#this is about having dissociative identity disorder

[mentallystill]

The ace/aro discourse was horrible. I wasn't really involved in the aspec community and I didn't search tags, but it still fucking haunts me. I've ID'd as being aspec for almost fifteen years, and I think I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times I have said out-loud that I might be aspec (might be, because I have such DEEP anxiety about faking it). Even with close friends who are also aspec. I don't post it anywhere.

I don't know if I've ever definitively said that I am aspec. It makes me too anxious. It makes me so anxious I shut down.

Like. I'm more open about being plural than being aspec. Do you know how bad it has to be that potentially having dissociative identity disorder isn't as bad?

I don't think younger/newer users fully grasp the shit show that ace discourse was around 2014-17

It was so hostile that, to this day, discussions that begin to derail just enough can make me physically nauseous, some specific mockery trigger crying sessions years later. We lost most accounts with any sort of ace positivity. There was no information, no support, and all this damage was done predominantly by other queer people.

All this to say that you, however you identify yourself, should be engaging with aphobic comments the same way you do any hate. We don't sugarcoat or try to be comprehensive with people who are blatantly racist, homophobic or terfs, so why give it a pass just because it's coming from a queer person? I see how this tolerance goes and it's done enough damage as it is.

[azureansys]

the negativity i experience throughout my days doesn't define my validity as a system

im allowed to be happy, im allowed to come to terms with what i am and embrace it when i need to

don't let anyone tell you otherwise when you find a bright side in every situation, a little bit of joy to keep your mind away from the blues

[eeveecraft]

I just got blocked without warning because a person got sick of their own sources proving them wrong that DID/OSDD/P-DID, etc are trauma-based. Like, it got sad and to the point where they admitted that they only briefly skimmed their sources before spamming me with them.

This person claimed to be "anti-sysmed," but literally was spouting sysmed rhetoric about how trauma is a requirement for DID.

So uh, newsflash: a disorder cannot be "trauma-based" if trauma is not a hard requirement to be diagnosed with the disorder. DID/OSDD/P-DID, etc are dissociative disorders, not trauma disorders. The DSM-V makes that clear:

[IMAGE TEXT:

Dissociative disorders are characterized by a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior. Dissociative symptoms can potentially disrupt every area of psychological functioning. This chapter includes dissociative identity disorder, dissociative amnesia, depersonalization/derealization disorder, other specified dissociative disorder, and unspecified dissociative disorder.

Dissociative symptoms are experienced as a) unbidden intrusions into awareness and behavior, with accompanying losses of continuity in subjective experience (i.e., “positive” dissociative symptoms such as fragmentation of identity, depersonalization, and derealization) and/or b) inability to access information or to control mental functions that normally are readily amenable to access or control (i.e., “negative” dissociative symptoms such as amnesia).

The dissociative disorders are frequently found in the aftermath of trauma, and many of the symptoms, including embarrassment and confusion about the symptoms or a desire to hide them, are influenced by the proximity to trauma. In DSM-5, the dissociative disorders are placed next to, but are not part of, the trauma- and stressor-related disorders, reflecting the close relationship between these diagnostic classes. Both acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder contain dissociative symptoms, such as amnesia, flashbacks, numbing, and depersonalization/derealization.

END IMAGE TEXT.] This is on page 292, by the way. Yes, these disorders are often caused by trauma, nobody is debating that, but it is not the sole cause. The sources this user shared describes the disorders as "often caused by" or "trauma-related," etc, which are not the same as stating these disorders must have trauma to be present. Anyway, it was just kind of funny just so easily debunking every single point with their own sources until they got sick of it and blocked me.

7-6-2025

[brazenautomaton]

I didn't mean this was the only thing that was happening, this is not a matter of one ideology, though that one ideology is more influential than you think

"the real problem is capitalism, what if the crazy people were actually sane because capitalism is crazy, maaaaaaaan," was a widespread opinion throughout all the 1970s and 1980s when the hippies eviscerated the concept of mental health to flatter themselves

but before that the concept of mental health needed reform because everything in mental health was just there to flatter the pro-orthodoxy "you're crazy because you aren't what I want people to be" biases of the people who did all the research

and before that the concept of mental health needed reform because everything in mental health was just there to flatter the "I am so smart and perceive things normies aren't smart enough to see" biases of the people making shit up

since then the concept of mental health has existed to flatter the progressive politics of the people doing the research. "stereotype threat," implicit association tests, "priming," the fucking "black children think black dolls are evil" thing, they had to flatter themselves with how deep and pervasive and undetectable biases were and how nobody could ever ever say there wasn't one. right now they're gritting their teeth and smiling and accepting that there's been a huge explosion of dissociative identity disorder that has nothing in common with DID as it was defined before and exists solely in trendy TikTok influencers. because that's what flatters their ideology of being maximally accepting. obviously there's heterodox people among this, but the Message Coming From The Mental Health Field is clear and if you ask what is the Settled Science That Is Already Settled says, you get the most flattering answer.

