Traumagenic Did - Tumblr Posts

My brain at six years old when something traumatic happened

Someone in our system made a userbox, I feel like this is one worth sharing for anyone who would find it useful. Enjoy. Feel free to use it.

We have complicated opinions on syscourse lol.

Not to make anyone worry, but saying you're a CDD system can make you a target for abusers and bullying.

By stating you're a system

You're disclosing that you went through debilitating trauma at a young age

You're disclosing that you may act like a young child in certain situations, and that child may not know, or understand certain acts

You disassociate to a level where we do not know what was done by/to the collective body

You're telling people that you may have patches of amnesia, disorientation, and where you may split under pressure

Many systems have issues with self harm, suicidal thoughts, substance use disorders and unfortunately, many abusers will take advantage of this

Systems, due to their amnesiac nature, are very easy to gaslight, often by saying that a different part/alter did or didn't do something

But Kyle! What can I do about it?!?

Choose, very carefully, who you tell that you have a system. We try not to tell new people in our life until we're fully trusting that they won't take advantage of the knowledge of the system. Even then, we can count on one hand how many of our in person friends and family are aware of our system.

Avoid linking social media, this includes discord, where you are 'out' about your system to other social media, especially around workplaces. Some workplaces, schools, universities and other places still hold stigma around DID (thank you, Split /s).

Be careful what you tell people about your system: keeping alter counts private, not giving out certain alter's names, using pseudonyms/symbols for alters are some of the ways we've done this. If someone we don't want to know about the system asks about an alter name, the majority of the time, we'll say that they're an OC.

Most people don't know what DID and OSDD are unless they have been in certain circles or happen to have an interest in it, so you are usually safe… but I always air on the side of caution.

Do what you wish with this list, I wanted to put these thoughts out there. Stay safe, feel free to reblog with more ways you keep your system safe.

Drink water, have something to eat, have your meds if you need them, use your mobility aids if you need them, and do something nice for yourself today.

With love,

System Dad (Kyle / 💜)

DID systems 🤝 Hydras 🤝 being traumatised and splitting another one to cope

We made something we're super proud of today, I just have to be careful posting it online as it's for our final design assignment

...the green guy in the middle has my whole heart 🥺 grumpy sock puppet 🥺🥺🥺

*Talking with therapist*

"...Who's fronting? shit's all foggy and I keep feeling interruptions"

*noise*

"..guys.."

*more hubbub*

"fine, write your names down"

*gets six names*

"awesome"

[perks of being a protector]

A rumour has started at my school that we have 'multiple personality disorder' I'm going to be sick.

They aren't meant to know that. fuck fuck fuck fuck-

yes we have DID but the people saying we have it are the kinds of people who'd accuse us of having a killer in the system because of 'split'

im going to be sick-

Some of y'all really need to read up on the structural disassociation theory btw

After about a year of having Simply Plural, I finally organised it beyond a few scattered categories

Role (with a toilet paper roll, bc why not), goes to this, which then breaks into alter lists.

Syskids breaks into age groups (I love the term syskids sm it's so cute... and i really hope it's not a endogen term)

Interests/hyperfixations breaks into multiple tags so we can see who shares interests.

Almost all alters are in at least two categories :)

"some sort of cryptid" is eternally going to make me grin a lot of our alters have non-human traits (it's a long standing way we process lol) but we don't know what to call them... cryptid it is 🤣

I keep seeing systems posting their fronter bracelets and felt left out so

Here are some of ours!

We don't wear them all the time but they're helpful when we do

And yes, Kyle does in fact have '69' on his... though I suppose I can't say anything when our blog has 69 in it too. Everyone hid meaning in their bracelets, flags and relationships etc but I don't know them all..

mine doesn't have any special meaning; I just really like orange, and I'm witchy sooo.. evil eye.

Have you ever tried bullet journaling?

OMG I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED

WE HAVE

Our host was really really into it back in 2021 - he'd journal everything. Here are a couple of their pages. Yes, they'd track fanfic as books read! Now we just use Goodreads and AO3 history.. we read too many fics to track any more. (please add us on goodreads, we need friend's reccomendations).

We decided to get a new journal for the system with lighter coloured dots… here's my first page!

