This is a self portrait I took a couple years ago, for me this is what my mental illness looks like.
It’s Feeling detached from myself, it’s when I don’t even know who I am, its the constant battle inside my head, it’s the 13 hours I was asleep, it’s the monsters inside my head that say I’m better off dead, it’s the inability to cry anymore at something traumatic and then breaking down because I’m hungry. Its feeling everything way to intensely yet not feeling anything at all.
The jacket sits oddly against their shoulders. Rich seamwork and heavy, fine-spun material feel like the memory of a dream more than a piece of their past. Cyril does up the buttons on their cuffs, pulls their arms across their chest, then circles them, feeling the pull of the fabric across their back and around their arms. With a sigh, they rotate their wrist and undo the cuff-links. It will slow them if they need to move quickly. Not by much, but even a half-second can carry the weight of a life kept or lost.
The thought jars against the slide of the smooth fabric of their dress shirt on their skin, rips a hole in the thick, weighty pall of their old life settling over them. They would never have considered movement over attire when they were alive.
Alive, yes – they were alive, years ago, and they stand here and breathe and think and hurt now but will they ever truly be as alive as they were the first time they put on this suit? Esme did up their cuffs that time, warm, blunt fingers caressing their wrist as he laughed about something inconsequential. It rings against the shell of their memory, golden-edged and bright, a spray of seafoam captured in the curl of an empty home that once protected something which no longer fits.
Thoughts From Trauma Processing - On Causes of My Derealization
I have been processing a lot lately about the ways and reasons I, as a specific alter in our system [vs the system as a whole, in general] tend to dissociate at the times it occurs when there is no traumatic thing going on. And the realization I came to is that I spent a lot of my life being made to feel like I had no rightto be here. I often was treated like my presence itself was a burden on the people around me, like I was inconveniencing them just by existing. And when that had gone on long enough, well I didn’t exactly believe it, but I came to expect being treated that way so automatically that I guess I stopped registering so many aspects of my physical existence. If I didn’t feel that I was really anywhere to begin with, then there wasn’t anywhere for me to be exiled from, was there? But that strategy, no matter how well it worked to keep me from just hiding in the headspace all the time, and let me continue participating in life to some degree and helping my system….. It was fucking wrong. Not of me to do, but of the people who abused me to put me in a position of feeling it was the only resort left to me. In the trauma processing work I’ve recently been doing, I’ve come to understand that it robbed me of the literal awareness, to a degree greater and more constant than I’d ever thought, that I literally [physically] exist. That I have a right to bodily be here. As much as not only every other part of my system, but as much as every other person on Earth.
So if anybody reading this has felt the same way, or has had a bigger struggle with derealization than is explained by just wanting to be away from the bad/stressful/frightening/traumatic things…. I want to say for the record -in case nobody else has said it before- that you have a right to be here. You have a right to exist. You have a right to take up space and to use the time given to you. You are not burdening anybody by doing the things you want to do, or being the person you feel you really are drawn to being. Your freedom to fully engage in living is not something anybody else has any right whatsoever to impugn. It doesn’t matter who they are or what their job is or what they have (either only supposedly or even actually) done for you. The one thing a person can never ever owe as a debt to anybody else for anything is the price of their right to be present in their own body and connected to their own life.
And if you wonder how that can possibly be or how you can ever believe it when literally nobody has ever acted like they wanted you to be? Well then, please, consider that track record officially broken. I want you to be here. Not for some reason that benefits me specifically -Hell, I probably don’t even know more than a couple people reading this- and not for just the sake of your system not being stripped of the benefit of you all being as engaged in life as possible— But just because I believe that every human being that has ever lived has the ability to enrich the entire species, just by existing and having their own unique perspective to contribute to the perceptions of others. That’s how we all learn, as a collective. That applies to you, and it applies to me. And I hope others can reclaim that sense of right as I have.
Stay strong - because you’re doing brilliantly so far, even if you don’t realize it yet.
I don’t know who the fuck came up with calling it that, but it’s not multiplicity. Calling it such dramatically distorts matters and aids the anti-recovery agenda. It creates the impression that anyone who is a system [not HAS, nobody “HAS {implication: person doing having is not same as persons being had} a system”] has been multiplied from the normal amount a human brain can contain. That is a lie. It’s just as much a lie as endogenics believing THEY can be “multiplied” by spirits from imaginary universes jumping into their heads. But it has the ability to hurt the people who believe it instead of just everyone around them, as the endos’ ‘belief’ [which they don’t really believe but want you to think they do so that you cannot question their sanity without questioning your own].
