first fig

Late 20s ; They/siya ; Nonblack POC ; Deaf ; Intersex

Cripple with PF DID ; on govt disability

➥ FT wheelchair • hearing aids/FM sys

♡ : Fountain pens, journalling, reading, plants, rabbits, deer, etc.

Ko-Fi ; Wishlist ; Therapy/DID resources

idk if the movie is good becauee i haven't seen it but i really enjoyed the book in case you can't tell

I added it to my TBR 4 yrs ago bc I had multiple friends sayin I'd like it. haven't gotten around to it bc my TBR is a bit over 300 books. I wanna read it at some point this yr

I watched the movie though and the science of the movie is one of those things where it's like...the stuff that's right outweighs the stuff that's wrong? the astrophage is kinda like a cross between a phage and an extremophile but it wouldn't exist the way it does. but that's fine bc if it did then it wouldn't be cool to think about. I'm not really sure if you wanted me to go into that? but For Me that's kinda the sweet spot for scifi where there's reasonable enough stuff in it that it don't piss me off but stretches stuff enough to be entertainin

short answer: you don't

long answer: preemptively I am big on community and am a big staunch defender of "communities aren't perfect but you don't abandon them you make them better". that said. you've p much hit the nail on the head w your assessment of "these spaces are full of teenagers and/or misinformation" although you've crucially missed "fully grown adults who are so unrecovered that they are actively detrimental to other peoples recovery and/or use their mental health as an excuse to be shitty to people" alongside a hefty dose of "bc the DID community insists on bein white-suburb-nice we still got straight up abusers who the community knew were abusive anywhere from 10 to damn near 20 yrs ago runnin around except now that there's new people there's a lotta folks that don't even know about it anymore"

part of this is due to DID now bein mainstream knowledge and there simply bein more people in the community. any time a community gets bigger even if you maintain the ratio of asshole per person there'll be a higher number of em. the other part is that as people recover, they don't feel the need to continue bein in support spaces. what you end up w is that people who have learned to navigate this have largely either Entirely left or they're still around but don't focus all that much on DID. which means the community is made up of a lot of freshly diagnosed/self diagnosed people, extremely unrecovered folks, and people who wanna take advantage of either group. there are no online DID spaces that don't have this issue

I do kinda feel bad for newer people bc *takes drag* back in my day the community was small enough that even if you hated somebody you knew what was goin on in their life. it was a lot easier to figure out who you wanted to be around. but honestly I actively tell people new to dx or who are lookin for people who understand not to join system discords or chats or groups bc I haven't met anybody who WASN'T in some way harmed by these spaces. I think a better option to not feel alone is group therapy for complex trauma referred by your therapist bc *at least* a therapist is there presumably guardin against issues like people gettin way too attached too quickly in ways that are unhealthy etc

When I’m in settings where the same external observers are around us all the time (hospitals, shelters, etc.) I get told all about what everyone is like. Their personalities, what they sound like, what they did in the days prior, and so on.

We do have designated notes spaces that our first tx team told everyone to maintain & what to write in them, which most still seem to, and I believe what people say if it correlates with what I’ve read before (like so-and-so likes bug science and I’ve seen a lot of stuff about bug in their handwriting even if I don’t understand most of what they’re saying even means.)

But I still have a very hard time with believing what I have absolutely no info or external clues about, like what someone’s actually like. I don’t really know how to believe whatever anecdote staff tells me. It’s not something I run into outside of facilities since I have never met anyone else’s friends (don’t recognize people who approach me and act like we know each other) and don’t disclose anything to my own…but we spend most of the year in these places and it’s so confusing and frustrating.

Sorry for the long ask but is this normal? And how do you make yourself believe that sorta stuff?

— Full-blackout-only OEA sys who does not!!! know who to believe

rough place to be in for sure. it's not "normal" in the sense that full blackout amnesia isn't common, which also means that most people w DID don't feel as lost as you do. within people that have blackout amnesia though I'd say it's a pretty standard problem, incl for me. before my dx I used to get capital p Pissed if somebody told me somethin that didn't match what I remembered bc they "lied," and after my dx it just became more confusion and uncertainty

this may have barriers for you dependin on certain factors, but you could straight up ask parts what they're like in your notes spaces. explain that you don't know who or what to believe and it would help if they gave you a brief summary of what they feel like they're like. I'd also take this time to ask them about their friends, specifically name, contact info, context of the relationship like where you met and what the dynamic is like, any key dates like birthday or whatever. it's kind of a catch-22 where bc you don't remember, you don't talk to them, but if you don't talk to them you kinda reinforce those dissociative barriers of "this is my person that's your person." helps to start somewhere by startin to blend those worlds together by at least talkin a bit when you can. also, personally I keep a daily journal that's a summary of the day's events incl social interactions. you prob already keep somethin similar but you could expand to include stuff that you often have issues w havin to believe others about. perk of this approach is you straight up don't have to trust what other people say