Our handwriting tends to look quite similar, though there are some little differences. I'm really pedantic about how my numbers and letters look - and I always get so annoyed when they stray off the lines from our shaky hands.

We keep our front history in SimplyPlural, but sometimes we'll leave notes for one another!

Here's my brother's page, sorry I had to blank out some details for our safety.. the "pansexual, yes, I do f*ck pans" is an in-sys joke..but kind of self-explanatory XD

a quick poem about our host's experience being diagnosed with DID

Diagnosis A pile of papers rest on my lap My history laid bare Yet it reads like fiction

I peer at the white-coat and tilt my head ‘Surely, this is a story?’ He shakes his head and explains

My mind fractured Far before I was old enough to remember it He explains my mind is in little parts ‘alters’ he calls them

The definition reverberates through my consciousness “Alter: a change in character or composition, typically in a comparatively small but significant way.”

I shake my head, a laugh bursting from my chest Humorous; stop messing with me He frowns

‘I’m not.. you have a personality disorder’

If I have a personality disorder, the world is flat He hands me another leaflet Dissociative identity disorder, formerly Multiple personality disorder—

my eyes blur before I can read the rest suddenly it makes sense every day, you’re a different side shame washes through my body

he says they have names and suddenly i feel ill

A kindly voice murmurs reassurance I can’t see her But she’s as real as my beating heart "Welcome to the family, kid"

*cutely redesigns your DID flag*

Playing around with our DID design assignment, tonight, and I made a thing...?

Look, it's just for funsies (and the assignment), I'm not expecting everyone to suddenly use my flag lol but I'd like to know, what do y'all think?

Coined for DID/OSDD (ie. complex dissociative disorders).

I took inspiration from the existing DID/OSDD symbolism in the Venn diagram (which is also a logo I'm using in the assignment). The colour scheme is inspired by the existing orange for DID, and the teal used in the OSDD flag coined by a deleted user on r/OSDD (and I've always thought of DID/OSDD as teal and orange!). The stripes are uneven to represent the fluctuating nature of having a CDD system, alters. The greenish-brown stripe is for amnesia and jarring day-to-day interruptions. There's a bit more meaning in it, but I can't remember right now.

I did a reverse image search with it, and it seems to be rather close to the pro non-traumagen "PMSC&" flag (according to pluralpedia..) and a little close to "venngender" which I hadn't heard of either until literally now... but…. apart from that little overlap… I think it's okay! Besides, there are only so many colour combos in the world!

Hope you like it!!

I can't tell anyone not to interact with this post: this is the internet, after all.. but we would appreciate it if it remained in DID/OSDD/trauma system spaces only.

I really hate the term 'headmates' because of its origins, 'alters' feels too clinical for casual conversation… normally we just say 'the sys' or 'the others' but I wish I had another term fjhfj

I have a small list of ideas for alternatives

mindsharers

echoes / echoforms

facetselves

mindfragments

inner entities

mindshifts

inner fam

brainmates

mindmates

headfellows

sysmate

but i dont really dig any of them :( any ideas?

Host & Protector Amber on host's journey to accepting their system (a rather bitsy post)

(colours used to differentiate who said what)

Host: it's been a long road, and I'm nowhere near done but… One of the hardest things to accept when I realised I have a system was accepting that DID isn't bad. DID systems aren't inherently dangerous. They're not any more likely to be abusers than the general population.

I knew so in theory from watching documentaries, researching, listening to podcast and reading people's experiences with DID. However.. personal experience often outweighs rationed research.

TW, talk of sexual assault, harassment, grooming, abuse, abusers using DID as a scapegoat

I was groomed extensively by a person who claimed to have DID.

Host: I knew they'd tried to SA me however I was told, by them, that they never got to the point of actually doing it, and that their “primary protector” had stopped "their bad alter" from raping me. [Amber: our trauma holders have things to be said about that]

but in doing so, their likely faking of DID, and hiding under a guise of "that wasn't me" "my bad alter did that" "we have bad alters!" lead to me developing a deep-rooted fear of anyone who said they had DID/OSDD, including to the point of denying any possiblity we could have it.

[Amber: when I did call them out on touching us inappropriately, they blamed it on one of their other alters.]

