We haven't watched many of them personally, but I often see people recommend CTAD clinic on YouTube. I've like the few I have seen, found them very informative. Can't speak to the ones I haven't seen but people often speak highly of them
We didn't know we were a system until we were 22. We're bipolar and chalked a little bit of it up to that. We then figured it could be borderline personality disorder, we fit the diagnostic criteria. For a while, we justified switching with spiritual reasons. We were convinced we had past lives of sorts, and the switching was just aspects of our previous lives poking through. It wasn't until we moved into a safer home and we're dealing with pretty serious PTSD that an alter reached out to me directly, and refused to be ignored. He was basically like "you can't deny this any more, we need help". There was still a lot of denial for months but I couldn't ignore what was happening anymore. We started seeing a trauma specialist and worked with her. We needed to hear it from her. And after many sessions, taking the DES and MID, she confirmed OSDD1-b
We were planning on a name change before realizing system things, because our host is trans. We publically use his name and not our birth name, and have for almost a decade. Figuring out system things though we've been a little hesitant? We still want to use his name publically but want to come up with a middle or last name that can represent our system as a whole. We've also hesitated to change our name because we were planning on doing so this year, but there has been a rise of transphobia in our state, and we had been planning to change our gender marker at the same time. Figuring shit out rn. Not in any rush though.
The waiting sucks, I know how it is. We've taken the MID on two separate occasions and the waiting always drove me nuts. Not sure if this is helpful advice to you, but when we received our results the second time we recorded the session. The state I live in is a one party state, meaning you can legally record as long as one person present is aware of the recording. My therapist probably would've been fine if I had asked to record, but I didn't because I was nervous. When we got the results the first time we didn't record and never got a copy of the results and even though we know it indicated OSDD we kinda forgot a lot of the details of the results. So when we took it a second time 3 years later we recorded the session when we were given the results. It has been really helpful to have it whenever we have doubts or are confused about something, we listen to the recording detailing our disorder. Maybe this is not what you'd like to do, and that's fine, but I figured I'd bring it up and give you something to consider while you're waiting.
You may get a copy of the results yourself, but we didn't. There were circumstantial issues that got in the way of getting a copy and we just stopped asking after a bit, which is why the recording has been really helpful, we had it right away
Someone already suggested, but we second multipliedbyone! It's $8usd a month and worth every penny. We always try to make time for our weekly meeting, it's such a supportive place and we love that it's entirely run by systems. It's really cool getting to meet older systems too, we're in our 20s and a lot of the members are young adults but there's systems of every age there, there's a system in their 60s or 70s in our meeting. Systems who are parents. Systems twice my age who are just like me. Very cool group and the zoom format is super accessible
Hi I'm an alter who split in the background! I didn't front at all for a while year. But I was still kinda in the background hiding sometimes. That's how I eventually got found out, I started cofronting instead of just being coconcious and the host was like "what is going on? I do not listen to this music these thoughts aren't mine???" I was hiding myself from him but I also wanted to be my own person! I hid myself initially out of shame. I took a lot of emotions the host couldn't deal with when we split, so he was just glad to be without those feelings. And I'm an introject of a character that our host associated with an abuser. At that point in time, his disgust for the character, because he projected our abuser on them, was astronomical. He wouldn't have been able to cope with seeing me around or having me around. Around when I started being more active, but still hidden, was once he was moving past that disgust for the character. And working a lot in therapy. I kinda took this as a go ahead to ease him into meeting me. But honestly I was still kinda scared and ashamed that I existed. Our host figured out it was me before i had planned on introducing myself. Im not sure I would've introduced myself lol I didn't really have a plan but I also wasn't hiding very well at that point. Everything's great now, it's been over 2 years since I split and now I'm a cohost. But it was really shocking for our host to realize i was here for a whole year without him noticing. He was even able to pinpoint when I split, because we had journaled about feeling like we were going to split and about being confused that it felt like we split but noone new showed up. Sorry this was a lot lol but wanted to share my experience as an alter who split in the background
It's not a sight thing, it's a left brain right brain thing. While it can be done with light I guess, we've never done it that way. There are two things we hold, the therapist calls them "tappers", one in the left hand one in the right. They both vibrate but only one at a time, left, right, left, right, and so on. We've also done it with headphones too where a sound plays left, right, left, right, at the same time as the tappers on each side. The eye movement part of it I'm pretty sure comes from how it was discovered/developed. I was told the founder was looking our a train window moving their eyes left to right over and over while thinking about something that was hard to cope with, I just looked it up though and it was actually on a walk through the woods? Looking left to right left to right. But the sight part is not whats important. Hence why the tappers are the popular way to practice EMDR. We actually do EMDR with our eyes closed, I have done this with every therapist I've done EMDR with. It's left brain right brain shit. Idk. I can't really explain well how or why it works. But as someone with lots of trauma and lots of years in therapy, EMDR has helped us make some of the biggest steps in our healing process. I swear sometimes when I do it I can physically feel my brain healing for the rest of the day. Something something neural pathways. I wish you all the best of luck!
