#it's probably structural dissociation not psychosis....

[spookietrex]

[sophieinwonderland]

systems are formed through trauma, the brain doesnt just create another person in your head for funsies. would highly recommend talking to a therapist about all this

Sure! Let's get the opinions of some mental health professionals!

Veissière first stumbled across tulpamancy in a 2013 New York Times article, “Conjuring Up Our Own Gods,” penned by Tanya Marie Luhrmann, a Stanford professor whose work explores how people experience God. Veissière and Luhrmann started working together, and they have since partnered up with neuroscientist Michael Lifshitz, who specializes in the plasticity of human consciousness. Together, they’re conducting a formal cognitive study using MRIs to see what is transpiring at the neurological level in tulpamancers’ minds. “My understanding is [that] hearing voices and communicating with identities, spirits, imaginary friends, tulpas — it all draws on a completely normal propensity,” Veissière tells me in a phone interview. “This is nonpathological voice-hearing; tulpamancers have come to desire auditory and verbal hallucinations.” (Depending on whom you ask in the community, tulpas are not necessarily considered imaginary friends; many believe tulpas have their own minds.) “There is a small but growing body of evidence that lives have been improved in this practice,” Veissière continues. “It helps individuals with social anxiety issues — it aids in theory of mind, the ability to relate to other people. Children who develop imaginary friends are better able to understand people in real life — they develop socio-cognitive abilities to infer what other people want and desire. It’s trainable.”

“If something doesn’t hurt, then it’s not pathological,” Lifshitz tells me on the phone. “Think about rumination. Maybe I think a lot, but it’s not depressive unless it’s making me depressed. Being disassociated — having the feeling of multiple agents living inside of you — in and of itself is not fundamentally pathological.” “The thing that’s clear is that tulpamancy helps people,” Lifshitz continues. “Tulpamancy allows folks to feel more relaxed and better able to socialize. In fact, we’re interested in how we could use it for developing better treatments for those who do have DID or psychosis. Perhaps we can teach [patients] how to engage with voices or personalities in a way that might be useful [or] therapeutic.”

Or how about this:

Dr. Richard Loewenstein is a psychiatrist based in Baltimore. He’s one of the country’s experts on dissociative identity disorder and sees a lot of patients with this mental illness. I talk to him on Skype. LOEWENSTEIN: Unity of self is probably more of an aspiration than a reality. And in our general culture we often refer to ourself as If it were divided. People will say well part of me wants this and part of me wants that or. You know. I wouldn't recognize myself ten years ago compared to how I am now or I'm not myself today.

But here’s Loewenstein explaining the key difference (between tulpamancy and DID): LOEWENSTEIN: disorders have a distress category, which basically says the symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

And there’s another key difference between tulpamancers and DID patients. LOEWENSTEIN: the disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice.

And as I've referenced before, the creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation have said that spirits in mediumship may also be "self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality."

Our definition of dissociation pertains to a division of the personality in the context of trauma. We are aware that this division may also occur in hypnosis and mediumship, that several other definitions of dissociation also address these other contexts, and that there are some indications that dissociation in these other contexts is also best understood as a division of personality. For example, Hilgard's well-known “hidden observer,” as found in some highly hypnotizable subjects, involves a dissociative part of the personality that is endowed with consciousness and self-consciousness, but the phenomenon is disputed (e.g., Kihlstrom, 1998; Kirsch & Lynn, 1998). Mediumship may involve conscious and self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality (Braude, 1995).

Isn't it funny how all these mental health professionals keep talking about ways your brain can make other people in your head other than trauma?

Maybe... just maybe... you should be the ones talking to therapists about this. Because I have yet to see any researchers into DID or other forms of plurality come away with the fervent endogenic denial I've seen from anti-endos. Actual professional opinions seem to fall on a spectrum from pro-endo to neutral.

It seems that being anti-endo is inherently anti-science. And this only will become true as more research is conducted.

[the80srewinders]

Can I have a verified source and explanation for endo systems? I'd like to be more chill with them but the lack of concrete consistent explanation or research heavily fucks with our psychosis and sense of reality (our system tends to use data and science to keep us grounded). They seem really chill and friendly. I'd just like to understand them more. Like would the ego states not integrate of it weren't for trauma? How does it work on a structural level? I'm just curious. You mentioned research so I'd like to learn more. Thank you/gen ^^

Thanks for asking! First I'd like to say that we totally agree with yall- data and science keeps us grounded as well, which is why we do plenty of it in our spare time. Now for the answer.

A source we found, and was written by the American Psychiatric Association, is Transgender Mental Health. On page 162, it goes into detail about plurality and its link to gender identity. (Note:we're not transmeds, and know not all plurals have gender dysphoria.) Here is this page:

And, on the American Psychiatric Association website, the DSM-5-TR is cited. The quote: "In addition, the disturbance must not be a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. As noted in the DSM-5-TR, in many cultures around the world, experiences of being possessed are a normal part of spiritual practice and are not dissociative disorders." Somewhere in the DSM-5 it also says imaginary play doesn't count as disordered either. And many endogenic systems developed from imaginary play- accidental creation of headmates. These are the sources I remember clearly right now, and we will definitely repost this with more sources because we're gonna go ahead and find the other sources we vaguely remember.

And would the ego states not integrate if it weren't for trauma? Thats a strictly DID/OSDD related question. We're not endogenic so we don't know how it works in the realm endogenic systems themselves do. But our best guess is because the ego states that cause DID/OSDD dont integrate because of trauma, there's probably other parts of the personality- called subpersonalities, everyone has them, its quite interesting to research- become sentient in these endogenic systems. Again the brain is complex so don't take anything we say here without a grain of salt but endogenic systems are very much understudied but maybe an endogenic system can add to this and help.

Again, thanks for the ask, its actually a very good question!

[hauntedselves]

i had therapy today, & i thought it would just be about the executive dysfunction stuff, and we did talk about that, but then somehow it became a trauma discussion?

(TWs: discussion of abuse & trauma, brief mention of eating & weight, and potentially psychosis-triggering discussion of not existing)

we were talking about the procrastination, since i have exams at the moment, and i said i'd tried all the tricks (structure, pretending it was due earlier, rewards, etc) and none really worked... she said it was probably a learned behaviour, and while neither of us mentioned any possible clinical reasons for it she did say "attention issues" later on so..... adhd still in the running?

i don't remember how that turned into trauma talk, but it did, and we talked about how i struggle a lot with assertiveness [since it was safer to just shut up] and getting my needs met - so much so that i struggle with meeting my own needs (eating and so on). i used the real life example of - if i'm driving dad somewhere, in my car, he'll adjust the temperature as he likes (without asking me), but if i were the passenger in his car i would never dare, i wouldn't even ask. i would just sit there in discomfort. and dad was never abusive! (neglectful due to disability, sure, but not abusive...)

last time i had therapy, i brought dad with me, and today she said that i was clearly "deferential" to him. i associate that word with like... overt submissiveness and sort of... cowering? like someone would be to a tyrannical king or something lol?... so my initial reaction was like, "uhhm...", but then i got what she meant and i was like Oh Yeah.

she only mentioned this casually, but i went oh... - that my struggle with hunger cues was not just autism but also from a) living in poverty my whole life (no food? just don't feel hungry, solved!) and b) subconscious self-deprivation (as a way to continue abuse [à la persecutors in DID]...?) and that made me think, well that makes sense - because my eating restrictions were rarely about weight (though that was a factor sometimes), and more about "you don't deserve to eat".

the other thing that i mentioned was that, if no one is directly interacting with me, i feel like i don't exist. like, in a literal sense. i attributed this to a combination of dissociation and Cotard's delusion/reverse solipsism, but K said that it was partially dissociative (no solid core sense of self, fragmentation, etc), but mostly traumagenic (she couldn't remember that word and said "traumary" instead lol...). she said that when she and i are talking , she compares what i'm saying to autism to see if it makes sense in an ASD framework. but this, and all of what i've been talking about in this post (except the procrastination), is clearly traumagenic.

so my homework for the meantime: practice Noticing and Naming when i'm procrastinating (i'm doing it right now!), & practice being assertive (start with little, unimportant things)

[gray-gray-gray-gray]

Chapter 25 of Psychosis, Trauma and Dissociation: Trauma Therapy for Psychosis?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach with a broad and growing empirical support for it. It's the internationally recommended approach for PTSD, its efficacy and efficiency recognized in many national and international treatment guidelines, including those of the World Health Organization, American Psychiatric Association, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and British National Institute for Clincal Excellence. The application of EMDR to psychotic disorders, however, is a just emerging area of research, with several studies that will be covered here.

