#this was a specialist therapist for people with dissociative disorders that took me over a month of searching to find

[reimeichan]

Do you have any advice for being taken seriously by professionals? We tried to bring up OSDD with our therapist but he seems to think we’re just chronically online. It was really disheartening

It really depends on your therapist. For us, we were able to in the intake forms mention that we suspected we have a dissociative disorder, possibly DID or OSDD, and our therapist actually took the time to assess and diagnose us. However, she was specifically a trauma-informed therapist with many years of experience helping DID patients to the point she was a dissociative specialist in all but name, so it would make sense that she actually took the time to work with us and take our concerns seriously. Every therapist we've worked with after that has also been trauma-informed and had experience with dissociative disorders.

However, I've also heard that people have had more success describing the symptoms of their disorder without mentioning a specific diagnosis or disorder. I'd also say that it'd likely help to bring in specific examples from your life of how the symptoms have affected you; for example, for us we may say "There are times where I'm talking to my parents where I feel like I'm suddenly watching myself scream and yell at them when before we were relatively calm, and I have no control over myself as it happens and it's like I'm a passenger in my own body." Or "I have a lot of trouble trying to stay consistent but it feels like who I am changes from moment to moment and it's so confusing. I can't make long-term plans because I don't know if I'll still have these same goals the next day, I can't even keep the same wardrobe because I'll look at my clothes and feel like I don't like anything there even though clearly I was the one who bought all of that stuff, so that means I must like those clothes, right? I can't even keep friendships because I may feel close to someone for a while but sometimes they're like a complete stranger to me." Something like that, I find, has often made professional more receptive to actually helping and listening to their clients.

But also.... sometimes, you may just need to find a different therapist if they aren't able to work with you. Maybe they're not trauma-informed enough. Maybe they don't know enough about dissociative disorders. Maybe they're the type who don't even believe in the existence of DID/OSDD. Or, maybe, they're just not giving you what you need from a therapist. I'm not saying this is the case for you, anon, but sometimes it's good to think about if you're getting the service you want/need, and if you're not, to find someone else who may be able to help you and meet you where you're at.

I hope that helps you, anon. Trying to navigate the world of mental health in this day and age can be difficult and I really sympathize with that.

[system-of-a-feather]

Early Therapy Story Time with Riku

So I was telling my friend a bit about a kind of funny story of what our first few months / year in therapy was like when our therapist was specialized in Autism and Aspergers with little training with trauma / dissociation. It is just kind of a sit down kind of story so if you wanna read some of our experiences and get a laugh or take whatever lesson from our experience you like, feel free to read below the “keep reading”

-Riku (Host)

Back when we first entered therapy I think in like 2016, I wasn’t host (at best maybe co-host but I primarily was only active to be online and occasionally in our high school band) but instead a now-dormant alter we call TA was “host”. I put “ “ around that because while she was technically host, she switched out a lot and there was little organization in our system due to other issues in the past causing dissociative barriers to be higher than ever and making communication hard for most parts besides Lucille and myself. (which back then we were in active denial about DID and having alters so I just thought of him as my ‘smart brain’)

Originally, our family was extremely against therapy as it was a waste of money and “stupid”, but between a mental health related hospitalization of my middle sister, Lucille and I were able to put a plan to use our parent’s love for looking like the perfect parents against them as to get them to let us “get therapy for 13 weeks for Trichotillomania” and then continue using their desire to look like the perfect parents to keep us in therapy. It wasn’t necessarily the most moral way, but at the point we were at in our mental health, we needed it.

At the time, TA was really not handling our life well, was majorly depressed on a daily basis, and loathed existing to dangerous levels. From what I hear from Lucille and the bits I saw from the headspace, she often compared herself to her “online personality that could do everything where she couldn’t even socialize if her life depended on it”. Aderis, at the time, was a very jaded individual who expected for us to k*** ourselves by the time we were 18 and was behaving recklessly and as a persecutor more than a protector. I was going through abuse through a number of toxic co-dependent friendships and was slowly getting majorly depressed and stressed over how I was living. Lucille was the only active fronter that was able to function remotely well at the time, so he pulled me aside to help get us into therapy since I cared about mental health.

Anyways we ended up with a therapist that specialized in autism and aspergers because we had to hide our intentions with the three diagnoses we had before being aspergers (which my mom said we were said to have at a young age but later took it back??), trichotillomania, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Pretty quickly our therapist picked up that TA dissociated a lot and quickly came across how much she hated her existence and hated that our real life was so shit compared to our online life. Like when asked about what exactly she hated about her life / self she often rambled about how useless she was in comparrison to the life I lead online and how she felt she should just give up on life and live online since it made us happier and was better and so on.

My therapist - untrained in trauma and dissociation - did pick up on the symptom of dissociation and (in hindsight) I realize he probably went ‘shit this is larger than i thought’ and did comment “The differentiation you have between your online self and irl self sounds almost like DID but I dont know if that applies if it is online and offline self since people tend to have similar” and we vaguely addressed handling as if it was DID.

My therapist then commented on how it would be best to try to “integrate” the online and offline self, which is kind of a decent step in thought and theory for our situation, but considering he was unexperienced and handling it - it didn’t quite work that way. In therapy we then began to work towards making the online world and real life world meet which did actually get me back to being involved in our real life as Lucille had me pick people I knew irl that I thought I would be comfortable interacting with online. I picked three people and invited them to a party and only one of them stuck, that person being my current fiance.

From there a lot of work was about trying to bring her “online personality” more into the real world so that she could have the skills she developed online and what not, and essentially that didn’t really work in terms of integration as much as it really just forced me to be involved more. Since I was talking to our fiance online, I had to front more to talk to him in person since TA would get uncomfortable pretty quickly around others and she struggled to trust / get comfrotable around him.

