The Unplanned System

Last year, I was officially diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and let me tell you that I was shocked.

After getting misdiagnosed with almost everything out there, I was diagnosed with something that I never thought I could have, ever.

A couple of months later, I started going into the self doubt spiral.

This is my advice for systems doubting themselves:

Doubting yourself is completely normal. DID is meant to be covert and hidden, it’s a defense mechanism after all, almost every system out there doubted their experience at some point, it’s okay.

NOT EVERY SYSTEM IS LIKE SYSTEMS ON TUMBLR. Oh my god, I WISH someone would have told me this last year. You don’t have to have a bed in your room for each alter. You don’t have to have perfect communication with your alters. You don’t have to talk with them on a daily basis and switch 1000 times a day, just no. My communication with my alters is terrible. I sometimes go months without fully switching, days and even weeks without alters talking in my head. My alters mostly work through passive influence and that’s okay. You really don’t have to have a system like the ones you see on here to be valid, please remember that.

Not everything’s “you’re valid uwu”, no. Sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes doctors make mistakes and it’s okay. There are a lot of disorders that might have a similar presentation to DID like BPD, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. You need to be completely honest with yourself about your experiences. You really don’t want to get misdiagnosed and get treated for something that you don’t have “terrible idea, believe me”. If you’re honest with yourself about your experience, then there’s nothing to worry about.

Please don’t obsess over labels. There was this time when I was almost always co conscious with my protector and I kept wondering if I actually have OSDD, and it made me really depressed. It does not matter whether you have DID or OSDD, they’re almost the same thing and the point is, you have gone through trauma that fractured your identity so it really doesn’t matter what you have. Doctors treat symptoms, not labels. It’s okay to be confused for a while ❤️.

Yes, alters can go dormant for a lot of time and that’s completely normal. No, that doesn’t mean that you’re faking.

Sometimes you can switch without knowing or noticing the switch, so don’t obsess over why you aren’t switching too often.

It takes A LOT of time to have a good communication with your alters. It really isn’t as easy as tumblr makes it seems to be.

You don’t have to have obvious and overt symptoms of DID to be valid. I haven’t had so many proofs of my amnesia, only 4 times or something. I have also never experienced dissociative fugue, and that’s okay.

Amnesia for your own amnesia. Sometimes you don’t even notice that you lost time or that you said something that you have no memory of until someone points it out. So again don’t obsess over not switching too often.

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT focus too much on your alters or your disorder. Do not go googling symptoms of DID and reading tons of articles for hours. This is just gonna make your self doubt much worse. It’s okay to learn about your disorder, just don’t do it too much because everyone experiences DID differently and that might increase your doubt.

Always keep in mind that DID is different for everyone. My best friend has DID and our systems are completely different. He switches much more often and he has no idea how many alters does he have, doesn’t know their names or anything about them, however my amnesia is much worse than his. Seeing systems acting differently doesn’t mean that you’re fake.

Since I brought this up, it’s okay not to know anything about your alters. I have around 16 alters and maybe more, I only know and have communicated with 6 of them. Again, it’s not as easy as tumblr makes it seems.

It’s okay not to feel like you’re a multiple. It’s okay not to refer to yourself as “we”. I personally never refer to myself as we unless I’m talking specifically about me and my alters.

It’s okay to have more overt symptoms after getting your diagnosis, and it’s also okay for your symptoms to be less after diagnosis. It’s really common that alters start being much more visible after diagnosis, that doesn’t mean you’re faking. Despite being less common but it’s okay to have less symptoms after getting diagnosed. Your alters might be just scared, I have experienced this and it made me feel like I was faking it all, but it doesn’t. Sometimes, your alters are as scared as you, maybe even more.

I wish someone would have told me this last year, so here I am, telling you why you shouldn’t worry, this too shall pass, trust me.

Also, feel free to add your own advice.

If you need anything, don’t hesitate to message us, we’d be more than glad to help!

and I was taken off my antidepressants because they may be lowering the libido I never had in the first place (plus various other reasons, but still immediately, cold turkey, which should NEVER happen unless they’re switching you to something else)

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She plays first person shooter games and is really really good at them. She plays electric guitar and shreds like a beast. She loves death metal music, and even produces her own. She wears Hot Topic T-shirts and jeans. She doesn’t like dresses, but might wear a button-down top every now and then. She loves having the side of her hair buzzed short. She has a half-sleeve tattoo on her bicep that is Lovecraft-inspired. She has stretched earlobes, up to a 00g right now. She LARPs (live-action role plays) and kicks ass. She loves watching horror movies even though they scare her sometimes. She’s into girls and wouldn’t turn one down in bed.

