Dissociative Disorders & Physical Disability.
Recently, I shared a technique I use when I’m in pain to my partner, a technique that I thought was fine and normal, and he just shook his head and said “that’s sad.”
This keeps happening to me.
Said technique was that I can shut off the majority of my pain by pretending the affected part of the body is not part of me and is like a piece of clothing/inanimate object attached to me.
Sure the pain is still there but it’s… filtered? Walled off? It’s like putting on noise cancelling headphones at a concert. It’s much less intense and I’m able to focus on other tasks without bothering with it, when otherwise I might need to hassle with painkillers (or ask my parents/teachers/doctors for help.)
I learned quickly as a kid that my distress was, apparently, always exaggerated, and always an excuse.
I discovered I could do this as a kid and learned to disconnect from my whole body easily, instantly, on command, in order to escape whatever situation I was in. I literally used to call what I now know is a dissociative disorder “leaving my body,” or just “leaving.”
And I leave a lot even on a daily basis. When going to see my psychiatrist, I waited in mental catatonia while my body chatted with a nurse and I got my vitals taken. It felt like I wasn’t able to even process what I was looking at. Reality and my senses are very loose, and sometimes I forget them.
And despite knowing I have a dissociative disorder, I didn’t realize that “disconnecting” part of your body from your consciousness wasn’t how most people automatically respond to discomfort? Or at least pain?
So it felt like being hit by a car when I was faced with proof that I am physically disabled.
I still feel stupid when I take breaks, or painkillers, or use a mobility aid. Like I don’t need them. I can just switch the pain off and make it feel like distant discomfort.
But if I do that, all my senses are dulled, and so is my reaction time, and my spatial awareness, even more of my grasp on the passage of time, and some of my motor skills.
…
I want to know if this is something anyone else experiences. I’m sure others do, but I feel really alone in this.
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Btw Internal Family Systems therapy =/= CDD
IFS therapy is a type of therapy that can be used to benefit singlets as well as plurals. It involves things like inner child healing, as well as recognizing and working with different roles the brain takes on to protect itself.
The brain can do this WITHOUT the level of extreme dissociation it takes to be a plural system. Having different facets (for example, some presentations of BPD, a personality disorder that often comes with dissociative symptoms) doesn’t necessarily mean they’re fully dissociated parts.
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Vividly experiencing an innerworld in such detail it’s akin to reality is not a part of having DID.
We thought we weren’t a system for like a year because we didn’t experience this but so many other systems claimed to.
This kind of vivid experience can happen in people who have MADD or something adjacent, but it’s not characteristic of DID.
If you have a highly complex easily visualized innerworld you might have something else instead of/in addition to OSDDID.
You aren’t abnormal or wrong if you don’t have a vivid innerword, or even no innerworld at all. An innerworld in OSDDID is largely a visualization technique. Not an actual location you can get sucked into.
People on TikTok claiming they see the world like it’s on a screen as they stand behind a control panel like in Inside Out and claiming its because they have DID? Nope!
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System Coining
Sourceline System
THIS TERM IS TRAUMAGENIC ONLY
A polyfragmented system whose alters and fragments are mostly/all “descended”/split from the first few alters that formed. Most/all current alters are made from the original group.
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Out of curiosity, has anyone noticed having different levels of amnesia between different headmates coordinating with how related you are?
As in, protectors having less amnesia between other protectors, littles having less amnesia between other littles. Or alters who split closer in time to each other, or alters who are different age levels of the same person.
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If you think beating kids is okay i hope you die 💞💞💞
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None of our headmates experience gender remotely the same way. Even our cis girls and cis guys and those who identify with our agab all have a completely different relationship to their gender and I think it’s fascinating.
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