thescreamcorner - Tumblr blog

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I would also love to know why so many of my more vivid nightmares over the last.... idk 8 years? Have near always involved getting shot????

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I've had so many things I want to say but so few words to attach to the thoughts and it's leaving me struggling to post for so long because it feels like I'm just repeating myself over and over

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Hello, I don't know if this is okay to send, but your blog has been able to voice a lot of the opinions we have on the current system community at large. Thank you for talking about these issues.

Idk how I didn't see this sooner but I'm glad I haven't been alone screaming into the void here, haha

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Every smoke tastes burnt and I can't find my last goddamn cig and I'm just. I don't even fucking know anymore

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Want it to be over

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It's really important for those with/suspecting to have DID to work towards self-understanding and internalized validation rather than externalized. Fundamentally this is true of all people, disordered or not, but it's especially true of those experiencing dissociative symptoms.

I know growing up with only the internet as an outlet for your thoughts, feelings and connections to others draws in a need to feel validated by what you see, hear and interact with online, but depending on the internet for validation of your experiences can be incredibly self destructive-- especially in anti-psychiatry and anti-recovery circles. Relying on a label to justify your existence is just as harmful if you're a person who's been diagnosed as it is when you're self-diagnosing or suspecting you may have something.

Confirmation bias is something we're wired to engage in-- it allows us to feel comfortable and safe. But sometimes that feeling is an illusion, and you're making things harder for yourself in the long run by not challenging your notions and seeking professional help.

There are resources everywhere for finding affordable professionals, as well as resources for practicing self care when experiencing symptoms regardless of what is causing them. Please don't be afraid of using them, don't be afraid of change and recovery, because it may look different for everyone but that doesn't mean you don't deserve to be at your best-- whatever that may look like.

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The DOs and DON'Ts of your online privacy as a DID/DDNOS system.

Openly being a DID/DDNOS system online can be dangerous, as it may lead to harassment or other risks for your safety. These are some tips for online privacy as a system: for newly discovered systems, younger systems and anyone who might need advice.

❌️ DON'Ts

❌️ DON'T easily give away your Simply Plural/PluralKit/Octocon access. Those system tracking apps/bots are full of sensitive information about you and other people might use them to hurt you, so it's fundamental to set visibility levels on your general system profiles, alter profiles and fields. When setting any kind of visibility level where information is shared with even one other person, ask yourself: "What do we gain by sharing this?" and "Can this piece of information be potentially dangerous for us if shared?" ;

❌️ DON'T share your triggers publicly, even the non-negative ones. People might take advantage of you in the future by purposefully triggering certain alters out. If you want to share triggers with other people as a sort of emergency measure, then carefully choose people you trust such as partners, close friends, guardians, family members or your therapist. No one aside from yourself is entitled to know what's triggering for you, if someone keeps demanding to know then vocalize how it's highly sensitive information and set a clear boundary ;

❌️ DON'T share the body's face online if you are not aware of the risks, especially if you are bodily a minor. Unfortunately some groups of people might harass you to extreme ends just because you're openly a system online: if you show the body's face online you can become their target for bullying and/or they might even try to dox you. Of course this is dangerous for bodily adult systems too, but for minor bodied systems doxxing can be even more risky for a variety of reasons. If you want to post photos of the system's body, don't do it on your system's social media account or on a public discord server: do it on a separate account non-system centered ;

❌️ DON'T share alot of details about your disorder on social media. Publicly highlighting details about your disorder (ex. being a survivor of organized abuse, splitting very easily from stress, having other specific comorbidities, etc...) can gain the attention of ill intentioned people that might potentially try to hurt you by manipulating you. If you want to talk about those things online, save that information for conversations in safe spaces with people you trust. However if you want to spread awareness of some things that affect your experience as part of a system but can also put a target on yourself, then take some extra cautionary measures by not posting too much personal information ;

✅️ DOs

✅️ DO set boundaries on your profile based on whatever feels comfortable. It's your social media page and it's understandable if you feel like certain groups of people should not interact with your content: boundaries are important in everyday life and that should be the same online. Aside from DNI lists, on Tumblr specifically there are many other things you can do to filter content (mainly blocking people and filtering tags) and to prevent harassment (reporting, not allowing anonymous asks, not allowing asks at all or not allowing asks with media attached to them) which can be both quite useful too ;

✅️ DO take breaks from social media when some situations online are starting to take a toll on your mental health. It doesn't matter if it's syscourse related, harassment or just general drama: when it starts to be something heavy for you then take a break to take your mind of things. Learn when enough is enough. It's important to remember that you decide how much time you'll need in order to feel better, you shouldn't be pressured into coming back ;

✅️ DO be careful on the tags you use related to system spaces. Systemblr is extremely divided on many things and misusing a tag can make people accuse you of invading certain spaces, this would probably result in you being a target for harassment. Before using a tag in one of your post, make sure you know what that tag is used for to not cause misunderstandings and/or other issues ;

✅️ DO establish a clear level of privacy with the rest of the system. If possible, try to communicate and discuss how much you collectively want to share with the public about the system (such as names or other information about the system's members) and what is best to keep private. Remember that if another system online does it, it doesn't mean you should do it too: always do whatever feels comfortable and not what someone else does ;

Do add more advice in the comments or reblogs if necessary, systems online deserve to be safe just like anybody else.

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Been absent from spending near every waking moment playing pokemon.....

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Crying over a bear.....

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To address again while sharing this: the "inner world" was presented in healthcare settings as a visualization technique to help disconnected parts reconvene, and some people have managed this in non-therapeutic settings due to either hearing about it online or having naturally vivid visualization ability. for many (especially those with aphantasia), this is something that's difficult, takes time, and/or may even be impossible.

