I'm not a nice person.

what i’m talking about is how the schizophrenic community is gonna exclude ppl without schizophrenia. the BPD community is gonna exclude ppl without BPD. the DID/OSDD-1 community is gonna exclude ppl without DID/OSDD-1. and so on.

so yeah, ofc a specific mental illness community is gonna get mad and yell at you if you don’t have or aren’t questioning that specific mental illness yet you’re coming into those spaces, taking resources that could be used to help them, and speaking over them. it’s common sense not to do that in the first place, yet some of you guys are plastering “don’t follow if you exclude anything ever” all over your blogs without ever giving it much thought.

and you shouldn’t call it that.

Dissociation is a psychological process that involves some degree of disconnection between the brain and reality. It is the brain’s way of protecting itself from experiences that are traumatic or overwhelmingly stressful. The purpose of dissociation is to take the memory or emotion that is directly associated with a trauma and try to separate it from the conscious self. It is a process which starts out as a defense mechanism to handle traumatic events, but it can be problematic when it becomes chronic or interrupts your ability to function.

There’s a mild & healthy occurrence in everyday life that can appear similar to  dissociation called hypnotic absorption. Hypnotic absorption is a process in which the mind loses track of unimportant background events in order to focus on the task at hand. Common examples of hypnotic absorption include highway hypnosis and getting absorbed in a really good book. Unlike dissociation, hypnotic absorption does not occur in response to stress or trauma. It is not the same thing as dissociation.

Here’s an excerpt on hypnotic absorption from isst-d.org:

“Dissociative experiences are often confused with those of hypnosis. While the two experiences may exist together, they are not the same. For example, hypnotic absorption may be present in someone who is experiencing identity alteration, but it is not equivalent. To be hypnotically absorbed is to lose track of the background events and be completely absorbed by the foreground (e.g., highway hypnosis, where a person drives by the exit they had taken many times, only to discover they had missed the exit and are further down the road). A person capable of hypnotic absorption may be absorbed in their thoughts while maintaining control of their body (and their driving), but what they are doing is not in their awareness. Thus there is a disconnection between mind (conscious awareness) and body. This disconnection in hypnotic absorption is an example of a dissociative process, but the absorption itself is not indicative of a dissociative disorder.”

PTSD is caused by trauma. DID is caused by trauma.

These are undisputed facts in psychology at the moment. After years of research this is what they know.

Would you claim to have PTSD but never have experienced trauma? No? That’s ridiculous, it’s caused by trauma, right?

Well so is DID. Don’t claim to have DID if you also claim to never have experienced trauma.

Educating people about a disorder that I am living with is not gatekeeping! Telling us that we can’t educate people on a disorder we are living with because the facts hurt your feelings is ableist!

while i agree that you shouldn’t force someone to process these things (that should be something they process and accept when they’re ready preferably with the help of a professional), i don’t understand the need to completely silence people who talk about these facts?? bc it’s misinformation to say otherwise.