Slowly things generally started to involve me in the real world a lot and at some point TA kind of just decided she was done existing and done fronting and dealing with life and kind of went into a slumber which has lasted the past 3 years. When that happened the system just kinda all turned to me and told me life was now my responsibility as both the most socially adjusted alter, the most passing alter, the alter that was most actively involved in our real life on a personal level and everything.

But like... I guess I didn’t tell this in such a funny manner, but like our original therapist didn’t diagnose us with DID - he wasn’t qualified to nor did he think it was ACTUALLY DID - and kind of worked with it as a weird normal level of dissociation and worked with it kind of like an exaggerated description of sorts. I don’t think for a moment he actually thought of us as separate.

I really just kind of find it funny in hindsight how much effort was put into bringing the “online personality” and integrating it and kinda how it both failed and succeeded in the long run.

It is also kind of why a non-specialist shouldn’t try to work with DID, but also to show I guess that working with a non-specialist can be helpful? Since in the end, what my first therapist did was enable and promote a host switch to the most effective potential host and that did our life a large boost considering TA would likely have been unable to maintain a relationship, manage college, or stick to therapy as full heartedly as I.

With that being said, it did put her in a deep dormancy that the entire system has been trying to preserve until we are in a safe enough life / stable enough situation and all that no matter what damage her waking up and coming out of dormancy might cause that we are 100% certain we can handle it well.

But thats just a bit of our story / night time tale of our early therapy days XD Felt like sharing the story so I hope you enjoyed. Any comments or questions regarding this is fully welcome.

[madd-information]

Hi, I was just wondering if you could explain to me the basics of MaDD, ya know, what it is how it affects different people (of course this won't be the same for everyone, but still), and how it is coped with. I think I kinda understand what it is, but I was hoping you could clarify for me. Tysm, I hope you're doing wonderfully today 😘

MD is a clinical phenomenon that was first described in 2002 by an Israeli trauma therapist (Eli Somer).  He noticed several of his patients alluded to inner worlds and decided to explore it further.  Being a specialist in trauma he originally thought it was unique to victims of childhood trauma. It took a few years but eventually a particularly tenacious MDer (Jayne Bigelsen) came across that 2002 paper… but she didn’t have any trauma, she had a wonderful childhood!  She enlisted the help of other researchers and a couple more papers were published which established that trauma was not necessary to the development of MD and a possible connection to OCD. Awareness began to spread and through the years more papers have been published and more researchers have begun to study MD. 

What they have found, so far, is that MD begins with a trait for absorptive/immersive daydreaming.  There seems to be a subset of people who are simply born with this innate trait.  For many it never becomes an issue (the “immersive daydreamers”) but for others something happens to make the behavior problematic.  That “something” could be many things, researchers have found a variety of pathways to the development of MD.  For some that might be trauma (mostly the kind brought on by neglect) but for others it can stem from characterological issues (shyness, introversion), adverse circumstances (isolation) or comorbid disorders (anxiety, depression etc). For a few there seems to be no particular pathway!  They discover this rewarding experience and indulge themselves too much to the point they become addicted.  

And the experience is rewarding.  MD, through the immersion, is an affect-laden experience.  MDers tend to have elaborate, fanciful and linear daydreams in which they become emotionally attached to their worlds and characters. They often have an idealized-self (but not always) and daydream about a variety of themes.  These themes differ from non-MDers who more often have daydreams based on real world events or wish fulfillment, but what really sets MD apart is the associated distress.  

This distress doesn’t come from the daydreams themselves (remember, immersive daydreaming is very rewarding) but from the effects is has on the MDers real life.  The three major sources (though there are more) are Time, Control and Shame.

Time.

57% of MDers say guilt and remorse over neglecting their real life is one of the most distressing aspects of MD. Some of it has to do with the quantity, MDers report spending an average of 56% of their day in fantasy. (Its also worth noting this 56% was active, elaborate, fantasy and did not include other types of daydreaming which MDers also engage in.)

Most MDers say their life would seem normal to an outside observer, but despite being successful in the real world they still carry a lot of stress through what they describe as a difficult ‘balancing act’. The temporary reduction of fantasy activity to get through obligations lead to increased anxiety and in some withdrawal-like symptoms, some will also ‘binge’ when the event is over, pushing away friends and family.

24% of MDers believe they are socially impaired, 9% say they have no friends or meaningful relationships. And many don’t sleep in a healthy way due to the amount of time spent daydreaming at night.  But even those who report normal social functioning still say they prefer spending time in fantasy to with their friends and family, which causes immense guilt and shame and the stress associated with that. MDers can daydream in the presence of others, though many, especially the ‘movers’ prefer not to, but this group also ends up exhausted with the balancing act and feels like they are never really present in the events of their lives.

Control.

MDers tend to enjoy their daydreams, love them in fact, but find themselves distressed by the fact that they can’t control them.  That’s not to say daydreams just pop up unbidden out of nowhere, they can, but, also common is the urge to create, MDers are unable to “control their desire to create the fantasies”. A full quarter of them describe it as a feeling of addiction, complete with withdrawal-like symptoms and almost 80% have tried to limit their daydreaming behavior, almost always failing, which, I’m sure you can imagine, is a very distressing thing to learn about yourself.

Shame.

Over 80% of Mders go out of their way to hide their daydreaming behavior from others, creating a sense of isolation and damaging social networks. They fear embarrassment and people thinking they are ‘insane or pathetic’ or, conversely, dismissing their concerns entirely. MDers also live with a sense that real relationships can’t compare to their daydreams and that life and real world relationships are less satisfying, causing a distressing disconnect from the people in their lives.  Though the daydreams themselves are enjoyable the ‘crash’ afterwards is extremely depressing and causes them guilt and shame for neglecting and not appreciating the actual content of their lives.

