#Slight backpedaling with that last bit? Me? No never

[atypical-irritant]

I have this theory and though it's not entirely popular within my system, let alone the plural community as a whole, I feel it's worth mentioning. Even if its not, this is my blog and I'll write whatever I please.

So last I'd heard the theory of structural dissociation hypothesizes that for DID to form there must've been some type of mental partitioning done at an early age, correct? I'm sure that's beyond oversimplified, but you get the gist. For my own system, I'm not sure how well that applies, or at least not in it's entirity. See, we'd gone through a substantially traumatizing situation that spanned roughly 3-4 years or so. During that time, we slowly discovered that we were a system, or more accurately the host at the time was eased into that knowledge one alter at a time.

Previously we'd assumed that we must've been plural much earlier than that and was just ignorant to this fact, but I believe it's possible the system as a whole "formed" during that highly traumatic period of time. Rather than there having been some covert functioning of alters throughout our childhood years, the framework for plurality was established early on but not utilized until a tipping point occurred. Once that shift happened, there doesn't seem to have been any going back, as if something mentally shattered and we haven't had the means (nor frankly the interest) in gluing it back together, hence the majority of my system preferring a goal of functional multiplicity rather than final fusion.

Now, there are some holes in that theory, such as hints of possible other alters who are not currently active having existed upwards of 4 years before our discovery date. My point more is that I believe it may be possible for the ability to develop DID/OSDD to form early in life but not properly manifest fully until much later, perhaps spurred on by some catalytic event(s), thus giving the appearance of a system forming later in life.

What would this matter in the grand scheme of things? I'm not sure. Not much, I'd imagine. It's not entirely something I could see being easily proven, but perhaps it would be useful for others to consider when trying to understand what brought about the circumstances they find themselves in now. As I've seen, many try to find these hints of plurality from their childhood in an attempt to make sense of their present existence and oftentimes they find there isn't any.

Rather than approaching the question with preconceived ideas of what is and isn't possible, we could view the psychology behind plurality as a more fluid theory that we, as a community, have the unique ability to share our own personal data towards fine tuning and advancing the greater understanding of this phenomenon/disorder.

From what I understand of my own system, we were somewhat concrete in our sense of self at a young age with a propensity for dissociative episodes when in distress. It's, of course, possible that the specific circumstances of our high-trauma period only served to break away the illusion of a singular self, I won't deny that. If nothing else, new alters formed during that time, myself included. I still believe there may be some merits to a theory such as early childhood distress/trauma, rather than forming a full-fledged system that simply hides itself well, may leave one weakened to the possibly of developing DID later in life.

Either way, I'm open to other theories and discussion on this. It's just a theory, after all. It'd be foolish to close the doors of possibility anytime a new theory crops up, otherwise we as a society may never give a chance to learn more.

#Slight backpedaling with that last bit? Me? No never #Syscourse does annoy the crap out of me sometimes with their pious behavior involving the DSM-5 #tag tangents #syscourse #plural community #did/osdd #psych discussion #my post