The most obvious use of EMDR in this case is to treat comorbid traumatic experiences as well as the trauma of psychotic experiences themselves. The process of being psychotic can be an overwhelming experience due to the primary symptoms, the treatment process often including hospitalizations and physical restraint and isolation, and the consequences of having a chronic and disabling disease. The conception of psychosis is a genetic brain disorder in needing of medication has left many psychotic patients without the option for therapy. Evidence for the safety and efficacy of CBT for psychosis remains mixed, and in many countries interventions are limited.

The role of trauma in psychotic disorders probably goes beyond just having the disorder, however, as the interaction between trauma, dissociatoon, and psychosis can't be understood from only a simplistic point of view. Traumatic experiences can be related to triggering psychotic episodes, they can influence the content of hallucinations and delusions, they can modify brain structure and function promoting the development of psychotic symptoms. Could EMDR help with all of these areas? By working on the 'traumatic layer' to psychosis with EMDR we could develop a new understanding of the interaction between trauma and psychosis.

There are several descriptions of positive results in single cases of EMDR treatment for psychotic symptoms in a range of disorders from PTSD to depression. In 2006, Miller described a series of clinic cases of schizophrenia, severe depression with psychosis, and delusional dysmorphophobia (excessive dislike for a part of one's body) that were successfully treated with EMDR therapy. In a follow up report, the patient with schizophrenia remained off medications and symptom-free. Based on his clinical experiences Miller (2010) proposed a specific EMDR protocol for psychosis, called ICoNN for "Indicating Cognitions of Negative Networks." It focused on more positive cognitions than negative ones or somatic sensations.

Van der Berg and Van der Gaag (2012) conducted an uncontrolled open trial pilot study, of EMDR treatment of comorbid PTSD in psychotic disorders, based on the argument that having a psychotic disorder should not shut the door for therapeutic treatment of PTSD symptoms. After a max of six sessions of EMDR, they found EMDR to be highly effective in alleviating PTSD symptoms with no evidence for adverse affects. Also, despite not being directly targeted, auditory verbal hallucinations and delusions also increased along with anxiety and depression, while patient's self-esteem improved.

De Bont, Van Minnen, and De Jongh (2013) studied 10 patients with comorbid PTSD and psychotic disorders to examine the efficacy and safety of EMDR and prolonged exposure in treating PTSD. The two therapies were equally effective and safe. 8 of the 10 patients completed the full course of treatment, and 7 no longer met the criteria for PTSD at the follow-up. The study was limited in some ways however - by not screening for dissociative disorders, small sample size, only using bilateral auditory tones rather than bilateral eye movements which have shown to be more efficient, etc.

McGoldrick, Begum, and Brown (2008) reported EMDR treatment for olfactory reference syndrome, a subtype of delusional disorder where there is a persistent, false belief about emitting abnormal body odours which are foul and offensive to others. Their article describes brief EMDR treatment for four cases of ORS, whose pathological symptoms had persisted from 8 to 48 years - EMDR therapy resulted in a complete resolution of symptoms in all four cases which was maintained in follow-up. While four cases is a very small sample, ORS is a rare diagnosis with a poor prognosis, so these results are impressive.

Kim et al. (2010) presented a pilot study with 45 acutely psychotic schizophrenia inpatients. They were assigned to three groups - treatment as usual, treatment as usual + three sessions of EMDR, or progressive muscle relaxation. They found that even during the acute phase, EMDR focusing on targets related to traumatic memories or disturbing consequences for psychotic symptoms themselves was well-tolerated. The test results however failed to confirm the effectiveness of EMDR compared to the other two groups. It would make sense that EMDR would be less effective when the brain is overly disturbed in the acute phase of psychosis however, where processing of information is disturbed.

Overall, results from EMDR therapy offer a different perspective for understanding how some 'psychotic' symptoms have their roots in trauma. Auditory verbal hallucincations can reflect either psychotic cognitive processes or dissociated parts of the personality. EMDR targeting traumatic experiences or even directly psychotic symptoms themselves has been shown to reduce the symptoms of psychosis. Exploring the effectiveness of EMDR and other trauma-oriented psychotherapies with psychotic patients could help with a number of questions. Can EMDR and trauma therapies offer an effective alternative to medication for psychosis? If EMDR treatment leads to a reduction in hallucinations or delusions by processing adverse life experiences, wouldn't this support the causal importance of adverse environmental situations for the development of psychosis? While more research is needed, the results we already have appear promising.

[gabelish]

Writing A Character With Borderline Personality Disorder

First of, thank you for wanting to include a Borderline character into your work. We have very little representation in media and when it is there, it’s negative. The antagonist in Single White Female and it’s remake is said to either be Borderline or Bipolar, for example. A few Borderline-coded characters also exist but their symptoms are probably closer to bipolar depression.

Trigger Warning for discussions of suicide, abuse, and hospitalization

What is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)?

It is called “Borderline” because it is “on the border of psychosis and neurosis. It used to be believed that Borderlines had a tendency to regress into “borderline schizophrenia,” but this really isn’t the case anymore. The term was coined in 1938 and there have been attempts to rename it but this is what it’s called for now.

Here is the raw list from the DSMV. My notes are below and italicized. Important take-always are in orange text.

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment; this does not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in criterion 5.

A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation

Markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self

Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (eg, spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating) [5] ; this does not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in criterion 5

Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior

Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (eg, intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)

Chronic feelings of emptiness

Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (eg, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, or recurrent physical fights)

Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

Generally, a diagnosis is only given if a person has at least 5 of these symptoms.

My comments:

Re: #1 There doesn’t have to be a literal abandonment in childhood. For me, I was emotionally abandoned by both my mother and father during my formative years. My mother also hated physical contact so now I have an impulse to seek it constantly. Touch-starvation is an easy trait to add to your Borderline character.

The stipulation in #1 that the frantic efforts cannot be the behaviors listed in #5 means that a Borderline person might: drive 3 hours in the middle of the night to the person who they feel might abandon them; do some extreme begging or bartering to keep the relationship. Also important: these do not have to be romantic relationships.

Re: #3 If Dissociative Identity Disorder means a person has multiple distinct personalities, for BPD we generally feel like an incomplete person, like we only have fragments of a whole personality.

A common joke in the BPD community is “Oh, you have a great personality.” And the Borderline person’s response is, “thanks, I made it specially for you!” You may also hear Borderlines called “chameleons” because we take pieces of other people’s personalities and incorporate it into ourselves. It can be a fictional character, too. I incorporated a lot of NBC Hannibal’s Will Graham into my personality at a point. Another aspect of this is that Borderlines are very good at code-switching. For me, when I’m in a new group of people, I have to “feel out” the vibe and everything and then alter my behavior to fit this social circle. Most people do this to some extent but Borderlines do it constantly and unconsciously and often extremely well. It’s not meant to be manipulative. It’s unconscious, we can’t control it.

Re: #8 The anger is a big one for me and it often leads to homicidal ideation. But Borderlines are incredibly unlikely to act on it.

Other Borderline Behaviors

Favorite Person/FP: Probably the most important aspect of BPD. An FP is specific to BPD. It can be a romantic partner, a crush, a parent, an authority figure, a sibling, or a child (specifically the child of the person with BPD of they have kids). This is the single most important thing in a Borderline’s life. An FP is an idealized person who can never do any wrong in our minds. Even abusive behaviors will be overlooked or reframed.

