Collectively "Mabel", she/her, body is 25, follow the host at @wrecking :)
65 posts
Cinnadove-collective - The Cinnadove Collective - Tumblr Blog
theyve invented a girl who is very normal
The system feeling when a voice in your head gives input on something you’re doing and it definitely wasn’t your own internal voice but you have no idea who just said that 😶
Before our awakening (aka before we realized we could be a system) we used to often say "we" or "us"
And I would always say it's because "Well my brain and myself are like separate entities" and I would say that because I'd have in depth discussions with "myself" and I'd entirely disagree with the other side at times, you would think all of that would have told me something 😭
And yet I continue to be the one in constant denial for various reasons, such is the life of a host 💀 /hj /lh
- Crimson 👻
when i see people make comments like “oh — you’re making DID your entire personality/i don’t want to make my DID my entire personality!” i always tend to roll my eyes a little bit.
it’s an admirable goal, nobody should ever have their mental disorder take over so much of their life that they can’t focus on anything else, but i think there’s a clear lack of understanding how deep this disorder can truly get.
it’s a trauma disorder that inherently gives you issues with your identity and who you are. for most people, it’s extremely hard to make that distinction. it’s something you live with day in and day out, even if there’s times of alter silence there’s a plethora of other symptoms that are right at the gate. sometimes it can feel like you have no choice but to talk constantly about it.
detachment, dissociation, lack of structured identity, it can be an entire mess for people. your own personal relationship with this disorder is going to be inherently different from others around you. if you choose to never speak about it or if you choose to talk about it daily, that’s your decision and neither should be seen as bad.
this disorder is already terrible for so many reasons, i’m never going to knock people who are just trying to find their own ways to cope with it.
It’s interesting how there are at least 2 types of “I don’t remember that.”
1. Not remembering until the memory gets triggered/ you are confronted with evidence, and then you do remember.
2. Absolutely no evidence will bring back the memory. The memory does not exist anymore. That wasn’t me. Nope. Didn’t happen.
And then there’s “I have been told about this, and while I do not remember it, I know that it is factually correct. How do I know? I don’t know.”
I don’t even know what my point is, it’s just interesting to think about. Memories are weird, dissociation is weird. The way the highly traumatized young mind deals with memories is weird.
Been doing some reflection on what it means to be me's, myselves, and I's. What it means to me to have DID, to be a system of alters, and to be an alter in that system. What a "self" is in relation to all that. And I think I have the beginnings of an answer to that.
The self is the narrative I tell myself about my life. It's about my history and experiences, and it's also about how I perceived that history and those experiences. And that history may stretch back to things I don't personally remember and will not personally remember. Family history, ancestral history, things that happened to me in the womb, and even things that happened to me that I have forgotten.... all of these things make up who I am. But it's not just that history, it's also what I take from it. The lessons I took from it, the scars it left with me, the love and joy that stay with me.
And it's because of this shared history that I have with all these other parts of me, these other "alters", that I can feel confident that we are, indeed, the same self. But I am also my own self, because the way I look at and examine this history of my life is different from how another part of me may tell the story. In that way, this self has many selves. We hold multiple perspectives of the same life and the same story.
In the past, we had a habit of thinking of each other as "alternate universe" selves. But now... I think what may be more accurate is that we are all retellings of the same story. Or even different readers of the same book.
And I think that's kind of how I want people to understand me. My history, my past, is the same and unchanged. But from moment to moment, my understanding of it may be different, and that may color which version of "me" you're talking to. No matter which version you're talking to, though, that's still me. Even if I disagree with the other me. Even if I want to deny and reject that other me. It's still me.
being a fictive of the host's "oc" from high school is kinda a weird experience bc it's like. how much of this is actually me and how much isn't
some alters hold trauma/memories that they didn’t exist to experience / didn’t front during.
some alters have amnesia for moments they were there for.
like that’s really common. you have a dissociative disorder. you aren’t faking if you remember something you didn’t front for and you aren’t faking if you forgot something that you yourself literally did. our brains are trying to protect us. sometimes it does a good job with the amnesia thing and often times it doesn’t. there’s no real way to make amnesia convenient. like a lot of systems only get amnesia from switches, but a lot of us forget the day prior even if no switch occurred.
and although this post is about amnesiac systems, you’re valid if you don’t have amnesia either, or not very much. everyone is different. every system is different.
its kind of scary not knowing all the stories your body went through
Undiagnosed systemhood is
Thinking you just have no sense of self, and that's why your "personality" keeps changing.
