#identity map

[dad-from-a-distance]

I did this with my therapist a few months ago and it was so so helpful to start developing my own sense of personal identity, which is something I’ve always struggled with. I subdivided the “gamer” category into genres of games I enjoy I.e. “colony sim, roguelike” as well as franchises I enjoy. As cringy as I felt to self-describe as a “gamer”, it actually did help me think about myself in a way I hadn’t before!

when i was in therapy i once expressed to my therapist that i really struggle with having pretty much zero idea of who i am as a person + she whipped out a piece of paper and suggested that we write down different aspects of myself. and i had no idea what to say bc ‘myself’ is a concept i’m not very familiar with so she started saying about my interests and how that’s part of me + i was like okay!! that makes sense!! so she clicked her pen and was like “you said you like video games before” and i was like sure bud :) and watched her write down, in capital letters ‘GAMER’ and i’ve never had so much terror struck into my h

[fantastic-nonsense]

thoughts: if Damian is leaving Robin and we're getting a new Robin (rumored to be Maps), does this mean I might finally be able to convince people to read Gotham Academy?????

[the-foundation-sys]

☆Endos

This is going to be half a rant about endogenics, and half me trying to cover points i think need to be mentioned. I'm aware some people call themselves endos due to not remembering their trauma or not thinking they have enough trauma, but for this post we're going to consider endos purely as non-traumagenic systems, and we won't consider that factor since i find it's very rare to see. Putting everything under the cut because i feel this will be quite long.

1. Endogenic's using system terms. I can guarantee that if endogenics weren't using system terms or claiming to be systems, they wouldn't get nearly as much hate. Because systems can only be formed by trauma, you can't be born as them nor can you will them into existence.

The main thing that pisses me off with them is them using terms and roles that exclusively exist due to trauma. Even if endogenics were real and possible, they wouldn't have half the stuff systems do. They wouldn't dissociate, they wouldn't have amnesia, they wouldn't have protectors, they wouldn't have 99% of alter roles, they wouldn't have shit. (A post i saw once that this reminds me of is how people with dissociative disorders can give clear and in-depth reasons for why they're systems, but you'll ask an endo and they'll go "oh well the human brain's a mysterious thing we don't understand!")

Personally, I'm a trauma holder- one of the worst ones in our system, actually. Every single fucking day, multiple times I'm tormented by the severe trauma we've suffered to the point I've nearly been having panic attacks whilst in school purely because someone touched me or made a sex joke. Endogenics have NO FUCKING RIGHT to have 'protectors' and 'trauma holders' and 'persecutors' WHEN THEY NEVER HAD ANY FUCKING TRAUMA IN THE FIRST PLACE.

2. Glorification. I don't get why endos get away with faking dissociative disorders just because they're using a different term and have a big community. It's like a community of people faking PTSD and just putting it under a different name, and suddenly being protected by people. People are always being shamed for faking disorders, so why is it suddenly so different when endogenics fake dissociative disorders? Why is it suddenly endogenics being defended?

3. Endogenics with new terms. Again, like i said before, if they weren't claiming to be systems, having these new terms for themselves would be completely fine! But since they're claiming to be systems whilst using these absolutely absurd terms, it's far more harmful, and they have no right. What the fuck do you mean your 'alters' are 'syshopping into your partner system's headspace'? What do you mean you're 'trading alters'? THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE. You can't 'will your system into existence' or 'create alters', THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE. Maybe if you weren't claiming to have alters and if you weren't claiming to be systems, you wouldn't get so much hate.

4. Reasons for endogenics. I think there's a few reasons why endogenics think they're systems, other than the past mentioned systems thinking they're endogenics due to forgetting/invalidating their trauma.

The first reason would be that they may be faking purely for attention. They may have seen systems online and decided they want to be inside those communities, or decided being a system seems fun, so they've decided to pretend to be one for fun. They might be roleplaying being a system purely because they find it entertaining.

The second reason may be because of the amount of misinformation thrown around about disorders. People may mistake themselves for systems due to the extreme misinformation online- particularly in endogenic safe/neutral communities. They may think that their rapid moodswings and poor memory immediately means that they're a system- bonus points if they're actively exploring their identity and are split on multiple possible identities and names, so they think that they're a system. We know people who've thought they were a system due to identity confusion, extreme moodswings, identifying with different characters or having multiple names, but then later realised that they weren't a system and it was instead something like BPD, or that they didn't have anything at all.

The third reason may be that they're fictionkin and don't realise it (or they do realise it and are in denial). They may mistake their different kins as introjects, and they may think they're an OSDD-1B system, or a system with generally low amnesia. Or they may notice that they're likely fictionkin, but they refuse that fact because they think being a system is more unique and fun.