Plurality is still fucking wrong too, though it is wrong in differently emphasized ways. First problem? Nobody refers to fractions as having been made plural. Where multiplicity implies multiplication from an original whole to many wholes, plurality implies to the average human mind two things. 1. That, again,there are multiple whole numbers involved. 2. This plurality existed from the beginning [vs. having multiplied from some original starting point]. See problems with word above, plus addition of implication that it could be naturally occurring and minus the absolute implication that it is a deviation from the original blueprint of one whole human.
There is only one number/calculatory term that has ever been used for DID/OSDD-1 that doesn’t obscure the nature of the disorder(s). That is fragmentation.You are not plural [multiple complete people in one body, possibly naturally occurring]. You are not multiple [multiple complete people in one body, somehow having made more human souls from the raw material found in originally only one].You are [multiple fractional people— still only people despite being less than a person because ‘person’ is still what their made of — having been prevented from ever assembling and then being thus susceptible to being further] FRAGMENTED.
THAT —Not just the implication from the second word that it was part of the set of PDs— is why the name of the disorder was changed from Multiple Personality Disorder. Once it was identified that this was NOT a personality disorder it became clear that there were not multiple anythings involved. If that weren’t the case, then it would have been called Multiple Identity Disorder. It’s not. Dissociate means to disconnect from. Dissociative Identity Disorder means The Disorder of Being Cut Off From Yourself. The disorder of having been cut apart.
What User Names Can Tell You About A Person’s State of Acceptance of DID/OSDD-1:
Anybody who uses Plurality in their user name is probably endo [fake, and not even trying to hide it] or at least ‘pretendo’ [fake, either not trying to hide it or trying to say they have DID/OSDD-1], or has been strongly influenced by them. These people tend otherwise be in denial of the fact there was or ought ever be one person to have one body.
Anybody who uses Multiplicity in their user name does not accept that their system makes one person and they are parts of the same psyche. This type of person is either somebody has been taken in by the massive anti-integration, anti-recovery campaign of propaganda….. or directly one of the people perpetrating it.
Anybody who uses Fragmentation in their name probably: 1. Accepts that they are parts of one person that has been fractured. 2. Knows a bit about DID/OSDD-1 that did not come from the internet. 3. Actively supports recovery.
In honor of that, and in light of the fact the term system, which is the medically correct term and should be clearly only referring to people with DID/OSDD-1, has been stolen, hijacked, and then co-opted by people who would not know what being a dissociative Identity was like if you hit them in the face with all your memories….. We will be taking a stand against these trends and changing our blog URL from cosmos-system to fragmented-cosmos. I also am starting a tag for all of those who would like to be able to read about DID/OSDD-1 things without having to sift through a bunch of people denying or having been prevented from learning what the disorder actually is. This is #actuallyfragmented. Because we actuallyarefragmented. Have a nice day.
I have heard many people -lately, and just always on the internet, unfortunately- asking questions about ‘integrative therapy’ as an option for the treatment of DID/OSDD-1, and nothing could be more frustrating to hear…. Because it’s such an indication of the profound smear campaign that several forces in the online community have launched against education, clarity, and truth about our disorder. And I have reached a point where I honestly cannot just endure standing here silently, pretending it is useless to provide people with reality and information that combats that.
There is no such thing as integrative therapy. There is just therapy. And if you do enough of it for long enough you will integrate. Integration just means the long process of healing your trauma. Because an integrated complete identity is what the human brain was quite literally designed to build from the moment you were born. It is not death, loss, or denial of anything. It is the construction of a consciousness and vehicle for experiencing life that holds ALL of the component abilities, skills, emotional potentials, and memories.
Since that is what a brain is designed to build, if by any means it can, that is exactly what will happen. The only thing stopping your brain right now is unaddressed and unhealed trauma. So, of course naturally when that is addressed, so too is your identity made whole finally. This is an incredibly slow and grueling process. It is also the most rewarding thing you can ever possibly do and the ONLY way to find out what it feels like to be fully alive. No one can force you to heal [not even yourself] but if anyone ever says a single other thing about integration than that? Either they’ve been a victim of the misinformation campaign that has cropped up these last few years so virulent it borders on mass brainwashing (and believe me, my system has had to heal more than enough literal brainwashing to know how close that comes to hitting the mark) that is designed to keep all of us from ever healing or people who are not really systems from having to fuck off and get a life……. OR they are quite literally the people purposely trying to instill said indoctrination into you, and they are LYING.