other thing I do is just recognize patterns. is this 1 person sayin this, is this 2-3 people, 5, etc. if a few diff people from 2 diff facilities/friends outside those facilities say the same thing then it's prob at least semi-accurate to how that part is perceived. if it's only one person, do they have a motive to lie about this, in this exact moment? if no clear motive to lie, then I'd just keep in mind that people can perceive the same exact action in many different ways. things don't gotta be as stark as "this is either true or not true" it can be true without bein the Only truth. aka you don't have to believe this is the 100% grade-A truth accurate within a microsecond type retelling, you can just believe this is how they, personally, perceived you. if you switch p regularly you could then, after the interaction, write in your notes spaces askin them to share their half. if you don't regularly switch then you could just kinda. leave it at that

also I'd like you to know you've helped me in knowing where to start looking at more academic sources than before :) i appreciate your blog alot!

it's not about the specific word. the average alter count in most modern studies is 14-16, and there are a SIGNIFICANT number of people w DID who have well below that average--"dual personalities" were considered the stock standard DID presentation for a while, and amab people w DID tend to have a lower average parts count (thought to be due to how child abuse can be gendered but ngl there are so few of these studies that who really knows)

if everybody w DID has chronic, prolonged trauma (and bear in mind the stereotypical form of trauma for people w DID is chronic csa so it's not exactly light shit), the average parts count is 14-16, and many have below that average, how do we get to polyfragmentation? there's a whole mess of numbers between 14-16 and 100+. havin 10x as many parts as average has to occur for Some reason. and sure you can throw in different thresholds and different factors in there but ultimately: 10x as many parts as average is a lottttt more and not really likely to stem from personal differences from the same/similar situations. statistical significance if we're going by p-value (for simplicity) is 5%. so even if you had certain factors going for you that made you cope differently etc to the point that you were actually pretty significantly different from the average person w DID, it wouldn't just jump from "average" to "over 10x more"

the evidence we DO have about polyfragmentation shows that polyfragmented DID is correlated w extreme, chronic forms of abuse. not to mention, there are a lot of people who survive extreme forms of abuse incl of the organized variety and DON'T come out of it polyfragmented. there are no studies that correlate autism (or really any other condition) w polyfragmentation...the whole "if you're autistic you're more likely to be polyfragmented" is a game of telephone type of misinfo that came from when, about 10-12 yrs ago, people were discussin amongst themselves as people w DID (not as researchers) whether it would be plausible that autism could lower your threshold to cope w certain experiences

ross is a shitbag and treatment of DID is a self aggrandizing piece of work whose main sales are prob his own employees. treatment of DID is pamphlet sized and originally written to train mental health techs at his inpatient facilities (several of which have been shut down and he just keeps openin new ones), where he exclusively cites his own body of work and then proceeds to say incredibly blatantly incorrect shit like that if you don't know what somebody has just dx them w osdd. udd is literally the placeholder diagnosis for dissociative disorders, NOT osdd. when I read it I made a point to highlight all the incorrect shit--most of the thin ass book is highlighted. contextually: if you are a researcher you are not supposed to only cite your own research bc besides being self absorbed it also means that you don't know a single person who was able to replicate your findings and replication is what allows your results to be generalized. also requiring your employees to buy your shit ass book to work for you is just inflating book sales artificially

the way that the DID community protects abusers by doin the whole white middle class suburban "we all know but we won't say anything about/to the weird uncle about his beliefs/behaviors and will even act friendly w him and actually if you say smth you are the evil awful shit stirrer" and/or "yeah but he's my friend my bestie so you must be Lyin" is a perpetuation of the cycles of abuse and silence and for a bunch of people who talk incessantly about "breaking the cycle" it's kinda cornballish

people can and do feign DID and people can and do lie about their trauma history whether or not this is a thing you wanna acknowledge and whether or not this is a thing that fits neatly into your disability politics or personally makes you question yourself. no harassment's not the answer and yes they do still need help but tellin people that there are Zero people who do this 1) denies peoples experiences (see above) and 2) does actually, ironically, stigmatize folks who did feign it for whatever reason and does feed this idea that they Can't admit that they don't have a specific dx or a specific set of experiences esp for folks who are swayed by social pressure more easily

"ok but it doesn't affect the real world" yes it does. therapists and researchers are Also on social media--the majority of the world is. there's research about how socmed affects these things. DID specialists stopped listin their specialties esp wrt ra on their websites bc of this. we have legislation bein made bc of internet rumors can we please get over the idea that social media doesn't affect the real world

she's fine from what I remember. some of what she says are things that I haven't found in any other research on the topic so I'd take that with a grain of salt, she also trends toward not contestin the stories given to her which means she's good at therapy in terms of how for the client, perception/interpretation > fact, but in terms of "is this a real factual literal sequence of events that physically happened to somebody" ehhh