I highly recommend seeking out a trauma specialized therapist if you can. Psychologytoday.com let's you filter nearby therapist in detail, and shows DID specialists as well. I know at 14 you can't just get a therapist and pay for them yourself, but if possible I would try to push your guardian to let you do this. I wouldn't bring up the dissociative disorder to your guardian, this typically does not end well. I'd find a therapist or two that fits your needs, and present it to them under the guide of depression or anxiety or whatever it would take to get them to let you have therapy.
Yes our system revealed itself once we moved out of our abusive situation. A few months after moving out. I think of it like this, our subconscious knew we wouldn't be safe if we knew we were a system while living there. Of course, the symptoms go all the way back to childhood. But we didn't know it was a dissociative disorder. We just didn't have solid communication or "proof" until an alter introduced himself and wouldn't let the host ignore him. Because of that, we ended up with a trauma specialist that has helped us through building communication and healing and getting along and what not. I believe this is common for systems, or atleast something I've seen happen frequently. The disorder hiding itself from you is part of the whole keeping you safe thing.
Ctad clinic on YouTube has good information from what I hear. Petals of a rose is a short film about DID that I really relate to as someone who has osdd1b. It may help you understand more. I can answer specific questions but don't have the energy right now to explain the entire disorder
I hear CTAD clinic on you tube is very good information, as a resource. Journaling is very important. We use a discord server for our journalling. It's just me in the server, and the bot PluralKit as it helps us keep track of who is saying what so we don't have to write our names everytime. We have so many channels in our journaling server, one where we just talk to each other, a vent channel, a channel for system art we make, each part has their own channel, channel where we list triggers, and dozens other that are specific. We've found this method helpful for us, not saying you have to do this as well. Sorry you're in your current situation and I wish you the best.
Fictive is the same as introject. Fictive is short for fictional introject. And the idea of an original is a bit outdated, the theory of structural dissociation is what is being used currently in the mental health field. No shame in splitting. No shame in splitting an introject. You can't control these things. Whether or not your old host has split is not for me to say.
We make Kandi bracelets! We get lots of beads and string cheap at dollar tree and thrift stores so we have an assortment and everyone has their own personalized bracelets with their names in letter beads. It's fun to make them together but we often misplaced them lol we need a bag or something
We are autistic. Diagnosed at 17, but the OSDD wasn't diagnosed for years. We figured out the autism on our own, and pushed for a diagnosis. I've even gotten diagnosed a second time when I went to a psychologist who didn't believe I was autistic so he had me re do the testing lol.
Disclaimer that we have osdd 1-b. But wanted to share our experience. Id say it's a green flag that she specializes in DID. We worked with a therapis tfor the last 4 years (had to change last month, because she's moving on to other things but our new therapist works under her and is also a specialist) who specializes in trauma and dissociative disorders. We were really apprehensive about her suggestions for EMDR because we had done EMDR with someone who was not good at his job and generally a bad person. And we were concerned and worried in general about EMDR. But we knew EMDR could be modified for dissociative disorders. And she also let me know she does that. We went atleast a year without doing it, doing other things in therapy and we did a lot of CRM also modified for our OSDD.
Thank you so much! I appreciate showing both the pros and cons - and I'm beyond proud of that persecutor (or whatever label they may use) for confronting those things. Definitely something we'd love for a few of our persecutors to work on lmao
Thank you! Sorry for the late response, I somehow mis locked to your profile before and accidentally replied to an old post thinking it was my normal feed and then when I saw i panicked and deleted it sorry! Mbcgmxkgvjlvagdtjs.
