[PT: Hello, hello to those who are reading this!! End PT]
(we finally got around to redoing this, phew, it was Soooo out of date)
So without further ado, our introduction!!
Our Intro!
[PT: Our Intro! End PT]
You can refer to us as Constellations/Stellar/Astra. As for pronouns, any are fine.
we don't interact from this blog, it's a sideblog :] any interactions will be from our main blog! we also have a blog for our templates; @star-templates-for-pk :3
We are bodily an adult.
I have Dissociative Identity disorder.
I switch between me/i and we/us pretty interchangeably.
We don't always sign off on our posts.
We are ANTI endo.
also! this blog used to be called cases-shenanigans, before we renamed it to constellations-notsoshenanigans :D
Our stances/beliefs:
[PT: Our stances/beliefs : End PT]
we are anti endo and anti harrassment.
we won't harass (pro)endo's, but we ask that (pro)endos don't interact with our posts. if you are (pro)endo/have some other difference in stances than us, and we like one of your posts, it's either because we misclicked or because we weren't aware you were (pro)endo.
we support neopronouns and use them ourselves.
we believe that ramcoa exists
we are anti fake-claiming
we are against pro-contact harmful paraphiles
we are pro self-diagnosis/self-suspecting (w/ research)
we are anti 'narc abuse' / 'disordered-abuse'
We have other stances and opinions, but they likely won't be a topic of focus in this blog.
A quick note.
[PT: A quick note. End PT]
we reblog a lot of stuff:
sometimes that stuff can be positive, sometimes it can be negative and sometimes it can just be neutral (aka a template for something).
the 'negative' stuff we reblog is mainly centered on disabilities. aka, the real lives of ppl with disabilites, how theyre discriminated against, the 'uncomfortable' sides of disability.
as much as there is room for more positive blogs, where theyre safe spaces away from the negativity of the real world (and they're lovely), we are v much not a purely happy blog.
some things we reblog, such as userboxes, we might not relate to, but we reblog them because they're cool and we want to share them with our followers. you'll never know which we relate to mwahahah (evil villain laugh).
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.
I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.
Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.
"They hate us all": True! A helpful reminder that assimilation will not save you.
"They hate us all equally": False. An attempt to obscure the ways in which anti-queer policies are disproportionately targeted at trans women, especially trans women of color. A retread of that classic white feminist error of assuming all women have a "common oppression", which obscures race and class differences among women.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
faltering our alter by sitting on the couch and saying, very casually, "man, why do I feel like im, like, half floating out of my body, thats so weird", only for our roommate to turn to us and go "weird, its almost like you have a *dissociative* disorder?"
Normalize "abnormal" speech patterns. Normalize lack of eye contact, normalize ticking, normalize emphasis on different syllables. Normalize "Inappropriate" emoting, especially when it's a stress response.
Normalize verbally processing thoughts, external system communication, non- aggressive interaction with hallucinations or delusions.
Normalize Echolalia, "TV Talking", vocal stimming, parroting, "Baby talk" as a way to self soothe.
disabled system culture is not knowing who does and does not know your mcas triggers so sometimes someone will eat something and then several hours later someone else is like “hey why is everything hell”
(ps i just saw you don’t have any claimed anons would it be okay if i was 🫀🍒 anon i get the feeling i’m gonna be coming back here a lot)
we dont personally experience this badly but our partner (also a system) does! very frequently they ask us “did we have dairy today?” before they start dying completely and have to go lay on the floor /aff
disclaimer: not comparing a lactose intolerance to a disability, just relating!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Writing Complex Dissociation: Which Disorder Does (/Should) My Character Have?
I want to say first and foremost that not all dissociative disorders inherently make someone a system. Not even dissociative tendencies. You can have complex PTSD, for example, and dissociate a lot, and not be a system. In the same way you can have a dissociative disorder and not be a system -- the only subtype of OSDD that implies systemhood is OSDD-1; types 2, 3, and 4 don't.
Dissociation on its own is a symptom of a lot of things, and we all experience mild forms of it daily throughout our lives (ex: sleep/wake transition stage, getting lost in thought). It is the structural elements, interference in day-to-day life, and the complexity of said dissociation that inform whether 1) someone's dissociation is disabling, and 2) whether that disability is related to systemhood. This post is going to be centering writing system characters in particular.
