#0003

#0001-#0003 bulbasaur - venusaur !

what's annoying is that it's difficult to talk about malingerers and factitious people in the context of DID because i don't want to sound like i'm accusing anybody, but at the same time, i also don't want to minimize the fact that the way DID is portrayed online as "fun fictives disorder" has absolutely contributed to a lot of people either malingering or believing they have DID when they absolutely do not. i've seen entire friend groups go down these rabbitholes where, one-by-one, they all "discover" that they have DID when what's really happening is they're getting a lot of exposure to the concept and that in combination with having experienced trauma and dissociation makes them believe that they have DID when they don't. DID is not the only dissociative disorder, it is not the only trauma disorder, it is not the "most valid" trauma disorder, yet it's like the 80s again, people act like this is the only reason dissociation happens. ૮(っ- ‸ - ς)

૮(⇀‸↼‶)ა when people treat DID like ~the ultimate disorder of innocence lost~ it causes many people who went through significant childhood trauma, who probably also experience significant dissociation, to believe that they must also have this disorder because of what they went through, or if it's not them themselves, it's their friends trying to convince them of this. the silent implication there is that if your trauma is really bad enough, then you will have DID about it. that is not how DID works. DID is a disorder of specific conditions and circumstances, not the worst trauma any human can experience ever.

૮(⚆_⚆)ა then these people read did-research.org, a carrd, watch some tiktoks, join a syscord server and decide that this is enough "research" to self diagnose the condition after, like, a single day. they say they're pro self-dx if it's well informed, but they themselves are not at all well informed enough to have even made that decision in the first place. then when you call them out, they act like research on DID is ~extremely scarce~ when it is not, and make excuses for not even trying to look at google scholar. it's okay to need help with reading books & research, but you don't get to self diagnose without reading any of it just because you feel like you understand it based on some youtube videos! sorry! ૮(っ˕ -｡)ა

if you think this is not a problem that should be addressed, simply put, you have your eyes closed. ૮(¬_¬)ა

it's not even that i'm against self-dx, (though i don't like calling it that, i call it a "self assessment", and one done in actual good faith recognizes the capacity to for you to be incorrect about your assessment, and also comes up with a differential diagnosis, while actively working to rule out other conditions before settling on a label, as well as regularly assessing yourself, but i digress), it's that these people aren't even meeting their own minimum standards for doing it and are doing it anyway. then acting like authorities on DID as if they have any leg to stand on, when all they're doing is actively spreading misinformation at best. ૮༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

૮(っ- ‸ - ς) like, if you're splitting several fully formed and fleshed out fictives every single time you watch a new piece of media you need to start considering if you have factitious aspects of your condition, whether you have factitious disorder or genuine DID with some confusion involved. you need to start wondering if the online spaces you're in are potentially influencing you to conform to expected behavior. especially if you are self diagnosed, because being without clinical resources, particularly if you're inexperienced in research and self-help with such a severe condition, leaves you inherently vulnerable to misinformation, influence, and communities like this taking advantage of your dissociation to confuse you about how it actually works.

having the disorder* does not make you an expert on how it works, and the biggest scam that overly validating self-diagnosis spaces ever made was the idea that you inherently know yourself best. the nature of DID is that you literally don't! you avoided yourself so badly that you've got several different autonomous self states to deal with your self-avoidance! that's the disorder! ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)ა

૮(ᗜ _ ᗜ)ა it's actually incredibly difficult to know yourself very well without outside intervention/observation due to how this condition works. it can be done but it is a lot of intentional work, and it often does not come to people easily, even when they knew about their multiplicity before discovering the full extent of their system.

૮(っ- ‸ - ς) and it's even worse to see teenagers poorly self diagnosing this condition because it's difficult to diagnose or self-assess in adults, let alone the one demographic in which dissociation is understood to peak at before settling in adulthood. especially when they are doing it while still living in their abusive homes. if you're a minor and either have or are considering self diagnosing, here's a piece of advice for you: focus on surviving instead. leave yourself in the questioning phase. if you actually care about getting an accurate self-assessment, then you need to understand that while DID is diagnoseable in minors, it is not easy. it is generally done in serious and obvious situations, it is not just handed out. this isn't because the diagnosis is being gatekept from you for no reason, it's because you're in the peak of lifetime dissociation and are still developing. not only is it difficult for professionals to diagnose conditions like this in minors, it's difficult for a still developing brain to assess itself accurately due to a lack of experience both with the world, and with itself. self diagnosing DID as a minor is very broadly not a good idea. but i digress, that is a topic for another day.