Therapy has helped us heal in more ways I could ever put into words. It took a lot for us to get into trauma therapy, because we were abused by multiple therapists in the past. And trauma therapy with the right therapist has truly saved our life. We wrote a detailed comment the other day about how EMDR specifically helped our system so I'll share that here
Our alter C split off of me during a period of time where I couldn't handle living anymore and was having multiple meltdowns a day. He split during a massive meltdown. And I'm really grateful to him. The burden became shared. We don't find it weird really. Interesting sometimes, how similar we are. But he's also different from me in a handful of ways. We get along very well but we don't feel like 2 of the same person, he's his own person. We have 2 others in our system that one split off the other, and they were extremely similar in a lot of ways and got along immediately, they'd mess with me because they'd pretend to be the other one to make me confused they found it really funny. They get along great, they definitely have a special connection between them because of the nature of the split. When it comes down to it though we really are all parts of the same self, you know. So there's varying degrees on which this happens because we all share a brain and a body.
As someone with OCD this sound a lot like OCD could be the major contributing factor. The more you push away the intrusive thoughts the more distressing and prevelant they will become. The DID is also a factor probably. We have had a similar experience. We had a persecutor who would take the intrusive thoughts and say them himself. He would push me and try and convince me they were my real thoughts because he wanted me to suffer. He would gaslight me, knowing exactly how to make me feel distressed. Try to convince me I'm attracted to people I absolutely wasn't and it was driving me insane, losing touch with what was real and what was not. He would also try to convince me that HE was attracted to these people and tell me he would act on it, saying this just to upset me further because he liked making me upset and the more unstable I was the more he could front and do what he wanted to sabotage me. Due to a lot of therapy he is no longer a persecutor and so this specifically hasn't been an issue. But all of us experience the OCD and varying levels. Some alters experience a lot more intrusive thoughts than others. From experience, and from what mental health professionals say, trying to push away intrusive thoughts only makes them worse. I know it's distressing to think them, but know that they are only thoughts.
We haven't watched many of them personally, but I often see people recommend CTAD clinic on YouTube. I've like the few I have seen, found them very informative. Can't speak to the ones I haven't seen but people often speak highly of them
We didn't know we were a system until we were 22. We're bipolar and chalked a little bit of it up to that. We then figured it could be borderline personality disorder, we fit the diagnostic criteria. For a while, we justified switching with spiritual reasons. We were convinced we had past lives of sorts, and the switching was just aspects of our previous lives poking through. It wasn't until we moved into a safer home and we're dealing with pretty serious PTSD that an alter reached out to me directly, and refused to be ignored. He was basically like "you can't deny this any more, we need help". There was still a lot of denial for months but I couldn't ignore what was happening anymore. We started seeing a trauma specialist and worked with her. We needed to hear it from her. And after many sessions, taking the DES and MID, she confirmed OSDD1-b
We were planning on a name change before realizing system things, because our host is trans. We publically use his name and not our birth name, and have for almost a decade. Figuring out system things though we've been a little hesitant? We still want to use his name publically but want to come up with a middle or last name that can represent our system as a whole. We've also hesitated to change our name because we were planning on doing so this year, but there has been a rise of transphobia in our state, and we had been planning to change our gender marker at the same time. Figuring shit out rn. Not in any rush though.
The waiting sucks, I know how it is. We've taken the MID on two separate occasions and the waiting always drove me nuts. Not sure if this is helpful advice to you, but when we received our results the second time we recorded the session. The state I live in is a one party state, meaning you can legally record as long as one person present is aware of the recording. My therapist probably would've been fine if I had asked to record, but I didn't because I was nervous. When we got the results the first time we didn't record and never got a copy of the results and even though we know it indicated OSDD we kinda forgot a lot of the details of the results. So when we took it a second time 3 years later we recorded the session when we were given the results. It has been really helpful to have it whenever we have doubts or are confused about something, we listen to the recording detailing our disorder. Maybe this is not what you'd like to do, and that's fine, but I figured I'd bring it up and give you something to consider while you're waiting.