DID, P-DID, and OSDD-1 are all complex disorders that are all too often simplified and demonized in stories meant to "include" us. Taking the first step into doing proper research is already miles above what most people do, and I and so many others appreciate that!
And I'm glad you're starting here, with what you're going to be writing in particular.
That said: even if you don't want to outright say in direct words what your dissociative character has, and would rather show it subtextually, it'd be good to have an idea so you have a framework to build off of, and so you have a consistent, well-established facet of your OC's identity.
DID, OSDD, P-DID - What's the Difference?
Good question! And it's important to note before anything else that the diagnostic criteria for something like DID versus, say, OSDD-1, will vary in some ways depending on where you live! In one country, what is considered OSDD might be read as DID if the exact same person is seen somewhere else!
Systems and dissociative disorders ARE observed globally. This is not a "Western phenomenon" or "something US Americans made up" -- DID has been observed as far south or east as South Africa, Australia, Japan. Population ratios between those with DID and without it are also very consistent in countries that have performed that research!
(It is very much a worldwide thing, and very much an intersectional thing. We are not all Cis White Man From Boston. Just doesn't work that way!)
And on top of that, covert dissociative disorders can be incredibly hard to diagnose due to how well they can slip under the radar or mask as other things. Standalone PTSD, personality disorders, that sort of thing -- the lines can be very blurry, and what you're seen as to a professional can vary from PTSD to DID to OSDD depending on how you present that day. So cases aren't often clear-cut, especially not from an outside point of view!
By no means am I making a comprehensive post here, but it's good to have a baseline idea for the differences so that you can do more applicable research moving forward. This is generally what those differences compose of:
[Long post (VERY long post) under the cut!]
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)
– “Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession (...)” and “marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning.”
"Two or more": keep that in mind! There is a minimum number of two alters a system can have (host included, the host is also an alter), but no maximum. This is due to how individual each DID experience can be! Someone can have exactly two alters in their system, while others can have 100+. (These experiences are known as polyfragmented DID. This type of DID is developed under very specific circumstances, highly complex, and highly under-researched, to the point where I'm only not going over it longer because I feel as if it warrants its own post.)
The average reported system count is around 8-13. If you need a baseline, go off of that!
Marked discontinuity in "sense of self and agency" can be a lot of different things; affect and motor functioning refers to tone, cadence, the way you speak and move and hold yourself, cognition/perception/memory refers to amnesiac barriers, outlook, morals, likes and dislikes -- everything down to the way you think can and will differ.
People with DID often feel indecisive, or inconsistent, and don't understand quite why until it's revealed (if ever). You can have one opinion one day and the complete opposite the next because of conflicting interests in alters. You may have to explain why your feelings and views contradict so frequently without consciously remembering that conflict happening.
It's also noted that changes in behavior may be noticed by others, but not always. And if they do, it rarely is thought to be DID -- my sibling, for example, while I was still in high school, would notice blatant switches and assume I was just having a "weird day" or I was "stressed". They noticed the consistency in behavioral changes, but thought nothing of it because I'd always been like that. EXTREMELY subtle symptom presentation is the norm.
– “Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.”
Day-to-day life, important events, personal details, years and years of childhood and later, will just be gone. It's not there. Inaccessible. You might not even notice it's missing, either.
Due to the nature of dissociative disorders being dissociative, these gaps are very good at camouflaging themselves. You aren't paying attention to these things like your peers are, so you don't pick up on warning signs right away. And it takes even longer to notice patterns.
This can also look like having the same realization about the same thing multiple times. And it feeling new, and world changing, Every Time. It can feel like you're going in circles indefinitely with everything you do.
– “The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
It's A Disability If It Disables You Basically. Again, some level of dissociation is normal to experience, it is the severity that is the problem. Like how daydreaming itself is fine, but could become maladaptive and disrupting in daily life.
– “The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice. Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.”
This is why tulpamancy is not and should not be lumped in with dissociative disorders. It is a closed practice, and something only a Tibetan Buddhist can speak on, which I am not, so I can't. What I will say: the implications you might see from people that tulpamancy is in any way comparable to a trauma-centric dissociative disorder are both ableist (implying OSDDID is a "practice" or something somebody can decide to "do") and extremely culturally insensitive (there is nothing disordered about Buddhist practices).