It’s important to remember that MD is still in the infancy of research.  MD researchers believe it may be a behavioral addiction and/or an OCD spectrum disorder, and consider MD to be the pathological side of dissociative absorption (which, until MD, has not been considered unhealthy).  There is currently no treatment protocol for MD, studies on possible treatment options are ongoing, but the general advise is to avoid triggers and treat any underlying issues, ideally in tandem with treating the MD as it seldom remits when only treating the comorbid disorder. Some find that medications help, but this seems to be hit or miss and in some cases makes the daydreaming worse. Researchers also recommend mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy.  How any individual goes about coping is going to vary depending on their circumstances, which pathway led them to MD and how severely the behavior is impacting their life.  

I hope this helps, hit me up with any additional questions or thoughts!

[voredere]

i don't know if my perspective is welcome given that i'm tying into the opioid crisis topic but i'm chiming in.

i have ehlers-danlos syndrome. it's a connective tissue disorder that makes my joints constantly pop out of place, my skin stretches and tears easily, and my general structural integrity is bad. this hurts a lot and often, and has since i was a child. i haven't had a naturally pain free day since i was 12. i'm 25.

but here's the thing: i also have a dissociative disorder. when something hurts, my brain blocks it out as much as it can, and i become stoic. ive ignored torn ligaments, broken bones, concussions, deep wounds and burns, and other things that should by all means be agonising. i don't express pain correctly. i CANT express pain correctly. and sometimes, my perceived pain is actually an understatement of the injury.

anyway due to my age and inability to express pain i haven't only been denied treatment dozens of times over my life, i've been denied EVALUATION. ive had doctors and physical therapists scoff at me and not run a single test.

when the pain became unbearable and the trauma of being gaslit over and over by doctors became too much, i tried to self medicate, and ingested tainted painkillers.

i almost died.

but here's why i'm bringing this up: after it happened, the doctors asked me why i took bootleg painkillers. i told them everything. the entire story above, start to finish. i told them i'd been in pain my whole life and i told them doctors had never, ever helped me or even tested me for anything no matter how many references or how much proof i had.

i told this story dozens of times while i was in the icu. and do you know what happened?

i still wasn't tested or treated for anything. i wasn't referred to a pain specialist or anything. i was told by the physical therapist i was too young to have chronic pain, and i should work out more. the discharge doctor reiterated this and attempted to take me off of my HRT as well. i was in the same position that had originally led me to try and self medicate and OD (and i told the doctor so, too.)

my point being:

doctors know the system is hostile to pain patients. they know patients are dismissed at every turn. but be it through cognitive dissonance or apathy, no one seems able to connect the dots between pain patients not trusting doctors or turning to black market alternatives to try and survive, and the way they're treated when they're in the hospital.

something has to change, and it needs to involve compassion for chronic disability and pain, and less focus on enforcing DEA regulations at all costs. THIS kills people, either directly when a doctor identifies a critical patient as a "faker" or tangentially when a pain patient gives up and turns to the black market (often to die), and it has to stop.

im so sick of tiktok nurses and doctors trying to mock their patients for coming in and saying their pain is at a ten but not performing the pain for them

every time ive been in the hospital near death i was simply too exhausted to perform pain for these people. it was a ten on the pain scale but they thought i was faking it for whatever reason until they got my lab tests back and realized i would need to be checked in for quite a while

like maybe you, able bodied young doctor/nurse who has never experienced chronic pain and disability cannot fathom me rolling up near death and a flat expression unable to scream and holler about my agonies but I assure you some of us are just too fucking tired to scream about something we generally live with every single day

on god wanna punch the smug off their faces.

[2dtacokit-blog]

oh jeez. Coming Back and I guess, Coming Out?

Well it has been over a few years I think since I was last on here and boy has things changed, myself included. I wasn’t planning on coming back on here as it was a horrendous triggering mess, couldn’t stand the bitchiness and toddlers... But my best buddy dragged my sorry ass back. My blog was an unmitigated disaster, I cringed for the longest time and was furious with myself. Mass deleting spree. It’s a long old read, maybe the longest post in the entire universe, but I cannot put this concisely. If you make it to the end, I thank you for witnessing this.

TW for CSA, SA, R, Su, Si. Just tread carefully. Crude, explicit and uncensored. 

If you know me in real life, please please do not reveal this information.

Some things are the same, still parenting, still confused, still in therapy, still fighting the same old demons but a lot has changed. I have grown up for a start, wizened up a bit, got some of my shit together and I am now single. I gave two fingers up to the NHS mental health service after the complete closure of therapeutic services in my area and sought private medical care. I am in private analytic psychotherapy weekly, getting to know myselves. I have now been formally/clinically diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, which has been a tough nut to get my teeth around. An old me, unsure who, used to write about it on here with complete assurance that it was the case and I didn’t recognise that attitude when I came back on. I will now be a lot more cautious with what I write with relation to my mental health because it puts me at great risk. I do not want the whole perimeter for my existence to be based on my mental health anymore... Even though it still governs my existence.

So yes, we are a “system” working towards consolidation of trauma and experiences in therapy and with private specialists, but we are primarily Aly. 

Another biggie to cover, and this will be the first place other than the survivors forum I will post this on, is that I am having serious issues with gender dysphoria. Now this is gonna sound very strange, for most that have known me I have seemed someone who sexualized their female body continually, putting it on display and clinging to it. Well... It came as a shock to me as to anyone I haven’t already come out to (literally 5 people I know in real life?). I will do what I can to explain and make sense of what is an ongoing discovery with my therapist.

Trauma fucks with people in many ways. Sexual and psychological trauma is an insidious beast that disguises themselves in many forms. Now as I have already covered, I have DID. A condition caused by having to adapt to survive severe and repeated complex trauma in childhood. I still have not much of an idea what that is but other me’s do. That is neither here or there for now, that is my business, but what it does is erase chunks of my memory of things I have been unable to process/deal with. 

As a kid, I was abnormal to say the least. A large chunk of that was due to trauma, switching continually and just casually failing my way through anything other than academics. One thing I didn’t understand was how the heck I couldn’t connect to the girls around me. I didn’t understand them, couldn’t get my head around how they worked or how they looked. I was tall, scrawny, long haired boyish thing that was torn between doing what they loved (getting muddy, trashing shit, buying the most ridiculous jeans you can imagine, pummelling people in rugby, pummelling people in the playground ((not proud of it)), studying, hanging out with boys, being silly) and who I felt I should be (cute, girly, into pink, dancers, sweet, gentle). 

