#dramatized conciously or unconciously

[symptoms-syndrome]

I’m the gatekeeper in a recently prof DX’d system, and our host prefers not to publicise our diagnosis, which I entirely agree with, but I grieve frequently for my past and my own life so I thought I might make my own account to help ease that a little and learn more about dissociative spectrum disorders. Do you have any tips on how to simply- get started?

Hm. I'll make this a multi part answer. I hope it doesn't get too long. I also am going to assume that by dissociative spectrum disorders you mean DID/OSDD, since I assume you're asking about system things? Most dissociative spectrum disorders won't cause dissociated parts the way DID/OSDD do.

Also obligatory "I'm not a professional or a scholar I just read books."

Firstly, I think it's important to identify why you want to learn more, because different reasons will make you want to take different approaches.

Do you want to learn to better understand yourself? If so, you would likely want to look into healing-focused, patient-directed resources. You don't totally need to understand how DID works on a whole to better understand and improve yourself, especially considering how different DID can be for everyone.

Do you want to learn to help others? Definitely more complex. Know and understand that you will not be able to help people you don't know (or people you do) responsibly until/unless you go through a lot of school.

If you want to learn more in order to like, connect w ppl w DID online or something I'm afraid you're SOL. Online DID communities are pretty atypical overall, a lot of the stuff people talk about on Tumblr or wherever are more? Community oriented things than clinical.

I don't know anything about your age, background, education, etc. But if you are going to venture past patient-focused self-help books and into clinical books and research papers, it's very important to learn things like how research is conducted, how those papers are written, and for what purpose. A lot of academic papers in general are written with the assumption you know that sort of thing, and people reading research papers without that context often leads to misunderstanding and misinformation.

For example, with DID, a lot of papers will talk about broad, overarching themes instead of specifics. You aren't likely to find papers specifically about, for example, fictives and source memories, but you might be able to find papers about introjection and substitute beliefs. Additionally, a lot of these papers are written with the intent of treating patients. If something isn't like, an issue that's negatively effecting a patient's life, there's less likely to be research about it. I suppose I might compare it to reading tarot, in that pulling a some card isn't going to tell you there's mold in your fridge, but it might tell you to be more concious of your environment? Bad analogy but hopefully you get my point. The assumption is that you'll be able to use the broad information in a paper and figure out how it applies to your specific patient, since they can't possibly write about each and every individual thing/way something can manifest in a disorder as complex and as personal as DID. You, being a single person, are a small minority of the people who have DID, so no paper, book, or resource will explain everything you have going on completely without having a lot of stuff that doesn't apply to you. There's a lot of common threads of course, but just keep in mind that just because something is written somewhere, doesn't mean it has to apply to you specifically. No one person can have every symptom presented every way.

Also with a disorder as complex as DID, it's best to start small. Learn about trauma first, PTSD/CPTSD, et cetera. There's a lot that probably won't be relevant to you specifically, but it's an important background to have. Like how if you want to learn architecture, you need to learn materials science first, and if you want to study bugs you need to study biology. It's all necessary background information that'll help you parse the information you learn about DID in a way that makes sense, because research papers aren't written for laymen and they're sort of written with the assumption you know the basics. This applies more the more and more specific you get.

Also, of course, papers/books/etc about trauma often have nitty gritty details and case studies. Be prepared for that and take breaks/make sure you have a support system as needed.

Lastly, and I don't know how to put this delicately or in a way that won't make people angry, but prepare for your research to be not at all aligned with your experiences on Tumblr, and sometimes even contrary to them. The way people talk about DID on Tumblr, especially the way a lot of popular blogs talk about DID on Tumblr, is definitely not the most common way it manifests or the most common way people are encouraged to treat it. This isn't to say that it isn't a genuine experience, it just isn't the most common one, and it certainly isn't a clinical one. A lot of intra-community issues are so specific that you aren't likely to find books or papers about them. Some things that are incredibly common sources of conversation in social media (such as pseudomemories, introjects, headspaces) aren't really talked about a lot in books and papers. The primary focus of the research field is the treatment of trauma, so things that aren't necessarily directly relevant are less likely to appear in research.

Be open to being wrong, being corrected, and learning. Just as with any other kind of learning. Nobody knows everything and it's okay to be wrong.

As for resources, I believe the most common books people read about DID specifically are

Coping with Trauma-related Dissociation (patient-directed) and Treating Trauma-related Dissociation (therapist-directed) by Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart, and Suzette Boon

The Haunted Self by Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis, Onno van der Hart and Kathy Steele (therapist-directed)

There are a wide array of books, I obviously have not read them all. Be more critical of books the older they are, and be aware of when someone is talking from personal experience vs when someone is talking from clinical experience. They both have their usefulness and neither is to be dismissed, but they shouldn't be confused.

Sorry this got very long! I tried to keep it as short as possible, but learning about this sort of thing is really complex overall so it can be hard to be concise.