like there is a "replication crisis" in psychiatry, which is a euphemism for "nearly everything we have published in the past 30 years is complete bullshit that we put out because it flattered our preconceptions." maybe some of the things they preconcieved were true! I bet a lot of them were, at least the ones about "minorities aren't inherently worse." but they weren't capable of actually finding out and weren't capable of not overextending because that might not be flattering.

and then also, there's the rampant fraud that didn't mean anything. christ, I wish I could find the piece again, but the field of mental health is so fucking divorced from reality that these huge scandals where foundational research to the field was found to be completely fraudulent and nobody's opinions or methods changed. that's a field that doesn't interact with what things are and aren't true. if you don't interact with what is and isn't true, you cannot produce useful information.

much like people thought "oh the SJW nonsense is just in college campuses" and then those college students graduated and suddenly became in charge of shit and made it everyone's problem, there are in fact people becoming psychiatrists who think that the real problem is capitalism, and that's an extremely flattering opinion, and they're all going to tell each other it's true, and then that will become the Settled Science That Is Already Settled. But it's not just capitalism! You know who else (well there's a lot of overlap but you know what I mean) is becoming psychiatrists? Fandom antishippers. And oh boy can they flatter themselves! And "Your fantasies are sick and make you evil and your thoughts all have to meet my moral approval" is going to become the Settled Science That Is Already Settled, and they're going to believe whatever they need to believe and interpret data however they need to interpret it in order to "prove" that consuming Icky media makes you a bad person and you have to let them control your media consumption.

They don't fucking grow psychiatrists in tubes of glowing liquid! Psychiatrists are people who decide to enter the field of psychiatry. People who decide to enter the field of psychiatry very often do so in order to flatter themselves about What Is Really Making People Crazy.

And if there's a huge backlash against Wokeism or however you want to call it, we just replace those people with a different group of people who flatter themselves. We go all the way down the antishipper path of "what makes you crazy is you're not living the kind of life that flatters my ideas about How People Should Live" and there's still no useful information produced.

All of the information is so noisy and hard to interpret and the emotional rewards of the flattering story about What Is Really Making People Crazy are so powerful and immediate that we will never get a field of psychiatry that is capable of prioritizing the former over the latter.

Has there ever been a non-pharmacological discovery that caused mental health to actually be more effective as in actually? Yeah, we stopped torturing people in asylums, which don't get me wrong is a very good thing. But it wasn't like psychiatry itself figured out they would be more effective if they did that, people got mad at them and made them change it. Has there ever been anything that was not a drug where psychiatry discovered something, and went "Oh, now that we know that, we can treat people more effectively," and then it was true?

The psychiatric project really loves imprisoning and forcibly drugging people so I can't exactly say I'm a fan and yet from a purely knowledge-seeking perspective I think it's undeniably the most serious project for understanding the way the human mind can be harmful to itself. Like this is not to say it's GOOD at this job, it is bad at this job. But it is BETTER at this job than academic psychology, or the psychoanalysis of old, or more literary critique style analysis, etc. The competition is not stiff!

[dissomuse]

Can we PLEASE talk about how people (I don't want to name them specifically but especially Endogenics) have just dumbed down system-inducing dissociative disorders into just alter disorders? hell, most of the community only focuses on your alters, only recently have I seen (a positively good amount of) people actually adress the dissociation parts of systemhood.

it's always "whats your name and identity?" "our __ fictive" "alter intros" "new splits" "front" "co-front" and never the reason why it's called a DISORDER.

Dissomuse out!

