🪶Squawking System🍇

the ones who hurt you were/are traumatized individuals.

you are/appear functional.

it was not caused by a romantic partner or family member.

“it could have been avoided”.

no one knows about it.

“it’s not that bad”

other people had it worse.

someone went through the same experience and does not feel debilitated by it.

it occurred a long time ago / you feel just fine now.

the ones who hurt you have apologized.

Especially on system discords

background.

I had come out of a 4-6 year dormancy in like December. I've seen it demonized so much. Yes dormancy can be sad and confusing but dormancy is a helpful thing most of the time.

So why do alters go dormant?

They may not be needed for the system anymore for example an alter who helped with school may go dormant after the system graduates. Trauma can make alters go dormant. Or they need a break.

So why is it so bad to demonize it?

Amnesia refers to the loss of memories - but part of your memory is the emotions of the moment. Amnesia isn’t just losing time; it can also be the loss of the experience, the feelings of the moment.

Emotional amnesia can be incredibly difficult to cope with, and all systems who do deserve some positivity. Remembering what happened, but feeling nothing about that moment, can be just as painful as the moment itself in some cases. I’ve seen systems grapple with their emotional amnesia, stuck figuring out how they felt, if at all, about intense childhood trauma.

Very simple yet helpful chart showing the theory of structural dissociation