F.A.system

-“OH, WHAT, ARE U #TRIGGERED???, LIFE ISNT UR #SAFE SPACE LMAO”

Here sesame street is trying to fill a gap where supportive adults should be. Where there should be a teacher or a family member or a counselor to help, for whatever reason, there isn’t, so Sesame Street is stepping in.

This breed of person has always hated Sesame Street. They hated it for showing black and white children playing together. They hated it for giving children of color the head start that rich white families were paying for. They hated it for Bert and Ernie for showing two MEN who LIVED TOGETHER, for the married black nurse who lived on sesame street when it was first released, and for them explaining death. I feel like there was a pregnancy at some point in its early days and they would have REALLY hated that.

These days they don’t (usually) say “I’m not letting my kid watch anything with black kids in it” but they sure throw a tantrum in the youtube comments when Sesame Street DARES to show an autistic girl playing with non-autistic children and being treated like shes anyone else. They lose their shit when Sesame Street has to explain incarceration to 5 year olds. And the muppet in south africa with HIV? Hoo boy.

Triggers are reactivations of traumatic memories. They are emotional responses that are more intense than a situation reasonably deserves. The way they impact people will depend on the individual–their history, biology, and ability to cope. They can push people into severe hypo- or hyperarousal as you describe, but not always.

A few ways Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation suggests how to recognize being triggered:

Your reaction to a situation seems more intense than is warranted, or it is significantly different than your usual reactions.

You are not able to step back and reflect in the situation, but feel stuck in your reaction.

You have a defense reaction, that is, flight, fight, freeze, or collapse.  

and from Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving:

“External triggers are people, places, things, events, facial expressions, styles of communication, etc., that remind us of our original trauma in a way that flashes us back into the painful feelings of those times. Here are some examples of powerful and common triggers: revisiting your parents; seeing someone who resembles a childhood abuser; experiencing the anniversary of an especially traumatic event; hearing someone use a parent’s shaming tone of voice or turn of phrase.

(…)One common sign of being flashed-back is that we feel small, helpless, and hopeless. In intense flashbacks this magnifies into feeling so ashamed that we are loath to go out or show our face anywhere. Feeling fragile, on edge, delicate and easily crushable is another aspect of this.

(…)Another common clue that we are flashing back is an increase in the virulence of the inner or outer critic. This typically looks like increased drasticizing and catastrophizing, as well as intensified self-criticism or judgmentalness of others. A very common example of this is lapsing into extremely polarized, all-or-none thinking such as only being able to see what is wrong with yourself and/or others.

(…)Another clue that we are in a flashback occurs when we notice that our emotional reactions are out of proportion to what has triggered them. Here are two common instances of this: [1] a minor upset feels like an emergency; [2] a minor unfairness feels like a travesty of justice.”

Tw: I don’t know how to describe this, sorry. General content warning

This is a subject I have a lot of feelings about. It’s true that a lot of people, ESPECIALLY on this site go on and on about how horrible DID/OSDD is, and how every moment is strenuous and they cry themselves to sleep every night wishing they were a singlet. And it is true that this is the experience for some folks - every system starts at a different place, and some have to work from the ground up. 

But, with that, every system starts at a different place. Just as some systems start with 0 communication, some start with very easy communication between members. Some systems start hating each other, some systems care about and protect each other from the start.

The mindset that DID/OSDD has to ALWAYS ALWAYS, every waking moment of the day for EVERYONE is something to dread and hate every aspect of, a disorder that brings you only misery and pain - is a mindset that was extremely damaging to us. 

We were a system that started with 0 communication, but with almost no tension between alters - we always have been and are very much a team that’s in it together. Convincing myself (the host) that my system was to be feared and that this was a horrible curse cast upon us did nothing but harm to me and my alters and hinder our healing process. (If you’re interested in that journey, I’ve written about it in a spoken word piece here) Having this mindset just made it take that much longer for me to accept my alters for who they are and start loving all of us. And I’m not gonna lie, while that mindset mostly came from external societal stigma, it also came from systems here on tumblr talking about how DID is ALWAYS HORRIBLE and no one should EVER want it because it makes every day A WAKING NIGHTMARE. I still see posts like this, and it breaks my heart because you can learn to work together and work to improve your situation with your system. It doesn’t always have to be horrible between yourselves and the thing is it shouldn’t be. Believing that pain is all there ever is and can be is a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Anyways, It’s safe to say that yeah, I don’t mind being multiple. I don’t mind having alters and most days I actually love them - because they’re my family. It’s true that having repressed trauma lurking behind a curtain and dissociating isn’t too great, but at this point I can’t change what happened to cause that. It doesn’t make sense for me to hate everyone else here when I can’t make them go away with the snap of my fingers - so I might as well embrace it. We work really good together to manage our life, and I’m so proud of my alters, and I appreciate what they bring to my life every day. 

It would be a lie to say I hate having OSDD - I hate the PTSD that comes with it, but in no way do I hate being a part of a system. My alters have never been the problem, and have never caused an undo amount of stress that greatly exceeds typical interpersonal issues. They’ve always been there for me, and I can’t appreciate that enough. 

So in conclusion, while some people DO experience DID to be a horrible disorder all the time, fight with their system, and say it’s something they wouldn’t wish on anyone - it would be inaccurate to say that’s all it ever is, for everyone. Systems are varied, and at the end of the day, they form to protect you and make you guys function better as a whole. There’s systems out there who work wonderfully together, appreciate each other, have good communication, and don’t mind existing the way they are. 

And that’s ok - It’s ok to acknowledge that our community is varied, and isn’t always centered on constant, unending traumatizing disordered experience. Learning to love my system and enjoy existing the way I am with the rest of the system as my family was the best thing I could’ve ever done for my healing. 

Too frequently I see people who have been pushed into believing that they can’t have DID/OSDD because someone told them that their trauma wasn’t bad enough or didn’t occur during the exact right time period. 

Today I saw a post by someone who had misunderstood the critical period for the formation of DID and thought that unless their trauma happened between the ages of 6 and 9 they couldn’t have DID. They thought that trauma that happened before age six was too early. 

So lets be really clear in the way we speak. DID is caused by childhood trauma between birth and when children typically finish developing a cohesive sense of self. For most children, this occurs around age six but for some children it happens as late as age nine. 

So DID is caused by trauma between birth and age 6 or 9. It is not caused by trauma between ages 6 to 9. 

I’ve been seeing trauma victims stereotyped as oversensitive, needy, trouble and attention seeking, accused of imagining things, and they’re always portrayed as a burden on society and publicly shamed for whatever they’ve gone thru. Any kind of pain or discomfort in children no matter how high, apparently needs to be dealt with as a personal problem and should be kept well away from society who just doesn’t wanna deal with such nonsense.

I’ve seen children who tried to tell the society about abuse only to be shamed, punished and humiliated because “they should have known better” and “they should have taken it better” and “they should just get over themselves”. Even the notion that their life matters and their pain means something and that trauma is devastating their life is looked upon as them being “immature” and “self centered”.

Thanks to all this one big part of being abused and traumatized is the added guilt for needing attention, for needing comfort and reassurance. Survivors are forced to feel selfish and miserable for even considering that it should matter if they’re in pain, that their struggle is important enough to talk about it out loud. We’re told that we’re pathetic and stupid for even thinking we matter, not only by abusers, but by counselors, therapists, media, television, our peers and society at large. How are we supposed to fight it? How are we supposed to heal? How come there’s no path for us to walk on, and the world acts like it would be better if we didn’t exist? We never asked for this. And we don’t deserve it.