We don’t always have an FP and I’ve also never heard of someone having 2 FPs simultaneously. I had 2 at the same time once but I would split on one and then idealize them other one. I would never idealize both at the exact same moment. A real or imagined negative interaction with an FP can make or break a Borderline’s day and if it is negative, they can “split” on them.

Splitting/Black-And-White Thinking/All-Or-Nothing Thinking: Borderlines “split” on people, usually an FP. This is how an interaction with an FP can “make or break” your day. If an FP doesn’t text us back right away we might think they don’t like us anymore or are mad or will leave us. So we, unconsciously without our control, “split” on them. When “splitting negative” on a person it is impossible to recall good memories of the person, or they are framed negatively. A once loved birthday gift from an FP might now be seen as insincere or irrelevant. This is the “devaluation” mention in criteria #2.

However, once the person texts back, say 2 hours later, we usually split back, and now the person’s real or imagined negative behaviors are gone and they are once again idealized, as mentioned in criteria #2. You can see how taxing such a sudden shift in emotions can be for a person.

It is also taxing on the FP if they are present during the split or received panicked or angry messages with the above scenario. It causes fights and the FP might view the Borderline person as “Bipolar” “irrational” or “unstable”.

We can split on people that are not FPs.

Tips For Your Character

Your Borderline character could easily be in out-patient therapy. I won’t go into the details but they could be in DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy). The structure is 2 sessions a week, one with a small group, and then another one-on-one with their psychiatrist who is probably also running the group. Psychiatrists need special training to treat people with BPD.

Your character would also do “diary cards” each day and record their mood and any notes about their day. These are easy to add in as throw-away comments like “I’m going to therapy, I’ll be back in an hour or so” or “damn it, I forgot to do my diary card”.

Fun fact: Therapists have been known to drop clients upon finding out they have BPD or giving them the diagnosis because apparently some therapists can’t handle us.

Your character might also be on some medication and an easy scene for angst could be them refusing to take their medication, forgetting to take it, or the meds being of of balance and them needing to go to an ER to be stabilized (usually they become suicidal or paranoid) and have their meds adjusted. This happened to me once. Lithium can be used in extreme cases as a medication but usually a combination of anti-depressants and mood-stabilizers is used.

BPD is often comorbid with depression so your character will probably exhibit depression symptoms as well.

Final Thoughts:

As long as you don’t make your Borderline character the antagonist or a manipulative partner who kills pets like in Single White Female, you should be fine.

Edit: tumblr glitched and I didn’t mean to post this now. I’ll try to get on my laptop when I get home and add a read more.

If you need clarification on anything or additional resources feel free to DM me or come into my inbox!

[suncaptor]

Cas seems somewhat manic and easily dissociative post taking on Sam’s psychotic PTSD which leads me to think he transferred the neurological structure (hence original hallucinations of Lucifer) which then changed in his processing while he was comatose (which I suppose could be the angel equivalent of some negative features of psychosis, too, as a human equivalent doesn’t make much sense). Because he didn’t actually have the trauma from Hell from his experiences, it was more just his neurological response. Therefore, like from the hallucinations he probably had a lot of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, and I’m guess that Sam’s like noradrenaline stress responses were just through the roof. Which for Cas then was handled through avoidant dissociation, intense like flight/freeze responses (when there’s any conflict) rather than like as much sharp panic especially given the manic symptoms he exhibited, which I think accounts for a lot of the associations, positive affect, impulsivity, and random impulsivity he exhibited, even if he didn’t appear all that frenetic (which I think in part is because he’s used to modulating emotions from his vessel). 

[illnessfaker]

do you have any resources on OSDD? like more in depth than just the diagnostic criteria, i'm very familiar with those, i guess more...people talking abt what it feels like? I have cptsd and I've been noticing things very similar to what you described in your post for a long time now. I thought I had DID for sure a while ago, but I was also actively manic/psychotic, so when that calmed down I assumed I had just been delusional. But the identity disturbances and dissociation persist. I don't think it's DID now it's osdd if it's anything but I'm wary of saying that for sure and rly would like some i guess more descriptive accounts of how symptoms are for someone with it. Sorry if this is a lot/you don't have anything of that nature, I'm glad to hear you're figuring out your own multiplicity and hope the understanding helps you in your healing process!

firstly, thank you for your kind words 😊

@/this-is-not-dissociative has a lot of info about did/osdd-1 (and other dissociative stuff) as well as having did/osdd-1 vs. dissociation in bpd/cptsd - though it's possible to have did/osdd-1 and bpd/cptsd of course - and did-research.org talks about osdd-1 a little bit (especially vs. having full-blown did). these are probably the best resources i can point you towards even though they don't contain many personal accounts. the first blog is staunchly against self-dx iirc and there's a lot of "you should speak to a professional about this" but u know how it is (at the very least they provide a lot of info and resources on how to go about doing that, it seems.)

some posts in particular that may be informative/helpful to you (there are probably many reasons to dislike this blog but it's what i've found most informative so yeah):

anp and ep, + an explanation of structural dissociation and how it models ptsd, cptsd, bpd, osdd-1, and did.

anp and avoiding trauma

an example of did vs. osdd-1

parts in bpd/cptsd vs. osdd-1

parts in cptsd vs. osdd-1 (this mod "kevin" has osdd-1, by the way)

parts vs. fragments vs. alters

alters not being easy to recognize

identity confusion vs. identity alteration

( read-more bc this got long despite it being past my bedtime lmao )

the problem w personal accounts of stuff and did/osdd-1 is presentations of these diagnoes will differ from person to person, sometimes greatly. contrary to media depiction they're also covert disorders by nature - they're psychological coping mechanisms for intense distress, and part of those coping mechanisms is being ignorant to the fact that your sense of self is fragmented / there are parts of your sense of self that are attached to trauma. i know of several folks who were initially diagnosed with osdd-1 but then later re-diagnosed as having did because the severity of their situation was very effectively hidden from them by this dissociation.

( another problem is that ppl are flawed and can give bad/wrong info on how stuff works or trends can give the wrong impression and unfortunately that's very common w did/osdd-1 spaces online. e.g. u don't have to know the name, age, etc. or know who's "fronting" or whatever with elaborate tagging systems and pages on ur blog with said info abt ur parts or "alters" to have did/osdd-1. worrying abt that stuff too much can worsen dissociation. )

it's not common for someone to have did/osdd-1 and for it to be obvious to themselves or others (who don't know what to look for, that is). this is why no small number of folks with did/osdd-1 are seemingly well-functioning on the outside since different dissociated parts often serve "everyday life" purposes such as going to work/school and these parts are the ones disconnected from traumatic "materials" as they're called. part of the reason why i'm wanting to conceptualize my experiences as osdd-1 is due to the fact that my default state (the "host"?) is emotionally dissociated from my trauma - i know it happened, but it seemed like it happened to "this body" rather than "me" and i don't feel anything about it until i get triggered. "apparently normal parts" that handle everyday life are usually trauma-avoidant or separated from the trauma like this in some way.

that being said, i'm still not totally sure if i qualify for an osdd-1 diagnosis or not tbqh. my situation is most like the "some individuals with OSDD-1 lack both amnesia and highly distinct parts" mentioned in the page i above linked (but yesterday and this morning/afternoon i was convinced i did - go figure). i'd been researching did/osdd-1 for a while (not necessarily because i thought it was what i was experiencing) which is part of what helped me come to terms with having experienced dissociation for a long time, and i thought up until like...the other day i definitely didn't have it. i came to believe i had some weird bpd/cptsd/szpd-like situation where emotional states had been "locked away" in boxes that i rarely touched as a defense mechanism against psychological distress. i also had a metaphor for my "emotional part(s)" as it/them being like, (a) ghost(s) that follow me around and aren't evil but occasionally "wrap their hands around my throat" to remind me that they're there.

then i saw someone w an osdd-1 diagnosis talk abt how they have parts whose "job" is to "feel sadness for them" as a defense mechanism against that kinda distress and then i was like...huh. and then i thought about how seeing my parents again felt kinda weird and distant. and that's kinda what tipped me off, despite having a pretty unstable sense of self and dissociation issues for a while. the "seeing my parents" thing is somewhat more major, because it felt different from my "default setting." thinking about it is uncomfortable and weird.

ur gonna have to do a lot of reading, tbh, and doing it in moderation is probably a good idea since thinking too much abt dissociation can trigger it. another thing is that conceptualizing yourself as having did/osdd-1 when you don't actually have that experience can worsen dissociation/identity issues as well so u gotta be careful abt how u approach it. but at the same time, cptsd and did/osdd-1 have mostly the same treatment methods anyway (and technically u gotta have cptsd to have did/osdd-1, not as like a diagnostic requirement really but a "you have to be traumatized from long-term traumatic experiences at a young age" sense) so many resources abt did/osdd-1 may be helpful to u regardless of whether you "have" them or not.

i can't tell u how to differentiate between symptoms of psychosis and did/osdd-1 (the blog i mentioned may have posts about that topic - there's two in their master-posts but neither were particularly helpful i don't think) since afaik i'm not psychotic but i wish you luck!