That conflict tore my little primary school brain apart. What used to happen at home is a mystery but school was agony. I would go in a dishevelled mess and was a freak, as all and sundry used to make clear. Girls didn’t want me as their friend because I wasn’t like them, and my attempts to emulate them came across desperate, copycat, attention seeking behaviour. But dammit I still tried. Tried the pink, tried the cute stuff, but they were my sisters stuff... Not for me. I loved them but they didn’t look right on me, made me feel worse. My younger sister was an alien to me; a proper real life girl and that highlighted my freakishness. I was being rejected by everyone. Experiencing massive emotional and physical neglect at home, bullied at school, turned away by counsellors and tutors, ofc rejected by the boys and girls I fancied. 

ENTER FROM THE LEFT MY MAGICALLY SHIT DISSOCIATIVE POWERS.

I had a few angry boy personalities about by this time, I didn’t know they were boys until like September last year. I had a mass emergence of parts, all male, that stored these memories like time capsules. Memories I had forgotten due to my dissociative amnesia. Anyway, similarly to how these parts formed and were there early, so came a female personality. One that could preform girl where the rest of us couldn’t. Not very well at this stage, she was a young girl, but she dutifully tried to copy the girls we grew up around. Camouflaging what I guess was early stage dysphoria from myself and those around me. This part felt terror at appearing anything like a boy, because looking like a boy when we should be a girl would get us bullied and rejected again. And we were alone enough. 

Around this time, I think between 9-11, I was visibly changing a lot in photos. Sometimes I would be incredibly tomboyish, othertimes... painfully... a mismatched attempt at what we felt a girl should be. Combine that with the elusive sexual abuse we aren’t clear of yet, we prioritised being sexually attractive over all else. Boys liked girls that had tits. Boys liked girls that liked their tits. My family liked girls that were girls, and tits were a thing girls had, make up were what girls wore. Girls liked girls that looked like girls, and were jealous of girls who looked sexy. Well that is who we will be, couldn’t be cute, so let’s be sexy instead. I wore miniskirts that were obscene, tank tops saying “sexy kitty” on it, and stuffed my croptop to make sure my tiny prepubescent body looked that little bit more adult. That didn’t go how we wanted it to. We looked more like a freak than ever because parts were still clinging desperately to their boyhood, and we looked like a clusterfuck to be honest. A sad one though. Desperately sad and my heart breaks to look back at that confused person in the photos.To be clear though, we were not at this point attaching any of this to gender, boyhood wasn't at this point me saying “LOOK I AM A BOY” but kinda what we really were without connecting the word boy to it. I wasn’t afforded an opinion of my own at this age, raised in the church, within a violent and abusive household in literally one of the whitest, hetero-normative, conservative towns in the UK erases ones ability to discover themselves.

In a final act of madness to solidify that i was a normal girl we went to an all girls school. 

Mistake.

Before we even got to that dam school we watched The Matrix. For the first time we saw someone that looked like a girl but also looked like a boy. We were mystified. We bypassed Trinity, she was a she and we didn’t connect at all, but the blonde one (who died very early on) has short boyish spiky hair. So we took our smol ass to the hairdressers and insisted we got our past shoulder length hair cut completely off. That did not go the way we planned. We looked older, looked somehow more like a freak girl/boy thing, and it was horrifying. We also looked like our mum, which was another problem related to the abuse stuff. We cried for ages because we felt like a freak, didn’t understand why we did it, couldn’t change it and we were about to start at the new, All Girls Grammar school. Shit. 

The first two years at that school was hell. My mum finally kicked my dad out, but we were still having to see him weekly. I was at this point dissociating all the time. I would have three loads of school stuff with me all the time, for reasons i couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand why the other girls had one pencil case when I had 3, had to have 3! How in the heck did these girls carry their stuff not in a bag or a giant tray like I had to?! Well I was catering to the parts that were present without knowing it. Either way I was bait man, freaking bait.

Skinny, tall, covered head to toe in excoriation marks, short tufty hair, looked like a boy, but so desperate to fit in I wore my dam mums make up. I got lost all the time, was crying all the time or having fits where i would smash stuff, steal things, yell for no reason or be very sexually overt. I was torn apart. A website was set up by my old so called friends called The Aly Fan Club, where they took photos of me around school, uploaded them to the net and commented on them, with people (usually men) commenting what they wanted to do to me. I took all this in silence because when i got home, my amnesia would wipe that shit clean from my brain for ages. From one hell to another. 

Coming out as what I thought was gay at this time was another huge problem, like any emo nerd I drew all this trash and put it on dA. In no time at all, most of the school knew I liked girls and there was now something NEW to bully me for. I tried to see this as punishment for my bullying behaviour in primary school to justify it but there was no justification. So much at this point was about punishment.

Punishment for being a freak, for being a loser, for not being like anyone else in this entire dam school. Punishment for looking so gross, for wanting these awful, naughty things, for liking the wrong people, for drawing how i felt... I needed to be punished. So I let it continue. I was an awful person and i needed to be punished.

But here is a thing. Breasts. When mine came in they came in suddenly. It felt like all my prayers had been answered and my ticket to being a girl like all these other girls had been called. I was One Of Them. I hated my body so much because of the hatred I got from others and my own discomfort that when these babies came in I adored them. Not what I anticipate anyone expects to here from someone suspecting they are a trans guy? “if you were truly dysphoric you would have hated them, that would have made it worse!” well for most cases probably. What these fatty parts gave me was attention, which i had been starved from in almost all aspects of my life, family included. What’s more, this attention was positive. I had never experienced such a thing for my body before that wasn’t... locked in another trauma pocket. 

