#Actually DID | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thecircularsystem · 3 days ago

Text

How to Individualize Safely

As someone who has found a lot of benefit from distinguishing my parts, and accepting ourselves as individual people… I have also found it difficult to do this safely, myself! Back in the day, we individualized ourselves so much that we grew to resent our system, and it really hurt our ability to integrate — but going to the complete 180 to treating ourselves only as fragmented parts of a single personality hurt us as well.

Individualization can be incredibly helpful for integration, as we have since learned, so I wanted to share my perspective on how to reduce the potential harm that could arise. By no means should this be taken in such a way as to suggest that individualization is always harmful, or always risky. I have just found it to be such with my own system. Equally, this advice is just what worked for my system; your mileage may vary, as recovery will always depend on the individual / system!

Unfortunately, this guide is incredibly long, and not very easy to summarize for ease of access. My apologies to those who struggle with large blocks of text.

General Reminders for Safety and Success

Compromise is Key

In every relationship, you must find balance. This is where my system struggled the most in the early days. If we agree that every part is their own person, then there will naturally be conflict due to sharing the same body for our existence. After all, we can't decide to do everything we want with the body; we have to come to a compromise. So, work on discussing with your system what you want to do. How can you reach compromises with who you, collectively, present as? How can you communicate your desires and needs? Some methods we used were mental grounding, journaling, notes, etc. We found a lot of success on using post-it notes -- often explaining them to our family as "writing notes about characters." I would highly recommend the round-table discussion technique! (That is two links!)

Part of compromise is understanding that you cannot get everything exactly how you want it; but by sacrificing just a little bit, you gain equilibrium and acceptance of ones self alongside balance with others around you.

Follow Through

If you agree with your parts to make changes for them -- buy new clothes for them, do some sort of body modification to help them feel more themselves, etc -- follow through. You have to stick to your word if you're ever going to trust yourself, and if they ever want to trust you. You can't just not do the things you agreed upon. If you find issue with a compromise after the fact, you MUST discuss that and come to a new conclusion that is better for all parties. If the decision cannot be reversed, then you will need to work together to comfort the negative feelings.

Remember, though, that consent can be revoked. Maybe before you get that tattoo you agreed on, you now realize that you’re terrified and can’t. Discuss this somehow! Let them know the detriment it would cause. Come to new conclusions that might be effective, even if not quite "ideal" -- can a tattoo be replaced with a marker drawing or tattoo sleeve art? There's a lot of compromises that can be made.

Treat Each Other Equitably, Not Equally

We have some parts who nearly never front. Would they feel more comfortable in certain clothing? Yes! But the clothing they like is either too expensive or rarely going to be worn, and we have a limited budget for clothing. Since they never really front, it's not a priority. However, one part who doesn't front as often, but is desperately needed, likes cheaper clothing that looks nice. Much of our closet is dedicated to her, because it's affordable. And large portions of our closet are dedicated to parts who enjoy fronting and are out more -- we spend the most money on parts like myself, who front for months at a time.

This is not equal treatment of parts. Treating ourselves equally would come at incredible detriment to our wallet, in this specific example, but in many others as well. Part of compromise and individualization is understanding that, as different people, you're going to require different needs to be met. Don't try to even things out; have open and honest conversations about equity in your system.

Be Prepared For Mistakes

As we worked on individualizing more, we made the decision (after years of deliberation) to cut our hair completely. I was excited for this; as a part who fronts constantly and needed to feel more masculine, it was the best I've felt in this body. Soon after this, a very feminine part fronted. We had spoken with her and agreed prior to the haircut that this was an acceptable compromise. However, when she switched in, she had a complete mental breakdown about the loss of her long hair, so much so that she struggled to return to front for months afterward.

The response was unexpected, but it's something you must be prepared for. Sometimes we don't know how we'll feel when something about us changes; sometimes we think we're ready for a big change and consent to it, but it turns out we were wrong. You need to be prepared to comfort parts who may become distressed.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Some of the tips I share may help. Some of them may hurt. Not every system is alike, and not every system will find benefit or harm from the things another system may find beneficial or harmful! If you are worried about individualizing in a particular way, my suggestion is to deliberate on it further with your system. Communicate and discuss your hesitations; try to find balance with one another and understand where your distress may be coming from.

And remember: you have survived this much. It will be okay if you try something and it doesn't work out; it's okay to hurt because you took a risk. This is the dignity of risk; you are able to make choices for your system and choices about your well-being.

How Do I Actually Individualize?

Now onto the meat of this post, actual tips and guidance for breaking things up more and strengthening the personality of parts. Here are tips that helped us. I'm also going to include how each one of these tips helped us integrate further.

Sign Offs

I highly recommend this as a trick to individualize. Funny enough, the standard method I've seen (writing your name at the bottom of a post) does not help me; it feels too formal. Instead, we sign off our posts with creative tag-lines we developed ourselves. For instance, I utilize the sign off "Armageddon Comes While I'm Sleeping," because I am a chronically exhausted part who struggles with taking action, leading to problems. I enjoyed that symbolism!