Overall endogenics really tick me off, i despise them, and i wish they'd move out of system communities and stop claiming they're systems.

-🩺

[ask-seer]

@askmercenary died

[veryaren]

get little'd idiot

tinymarg or. "natasha" extra

[moecenary]

small ramble to accompany this old drawing of mine: i recall seeing a clip from the stageplay between a banter of norton and naib, where norton poked fun at naib for sleeping with stuffed animals. while norton (in the stageplay) was obviously teasing naib, and not being serious, i think it would be a cute idea if naib had at least one stuffed animal he was really attached to. coincidentally, this same stuffed animal would be a gift from norton, probably won from the carnival or something along those lines.

[uriswhumpchamber]

While I am not one to be held back by realism, sometimes it ends up making a scenario better. Like:

Whumpee is great at whatever it is they do. They have some sort of job where they need to retain information, be able to orient themselves, and the like. Their mind is amazing at that, and they're proud - incredibly proud of themselves. And then something happens - the hurt happens.

Maybe they're kidnapped and kept somewhere they don't know, maybe they're tortured for the same information they had before. Maybe they're in a bad accident and lost. Something they, by every metric they used before to feel accomplished, should be able to deal with. Making escape plans, being able to find their way out of places and back to wherever they want to get - it's their whole thing.

But they can't. They're in pain, and exhausted, maybe being tortured, maybe just too hurt or shaken up. And they can't think. They stumble, they get lost - they get a good look at the sky and cannot find North, no matter how hard they try to remember how to do that. They walk into their captors because they make a turn right instead of left, or perhaps just walk in circles for too long without even noticing. They run for the nearest exit only to get lost not even a few meters from it, their head spinning, unable to remember the map for that very same area they're sure they knew. They cannot think, at all, their mind completely empty of anything useful.

And their pride shatters.

[system-of-a-feather]

Alternative System Mind Mapping Method for Communication

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a professional or scientifically or anything really backed method, this is something coming solely from peer / personal experience.]

In regards to an anon ask earlier, I was thinking about it and one of the ways we've approached improving communication - particularly internal - in a way that is a lot less prone to flooding or dealing with trauma or anything too overwhelming - is by approaching it following the concept of Memory Webs

I haven't read up on them recently, but "Memory Webs" were a thing that our AP Psychology teacher in highschool made us do because the AP Psych test was term / jargon heavy. Memory in the human brain has been shown to be HEAVILY associative and the ability to remember and connect things tends to rely on following a "web" of connected topics, ideas, concepts etc from one idea to the next.

So in our AP Psych class, she gave us these GIANT books for Vocabulary Webs that we had to slowly work on, each of which required 6 other vocab words / related concepts, a summarized definition, and an image to represent it. By doing this, you added 6 cues to recall the word (increasing the chance you'd remember it), a visual cue, an episodic memory of working on it, and a definition - all in all improving how connected the word is to other concepts in your brain and making it easier to recall it.

I personally like to look at DID and our parts in a similar manner sometimes where the large issue is that a lot of the nodes in the web of associations are either disconnected or connected through a hard-to-find and/or small chain. In that sense, parts struggle to be held together because they are not associated concepts. It's hard to reach other parts because the dissociative walls (which in our unsubstantiated opinion is less a 'wall' and more so a lack of reinforced neural connections, so I would call them dissociative caverns) keep associations from forming

As a result, alternative to more traditional ways of mapping your system and parts, a method I've liked to internally visualize systems and navigating system dynamics is through a memory web manner. (I actually have never done it physically cause the Ray part of my brain - also the most prominent part writing this rn - rarely liked to front if he didn't have to and did a lot of stuff internally)

Here's a bit of a breakdown using six of our parts if any of you want to try it out.

We personally like it because it strips a lot of trauma and stress off of it and makes it a lot more of a positive and present engaging activity. For the purposes of this, I'll be using the free online app of Milanote cause we've used it before for OC associative webs and I think it'll do fine enough. (Honestly it actually might just be a good way to log alter information now that I'm looking at it if you are at a place in recovery where keeping track of that physically helpful)

So we can start by dropping down the parts we want to include in the form of boards

So from here, we have a bunch of disconnected parts. However, we find that a lot of these parts have things that mean a lot to them, that illicit a strong emotion or reaction from them.

Some parts may lack it more than others (often in our case trauma holders and/or trauma locked parts) and that's okay and to be expected. This is a visualization method and if there isn't much connecting a part that is 100% okay.

For demonstration sake, I will now add bubbles around each part of things that were pretty early apparent that each individual liked.

