#talks about dissociation

[marspebbles]

helping hand

[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.

[starstruckodysseys]

never stop blowing up is so fun bc 99% of the time it’s near incomprehensible and high octane action and then every so often out of nowhere someone will make a character choice that sucker punches you in the gut. and then it’s back to the antics so fast you get whiplash

[syscultureis]

Sys culture is being infuriated when a system believes in "narcissistic abuse". NPD is literally one step away from system disorders, it's a coping mechanism just like DID/OSDD. Narc abuse isn't real.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

[didtipsandhelp]

When you're dissociating and someone asks you if you're okay

[coffin-ramblings]

Ashley is "very not good" and "in fact very bad". That is what the promo card tells us.

The flippant attitude to cannibalism and murder, the abuse and manipulation of Andrew, and constant death threats to Julia prove that, so why do they need to say that? Isn't that enough to prove that she's a bad person? On the same promo, we are told Andrew "exists" and is a "doormat extraordinaire", which while true, is a lot more complicated than it looks. He does not just "exists", he was the one who raised Ashley thus one of her "creators", and he is not that much of (if he ever was) a doormat extraordinaire, he lets Ashley make the choices because it's what he wants, and has asserted power several times throughout the game for his and Ashley's benefit. So is what the promo says about Ashley completely true in light of that? Is the truth perhaps a lot more complicated, as it was with Andrew?

Furthermore, it's quite odd how Ashley is quick to accept being called a "tar soul" and how she implies she's a bad person too when she and Andy buried Nina's body.

And in Decay vision, if she kills Andrew, she goes on a rant about how she's glad he's dead, despite it clearly being the worst thing she has ever experienced.

While it's easy to think that she's having a mental breakdown and saying stuff out of madness, I have seen someone (can't find the post though) argue that this is Ashley's attempt to continue her self-narrative that she is a "bad person". She believes no one likes her because she's a bad person. She thinks not even Andrew likes her, and she "has to" drag him the "good person" to be her level of the "bad person" to keep him stuck with her. And when she kills her brother, her parent, her best friend, her soulmate, her everything, she immediately jumps to the justification that she is glad that he died instead of being devastated that he tried to kill her, because bad people can't feel remorse and heartbreak from having to kill someone they love, right?

And I'm inclined to agree with them. Ashley's thought process of pranking Nina is that she'll have her back as a friend after she learns her "lesson", even though she isn't happy being constantly left out or avoided by her.

She didn't hate Nina then, she was afraid of being even more lonely than before if Nina takes Andrew's attention away from her. And her initial reactions to Nina's death was to go "oops", try to justify why she died, cover it up by burying her, and after she's buried, Ashley says that she can just forget about her by not thinking about her for a long time.

That is not the reaction of someone "bad" reveling in their victory of an innocent person's death and trying to get away with it, that is the reaction of a kid who went through something traumatic, not want to get in trouble for it, and trying to rationalize it with something that sounds like an adult in their life (Renee?) would say. Then their brain triggers dissociative amnesia because remembering it would cause great stress and PTSD. Given how stressful Leyley's life was and still is, it makes sense that's her brain's main coping method, and Nina's death was just another instance of it shunting trauma away in an attempt to keep PTSD from happening. It is likely that amnesia made Ashley quite forgetful, as dissociative amnesia does not affect just one singular event, it also affects other memories as an overprotective measure. This also may be why she develops such a flippant attitude to their crimes: joking about them helps her not have to confront the weight of what they just did. Thus, even that attitude being a marker of her being a "bad person" is more questionable. Really, her actions that have the intent to directly harm people are what her make a bad person, but I digress.

The idea that her flippant attitude is perhaps not a good marker of her being a "bad person" is best shown in Episode 1 after they eat the neighbor. Ashley is made aware that her devil-may-care attitude is quite abnormal and worrying for Andrew, which worries her. If she talks before going to bed, she gets visibly confused and worried at Andrew saying she needs to see a professional.

When he later asks how she's so unbothered by the cannibalism, she replies she says she compartmentalizes nervously, which she then follows up afterwards with a joke to not have to dwell on it.

That specific coping method of compartmentalization is the same thing Andrew's brain does in his dream in Episode 2, where it ends with him having a flashback of burying Nina.

In fact, it's interesting how we never get to see adult Ashley's every day psyche. This is not the same as seeing her thoughts and perspectives in the waking world, nor is it the same as the Burial vision where it's Ashley's self-narrative of her life from childhood to adulthood and how she potentially changes it. We never get to see her dream without it being a vision, a glimpse of what her mind looks like in the present processing her experiences in the every day and the past.

This is particularly crucial because while Nina appears while Andrew's brain is doing its standard compartmentalizing of Andrew's current stresses, the only times Nina appears in Ashley's head (outside of Burial vision) were flashbacks of when she is doing this as a child. While it's framed as the moment when Andrew "proves" his devotion to her, flashbacks similar to PTSD ones can happen alongside dissociative amnesia, and they do occur in dreams. Even though Ashley has forgotten Nina's name and eyes, she is always there, haunting her dreams.

