“But you don’t have a diagnosis”

Yeah but someone in this place is deadass allergic to chocolate while the rest of us are vibin 💀

reading the symptoms of autism as a now grown adult after being bullied for no explainable reason all your life

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that’s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!

Microdosing polyamory by dating a system

People with psychotic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with personality disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with substance abuse disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with tic disorders are neurodivergent too.

People with bipolar disorder are neurodivergent too.

People with dissociative disorders are neurodivergent too.

Neurodivergence isn’t just ADHD, autism, anxiety, and depression. (Plus those last two also get left out sometimes!) Neurodivergence is anything that affects your brain.

“Neurodivergent people hate loud noises” is actually just as valid as a statement as “neurodivergent people have delusions,” “neurodivergent people have tics,” or even “neurodivergent people have low empathy.”

boy it would be nice to be able to google something related to personality disorders, psychosis, intellectual disabilities, autism, DID/OSDD, etcetera without finding majority articles that are like “how to deal with a person with X” “how to cope with your child with X” “how to spot someone faking X” “can people with X be cured?”

being immortal and having DID must be crazy. yeah our boy Carlos hasn't fronted in 300 years and just woke up to the sound of Uptown Funk and started screaming

Trigger Warning: Abuse. New Comic: Words Matter. Thanksgiving is not a great time for many LGBT, please be mindful of the words you use, even if you dont think they are a big deal, its not you who is impacted by them, choose them carefully. People keep messaging me to support me. I set up a temporary KoFi for now, i might do more with it in the future. All support I get will go to fund my transition.

That includes all the stuff im super self conscious about.

Ko-fi.com/welldrawnfish

fuck it we ball

“Don’t let your disorder define you”

Okay but do you support the people whose disorders do define them?

Do you support people with the chronic illnesses who have had to develop whole lives around their conditions? Do you support the intellectually disabled people whose whole way of thinking is defined by their disorder? Do you support the people with personality disorders who literally have a disorder as a personality? Do you support the autism/ADHD people whose disorder you can’t separate from who they are? Do you support the DIDOSDD people who have multiple definitions of themselves because of their disorder?

Or are you just saying that because a disorder defining someone means you can’t ignore it.

🏳️‍🌈Happy pride month!!!🏳️‍🌈

I know pride as a system isn’t easy, from having a body that doesn’t fit to maybe not even being able to use the body, I know we often feel like we don’t know where we fit in. But you don’t have to know where you fall under the lgbtq+ umbrella or even be lgbtq+ to participate in pride. Share your love for the community and the history that this month is celebrating, have a happy pride 🏳️‍🌈

poor memory is a huge deal and i wish people wouldn't diminish it by saying "oh yeah i can't remember what i had for breakfast lol."

i can't remember the first 10 years of my life. i can't remember entire days, weeks, months at a time. i can't remember entire people, i can't remember names or faces. i can't remember when things are scheduled for, my calendar app on my phone is booked to the max with reminders and task checklists. i can't remember when i moved into what home when, i can't remember important milestone dates like when i got or lost certain jobs, or when i started a new hobby.

that's what i mean when i say i have poor memory. poor memory is so scary for the person who has it. it's not a quirky thing, everyone forgets small details. memory problems are scary because you can go through entire events or days with no memory, or plan for things in the future that you can't recall ever even looking into or scheduling. it's not a funny haha kind of thing, it's serious, and it affects a lot of people in very unavoidable ways.

not being able to plan for appointments or work schedules, not being able to remember people's names or faces, not being able to recall whether or not you were present for something or whether or not you met someone, not being able to keep track of what's happening on what dates and losing track of items because you can't remember where you put them are all very real problems, and anyone dealing with them deserves to be taken seriously, and not diminished when they choose to speak up about it.

this post is for the people with memory issues

people who's memories are getting worse every day, who's memories are stable but poor, people who can't remember what they did today or yesterday or this week, people who's childhoods are a faded blur. people who have slow greying-out amnesia that seems to just fade in and out of existence, and people who have complete blackouts, and people who have both. people who mourn the happy memories they know they've lost, who fear the bad memories they've lost that still affect them.

people who have "emotional amnesia" that makes it feel like none of their memories are their own, because there's few or no feelings attached. people who can ONLY remember the feelings from certain or even most memories, not actual events. people who's memory issues scare them or make them angry or make them miserable. people who's memory issues get them called childish or difficult or rude. who can't remember the names or faces of those they love. who are constantly forgetting the things that "you'd remember if you really cared". who misplace everything. who remember so little of their lives that they barely know who they are. people who's memory issues come from trauma/dissociation, ADHD, traumatic brain injury, brain fog/chronic fatigue, drug use, alcoholism. people who have no idea what causes their memory issues. people who's memory issues come from something else entirely.

i love you, you're strong, and you deserve support and care for what you're going through. memory issues can be frustrating and upsetting and disabling, and your suffering deserves to be recognized. whether you're soaring through recovery or are only ever going to get worse, you deserve good things in life and to live the fullest you can, regardless of how much you remember.

one of the most important things about dissociative identity disorder and generally being a system that i wish people would understand is that it truly isn’t as cut and dry as it may seem for member count.

you’ll see people who say they have “six alters” and then immediately assume it’s six fully fleshed out equal individuals with no confusion or fuzziness regarding identity. that’s simply not true in a majority of cases, as i have seen.

most systems still VERY much deal with confusion regarding potential splits, go through dissociative episodes where they’re unsure of who they are, sometimes feel no attachment towards any identities, feel like they might have split and then suddenly that person is gone, unsure if alters they haven’t heard from often have gone dormant, not sure how to react when alters do come out of dormancy, etc.

it’s not a fun feeling and it’s genuinely unfair in certain situations to force systems to list every single alter to you with full certainty, as if it will never change. because it will. for so many different reasons, systems will grow, they will shrink, they will fuse, they will develop. you can’t expect the person with the dissociative disorder and lack of core identity to be able to keep up a perfected list of forever, it’s simply impossible. you may have alters who stick with you, but that doesn’t mean changes won’t happen.

and systems who may be reading this — please don’t feel bad. you are not a hassle, you are not a headache, and you are not an inconvenience for simply coping with something like this. it’s out of your control and the only thing you can do is continue to cope to find ways to help yourself retrain from these reactions. please don’t allow yourself to be harmed by others who don’t understand what you are going through. there are people who will accept and love you for who you are, all of you.

past, present, and future.

Most people only get 4 stress responses: Fight, Flight, Fawn, and Freeze.

people with DID unlock the secret fifth one: Forget

-host

“One of your alters doesn’t like me!”

My dude some of my alters don’t like ME. You ain’t special.