if your self diagnosis wasn't done based off of books and papers of clinical information outlining exactly how the disorder is formed, how it works, and how it's treated, then it was done badly and you have zero authority to be speaking over people who are diagnosed and/or actually have done the reading that you didn't. period. end of. if you've done that and you're in syscord spaces online, on systok, other system communities, and the demographic is "fictive-heavy systems" that parade their fictional introjects around or constantly talk about them, constantly talking about splitting new, highly-developed fictives every time they watch a new TV show, rather than being a community actually focused around trauma and dissociation, then these spaces are harming you and your perception of DID, because this isn't how it works.

૮(¬_¬")ა i'm not about to say that fictive-heavy systems never exist, or that fictives are just ~sooo rare, no one here could actually have them~ because i don't think that's true, but they are not special, either, and nobody will stop treating introject alters like they're just an advanced version of kins you can collect. ૮(≖_≖ )ა just like any other alter, they exist the way they do for a reason. introjection in dissociation has a specific function and general manner of behaving, and people's brains just going "copy and paste" is not how that works. at best, you're confused about your disorder, at worst, you're practically mocking it, whether or not you actually have DID outside of that.

૮(ㆆ_ㆆ)ა what i am saying is that these spaces are full of misinformation, fetishization and they are anti-recovery. they do not contain useful resources to help people with DID. they cannot tell you why grounding doesn't work for you, they cannot tell you why your alters keep doing things out of your control even if you have "system rules", they cannot help you in times of crisis, they can't even give you a single book to read outside of the haunted self, and i guarantee you they have never read it, otherwise they'd never be recommending it to anyone new to this. i cannot stress enough that the haunted self is a textbook and not for beginners. in most cases, they won't even let you talk about the realities of your condition without considering your very existence a discourse topic where you're on the chopping block to be pedojacketed, (i.e. having hypersexual child alters due to experiencing CSA), because the realities of the aftermath of severe child abuse are just too weird and scary to confront. is a space like that really conducive to recovery and cooperation between you and your alters? i really don't think so. ૮(ᵕ•_•)

૮(ಠ_ಠ)ა people and spaces like this are harming people with DID at best, and outright grooming people into believing they have DID when they don't at worst because of the severity of their disinformation. they cause people to believe that the only valid trauma disorder is DID, because that is what they're constantly implying by roping in anyone with trauma at all instead of looking at their actual symptoms. people lie or exaggerate their trauma to "fit in" because they feel like domestic abuse alone is not "bad enough" to cause DID. i have directly seen groups of people manipulating others into believing that what they experienced falls under the category of RAMCOA when it absolutely does not, (i.e. you cannot experience programming abuse online, in a chat room, it is not possible). ૮༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

this needs to stop. it is dangerous, and the only way we can stop it is by actually talking about it, and people who have had factitious experiences because of these spaces online. it wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened with DID, it happened in the 80s and 90s too, and many people with DID, and without, have also experienced factitiousness as a result of the media surrounding DID at the time.

these spaces are toxic, and predatory. they do not help anyone self assess accurately, they do not help anyone access resources or a therapist, and they do not know what they are talking about. if you are in spaces like these, especially if you are self-diagnosed, you need to consider taking a step back from them. these spaces are not helping you. in fact, they're probably mutually encouraging people to get worse, whether they realize it or not. and the only way we can get it to stop happening is to acknowledge that it is happening in the first place. only by collectively changing the culture of how we handle DID can this kind of behavior finally be put to rest. (◞ ‸ ◟ )ა

~☆~

D: Hey, hey, how much you wanna bet I can jump from the ladder to that chest without getting hurt? D: I'll land on all fours. M: I'm not sure I really want to bet anything on that, D... S: If there's anyone who could do that, it'd be you Debbie. D: Okay both of those answers are useless to me. D: Vilmr can you at least pretend you don't believe I'll make it so I can rub it in your face when I do? V: ... 🔆 D: Vilmr? S: You look deep in thought Vilmr, what's on your mind? V: I am just starting to wonder... V: If maybe we should ask Maja, if we should be streaming this. D: Are you serious. M: Do you mean from a legal standpoint, or...? V: I am thinking more about our karma. V: What if we are attracting bad company, observing this as skeptics? D: Well then you shouldn't have to worry because you're not the one seeing it. V: I can worry for your safety too, you know. S: It's nice of you to worry for us Vilmr, but I think it's alright. D: Yeah a million jillion people have seen eclipses before and ended up okay. D: Probably. D: I mean how else would we be here right now. V: Mmh... V: Maybe...