I didn't need Split to scare me into believing DID systems were bad, I had someone I knew, and at the time, respected, do it for me.

From my perspective, everything in my life fell apart.

It was only after I had vanished into our internal world for several months did I start to feel safe to ask questions. I started writing to Amber and everyone else.

Amber: I wrote back pretty much as soon as I saw host had written to me - they'd addressed me by name, so I wrote back and explained my role. And they flipped out even further. We didn't see our host for months.

Not only did they disappear in headspace, but they wouldn't float in and out of the fronting space like they did previously. They wouldn't front, or track in Simply Plural, write, or comment on anything. I thought they'd gone dormant for a while.

Eventually they fronted, and asked myself and a couple of our friends, “Is there anyone in our system who would hurt anyone?”

I and one of our best friends explained that there wasn't. Luckily for us, our host trusts that friend implicitly and combined with my note of "everyone in our system would rather kill themselves than hurt anyone else" they started to believe us. Slowly but surely they started relaxing, and believing me, and being willing to speak in therapy.

And in return, our brain has finally let them appear solidly enough in the internal world that some of us can see and interact with them.

I finally got to hug them.

All I can say right now, I am so fucking proud of how far our host has come in the last couple of years. They've grown, matured and fought through so much shit lately, I couldn't be prouder. I feel like an older sister saying so, but it's so true.

Moral of the story; fakers suck ass. Hosts take time to come around to being in systems. Do your research.

And most importantly, be kind to your hosts and your system members. Take care of them. They may not front the most, they may not be the bravest people on the planet, they may not even know anything about the system, but our role as system members is to love and support our hosts and other sys members, come hell or high water.

Don't be afraid to reach out to people. You don't have to do this with just your system. <3

Reminder

DID isn't just having fun people in your head

Along with shifts in personality, it's often times:

amnesia: 'waking up' with no memory of what's going on

travelling and having no idea where you are or how you got there

dizziness

confusion

spacing out

headaches

feeling broken & worthless

fear

not knowing why or how you're wearing what you're wearing

nausea

pain

anxiety

finding things amongst your belongings you don't remember acquiring

time loss

depression

suicidal ideation & action

spikes in inexplicable emotion, especially anger, fear, and shame

body and voice dysphoria

depersonalization & derealisation

loss of control

hearing voices

finding injuries you don't remember getting

self harm

not recognising friends/family/colleagues

forgetting important events (birthdays, parties, graduations etc)

mood shifts with seemingly no trigger

finding notes in similar handwriting but something about it is slightly off

flashbacks: somatic flashbacks, nightmares, split second flashbacks to 'little things' but not getting more detail

bed wetting

age regression

inadvertently lying, or being questioned if you have

feeling like your body isn't yours

knowing something is wrong, but not what

wondering why your body doesn't align with your perceived sex (for alters whose gender/sex don't align with the body)

watching your body do things and having no control over it (feeling like a puppet or like playing a video-game in 3rd person)

mass fluctuations in libido: fluctuations from hypersexual to zero sexual desire

not being sure if things really happened, or whether you imagined/thought about them

identity confusion

+ many more

I have two book recommendations DID experiences: "All Of Me" by Kim Noble, and "The Girl in The Green Dress" by Jeni Haynes. Please check trigger warnings.

Asking the system whether they want to use parts language (each alter is part of a greater whole), or person language (we're multiple people sharing a body) is always so funny because this happens

fronter, talking to someone else: yeah, we're all part of a greater whole, don't worry, we're all the same person :)

alter: [screams as if the devil just bit their earlobe] how dare you!!?!??!?! I'm a person!! aND I'M NOTHING LIKE YOU

vs

fronter, talking to someone else: so it's like- we're all individuals- sharing a body, and we all have names and feelings and-

alter A: . . . what are feelings?

alter B: ??? what is a name . . . . ?????

alter C: wdym I'm sharing a body with these imbeciles, ew

alter D: ..aren't we parts of a greater whole, cus the brain split to deal with traum-

alter C: shut up, Jessica.

bringing this one back

Researching DID as a system always leads to this.

Purple links.

Someone's already looked.

And we forgot.

Hi! I'd love a rundown of why you use PluralKit and Tupperbox! I've not looked much into did management apps before tbh

Awesome! This is adding on from this post about SimplyPlural.