I never have been that forceful before in public statements, because I believed that no one would hear me over the screaming and bleating of hysterical sheep-in-wolves-clothing who do not want to admit —or, more importantly, let you admit that Truth— because it would cost them one or more things they value and covet. But you know what? I have decided I have faith in all of you. You deserve to see at least ONE person, anywhere, state this. There IS no door number three, for the options of who promotes anti-integration propaganda— there are just the perpetrators, and their victims. You can’t parrot propaganda as an ‘ignorant but innocent bystander’. If you’ve fallen prey to a piece of missinformation, enough so that you repeat it, you are one of the victims.
And to those who want to howl or lambast me for saying that? Go ahead. Do your best. Scream like an incoherent, rabid beast until your throats are raw. Reblog and respond with long virulently aggressive rants. Post as many links to the same three articles or the the blogs of the propoganda promoters and pretend it agrees with any book written about DID. Show pictures of out-of-context excerpts from those books. Even go ahead and send me all the hate you want in my ask box or personal messages. I don’t give a fuck, and I will not shut up. There is nothing any of you can do to me that can cost me anything at all. *laughs* What exactly the fuck do I have to lose? I don’t do all I have for the community for attention, popularity, or friendship. I don’t need support as an individual in the healing process from anyone here — I have a strong support network in real life, and I don’t lack any information I might be able to find there. The ugly truth is that, in the several yearsI have been here, I have quite literally never encountered ONE single fact about the disorders I hadn’t already known — most of it was presented far worse and more distortedly than I imagined it was possible to do. I don’t gain anything from posting on this blog except the potential to make a difference that brings healing to people who need it most. Anyone who would like to take thataway from me…. Well, too bad. You can’t get me to delete my blog, and you don’t have the ability to delete it yourself. Or you’d have done that a LONG long time ago.
ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SIGN A CONFESSION TO BEING ONE OF THE PERPETRATORS OF THIS MASS-INDOCTRINATION OF ANTI-RECOVERY PROPAGANDA, I FORMALLY INVITE YOU TO DO SO BY REBLOGGING THIS POST AND TRYING TO ATTACK ME, TRUTH AND SCIENCE.
Education and Science in the DID/OSDD-1 Community - A Titanic Rant
Why the fuck do people obsess over false dichotomy and often devastate themselves because of it? It seems like in the DID/OSDD-1 community (like in much of well….. civilization right now), people [on average] have totally lost the ability to be discriminating. No, not as in being prejudiced; as in being able to tell the difference between things. And on the other hand it’s also (somehow simultaneously)as though they cannot comprehend the concept of moderation/mediation-of-principles/equilibrium. Nothing [as presented or addressed by those holding the status quo of this community] can ever be dynamic, everything must be static, nothing can ever be complex or in motion or relevant only by its appropriate relationship with something else. And the second someone tries to embrace the ability to comprehend complexity-of-interrelated-information, to acknowledge that facts (be they scientific or about the emotional reality of your own trauma and experiences) are not ever something that can be correctly interpreted in small numbers -let alone in isolation from every other fact in creation…..
They are then told (by a terrifyingly staggeringly large number of people, most of them completely unsolicited, and some quite violently)that no one can have a monopoly on the truth, that everyone must define (but create,they mean CREATE, as though it is optional or they can get one from Build-a-Fact) the Truth for themselves. That the cost of possessing the ability as a human being of being the one to define, describe, and develop the qualities of your psyche is the Faustian deal to accept [and then proceed to act upon that acceptance] that every single other thing in existence can only be said to be real by mutual CONSENT. And they refuse to consent, so you better shut up and fuck off, or bow down and get in life-ending-LINE. This is insanity. This is what your abusers wanted to turn you into. Don’t fucking LET them.
We do NOT have the right to deliniate reality. Human beings have no right whatsoever to change the fabric of space-time [even just —maybe ESPECIALLY just— within the confines of what they will and will not acknowledge about it] whenever something is uncomfortable to them. It is NOT our “freedom of interpretation” that makes us unique. It is our perspective. Do you know what freedom of interpretation means [rather than inclination toward specializing in specific emphases]? It means “when we are wrong, because the tool [our minds] that goes about evaluating facts and rendering best hypotheses for the implications those facts have when taken as a bigger picture is unique, so are our mistakes.” Never EVER tell someone to be quiet because they speak a fact you do not like or have not heard yet or wish they hadn’t told you. Tell someone to be quiet only when they speak a postulation (as though it were a fact) that you have already tested and obtained results that strongly indicate its falsehood. Then explain to them what you learned. They will then be able to investigate it for themselves if they like, which if you are correct will yield similar results.
The mass-indoctrination of idea that the mental sciences are not just as concrete as any other is ridiculous and an attempt to do what people have ALWAYS done to the mentally ill— shut them up and write them off. Your emotions are chemically and electrically measurable as events and physical states in your brain. It is possible for a scientist to measure and diagram for you PRECISELY which parts of the activity of your brain indicate something about your humanity and which indicate something about your individuality as a specific human being. When science says “theory” it means “this may not be finished yet”, not “this might be totally wrong and we can’t know for sure, ever, no matter what, so feel free to ignore it when you want!”
