Well, with cohost going down, we needed to find a new home for our long-form writing, and this place seems nice (particularly love the multi-icon feature), so here we are. I've reposted a couple years worth of stuff from our cohost, so go read if you'd like! Thanks for joining us!
And say, while you're here, why don't you check out our system readme, our creative portfolio, or our PKMN collection? And leave a comment if you do? Pretty please!
NOTE: Originally posted July 3, 2023.
hate fakeclaimers and their influence so fucking much for lots of reasons but personally because it has led to a situation where parts of our brain are more willing to trust a medicalist exclusionist tumblr fuckboy than our therapist AND our partner AND the rest of our brain
"real did dot tumblr dot com" or something says that our "pseudosystem" is a dangerous mentally unhealthy extrapolation we've mistakenly taken from our BPD+OCD symptoms and that idea is so compelling because those symptoms obviously are inextricable from our system experience
it is ironic really because the obsession with something we read on some asshole's stupid blog once is way more actually OCD than the supposed obsession we have with performing systemhood to ourselves to convince ourselves we are a system (which is actually just us vibing)
screaming "stop putting on this charade! who are you trying to fool! we don't have alters, we don't have amnesia, we don't have DID or OSDD!" all the time is also a great way to avoid actually introspecting about one's role in our system and personal, alter-specific issues…
It would in fact be easier if this all went away, and they see that as meaning that it's supposed to "go away" — but it wouldn't actually go away; we'd just stop thinking about it and go back to the way we used to be, and, like, beyond the fact that that would suck, we genuinely don't have the capability to do it
That's what sucks the most about them having something to latch onto to justify them portraying our plurality as something that both can and ought to be discarded — they see us as intentionally keeping up a performance when in truth we can't stop for them even if we wanted to (and sometimes in the throes of their pain we genuinely truly do wish we could make it go away for them)
It hurts to have your own mind sobbing at you "stop! please stop doing this! for the love of god stop acting like this" and know that it genuinely thinks you're purposefully not giving it the impossible thing it wants because it was told it was both possible and imperative
and like to be clear our therapist says we have DID. those of us who believe we are a system don't even believe you need DID or OSDD to be a system anyway, and we also believe the DSM criteria is badly in need of broadening, but our therapist says we meet the criteria anyway — it really ought to be an uncontroversial fact at this point that we have alters and (some) amnesia between them. but no, we, uh *looks at notes* we just are really good at faking and tricked her 😑
—🔶Aurora and 🎀Melody
NOTE: Originally posted May 30, 2023.
It's really dangerous and limiting to assume that other people's experiences lining up with yours means that you should assume that you have the same problems that can be solved with the same solutions. Empathy doesn't have to come from a place of having been there yourself.
BUT,
assuming that your experiences not lining up 100% means that you can't possibly be like that person, that you'd be appropriating from that person by thinking you are… that is a vortex that can suck you down, down, down into the depths and away from hope and healing.
I see the tension between these poles constantly in all sorts of contexts — about autism and ADHD, about being trans and/or nonbinary, and, seemingly especially, about being plural and/or having DID/OSDD.
On the one hand, you have people so focused on trying to spread awareness and open the eyes of so-called "eggs" that they'll say that a fairly widespread experience is "evidence" of their identity just because they themselves have been through it.
On the other hand, you have people so intent on keeping out malingerers and the confused that any experience not exactly like theirs becomes apparently worthy of such alienating scrutiny, criticism, scorn, and patronization.
So much of our mind has spent the past two years absolutely fucking terrified of accepting ourselves because of the latter, and absolutely fucking terrified of sharing too many of our experiences because of the former.
There's a simple balance to be struck between "if you have this experience, it obviously comes from this source and this identity label applies to you!" and "if your experience isn't exactly like mine, get the fuck away from my identity label". I dunno why striking it's so scary.
We've been living as plural for two years as of today, and along the way we've seen and internalized so many confusing and alienating things in both directions.
If there's anything I'd like to take today to say, it's…
only you can know yourself, and you can only know yourself.
Thanks for reading. —🎀Melody
NOTE: Originally posted March 13, 2023.
An idea that's been massively influential recently on how we live our life as a plural system is that, more than anything, DID/OSDD is a disorder of living in parallel realities. This incredible Twitter thread by @documense puts it perfectly, better than I can, so I'll just quote it directly.
(CW for quoted material below the cut: parental emotional and medical abuse)
( Read more... )
NOTE: Originally posted September 12, 2022.
(CW: dissociation, dormancy, bullying mentions)
Essay sort of thing on how we're learning how to do self-expression as a very blurry plural.
( Read more... )
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