#alter posts

[insipid-drivel]

When DID saves the day

Alex here! I’m one of the primary alters of insipid-drivel and happen to be a pretty regular presence out in the wild. We’ve been endeavoring as a system of alternate personalities to speak out gradually about what it’s like to be us, what it is we - in our unique case, as all DID/OSDD presentations vary and so you should not take this as a research article to be relied upon for all of us - do, why we’re here, and other fun stuff along the way.

I was here today to help keep everyone affected by our mother’s abrupt health crisis and emergency surgery. insipid struggles with severe panic attacks related to this sort of subject matter, and so I’m here in front not to dominate, but to calm and help keep us functioning rather than succumb to severe panic and emotional turmoil.

Today, our mom had to go to the ER. It’s been a very difficult week. We (our pronouns are they/them collectively, but our family is from Southern roots, so it’s also often just “all y’all”) suffered from undiagnosed gallstones for over 20 years due to a hilariously outdated and mismanaged medical system that fobbed off an AFAB person who happened to have an unrelated mental illness who said “this hurts” for the umpteenth time! I happen to be an alter that’s highly fixated on medicine, health, and general wellbeing (and cheese) and felt particularly strongly to write this post with the intent of it additionally serving as a comfort and word of solidarity for other people out there who have suffered too long from doctors that forgot that medicine involves working with actual human beings and that being a bigoted asshole is why people die more than they should.

Like a few other conditions in our family, digestive issues have always been a genetic issue. In our particular branch, it’s gallstones. Our mom is in her mid-60′s and right in time for age-related gallstones to manifest, too, because our sensitivities to various foods often intensify as we age. Really though, as you get into your middle age, have a peek at your gallbladder if you eat a fatty or alcohol-rich diet. It just takes an ultrasound to check if you have any gallstones, yourself. They’re completely painless until they reach a point where they come loose and become trapped in a bile duct (an itty bitty little hose smaller than a human hair connecting the gallbladder to the stomach). This presents with absolutely horrifying pain in the mid-abdomen, usually toward the right hand side, as well as sometimes with severe burning and piercing pains in the abdomen. The pain is usually so severe that it necessitates hospitalization, opioids, and eventually, surgery.

With how severe the pain of a gallbladder in distress is, it’s easy to imagine how helpless you could feel when presented with a loved one in agonizing pain that you can’t make go away. The bitch of it is, when you’re waiting to be called up so you can get access to general and pain treatment, the gallbladder attacks often trigger spasms in the intestines that causes a sensation of intense urgency to use the bathroom in frequent waves. It’s virtually impossible to stay still and wait. It’s just as hard to watch, especially when you’ve suffered from it, yourself. It can bring back traumatic and triggering memories, because these conditions can be and are traumatic. Pain can leave deep psychological scars, and that’s okay. The important thing is to keep fighting for your right to feel better in every way you know you deserve to. It is very normal to see a therapist after a major health crisis, especially when pain was a major part of it, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of talking to someone.

Our younger brother is our only other major form of direct support, but he happens to be on the shy side of autistic and can struggle with crisis management, especially when it’s personal to him. Like many people on the spectrum, he can clam up and quietly crumble from feeling the pressure to be The Guy, but not feeling like he has the life experience or confidence to “help correctly”.

That’s where I specifically come in! With insipid down with completely-understandable panic attacks because C-PTSD sucks and our brother feeling frozen and unsure of how to help and when, I asked insipid’s permission to take over, stop the panic cycle, and manage the most important thing of all: looking after our mom’s elderly, disabled dog and informing both him and our mother about what to expect, what signs were positive, and generally take charge and provide a sense of stability that our mom being cripplingly ill has temporarily taken away.

I’m a problem-solver. I fix things, and I love to take care of people and know that I’m helping. That’s what a lot of us alters do, and all we really care about. DID/OSDD, in our case, isn’t that much of a disorder. We work together as a system - we prefer to be called a team - to provide in surprising ways. We may not all be talkative, or personable, or even likeable, but there’s usually specific reasons behind why we exist as we do to the person that lives with us.

Instead of being a nervous wreck and never sleeping until everything is okay (and thus keeling over of sleep deprivation, and brain health is kind of a big deal to all of us because it’s kind of the only real space we have), I can get us to bed and panic attacks can piss off ;) Everything’s fine and dandy, and I know it because I said so, and that answer is acceptable in my abstract reality.

In the words of Adam Savage (or whoever he heard it from), “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

Fight the stigma, and good night <3

-Alex

[harestigm]

I think what helps is separating the abuse from the non-abuse. 

My family is really good, they support, help, and love me. I think. 

But. They did some really bad, repetitive things that hurt and traumatized me, even if it wasn’t directed at me and was between two adult people. I didn’t *feel* traumatized, but I did feel scared, angry, ruined, ashamed, anxious, etc. 

And now it lives with me and haunts me. Daily. 

No, they weren’t abusive or abusing me, because it was an accident. 

It was an accident. 

[dreamdropsystem]

We always talk about how autistic adults are adults, and that's true. but shoutout to the autistics that :

age regress

pet regress

don't feel human

are age stunted by trauma

who feel like a teen/child for whatever reason

who want to be a child again

age sliders in a system

littles in a system

middles in a system

[wasyago]

recks cleo !

she's a human btw, not a robot teehee ^_^

[rose-colored-tarot]

Personally I've never been a fan of the "magic is a beast that needs to be tamed" metaphor. Magic is more like the ocean: powerful, terrifying, capable of unbridled force. But at the same time, it is gentle, warm, the lifeblood of millions of people. The folk who know the ocean know you cannot harness it's force, you must work within or around it, lest it destroy you. Similarly, magic is great and terrible and gentle and kind, all at once. And those who work with it need to work WITH it, not reign over it. Because the primordial forces have no rules about biting the hand that feeds you.

[thelostmoongazer]

yeah he's baby girl or whatever

[stimmingandstruggling]

soulmates but not in a soft romantic way soulmates in a destined to change each other for better or for worse, cannot be who they are without each other, unstoppable together but they’re also the only ones who can defeat each other, equals, existences undeniably tied to each other way

[carthonasi]

what do you know about my mother? she was like you. she was kind. and loving.

[catlezboyfriends]

host is asleep time to be a fag

[pancakemolybdenum]

screw it. im posting this too

[dailyarturia]

[bonus-links]

I've been sick lately and haven't been able to draw much,,,,have a collection of doodles i haven't posted yet ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[remarkingonit]

"I'd rather focus on my hot, hot, hot wife." (7x09)

[atzupdates]

[231005] HONGJOONG and MINGI for Altered States

[hydnes]

People using the McDonalds Zionism thing to be fatphobic as fuck is crazy because why would you be like "Why do you need to shovel your fucking face with grease anyways" if you weren't already thinking that prior & just wanted an excuse to brazenly say it. Insane

I still stand by what I said I'm just turning off reblogs because I'm just being exposed to paragraphs of stuff that's almost completely missing the point and I'd rather people didn't boost this over actual posts about what's going on.

Please keep talking about Palestine and not spending money on corporations who fund genocide, and most importantly please remember the people you're doing this for as that's the point I was trying to make with this post.

[6kn0wh3re6]

250 posts!

Michelle Alter