Not having an "inner world" is not a sign of faking-- it's actually quite normal.

We used to think that we needed an innerworld to be a valid system because everyone was talking about theirs, so we made one up. We never had one. We have aphantasia and felt invalid because we didn't have one

If you're a system and you feel invalid because you don't have an innerworld, they aren't required.

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Stuck between the need to soothe myself and the urge to do things that could potentially make it ten times worse

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Her: you seem like you're going down a rabbit hole and spiraling

Me: huh, idk maybe

Also me: ☆ spirals ☆

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Found out can't make bills this pay, very stress

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My Thoughts on "An Open Letter" from Grey Faction

As a preface, this is something I've thought about doing ever since I wrote my post on RAMCOA's history, as a link to their site was featured due to it having extensive detail and evidence regarding the behavior of ISSTD's members. When I read through their "open letter to the DID community", I had a lot of thoughts about it, not nearly all of them positive, but addressing that wasn't relevant to that post.

So here's this one. My thoughts under the cut.

To start, I do want to say that I understand there is good faith in what is written. Their points seem genuine and open minded, and do source two medical writings for their viewpoints about DID not necessarily being a "strictly" post-trauma disorder. However, I strongly contest their reasons for presenting this, and the implications behind them (and the writings themselves).

Grey Faction asserts that the trauma model of DID is the fundamental deficiency that bolsters the ISSTD. They imply that DID being defined as a trauma-caused disorder is the solitary gateway to treatment that improperly fixates on reliving and recovering from trauma, therefore making it a net benefit to redefine the disorder entirely and include those not affected by any form of trauma.

However, I must note the information I was able to glean from their sources first-- one of them is from 1994, being by no means "recent" as they state. It claims in the abstract that DID (referred to as MPD) in its entirety is merely socially constructed, "like other forms of multiplicity". I don't think I need to go too in depth about why presenting this is the opposite of "helpful" for those with DID, but I'll make a separate post for it if anyone asks about it.

The second source actually is recent, being from 2022. However, it mostly includes DID as a footnote while addressing dissociative disorders as a whole, and how other factors can play into developing one. It also focuses in on the failures of treatment for dissociative disorders due to the fixation on trauma-focused healing, and posits an urgency for psychiatric teams to incorporate therapies and treatments that actually have empirical evidence of being beneficial regardless of specific diagnosis.

With those out of the way, I want to address what I see as the fundamental flaw of this letter: its indirect address of "the community". Online spaces for DID are rife with self diagnosis, misinformation and misinterpretation, so this could be targeting all sorts of people and viewpoints that have nothing to do with DID, but rather "multiplicity" as a whole cultural category. Something that, much like both sources seem to do, completely conflate it with DID- a disorder.

Not all forms recognized as "multiplicity" are in any fashion related to a disorder. DID is not a disorder on the basis of experiencing multiple facets of self, but rather because of the dissociative separation, and the diminished quality of life that results. Something that, on that level, is still suspected to occur primarily (if not exclusively) due to trauma, and as such trauma is still a noted aspect in the DSM 5. Therefore listing any and all forms of multiplicity under the same categorization, let alone including them when addressing DID specifically, is very much a problem.

With all this in mind I want to propose what I find to be the real issue with DID and its clinical treatment - the trauma-centric approach to recovery, and the absolute ego and stubbornness of those in the ISSTD.

If a patient is diagnosed with DID, a trauma-based dissociative disorder, and is found during the course of care to not have any form of trauma, this constitutes a misdiagnosis. But as we've seen from the ISSTD message boards, their members absolutely HATE the idea that their diagnosis could be wrong, and will bend over backwards to justify their patient having DID-- including leading and implanting fabricated memories, like the cases of Dr. Braun.

If you were to remove that stubborn mentality and focus on treatment that is not centered around recovering specific traumatic details, then two things can happen when a client is found to have no trauma history. Either treatment has been found beneficial and can continue while pursuing a re-diagnosis, or treatment has not been found beneficial and a re-diagnosis can be pushed to find what treatment will be more effective. That person can then, if they experience a non-disordered form of multiplicity, seek out spaces that are more accurate to their experiences.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is not synonymous with "multiplicity" as a cultural experience, and cannot be boiled down to "people in your head" due to the many factors of its diagnostic presentation. When pushing for completely removing the trauma model, there's a heavy conflation between DID and other forms of "multiplicity", not only by the public but even by medical professionals writing these dissertations, that further damages the ability to recognize and treat DID. This also re-presents a problem from psychology's history, of treating any "abnormal" behavior or belief as inherently disordered.

This conflation is something I am not complacent in within my own spaces, and it is not something I will become complacent in just because cited sources feature a doctor.

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I still kind of miss the wild west creepypasta era I got to experience from the 2009-2014 internet -- back when youtube was mostly fresh out of high-school kids making random comedy skits/shows, when internet horror was either somewhat believable or at least was sourced from passion, when complex ARGs that interconnected with those from other creators were still in their heyday, and when the most controversy from creators you heard about was petty interpersonal drama

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There's something so wild to me about going from a few consistent days of critical thinking, effectively using my time to make well researched posts, to today where my brain has more or less shut off to anything that isn't Pikmin or Pokemon and started refusing to think in big words anymore

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I’m not a system but I cannot imagine how actually enraging it must be to have been traumatized to the extent that you form alters just for your disorder to gain online popularity and become a trend for people with no actual personality to pretend they have it on tumblr and tiktok instead of forming an actual personality or finding other reasons to be interesting.