#this stuff seems to be a common experience for a lot of introjects though

[thethingything]

anyway sorry about all the system posts in quick succession, I'm just having a weird time because our brain's fixated on wanting to talk about source stuff again but that's still way too anxiety inducing and idk why it's doing this but I guess it's just a thing it does every so often

[skyedancer-system]

Some people on another post said they were interested in hearing our system experiences (with being a gateway system and other stuff), so here we go!

It got pretty long so we’ll use a cut ^^

We’re a gateway system, which means that our headspace is, in a way, a real place somewhere. For us, we see it as a kind of in-between space between worlds, and that we’re connected to it, an others are as well (more on that later). We call our headspace STAR SPACE bc of how it looks (a bunch of floating islands in outer space; the art in our pinned is mostly accurate to what it looks like) and it just sounds nice ^^

Since STAR SPACE is an in-between, we get new people showing up a lot, most commonly because 1.) Something happened to their world/happened to them in their world, or 2.) They already had an aptitude for world-hopping and ended up in STAR SPACE. The “something happened to them” explanation is the more common of the two in our experience.

We do have one person in particular who world-hops a lot: 🔮Sunny. Crow goes between here and crow’s home world (where he is also part of a system) a lot. He actually spends more time there than here, but comes over every so often to check in, sometimes bringing friends along (first time that happened is documented here (link)). 🐝Bee travels too, but she can’t go back to buzz’s home world for some reason; we aren’t completely sure why. She does tag along with 🔮Sunny sometimes though. Them traveling between STAR SPACE and crow’s system is how we fully realized that it’s an in-between space.

We have had a few people permanently leave, or at least it seems permanent considering how long they’ve been gone and the circumstances around it. It’s different than someone going dormant; when they’re dormant we can still mostly feel that they’re here in the system (down in the void beneath STAR SPACE we’re pretty sure). When someone leaves completely, their presence is 100% gone until they come back (if they come back).

Gateways between STAR SPACE and other worlds tend to form when we get latched onto a certain world that exists in fiction here; it’s why we have so many people in here that we call fictives (though they technically aren’t introjects), and a lot of people from one place or closely connected places tend to come through in a short time (for example, the most recent was Pokémon, and we had 11 people show up in around 2 months, mostly from the same version of the Pokémon world).

We’ve had a couple people end up in the system long before their home worlds were even conceptualized in this world. 🌑Mare and 🔪Omori have been around for well over a decade at this point (though none of us knew we were separate people back then), yet their sources have only existed here for around 7-8 and 3 years respectively. They did not realize who they were until we interacted with their sources, but they were always themselves.

There are only 2 people in here that don’t originate in an outside world; 🐉Night (who was the first to ever split we’re pretty sure), and 🌈Aster (an OCtive who formed as we were making a design). 🌈Aster stands out since he formed within the past year, while 🐉Night has been here since elementary school or earlier.

Like in other systems, STAR SPACE does tend to pull more people through when we’re stressed or going through a hard time. People can show up at any time though.

There’s a lot we still don’t understand, and that we never will, but that’s part of what we enjoy about this! We are always discovering more about ourself, and other worlds in the process! We just wish there were more gateway systems out there talking about their experiences; we want to see how they differ and how they’re similar!

If anyone has questions about anything we’d love to answer them! Talking about our system is something we really enjoy, and sometimes it helps us realize new things too!

[symptoms-syndrome]

hi, i hope it's okay to send this, please don't feel obligated to respond. my bf sent me your recent post about online DID communities and i wanted to say thank you for sharing it because i really relate.

i have what my bf describes as a very "typical" case of DID-- one single part who seems to be an introject of my abuser and stuck at the age the trauma happened, possession-type switches and amnesia. however, until i met my bf (who also has a dissociative disorder + has researched this stuff) i always thought i was some sort of freak, that my experiences with dissociation are highly abnormal. i seriously thought the "common" dissociative experience was to have lots of well-defined alters with their own personalities and little to no amnesia. i never wanted to reach out to others because i thought my experience was unique and, for lack of a better term, that my case was too "extreme" for most people who claim to suffer from dissociative disorders to relate to

and the false perception of DID that online communities has given me over the years has fucked me up a bit i think. very few people know i struggle with this sort of thing, i keep my own experiences a tightly-guarded secret because what i go through is scary and i don't know if people will believe me when i say it's scary. but it's scary. even though i've been dealing with this for years the possession-type switches scare the hell out of me. dealing with a violent and capricious part who imitates the person who hurt me scares the hell out of me. so i've always avoided looking at DID-related stuff online because it makes me feel othered, i'm just like-- why aren't you guys scared too? is this supposed to be fun? what's wrong with me? and it really sucks because apparently my experiences aren't uncommon at all, and yet it feels taboo to talk about, like i'd be ruining people's fun or something. i don't know

so yeah, again feel free to ignore this, i just wanted to say thank you again and that i really relate. since opening up to my bf and learning more about DID i've been tentatively trying to find blogs or books or whatever from people who experience some of the Scary stuff i do, esp the possession feeling and the having an abuser introject, but i think probably a lot of us feel the same way-- ashamed, isolated, too extreme-- and even those who speak up get drowned out. and yet i want to talk about it so badly. i want to talk about it so others like me know they aren't anomalies, but at this point i don't know how. :(

I really appreciate you sharing! I very very very much resonate with the whole. "What's wrong with me" and "is this supposed to be fun."

I've been told that I also have a relatively textbook experience with DID, if there is a textbook experience. I didn't know until adulthood that that was what I was experiencing, I went through a lot of different diagnoses to get here. I'm often very scared by my experiences.

DID is a scary disorder by virtue of being formed by scary trauma, I think. And I think it's easier for most people, including many w DID themselves, to see "softer" versions of DID, or DID that's more clearly defined and easier to understand. A big thing that scares me about my own DID is my lack of understanding about it. I don't know exactly how many parts I have, even with parts I know relatively well I don't always know their own inner workings or when they front/are around. Obviously there's also the lack of understanding that comes with not knowing what I've done when I have amnesia episodes. I even have some symptoms/experiences/presentations that feel dramatic and fake, and those make me feel embarrassed and scared too.

I've done a fair amount of healing, I think, even though I'm still very much in the beginning of this healing journey. It's become less scary than it was. But it's definitely still scary. And scary in a way that's hard to understand.

I will just say, if it's comfort or maybe just because I want to, the loudest and/or most confident voices are often not the most common or correct.

Phobia of inner experiences is something pretty well documented among many (I hesitate to say most even though I think that's true? Simply because I don't want to definitively say one way or the other based on memory alone) people with DID. Many of us are scared of our own experiences, and thus don't talk about them as much as people with possibly an atypical presentation of DID. I think that's why many "typical" people with DID get drowned out.

I relate to keeping it a closely guarded secret. And it can be really, really hard to do that. I hope you're able to come to a place someday where you feel okay sharing with whoever you feel is important to share with.

That's why I like the internet, and why it feels so awful to have my websphere taken over. The internet (Tumblr in particular) has anonymity, I can choose who knows who I am and who doesn't. What I say here doesn't impact people's perceptions of me IRL. I could delete this whole blog if I wanted to, and start a new one with a fresh slate (which I won't, but I could.) I get to pick and choose what I put here and what I don't.