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circular-bircular · 6 months

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“You can have DID without trauma!”

Vent art. Mod “Armageddon.” Tw for COCSA and general abuse.

You are a system. You have DID. You do not know this.

You go through 15 years, not knowing this — just existing in a haze, having such a bright childhood, one you grasp for later in the dark moments, trying desperately to hold onto it.

At 15, you realize, wait. I think something’s wrong. You realize you don’t feel like “yourself” — and even more alarming, you don’t know who “you” even are. You hear voices, suddenly, in your head. You find notes you clearly wrote, but it’s someone else’s handwriting, someone else’s words to “you.”

You just need to figure out who “you” is.

You go to your sexual abuser abusive romantic partner best friend because your abusive neglectful overbearing parents would never understand, or might be too worried about you. You ask them, “What’s wrong with me? I’m scared. I’m confused. I feel like I’m going to die.”

They smile. They want you, they need you to stay, and to stay you can’t be scared. “Don’t worry — that’s normal.”

You sigh in relief. Thank goodness. You’re fine. You’re okay. Nothing is wrong. The voices are just normal things everyone else experiences. The fun imaginative things in my head are normal. The fighting, screaming, sobbing, fear, need to run, need to love, need to help everyone while fully believing you’re about to get hit, or touched, or watched, always watched—

Don’t worry. That’s normal.

You are a system. You have DID. You do not know this.

You are 19. You’re not sure when that happened — isn’t time silly that way? You are normal. You were a bit “quirky” and “cringy” in high school, roleplaying a lot. You do not remember the voices in your head. You do not remember their names. You do not remember two entire years of high school, and you do not remember that you have forgotten.

You see a student presentation in class about a story, and how the main character could be read as having dissociative identity disorder. “The symptoms come from childhood trauma,” the student says, “but people don’t always remember their trauma.”

She describes the symptoms. You feel… weird. Why does that sound so familiar? So normal? You laugh a little and look around, expecting everyone else to be rolling their eyes at such an obvious observation. How ridiculous of psychologists to diagnose a very normal thing, right? But everyone else is nodding along, very interested, and the professor praises the student for her psychological lens, and “valuable research gathering on a rare disorder.”

You don’t remember going to your dorm, or the test you took that day online. The next thing you remember is not being “you” anymore, because “you” is locked in a room in your mind, and now you’re someone else, sobbing at the website you’ve pulled up. It’s about dissociative identity disorder.

You’re not you. You’re someone else.

You go to your best friend. You tell them everything at 4am, sobbing because you don’t know what to do anymore, and you’re scared, because you don’t know who you are.

“You’re not crazy. This isn’t normal, but you aren’t crazy. I believe you.”

You breathe for the first time in years months weeks days.

You are 19. You have DID. You think.

There’s only one problem; you don’t have trauma. You do. It’s there. They hurt you so much, you idiot, why can’t you hear the voices screaming that at you? So what on earth are you experiencing?

You try to research it. All you have is a DSM-III and resources on multiple personality disorder. And, of course, tumblr — your home away from home.

You find a war happening. People with trauma versus people who say they have none. They all seem to hear voices, and many are angry and struggling and confused, just like you. You must be like these “plurals” you’ve seen. The ones without trauma but with DID. That’s not what that was, and you know that now, but it’s was so hard to tell back then.

You join them. “I have DID,” you say, “but I don’t have trauma.”

“That’s okay!” They tell you. “You can have DID without trauma.”

What a relief. You’re normal. You’re fine. You’re not like those anti-endos, you’re told. “They medicalize their systems,” you’re told, “and their therapists are abusing them.” You feel so bad for those poor systems. They’re not like you; you’re fine. You’re normal. Unlike them.

You try to avoid the traumatized ones, but you see so many of them getting angry. They keep yelling about these people who don’t have trauma, who are “appropriating a disorder” — that same disorder you clearly have, but you don’t have trauma.

You crash your car while dissociating so hard that you hallucinate your parts headmates around you. And you are happy, because at least you have a family to take care of you. Isn't it so nice to see your parts headmates in real life?

You're normal. It's okay. You don't have trauma. You don't need trauma to be a system, and you love being a system. No you DON'T, the parts scream, you're dreaming! Wake up! Wake up, please, god, don't let that woman hug you, don't you know what she did--

You keep moving on.

Then you see the arguments that spark something in you. “You need trauma, but the age range is wider than you’d think.”

Your sexual abuser abusive romantic partner best friend from high school. There’d been that time you fell out with her. That time you blew up at her because she’d kissed you in public, blamed you for teasing her too much. You realize how little you remember.

What else have you forgotten?