•The theory of evolution is a theory and not a fact not because scientists have not obtained sufficient data to confirm or deny that evolution is occuring, or that its basic fundamental relationships are not readily testable and reliably consistent. It is still a theory because nobody has finished mapping it yet.
•The theory of gravity is a theory and not a fact notbecause scientists cannot confirm gravity exists and affects absolutely all matter according to a set of consistent [math] functions…… It’s a theory because despite having a quantity of data about the phenomenon sufficiently large to fall into the category of “larger than the human brain can calculate” [due to being able to, unlike for the process of evolution] make direct physical observation of it and its rules for affecting matter unassisted and in fact continue doing so nearly constantly throughout our physical existence]… nobody has yet figured out why the fuck it works, given what the rest of Physics is doing. But it does. Anytime you’re uncertain about that, just close your eyes and ask your body “are you sure gravity is real, and also non-subjective/unaffected in its definition by my perception or consideration of it?” It will give you a reliable answer.
•And finally structural dissociation is a theory and not a fact NOT because there might be some totally unrelated and undiscovered alternative explanation [“or even MANY! varying from person to person!” As some people love to suggest], NOTbecause nobody can know for sure how things work in the brain (no the mind is not separate from the brain, anymore than your life [the biological qualities-process-fact] can be said to exist independently of your body as a whole) and thus can only ever make guesses about shadows on a wall…………… But just literally because the scientists that put it forth as their contribution to the body of knowledge known as the Definition of Humanity knew damn well that it’s not even remotely DONE YET. That there is so much more complexity it can grow to include the explanations for all of the nuances of.
If it is the key to the beginnings to a mathematics for the phenomenon of identity development [of identity itself, one day] in humanity then think of it this way: How dare you try to obstruct anybody else from believing they have a right to utilize it when it is offered— and what does it make you in the epic saga of the human quest for self-understanding, if you’re the one getting in the face the person who first offered humanity fire and threatening them with torment and exile if they complete their attempt to bestow it. Ask yourself too, what would have happened to the very notion of sanity itself if when the ancestors of Homo sapiens first began communicating their shared experiences, no one had been cooperative enough to create a standardized set of sounds-for-thoughts [which came to be called language]? Where would this planet be? Where would we be? …..Would we still be here? Would we ever have been here at all?
What if when the first people to ever describe who they were and what experiences of their life shaped them into that explained that there is this thing called emotion that despite our differences is a shared experience across our species…… people had told them that it was ridiculous, rude, or unfair or even evil to try to force people to admit that we all can experience the same emotions and that a given emotion can be said to exist and have definite qualities and consistently describable observable impacts. That you were persecuting and oppressing them by telling them it was unfair, deceptive, and harmful for them to use the word heartbreak when they meant resentment, or the word disappointment when they meant jealousy, or the words ‘deal with’ when they meant ‘agree never to deal with’, or the word love when they meant fear……..
And then realize that that’s EXACTLY what gaslighting is. And stop. Fucking. Doing it. To anyone. EVER again. Even to yourselves.
okay but the pain of going through trauma and subsequently dissociating away from it so you cant remember it or the year after it and then finally getting the memories back and feeling like it wasn’t you who moved through the year after the trauma but it definitely was you who went through the trauma is a mood and idk how i got back the memories of the year its like the me who was in the year shared the memories but they arent mine that pain hurts
a few years ago we went to our psychiatrist and forced ourself to go, hey, we think we have did and really need help. they didn’t really engage with it. if anything, the psychiatrist really didn’t like that it was evident i do my own research about stuff. like i forced myself to be open about it to try get help. it’s hard because it’s so shameful.
and when it didn’t go anywhere, i was like okay, so let’s see what happens if i just. ignore it. just resulted in me where i’m at now, noticeably losing time everyday, having a lot more instances of feeling very much Not Me (and then not remembering it), being more irritable, saying/doing stuff and not remembering and it’s to the point i used to be more able to figure out which alter is present, and now it’s almost impossible. i’m lucky if i can figure out when another part is present in the first place. let alone who. i need help with this. and i’m worried if i go to the psychiatrist again and say basically “hey so i tried to just ignore having did and it’s actually worse now” they’ll just again not want to engage because i specifically mention a disorder.
it’s hard. forced myself to be open about it to no avail. ignored it. now in a position where i need to be open about it again to get help for it but scared it’ll just repeat again.