Your main options for tracking apps are SimplyPlural and Octocon.

Octocon is currently only available on android while SimplyPlural is on web, android, iOS and can be run as a program/pinned to taskbar on Windows (I don't know how but one of my sysmates installed it as a web app program 😅).

Main options for discord proxying (or messaging as an individual); PluralKit, Tupperbox and Octocon. All three are added to a server as a bot, and allow for a proxy/app message that displays as a different username but remains linked to your account.

Using commands specific to each application, users can find out who posted each message.

Okay so back to the question

Why do we use TB and SimplyPlural instead of the alternatives?

SimplyPlural

Super easy explanation: we've been using SimplyPlural longer than Octocon has been around. We've got about 16 months worth of tracking data, friends, 40 or so custom fields saved in it, along with all our alters and personal info. Making the switch to Octocon was something we tried when it was first announced, but we decided against it after giving it a test run as both an app and as a discord bot. We had some issues with importing custom fields and image hosting.

For those of you who don't know, custom fields are categories, or questions that you can ask an alter to fill in; some come built in like favourite colour, food etc, however you can also add your own as needed. Ours include everything from name, internal relationships (e.g. alter A hates alter B but adores alter C, alter C is alter D's child, alter C and B are siblings etc), skills, favourite things, and positive/negative triggers, amongst other things. We use them all the time, and a fair number of our alters have filled in the questions - losing that information was not something we wanted to do (..or heaven forbid... copying all of it over from existing SimplyPlural profiles). I suspect this is something that Atlas, the developer, is working on.

Presently, Octocon doesn't have the functionality we need/are used to from SimplyPlural. Sooo, onto some positives; things we adore about SimplyPlural

>The ability to host images within custom fields and alter descriptions, using '' allowing us to do things like this...

Kaden learnt how to do this and posted about it at the time, since then he has since been slowly explaining to the rest of us how to do it.

Our SimplyPlural profiles are one of the places where we can be fully ourselves without worrying as much about the collective's outward appearance etc; some of us dress our profiles up with collages, fancy text, banners, and flags while others just have a bit of information or an empty bio; it's completely up to the individual (and not being biased or anything, but our personalities really show up in profiles).

> Front history

Having a full breakdown of fronters past (as long as they log it) is super helpful, especially when our therapist wants to check in on triggers etc. It also helps us to figure out when an alter may have gone dormant or may only appear at specific times. I specifically like that it gives you a visual breakdown of who was fronting during what time, and it holds information on individual alter profiles about when they fronted, and for how long.

>Privacy buckets

This is something I posted about a few days ago. The current beta version has reworked the privacy settings from public (all friends), trusted friends (selected people) and private (your system only) to entirely in the user's control. Instead of having 3 options, you can make specific categories for groups of friends, or even label each of your friends with one bucket and choose each alter, custom field and custom front they can see.

@persmo made a really detailed post on this in late August that I've linked here.

>Friends

The ability to change the amount of data friends are able to see (eg. ee shared members, see fronter etc)

>Message Boards

Each profile has their own message board. Messages left on boards send a notification to the phone when that specific alter fronts, meaning if someone forgets to check the shared chat, they still get the information. Notifications will continue being sent every time they mark front until that alter marks the message as read.

Being able to leave messages for each other has been a literal lifesaver.

>In-system Chat

SimplyPlural has a section where you can chat solely within your system. It functions a bit like Discord in the way that you set up sections with individual chats inside of them.

We use them for fun things like silly quotes, reading logs, infodumping, as well as more serious things - if something happened to someone we love, we'd mark it in there to make sure the information is passed on to those who need to know.

>Groups

Alter groups are incredibly helpful for us, even though we're a relatively small system. We use them as tags for interests, roles, ages and tagging sources for our few introjects.

Tagging interests and roles often ends up looking like this 😆 I promise it makes sense to us... ish.

>Analytics

System analytics is one of the features we use a lot in therapy, especially now that we have more than 6 months data saved in SP tracking. We can see at a glance how much one alter has fronted in a set amount of time, and how many times they have tracked as fronter.