For someone who was ready to kill themselves at age 12 because they were such an unforgivable, wretched, disgusting, freak, that wasn't even a girl, that couldn't stop biting themselves till they bled... The power my newly sexualised and definitely female body gave me was sorely needed. People fancied me now. They wanted to touch me rather than just hit me, or throw things at me. They wanted to pull me not swear at me or spit at me. Survival Aly adapts, it is what we do, so we adapted. But things were still not right. Self harm was a massive problem, so were suicide attempts because we were still... not quite there yet. We ventured online a lot, where older men from across the world would ask for photos, videos and meets. I had no idea this was sexual grooming, but we were also dependant on that to survive. Somehow though, the impact of that, some bullying that was still happening, my everpresent self hatred, confusion and discomfort and increase in abuse in the home led us to attempt suicide in the school toilet when i was 14.

We tried to cut our neck open this time.

A teacher found us and dragged us to student services. My mum as usual was angry as heck and embarrassed. Apologising for my behaviour and the inconvenience. My dad was cloying like molasses creeping into my head. I remember because i bled all over the blouse of Ms Ginsberg, a tutor i fancied since forever. It wasn’t that severe, it was considered a superficial wound, but the amount we were doing and the continual attempts were serious cause for concern. Then my step mom found photos of me being sexually active at 14 and before, my mom found a load of the video files for the other men and I was hospitalised. Something miraculous occurred during this time though, another part came out. One that was confident and proudly female, one that was overtly sexualised but more cunning. She was a chav, an incredible cheemo (idk if anyone remembers this fashion disaster movement thing). She could adapt and fit in to any social situation and essentially helped us waltz out of hospital with no memory of being there for years. 

All memory of confused tomboy/greyspace/whatever the fuck i was me was gone. This me didn’t give a dam and was in it for themselves and to survive, to be adored. And sex was their weapon, they just had to be cunning about it. By this point I was 15 and didn’t really think more about what I was. We were screwing guys now, guys and girls, thought this was something to be proud of. Dismissed the old small group of friends i had for the guys that hung around at the park and girls that used to go out and get drunk. We took naked photos of ourselves and put them online, and paraded ourselves around scantily clad because it made us feel powerful and loved. 

At 16 i was raped. I was again at 17 twice, and this pattern continued beyond being hospitalised for the second time at 20 (the worst 21st birthday ever), beyond getting pregnant which was also conceived through rape. I had been sexually abused and raped a lot during this time, but my dissociative amnesia would wipe the memory. So I would know something bad was happening but was denied processing it by my inbuilt survival mechanisms that kept me alive as a kid. I was unable to get out of the loop or register any danger because the switching would be so automatic, so ingrained, it basically was not up to me to get us out of the situation because another part was there in brace position having dissociated fully. All during this time I preformed female because it was necessary. I didn't have room to question my gender because i was too busy surviving and trying to literally not die. 

Then the pregnancy. I cant relive any of this trauma stuff too much, that isn't the point of this post but during this time, my gender was more apparent than ever before. Drawings we used to do of parts that had male appendages but still looked female started to change. Become more male. The internal distress was so monumental for many reasons; rape pregnancy, the gen father not leaving us alone, fear of my dad, still loosing my mind, desperately trying to be loved my my partner at the time. But there was another distress there. 

I cant be a mum. Women become mums. I cant hold this child in me. This shouldn't be there. 

Everyone was hammering home how much of a glowing woman I was and each time they said it I wanted to die. I tortured my body, got others to torture it too. Despised it, loathed it. It wasn't right to any of my parts. Three parts got us through that pregnancy but we dont know who gave birth. I dont remember it. We destroyed almost every pregnant photo of us. What were we disgusted by aside from the feeling of being broken, used and bred? How undeniably, unquestionably female we were. 

Even so things were happening inside my head and body that made us feel insane. We started feeling like we had a penis, like felt like we could touch it, could feel stimulated by holding an appendage there (tmi i know). We tried in secret without thinking about it, moving our breasts up, down, flat, out of the way (fairly impossible by this point i was a lactating G cup *vomits*). We had glimmers of feeling male... which... felt good. First time we pegged we cried in the toilet with the door locked because it felt real, felt right though we couldn't explain it. So we were too scared to do it again, tried to force feminise ourselves again because that is WHO WE SHOULD BE. I mean look? I have a kid now, i am “mom”. Stopped drawing these mysterious genderconfused parts and forcefully only drew accurately what our body was. Which was agony.

Until September 2017. 

Ploughing through therapy, maturing, making milestones in recovery when we started to talk about childhood trauma, my dad, the first and only time i drew myself fully as a man for my friend, and BAM! Bam! is not overrated it was literally a Bam! moment, because the part emergence I mentioned earlier occurred. And with these male parts came the bloody nail bat of gender dysphoria hitting me in the head over and over till I self harmed for the first time in years. The male parts were terrified and disoriented at first, they had a lot of growing up and catching up to do, some more so than others. They remembered being 15, 13, 10. Remembered the first pegging experience, remembered... things we had no connection to. Now they are mostly my age, helping each other to mature and grow as needed due to being a parent. 

The first used to cry and scream in the mirror, punching walls because the body was wrong. Attacking our breasts like i had done subconsciously for years but this time, because they knew their breasts were wrong. They drew themselves over and over to solidify their gender identity when all else was screaming they were female. We pulled away from our partner, couldn't be touched, couldn't be interacted with because it would be a reminder of our gender. We flinched at being called a woman, a girl, female, and with that came memories of feeling like that as a kid. Fuck me, we were dysphoric as a kid. The first proper realisation.

Up until this point we had NO idea we had ever experienced gender dysphoria. But this is how DID works. It erases traumatic information and stores it in the parts that dealt with it. When the parts properly emerge, this information is leaked out over time. So great. Dysphoria.