Also for the purposes of how I know our system works and how I plan to do this, I am actually moving Riku to the center and you will all see why Riku is such an S tier center point with this model

So you can see some connections forming.

Some key things you can take from this visual that also applied to earlier stags of how we connected

Lucille and Riku are and have always been pretty darn connected, they go back as one of the longest duos and were split almost as a pair to deal with academics

Chunn and Ray have a very shared interest of "I don't want to do anything leave me alone"

XIV literally was just a piece of shit early on and didn't have any immediate HARD connections with anyone largely because he never was interested in actually engaging in things he liked in a positive way as his "favorite emotion" at the time was "being pissed off"

Lin - an originally trauma stuck / loop - is very very poorly associated with anything that isn't overtly trauma related (and that is saying something cause Vocaloid is trauma related) and thus has very few connections to other parts

So looking at this though, there are a few things that have some similarities between parts. What you can do is make plans to try to foster the interests that you do have and try to generalize it a bit more to also encompass what interests other parts have. So lets engage in hobbies a little more - explore a few concepts that mean a lot to parts independently - and find some more generalized version of those hobbies

(forgot to add easy listening to Ray's and "only wearing monochrome*" to XIV's earlier) (*there are a lot of nuances and caveats)

Damn, look at that. It's messy and ugly to have in a 2D form. I absolutely hate it, this would be so impossible with our whole system. But HEY, it's very connected - and that's the goal.

Compared to the previous one, you can see how easily it can be for one part's interests to start to drift into another. Because they are largely and strongly associated features to each part, they are a lot more accessible when engaging in their shared / associated connections and interests which makes it easier for the them to stay together near the front, stay associated with one another, and work with and communicate with one another.

Of course anyone following this blog goes "Where tf is Birds" and that I left out because it would ruin the point of the web as it actually is one of our traditional "you are around the system a lot? okay pick a bird" which serves to 1) be a fun system culture thing 2) be a means of welcoming a part in and 3) helps establish a foundational connection; we do the same with music but with music its a lot more elaborate and I probably wont explain it for other reasons.

But overtime, by fostering interests that were already present and encouraging parts to broaden and generalize their specific interest a bit, you end up with a lot of overlapping associations that can greatly improve internal communication, co-fronting ability, and just general fluidity and easy of moving around the brain web.

It becomes a good way of trying to figure out what you can do to encourage and help build connections and associations between parts by seeing where things are similar / could have more overlap (combat and martial arts, different types of fashion, different types of music, different appreciation for arts, taking over the world, yada yada yada)

And you wanna know the coolest thing? When you step back from the whole web you can see certain things appear that stand out the most and have some of the most connections.

If you ever intend to go to Final Fusion, those are the things that will likely be the most prominent traits of your whole self

For us? [REDACTED BIRDS for the point of the demonstration], Music, Fashion, Taking over the World, Recovery and Healing, Buddhism, Martial Arts, Arts in general - they're all some of our largest traits that persist in almost all forms as individual parts, partially fused parts, and fully fused parts.

And the BEST part? Doing this didn't require us to touch trauma at all.

Of course in recovery that will come up cause PTSD doesn't ask permission, but its a very low stress way to help improve internal communication and engagement with one another.

[afuckingsystemsthoughts]

i know I'm gonna get some hate for this, but it needs to be said.

hazbin hotel is problematic. the creator is problematic. the creator romanticizes sexual abuse in the show, along with sexual violence in general. it's also offensive to Christians, which, I'm not a big fan of Christianity, but I also won't offend their religion because that would be anti-theist and that's not good; we should respect all beliefs and religions (that are not cults, harmful or toxic.) i say this as a sexual abuse survivor myself- sexual abuse and sexual violence are not funny or entertaining. and if you fetishize sexual violence, you are not a person with a harmless kink. you are a paraphile, which makes you radqueer, which makes you a part of the community that mocks peoples races, trauma, physical and mental disorders, and normalizes pedophilia and zoophilia. including that in your shows and doing that alone speaks for who you are.

and ofc, the DID fakers and endos are gonna pretend they have hazbin hotel alters. every sys server I've been in has at least one system with an angel dust alter, he seems to be the most common, but there's others too, and id believe the systems who say they have hazbin hotel introjects, if it wasn't for every system we've seen with a hazbin hotel introject also has a fuck ton of other introjects from other media used by admitted and obvious fakers. I can accept fictives from toxic sources, because fictives aren't their source, just the brains representation and internalization of the source- but so many fakers following a dumb trend have these hazbin hotel introjects, that it makes me paranoid around system spaces and just... people who say they have DID/OSDD in general. and the fakers are following the trend using toxic media like hazbin hotel, which makes it worse because of how toxic the show and creator are. it shows that fakers truly do fetishize us and our trauma.

