Gentle Advice for Young Systems
This is some gentle advice for the young systems out there - and I don’t mean young physically, I mean the people who just got diagnosed, just discovered your system, those still trying to figure things out, etc.
The prospect of DID/OSDD is always a potentially scary one - there are a lot of twists and turns that you’ll encounter along your journey to understand your system and heal - but from one system to another, it does get better in time.
We’re going to list off a few things to keep in mind as you go about your journey;
you’re never going to 100% know everything about your system, you’re never going to be 100% in control of everything, and that’s okay; There are many unknowns that come along when you have alters - who is who, who is fronting right now, who is feeling this emotion, why are they here, what do they like, why are they doing these things, and sometimes that lack of knowledge can be scary - you might feel like you want to control everything about your system, but you have to remember that they are a defense mechanism, they are there to protect you (yes even persecutors), you won’t be able to control the defense mechanism - what you can do however, is become familiar with it, become familiar with your alters, their triggers, your triggers, understand the relationship each alter has to you, and how your system as a whole navigates your life. Sometimes it’s okay to just say “You know, I don’t know what the hell is going on, I don’t know who is out, but in time I will. I just need to give myself more time.”
you don’t need to compare your system to any other system out there; I get a lot of asks asking me if what their system does is ‘okay’ or ‘normal’. Please remember that tumblr has a bit of an unrealistic representation of DID/OSDD - this is because online, alters can be more themselves, we as the audience can see the differences between people clearly. In real life however - this is not always the case. DID/OSDD is by nature a very covert thing, and only a certain percentage of people actually have very obvious switches in real life. So maybe your alters don’t speak differently when they’re fronting? That’s fine. Maybe you don’t have an inner world or your inner world is extremely small? That’s fine too. Understand your dynamics as a system without trying to press your alters into being something they aren’t. Remember that every system is unique, you don’t need a reason to push your system into being unique so that other people see it too.
Read, read, read, read; learn the terminology of the community, learn more about the disorder and how it comes about - it’s a lot of reading, but trust me, the more DID/OSDD stops looking like this magical foreign thing to you, the more you will be able to see how your alters relate to your trauma, how they relate to you functioning, (http://did-research.org/) (http://this-is-not-dissociative.tumblr.com/list) here are some sites to get you started. The more knowledge you have about the disorder, the more you will be able to feel less crazy and out of control of your life - you’ll see it for what it is, a disorder that you just need a little bit of help unraveling.
The denial never really goes away; even systems who have been together for years still experience denial - you will always have that voice saying that you made everything up, that you’ve been faking this entire time for no reason and that you are bad because of it. We tend to look at denial as a good and bad thing - if you’re questioning the validity of your system, feeling like you made it all up and that you’re faking, then that’s good - that means you’re thinking, you’re analyzing your actions and your feelings and trying to make sense of it. Just try not to get swallowed up in it, telling yourself “You know, right now I feel like I made it all up, that I’m faking it all, but I know deep down I have these people inside, certain things I can’t explain - and even if I feel like it isn’t real right now, I shouldn’t beat myself up over because I’m just trying to make sense of my insides.” We consider this a good kind of denial - the bad kind of denial, is when you start denying anything bad ever happen to you, denying that you need help from a helpful source - but understand that you don’t need to push yourself out of feeling denial, just acknowledge that you’re feeling it, and let it pass - don’t beat yourself up during it, just let it pass.
Healing means different things for people, take your time and keep your options open; everyone has a different meaning of healing to them - some people believe integration is their means of healing, some people just want to live in harmony with their alters. We personally don’t believe either option is bad - so long as you are safe, healthy, and happy, we will never judge your life choices. However - we would advise you to keep your options open, don’t limit yourself to saying “I can only be healed if we integrate.” or “We won’t integrate, and we are considered healed if we all live in harmony.” You will experience good times during your road to healing, you will experience bad times, you will move between the good and bad and sometimes your idea of healing will change - remember that whatever works for you, will work for you, it might not work for someone else, but if it works for you and you are safe, happy, and healthy, you’re doing okay. Just remember to keep your options on healing open at all times - this also means that you don’t need to deal with it alone, find a support group, find a therapist, just as systems are unique, your road to healing is also going to be unique.
Patience, patience, patience; you can probably tell that a theme we’ve been repeating in this whole thing was patience - giving yourself time. It’s extremely important that you don’t feel like in one year, you need to be at a certain stage of your recovery. Give yourself time - because the things you’ll be experiencing are new and confusing, you need the time to process everything. Give your alters time - things are just as new and confusing for them as it is for you. Some systems don’t have internal communication - and that’s okay, even if it takes weeks, months, years to build up that communication, that’s fine. It isn’t a race to see how fast someone can be healed, don’t look at others in their stage of healing and feel like you should be there - everyone is just trying their best, and that’s all you need to do too.
Hopefully this was helpful to someone, sorry if some parts are a little rambly, we tried our best to convey some of the information we wish we had been told when we started our journey…
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