[thesorceryman]

Possession is defined as ‘‘the belief that an individual has been entered by an alien spirit or other Para human force, which then controls that person and alters his action and identity. The word Jinn in Arabic (Alujonnu in Yoruba "borrowed from Arabic word JINN") refers to something that is (concealed and hidden from the human eyes ) in Al-Qaamoos Al’muheet ( which is the biggest Arabic dictionary of all times ) said this about the word ” JINN ” { Jannahu al-layla } which means ( the night covered him ) ( or concealed him) so this word simply means some being who is Hidden from the normal human eye. JINNS (demons or devils) are unseen creatures that are believed to exist in all major religions and have the power to possess humans and cause them harm. Jinn possession can manifest with a range of bizarre behaviors and unusual movements which could be interpreted as several different psychotic, non-psychotic mental disorders as well as feelings of the implant by foreign bodies or aliens. They do, common with humans, such as they also have the ability to, however, possess some characteristics in the ability to think and reflect. Similarly, choose between the path of good and the path of evil in the same manner as humans.

These are conscious beings, which are invisible, among the ordinary people they are known as ‘fairy’, ‘giant’, ‘genie’, ‘ghost’, ‘JINN’, ‘elf’, ‘aliens’ and various other names are given to them depending on the image they display. The people think that they are the SPIRITS of the dead people, so they try to establish contacts with them by calling them. Last but not least, these conscious beings introduce themselves as ’BEINGS FROM OUTER SPACE’ to those people whose level of knowledge is insufficient to be able to buy their stories. The JINN takes its existence, its liveliness, and its ‘self’ conscious from the absolute ‘SPIRIT’. With regards to the perfection it possesses within the consciousness, it is something that comes after the ‘HUMAN BEING’ in the whole universe. It is fully aware of its own consciousness only after it can enfold itself in the periphery (the body of light). This, in a way, can be considered as the birth of the JINNS concerning their structures.

Their death in the absolute sense takes place right at the moment of the doomed event, just like human beings. Their death in the simplest sense (i.e. the kind of death we know in general) takes place whenever their periphery (body of light) gets isolated from them at the end of their planned life span. The JINNS can understand the death of each other simply by finding out the loss of another jinni from their group. Even though their lifetimes are as long as the humans in reality, due to their structure and some properties they possess, this period could be as high as the age of 700-1000 when compared with us. In actual fact, when their life span of 60-70 years concerning their own unit of time is compared with our unit of time, we can see that it amounts to a life span of nearly 1000 years. Due to their structural behaviour, they also possess quite sophisticated potentials and some of them are even more superior to humans in terms of their conscious level. However, it is known for sure that the superior human being is much more superior to the most superior JINN. Concerning their character, they are weaker than humans. They are more inclined to display such behaviours, which can be considered as negative. In general, they deal with such activities. Despite this fact, there are also good ones among them as well as the ones who are more religious and even ones who are saints although this is very rare.

Their most significant characteristics and pleasure is to manipulate the weak points of the people, make individuals depend on them and make them do what they want, make them serve as well as worship them as if they were their servants.

So what are the ” Elemental Spirits “ ?

Elementals spirits are what some call the Nature Spirits or Devas or the Faeries . this type of Spirits have only one element to their nature usually Air, Fire, Water and Earth , so Djinns are part of the Fire Spirits.

Yes, the Spirits of the Four Elements are divided into four categories, earth, air, fire, and water. Let us look at each of them in turn.

1. EARTH: Earth spirits, that is the beings, which relate to rocks, stones, minerals, precious gems, hills, and mountains are traditionally called in English ( Gnomes ). All aspects of the solid physical structure of the planet come under their domain. Although they can be found within rocks, they also have the freedom to move around but generally stay close to the ground. They are a) Gnomes b) Kobolds c) giants d) mountain spirits, they are short about 1 to 2 feet tall and thy look old with full beard those are the Gnomes or the Ghulz, the other type are bigger and bit taller, most of them live underground, under the trees or on hilltops.

2. WATER: Water spirits are connected to all liquids, but their presence can be felt in a much more powerful way by streams, rivers, lakes, and, of course, the sea. They are traditionally known as Undines, they have males and females. but their females are shining as if wet, is female, nude and without wings, the exquisite limbs gleam through the white auric flow, the arms are particularly long and beautiful, and she waves them gracefully in her flight. She is about four feet in height and her general coloring is silvery-white, with gold stars around the head.

3. AIR: The spirits of the air are connected to all gaseous substances but like water, beings are best sensed in winds and breezes. Because air moves so quickly they can be difficult to pin down. They are known as Sylphs in tradition although the perception of a ‘fairy’ with tiny wings that can fly is a close approximation to how they appear to children.

These live in the element air and are like light in the atmosphere. Sensitive to the movement of the atmosphere, they have a sleepy consciousness. Their task is to transfer light to the plants. The stream of air caused by a flying bird creates a sound they can hear. They like birds flying through the air. Sylphs are connected to movement in space, like modeling and directing the wind. Elves (or fairies) are more connected to the expansion of life in their area.

4. FIRE: (these are what most people call the JINN ) Fire spirits can be found in volcanoes in nature but also in any fire, from candle to inferno. They are known as Salamanders or Vulcanii and are the most difficult of all of the elementals to connect with, being said to the only associate with philosophers and adepts of the magical arts.

Possession worldwide is found more commonly in women and marginalized groups and maybe a vehicle through which they can express their complaints in a context in which they can be heard. Spirit possession generally occurs in cultural contexts in which the self is more likely to be fragmented. Whether or not possession is itself seen as pathological is dependent on the cultural context in which it occurs; by no means are all cases of possession seen as signs of illness. Being possessed by demons or evil spirits is one of the oldest ways of accounting for bodily and mental disorders. The idea that spirit possession and mental illness are related has a long historical legacy.

Possessed individuals sometimes exhibit symptoms similar to those associated with mental illnesses such as psychosis, hysteria, mania, Tourette syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder; this includes involuntary or uncensored behaviour. Since possession is not normative in Western cultures, it is the cultural context that determines the distinction between psychosis and the spiritual. Spirit possession is a culturally specific way of displaying symptoms of psychosis, dissociation, social anxiety, etc., and is a fairly global idiom of distress. That is, whereas a person with psychosis in the West may believe he is being controlled by a computer, a member of a community that beliefs in spirit possession may believe his body to be taken over by a demon.

How does JINN possess people?

1. Weak spiritual protection

2. Hexing and cursing

1. WEAK SPIRITUAL PROTECTION : The JINNS establish their connections especially with nervous women following the time they’ve given birth to a baby or during illnesses accompanied by high fever or during accidents. This is because during those periods, the brain is busy with the extra activity taking place in various parts of the body and therefore the human being simply cannot have control over the brain’s activity in a desired manner. As a result, the JINN takes over the control in the related part of the brain at that particular weak moment by becoming visible

to the person in whatever form he likes and force him/her to do whatever he desires.