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[dreamwritesstuff]

the library

sometimes i wander through the library in my mind; it keeps my memories safe, all in one spot. i met the librarian once, but she didn't like me much

"what're these ones?" i asked her, reaching for an old book it was sitting on a high up shelf surrounded by others that looked like it though they were all dusty and covered in webs "don't touch those" she said quickly, hitting my hand away and she nudged me down the steps away from the old tomes that i now was so curious of

they were thick books with browned pages and dyed leather binding. they sat crooked on the shelf, i wanted so badly to open one, to see what the writing inside was like, what memories it held, what stories it told

i felt a like a little kid being ridiculed for peeking into the locked doors when i've been told not to. maybe that's all i am, a little kid who never got to grow up quite right

what memories do those books hold? are they dangerous, i wonder? do they tell secrets, stories dipped in darkness and dripping with a chill you can't quite shake off? i felt nauseous at the thought. i know that feeling a little too well already

maybe i don't want to know. maybe the librarian was right to shoo me away, and maybe those books are dusty, covered in webs, for a reason

[drakesvalley]

The wildest part about being a system and having known you are a system for a while (6+ years for us) HAS to be seeing people who are just figuring it out fall into holes that you've long left behind.

Like. Yeah. We also thought we needed to keep tabs on everyone to increase communication. In the end it became too unwieldy. Especially since DID evolves with what you experience all the time.

Microlabels are cool and I fully support anyone who uses them, but figuring out what to call every single structure in your system isn't for us anymore.

Another thing we notice is people who try their best to know who is fronting at all given times. A lot of that comes naturally to us nowadays, but it's also... OK not to know. Especially if you're not focusing on anything system related at the time.

I guess a lot of this boils down to, it's okay not to care. It's okay to go with the flow of things and figure out at your own pace. Identity is fluid, especially if you have a dissociative disorder. You don't HAVE to have everything figured out 100% of the time.

It's okay to take it slow. It's okay to not know. It's okay to just exist for a bit. It's okay to live and experience things beyond being a system.

To all the people who are just starting to comprehend this. You do not need to know and label exactly what is happening in your head all the time. Fuck, we sure don't. And we're happier for it.

It's okay to just be you.

[interstellarchaosss]

Pertaining to the last ask, to your friends, what does a person like them notice when a system (like you) is switching alters/headmates?

Some answers from our partner:

- Voice changes, pitch, tone, way of speaking. Even when masking there are tells like pauses between words, or different words used, or pronounciation of words (like the brits pronouncing words brit-way and Mahito's "t"s).

(Mahito's "t"s referring to Mahito pronouncing his t's very harshly in most words.) Some of us speak with more energy even when masking (like Red) or much less (like Dain).

Some people (Soul, Vince) use words like "quite" much more often than others. There's other vocabulary differences like that.

- Ways of moving. Different way you sit, different ways you walk, how much you trip, some people (Merlin) act like they've never had legs before.

We've been told by others that Crowley walks with a "smug aura" and that Vena walks "like a businessman". I think a friend once said Vince has a "overly confident straight male" walk.

Shrapnel and Onslaught are known to sit as spread out as possible (subconsciously, they aren't deliberate about it)--to the point where Onslaught's girlfriend has to remind him. Onslaught and Heart tend to put their feet up where possible. Dain tends to sit making himself as small as possible.

Some people need our cane more often than others because they're worse at walking--Merlin, Mystery, Fin, Mike, etc.

What foods/drinks you go for.

Vince and Shrapnel both have different regular cafes they prefer to go to--Shrapnel having specific drink orders as well. Merlin is known to mainly go for fruits and berries if he can get his hands on them, while Shrapnel and Rave normally go for something spicy.

So.... In the end, it's a lot of small patterns people can notice that might seem like regular day-to-day differences. After all, someone pronouncing things a little weirdly and wanting to go to a specific cafe one day doesn't make them a system! But sometimes, those things happen because of a system. But because differences in routine and life are part of being a person in general, there's not really that much of a line between "singlet who wants to go to this store for a change" and "this headmate really only likes this one specific store and fronted for the first time in 6 months". That's why it's hard to identify a system unless they tell you, in a lot of cases--if you can't see what's going on internally, differences are easy to brush off!

[thestarseersystem]

contrary to popular belief and to online fakeclaimers, DID is a lot more inclusive than you think it is. It may not make much sense because its internally and externally complex, but most symptoms that people discuss and have and aren't sure are real or not, are common issues and symptoms within the community. People just like to gatekeep the hell out of DID, because its "rare" and "special" and all that bullshit. Most people with severe dissociative symptoms are going to have a severe dissociative disorder, probably multiple of them.