“I have trauma but it’s well past the age range,” you say to an anti-endo, knowing you shouldn't have spoken to them, because everyone tells you not to -- but none of them are traumatized, and this person is. “What’s wrong with people having this disorder without trauma?”

“There’s decades of research on this,” you’re told. “It sounds like you do have trauma. Consider that you might have some you don’t remember. Otherwise, you don’t have DID.”

You are 19. You have DID, you know it. You ignore this person. “These other people told me I don’t need trauma. You’re just gatekeeping. You’re just wrong. I’m not traumatized. I’m not like you. I’m better.”

You go to the ones who comforted you, listened to you, manipulated you. "I have trauma, I think, but it's past the age those anti-endos talk about, how ridiculous are they?"

"I'm so proud of you for standing up to those sysmeds! A lot of us have been traumatized because of how people treat our system. I'm sorry those anti-endos traumatized you."

"Well, it wasn't them -- but you're right. Anti-endos are traumatizing. They've traumatized me."

You believe the lie you spread, because they spread it first, and it sounds right. You do not mention that you learned you were sexually assaulted by a peer as a child. That would just be trauma dumping, and that would make you no better than a sysmed.

You are 19. You’re “cured” of your DID, because the plurals around you say that if you like your system, you don’t have DID. They say if you can’t remember your trauma, you probably don’t have any, and “most DID is caused by trauma, you just might be a disordered plural.” They call you endogenic, or mixed-origin, or autigenic. Trying to suggest you have DID leads to them talking about those horrible traumatized systems DID systems disordered systems anti-endos.

“You can’t listen to them. You can’t reblog from them. They’re homophobic, racist, transphobic, bigoted, ableist, wrong. Any information they share is ableist.”

You listen. You always have. You roll your eyes good naturedly at them suggesting you don't have trauma -- they just meant your system isn't caused by trauma. They just misspoke. That's all.

... But what if they're right?

You are 20. You are a ????? system. You say you have DID, because you are disordered and fit all of the criteria, and you can have DID without trauma. Maybe you are just plural?

You start getting into fights with systems online. You spread misinformation your experiences. Anyone who disagrees with you is an ableist gatekeeper. You get fakeclaimed and it hurts. Now you are traumatized by anti-endos. You try to avoid them more, falling deeper into those circles that include everyone, including you. They must love you. They love everyone.

You see a post about trauma. You realize, slowly, so so slowly, your parents have hurt you. You remember everything. No??? You remember so little, the voices scream, sob, you can’t remember it because you’re not even trying to. Why bother trying when you can live in denial, and keep getting abused each time you go home, and keep getting hurt worse and worse every single weekend?

You are 20. You are a DID system. You have trauma. You know some of it.

You go to your manipulators harassers friends. “I figured it out! My system was formed my trauma!"

“Oh, you poor soul, who told you that?”

You feel cold. “What?”

“Those awful anti-endos fakeclaiming you-“

You feel isolated. “No?”

“You can’t listen to them. You’re autigenic. You’re being manipulated. You don’t have trauma.”

“My parents-“

“They love you, that’s not abuse. They were rich, that’s not abuse. They only yelled at you, that’s not abuse. You aren’t traumatized — don’t let the anti-endos convince you that you are.”

You are desperate. “But my DID!”

They frown at you. “You don’t need trauma to have DID. Saying otherwise makes you a sysmed."

You leave your friends. They weren’t friends at all.

You isolate. You have nobody. You made it clear that you would not speak to the filth anti-endos traumatized systems like yourself. You have nobody left to talk about your trauma with.

You are 21. You are a traumatized DID system. You only have your partner and in real life friends. Your abusers force you to drink on your birthday, and come into your safe space. You have nightmares for weeks.

Then you’re 22 and you are stuck with your abusers. You can see their faces now. You know the truth. You feel sick.

You are 23. 24. 25. You find new circles. You've researched trauma more, not nearly enough. You briefly become anti-endo, frustrated as you see more and more people hurt like you were, frustrated that the pro-endo spaces do not have any resources for those like you. Then you mellow, you try to divorce your trauma from your experience online. You try to find places to spread research and knowledge, to be traumatized and have people recognize what that means.

You are attacked for being traumatized, because this space has never been safe for trauma victims. You remember how you used to think when you were 19. You remember how you felt when you were left all alone. You try to keep the doors open, but it's so so hard, and you have to take care of yourself too. But you try. God, you try to help others.

You are 26.

You are in so many circles — endogenic, plural, CDD, traumatic, traumagenic, it doesn’t matter. You have so many people.

You see people telling others, “You don’t need trauma to have DID!” You take a deep breath and follow what your disgusting medicalist inclusive and welcoming therapist has taught you about stopping spirals. You try not to say anything deep at first, because you’re clearly triggered, and recent lessons have taught you more that you need can’t be traumatized online without getting hurt badly.

