her favourite

WHAT

one of my fav things is writing the reader as a monotone character who never voices her emotions. like it’s so fun to make her so socially awkward

“The ceiling stopped spinning for me. Is it still spinning for you?”

“Holy shit, no :D”

I’d prefer if someone who has experience with/knowledge on dissociation answer this.

So, I’ve always struggled with dissociation. Growing up I’d constantly disconnect from reality in the sense that I was always “zoning out” and going into “la la land”. And I would (rarely, AFAIK) have blackouts and forget what I’d said/done, usually something “strange”. I also struggled with psychosis growing up, though the dissociation started long before the psychosis did, and nowadays as an adult I experience dissociation (including episodes of amnesia, not blackouts tho) during months where I have literally no psychotic symptoms. I hear voices internally inside my head, that are not mine and don’t sound like me, which I can’t control, of different genders, and sometimes I can “reach” them by clearing my mind and calling out for who is there. I quite literally experience multiple “streams of thought”, from different people at the same time, fully coherent (as far as I’m aware, it’s hard to focus on just one) for perhaps 15 to 30+ minutes straight (I don’t time it tbh) and when I’m completely calm.

Now, this sounds a lot like DID to me, and I have more symptoms to list but since I am not looking for a diagnosis and you can’t provide one, I’m really asking for advice on what I should do. I have some PTSD symptoms, but aside from that I don’t really have any known disorder which could explain these experiences. I experience hallucinations and disorganised thinking here and there, but not consistent enough to qualify for a psychotic disorder. Literally just random. Maybe I am slowly developing one, but there’s not enough proof of that, and my experiences line up so closely with DID that I can’t get it off my mind. I don’t know whether I should drop the idea of “multiple parts” altogether, since I’m not sure speculating so hard is “good for me”, and I likely will never recover the memories from my childhood and teen dissociative episodes. The problem here, though, is I’m too deeply fixated on the idea of a “dissociated me” and want to continue interacting with the complex voices. At times, this year, it has felt as though someone is “with me”, and I feel “far away” and as if a particular “voice” was on the verge of “switching places” in my body but it wasn’t a belief, more like an interpretation of a sensation. But I could’ve been influenced by the internet, like my brain fabricating/mimicking this particular symptom in a semi-psychotic way. I guess what I really want to know is: could psychosis mimick symptoms of DID? Could a person have these random symptoms with seemingly no trigger and have no diagnosable condition at all? Could I have something unique altogether, between dissociation and psychosis? Would it be reasonable to suspect a dissociative condition at all, or am I pushing myself into a narrative that I don’t fit?

And worse: would it be wrong or offensive of me to view myself as having “multiple selves” or “parts of self”, or to name my voices (which I acknowledge must be SOME type of psychological construct) should they not name themselves? If I truly discover I definitely don’t have DID, is it weird or wrong to feel as though I… must do? It doesn’t feel right that I’ve had all these experiences and I can’t “belong” somewhere.

This was long. You don’t have to answer BTW, I’m just very tired and confused and a little embarrassed and weirdly resentful. I feel like a bit of a freak. I don’t feel comfortable telling professionals IRL about this.

Hi! Quinn here.

I decided to answer, since I do have experience with both dissociation, psychosis and some degree of experiencing myself as multiple people.

Like you said yourself, I can't diagnose you, and I'm not a 100% sure I can tell you what to do, either.

But I can spend a few words on my own experience, and my own personal and professional thoughts on the matter.

So first off, I think I'm going to say this a lot on this blog, and it's going to become really annoying, but I truly believe that the amount of focus we have on diagnoses and their differences, can be harmful. I don't think it's very helpful to anyone to get stuck on whether they have this or that diagnosis, if their experiences are "valid" as this or that, based on arbitrary categorizations.

The fact of the matter is that you experience these things, and they are there, regardless of whether they belong to a named disorder.

I'm going to get a bit personal, and talk about myself for a hot minute.

I grew up with psychosis, dissociation and trauma as pretty consistent factors in my life. At a point in my early twenties (and arguably prior to that), I further became aware that I wasn't "alone" in my head. At first I was scared, and I told my psychiatrist, who immediately freaked out and doubled my dose of antipsychotics. That didn't really help though, and for a long time I fought against "the others". Then one day I met a new partner, who has DID.

I was terrified that if they found out about my "others", they would think I was mocking or appropriating their experience.

Long story short, they helped all of me come to terms with who I (we) are, but for years I struggled with that same question: Is it psychosis? Is it dissociation? An overactive imagination? A coping mechanism?

.... All of the above?

In the end I discovered that I don't much care what causes these experiences. All I know is that it doesn't harm me or others, and that there's nothing "morally wrong" about experiencing this level of compartmentalization without knowing the direct cause.

As for naming what your experience as other parts of yourself - all I can say is that in my experience, the act of naming something has a lot of power to speak it into existence. That's not to say "don't", but rather to tell you to consider what it is that you hope to gain by naming these parts of yourself.

I do find that dissociation and psychosis are related concepts, albeit not always co-occurring. But many psychotic people experience a level of compartmentalization that lends itself to thinking in terms of dissociative disorders, and many people with dissociative disorders could also be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.

I think we're doing ourselves and our communities a disservice, if we insist that there can be no relation.

Given the professional climate, where most people with DID get a diagnosis as something psychotic, I do understand why people with DID are arguing strongly that they aren't psychotic. There is an important distinction between "pure DID" and someone with schizophrenia. But that doesn't mean schizophrenics and other psychotic people's experiences of compartmentalization are wrong or bad.

Schizophrenics etc who experience compartmentalization are not the problem - professionals who invalidate and belittle their patients, are the problem.

Sorry..... That was a tangent.

Anyways, yeah just... I know this is not easy, but my best suggestion is to work against the urge to obsess over what's "really going on", and shift your focus towards what feels right and healthy for you.

All the best,

Quinn

I get a lot of entertainment thinking about how containers are used in video games sometimes.

Using a fear of Palestinian revenge as justification for the occupation is both wild and familiar

Aint nobody thinking about vengeance after getting freedom 😭 all we wanna do on this planet is drink chilled juice and not die

i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’

Love the contrast between the Americans’ “Apollo” and the Soviets’ “Sputnik.” You got the Americans naming their rocket after a Greek god trying to communicate the grandness and importance of this rocket. And you got the Soviets naming their rocket “fellow traveler.” Like a friend you go on an  adventure with together. This rocket is our little friend lol 

we need more dials and knobs and levers again. this world is lacking in dials and knobs and levers. it's one of our biggest issues.

"I love you , I'm glad we're friends"

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

the baby has one parent's little face marking thing and the other's coat because they're a little horse family the world is a beautiful place

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

David Tennant being a lifelong Doctor Who fan who was inspired by the show to act, becoming the Doctor and Ncuti Gatwa who watched David Tennant and was inspired to act, playing the Doctor opposite David’s Doctor is the most beautiful thing

this is what i sent

this is what i got