(Additionally: the idea of "tulpas" the way most Westerners practice it is a skewed interpretation of something only lightly "inspired" by Tibetan Buddhism. It is a very similar situation to how white people will talk about the "seven chakras" when that is nothing at all close to what chakras are. Not only is it appropriation, people are also defining it incorrectly! I plan on compiling my own post about misinformation related to these things once I have enough applied knowledge to be able to do that.)
On topic again:
If the experiences line up with cultural or religious practice and are not disabling to the person, it is not OSDDID because it did not form the same way. If a child is engaging in escapism via fantasy play and said play is controllable by the child, it is not OSDDID because the motions are voluntary.
These experiences are all still real! And deserve respect! But they cannot be categorized the same -- like how generalized epilepsy and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures present similarly in some ways but aren't the same thing, or how a fainting spell might look like a seizure but isn't a seizure. It'd do a disservice to both to lump them in with one another, if that makes sense!
– “The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or other medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures) (American Psychiatric Association, 2022).”
Speaks for itself but I'm Including It Anyway.
— All criteria backed by the DSM-5. All quoted text brought from the linked organization (DID Research) and goes into further detail than I have, if that's something you're interested in. (And you should be! Don't take my word alone for it, look deeper!)
———
All other types (OSDD, P-DID) are disorders that mostly fall under this criteria, but diverge in some significant way. This does NOT make anyone with these disorders "less real", it only means they have a different experience with structural dissociation -- and structural dissociation is highly individual, dependent on the person and their situation (so you'll be hard pressed to find two systems that experience their disorder the exact same way).
This is just something that happens. Very confusing disorder to have!
———
Partial Dissociative Identity Disorder (P-DID)
– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:
– “(...) the person still experiences a disruption of their identity, like in DID, but there is a ‘dominant’ personality which is usually at the front. Intrusions from other parts are infrequent and irregular, perhaps only happening during a particularly distressing or emotional experience.” — “What are the Dissociative Disorders?”, International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation
By "intrusions", people mean switching, or executive control. Different terms that mean the same thing.
In OSDDID cases outside of P-DID, alters will have the ability to take executive control of the body -- this is something that, most of the time, is not present in P-DID. I've seen it described by a P-DID system through the roommates allegory: that collective is there in the building, and they all share the space, but only one of them answers the door.
This is usually the case, but a P-DID system can break out of that -- switching, etc. can still happen in some P-DID systems, particularly when under severe distress.
P-DID, as said by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, is most commonly recognized and diagnosed outside of North America. P-DID is also the least discussed from what I've seen, which may or may not be correlated in some way. (Again, how these things are labeled and understood will vary from place to place and group to group! It's important to get multiple perspectives on a given subject for that reason.)
———
“Other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD) is a dissociative disorder that serves as a catch-all category for symptom clusters that do not fit neatly within another dissociative disorder diagnosis.” — “DID Versus OSDD-1”, DID Research
Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder, Type 1A (OSDD-1A)
– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:
– Alters are not distinct enough for the circumstances to be treated the same as DID. For this reason, this particular type of system will especially go under the radar, often misdiagnosed as PTSD or BPD, or not read as a disorder at all.
Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder, Type 1B (OSDD-1B)
– All criteria for DID diagnosis is met, EXCEPT:
– Inter-identity amnesia is not present. Emotional amnesia is more common than complete blackouts; I hear the term "greyout" used quite often in reference to this kind of amnesia.
NOTABLY: I distinguish between the two here because they used to be more heavily utilized in the diagnostic process, but aren't anymore. It is NOW mostly refered to as OSDD-1 and that is IT, but I wanted to include this information anyway because of how often it circulates. The labels may be outdated in some places, but they will come up in research so it's handy to at least know what they mean.
AND ANOTHER THING TO ADD: because of this some systems with OSDD have been diagnosed under the old criteria and may self-identity as having 1A or 1B instead of OSDD-1 on its own. It is their right to self-label how they feel fits their circumstances. Please do not go around telling people not to call their disorder the name they've been using for forever. It's not like the case of autism versus "Asperger's" it is NOTHING like that the context is SO different PLEASE!!
Back on topic, and As Said Above. Both of these OSDD types above fall under type 1. Types 2, 3, and 4 are also considered OSDD, but are not system disorders.
