Feeling Pretty Branched Over Here

anyone who is interested in a Choose Your Own Adventure guide to getting better should check out the Integral Guide To Well-Being. if you click one single link on this post, make it this one

the second link you should click (especially if you have or suspect you have a personality disorder, but also just generally if you are suffering or have suffered. anguish is covert for a reason) is everything Pete Walker has ever written, starting with this

systems and dissociative folk may not know about kinhost.org or their podcast Many Minds On The Issue, both worth checking out; people with any degree of trauma and/or structural dissociation, from CPTSD to BPD to DID, may find Dis-SOS useful. the United Front Boot Camp is a very helpful way to start working together internally.

also for CPTSD and friends: if you can get your hands on the workbook "Finding Solid Ground", do that. we don't have it in our library and we can't give you our firsthand account, but to our knowledge, it's the single most comprehensive treatment plan for complex trauma and especially dissociative disorders out there. many very dedicated people (both practitioners and the people in their care) have worked hard to make it; you should be able to make use of it with a therapist or alone. most trauma books do not account for the amount of titration you need to do to safely absorb the information in the first place. it's a labor of years and the first of its kind

here's a shitload of books. it has so many books. we don't know if it has all of the ones we like (we didn't see Waking The Tiger at first glance, which is our top recommendation) so feel free to check out our much much smaller messy little library too. not in any way exhaustive; this is literally just the stuff we found on our phone. we've starred some of the ones we found helpful

our favorite library of meditations for self-compassion, attachment repair, schema therapy, and more is here; if it affects you way more than you expected, or if you get a weirdly strong resistance to doing it again, we recommend proceeding slowly, firmly and gently

Tapping/EFT sounds like it should be pseudoscience. It's not, but some of the people selling it are definitely predatory. Brad Yates on Youtube has a ton of free videos on what may well be every emotional issue under the sun, and we've decided we like the guy

Codependents Anonymous

not everything can be done with an electronic device. seriously: please consider going outside for several hours while leaving your phone at home, and having a serious emotional conversation with another person without trying to shield yourself or laugh it off. you can't replace time with nature and mutual vulnerability with anything and you need both.

(the lack of mutual vulnerability, by the way, is one of the reasons why we have so many issues with how therapy currently works. there is structurally a power dynamic inherent to being The Helper and The One Who Is Helped. you aren't going to get the same release and sense of belonging if therapy, or surface level relationships, are all you have.)

if you want to pursue self-treatment, we have a few books on Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the messy library linked above. looking into DBT is also worth your while. IFS is (in our opinion) the easiest therapy to self-guide through, and is a major feature in the Integral Guide at the top. however, important disclaimer: connection with someone else is a vital part of recovery. your nervous system will struggle to stabilize itself alone, and benefits enormously from having another nervous system to mirror that isn't hooked up to all your stress chemicals. talk to friends regularly, find someone to connect to. therapy is very useful when you have a person who is stable enough to take whatever you can throw at them. face to face contact is ideal, but do whatever you need to. direct yourself, and own your recovery, but don't do it alone.

More general resources:

The Anarchist Library

This classic self-care flowchart, You Feel Like Shit

what'sokay.org, a sexual health resource that is a good reference for if you're okay, if how you treat others is okay, and if how others treat you is okay. good for everything from checking "am I anxious/obsessive-compulsive/self loathing/etc, or is something actually wrong?" to if you are being abused or being abusive, and what to do about it

The DARE Response (best anxiety treatment we've found). It also has an app.

this isn't everything that's out there and we might have forgotten some of the things we've used, but we can confirm that we have used all of these recommendations personally (with the exception of Finding Solid Ground and the mental health book library). distribute pirated goods freely and with discretion; we don't want to lose libraries by getting caught. let us know if any of the links don't work.

We have since gotten the Finding Solid Ground workbook; we do not yet have the accompanying book that goes into the theory. It is in fact very good. We are still working through it, at our pace, but the skills inside are useful and they are laid out in a way that is easy to understand. If you can, we recommend you get this book. Digital copies are appreciated if you have one.

We have also fallen in love with Lama Rod Owen's book The New Saints. Recovery and radicalism go hand in hand, in our opinion, and this book speaks to what is necessary to get free; not just for ourselves, but for everyone. His book Love and Rage is next on our list.

The CTAD Clinic is the channel of a therapeutic organization that specializes in the treatment of dissociative disorders, and has clear and accurate information on many aspects of living with DID and OSDD. Excellent resource, especially if you are going it alone. It is one of the few YouTube channels we will actually recommend to people, because while we do not endorse the medical model, we do appreciate it when people don't just make shit up.

Check out the podcast From Borderline To Beautiful. It's maybe the only resource we have found that actually encourages and gives very helpful guidance on recovering from BPD, instead of just "managing it". The work is difficult, but can be done if you take it seriously.

Other podcasts you may find helpful:

Tara Brach (personal recommendation, one I learned about through my current therapist), Heal The Hurt, CPTSD Recovery: We Are Traumatized Motherfuckers, Stuck Not Broken, Many Minds On The Issue (system-specific), and the DARE Panic and Anxiety Relief podcast. All have very different tones, so if one doesn't suit you, try the next. This can also be useful for reaching out to people in your life who need help, but might not respond to the same things you do – some people have different values and need to hear it in different ways.

(tags via @obi-one-drop, previous reblog.)

absolutely seconding this one! somatic experiencing is by and large what we have found most helpful in dealing with our dissociation, flashbacks, and other cptsd symptoms. It's also been a huge boon in system communication (some of us can't talk, but still respond in the body!) and in actually helping each other, and coordinating to deal with problems. It's not a replacement for needed action — for example, if you use somatic experiencing as a way to soothe yourself while repeatedly breaking your own boundaries, you will make things worse. Like any tool, it is how you use it.

Peter Levine is a trustworthy and experienced source in the field, and while he doesn't have his own channel, looking him up on YouTube will get you plenty of interviews with him from other sources. Check him out.

And in the meantime, check out Peter Levine's self-holding exercises (part one) and (part two), something we discovered recently and have found astoundingly effective.

(Also, sad update to the above posts: the large pirated library is down. Our messy personal one is still too small to catch the eye of the law, but be warned, it's far less curated and we know at least one of the books on it suck. Remember that when we made it, it was just a collection of books we downloaded, and when we did that we hadn't read them yet. Read critically!)

you have been turned into this cat breed!