[subsystems]

Do you have any tips for system mapping as a polyfragmented system? Every time we've tried to make one we've just gotten overwhelmed by how many parts there are and how much we don't know

Hi anon! I have some advice based off of my own experience. I hope it will work for you (I'm sorry if it doesn't, though). First, I want to stress that it's okay if you can't create a perfect system map. I've never been able to make one that felt 100% correct, and I've tried many times!

Being dissociative can make it quite difficult to understand what's going on internally. You might have a hard time understanding yourself as an individual part, let alone understanding the other parts in your system. On top of that, your system might have some complex inner organization, like subsystems or parts-within-parts. Don't even get me started on how amnesia can make this all even more confusing, too!

So, remember to cut yourself some slack when it comes to system mapping. Your struggles with it are completely understandable!

Tips for System Mapping When Your System is Confusing as Hell

Make your own template.

A lot of pre-made system mapping templates contain things that don't apply to everyone, aren't important to everyone, or not everyone knows enough about their parts to answer. Some designs might not fit how your system functions. So, if pre-made templates don't work for you...don't use them! Try making your own!

When it comes to your own template, I think it's important to be mindful of your current stage of recovery. If you don't know a lot of things about your parts, that's okay -- that's where you're at in your recovery right now. In that case, you probably shouldn't create a template that requires you to write down a ton of information. Allow yourself to include your confusion and questions into your system map!

Think about what you want to keep track of when it comes to your parts. What would be the most useful things for you and your therapist to know? Yours will probably look different but here was the template that I settled on:

Does the part have a name?

Do they feel younger or older than the body?

What are they associated with?

Anything else?

And here's an example of how I would fill this out:

Does the part have a name? I don't think so

Do they feel younger or older than the body? Much younger

What are they associated with? The color yellow, puppies, childhood, abandonment, crying

Anything else? Likes puppies and drawing, sometimes buys candy without our knowing, unsure if this is one part or actually several

Get messy with it.

I understand the desire to have a neat system map. I've always wanted to have a perfect list of all my parts, all the important details about them, maybe organized into some sort of chart too. But these things doesn't always capture the complexities of being dissociative and having parts. Sometimes, you got to get messy.

I feel like the closest I ever came to a system map that felt the most "right" was in my therapist's sand tray. I picked out different figurines to represent my parts, placing some closer together than others. I would also move the sand, making big and low hills beneath and between parts, burying some things, cutting lines around other things. Something like this picture, but way more chaotic:

You can do this at home. You don't even need sand or figurines. You could grab some objects from around the house or outside, print or cut out pictures, grab some paints, scribble on paper, sculpt something out of clay, etc. Pick out something to represent certain parts or feelings or situations. Place them wherever, move them however, just let it kind of unfold naturally. Then take a picture of it and/or write about it (so you don't forget)!

Maybe put the trauma stuff somewhere else.

You'll probably feel tempted to record trauma memories and triggers associated with parts -- but it's probably best to write that stuff down somewhere else! You want your system map to be something that all parts can look at. Try not to jump-scare them with trauma that they may or may not know about yet.

This won't apply to everyone but, in my own experience, including stuff like this in our system map triggered our avoidance. Not only did it make creating the system map harder, it also resulted in some parts destroying/hiding what we wrote as a way to protect themselves and other vulnerable parts.

Aaand that's all I have to say, I think. Good luck with your system mapping, anon! - Sunflower

[sforzesco]

Slavery and Roman Literary Culture, Sandra R. Joshel

[mrmanbat]

Favorite Robin? There is a right answer

Damian.

Dicks time as Robin was pretty solid- but most of his story’s were… childish? Well no- more like censored. Often his comics lacked in darker topics because when he was Robin parents were afraid comic were turning their kids into gang members or some shit. So in response comics became very PG and often nonsensical.

Jason’s Robin just got screwed over. As did Steph’s. I don’t know enough about Maps. And Dukes story was never truly focused on his part in We Are Robin.

Tim was my favourite but oh my god let the poor boy move on. With each new run with him as Robin I keep on wanting to smash my head against a wall.

Damian’s a shitty Robin and he doesn’t have the shine needed to contrast Batman- however it is new. And ‘new’ is interesting.

I’d much rather read about Damian struggling to fit into the cookie cutter mold of the Robin mantle than yet another comic featuring Tim “I have my life together” Drake as Robin.

[daguerreopher]

Joseph, have you perhaps considered you are some form of depressed?

[princesslocket]

💗 Love is in the air 💗

[itscolossal]

Ryan Villamael’s Cascading Floral Sculptures Reconsider Maps and Identity

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]