She’s transgender.

Now of course, there are the people who will take what I wrote and say, “Oh, well doesn’t sound like she’s really trans. Sounds like she still likes a lot of guyish stuff so, like, is she sure…?”

But wait. If I had said all of these things about a cis girl, she sounds like a guy’s dream girl. How come after I said that she’s trans, suddenly people think there’s no way she could actually be a girl. If cis girls can like those things without their gender being questioned, so can trans girls.

Box braids didn’t become popular until the early 80′s when the GOAT Patrice Rushen took to the R&B and jazz scene

But at the time, they weren’t really called “box braids.” They were individual braids inspired by North African cultural aesthetics, especially Egyptian. However, box braids have their roots in our home region, West Africa as well.

Early on, you saw a peep of these beautiful, intricate hairstyle in the late 70′s from the female singers in Oddysey and S.O.S. Band

I believe both singers from these bands appeared with these hairstyles in the year 1977. So box braids have been here in African-American culture for a LONG time. It just didn’t really become a fad until the early 90′s because before then, these hairstyles were looked at as “trippy” Afrocentric hairstyles that artists would wear to get in touch with their African roots. The 80′s was a time where a lot of African-American artists’ fashion were inspired by West and North African roots.

 At the turn of the decade, you began to see box braids become more mainstream with Janet Jackson, Naomi Campbell’s ethereal ass, rapper Yo-Yo, and Jada Pinkett Smith.

Then in the mid 90′s, Stacey Dash makes braids en vogue by sporting the famous look in Clueless.

All the middle to upper-class girl caught on to box braids because of this but who should really get credit is the incomparable, Brandy Norwood!

Ask for “Moesha” at the hair salon, and it was say no more.

Mariah’s white-passing ass tried them on for size in her Thank God I Found You remix video and they looked dope!

And then here comes sexy stemme Alicia Keys bringing back our great-great-great North African ancestry in 2001

She made cornrows cool for all the black girls in grade school!

And I almost forgot! Beyonce really made kinky twists hot in the early ‘00s as well

Always looking like somebody’s cool redbone cousin rollin’ up at the family cookout 

Then Christina Aguilera tried to join in on the fun, but we said, “Nah, sweetie. You Latinx but you not afro honey. But you look cute sis”

*fast forward to several years later*

Unfortunately, box braids were no longer as popular as they were in the early ‘00s. Bad, synthetic weaves dyed a tacky brown were in from 2004-2008.

But in early 2013, box braids had a revival!

Thank you, Keri Hilson! You may not be shit, but you did that thing! I always said you was my hair-fashion icon tho. I can’t stunt on you.

We had Zoe Kravitz make braids cool for the edgy, sarcastic and loner black girls like me!

Soon, we saw so many pictures of black girls modeling box braids on Tumblr and Instagram!

Solange soon rocks these braids because she’s hip and poppin’

Then Christina Milan being Afro-Latina, she had to get in on this

Even Tia or Tamera

Soon, these 90′s R&B girls came back for a reunion with their beautiful, braided locs!

We all saw Ayesha Curry try to butter up to the black female community by taking an adorable selfie with her mama 

Now we got Instagram models and actresses making braids en vogue!

(Babyhairs aren’t mandatory and I recommend women with type 4 hair to get these styles. If you are under, I wouldn’t keep these in for very long)

So now box braids are everywhere, and they are the go-to for a black girl’s protective style, especially if they have my hair type! But anyone who is black and of African descent can wear them. You don’t have to have tightly-coiled hair to wear these, but they are what the styles are intended for since the hair is apt for them. 

Signs of being addicted to approval include:

1. You are very aware of the expectations of others. They also affect how you feel about yourself.

2. You are constantly worried about how others view you/ what they are thinking about you.

3. You choose NOT to do things that others don’t approve of for fear of judgment and rejection.

4. You DO things you don’t want to do as you fear others making fun or you, putting you down, or talking about it.

5. You feel anxious and upset if you think you have upset or irritated someone – and desperately try to make things right.

6. You think the views and opinions of others are more informed and valuable than yours.

7. You agree when others criticise and put you down. Then you start to attack and feel ashamed of yourself.

Hermit crabs start out their lives tiny and defenceless, and they choose a small shell to protect them. When they grow too big for the shell, big enough that it stops them from growing more, they abandon it and move on to a shell better for them at that size.

Does that mean the old shell was a terrible mistake? No, because it protected them back when they were smaller and more defenceless! But now it’s limiting their growth, and it’s time for them to find a better shell.

you spend hours/days/years in a panic over the possibility that you were the one who abused your parent & all the abuse they subjected to was just a response to what a horrible child [they always said] you were.