#actually cdd

The cycle of forgetting and then re-remembering trauma memories

Constant depersonalization and derealization

Feeling as if you're stuck living someone else's life

Failure to plan for the future because nothing feels real + losing time

Thinking a flashback is over when you've actually just dissociated away from it, and having it resume as soon as you stop dissociating

Dissociative stupor/trance

Alexithymia

Identity issues outside of alters

Inability to connect with other people

Being unable to tell if you've healed from a past problem/trauma or if you've just dissociated away from it

Not learning from past mistakes because of amnesia and dissociation

Feeling nothing psychologically despite physical shaking, racing heart, nausea, crying, etc

The extreme disorientation + identity confusion that comes with co-consciousness and co-fronting

Somatic flashbacks

- neglect (physical and/or emotional)

- living in an emotionally unstable environment (for example, having parents that fight often)

- any kind of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse (not just from parents)

- consistent bullying

- etc

Remember that what is traumatic to a child is not the same as what is traumatic to you now. So think again before saying your trauma ‘isn’t bad enough’

Except you do see us.

We're on the front page of your favorite porn site. We're the tweaking homeless person you pretend not to look at on the street. We're your favorite political talking point. We're the infant in the emergency room screaming from a pain they can't comprehend. We're the black lines in classified files you make jokes about. We're buried in the backyards of farmhouses that have long since returned to nature. We're the ones who sold you drugs in high school. We're the classmate you bullied for growling and barking like an animal. We're the product of a $200 billion industry. We're the blood on your favorite politician's hands. We're alive and dead and existing as fragmented states in between.

sure, there are multiple ways you can make toast. you can use a toaster, a grill, a pan, an oven, even a flamethrower if you like it REALLY toasted. but you know what all of those methods have in common?

they all require heat.

if you have no heat source, you can't make toast. sure, you can use a sharpie and scribble on bread to make it *look* like toast, but it's still bread. it still isn't toast without the heat.

developing a CDD (aka system/plurality) is the same way. trauma can look vastly different, but it's all still trauma. abuse, neglect, bullying, it does not matter. trauma is required for the formation of a system just like heat is required for toast.

for the longest time, i felt completely alone in my experiences because i didn't match what they insisted was "normal." i didn't consistently have a headspace. my gatekeepers couldn't just summon alters to front at will the way theirs supposedly could. everyone around me seemed to experience things in the same neat & tidy way while i felt pressured into pretending that i was just like them to avoid scrutiny.

i had to redo my syscovery from scratch last year because so much of what they taught me (& what the community normalized in general) felt harmful and incorrect.

you know what happened once i did that? i could actually see experiences similar to mine reflected in medical texts, rather than feeling like i was forcing myself to fit some standard. funny, isn't it? somehow, i was more of a "faker" in their community than i ever was in ours.