thank you for the idea! i didnt know i wouldnt get a copy of my results. i will definitely consider recording my session
You may get a copy of the results yourself, but we didn't. There were circumstantial issues that got in the way of getting a copy and we just stopped asking after a bit, which is why the recording has been really helpful, we had it right away
Someone already suggested, but we second multipliedbyone! It's $8usd a month and worth every penny. We always try to make time for our weekly meeting, it's such a supportive place and we love that it's entirely run by systems. It's really cool getting to meet older systems too, we're in our 20s and a lot of the members are young adults but there's systems of every age there, there's a system in their 60s or 70s in our meeting. Systems who are parents. Systems twice my age who are just like me. Very cool group and the zoom format is super accessible
Hi I'm an alter who split in the background! I didn't front at all for a while year. But I was still kinda in the background hiding sometimes. That's how I eventually got found out, I started cofronting instead of just being coconcious and the host was like "what is going on? I do not listen to this music these thoughts aren't mine???" I was hiding myself from him but I also wanted to be my own person! I hid myself initially out of shame. I took a lot of emotions the host couldn't deal with when we split, so he was just glad to be without those feelings. And I'm an introject of a character that our host associated with an abuser. At that point in time, his disgust for the character, because he projected our abuser on them, was astronomical. He wouldn't have been able to cope with seeing me around or having me around. Around when I started being more active, but still hidden, was once he was moving past that disgust for the character. And working a lot in therapy. I kinda took this as a go ahead to ease him into meeting me. But honestly I was still kinda scared and ashamed that I existed. Our host figured out it was me before i had planned on introducing myself. Im not sure I would've introduced myself lol I didn't really have a plan but I also wasn't hiding very well at that point. Everything's great now, it's been over 2 years since I split and now I'm a cohost. But it was really shocking for our host to realize i was here for a whole year without him noticing. He was even able to pinpoint when I split, because we had journaled about feeling like we were going to split and about being confused that it felt like we split but noone new showed up. Sorry this was a lot lol but wanted to share my experience as an alter who split in the background
It's not a sight thing, it's a left brain right brain thing. While it can be done with light I guess, we've never done it that way. There are two things we hold, the therapist calls them "tappers", one in the left hand one in the right. They both vibrate but only one at a time, left, right, left, right, and so on. We've also done it with headphones too where a sound plays left, right, left, right, at the same time as the tappers on each side. The eye movement part of it I'm pretty sure comes from how it was discovered/developed. I was told the founder was looking our a train window moving their eyes left to right over and over while thinking about something that was hard to cope with, I just looked it up though and it was actually on a walk through the woods? Looking left to right left to right. But the sight part is not whats important. Hence why the tappers are the popular way to practice EMDR. We actually do EMDR with our eyes closed, I have done this with every therapist I've done EMDR with. It's left brain right brain shit. Idk. I can't really explain well how or why it works. But as someone with lots of trauma and lots of years in therapy, EMDR has helped us make some of the biggest steps in our healing process. I swear sometimes when I do it I can physically feel my brain healing for the rest of the day. Something something neural pathways. I wish you all the best of luck!
I highly recommend seeking out a trauma specialized therapist if you can. Psychologytoday.com let's you filter nearby therapist in detail, and shows DID specialists as well. I know at 14 you can't just get a therapist and pay for them yourself, but if possible I would try to push your guardian to let you do this. I wouldn't bring up the dissociative disorder to your guardian, this typically does not end well. I'd find a therapist or two that fits your needs, and present it to them under the guide of depression or anxiety or whatever it would take to get them to let you have therapy.
First question no, second question yes
Using mouthwash takes less energy than brushing our teeth so we try to atleast do that when we can. It helps
Yes our system revealed itself once we moved out of our abusive situation. A few months after moving out. I think of it like this, our subconscious knew we wouldn't be safe if we knew we were a system while living there. Of course, the symptoms go all the way back to childhood. But we didn't know it was a dissociative disorder. We just didn't have solid communication or "proof" until an alter introduced himself and wouldn't let the host ignore him. Because of that, we ended up with a trauma specialist that has helped us through building communication and healing and getting along and what not. I believe this is common for systems, or atleast something I've seen happen frequently. The disorder hiding itself from you is part of the whole keeping you safe thing.
We use discord and Pluralkit. We have a private server with just us and Pluralkit in it
Do you mean two alters as in two as a whole (host if there is one, and at least one other)? Or two others besides the potential host?