Sometimes this act of forcing can take place by the impulses that the JINN sends to the part of the brain that is connected with the faculty of pain centre and making the individual feel that pain. At other times, by triggering the centre of fear, JINN could make the individual even more frightened so that the individual can do whatever they desire. Most probably, what is simply being carried out is that they send out light signals to a certain centre in the individual’s brain and therefore create the desired effect. Whenever the mediums go into a trance, they experience exactly the same situation. This is the reason why they are asked to relax and let themselves loose in the first place. Here, the objective is to decrease the control that the human being has over his

brain. In this way, the JINN desired to be contacted would be able to possess the individual more easily. In such connections, the women particularly say that the JINN becoming visible before their eyes appear as a very handsome man.

The JINNS who establish contacts openly with the women or the young girls usually marry them and have sexual intercourse with them. During these connections, the women see the JINN as a solid object and have a sexual contact with it as if it were a male from the human kind. However, as the JINN do not have a tangible solid physical body, then the following question comes to the minds.

How on earth the JINN who cannot even be transformed into a complete physical object can manage to satisfy a woman belonging to the human race during this connection?. Under such conditions, the JINN stimulate the part of sexuality centre in the brain of the woman involved and cause her to get satisfaction. As a matter of fact, all the scientists who work in the field of physiology know very well that when an electro shock is applied to a certain centre of the brain, it is possible to make that person do whatever you want. In fact, these are just the sort of contacts, which do not only take place between a woman from the human kind and a man from the class of JINNS. There can also be a sexual relation between a woman from the class of JINNS and a man from the humankind as well. Moreover, it is also said that the JINNS have homosexual contacts too. In all of these connections, the point which is usually discovered in common is that a member of the JINN makes a contact with a human being only for the purpose of fulfilling his selfish desires on the human being forcefully. In general, the people who have been forced into such positions do complain about this. These events take place without consent of the individual.

In such cases, especially when there is a connection between a woman from the human kind and a man from the class of JINNS, the woman isolates herself from the world outside and most of the time she wants to stay in a room.

2. HEXING AND CURSING: These are done by individuals who possesed power to manipulate or control JINNS to do whatever they want. In this case, the JINN is sent to forcefully ententer the body of the victim and do as it pleases. The victim will exhibit some of the symptoms listed below.

SYMPTOMS OF POSSESSION

1. Hearing voices

2. Erratic behaviour in one's words, deeds, and movement.

3. Being quick to get angry or weep with no apparent cause

4. Seeing metaphysical objects

5. Irregular menstruation in women

6. Constant headache

7. Frightening nightmares which include seeing various kinds of creatures such as ghosts, or apparitions, seeing oneself falling from a high place, seeing people in strange forms and snakes.

8. Insomnia, anxiety, and fear upon waking.

9. Talking loudly in one's sleep, or moaning and groaning.

10. Having sex in dreams.

All these symptoms still need to be examined by a professional or priest before establishing the fact that truly one is possessed by JINN through reading or divination.

Nowadays, the medical science cannot diagnose these cases and therefore they try to cure the patient by means of applying electro-shock for the sake of the positive science. However, in these cases too, hardly any result can be obtained. At the end of the electro-shock process, there is a disorder and an agitation in the brain cells of the individual causing a state of calmness. This of course does not mean that the person has been cured, it is because of the disturbance that she had due to the shock. Generally, it is seen that the people who have good healing powers can correct such situations by way of prayers, spells and ritual blown upon to the depressed person.

If you're experiencing any of the symptoms above or needs spiritual help, contact me. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @thesorceryman

[neuroglitch]

Hey I don’t want to be rude, but please be careful identifying with ‘multiplicity’ (which btw it isn’t a spectrum, DID/OSDD are structural dissociation, not ‘multiplicity’, which is often spiritual!) Sectioning off or splitting up your identity can be incredibly damaging, especially if you have pre-existing conditions like psychosis or another mental illness like a PD! Please look into the structural dissociation scale too!!

Hey there! You’re not rude, but we probably have to agree to disagree.

I will refer you to the definition of multiplicity, “Multiplicity, also known as plurality[1], is the phenomenon in which a person has multiple distinct personalities.This phenomenon can be used by identity disturbance, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Other Specified Dissociative Disorder, among other things, though some people claim to experience multiplicity without having these disorders.[2][3]Multiplicity is considered to be a large splitting of the personality. A "system" is a body that contains multiple different selves that each can control the body's behaviors one at a time and switch between each other voluntarily or involuntarily” This is the definition I tend to go with. I don’t doubt that there are more definitions out there, but I gotta pick one. So in my definition, structural dissociation is at least one path to multiplicity.

I recognize that the human mind/brain is incredibly complex, and that there may be several roads to multiplicity, but I tend to believe that dissociation is involved in most of them. Because “dissociation” basically is the psychological act of disengaging - from the world, from yourself, from certain memories or emotions - which I consider necessary for a mind to compartmentalize to the point of someone becoming multiple.

That said, I do not believe that this means all multiplicity is disordered - dissociation can look a lot like some of the altered states of consciousness found in practicing meditators etc., so I believe that it is possible to have dissociation more or less within volitional control.

Notice that wikipedia’s definition includes Identity Disturbance under the umbrella of multiplicity. Identity Disturbance is most often thought of as a symptoms of borderline personality disorder, but which also happens to be a common sympton on the schizophrenia spectrum.  I am well aware that sectioning off or splitting up my identity could potentially cause problems, but 1) I am not doing this intentionally, so I don’t know what you want me to do about it? And 2) I very consciously recognize my aspects(!) as different parts of the same whole, and as sides of myself that I needed to express in one way or another. Exactly to avoid complications, or making the split worse. That said, it does not only cause problems, as a matter of fact I have had significantly less psychotic experiences since I let my aspects back into my life. And running a discord server for psychotic people, I have seen many people find a greater sense of peace within themselves after realizing they were multiple. I suspect this stems from the fact that psychotic “parts” are thought of as something not to be engaged with, and to be suppressed, while people with dissociative parts are often encouraged to work with these parts to foster communication and growth. So while I appreciate you looking out for me, I guess we have different sources on basic definitions, and as such will likely never fully agree.

Cat

[gynandromorph]

also, i hope now that i’ve cleared the air a little more about my own brain problems that it’s obvious why i’m heavily shifting away from characters with schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms and more towards characters with dissociative symptoms. i don’t think that people with psychosis always have dissociative disorders and i don’t know where one draws the line between probable dissociative disorder versus meaningless hallucinations. i know plenty of people with DID and OSDD and not all of them have psychotic symptoms like me and i don’t think that all of my symptoms are meaningful. it’s an extremely difficult and blurry line to walk and it’s not really enjoyable to a brain that likes order and categorization for structure. what i do know is that people who are only diagnosed for psychotic symptoms and go on to reject psychiatric evaluation and form self-advocacy networks that embrace their symptoms tend to have improvements to their overall quality of life similar to people with dissociative disorders who learn to accept and openly engage with their symptoms. i don’t know how much of that is due to overlap in diagnostics versus the basic premise that unconditional love and companionship will universally improve the human condition. what i also know is that a long string of misdiagnoses, which is EXTREMELY par for the course for DID, really, REALLY damaged my ability to contend with my experiences in a productive or even just like, tolerable way. being able to refer to my own feelings or memories as intrusive thoughts or hallucinations or delusions just like my doctors decided was monumentally harmful to me in ways i still don’t know how to grapple with sometimes. even these feelings are obviously, internally, mixed but i do know that i have still NEVER portrayed a character who i consider to have symptoms LIKE MINE, except for outis, and the person i am now, i don’t think that having a character with my symptoms presented as primarily schizophrenic and tortured by voices and visions would be like. good. for me. i don’t think it would be good for somebody like me to see even if it would feel good at the time. i still have a lot of conflicting and extremely tangled opinions and emotions about the topic and i don’t know how to sort them and i just know that i would feel extremely uncomfortable proceeding in the way i had previously intended to proceed with several characters, namely outis, not because it’s bad, but just because, i don’t know. i don’t know anymore, i don’t know where i’m supposed to draw the line and what’s unreal and what’s something i’m actually feeling but just feel detached from and what’s self-destruction and what’s lucid insight and it means i don’t know where to draw the line between symptoms that were labeled psychotic due to a complete lack of empathy when they are just trauma and dissociation vs. legitimate psychosis from stress, and i don’t want to write about something i feel so deeply unsure about, i barely have enough room to breathe just to sort out my current feelings to keep my head above water so i’m not really ready to say i’ll have it all figured out by the time i get around to needing to write about it either

[sophieinwonderland]

I've been trying to learn about nontraumagenic systemhood for years now, because its part of my psychology special interest, but every single time, i get too deep into it and it triggers my existentialism, especially since some people associate spirituality with systemhood, and especially when people say things like "if you feel plural you probably are, everyone has a dæmon you just need to become separated, everyone is plural in a way". It's forcing an identity, belief, and experience onto an entire population. Especially the first one because feelings and thoughts don't always ≠ reality. I've tried reading academic sources but struggle with reading complex papers (maybe someone here can paraphrase or give the most important parts?), but from what I've read so far none of it actually answers anything in depth. The only thing that in depth explains systemhood is the theory of structural dissociation but I'm aware it may have holes in it (which is why its a theory).

