being the age they are stuck at, in the book this is used in context of child parts.

Trigger warning in the term is also applicable to my discussion of it.

According to the NHS (2024) website on eating disorders, there are many potential causes for them, including various traumas. An individual experiencing an eating disorder or in recovery may also experience trauma or stress, on a psychological, physical, and social level. As a result, an alter may split due to the eating disorder as parts are fragmented due to trauma. This alter may serve as a protective/caretaker part, ensuring the survival of the body, but it may also be a part that has split off due to denial of the eating disorder. This part may be used by the brain to hide the parts of the individual that are heavily affected by the trauma of the eating disorder.  This can also allow the affected parts to recover at their own pace, as they are aware that the body will be fine. However, this alter may also serve as an unhelpful crutch, causing other parts to believe that they do not need to recover or are not ready to do so. In reality, it is crucial for all parts to recover in order to aid in trauma healing and move towards a more sustainable life. Relying too heavily on one part can result in their exhaustion as they will be using their available resources to focus and take care of the needs of others. If this is their only role, it may result in a lack of self-awareness of their own needs, making it difficult for them to meet them. This point is supported by Van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele's book (2006) "The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization" when discussing caretaker parts in systems. It is important to allow a part to take a break, otherwise they may begin to dread their role or task, leading to unpleasant or even stressful experiences. Therefore, it is necessary for parts to have the capability to share responsibility for tasks, even if only for a short time, to give the main part a chance to rest, another reason why recovery for those parts heavily affected should be encouraged. This idea and self-care is discussed more in W AT’s book “Got Parts: An Insider’s Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder”. 

The term "called out" may refer to this alter being triggered when food is present or is brought out when a part is triggered by food, allowing it to take control of the situation. Alternatively, it may refer to the switching technique learnt in therapy, where communication between alters is improved to the point where one alter can reach out and ask another to take control. However, this is a complex skill, as it is considered, to master and there will always be a risk of failure, so it cannot be guaranteed to work every time. Based on this, it can be assumed that the term refers to the act of this alter stepping into either calm or avoid a trigger.

Van der Hart O, Steele K, Nijenhuis E. The Haunted Self : Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization. W.W. Norton; 2006.

NHS. Overview - Eating Disorders. NHS. Published 2021. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/feelings-symptoms-behaviours/behaviours/eating-disorders/overview/

W AT. Got Parts? : An Insider’s Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Loving Healing Press; 2005.

Echoes in the Multiverse . Echoes in the Multiverse. Tumblr. Published June 16, 2024. Accessed August 2, 2024. https://www.tumblr.com/echoes-in-the-multiverse/753468998583271424/what-is-switching-technique-in-your-last-post-you?source=share

Bibliography link 4 is to a post we made discussing more about the Switching technique and the resources we used to write that post and expand our own knowledge we gained in therapy.