But you see people denying their trauma. Saying, “I don’t remember any trauma, and even if I did have trauma, I don’t feel like I do."

You remember being that way. You remember not remembering. You remember how your parents sexually abused you, now, even after you thought you’d remembered it all. You remember how your parents hit you and neglected you alongside their overbearing lack of boundary keeping. You remember how you convinced yourself it wasn’t trauma.

You remember how you went back, for years, because of what people said.

You could have left at 19. You had the chance. The options. The doors to freedom were wide open, and you did not step out, because you thought your cage was already freedom.

How much sooner could you have been free if you had simply acknowledged you had trauma, and it had been made clear that it was okay to have trauma? That it would be safe to leave? That you deserved to be able to leave?

You do research. You've done research. You try to find proof of endogenic -- of non-trauma -- DID. You find fakeclaiming. You find people misinterpreting statistics, or even flat out lying about statistics. You find decades, even centuries of research, in the attempt to figure out what's happening. You even resort to literary analysis, because at least you might be able to find evidence of people discussing non-trauma DID as a legitimate scientific thing while psychoanalysing old texts -- just like back at 19, back in college, back when you first heard what DID was.

You find nothing.

You try to share your experiences still. You try to explain in more private spaces, spaces where there can't be anonymous hatred flung your way -- or worse, people who have determined that you are an enemy that must be defeated taking each word you say and twisting it to demonize you -- and you watch in horror as they remember.

"That's trauma?"

"That's disordered?"

"I've never heard of this before."

"I thought I was endogenic. I thought I didn't have trauma."

They're fine. They struggle -- but trauma is a struggle -- and more importantly, they now know what resources to even aim for. They know where to look. They know what can help.

You wish you'd known that.

And you will never, ever stop being bitter about the years those people took from you. You will never forgive them for their fakeclaiming. You will never forgive them for the years you spent being abused more.

But it's okay.

It's normal.

And isn't it better to be inclusive of that very slim amount of people who, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite all of Occam's understandings, and despite the harm that inclusiveness does to those who are suffering, just have DID without any of that pesky, disgusting trauma?

What do I know? I'm just a filthy sysmed.

#venting #syscourse #You can reblog this #I don't mind #But I won't be responding to anything on this post I don't think #I just needed to get this out #Armageddon Comes While I'm Sleeping #tw csa #tw cocsa #tw abuse

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justflesh54 · 4 months

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the way i would never have experienced HALF my truck of trauma if i was born without autism.... its not fair

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plural-affirmations · 5 months

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Here's to those who have had self-inflicted trauma.

Many, many traumatized individuals end up feeling like they are partly or completely to blame for their trauma. Regardless of reason, you are not responsible. Even if it was something you did to yourself or others, I firmly believe you were a victim of circumstance; genetic factors, predisposition, lack of knowing it was dangerous, adult influence, etc... there were things out of your control. So, today? We're here to appreciate you.

Shoutout to those who:

Went through SA, CSA, COCSA, and/or NCCSA

Were forced to do traumatizing acts to another child/person

Had/have an eating disorder

Had/have an addiction, even the "mild" or "uncommon" ones

Experienced self-harm or suicide attempts

Otherwise had a near-death experience

Were hospitalized for their mental health

And anyone else who just feels like it's their fault. Because I promise, it isn't.

It's going to be ok. I know how hard things can get. I've had my own run-ins with crises before, but... the important thing is that you're here. You have so, so much value and brightness inside you. I don't want you to think you have to take drastic measures to feel better. Because, you didn't get to write the beginning of your story... but you can definitely write the rest. And I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Please stick around, ok?

🖤💜💙💚💛

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johnnycakesb14de · 22 days

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"Mental health matters !!!" Until it's hypersexuality caused by being sexually abused as a kid by people older than you and your friends

#top ten reasons i can't date anyone #tw sa mention #tw cocsa #tw hypersexual

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oa-x · 5 months

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#vent art #csa.#implied csa #tw csa #cocsa.#implied cocsa #tw cocsa #ptsd #cptsd #god must hate me catie turner #also #dysphoria

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aprilsadviceaskblog · 18 days

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Hi April. I wanted to say thank you for running this blog. It means so much to me and I'm sure many others that there's a safe space to speak up about our own traumas but also see the validation given to others!