Presentation of a dissociative disorder, overt and covert, is also nearly never this cut-and-dry. [For all intents and purposes you CAN be very straightforward as you build your character at first, but the disorder is complex and messy, so if somebody doesn't seem to fit cleanly into one type as you write at first, that's alright!]
What About UDD?
Unspecified dissociative disorder (UDD), from my understanding, is used in the way that DDNOS (dissociative disorder not otherwise specified) used to be. A medical note of UDD is there to clarify that a given patient has a dissociative disorder, but it is not yet clear which category they fall into.
UDD encompasses any disordered experiences outside of specific known conditions, and many (but not all) people with a UDD diagnosis are given more specific names for their condition later -- someone could have P-DID and have UDD in their medical record because they haven't got the chance to be fully evaluated yet, for example!
“This diagnosis, along with Other Specified Dissociative Disorder, act as a "residual category for dissociative symptoms which do not fit within a more specific category" and either the clinician decides not to specify the reason that the criteria for other Dissociative Disorders aren't met, or not information information exists to make a more specific diagnosis.”
“If a reason can be specified, e.g., dissociative trance, then Other Specified Dissociative Disorder should be diagnosed instead.” — “Unspecified Dissociative Disorders”, Trauma Dissociation
The ICD approaches unspecified dissociative disorder the same way the DSM does: “it cannot be diagnosed when a more specific diagnosis is appropriate.”
If your character is going to have experiences that would fall into the unspecified category, then go right ahead! Because people do have experiences that may fall outside of a typical presentation for a dissociative disorder, but still have a dissociative disorder. UDD just encompasses all of those cases, so be very specific with what kind of experiences you're going to be writing so it isn't unrealistic or disrespectful. Make sure you don't write something contradictory without intent!
Writing Complex Dissociation: Narrow Down What Type, Then Do Specific Research
Overall: I ask that you be very mindful of exactly what condition you're writing and why. (And where -- remember, regional differences can impact labels, perception, treatment, everything!) But if your character's story is a more complicated one, that's perfectly fine, I'd even say it's more realistic! The nature of complex dissociation is that it isn't clean and clear-cut and easy to define!
Nothing is as blatant or linear as how it looks on paper. I recommend before starting any specific writing, of course, to pinpoint which type of structural dissociation you're going to be modeling off of and what you want to achieve by doing that; we can get into all the gritty details once that foundation is established!
And again, this is a GENERAL post! I did not go NEARLY as in-depth as I could have and encourage everyone to do their own research (with discretion)!
———
References:
– DID Research.
– International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.
People expect you to have both of these at the same time when you're a system:
100% clear cut communication 24/7, without fail, no mess ups, you know every part of yours from the inside out, y'all get along, y'all know how to function like a singlet, none of y'all get into fights or gatekeep information from each other.
AND
You literally can't function in any setting, memory problems through the roof, communication issues like the worlds most dysfunctional middle school friend group of 10, gatekeepers gatekeeping EVERYTHING, the host has no idea of the system, and everyone hates each other.
the man who owns and runs the thai restaurant in my town knows me by name. he is one of the kindest and most thoughtful men i know. i started ordering from his place back in january, which was when i got my fibromyalgia diagnosis. back then i was using a walker, had limited mobility in my entire body but especially my hands, and was very visibly in pain. i always ordered the same thing: yellow curry with no meat, potatoes and carrots only (i have texture and other dietary issues). he always made it a point to make sure i could get out the door and carry the food safely. he had his workers package the food so that it was easier for me to open. as i kept coming back and i told him a little bit about my health status, he would always encourage me to keep going. he told me about how the spices he used were good for inflammation and began to edit the recipe just for me so that spices that were even better for fighting inflammation were used. he’d give me extra portions and despite the fact that i would tip every time, i realized later that he never charged my card for them. as time went on and my condition began to get better, especially with the help of a physical therapist, he would make encouraging remarks and tell me how happy he was for me. the day i came in without my walker, he practically jumped for joy, and despite my insistence, he gave me my meal for free that day. i continue to make progress with my conditions and i continue to go to the thai place. this man who does not know me personally and who i hardly know anything about is one of my favorite people. it’s interactions with humans like these that make loving life easier. and his curry really does help my chronic condition. it’s comfort food taken to the next level.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