Another part came out to implement what I am now starting to think is their cure for this, to ultimately feminise us. Because we needed to be female. Erase the dysphoria and with it that other male part. Nothing feminises me quicker than one of my most terrifying abusers. So guess what bellend got back in contact and re-traumatised the system, this one *points to self in dismay*. Long story short, shit went down, not un consensual shit as before but still shit. That part would routinely draw the male part being hurt by this guy over and over again till they freaked out. 

But wait! The hellscape is not over. From stage right we have another destructive part, hyper-masculine, angry and unempathetic. Grateful to him because his presence pulled us away from that guy (he viewed him as pathetic and beneath him), but now we are just... drinking. Getting wasted in the park, hitting things, smoking up at night again. My specialist had told me to get to know these parts as they are vital for my recovery so we drew what they needed us to draw and goddam these guys are hurt. These are protective parts. They took the shit we couldn’t. And this one, swearing at my partner, exploding all over the place, trying to run away, self harming, kicking the shit out of the wheely bin outside survives threat of physical violence. The one that went to my old abuser survives some of the more extreme sexual violence and torture and the first male part deals with psychological abuse. I can see it in their drawings, their confessions and in our therapy sessions. We have other parts but they dont want to be discussed.

All of these parts are heavily dysphoric because they are all male. Unquestionably so. Their rage at this body is because it isn’t the right one.  So where do I come into it, me being the primary/fronting part, or leader of the twisted UN committee that is my brain?  That has taken longer to figure out, and has been a more agonising journey. 

I am dysphoric too. 

I cannot erase now i have them, the memories of my childhood spent dysphoric. The memories of trying at any cost to be a girl. Which shouldn’t be hard considering genetically I am one. I have had to fight within myself my transphobia i didn't even know was present. We aren’t talking bigotry here, but the genuine terror that i could be transgender. When most of the make up of who I am, and my survival to this day has been formulated by trying to accepted, loved, normal (though i failed at that horribly), not rejected and safe from physical, sexual and psychological abuse... Coming to terms with the fact you are transgender is not a comfortable thought. Not one I welcomed, and one that terrified us. 

The fear of being transgender was so great it made us sick, sent us into crisis, started us self harming again. Trying everything we can to not be transgender because I have been through enough and survival brain is screaming as loud as it can that this will cause serious problems. But we couldn’t. Cant draw myself as a girl at all without wanting to cry or wretch. Cant wear girls clothes because i feel like i am crossdressing?! Cant wear bras, cant do feminine make up, cant do anything I used to do to be accepted anymore. Cant be a girlfriend anymore. 

We started without realising it trying to make ourselves masculine. We would zone out and be drawing on facial hair with eyebrow pencil, tried using vetwrap to bind my chest, do not do this, it bruised us for days. We bought a mans top and a guys jeans and we lived in them exclusively unless family was over. We started wearing boxers, packing (though going to the loo and watching a dam sock fall out your pants makes your dysphoria worse and left us feeling humiliated so stopped doing this). I started drawing me not my parts but me and that me was always always male unless we were trying to force ourselves to draw a female us. 

We reached out eventually to my best friend Ruth, and they encouraged us to get a binder. This provoked fear again. Self harm, self medicating, the usual destructive bs. But now the distress levels were triggering depersonalisation and derealisation; both symptoms of DID survival patterns. We stopped being able to recognise ourselves in mirrors because the damn amnesia was wiping it in an instant. My hands would feel male then flick to female, my body was glitching continually and I tried to get out of buying a binder by talking about my “genuine transgender friends” saying how I couldn't be trans because of their experience, that I am so obviously taking the piss, that I cannot be trans this must all be trauma. But Ruth stuck with me, as did a few other people, and still pushed for me to get a binder just to see how it felt. 

I did and when it arrived and i tried it on the reaction was... well... overwhelming. Much like looking in the mirror seeing what is a very female face with a drawn on beard, i was looking at a body i hated being crammed into something that kinda hurt to put on, and making me look like i had a deformed ribcage. I cried. I dont know what i expected in that moment. Maybe that all the dysphoria will go away and it would be fixed and that would be that. All okay. But no. I felt sad that I was punishing my body for not being right, angry at myself for not being able to just be a dam woman. I MADE A BABY WITH MY BODY THIS SHIT SHOULD BE EASY. 

Standing in a mirror, with a binder on, boxers on and socks stuffed in them trying my best to look like a man, I felt like a freak. 

But then i put a shirt on. And holy heck i could see my feet. I was small, the first time i have ever looked at myself and seen a small body rather than something deformed that i see when i see my breasts. I looked smart, I looked beautiful in that shirt. The tears were still rolling down my dam cheeks, and i was a snotty wreck but I for the first time in 4-5 years I also didn't feel rage at being fat. Because I wasn't fat, not in the slightest. Standing there in shirt and boxers with flat chest, masc make up on, i looked like a guy... just about. And i smiled. I smiled so much. 

I urgently facetimed Ruth and was like “come see how good I look” something I hadn’t genuinely felt in a very long time unless a man thought I was sexy. But here, in my tip of a room, almost dancing on cam for my best friend, showing her how i could bend over and no udders were just dangling there, how i could type and see my hands move... I looked at myself and felt good. I didn't care if anyone else thought i looked good because I felt on top of the world 

This was my first introduction to gender euphoria, that wasn’t related to some obscure masturbatory habits and pegging. That feeling made things liveable for a while. I wanted to chase that feeling because it felt incredible. I was working out before but now I did it to not get thin, to not starve myself but to love myself. I started taking weight training seriously, and whilst the gym was a trigger for my dysphoria (room full of massive dudes who all see you and talk to you as a girl in your skimpy ass gym kit will do that to you) I pushed on. My shoulders are getting broader now, muscle definition starting and i love each of these changes. I eat more than I ever have done but I eat healthily because this male me, this real me that i seem to love I want to treasure, look after and care for. 