>App reminders

SimplyPlural allows for users to set reminders at specific times (eg. everyday at 3pm take your meds) but also that the reminders are sent after an action happens. We have an automatic reminder set up for a set amount of time after someone marks front, to make sure they are still fronting.

>Honourable mentions

System polls

Switch notifications (both for our friends and for when our system friends switch)

'Quick front entries' - adding a member to front history if they didn't track

User reports; reports generated by SimplyPlural that remain attached to a URL that can be sent to family, friends, therapists etc without giving your SimplyPlural username or making them get the app.

Cross platform support: SimplyPlural runs on android, iOS and web, meaning as long as our friends have a log in they can use it... and we can run it on all our devices.

I've totally missed some things, but they're the most important points

TupperBox

This section is shorter, promise.

We chose TupperBox over PluralKit and Octocon as we didn't want to have any personal data (beyond names) linked to our discord. PluralKit has the capacity to have member profiles, however the trade-off is having a system ID number that is attached to every member profile (no matter how tight your privacy is) that can be used by anyone to pull up any linked information that's marked public. More information on why here.

PluralKit makes users automatically public with commands and the online portal being the only way to change it. Unfortunately, many treat PluralKit as if it's private and often include extremely personal things in their descriptions (triggers, sexuality, etc). More conversation on that here.

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with Octocon's integration on Discord, but I have heard pretty good things about it.

Tupperbox has less functionality than PluralKit and Octocon in that it's mostly streamlined for role-playing simplicity. All that displays when you send a proxy message is the name of the tupper/user and an optional profile picture, which we drastically prefer. It sucks not being able to bring up a profile to say who we are, but we'd rather have that than have our PluralKit leaked.

All of this is personal preference, use whatever you find works best! :)

It drastically depends on your country, Infernal. We kiwis are lucky that a DID diagnosis doesn't affect day to day things very much, however some other countries are not as forgiving, and neither are individual psychs and supports.

Lack of support and response happens in New Zealand too: I've been denied healthcare (especially mental health care) when I've said I have DID — people respond awfully, often aggressively, or fearfully.

We've been hospitalised for suicidal ideation just to be told that 'you're making it up if your alter tried it — how the hell would you forget that?' or 'how would you know' as if the pill packets weren't telling enough because they simply believe DID doesn't exist or don't understand it (bc tbh NZ doesn't teach sh*t on DID).

Councillors won't work with me as I'm 'too complicated' or they believe we must be faking it as they believe DID doesn't exist, or they don't know how to deal with anything Spicer than anxiety, or we have 'too many' issues to be easily supported.

Lots of chronic pain specialists in our experience don't like DID patients as the effect of trauma on the central nervous system becomes an extra barrier to healing; making them look bad — I've stopped telling certain specialists we have DID to prevent the instant dismissal.

I've told people we have DID to be hit with variations of 'you must be faking it for TikTok, i've never seen you switch', fear of an alter being dangerous, wondering why we aren't locked up or complete confusion. We've had long time friends turn on us on a dime for knowing we have DID; immediately assuming we're out to hurt them. Yes, it's founded in misinformation, but it still happens. and still hurts.

We're not allowed to drive too, due to our fainting (they may be non-epileptic seizures, not sure yet) and disassociation. People may not be locked in a psych ward for good as many systems fear, but diagnosis still has an effect on their lives. It has an effect on how people perceive them and consequently how they're treated.

Getting a public DID diagnosis CAN be unhelpful. For some keeping it between their system, trusted people and their mental health supports are is the safest thing to do.

[but also don't let people shit on you; you can report any discrimination, including employers, school and medical staff]

I have seen alot of people say that getting a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder ruins your life. And its straight and blatant misinformation. Getting a diagnosis cannot and will not ruin your life. You will not be locked away, you will not have limits of what you can and cannot do. Purely the only thing I am not allowed to do is drive. And that is only for both mine and others safety due to how heavy my dissociation is in public and stressful settings. - Vesper

I genuinely don't know any systems who aren't queer in some fashion - all of us seem to be either be not het or not cis (I do have thoughts on why but it's too late at night for those).

I might do a future poll just for systems that breaks up whether whether just one or two members ID as queer or whether it's the collective but for now please count this as collective identity (or as I heard someone call it the "singlet-sona")