S: Oh hey, I know we can't tonight, but... S: You know what'd be fun tomorrow night? D: What? S: We should play night tag again! 🔆 S: Since the moon's so new it'll still be extra dark out. S: I know how much you like night tag Vilmr! V: Only if it's not in the woods this time! V: I hate it when Debbie hides in the trees. V: We can never find her! D: Hey okay, nobody ever said it was against the rules. V: Well I want it to be against the rules now. D: Pssh. D: Not my fault I'm super smart and think like, five steps ahead. S: Well, we could fly down somewhere more wide open if Yuan is around tomorrow night? D: Fuuuuuuuck yes, I'd be so down. M: Oh, I don't think I can tomorrow. S: *gasp* S: Oh my gosh right, tomorrow is your first night at the comic shop isn't it? M: Yeah, but I don't mind if you guys go ahead without me! D: Excuses, excuses... D: If you're scared of getting owned just say so. M: You got me, D. M: My job is just an elaborate ploy to avoid losing at tag. S: Well maybe we could save it for another day and go comic shopping instead? :> D: What the heck, are we gonna be shopping for like, hours? D: We could still play night tag, like, we can do both-- OH! D: Ohhhhh, if we do go though, Michael you BETTER remember to bring that hat. M: Haha, of course D.

S: *yawwwwwn* S: Vilmr, you still seem pretty agitated, are you that worried? V: What do you think? D: I'm not even gonna get innnnnnto this anymore! D: Honestly I think it's just so stupid silly. D: If you don't even believe in this stuff for real, what is even your reasoning this time? V: Debbie, just because I do not worship a moon god does not mean I do not believe in bad karma. V: With or without gods, things are always at play in this universe. V: It is not stupid, not to me. V: What happens if it really is a bad omen? V: What if we're doing something really dumb right now? V: Just to say you got to see it? D: Jeez Vilmr, you gave me your cell so you could avoid talking like this! D: I might as well be replaying Maja's voicemail, you two sound so similar. V: You are impossible! M: Vilmr, we're not the only ones watching this livestream.🔆 M: I'm seeing there's at least another fifty on the same page. M: Do you think they're in trouble too? V: Yes, I do. V: I'm really starting to think this stream shouldn't be up in the first place. V: There is a reason why this eclipse is in such a remote part of the planet. V: Think about it. V: The only places this can even be observed at all are either in the middle of the emptiest ocean in the whole world, or on the furthest edge of all of Halvma. V: Nobody even lives there. V: It's almost like nobody's meant to be seeing this one. S: What do you think is going to happen, Vilmr?

V: I! V: I do not know. V: But it feels like something bad. V: The air is biting all around me, I can feel it. S: Vilmr, I don't mean this in any sort of judgemental way or anything, but... S: You tend to say these kinds of things about a lot of things. S: And things usually end up alright. V: Ah, but see you fail to realise, you use the keyword: "usually." V: As in, not always. V: Sometimes, things still go bad. M: ...you do seem to have some pretty impressive foresight from time to time, I have to give it to you. V: Thank you. D: Okay well nothing's gonna stop me from watching this, sorry not sorry. D: If it means I'll die, at least I did it watching something cool, right Samantha? S: ... D: .........Smumantha...... S: Well now I'm nervous! V: And there is good reason for this! D: Well duh, you scared her into feeling that way! D: -_-!!! M: Okay, I know I complimented your foresight just now Vilmr but I really do think it's... a bit of a stretch? M: This time, I mean. M: Like, uh, aside from the fact that this might be legally dubious, D: enough with that already we gettttt it we get it. M: I think we'll be okay. M: It's not like we're actually seeing it in real life, you know? M: It's just a projection of it, after all. S: Oh, I guess that's a good point. D: Literally such a good point, probably the best point you've ever made actually Michael. V: Blughghhhhhh...

D: It's already about to start anyways, huhuhuhUAHAH!!! S: Ahhh no okay I'm still scared! M: It's just a video Samantha, nothing divine about that! V: Maja förlåt miggggggg... D: No turning back now, scaredyturds!