I am not gonna wear baggy clothes and cut my hair off to look like a passable cis guy because that feels like punishment, and I have done that enough in my life and been punished by people in ways that have left me unable to walk and bleeding. I want to see my body when i work out because i love seeing the muscle definition, I wince at my breasts but try to imagine it being different. I love my long floppy hair, and I am not gonna change that because men with long hair are stunning. People talk about “the cut”, and I get the feeling of shame that i must be making this all up because i dont want to cut my hair off, but I am not a boy, I am almost 25. I have lived through some shit, I am not a boy. I am... a man. And I like how my hair feels like a lions mane. I associate cutting my hair off with my own lack of control and desperation so i dont want to return to that ever. 

My therapist has been exceptional. He wants me to embrace this because he has seen massive improvement. Yes I am in and out of crisis a lot, there is a lot on my plate and dysphoria is a c*nt when you are already struggling, but here is the dam thing.

For the first time in my miserable fucking life I don’t want to be hurt or punished. I don’t want to be beaten, spat on, assaulted or killed. I don’t want to starve, I don’t want to be anywhere near any of my old abusers or rapists. I don’t want to submit to be liked. I don’t want to preform as a character to be accepted. I don’t want to be dependant on anyone to survive. I don’t want to sexualise myself to be loved. 

The dysphoria will challenge this, oh man it does. My depersonalisation and fear of being trans challenges this. 

Little voices going “you are not really a man. you have tits. you have a baby. you are a mom. you are doing this for attention, all this because you have to be somehow sicker than you already are. It is just trauma. You are making all of this up. You are trying to just not be the snivelling wretch that they made you into. You make a mockery of a very real cause. You are not trying hard enough, a real trans guy would cut their hair. You like your appearance sometimes which means you must not be trans. You are not a man, you are just like literally any of those cases of confused survivors of abuse that you see all over the internet, that is you. You just cant admit it because you are scum. It’s the same as everything, none of this is real, none of this is true. You are nothing like a man. You are a nothing, A NOTHING”.

Those are the voices that send me into crisis. That have me self harming, suicidal, terrified, self hating. Not when I pass as a guy, not when I draw myself as a guy or just... am a guy. The doubt and pull back to my assigned gender is what is killing me. Well alongside the actual traumas and parenting a toddler, alone, with over £2000 in debt. I never want to lie, but unpicking the truth when you are multiple people and have amnesic survival programming to prevent you from uncovering traumatic realities is very hard.

What is amazing though.... which I will cling to when my binder is crushing, when Instagram is full of BS about what is True Transgenderism, when FB is full of trans hate and I am still annoyingly in the closet with my family and most of the universe is this... When my BFF Maddy calls me an amazing, perfect boy, I blush and well up with tears and feel seen. I felt visible. When she sends me gifs of someone snuggling the death out of a tired proud lion, ruffling his mane, I feel seen again I cry with happy relief feels. When she or my friend Ruth says i look handsome, or masculine and I am blushing again forever, that is precious. When I look in the mirror after working out and see my shoulders broader and chest almost flat from the binder, hair swept back, I look strong, i look male, i look right. well almost. When i complete a drawing of how i wish i looked and i get it correct, i feel ready to punch the goddamn sun in its stupid face like LOOK! I EXIST! When I dream of being a guy and being touched by another person as if i am a guy, i feel like i am gonna take off from this planet and leave it in my dust... because not only do they see me, but they accept me and love me for who I am, who I want to be rather than who they want me to be or who i need to be... It makes me put that blade down and walk away. Make a hot chocolate or draw something.

So... I guess this is it. I am a guy. 

A closeted guy for my safety for now. But a guy.

A guy with a shit tonne of trauma. But a guy.

A guy with DID, and female personalities. But I am a guy.

A guy who has a 2 year waiting list before he can talk to a gender clinic about this but still. I am a guy. 

A guy that yes, despite all my best efforts, looks androgynous at best, and uses feminine appearance for protection because they are still too scared to present fully as male. But still a guy.

If this changes in future, well then... whilst living without dysphoria would be just the best... I dont want to loose who I am now i have finally caught a glimpse of them for the first time. It has made me a better person, a better parent, a better friend... Why would I ever give that up? It is gonna be a long old road, it may all change, I may change again, I may legitimately forget all about this. I may be too scared to ever come out to my family. The doubt, fear and dysphoria may actually win the next time I am in crisis. I may just delete this post out of shame but fuck it.

My name is Aly and I am a fucking guy. 

[spark1edog]

rambly talk of trauma and parents and stuff, nothing particularly graphic just some thoughts and a few vague memories ive been chewing on

-🥀

realizing how neglected i was and just how much having two depressed, anxious, traumatized and largely uninvolved parents from about age 4-6 onwards is so tough and it happens over and over about small things. whenever someone raises their voice or expresses frustration i just freeze and emotionally im right back in the background of my childhood home eating candy and staying out of the way. 

now whenever the neighbors argue or my partner gets frustrated at a video game im terrified and its like i become transparent. my eyes just glaze over and my only goal is Get Through It. i always feel so small, not age wise, just.. energetically, i guess. 

i always end up seeing parallels between my relationships and that of my parents, at least when they were together. this was particularly prominent in my relationship with my last partner. i was constantly thinking how much they reminded me of my dad in how they acted when upset, and even when excited and sometimes sad. for so long i mirrored him, when i had issues in my relationship with my mom. 

eventually i began to reconcile with my mom and my relationship with my dad began to worsen. i took a much more defensive/avoidant stance in all my relationships platonic and otherwise, not really mirroring anyone jsut carving out an identity for myself as a normal 13-16 year old would. felt very alone overall despite always having at least a couple close friends. (though, they were all equally fucked up and some enabled me to get worse.)

making an identity for myself involved a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms also which caused a lot of trauma because my parents were so oblivious to it and i couldnt. go to them because I NEVER COULD GROWING UP and even though my mom is better about that stuff *now* i hadnt and still havent processed and resolved the trauma of not having that support when i really needed it. 