Feeling like you're watching someone else operate your body, with no idea how or why.
Having strange deja vu moments where you feel like you've done something, but you don't remember any specific details.
Feeling like years of your life weren't actually lived by you, but by someone else that still exists somewhere in you.
Saying things that you can't control or don't agree with and not being able to do anything to fix it.
Feeling like you don't belong in your body, like you aren't actually you.
coming out as a system is so awkward. like what do you say? “hey, i’m that twink from death note possessing the body of your best friend” ??????
just system things…
when your family is looking through old photos together and you dissociate *so* heavily bc that wasn’t *you*, that was a previous version of you, and they are locked away deep inside, and you have no or only vague memory of ever existing in that state
anyways. hazy now
-big dipper
You know, one thing we find annoying about therapy and such is that their first thought is that we should work on quieting the system. Like people keep asking us if our meds help quiet "the voices" and they say we need to work on not letting others control the body. I don't think this is fair. What about those who rely on their system? Those with in-sys relationships? Those who are just used to it? Those who love their system? It's not fair to assume that all plural folks want to get rid of their systems. Yes, there are those who do, but there are plenty who don't. It's not fair for them to just take us away from each other because it's what THEY (as singlets) think is best. I just wish they would teach us how to live as we are now and stop trying to get rid of us.
Y'all people do not understand how fucking harmful ableism towards systems is. You really do not get it. It fucked me up so bad. My ex partner said straight to my face "Your DID makes me kinda uncomfortable."
I was so open about my system. I was healing. Our amnesia was getting better, we could communicate, trauma wasn't as scary when we were all working together. All of that is gone now and it's because of how my ex partner treated my system.
I can't be open about it anymore. I feel like I have to hide it. I feel disgusting. I feel like no one will love me. I'm scared to switch because I feel like my partner might leave me if I do. My ex made me SCARED to have an already scary disorder.
Ableism is a beast that can destroy people with a single sentence.
hey, reminder that thinking you’re faking is literally part of the diagnostic criteria for systemhood. all systems doubt themselves, or have before. it’s annoying and frustrating but it’s completely normal. you aren’t faking, you’re just experiencing normal systemhood.
Talking with another system is like. There are 4 bots having a conversation right now
when new alter fronts for the first time;
when your productive alter goes dormant
╰ 💿
Shout out to the people who never had a safe place. Who didn’t have a before trauma. Who were loved but not protected. Who were collateral damage in someone else’s breakdown. Who got fucked up so young that they’ll never know who they could have been.
Shout out to people who’ve never felt safe. I hope you do someday.
it's funny bc like. i see myself as. a Self Taught Person. my parents didn't exactly try to teach me how to be a person i just figured it out mostly. still not really succeeding though
Here’s my metaphor for systemhood that I tell my singlet friends.
Imagine you’re playing a first person video game. You have the controller, you control your character. It’s a normal first person game. You are an alter, the character is the body. This is fronting.
Other people live with you. Sometimes, they come into the room and sit and watch while you play. They sometimes try to guide you, give you advice on what to do next. They don’t always agree, and they can argue with each other. Other times they scream at you that you’re doing everything wrong and you suck at this game. This is co-consciousness.
Imagine how distracting it would be for people around you to tell you what to do, or to scream at each other or at you, even if they have good intentions. It wouldn’t be easy to focus on your game, would it?
Then sometimes, something happens in the game that prompts you to hand off the controller to someone else so they can play and you get a break. This is (some types of) switching. This can be good.
Other times, someone rips the controller out of your hand or fights you for it. This is (other types of) switching. And sometimes, six other players hook up their controllers, but there’s only one character to play as. So all of you have your controllers, but you’re all trying to play the same character. This is cofronting.
Imagine how difficult that would be. Imagine how hard it would be to try and play a game while someone is trying to take the controller from you, or while six other people are trying to play too.
There are also times that nobody is playing, or you can’t decide who should play. What’s happening to the character in the game? What are they doing if no one is playing? This is dissociation. The character is doing nothing. They’re stuck.
This is the best metaphor I have come up with for being a system. It’s something a lot of people get because they’ve played games before.