You can use names, emojis, tag-lines like us -- or some other system you find helpful. We find the most benefit from signing off on posts like these, but I've also seen individuals utilize sign-offs for other things as well.

Integration Benefit: Seeing which part wrote what helped us to understand who was struggling, particularly as they signed off on the private vent blog we have. They couldn't hide their feelings -- they made the active choice not to hide those feelings, because we are working together as a team of people, now. This allowed us to seek out struggling parts and comfort, compromise, and coordinate with them, specifically. This has led to far more ease of integration.

Proxy Bots

This is a tip that did not help me; proxy bots such as Pluralkit and Simply Plural are used often in Discord servers. They allow an individual account to use multiple usernames as proxies, making it so an individual account can post as multiple users.

For us, proxy bots encouraged too much individualization, leading to heightened dissociation. However, this was years ago when we had less connection to one another, and I would be tempted to try again now that I have learned the safety tips I mentioned above.

Integration Benefit: Many systems find that proxying allows them to see parts they didn't know existed, due to amnesia barriers. Similarly to sign offs, proxying allows systems to seek out struggling parts.

Wardrobe and Accessories

We have a collection of scarves that different parts can wear, depending on who is fronting. We have shirts and dresses and pants that are certain parts favorite outfits. We have jewelry that is part-specific. We have packers of numerous sizes to accommodate for various parts and their comfort.

Wearing these things helps parts feel more like themselves. We feel more at home in our own body and can shape ourselves how we appear. We do need to moderate ourselves some -- we can't go buying Ve entire angel wings, but we can get t-shirts that reference angels to help her feel more like herself.

Integration Benefit: Feeling comfortable fronting helped parts understand what others were going through, fronting for longer periods of time. It also made them more willing to compromise on other things (i.e. "If I can wear a packer, then we don't need to get bottom surgery, which will make the girls feel more listened to").

Playlist Crafting

Some of our parts have wildly different music tastes! We have a collection of spotify and youtube playlists for different parts. This way, when we drive, we can listen to music that makes us happy. Some of our parts even have multiple playlists.

Integration Benefit: There's been a lot of these honestly. Our song history helped us see who frequently fronted when we struggled to remember; listening to other parts playlists helped us understand what they were feeling or thinking; putting the songs all into one huge Circular Playlist helped us identify more clearly specific fronting triggers and work through trauma together. The list goes on!

Individual and Adapted Hobbies

This was actually suggested and reinforced by my therapist. Our protector, Numb, began to feel aimless, as he no longer had his chess game (aka, planning every interaction to its fullest extent to ensure we didn't get hurt) to occupy his mind, due to us being out of an abusive environment. He felt powerless and like he was going to slip into dormancy due to a lack of need to exist. My therapist encouraged him to consider what he enjoyed; from there, he could find growth through hobbies. Rather than leaving us, he could adapt and change, just like the rest of us.

Numb very much enjoys article reviews and reading. We developed the innerworld to contain a study where he can watch over our containers of memories while he enjoys his books.

There's hundreds of other examples. As a part, I'm a gamer, but Curtis is more musically inclined, whereas the kids focus more on physical toys and puzzles. Sierra loves doing her hair while Debra loves food. Emory is our biggest D&D nerd -- predictably.

We also share hobbies, but tackle them in different -- adapted -- ways. For instance, we all enjoy writing. But Numb enjoys purple-prose focused emotional work, whereas Curtis loves dialogue, whereas certain parts like to share what they write on our 18+ blog instead. Even when we write the same things, we write them differently.

Integration Benefit: Having individual hobbies helped us feel safe. It helped us to understand that we could grow past the trauma that led us to existing; we could become our own uniquely beautiful people and our trauma could not hold us down. This led to us being able to work through our trauma and communicate better than ever.

Being Yourself, Loudly

I mean offline. I understand that this is unsafe for many individuals, and as I've said numerous times -- these do not apply to every system ever. But for us, being known by the name we go by and being able to be openly a system of parts has helped us extensively with individualization and healing.

Our friends and family all use our correct names and pronouns when we are fronting (for the most part; family struggles some). We have in our bio and intro on servers -- even those that are not system based -- that we are a DID system. We have told numerous coworkers and far more strangers.

Integration Benefit: As with many of the above, this is all about our comfort in our own body. Feeling comfortable, safe, and loved has been the number one healer of our trauma. Being myself loudly allows me to be, well, myself -- in all my glory.

I hope that this made sense! It's now midnight for me and I'm quite tired, so I'll just post what I have. Thank you all and goodnight <3

#armageddon comes while im sleeping #did #cdd #complex dissociative disorder #sysconversation #dissociative identity disorder #actually did #actually dissociative #syscourse #did osdd #dissociation

37 notes · View notes