This all suggests that the plot twist of our perceptions of the characters in episode 3 is that when we finally get to play Ashley in her normal dreams or see her mental breakdown (maybe if she kills Andrew?), we find out that she feels some sort of guilt for Nina's death and perhaps their other crimes. Even though she insists to herself she doesn't feel guilt about that because she is a "bad person", it is all a lie that she manages to convince to herself and the audience. This would be very shocking as we're in her head a lot of the time, so we'd assume she can't lie to us. But she has all along, just like how Andrew has to us.

[edible-emerald]

The new spoke video makes a lot more sense if you view it as him dissociating the entire time

[xxacidnekoxx]

me: I am traumatized and I am drawing art to cope with it and posting it to maybe reach other people who share similar trauma hoping things become a little less lonely overtime as I read other people's stories and ways of coping .. it happens that I can only draw furries and anime that well but I think its okay it doesnt make my art less meaningful... what people seem to think I am like before they get to know me: "UwU I jsut wanna forget teh twamas and sad times :< and draw CUTE FLUFFFIES XDD 🌈OWO BOYKISSERS >//< im just a kittyboy on all the druggies >w< tee hee"

[thefluxsystem]

something i don’t see talked about in the system community enough are the dissociative shutdowns.

when you’re in a system, you know what it feels like to not have control over your body because somebody else does. so, when you’re supposed to be controlling the body and, when life hits the fan, suddenly it won’t do anything you want it to do, it’s terrifying.

the world feels crushing yet far away at the same time. your eyes are looking around, but they’re not truly seeing. you can hear someone talking, and you can’t respond— and if you are, the words falling off your lips are foreign and feel numb on your tongue.

when you’re in that state you feel nothing. you don’t notice your own actions (if you can even muster any), you don’t register touch or pain, you don’t feel cold, you don’t feel heat.

hours pass. maybe it’s only minutes? it’s impossible to tell. you’re frozen in time and space but everything is still moving on around you.

then all the sudden it’s over. at least it seems over. something still feels… wrong. but there’s no time to address that.

as time goes on, it turns out that you never really circle back to why that happened. until it happens again. then you ignore it. the cycle continues.

[is-that-plural]

severance. like the show. the concept. The Thing.

!! Rating: Holy Shit, there's so much to say about this one. Short answer; yes AND no.

SO. we've been binging this show since last week, and wow its a good show i recommend giving it watch !!

i will Try to keep this spoilers-free but, its still better to watch the first few episodes, then come back to read this post

the main concept of "severance" as a concept is purposefully splitting the brain, (via brain surgery) to make two separate consciousness, one for work, one for home.

this is where it already gets tricky; its purposeful, it's basically consensual on the "host's" part, but the headmates (or "innies" as the show calls them) did not want this, but now that they have a chance at life, albeit a boring 9-5 box office job, they're content. (this is a point towards 'not plural')

some of them find happiness some of them find love, some of them find purpose, because that's what people need, proving that the "innies" are fundamentally people. (point towards 'plural')

i think a lot of the show focuses on the terror of waking up without memories, the utter horror aspect of it, and usually i'm quick to jump to "well this is the writers using d.i.d as a horror trope" because most of the time it is. (point towards 'not plural')

with severance; the horror aspects of the show are Real Terrifying Plural Experiences. as a system watching this show was lowkey eye-opening because i can show it to singlets and tell them "this is what its like." then they'll have a better understanding of my system and by extension other systems as well even if on just a surface level (point towards 'plural')

a lot of the struggles and conflicts in the show are centered around the "innies"(headmates) disagreeing with the "outies"(hosts) goals and ideas, etc etc there's LOTS of conflict between the two and absolutely NO communication between the two. (point towards 'plural')

the company who they all work for, has MANY strict restrictions on the "innies" ability to do almost anything, they are there to work and that is it. "innies" cannot communicate with "outies" and "outies" don't want to communicate with their "innies"(Schrodinger's point. could be either.)

SO. long answer; there are many many MANY Experiences shown, that are Real to Systems, yes the show frames it as a "wouldn't this be fucked up?" scenario, but it Is real and it IS (albeit. maybe slightly less? fucked up?) in real life and in real systems

(i say slightly less fucked up bc i believe it is more flawed and miserable for a company to do that to its employees, given the (outies) employees agreed to it, its almost endogenic, in that the systems didnt form in childhood trauma ,, and "became" systems intentionally, which isnt how plurality actually works, point for 'not plural,')

[furiousgoldfish]

me: you know what, I should try talking about my problems. Maybe if people knew I would feel less alone and someone might even help me.

the voice in my head: the main part of your problem is that you're having voices in your head that make you upset. You can't tell people that, you'll get institutionalized.

[soundleer]

i forgor to post these old doodles of peeb and jayjay so why not i post them now, i love my goobers

chirren time :33

[catboyaventurine]

huh aventurine introjects are more common than i thought..

Fellow Aventurines !!

gather here, i wish to collect you all as moots

(but ofc those who are uncomfy with "doubles" feel free to do whats best for you)

[howlsofbloodhounds]

killer probably crashes out any time he feels even a tiny bit of guilt that he can’t dissociate from and repress

[azureansys]

im so tired of being infantilized just because im disabled

[dizzydoctor]

IM NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN MY SOUL