#subsection syscourse

I was engaged in a conversation about how diagnosises can be quite harmful when I mentioned how we wish to pursue a DID diagnosis. A singlet (very politely I must stressed) asked me what the point of it is. After all, we are in treatment for it with a trauma specialist who specialises in complex cases who is able to assist us.

And it made me stop and consider that. It was a while before I was able to formulate my response.

Confirmation we do actually have it was the first thing that popped into my mind. That was not quite accurate, as we generally have a very good handle on denial. Instances of denial are brief, although they are quite severe at times as it can cause major set backs in communication, and do not truly impact us.

For multiple months we have been in a state of constant dissociation. When people were fronting they simply were unable to remain grounded. Even I, our most consistent fronter, was never able to ground and I would instantly leave the moment we would have any form of expression in our voice or body at all. (I tend to be quite hypoemotive.)

We used to be able to simply get alters to the front by sort of summoning them, we have not used front triggers in a long time. It was only a few days ago that we figured out our communication and dissociative barriers had worsened, and that that means we are not capable of switching like we used to. We dug up old front triggers and got someone to the front and it was the first time we were grounded in months. Since then, we have achieved certain switches in the way that we used to between alters with good communication by taking the time to ground ourselves using things akin to front triggers.

There is minimal memory for multiple months. Even instances we know we were present are foggy or just entirely forgotten due to the fact that we were unable to encode much of anything while so dissociated. And those instances may honestly be fewer and far inbetween than we thought, as I suspect a lot of instances of 'someone being there' were fragments that split off based on our need for someone to be there.

Our system is quite unstable. We split very regularly at even the slightest hint of stress, and have complex splitting patterns that mean we always split several parts at once. It worries me how more unstable we have gotten, how many more parts we have gotten, as a result of the last few months.

Having access to a DID specialist would provide us the support to stablise our system and integrate. (Integrate =/= fuse.) Which lead me to realise that not only do I wish for our system to be stable, I wish for our system to be functional.

Last night we were trying to find a protector who could handle supporting a friend during a difficult moment. Several alters were tired before we found someone who may work. They dissociated almost instantly when the situation began, and I now realise that likely means that a fragment had split to handle it. I now realise that it is likely every instance of an alter who was brought in to handle a situation only to afterwards find memory of the situation foggy despite at the time the person fronting believing themselves to be them likely means that we had split a fragment.

It would be great if those parts of ourself that protect us could be a proper alter who is capable of being grounded during stressful situations. It would be great to have alters who hold memory of those events as opposed to them just disappearing from all of us.

It would be great to have fusion so our system can be smaller, more manageable, more functional. No more scrambling around for 10+ minutes looking through our system list to try and find someone who may be able to handle something, only to have that not even work. It would be great if we had consistent fronters, as opposed to various people popping up at random and being consistent for a short period of time before simply phasing out.

The issue is, I feel incredibly frightened and isolated upon this realisation. The community only ever discusses fusion in the context of, "I would never my alters have helped me through too much, I love them too much!" It is only very recently in it being brought up in syscourse that I ever heard someone who fused say that they did too.

I as an alter do not want to fuse. At least, I do not at the moment. But the idea of anyone in our system fusing is frightening. I (as an alter) introject very intensely and regularly. (Reminder that introjection as a process can occur without the introjected parts gaining dissociative barriers.) Beyond simply knowing and caring about the people in the system due to us being in the system, I have psudomemories shared with many of them. Even as source seperated as I am, the idea of people who I know and love and remember doing all these things with no longer being the same is frightening.

I know they would not be gone if they fused, the fusion would be all of those parts together, but it is still scary. Not only am I scared, I feel very very isolated.

Fusion needs to be given space within the community. We need to allow for discussions of it to extend beyond the, "I could never I love my alters too much," perspective. There is this false idea that systems who reach final fusion were never like those of us who have not. The way it is spoken of paints this picture of people who have only ever viewed every single alter as a dissociative part and there was no complex feelings surrounding the situation.

When we speak about alters being dissociative parts, a lot of people end up treating it like it has a different defition to alter. It has a broader defintion than alter, but all alters are also dissociative parts.

Alters having individual senses of self, recall of past events, identities, and even alters who consider themselves as seperate people are still dissociative parts. All of that and more is included in the defintion of dissoociative parts.

We consider ourselves seperate people. That does invalidate the fact that we are dissociative parts, nor does us being dissociative parts invalidate that.

To be perfectly honest, we are not the most comfortable with parts language due to a lot of people viewing it as incompatibile with considering ourselves seperate people.

The best way I can provide an example of what parts language means to us is our relationship with our gender identity.

We are a transgender man. Does everyone identify as a transgender man? No. Does us all being a transgender man invalidate individual alters identities? No. Does individual alters identities mean that they are not a transgender man? Yes and no. They are not a transgender man, but we are.

I personally as an alter am a transgender man, so I am getting someone else to assist me in explaining.

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okay hiii!!!! its mina!! :3 (it/she) (that was tim btw)

im honestly not sure what my gender is but its definitely like not a man. its feminine, or at least i talk feminine. idk. not cis, not a man. unlabel is probs best answers

anyway, im not a man, but we're a man. us being a man does not make me a man. me not being a man doesn't make us not be a man. does that make sense?

like we live our life as a man, we view the body as male, we present as a man. ive got the lived experiences of a man!

and the whole being transgender part, like im not cis, but even our alters who ID as cis are parts of a collective transgender man.

thats not saying that we, as a transgender man, have parts of us that are cisgender women. thats not how parts language works for us. we are all one man whos made up of a bunch of men, like 3 women, and some other people.

us being parts of a man is less like im the arm of a man and someone else is a leg and more like we're all stacked in an inescapable trenchcoat together.

like parts language we are honestly kinda uncomfy using just due to how people misunderstand what it means when we use it. consider ourselves seperate people and not being viewed as seperate people, as it turns out, causes us to dissociate for months on end and lose a bunch of time. fun DID things woo!!

i honestly think that like a lot of problems with how people view medical experiences is that they kinda like forget that just because somethings like a disorder doesn't change how it feels. like yeah we're dissociated parts because of trauma, but that doesnt like change the fact that we consider ourselves seperate people. like im just saying, the root of this is probably ableism and the idea that something being a medical or like pathological or disordered experience = bad wrong needs to be fixed.