the-emerald-system-blog

[the-emerald-system-blog]

okay, here is a thing: some people that suffered from abuse can’t remember every detail about it and sometimes they will remember it gradually during their life. if they tell you different stories about the same thing, don’t just judge them. if they tell you they forgot about things, trust them. if they tell you they just remembered something about the abuse, trust them.

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Can you describe or explain what an emotional flashback is? I wanna have that level of awareness too. I was listening to sad music and disassociating too.

Emotional Flashbacks are one of the hallmark symptoms of CPTSD and one of the things that differentiates it from PTSD. 

In PTSD and typical flashbacks you flashback to an event and are re-experiencing that event as an explicit memory. In typical flashbacks you are experiencing a specific memory of an event. 

In CPTSD and Emotional Flashbacks you flashback to an emotional state without a clear memory of the event that caused this state. So you are experiencing the emotions tied to the traumatic event without remembering the event itself. 

This makes it harder to recognize that you are experiencing a flashback because you seem to just feel bad for no reason, especially if you don’t realize that you were triggered. People with CPTSD sometimes can’t remember specific traumatic events because trauma was long term and a part of their daily life, and/or because the trauma began at such an early age. 

To give a more clear example, I recognized that I was having an emotional flashback today because I was feeling frozen, helpless, powerless, and as if my actions would have no impact on the world around me. 

Just recognizing that you are having an emotional flashback can be helpful, but grounding techniques that pull you back into the present are especially helpful. Once I realized I was in an emotional flashback I turned off the sad music and tried to reorient myself to the present. 

Writing this reply to you has actually been very grounding. 

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Resources for Male Victims of Abuse

How to Recognize Abuse

**Emotional Abuse of Men

**Sexual Assault of Men and Boys

**Men Can Be Victims of Abuse, Too

**Domestic Violence Against Men - Know the Signs

**Information for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse

**Help for Battered Men

**Battered Men, Battered Husbands

**For Male Survivors of Rape and Sexual Abuse

**Male Survivors of Incest and Sexual Child Abuse

**Help for Men Who Are Being Abused

Help Lines (Phone and Text Chat)

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (or 1-800-787-3224 for TTY)

National Dating Abuse Hotline: 1-866-331-9474

National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-237-8255

Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men: 1-888-743-5754 (US and Canada)

Hopeline Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-784-2433

National Hotline for Victims of Crimes: 1-855-484-2846

National Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888

Polaris Human Trafficking Text Line: Text “BEFREE” to 233733

**1in6/RAINN Chat for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse

Support Groups

**1in6 Support Groups

Male Survivor Support Groups

Pandora’s Aquarium - Chat (includes chats specifically for men)

Pandora’s Aquarium - Forums (includes forums specifically for men)

How to Find a Shelter

Domestic Shelters Search (shelter locator with filters to find shelters specifically for male survivors)

SAFE (located in Austin, TX, but states they can help people find resources/shelters in their area)

How to Find a Therapist

**Male Survivor Therapist Directory

Mental Health Services Locator

Resources for and About the Abuse of Kids/Teens

Love is Respect Hotline: 1-866-331-9474 (Hotline for teens)

Darkness to Light Helpline (Sexual Abuse): 1-866-367-5444

Darkness to Light Text Line: Text “LIGHT” to 741741

ChildHelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-422-4453

Children of the Night Hotline (Children in Prostitution): 1-800-551-1300

National Runaway Safeline: 1-800-786-2929

Covenant House Nineline (Homeless Youth): 1-800-999-9999

Stop it Now Hotline: 1-888-773-2362 (for adults concerned about the welfare of a child)

Jennifer Ann’s Group (for teens experiencing dating violence)

Other Resource Lists 

(While I tried to include the most helpful resources I could here (i.e., resources that lend themselves to one-on-one communication, individual reading, etc.), there are plenty of other great resources, including regional resources, listed in these links. Some of the resources are specific to men and others aren’t, but they are all helpful for male survivors.)