Two including the host
We all struggle with EDs differently in our system. You are definitely not alone in this experience
Ctad clinic on YouTube has good information from what I hear. Petals of a rose is a short film about DID that I really relate to as someone who has osdd1b. It may help you understand more. I can answer specific questions but don't have the energy right now to explain the entire disorder
As someone who transitioned before realizing we are an osdd1b system, I really relate to your joirnals
I hear CTAD clinic on you tube is very good information, as a resource. Journaling is very important. We use a discord server for our journalling. It's just me in the server, and the bot PluralKit as it helps us keep track of who is saying what so we don't have to write our names everytime. We have so many channels in our journaling server, one where we just talk to each other, a vent channel, a channel for system art we make, each part has their own channel, channel where we list triggers, and dozens other that are specific. We've found this method helpful for us, not saying you have to do this as well. Sorry you're in your current situation and I wish you the best.
We've done lots of therapy on Zoom and found it helpful.
Fictive is the same as introject. Fictive is short for fictional introject. And the idea of an original is a bit outdated, the theory of structural dissociation is what is being used currently in the mental health field. No shame in splitting. No shame in splitting an introject. You can't control these things. Whether or not your old host has split is not for me to say.
We make Kandi bracelets! We get lots of beads and string cheap at dollar tree and thrift stores so we have an assortment and everyone has their own personalized bracelets with their names in letter beads. It's fun to make them together but we often misplaced them lol we need a bag or something
Additionally, you could crochet little bracelets also and put letter beads into it while you make it!
We are autistic. Diagnosed at 17, but the OSDD wasn't diagnosed for years. We figured out the autism on our own, and pushed for a diagnosis. I've even gotten diagnosed a second time when I went to a psychologist who didn't believe I was autistic so he had me re do the testing lol.
Disclaimer that we have osdd 1-b. But wanted to share our experience. Id say it's a green flag that she specializes in DID. We worked with a therapis tfor the last 4 years (had to change last month, because she's moving on to other things but our new therapist works under her and is also a specialist) who specializes in trauma and dissociative disorders. We were really apprehensive about her suggestions for EMDR because we had done EMDR with someone who was not good at his job and generally a bad person. And we were concerned and worried in general about EMDR. But we knew EMDR could be modified for dissociative disorders. And she also let me know she does that. We went atleast a year without doing it, doing other things in therapy and we did a lot of CRM also modified for our OSDD.
Thank you so much! I appreciate showing both the pros and cons - and I'm beyond proud of that persecutor (or whatever label they may use) for confronting those things. Definitely something we'd love for a few of our persecutors to work on lmao
Thank you! Sorry for the late response, I somehow mis locked to your profile before and accidentally replied to an old post thinking it was my normal feed and then when I saw i panicked and deleted it sorry! Mbcgmxkgvjlvagdtjs.
Therapy has helped us heal in more ways I could ever put into words. It took a lot for us to get into trauma therapy, because we were abused by multiple therapists in the past. And trauma therapy with the right therapist has truly saved our life. We wrote a detailed comment the other day about how EMDR specifically helped our system so I'll share that here
Our alter C split off of me during a period of time where I couldn't handle living anymore and was having multiple meltdowns a day. He split during a massive meltdown. And I'm really grateful to him. The burden became shared. We don't find it weird really. Interesting sometimes, how similar we are. But he's also different from me in a handful of ways. We get along very well but we don't feel like 2 of the same person, he's his own person. We have 2 others in our system that one split off the other, and they were extremely similar in a lot of ways and got along immediately, they'd mess with me because they'd pretend to be the other one to make me confused they found it really funny. They get along great, they definitely have a special connection between them because of the nature of the split. When it comes down to it though we really are all parts of the same self, you know. So there's varying degrees on which this happens because we all share a brain and a body.
As someone with OCD this sound a lot like OCD could be the major contributing factor. The more you push away the intrusive thoughts the more distressing and prevelant they will become. The DID is also a factor probably. We have had a similar experience. We had a persecutor who would take the intrusive thoughts and say them himself. He would push me and try and convince me they were my real thoughts because he wanted me to suffer. He would gaslight me, knowing exactly how to make me feel distressed. Try to convince me I'm attracted to people I absolutely wasn't and it was driving me insane, losing touch with what was real and what was not. He would also try to convince me that HE was attracted to these people and tell me he would act on it, saying this just to upset me further because he liked making me upset and the more unstable I was the more he could front and do what he wanted to sabotage me. Due to a lot of therapy he is no longer a persecutor and so this specifically hasn't been an issue. But all of us experience the OCD and varying levels. Some alters experience a lot more intrusive thoughts than others. From experience, and from what mental health professionals say, trying to push away intrusive thoughts only makes them worse. I know it's distressing to think them, but know that they are only thoughts.