Besides that, I realized maybe we're asking the question in the wrong way- Instead of asking "why/how does (nontraumagenic) systemhood happen or exist", we should be asking "why/how does such a wide range of experiences involving identity and consciousness exist?" this question involves singletonism- how is a single identity formatted, what prevents systems from being singlets, and singlets from being systems. how can a singlet become a system and stay a system. etc. If we can solve these questions, the question of why or how nontraumagenic systemhood exists will naturally follow. Input?

I think that phrasing of the question really might be better!

If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about my own thoughts and theories on this.

Personally, I like the theory of structural dissociation as an explanation for most traumagenic plurality, but there are some notable gaps that it doesn't even try to deal with.

For example, it focuses a lot on what causes personalities to form or become dissociated. What it never really deals with though is how exomemories work. Okay, fine. Trauma can cause dissociation and result in the formation of new internal agents. But does that explain how trauma causes the brain to create autobiographical memories of these agents from fictional universes?

The theory of structural dissociation doesn't ever address this.

After trying and failing to find an explanation for this, I actually turned away from research into DID and towards research into psychosis.

Graham Bell's work in understanding social agent representation in psychotic disorders and non-disordered voice-hearing is most fascinating.

I'm using this in conjunction with the theory from Mosquera and Ross that intelligent hallucinations in psychotic disorders are also parts of systems.

The article on social cognition suggests that people naturally have the ability to create "illusory social agents," citing imaginary companions in childhood as one example of these. This is similar to Simulation Theory, which argues that we empathize with people by creating temporary mental simulations of them.

While some may object to conflating nonfronting agents in psychotic disorders with fronting headmates, I believe the article from Mosquera and Ross shows that these may be the same things manifesting in different ways. It's just that the trauma causes detachment in some cases that allows internal agents to switch and take executive control of the body where they may not in others.

With this view, it's easy to see how exomemories form. Our brains, in this model, would be programmed to create simulations of other people to understand them. These simulations would need to create false memories on a subconscious level to work accurately. (And our brains tend to use the mechanisms for remembering that they do imagining. It's why both remembering the past and imagining the future are grouped together as "mental time travel."

This is the only explanation for how exomemories form I've been able to find that doesn't try to dismiss them as simply "metaphors" as many psychiatrists are quick to do.

Going back to the imaginary companions, I think there is increasingly strong evidence that the hallucinatory phenomenon that we call imaginary companions are often able to act outside of the control of the host children, possibly having as much agency as any singlet or a headmate in a system, with some even engaging in bullying behavior towards their hosts.

If imagined companions are dissociative agents, I'd like to answer your question with this theory:

Singlethood is a sociocultural condition.

Many children naturally have other agents in their head during childhood. There is reason to believe that these agents may possess their own autonomy and self-consciousnesses.

But they are told by society to ignore the voices or convinced that the voices are just their own thoughts. This could cause forced dormancy or result in fusion.

Using the Theory of Structural Dissociation, maybe imagined companions are fully self-conscious "states" that would integrate due to societal pressure. Then trauma interrupts this integration, causing them to become more separate and dissociated.

What does this mean?

Well, I think it could mean that people are biologically inclined to be multiple. That many singlets may have been plural as children, and that there would be far fewer singlets in a world that didn't make people think they were crazy for talking to voices in their head and actively discourage these experiences.

It means that the process of integration that the Theory of Structural Dissociation suggests is being interrupted isn't a natural process at all, but a sociocultural one.

This explanation obviously needs a lot of research to prove it. We need research into endogenic systems, more into traumagenic systems, into the overlap of these with psychosis, and more into the agency of imaginary friends of children. But I feel that this is the direction many of these fields are moving in.

Also, I think the reason "everyone has a dæmon you just need to become separated" works is because singlets are still made up of parts that can be separated and interacted with. We see this in the case of Internal Family Systems therapy where specific parts can be personified and interacted with.

It's not that everyone literally has an animal in their head their whole life. (But some might.) It's that everyone has parts and subpersonalities that can be personified into the form of an animal and interacted with until those parts develop self-consciousness.

[ziracona]

😮 Oh man, with the insight on Frank, it has me so curious. What's going on in the heads of everyone in the Legion lately? I'm especially curious about Joey, after the quality time spent with the survivors (well, in the back seat with Susie driving) during "She's Like the Wind". Or, if you're tired of the Legion, what about Michael in "The Tower"?

I’m totally happy to do the Legion (and I actually wrote up a bunch of stuff on them before deciding p best to wait), but there’s a lot of Legion stuff in the chapter I’m posting in the next couple days with some sort of big status-quo changes, so I feel like I should wait until after that to give Legion updates, or it could be kind of a waste, so I’ll do Michael.

Oh boy Mikey. Let me see. Buckle up, because this is a long one. So, let me start by saying in this fic, the way I write him is based on the canon portrayal in the first film (and some influence from the others—especially 2 and H20), but with my honest best attempt at an accurate psychological take on his situation. Horror’s a great genre, but it does a really shitty job about using mental illness as some kind of blanket excuse for being evil. John Carpenter literally came up with Michael after seeing some 12 year old schizophrenic kid in a mental institution when he was on a field trip that he thought had really dead, evil looking eyes, like he didn’t have a soul. Which is a pretty fucked up way to treat mental illness. And, since there’s no reason I should accept ‘He’s got psychosis and the devil’s eyes and has nothing in him but evil” as an accurate take on an actual human being, I’m not. I’m taking what is canon, and interpreting it (to the best of my ability) like a normal psychologist or person who isn’t Dr. Sam Loomis would. Usually I wouldn’t give as much on a character psych take (because I really, really like seeing how people interpret things), but it’s kind of specifically important for Michael and me doing my best to write him responsibly that while he’s a lot of things, and a lot of them bad, he’s not a mindless wall of walking evil.

Canonically, Michael’s had psychosis since he was at least five, and heard voices that told him to do bad things, like hurt people. He told his parents, in an attempt to get help, and was ignored. When he was six, he did what the voices told him to in an attempt to get them to stop, and killed his sister (without looking at what he was doing while he did it as much as he could [canon]), and then went downstairs to wait for his parents to get home (probably in the hopes that they could fix it, because he was six years old, and when you’re six, your parents can fix everything). Instead of anything getting better, he got sent to court, sentenced (to be tried for murder as an adult in fifteen years when he turned 21, which is absolute bullshit because by no stretch of human logic can a 6 year old child have committed a crime as an adult), and then left in an asylum for the next fifteen years of his life. His psychosis worsened, and he gained other symptoms, such as mutism and catatonia. His mom only visited a few times, with his little sister, and then she vanished off the face of the planet from his point of view. Completely abandoned by his family and everyone he knew, the only human contact he had from ages 6-21 was Doctor Sam Loomis, his psychiatrist, who had decided within a couple of months, that Michael was the human personification of evil, faking his mental illness like the evil genius six year old he was, and a demon in human form hellbent on murder. Now, the human brain doesn’t stop developing until the mid 20s, and it sure as hell isn’t done when you’re six. Kids that age don’t even really have a fully developed understanding of mortality and only a basic grasp on ethics. Emotional empathy doesn’t start really forming well until age seven, and abstract reasoning isn’t until preteen years. When you’re six, you’re not old enough to be evil. You just aren’t. But, if you grow up from age 6-21 with only one constant in your life, isolated in a tiny white room, hearing over and over from said only constant, an adult and the source of authority in your life, that you are evil, and soulless, and you are a killer waiting to kill again, you are dying to get out and commit murder, and they’re onto you, how exactly can you expect a human being to turn out?Especially when they’re already dealing with violent psychosis. You’ve basically convinced a mentally ill child that they are the bad voices in their head, not the person, and their goal in life is to commit lots of murder.