[pdid-culture-is]

(vent-ish) P-DID culture is being so so so jealous of other (not pdid) systems for how they operate and are so. perfect. we dont work like other systems at all and it makes me so jealous when people talk about their system. sometimes i really wish i just had standard DID so it wouldnt be as hard, all non-PDIDs have it so easy and they dont even know it.. tons of resources online and others to relate to. maybe its bad to say but i yearn for the generic system experiences, even the negative parts. i want full switches and blackouts, i want the confusion that comes with it, i want alters that can actually be active, i want every part of the DID experience so i can relate to someone. i feel guilty over that, why would i ever want it different when i obviously have it easier than most? dont know. im tired of not being seen in the system community im tired of the alienation im tired of everything and i just want to feel comfortable with my own system but its so hard when you dont even feel seen by people who are supposed to get you the most. im sorry

.

[kornlings]

sorry, I can't hang out today! I'm too dissociated to do anything!

[lemon-tea-leaves]

If you're gonna go around talking about how invalid self-diagnosis is and how you should ALWAYS just go to a doctor because they're the experts, consider doing the following instead:

Reminding yourself that no doctor is infallible, and unfortunately there are shitty and VERY misinformed doctors out there

Advocate for the spreading of accurate information about the neurodivergence or illness or disorder or etc.

In that same vein, dispel myths and misconceptions about said Brain And Body Things™

Advocate for easier access to evaluation and diagnosis

Support people who have been medically gaslit in the past and just want to know what's going on with themselves

Support people who have had their life affected by their symptoms (despite not knowing what was causing them) and just want to know what's going on with themselves

Support people who just Feel something Wrong and just want to know what's going on with themselves

Just fucking support people and stop tearing others down because you're white knighting

There are people intentionally making a mockery of things like DID or being autistic, among other things. And there are people who mis-self-diagnose (usually due to research that isn't deep enough) and are fed misinformation which leads to them misrepresenting the disorder.

But there are also people who have the symptoms, looked into the symptoms, found something that matched the symptoms, and maybe FINALLY felt they had an answer when they couldn't find one because they didn't have the means or whatever the reason.

And you're telling them that they're making a mockery of a disorder because they wanted to find a reason. And it's because you associate them with the people on TikTok that you roll your eyes at. And it's fucking annoying.

TL;DR:

Maybe instead of being a dick about self-diagnosis, you could help set a path towards making it so people don't have to in the fucking first place.

(Also, as for my opinion on self-dx, self-dx with a good amount of research from verified accurate sources = A-OK. I'm saying this as a professionally diagnosed person who has had to self-dx in the past. I've been wrong about some things and right about others, and professionals have been right about some and wrong about others. But it helped to set me down the right path. I wouldn't be where I am if I hadn't.)

[cookie-nom-nom]

weirdly enough one of the things that prevented me from fully using exclusively they/them pronouns wasn’t even like a fear of blatant transphobia or whatever. It was because an acquaintance with DID developed a headmate based on me and I realized they were integrating my habits so I stopped telling them personal details about myself bc I didn’t want to influence the headmate into being someone they weren’t. And then the headmate transitioned to they/them before I did and it gave me a crisis about who was copying who. So like. Everyone’s gender journey is different but some are zanier than others. shall we say.

[binary-sys]

not cis not trans but a secret third thing (introject that identifies with my source gender which doesn't match the body)

[gay--dog]

is there a chance my plurality will get more clear and more defined or am i just gonna have to deal with never knowing who the fuck i am ever and not being able to predict or control any of it like forever until it maybe goes away if i get better in the future

[dreamwritesstuff]

puzzle of us

"careful," he says, putting the piece into place- the last one we have. it's finally done!, i go to jump up from the table, "but there's gaps," i realize, "the edges aren't finished and there's holes in the middle" "i know," he says, "but this is all we have for now"

i stare at the puzzle. it's old and faded, much older than i. the corners of the pieces are peeling up, the paper printed on the cardstock not glued down well enough. they were never cut quite right, never fit together like they should've, you had to force them to fit sometimes, unsure of if it was the right spot or not. the colors were sepia tinted and, as i looked at the picture as a whole… "what is it?" i asked "its us" he said, "its our story of childhood"

i stared at it some more. yes, i could see it now, the swings with our cousin, playing catch with our dad, baking with our mom, games with our sister… "but what about my memories?" i asked he shook his head, "those memories aren't happy"

that didn't feel very fair

so i stared some more at the puzzle of us, with the missing pieces and torn up paper and peeling edges and confusing pictures and sepia toned colors and i tried to make it feel like home

he set his hand on my shoulder, "it's okay" he says, and i believe him because he never lies, "it'll feel like home soon"

and i didn't know how he knew what i was thinking but i believed him and so we sat together staring at the incomplete puzzle of us and it didn't feel like home still, even as the clock ticked by hour by hour, month by month, but maybe it will soon