shihkas

[shihkas]

i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

[shihkas]

DID is forcing me to reckon with the difference between knowing what happened and remembering it

[shihkas]

DID symptoms that people don't talk enough about

The cycle of forgetting and then re-remembering trauma memories

Constant depersonalization and derealization

Feeling as if you're stuck living someone else's life

Failure to plan for the future because nothing feels real + losing time

Thinking a flashback is over when you've actually just dissociated away from it, and having it resume as soon as you stop dissociating

Dissociative stupor/trance

Alexithymia

Identity issues outside of alters

Inability to connect with other people

Being unable to tell if you've healed from a past problem/trauma or if you've just dissociated away from it

Not learning from past mistakes because of amnesia and dissociation

Feeling nothing psychologically despite physical shaking, racing heart, nausea, crying, etc

The extreme disorientation + identity confusion that comes with co-consciousness and co-fronting

Somatic flashbacks

Being triggered by your own DID symptoms because you know the only reason you're experiencing any of this is because of what they did to you

[shihkas]

Make sure you don't accidentally punish people for communicating their needs and boundaries. When someone cares enough to have the uncomfortable conversation, that's a compliment and a clear sign that they are invested in the relationship. Yes of course it's uncomfortable to hear that something you've been doing has been upsetting someone you care about when that was never your intention, but people generally only bother to have these conversations with the people they want to keep around - the people they trust to care. If they just didn't like you, they'd probably just try to avoid you. So make sure you don't make it into a more punishing experience than it has to be. Try to see the care and the trust behind the criticism, even when it triggers uncomfortable emotions. It's a good sign that they're there telling you.

[shihkas]

dont retreat emotionally. people like you and want you around. they like to talk to you, and you genuinely matter. you have to trust this through the hard times so you can get to the better times without sabotaging yourself. you are worth loving

[shihkas]

my daily habit of continuing on

[shihkas]

It's important to show that you care. Fuck being nonchalant. Text first, send multiple messages in a row. Tell them what they mean to you, be honest about how you feel. Tell your friends that you love them. Love is a gift that can be given away freely, by anyone and to anyone. Show that you care.

[shihkas]

The body never overreacts—it remembers. Memory lives in the body. As does intuition. We know what is coming both because we've lived it and because we often feel the terror of the shadows long before we're able to describe the face of the monster. There are many kinds of knowing. Keep breathing. Stay near to yourself.

Cole Arthur Riley

[shihkas]

[shihkas]

About ten years ago I decided that the next step I needed to take in my life was to accept and explore what it meant to be a failure and to have failed. This infuriated almost everybody in my life and clearly terrified a lot of people. People do not want you to accept failure. They dont want you to like... Sit with and think about it and pick it up and turn it arpund in your hands and really examine it. They want you to keep throwing yourself against the impossible walls until your body explodes! They do not want you to say "alright then, I've failed. What does that mean for me? Im still here. What does the life of someone who has failed look like?"

This makes people very angry and panicky.

My mental health improved in ways it had not in the previous DECADE once I stopped. And. Sat. With failure. And thought about what my failure ... Was. And looked at the structures that produced it and examined them critically.

It is so taboo to fail and admit it openly and talk about it. It is so taboo to talk about or think about failure in an accepting way rather than hiding it shamefully until you experience a degree of success in some area which allows you to present the past failure as "a stepping stone" to your current situation. Fuck that. We are put in positions of guaranteed failure by society every day and then punished and shamed for it. Lets fucking talk about failure

[shihkas]

[shihkas]

Hey. Your brain needs to de-frag. Literally it needs you to sit there and space out.

If you want your memory or executive function to improve, stare out a window at the skyline or sidewalk or trees or birds on the electrical wires for like 20+ minutes per day. (With no other stimulation like a podcast or TV if you can manage but hey baby steps innit). If you're fortunate enough to have safe outside with any bits of nature, go stare closely at a 1 meter square of grass and trip out on the bugs and shapes of grasses and stuff.

Literally this will make you smarter. Our brains HAVE TO HAVE this zone out time to do important stuff behind the scenes. This does not happen during sleep, it's something else.

That weird pressurized feeling you get sometimes might be your brain on no defrag.

Give your brain a Daily Dose Of De-Frag.

[shihkas]

''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments

[shihkas]

[shihkas]

"I have come to believe with fervent passion that the focus on multiple personalities is missing the point. Dissociative identity disorder is not rare; it is not unique; it is not special. It is just a logical set of symptoms to some terrible trauma. It is a normal way to react to very abnormal childhood treatment."

- Carolyn Spring

[shihkas]

i just saw someone describe a disabled person as "someone with beautiful abilities" i cannot do this anymore

[shihkas]