Collective System Blog!

OH! I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS!

There’s a WIRED article that explains the history behind this practice. 

Basically, this guy named Jeffrey Mitchell had a traumatic experience, then after months of PTSD, he told a confidant about the event that traumatized him. Retelling the event to a confidant was so cathartic for Mitchell that his PTSD went away after. He did a bunch of research to see if his personal experience of catharsis and relief could be replicated in other people suffering from PTSD. Years later he published a paper proposing a formalized psychiatric treatment revolving around this idea that expressing a traumatic experience helps relieve it. The paper was so influential that the whole psychiatric community adopted “critical incident stress debriefing” (CISD) as a standard treatment for PTSD.

Unfortunately … it’s bullshit.

Not only does the CISD treatment program Mitchell came up with not help the majority of patients who try it, but it actually makes PTSD worse in the majority of patients who try it.

The WIRED article explains why:

CISD misapprehends how memory works…. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. 

…the very act of remembering changes the memory itself. New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge. 

Basically, Mitchell waited until he had some emotional distance before trying to recall the memory, and he had full control of the situation. It was fully his decision. Nobody was pressuring him to talk about it. So he felt safe. Thinking about the memory from a place of safety allowed his brain to re-contextualize the memory as harmless.

Conversely, pressuring a patient to recall a traumatic memory, particularly when it’s still fresh in their minds, makes the patient feel very unsafe. Recalling a bad memory in this unsafe context only serves to re-traumatize the patient. 

If someone asked me what's something bad that happened 2 days ago I'd have to sit here for like 10 minutes trying to remeber and hope that someone will pass up the memory. And often Ivy doesn't let that happen, if it's something terrible.

Also what does that professor expect? For someone to say "I had to take a test even though I got an hour asleep"? Or is he really waiting for the "I relapsed after being sober for 3 months" or the "I tried to off myself"

Personal battles are PERSONAL for a reason. Opening up to complete strangers about things can be a death sentence because EVERYONE now knows what's going on in your life.

"But Ay what if that's moment they finally find help?"

You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.

If that person straight says "I tried to take my life" they might do it again. They might not care at that point. They might be too far gone.

Just something to think about.

(under the cut)

sometimes i wonder why people "want" to be system or have a trauma disorder, you really want the sleepless nights? do you really want the horrible flashbacks? do you want to feel like a monster for having basic human reactions? do you want to have everything rush back because you put a song on?

stop thinking systemhood is "just fun little friends in youre head" stop thinking cluster b is "cute" and "quirky" its not, it never will be these disorders ruin my life, i get systems and trauma finding fun in a shit position, but they are not for others to find "fun" or "cool"

stop being fucking weird about us

And then my ocd is like ummm bad song bad song bad song

So it's fun all around

But the second one threw me for a loop. Becuade my most recent ocd obsession is everything happens for a reason and God wanted me this to do this/get this/ see this or something

This is through the lens of the host. There are 3 different times I found out about my DID. We were 15 years old at the time, around this time and in summer, 7 years ago.

1. I was age regressing a lot. I noticed my personality changed drastically when age regressed. The way I viewed people changed too. My mind was that of a child. At one point I decided to name my age regressed state. (We'll call her K). I was on instagram and a question popped up, "why do you age regress?". One of the reasons was "multiple personality disorder/DID". My age regressed state, or "K", told me that that was the reason. I looked into it and the symptoms fit my experience, I just didn't know about it then. "K" then told me about the others in the system.

2. Another alter, we'll call her "P", wrote a story about another alter, "M". I thought I was writing it but I would never remember what I wrote afterwards. The alter we were writing about, "M", told us or told "P", how she wanted the story to go. As it was her "innerworld backstory". M would come out a lot to help write her story as well.

I was having a lot of problems with my age regressing and amnesia so I reached out to tumblr and reddit and a lot people were like hey check into plurality

I pushed it off till my dissociation was getting really out of hand and now tadaaaa I have a multi personality disorder (I'm unsure of which one right now)

Meeples (the little alter who I thought was my age regressed self) he knows everything going on in the headspace and who everyone is and as the host I don't so it's interesting when he gives me an answer for a question I was wondering about myself.

I'm glad there is others out there that found out through their little alters. I'm glad meeples led us to here.

Cw toe nails and a little tmi

It did not come all the way off there's still like a thin layer of nail there??? So that's why it doesn't hurt I think....

Our dermatillomania is crazy so it's not an unusual thing so it didn't worry me a lot