**Male Survivor (regional, international, and online resources)

**Husband Battering: Men and Domestic Violence

**Help for Battered Men: Online Resources

**Help for Battered Men: National and International Resources

**Help for Guys: Help for Victims (some resources for men, many general resources)

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Meet The Alters  Unknown

Greetings I am Unknown Unknown age and background I refuse to be a protector of any sort I am the devil

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Meet The Alters  Cathy

Um I'm Cathy or Cat, I'm 17 years old I'm very shy and introverted but I love making friends and playing dnd I'm a protector or caretaker like a parent Please be nice to us

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Meet The Alters Maria

Ok, I'm Maria, I'm 19 I have narcissistic personality disorder and hypersexual I'm very bitchy and emotional I wouldn't call myself a protector at all but just the hypersexual

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Meet The Alters  Alex

Hey, I'm Alex I hate doing this shit but whatever I guess I am 16 years old, I used to be a persecutor alter but I guess I'm bettering myself I like metal and such, and being an ass I'm single but not looking Bye

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Part Five Of DiD

Are there famous people with DiD? Famous people with dissociative identity disorder include retired NFL star Herschel Walker, who says he's struggled with dissociative identity disorder for years but has only been treated for the past eight years.Walker recently published a book about his struggles with dissociative identity disorder, along with his suicide attempts. Walker talks about a feeling of disconnect from childhood to the professional leagues. To cope, he developed a tough personality that didn't feel loneliness, one that was fearless and wanted to act out the anger he always suppressed. These "alters" could withstand the abuse he felt; other alters came to help him rise to national fame. Today, Walker realizes that these alternate personalities are part of dissociative identity disorder, which he was diagnosed with in adulthood.

How common is DiD? Statistics show the rate of dissociative identity disorder is .01% to 1% of the general population. Considering dissociation more broadly, more than a third of people say they feel as if they're watching themselves in a movie at times (that is, possibly experiencing the phenomenon of dissociation), and 7% percent of the population may have some form of an undiagnosed dissociative disorder.

What's the recommended treatment plan for DiD? While there's no "cure" for dissociative identity disorder, long-term treatment can be helpful, if the patient stays committed. Effective treatment includes talk therapy or psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and adjunctive therapies such as art or movement therapy. There are no established medication treatments for dissociative identity disorder, making psychologically-based approaches the mainstay of therapy. Treatment of co-occurring disorders, such as depression or substance use disorders, is fundamental to overall improvement.

Because the symptoms of dissociative disorders often occur with other disorders, such as anxiety and depression, medicines to treat those co-occurring problems, if present, are sometimes used in addition to psychotherapy.

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Part Four Of DiD

What roles do the different personalities play? The distinct personalities may serve diverse roles in helping the individual cope with life's dilemmas. For instance, there's an average of two to four personalities present when the patient is initially diagnosed. Then there's an average of 13 to 15 personalities that can become known over the course of treatment. While unusual, there have been instances of dissociative identity disorder with more than 100 personalities. Environmental triggers or life events cause a sudden shift from one alter or personality to another.

Who gets DiD? While the causes of dissociative identity disorder are still vague, research indicates that it is likely a psychological response to interpersonal and environmental stresses, particularly during early childhood years when emotional neglect or abuse may interfere with personality development. As many as 99% of individuals who develop dissociative disorders have recognized personal histories of recurring, overpowering, and often life-threatening disturbances at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood (usually before age 9). Dissociation may also happen when there has been persistent neglect or emotional abuse, even when there has been no overt physical or sexual abuse. Findings show that in families where parents are frightening and unpredictable, the children may become dissociative.

How is DiD diagnosed? Making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder takes time. It's estimated that individuals with dissociative disorders have spent seven years in the mental health system prior to accurate diagnosis. This is common, because the list of symptoms that cause a person with a dissociative disorder to seek treatment is very similar to those of many other psychiatric diagnoses. In fact, many people who have dissociative disorders also have coexisting diagnoses of borderline or other personality disorders, depression, and anxiety.

The DSM-5 provides the following criteria to diagnose dissociative identity disorder:

Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events. 3.The person must be distressed by the disorder or have trouble functioning in one or more major life areas because of the disorder.

The disturbance is not part of normal cultural or religious practices. 5.The symptoms can not be due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (such as complex partial seizures). Part Five Next

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Part Three Of DiD

What is the difference between schizophrenia and DiD?

Schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder are often confused, but they are very different.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness involving chronic (or recurrent) psychosis, characterized mainly by hearing or seeing things that aren't real (hallucinations) and thinking or believing things with no basis in reality (delusions). Contrary to popular misconceptions, people with schizophrenia do not have multiple personalities. Delusions are the most common psychotic symptom in schizophrenia; hallucinations, particularly hearing voices, are apparent in about half to three quarters of people with the illness.

Suicide is a risk with both schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, although patients with multiple personalities have a history of suicide attempts more often than other psychiatric patients.

How does dissociation change the way a person experiences life? There are several main ways in which the psychological processes of dissociative identity disorder change the way a person experiences living, including the following:

-Depersonalization: This is a sense of being detached from one's body and is often referred to as an "out of body" experience. -Derealization: This is the feeling that the world is not real or looking foggy or far away. -Amnesia: This is the failure to recall significant personal information that is so extensive it cannot be blamed on ordinary forgetfulness. There can also be micro-amnesias where the discussion engaged in is not remembered, or the content of a meaningful conversation is forgotten from one second to the next. -Identity confusion or identity alteration: Both of these involve a sense of confusion about who a person is. An example of identity confusion is when a person has trouble defining the things that interest them in life, or their political or religious or social viewpoints, or their sexual orientation, or their professional ambitions. In addition to these apparent alterations, the person may experience distortions in time, place, and situation. It is now acknowledged that these dissociated states are not fully mature personalities, but rather they represent a disjointed sense of identity. With the amnesia typically associated with dissociative identity disorder, different identity states remember different aspects of autobiographical information. There is usually a "host" personality within the individual, who identifies with the person's real name. Ironically, the host personality is usually unaware of the presence of other personalities. Part Four Next

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Part Two Of DiD

What are the symptoms of DiD? Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct or split identities or personality states that continually have power over the person's behavior. With dissociative identity disorder, there's also an inability to recall key personal information that is too far-reaching to be explained as mere forgetfulness. With dissociative identity disorder, there are also highly distinct memory variations, which fluctuate with the person's split personality. The "alters" or different identities have their own age, sex, or race. Each has his or her own postures, gestures, and distinct way of talking. Sometimes the alters are imaginary people; sometimes they are animals. As each personality reveals itself and controls the individuals' behavior and thoughts, it's called "switching." Switching can take seconds to minutes to days. When under hypnosis, the person's different "alters" or identities may be very responsive to the therapist's requests. Along with the dissociation and multiple or split personalities, people with dissociative disorders may experience a number of other psychiatric problems, including symptoms: -depression -mood swings -suicidal tendencies -sleep disorders -anxiety, panic attacks, phobias -alcohol and drug abuse -compulsions and rituals -psychotic-like symptoms -eating disorders Other symptoms of dissociative identity disorder may include headache, amnesia, time loss, trances, and "out of body experiences." Some people with dissociative disorders have a tendency toward self-persecution, self-sabotage, and even violence (both self-inflicted and outwardly directed). As an example, someone with dissociative identity disorder may find themselves doing things they wouldn't normally do, such as speeding, reckless driving, or stealing money from their employer or friend, yet they feel they are being compelled to do it. Some describe this feeling as being a passenger in their body rather than the driver. In other words, they truly believe they have no choice. Part Three Next

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Information

Dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) is thought to be a complex psychological condition that is likely caused by many factors, including severe trauma during early childhood (usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse). 

What is Dissociative Identity Disorder? Most of us have experienced mild dissociation, which is like daydreaming or getting lost in the moment while working on a project. However, dissociative identity disorder is a severe form of dissociation, a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociative identity disorder is thought to stem from a combination of factors that may include trauma experienced by the person with the disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to assimilate with his conscious self.

