coolhumanoidbeing

[coolhumanoidbeing]

hello I'm back, therapy has been epic and I'm okay with having DID again

A doodle one of us made as a visual aid to help compare with another system how it feels like it works

[coolhumanoidbeing]

when life is good I barely post here. I think writing is a coping skill, so I'm only drawn to posting when things are bad

[coolhumanoidbeing]

People that think of children as some kind of incomprehensible other species fascinates me. You were one??

i think as adults it’s our responsibility to be nice to kids and treat them with the respect we wish we got at that age and im not kidding or exaggerating in the least

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Getting therapy from an actual DID specialist might be one of the best things that happened to me.

It also helps me see that when people say things like "no therapist would ever say alter" or "Therapists will help you find the real self (aka alter)"... it's all false. A good therapist meets you where you're at. They tend to copy your vocabulary (and not just with DID patients).

I'm still trying to understand they aren't trying to trick me tho. Like "ha!! See? It was a delusion all along! I don't even believe in DID!!", all cartoon villain style.

But I'll get there. And to the next step, and the one after that.

[coolhumanoidbeing]

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

[coolhumanoidbeing]

"you cant use your disabilities an excuse"

there are many reasons why a disability will disable someone. before you call it an excuse, maybe try considering why their disability, visible or invisible, effects their abilities.

[coolhumanoidbeing]

For anyone who would like a heads up, the "DID/OSDD community" community on here doesn't let you tag post "endo dni" (or anything similar), as it is considered syscourse (??)

For a variety of reasons this can be quite upsetting, so make sure to stay away if that's your case! Remember that it's your job to protect your peace and that you don't have to interact with anything you don't want to <3

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Trauma didn't make me nice, I consciously made me nice because I don't want anyone else to suffer like I did. Trauma didn't make me strong, I made me strong. Don't you dare ever tell me my trauma made me anything but scared, broken, and confused. Don't give credit to the abusers for me being a good person. They didn't make me good, I made myself good.

[coolhumanoidbeing]

You're allowed to be ill and happy. Being happy doesn't make you any less worthy of help.

It's okay to make the best of what you have. You don't have to constantly be miserable to be "valid".

[coolhumanoidbeing]

I feel like a lot of people seem to mistake making the most of the situation you've been given as loving/romanticizing your disorder

Like, I don't love having DID but I'm sure as hell gonna make the most of it and learn to appreciate what this disorder has done to get me this far in life. Acknowledging and enjoying some aspects of your disorder is really just coming to terms with the fact you have to live with it and try to make it somewhat enjoyable so you aren't just suffering 24/7

[coolhumanoidbeing]

host coded post

hello alter thats obsessed with organizing and labelling everything. we give you the gift of not knowing shit about the system

[coolhumanoidbeing]

I rarely ever "feel like I'm someone else". I just blackout.

Ironically, it sometimes feels like I don't have DID. I just live my life with little contradictions and holes. Sure, I dissociate, but the dissociation I can remember experiencing is never the "DID" one.

[coolhumanoidbeing]

when people talk about intentional plurality i beg them to look into IFS. I saw a post recently about someone praising plurality as an intentional coping mechanism rather than a trauma response through dissociation, and how it can be helpful to imagine different “alters” for different situations to make life a little easier.

yes, this is a coping strategy— internal family systems. this is NOT plurality.

i will always come back to this: if you have to pretend to be someone else, that’s not plurality. recognized plurality ONLY stems from intense, repeated trauma and some form of dissociation/derealization that happens unconsciously as a result.

DID ≠ a coping mechanism

DID = a trauma response!!!

[coolhumanoidbeing]

Another weird thing I hear used against those in CDD spaces is "you can tell these people don't know anything because they would all use the word 'parts' not 'alters' or 'fictives' cuz therapists don't let you use terms like that". Not only is this false, but psychologists are not required to exclusively use clinical terms accepted in strict medical literature. If you call your identity states "inner people" or something because that's what you've always understood them to be, therapists will often use that term as well and allow you to self describe your experiences.

Similarly, a common misconception and assumption is "You can't act like alters are people, a therapist wouldn't let you do that" because again, yes they would. In fact treatment involves treating a patient's alternate identities individually as "real" people the way that they likely never experienced. A practitioner qualified to treat a CDD is not going to tell you not to call another alter a person because they don't meet their definition of personhood, they are going to talk to them in accordance with how they understand their own identity because they exist as they do for a reason. A psychologist isn't going to go "hey, cut that out I'm not gonna pretend you're 4 year old 'Sally'. You're John so I'm treating you as the 44 year old man you are. 'Sally' isn't a real person". Sounds like a malpractice case waiting to happen. There is nothing constructive, helpful, or healthy about this denial approach that people assume that any "sane" therapist would use. It is not a treatment modality, it's just what some people want to happen because they can't comprehend why a medical professional would "humor" these alternate identities. But it's counterproductive when you're dealing with a patient so traumatized that they've dissociated to develop multiple identities. Hell even if the person were truly only pretending to have DID, that wouldn't be a helpful approach.