like. my parents werent abusive. i was abused a few times, but not by them. not overtly at least. and they apologized and changed their behavior eventually, at least my mom. but their actions or lack thereof traumatized me and i dont know if ill ever be able to tell even my mom about the extent of the fucking. mental illness i suspect i have. like. i cant get a diagnosis for anything but ptsd probably because employment and stuff, i already have a hard enough time getting a job being neurodivergent and anxious let alone having a dissociative disorder listed anywhere where anyone important can see it. 

if and when i move out of my home state maybe i can find a specialist. my partner wants to go to a big city, surely theres someone in boston? 

if this whole thing pans out between my mom and my stepdad (whole other story) and i do end up having to live alone much earlier than anticipated, i might try to find a therapist who specializes in it here (who knows there might be one in abq) so i can at least get assessed/Clinically Recognized (if i do have osdd) if not professionally diagnosed on paper by a psychiatrist. 

idk, im just.... i want support and help but i dont want people to butt in and gaslight and guilt trip me about my trauma like they always have. and now that im an adult i can do that. 

[possum-teeth]

wow i’m actually not on mobile for once so i can do one of these

i can’t fucking do this anymore.

because i’m stupid and mentally ill (separate entities completely) i apparently cannot bring up my real problem to my therapist.

nightmares? nah, i can deal with that shit, it just adds to some sleep problems, not really affecting me enough for me to care anyway. yeah, it sucks, but i’ve lived with it for years. they can improve. they have improved.

flashbacks?? yeah, terrible, absolutely throws me for a fucking loop, but ultimately livable. 

dissociation maybe??? getting fucking closer tbh, i’m missing out on so much, where has my time gone? has it been a few minutes? hours?? fuck i hate myself. i am not myself when i dissociate, i feel like a fucking robot. and i can’t fucking escape it unless someone physically like touches or nudges me or something. it usually takes a lot, but occasionally weird changes in the general speaking and sounds around will be enough, like yelling or that weird whisper yelling thing people will do.

no though, it’s gotta be the fucking episodes i go through in public. from what i’ve gathered they are linked to sensory processing problems. it’s normally never been enough to bring up, i tend to have it very very mild for the most part, i fucking hate a lot of shit, it feels uncomfortable and near intolerable, but ultimately i can handle it. i fucking hate wearing shoes and socks, flip flops are a good compromise for me, HATE pants. they are the fuckign devil they feel so fucking wrong on my legs, the only tolerable ones are incredibly loose too large pajama pants, so i wear shorts. all year long. i live in the fucking midwest too, we do have some bad winters. i still wear shorts then. i cannot  clip my nails, it feels so absolutely wrong on a LOT of levels. they either break or i suck it up and chew them off eventually on a night before i take a shower and go to bed, hoping they’ll finally feel normal again in the morning.  and sounds i’m okay with for the most part nowadays, mostly in part to my mother who i swear to fucking god was trying to go deaf, i do have off days where i need to turn the car radio way down though. i feel like an asshole those days. 

honestly my sensory problems are mostly auditory and tactile in form and generally manageable (they had to be, i needed to shut up about my problems growing up because they were all in my head y’know. like how depression isn’t real and i just needed to stop being depressed like how it’s a choice you know?) but when i get the slightest bit stressed istfg everything is amplified x1,000,000

and i can’t fucking deal with this shit anymore.if i can’t hole myself up in an area in complete isolation quick enough or have someone to solely focus on, like holding onto, having a simple talk with to calm me down or just fucking shocked out of it usually by something gross(like when i was younger my little sister’s gross sticky fingers would snap me out of shit somehow, i needed to wash that shit off my hands asap, i feel like it should have the opposite affect but whatever, if it works i won’t question it) but anyway if i don’t get away i will either dissociate to the fullest degree and not even know where the fuck i am in time and space, or i will feel like everything is way too loud, a whole foreign language, feel like pins are stuck everywhere under my clothes, and want to run away/ punch someone/ and/or bash my fucking head into the nearest solid object be it a wall, a tree, a table, or even the fucking floor. I cannot rationally think, i get so fucking stupid to put it into a word, and then the absolute exhaustion sets in. which tends to last for hours. 

and fucking shit when i feel that overwhelmed i wish i could say i feel like i’m hitting rock bottom, but no. i feel like if i don’t get away while in the middle of all that, which i have each time, i have ran out of a store a few times luckily not into traffic tho it wouldn’t surprise me if i ran in front of a car in these episodes, but i feel like i’ll reach a point where i’ll just straight up faint. 

i’ve been trying for years to improve this, i’ve tried just gradually working my way up to larger places but i’m only getting worse. like i feel like the only permanent solution is either just dying and being done or never being alone. i can’t fucking live like this anymore.

like i do not have a diagnosis but i’m suspecting have have sensory processing disorder of some sort but who would i even see about it. haha like my general practitioner would take me seriously. my breathing problems are a fucking mystery i was told i’d be contacted about seeing a specialist and it’s been weeks. i’m just making all sorts of shit up for attention clearly. i’m so fucking frustrated i’m almost to tears. i’ve been in tears over this shit. my therapist won’t diagnose me with shit, i don’t even know anymore. 

IT IS SO FUCKING HARD FOR ME TO COME TO PEOPLE WITH MY PROBLEMS IN REAL LIFE. my mother always told me i was faking it when i got sick, i was faking it when i got the fucking flu, but my brother wasn’t when he got it the day after. i felt like i was fucking DYING. PEOPLE WERE CONCERNED FOR ME AT SCHOOL. 

and oh if that wasn’t fucking bad enough, i had an abscessed tooth when i was younger that i had pointed out to her.   it went on FOR MONTHS. it could have fucking spread and i could have actually died. i kinda wish it had killed me.

i can’t understand how she never cared to even QUESTION IT. like even then it had to be one of the first things to pop up when you google ‘bump on gums’ and she was not stupid with technology. she took to it like a fish in water. she texts more than me and texted before me.

 i am just tired.