stampede-system

[stampede-system]

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always be yourself. it doesn't have to be the same self every time. you can make a new one if you need to. but make sure it's yours before you be it

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He will do amazing, help the system immensely, then just disappear again 😭

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This Just In!

The characters in my head are no longer living there rent free!

They have gained sentience and are now expected to contribute.

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when you have a new hyperfixation that you write fanfic about nonstop but then your brain does The Thing and accidentally splits a new introject from the hyperfixation and he sends you a chat being all weird about the fanfiction he found so you have no clue how to respond and just send him this to find if/when he fronts again

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a comic about my experience with other people's perception of my DID/OSDD. might do more pages in the future? we'll see.

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sorry babe i can’t come over. i’m arguing with the voices in my head about whether or not they exist again

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You are allowed embarrassing introjects. You are allowed alters based on a popular game, movie, TV show, etc! It is not morally wrong or an indication of faking. Your mind latched onto what it needed to survive. You are allowed to have introjects.

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it's okay if you split for no apparent reason / minor reason.

some systems have low split tolerance. they may split because "minor" triggers which wouldn't cause split in other systems. some brains just have no coping skills besides splitting. so these systems split to cope with anything. stress, emotions, difficult tasks, etc.

it doesn't make you fake if you split often, split easily, split from minor triggers. and also you may not know something is stressing you out when you're inside the situation. so you may see it as split for no reason while reason does actually exist.

and sometimes you may split fragment and not notice, and after some time this fragment may develop into formed alter, and you find out a "split out of nowhere" while there was a reason and split happened in the past.

you're not fake because of easy splits, frequent splits, unexplainable splits, etc. it is possible, it happens with many systems, and it's okay.

[stampede-system]

Types of Amnesia

Diagram created by me

General criteria for amnesia:

Memory loss

Confusion

Inability to recognize familiar figures/places

Difficulty recalling names or places

Not remembering where you went

Worser ability to remember things that had happened

Generalized Amnesia Where a person completely forgets everything about themself and have no recollection of what, where, and who they spoke to. This can describe a blackout switch and may still recognize who they are.

Localized Amnesia Where a person is unable to recall a specific/series of event from the whole, which creates an incomplete picture of the situation. For example, remembering childhood but not the abuse.

Selective Amnesia Where a person only lost some and retain the rest, forgetting parts yet not all of them. This can describe greyouts as it grasps some information/sensory yet not enough to tell what exactly happened. One example is playing the phone and unable to recall what occured, only to jump its memory right to being at bed.

Emotional Amnesia Where a person has an intact memory and it's details on what had happened, but do not remember what the event feels like (e.g. was scared, happy, etc.). One description is that you're watching something that didn't happen to you, because you don't feel like being in the scene itself.

Continuous Amnesia Where a person fails to retain full parts of the event/day, for a set period of time (can vary from minutes to days) and create an accumulative, small bits of selective amnesias, continuously, leaving many gaps in a chronological timeline. This usually happens in times or stress, or abuse.

Fragmented Amnesia Where a person has an unrelated, and/or disjointed memories that does not go with the timeline's order, creating confusion and difficult to grasp the cohesive picture of what truly happened. Emotional amnesia may be present in this type. Bonus for systems:

Amnesia barriers Where a person fronting is not able to recall other alter's memories, which is a form of retrograde amnesia and compartmentalization. Because the fronter will only retain any information before switching out with the next one, the rest experiences anterograde amnesia as it cannot form and remember those memories, unless being coconcious or cofronting (even though, this is not always guaranteed).

Take notes that amnesia can still happen outside system things due to comorbidities like anxiety disorders or depression, this does mean systems are bound to experience more amnesia compared to non-systems folks out there.

Do you have any discussions about this? Or would like to describe your own way of seeing these different types of amnesia? Or have more to add? Feel free to tell them here!

- j

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Think systems with a high number of fictional introjects are a new phenomena? Kluft's paper on polyfragmented/extremely complex DID from 1988 includes a patient with LOTR introjects, and another based off of Shakespear's Tempest. Fictional introjects have been a thing for a very long time!

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Idk maybe that's why

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a comic about my experience with other people's perception of my DID/OSDD. might do more pages in the future? we'll see.

[stampede-system]

Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.

Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.

Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.

Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?

Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.

Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.

Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.

There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.

This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.

[stampede-system]

[Text; This system Kills facists]

[stampede-system]

Since the r-slur is making a comeback (you know, the word that starts with R, has six letters, and ends in D), I'm gonna make a little PSA:

Yes, it's an ableist slur.

Terms like "asshat," "head-up-ass," "up their own ass," and "high on their own farts" exist. There's also words like crap, dogshit, half-assed, assclown, and chucklefuck. And on the less vulgar side, there are terms like ridiculous, nonsense, train wreck, pointless, insipid, self-absorbed, pretentious, annoying, boring, contemptible, vile, and disgusting.

Substituting words like restarted, poptarted, brain damaged, smoothbrain, etc. is still ableist, because either 1. you obviously still mean the r-word, or 2. you're still using disability as an insult.

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Shoutout to systems who just can't catch a break!

Life often packs a lot on us, and it can be even harder when you're wading through a trauma-filled mire of hell. It's hard work to get out of it, and so many of us are trudging through it each day, just doing our best.

Shoutout to systems who feel they are constantly struggling. Maybe you catch ill often, partly as a side effect of having trauma taking all your energy to stay healthy. Maybe you struggle with motivation, leading to missed deadlines and opportunities galore. Maybe you keep having things pile up, more and more, until it feels like everything is one fire.

You are not alone. This is all so common for people to go through, system or otherwise -- but so, so many systems can really relate.

You aren't alone, and we'll get through it together, one step at a time.