I think a lot of it comes from the discomfort around and inherent strangeness of the concept that one person can somehow be five "people". They're "parts" at most but the parts vs people thing is so nuanced. Someone with DID is human, there is no "real" them. Perception of self, identity, and personhood are so complicated and personal. The thing with DID is that you truly do not have a singular sense of personhood or identity. So how that feeling is defined, depends on who you ask.

Some people even with DID frame it as "it's not the existence of multiple people but less than one whole person being fragmented" which is not inherently incorrect for someone to describe themselves. But both can be true, you are the fragments of what would have been one cohesive identity, and exist with different perceptions of identity and personhood. Really saying someone with DID is less than a whole person feels dehumanizing but at the same time that is genuinely how some people feel about living with it. Like a bunch of pieces of a person, especially if these parts aren't very complex. So I wouldn't tell these people "no you have to see all your parts as whole PEOPLE" because their sense of personhood is not mine to dictate. For some, these identities feel so distinctly different and complex due to the extent of dissociation. I just don't see myself being able to tell someone they can't consider themselves a person. Sure socially, the "outside world" won't see you as 15 people or care that you have DID but you can still perceive yourself as you do, and as a person. It's part of the survival mechanism to do so, regardless of how uncomfortable that is for someone else. Fuck's sake, I doubt the people who feel so strongly about denying personhood to those with CDDs truly have had strangers irl with DID asking to be treated individually as different people but I'm fairly certain that most of them have unknowingly interacted with someone that has DID. But I've seen some people get so pissed at the mere idea of how someone with it perceives themselves internally. It's a covert condition, most people with it don't want strangers treating them differently but people act like they're all just going to Olive Garden or some shit asking the servers to call them Naruto and screaming ableism if they don't. If anyone, typically people close to those with DID are the only ones that they wish to know different alters on a personal basis, with a few exceptions like with any disorder. Chances are your coworker isn't gonna aggressively demand that you regard them as 25 individual people but it's like the people passionate about this invent people to get mad at based on some kid they saw using Pluralkit or some TikToks reposted to a cringe comp on Youtube.

Like personally, I don't care what people think of me but to say I'm less than a person is objectively pretty fucked up and to think I should have a therapist condition me to perceive myself otherwise when that has the potential to compromise the safety of someone dissociating to survive, is just as well.

[coolhumanoidbeing]

On your blog...

You want to exclusively talk about the debilitating side of DID? Sure! I hope it helps to write it down ❤️

You want to talk about the quirky, or fun events that come from your DID? Sure! I'm glad you have a place where you can be positive. ❤️

You want to talk about science and studies? Awesome! You can even link them to allow for further reading!

You want to talk about the community, and talk about yourself using community-made terms and ideas? Cool! Science hasn't caught up on the lived experience of people with DID. You keep doing your best to describe yourself!

You want to talk about how you have little to no sense of self, and undefined alters? That's totally fair! Dissociation is sometimes not cut and dry, tell us about it!

You want to talk about how you have very clearly defined alters that feel so distinct from you? All good! That's common too, tell us more!

But if...

The second someone has a lived experience that differs from yours, you argue with them?

The second someone is too positive, too negative, not aware of their alters, too aware of their alters, too scientifically inclined or not enough scientifically inclined, you argue with them?

That sucks!

Syscourse feels like a knife to the chest. I've suffered enough. Let me have a community. I know I can't be the only one to think this.

It's not because you wanted a community when you opened Tumblr, and found experiences that differ from yours instead, that you have to attack these people.

I've tried to stay away from the fights, but I think that if no one brings up how senseless they are, they have no chance of stopping...

***this is about DID. Not endogenic folks. I do not include any endogenic people in my discussions since they do not claim to have DID***

[coolhumanoidbeing]

french version here

If you only ever read one of my posts, let it be this one.

TODAY IS DID AWARENESS DAY. READ THIS PRETTY PLEASE ❤️❤️

Are you Canadian?

Specifically, are you from the province of Québec? (if not, you can stop reading, thanks for sticking around - but you can also keep reading if you have a few dollars to spare!)

If so, did you know that there is NO OPTIONS to treat DID in the public healthcare system? But fear not!!! Over the past few years, a non-profit has been created.

Today, they're asking for YOUR help to cover some legal costs, as well as pay some professionals and get more activities going.

Here is their link. All their meetings are open on teams too, if you want to know more about how the donations are spent!

They also sell super cute bags with a chameleon!! Here's a picture:

All the profits also go for the cause!

[coolhumanoidbeing]

You can literally make anything and anyone problematic if you try hard enough seriously give me people and things and I’ll make them all “problematic” right now.