Michael’s personal goal, as much as he has one left, has pretty much solidly always been to do what the voices want so they’ll stop and he can be at peace. What they want is for him to kill his family, meaning his sister, Laurie. Kill Laurie, be at peace. That being the case, ending up in the Entity’s realm is about as shitty for him as it is for her, because no matter how many goddamn times he kills her, he can never, ever kill her for real, so he will never be able to stop the voices. He’s about as tired of being here as she is, which is saying a lot. But it’s been forty years of shit for him too.

I think Michael forgot he was a person a long time ago, because nobody’s treated him like one since he was baby. Since he was six. If you treat someone like a monster their whole life, that’s what they’re almost certainly going to become. In the Entity’s realm, it hasn’t really been any different. I don’t think he thinks about things very complexly, because he’s sort of too tired to, and he doesn’t have a real reason. He never learned a lot of normal human behaviors, including any attempt at even the most basic social contact. It’s like that really depressing scene in Lilo & Stitch when Jumba’s commenting on what it must be like to have nothing, even memories, to visit at night. He has memories, but they’re basically all the same—white room, fifteen years of Dr. Loomis. None of that’s a real human experience. Dr. Loomis didn’t even think he was a human—called him “It” instead of “Him.”

With Laurie suddenly acknowledging he’s her brother, it’s weird to him. Canonically, every time someone in a film reminds Michael he’s related to them, it’s like he gets smacked in the face (it’s actually kind of hilarious. He even takes his mask off for his niece in 5 when she calls him “Uncle”). A family member doing this always metaphorically suckerpunches him with the reminder that he has a name and an existence outside of killing people and there are human beings who know who he is and are related to him and have a lasting concept of him as a person. It’s not like he ever forgot they were siblings, but he didn’t remember to think about it. He spends all his time being the Shape, because Michael hasn’t really existed since he was six years old (not in a Dissociative Identity Disorder way, just, it’s an aspect of who he is that no one has been willing to acknowledge since he was a baby. He puts on the mask and kills because that’s what he’s supposed to be. It doesn’t really matter if he wants to, or if he likes it, or even if he still doesn’t have a completely developed concept of mortality, because he’s known for years now that it’s just what he does. It’s what he is). I don’t think he really knows how to think or feel (which he’s not used to doing period) about his sister or about that and being spoken to. He was definitely relieved at the prospect of having a way out of this, and since then it’s been kind of agonizing that she reneged on him and won’t commit joint suicide, but she’s also just been…weird. Been different. She talks to him like a person, which no one has ever done, and he does remember her from when they were little. I think it’s very confusing. He really doesn’t have the normal human skillset to be able to emotionally understand this. Which doesn’t mean he’s some emotionless zombie, just, he didn’t learn how to properly interpret or respond to things. He doesn’t have a normal human emotional or social skillset, because he never got to develop one. He didn’t get the chance. He hasn’t had a positive physical interaction, a hug, a handhold, a pat on the shoulder, since he was six--he hasn’t had any kind of social contact outside of the hostile psychological hatred and threats from Dr. Loomis period. There’s just not a normal set of human understand-the-world mental structures developed in him at all. Instead he’s got like…just all this shit—this really fucked up way of understanding the world built from fifteen years in isolation with just Dr. Loomis that’s completely separate from a normal human experience or mental scape, and the mental set of tools he would use to try to understand his sister is like, the dusty old normal human set that stopped growing when he was six years old that he kind of forgot about.

Michael’s also never done anything he wasn’t supposed to in the Entity’s realm, and I don’t think this has been explicitly stated in the fic, but he’s been punished now, for trying to break the rules with Laurie these past few trials. I don’t think he knew how to handle that or feel about it or think about it either, because it was a new experience for him. It’s very hard to hurt him at all, and it’s never happened with the Entity before this.

During The Tower, Michael wanted what he’s wanted since it was on the table (a way out by killing her), and when she said she couldn’t do it yet, genuinely misinterpreted that as her meaning she had to help the others finish the trial first. I don’t think he entirely understood why she kept running away from him, but he’s used to that kind of behavior, so it wasn’t that strange. What was extremely weird to him was getting jumped by two kids (when usually survivors wouldn’t touch him with a fifty-foot pole if it was up to them), who proceeded to tell him be was being a really crappy brother and should be nicer. It was. Surreal. I think when Laurie showed up and told him she hadn’t meant ‘in twelve minutes’ when she said later, he didn’t just attack her because he was mad she didn’t want to do suicide yet, I think it also kind of hurt his feelings that she made fun of him when he genuinely was trying to understand and thought she meant something else. Since what he wanted was off the table, he was upset (which was especially volatile becaus he doesn’t often experience hugely strong emotions) and on instinct just did what has been programmed to come naturally instead and went fucking lethal on them all, but got a surprising amount of resistance.

When she came back to fight him alone, I don’t think he completely understood everything she said, but he got a lot of it, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like losing the chance to get out of the realm for good with her, but I think he also didn’t really like being basically told that he was dead to her from here on out. I don’t think he’d exactly think of it that way, or put it into words—I don’t think he’d had long enough or the emotional growth enough to appreciate her caring about him, or to want it, but at the same time, he’d had someone treat him like a person for the first time in fifty some years, and I think it was probably briefly nice to be called by his own name and talked to like a person—I think it would be hard for that not to mean a little bit, even if you didn’t understand way. And then he had it reaffirmed by her before their fight that what Dr. Loomis had always said was true, and he’d fucked up so bad with her that he wasn’t ‘Michael’ anymore to her either, and even if he wouldn’t really think of it like that, I think subconsciously, that kind of had to hurt. 

At the end of their fight, when he was out on the floor, and Laurie didn’t kill him, while he was genuinely unconscious for some of that, he was awake for some of it too—the bulk of it, actually. Michael in film canon routinely not only has genuine resets where he passes out and heals and gets back up, but plays dead as well, to protect himself. So, he did hear a decent chunk of what Laurie said to him. She kind of poured her heart out, and some of it was pretty complicated stuff, and a lot of it was stuff he doesn’t really have the emotional complexity developed to understand right now, but he understood some of it. I don’t think he expected things to end like they did (and not just him getting his ass kicked by her). She basically flipped on him, and said she was wrong, and even like this he was still her brother, and because she remembers how he was when he was six she can’t make herself not love him, even if she knows she shouldn’t, and that she wasn’t going to kill him like that, even if it meant he was going to come after her again and kill her. I don’t think he gets why she would say those things, but it did make him want to know, and I think he’s aware that it should mean something to him, regardless of if it does or not on an emotional level, and it is at least something that interests him. Probably his most intact human emotion is curiosity (and it’s no wonder—he’s basically never seen anything, or been anywhere, or done anything—he’s barely gotten a chance to live, period. Any social interaction where someone isn’t running from him screaming or threatening him and telling him he’s a monster is uncharted territory). What that would mean for him going forward as far as Laurie is concerned is very complicated, though. Laurie interests him and there are things he wants to understand, but he’s just got so little ability to function like a normal human being. So much of him is so awfully mangled and maladapted, and the rest has been stagnating since he was 6 and he’s so very, completely, depressingly isolated. He’s a serial killer, but he’s really also kind of a tragic character. It’s fucked up what happened to him, and most of it isn’t really his fault. It didn’t have to be like that.

