your thoughts are like river water running over stones

all the replies: you're a fucking idiot

*after act 2*

Smoking is a vice. Vices can be managed, cut back and replaced.

If anyone tells you go cold turkey on most drugs in a high stress period of your life if they are not causing insane self harm or harm to others, they are like a puritan and a cop who is going to inadvertently hospitalize you or give you a stress attack. Quitting cigarettes cold turkey while braving exterior stress can make your health worse should you relapse.

Consider counting cigarette intake down before quitting entirely. So you don't have intense panic attacks.

You often need to be stable to quit. It is okay when you aren't.

They chase you.

Until they get bored.

just thinking about kris, i think there's a lot of ways their struggles can be interpreted as relating to disability. one example that seems particularly intentional is kris not being able to play the piano while under the soul's control and toby commenting about not being able to play the piano (among other things) due to pain.

Loss of muscle memory could be explained by skill regression in CDDs, which is a relatively common experience. It can also be benign (such as a response to regular stress) or a part of some physical health conditions. It also can potentially occur on the lower levels of structural dissociation such as C-PTSD.

From the DSM-V section on DID:

"Dissociative amnesia (Criterion B) manifests in several major domains: 1) gaps in any aspect of autobiographical memory (e.g., important life events like getting married or giving birth, lack of recall of all school experiences before high school); 2) lapses in memory of recent events or well-learned skills (e.g., how to do one’s job, use a computer, cook or drive); and 3) discovery of possessions that the individual has no recollection of ever owning (e.g., clothing, weapons, tools, writings or drawings that he or she must have created)."

From The Haunted Self (theory of structural dissociation):

"Loss of skills not only involves the absence of certain mental actions, but also of behavioral actions. When EP has complete executive control, the daily life skills of ANP are often missing. Thus, survivors as EP commonly report that they have no idea how to cook, take care of children, or perform work duties, and generally feel inadequate and overwhelmed with the tasks of daily life because they do not have access to needed skills for periods of time."

As for limb weakness, that may have something to do with functional neurological symptoms, which can be associated with trauma and dissociation (which used to called "conversion symptoms" and is now commonly called "somatoform dissociation"). It can be an associated feature of CDDs but it's not exclusive to them.

From the DSM-V section on DID comorbidity:

"The most common forms of functional neurological symptom disorder include nonepileptic seizures, gait disturbances, and paralyses. Most commonly, nonepileptic seizures resemble grand mal seizures or complex partial seizures with temporal lobe foci; others may mimic absence or partial seizures."

And from The Haunted Self again:

"Temporary or more permanent loss of motor control includes partial or total paralysis of limbs or the entire body, contractures, physical lack of coordination, cataplexy (i.e., a sudden and general loss of muscle tension)... These symptoms are often dissociative in nature and can be trauma related... With regard to freezing, patients report being unable to move while still feeling extremely fearful and hypervigilant...In this condition survivors’ muscles become flaccid and sometimes they temporarily may remain in fixed positions."

So while these things can be a part of CDDs, they can also appear in less complex structural dissociation and also other health conditions. I'd say it's worth bringing up to a medical professional.

Some studies that may be helpful:

Dissociation and its biological and clinical associations in functional neurological disorder: systematic review and meta-analysis

Dissociation and interoception in functional neurological disorder

Cortical thickness alterations linked to somatoform and psychological dissociation in functional neurological disorders

Toward a possible trauma subtype of functional neurological disorder: impact on symptom severity and physical health

Somatoform Dissociation: Major Symptoms of Dissociative Disorders

Degree of somatoform and psychological dissociation in dissociative disorder is correlated with reported trauma

Somatoform Dissociation, Psychological Dissociation, and Specific Forms of Trauma

Somatoform dissociative symptoms as related to animal defensive reactions to predatory imminence and injury

Links to studies about different presentations of DID, including different alter types, childhood and adolescent DID, and DID across different cultures.

referenced comic

Transcript