Cw csa, cw cocsa

I'm a victim of cocsa and anytime I look up resources, I always see the resources recommend that the perpetrator also deserves help. If I had read this when I was younger I would have been angry, but as an adult, I understand what the resources mean--the perpetrator is acting in a way that is inappropriate and harmful and needs adult guidance and support with learning how not to behave in this way. My abuser was heavily bullied and didn't receive the support they needed so they took it out on me

But the little kid in me is still furious about what happened. I still see them so often and I see how the anxieties and trauma they experienced affects them today but they're still in a much better place than I am, both financially and socially. The trauma they've caused me has been so debilitating, it's affected every part of my life including my ability to get to a place of financial stability since I'm spending all my energy to make it from day to day. I keep fluctuating between being angry and having empathy for my abuser, and the conflicting emotions means I'm going from one extreme to the other, which is also very distracting and mentally draining

I think I'm just looking for a place to talk about this safely and get the reassurance younger me wants. And if you have any advice, I'd appreciate that too but it's totally okay if not!

Thanks again 💌

Hi anon,

You are absolutely valid in these feelings. It is absolutely okay to be angry at someone who hurt you even if you understand and can empathize with their circumstances. The reasoning behind it doesn't change the fact that they hurt you.

It's okay to feel these emotions. It's okay to feel confused over them. I think maybe you're putting too much pressure on yourself to be empathetic. And you don't need to. I'm not saying to go mean to the person, but to give yourself the space to feel these feelings. It's okay to be angry. Don't get caught up in that the "right" thing to do is to show empathy and that it isn't fair to be mad at them. Your feelings are your feelings, and that's okay.

Them needing help and support at that age doesn't change the fact that you didn't deserve what happened and you deserved so much better.

I wrote an article on anger here, and I want to share this part of it with you.

"Anger is a valid and understandable emotion when it comes to healing from trauma, even if your trauma does not have a specific person to blame (natural disasters and death of a loved one are examples). If the person who hurt you did not mean to or did not know better (like another child), anger is still a valid emotion. You’ve been hurt and you should not have been and it is reasonable to feel angry at this."

I don't have a lot of advice, but the first place I think is worth starting is in making sure you aren't invalidating these emotions of yours and letting yourself have the space to feel them. They're valid and understandable.

#tw csa #tw cocsa #april answers #tw abuse #tw bullying

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flowersbark · 4 months

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my body

my autonomy

my philosophy

my psychology

will always just be

what you made of me

#vent #vent post #cw vent #tw cocsa #cocsa victim #cocsa survivor #sa vent #sa victim #sa survivor #sa poem #poetry #cocsa poem #vent poem #vent blog #csa vent #csa victim

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granulesofsand · 9 months

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🗝️🏷️ CSA, SA, details about sexual functions, shame

To the person with the CSA ask from a few days ago; I wasn’t sure if you wanted it attached, I know sexuality can be a touchy subject for the public eye.

Not Remembering

Memories of sexual abuse are often hidden deeper down. There’s an air of secrecy and shame already heavy in many mainstream cultures, even with consensual sexual activity.

Some children have direct interactions that teach them to dissociate those events further, others learn just by their environment.

Similarly, instances of COCSA are treated as ‘lesser’ than CSA by adults, and may surface sooner than other types. Same goes for abuse unaffiliated with a group or beloved figure.

Symptomology

There is no one presentation of physical symptoms. Sexual disfunction is common overall, but it can be difficult to find specifics.

Oftentimes both extremes are possible— hyper sexuality and hypo sexuality, preoccupation with a trigger and avoidance of it, risky behavior and refusing all contact.

There are also some things that are frequently observed in survivors. Mixing up fear or pain with pleasure is normal. Worrying about predatory behaviors within yourself is normal. Lots of kinks stem from trauma, that’s normal.

Normal for CSA survivors is just different than normal for the general population.

Bad Enough

Any amount of maltreatment is enough for a person to develop these symptoms, and some will have them even if their experiences don’t align with what clinicians currently call trauma.

Symptoms can be programmed in. A particular event repeated or a staged occurrence could be used to create a desired response, and sometimes symptoms are noticed before memories come up.

It could go either way, and it’ll take time for both. You have the choice to wait for memories or to dig for them, to analyze what you find or leave it well alone.

Diving In

A good therapist is always recommended, but at least have backup plans in case things go awry. Internal and external supports, muscle-memory coping skills for when survival responses arise, comfort at the ready.

Take lots of breaks and do your best to notice distress inside. It’s quite alright to discover your memories paint a different picture. Be kind to yourself/selves, good internal relationships are more important than finding some absolute truth.

Stepping Back

It’s also not wrong to decide to close this door for now. Your safety should come first, and that might mean aiming for stability over answers.

Keep gentle track of symptoms and journal when it feels feasible. Take care of you, whatever that looks like. Maybe pick another goal to focus on for the time being.

I hope this helped, please reach out again if you still have questions.

#tw csa #tw cocsa #tw sa #tw child abuse #tw ramcoa #ramcoa #osddid #did osdd #dissociative identity disorder #polyfragmented system

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