[antirealisation]

All this shit about Johnny, “it’s not just (’just’) trauma, it’s exotrauma,” is basically me saying that all the delusions and hallucinations can’t just be normal old psychotic-style reactions to all his goddamn childhood trauma, it’s gotta have this fancy-ass word that makes it sound unique and extra strange and bizarre and anomalous.

Even though that’s actually the opposite of what a lot of the shit we’re reading and apparently claiming to believe says, “Actually psychosis is an under-recognised-ly common response to trauma, hallucinations and shit can be traumagenic, dissociative, even if the content isn’t literally ‘what you’d expect’ from a flashback.”

And we claim to believe that. Repeat it, even. Like how the kids talk about structural dissociation, maybe it matters less that we personally are going against this Good Progressive Science as long as we yell loudly enough about how wrong we might be. And it sounding like the kids is also something I hate, aaaagh where is this scrupulosity coming from, I’m meant to be more callous about these things.

Probably doesn’t matter, putting too much thought into it when literally nobody is affected but me and like a handful of people who even know the “exotrauma” word, but blehhh. Why I hate even hinting at it at the HVN group, when lots of Officialler HVN people really like the traumagenic model.

[solipsistful]

do you have any info/posts/thoughts about system members with entirely different neurology rather than experiencing the same disorders through different lenses? imo it makes sense to me that the brain can't entirely differ in neuroses across system members, just presentation— but we know of a diagnosed DID system whose psych confirmed only one alter has bipolar disorder, and in my system we can't quite yet reconcile how our highly differing symptoms fit together. mostly curious tbh

We can’t really give Research-Backed Information, if that’s what you’re asking, because there iiiisn’t really research there, as far as we’re aware, beyond the occasional reference to alters potentially presenting with specific issues as a result of being a “limited part” (e.g., depressed because they’re dissociated from any good feelings; personality disordered because they contain only a few extreme behavior patterns). that’s kind of the extent of any Expertise we’ve seen.

Buuut we do have plenty of thoughts, and you asked when we’re as talkative as we have been, so here we go :V

We’re actually kinda in that situation: Serpent has BPD (therapist-acknowledged!) and various trauma-related stuff, structural dissociation, etc. which y’know is meant to have some basis in something neurological. but it’s all related to exotrauma and so sorta by definition can’t be affecting “our” neurology. his mood episodes are sorta different, too – and seem to be on a cycle unrelated to Thomas’ and mine.

(S- “yes yes we know I’m a mess” look there aren’t many other places to point to in this system, ok)

I mean, I’m very much materialist, so theoretically this should all be neurons, but, hm. I guess the big issue to me is treating disorders as distinct neurologies – that A Bipolar Brain is a certain delineated type, and looks the same as all other Bipolar Brains. That’s just not something we can sign onto, not yet. Probably, with a lot of these subjective aspects of multiplicity – identities, whatever makes system members different people, including different disorders – “it’s neurons” explains it only marginally better than “it’s molecules”. like, yes, but where do we go from there.

Like, what are we gonna count as “the same disorders through different lenses” then? Me+Thomas vs. Serpent have very different mood episodes, where we tend atypical and Serpent tends melancholic and possibly psychotic? (there’s overlap with BPD/dissociative psychosis there; like goood the BPD v. bipolar stuff is its own damn mess, if you want to talk mental health categories). Atypical v. melancholic seem to respond differently to medication, and psychosis bumps one into either bipolar I or schizoaffective territory. So, does that all get captured as “makes sense because bipolar”, or is that Supposedly Impossible?

I guess the point I’m getting at is that we’re suspicious of anything that claims too solidly that all the features of X disorder can be boiled down to neural mechanisms (and are therefore either fully absent or present across a system). And most takes on mental illness don’t! Disorders are just as often talked about as maladaptive thought patterns or as having a cognitive causal “step” in between neuron and symptom: PTSD isn’t “just” an overactive amygdala (it isn’t identified “just” in the amygdala, but I’m simplifying); it’s taking various maladaptive steps to avoid that anxiety (avoidance symptoms), possible behaviorist-model trained responses, etc. Bipolar is treated with the same sorts of CBT that people throw against more environmental depressions.

You can probably get at the same result from all sorts of different underlying neurologies, possibly via similar cognitive mechanisms (otherwise, comorbidity would not make sense – how could both bipolar and OCD, imagined as separate things, be influencing the same brain?). You can probably get at lots of different results from the same underlying neurological structures (in whatever way you want to take two brains and compare them). That’s sorta a nature vs. nurture question, I think – to what extent does external context influence symptoms? But also, to what extent does internal context influence symptoms?

If that makes sense? That is, maybe there’s something where “the same neurological structure”, working through the sociocognitive structure we call “Ace”, results in a depressive mood episode and whatever else you want to say about me; through Serpent and his specific set of memories and tendencies, it’s depersonalization.

… i feel like im making a category mistake there, but this whole thing is just mind-body dualism fuckery, isn’t it.

anyway, im not really that skilled on the neuroscience side of things, so take that aspect of things with a grain of salt ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ still, i’m always struck by the idea that it should “make sense” that Serpent and me are both bipolar, even when i look at his depression and go “wtf are these symptoms, pathological guilt?? immense self-loathing??” that it’s weirder that Serpent considers himself allistic, than the fact that we once had a headmate with such a different set of autistic traits that it was kinda hard to communicate with him at times. And that “different mental illnesses” is more striking, more in need of explanation than “different ages; different genders (aren’t people trying to find the neurological basis of that?); different MBTI profiles; whatever.”

- Ace

[mamasaiko]

Mutsuki's psychological profile.

Mutsuki is probably one of the most difficult characters to understand, this is probably due to his complicated psychological profile.

During his adolescence Mutsuki had a complicated family relationship, the continuous abuse of his father caused him to develop a possible double personality.

"The double personality consists of a dissociative disorder of the identity of the "I" by which a person has two distinct personalities; That is to say, it has two different ways of being, with their respective structures, patterns of behavior, criteria and forms of reaction that condition their way of acting. Depending on different circumstances, usually due to situations of psychic tension, one goes from one personality to another, so that this disorder has also been called "alternating personality". 

"The double personality is a rare alteration, which affects women more than men, particularly young people and adolescents. It is usually associated with psychosexual disorders and loss of impulse control. In its free evolution, brief episodes of reactive psychosis are also frequent."

His other personality, as we can see only manifests when Mutsuki feels his life in danger, some examples are:

 when he killed his parents due to the abuse of his father 

or when during the aution arc was attacked by Karren and subjected to a high degree of stress

His other personality that is more aggressive and obsessive, is in complete harmony with the most gentle and shy personality, both of them identifying with a different gender identity.

"In addition to having completely different psychological characteristics, they can belong to different name, sex, profession, age, nationality, race, ..."

Nevertheless, due to the continuous subjection to stressful situations added to the constant torture to which Torso submited him, caused that balance began to undo itself. That moment happens when the gentler personality begins to be aware of his other self, emerging memories that were retained

And is that this is one more symptom of said disorder:

"The passage from one personality to another often happens abruptly. Once the transformation takes place, the most common is that an amnesia occurs, for which everything or everything is forgotten, while it dominates the previous personality. It is also common for each personality to have no knowledge of the others."

Is thereafter when the more aggressive personality that usually only showed in situations of high stress, begins to appear in more frequent occasions, being aggressive even with those to which he holds esteem, as we can appreciate when he attacks Akira

However, it is not until Uta appears disguised as Sasaki that the little existing equilibrium disappears, provoking the complete mental instability of Mutsuki.

From this moment, both personalities exchange positions steadily, as we appreciate in his abrupt change of behavior and attitude, added to the continuous change of personal pronouns to refer to himself during a conversation.

Mutsuki is now completely dominated by his emotions, feelings like abandonment, jealousy or love become obsessive and motivates his actions

Causing suffering to others in the process with the sole purpose of satisfying them.

Therefore mutsuki consists of a complex psychological profile, that although does not excuse his actions allows us to understand a little more his actions.