Is DiD real? You may wonder if dissociative identity disorder is real. After all, understanding the development of multiple personalities is difficult, even for highly trained experts. The diagnosis itself remains controversial among mental health professionals, with some experts believing that it is really an "offshoot" phenomenon of another psychiatric problem, such as borderline personality disorder, or the product of profound difficulties in coping abilities or stresses related to how people form trusting emotional relationships with others.Other types of dissociative disorders defined in the DSM-5, the main psychiatry manual used to classify mental illnesses, include dissociative amnesia (with "dissociative fugue" now being regarded as a subtype of dissociative amnesia rather than its own diagnosis), and depersonalization/derealization disorder.

Part Two Next

[the-emerald-system-blog]

DiD Inner World(s)

Many individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) have an internal world in which they or their alters can manifest as themselves and interact. These internal worlds, which are also known as inner worlds or headspaces, can range in size and complexity. A system with only a couple of alters might have an internal room in which alters that are internally active, awake, and aware might manifest. Others might expand this living room to include doors to bedrooms for groups of or individual alters. Some systems might have an entire house that is fully equipped with everything that the alters would feel that they need. Others might have small towns that may even be filled with static "NPCs" (taken from the roleplaying term "non-player characters") that can interact with alters but themselves are more similar to imaginary constructs than to actual alters or fragments. Even more expansive internal worlds can result when highly imaginative or dissociative systems use their inner world to retreat from the outside world and so play out entire stories within their mind. Alters may be perceived as having internal lives when not active in the outside world, and these inner lives may involve travel to other internal locations.

It should be noted that because internal worlds are not objectively real, some subjective experiences of them may not be as concrete as they feel. For example, an alter that is harmed or even "killed" internally has not taken any actual damage and can still front, or access the body while to some degree aware of the outside world, as before when needed. Alters who have jobs or skills inside will not actually have these abilities unless they learned them from valid sources in the outside world. Many internal happenings may be metaphorical or highly symbolic. As well, the brain is not capable of running a completely independent parallel track inside for every single alter who is active within the internal world. It is more likely that internal happenings are recreated "false memories" that are accessible as the alters involved connect with the front of the body and mind (become active in such a way as to be aware of or capable of interacting with the outside world or connect with other alters who are currently capable of such).

That such internal environments are possible for individuals with dissociative identity disorder is well known and accepted in clinical and academic environments. For example, "The Haunted Self' by Onno van der Hart, Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis, and Kathy Steele includes information about how alters can interact internally and sometimes never take active control of the body. Within this internal environment, alters may soothe each other or reenact trauma to cause subjective internal injury. Traumatized child parts may perceive themselves as eternally hiding within a closet or locked within a metaphorical dungeon. These worlds might be filled with symbols of the system's pain and suffering. On the other hand, internal worlds may also be places of magic and fantasy, fulfilling the system's need for a place in which alters can retreat when the outside world becomes overwhelming. Alters may perceive this internal world as real as or even more real than the outside world (Hart et al., 2006).1

Internal landscapes are also referred to within "Dissociation and the dissociative disorders: DSM-V and beyond" by Paul F. Dell and John A. O'Neil. This text refers to internal worlds as "common internal reality or landscape or inscape" in which alters reside. It attributes the existence of internal worlds to a shared autohypnotic effect between alters that can sometimes be created by clinical hypnosis and is "distinct from external reality, dream, fantasy, or posttraumatic hallucinatory flashback." Internal worlds are viewed in the same manner by all of the system's alters, each of which usually has a unique personal appearance within the inner world. Internal worlds display continuity over time and allow for events to occur and be met with their logical effects. Accordingly, internal landscapes are seen as a sign of internal unity underlying external multiplicity and fracture (Dell & O'Neil, 2009).2

Different systems may have more or less control over their internal worlds. Some may be able to actively shape and add new aspects to their internal world while others may regulate this ability to a specific alter or groups of alters or find the task impossible. Some systems do not naturally have an internal world but may be able to create one with the help of therapy. Internal worlds can be very useful because they can make interaction between alters easier and so can increase cooperation and co-consciousness.

[the-emerald-system-blog]

What is your OCs Myers Briggs personality type?

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Describe your OC as a high school superlative (best dressed, most likely to be president, etc)

[the-emerald-system-blog]

 Would you consider your OC a nice person?

[the-emerald-system-blog]

Which OC says they’re just taking a short nap and ends up waking up 10 hours later?