r/F4481

hi there. my therapist sent me a link to the power to the plurals website. i do really appreciate the sentiment of this, but i just have such a hard time with plurality culture at large and the idea of endogenic systems.

i am absolutely on team “i have no right to dictate your subjective experience of yourself” when it comes to syscourse. i would never go into a space which is blanket plural positive (including endogenic systems) and say that they’re wrong or lying about the ways they perceive themselves.

that being said, i hate how OSDDID systems are lumped into plural culture at large. yes, we have things in common, but i really feel that my experience and the experiences of most OSDDID systems is fundamentally different from those of endogenic systems.

maybe it is a bit of jealousy that systemhood could be a positive experience for some people. it is sometimes positive to me. it feels nice to see myself heal and to give my younger parts the things they need to feel safe, express themselves, and grow. i recognize that having DID is the reason i survived the things i did and the reason im able to function day to day in the aftermath.

but i think that having a dissociative disorder is just so fundamentally different from feeling like you were naturally born as a system or like you created it. i am this way because i was beaten into a non-Euclidean shape via extreme and repetitive trauma. i don’t like being a system. i try to get whatever joy and wisdom out of it i can, but i can’t deny the fact that i wish i didn’t have this.

i have difficulty with the idea of purposefully willogenic systems in particular. i see this as a disorder which severely disrupts my life and it’s hard to see people saying they purposely made themselves a system or want DID and not take that as an insult.

it sucks because i really see myself as an open and nonjudgmental person but when it comes to this i really struggle to see the other side. i would never harass anyone who says they’re an endo system nor would i choose to enter those spaces to begin with. but i don’t like having this amorphous blob of hatred towards people who have different experiences than i do.

just wanted to share. the doctor i spoke to seemed very knowledgeable about trauma related and dissociative disorders. i also felt listened to which is really rare with doctors.

i also asked if doing a diagnostic screening for DID would be possible, because i feel like my diagnosis was really rushed (i didn't stay in the clinic i was in very long, and the diagnosis was just based on what i told them, not on any diagnostic tests) and i just wanna be 100% sure that nothing was missed and that there really isn't any other disorder that could explain my symptoms. the doctor said that should be possible.

the waitlist is nine months, but that's fairly normal for psychiatric treatment where i live. the treatment happens in cycles, 5-6 weeks of php (monday to friday, 8:30am-3pm), then 5-6 weeks at home, and then they check if another 5-6 of php would be helpful for you.

i haven't had any treatment since getting diagnosed with DID, so i am really looking forward to finally getting help

Hey everyone. I'm so glad someone recommended this subreddit to me. I was diagnosed with DID in 2018.

Being in other online spaces (including other subs for Dissociative Disorders) has been irritating to say the least. Recently it has become unbearable.

So here I am! Feeling thankful for this space.

I was diagnosed about four months ago now I think, and I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s like I can’t even think about it in any detail. I only half-remember therapy but I got referred to one of the foremost DID psychologists in the country and I thought she’d say to just try better to ground, but now I’m doing parts work and it’s terrifying.

I feel like I’m going insane constantly. I feel like I’m a shattered fragment of something with no continuity and no personhood. If every time I “switch” I black out and don’t remember anything, then what’s the point of therapy? I don’t even remember the majority of my own days.

Does it ever get better? Is parts work even the right thing to be doing? I’ve been in therapy since I was 14, over a decade now, I’ve tried pretty much every modality. I briefly did IFS and I absolutely hated it. So how is this different than any other type of therapy? All it does leads to is me panicking and blacking out.

I need help with the flashbacks and the losing time and unreality and all the other weird awful stuff, not to be indulging this awful nonsense. If we treat PTSD and dissociation, fine, but I absolutely hate the parts stuff.

To be honest, I’m really struggling over this right now. Let me preface this with an obligatory “I love my brother, he’s amazing, and he’s completely different now”, because if I don’t say that I panic.

My primary abuser, which is a term I’m still struggling to use, from ages maybe 4-12, was my older brother. Not to go into too much detail, but it included confinement, suffocation, drowning, etc. repeatedly. It was framed as something called the “escape game”, and I genuinely just saw it all as a game until somewhat recently. While it wasn’t the only form of abuse or neglect I encountered in my childhood, it was by far the earliest, and I suspect had a major role in the formation of the disorder.

20 years later, my brother and I are incredibly close. We bond all the time over our harmful experiences with our parents, how messed up childhood was, etc.

But my brother also struggles with dissociative amnesia, as well as the results of ECT for depression. He barely remembers anything prior to college, and definitely not early childhood. He’s passively suicidal, incredibly depressed, and is generally in a very bad place. I’m a main pillar of support for him and I love him with all my heart, he’s an incredibly cool person. I’ve looked up to him my entire life and even now, after reframing the escape game, I can’t hold him at fault for it.

I also can’t EVER let him know what he did, because of how close we are-I’m terrified it will lead him to commit suicide.

Does anyone have advice on how to deal with being very close to your original abuser? It’s such a weird, delicate situation, and I genuinely do love him so much- but younger parts either idolize him or are terrified of him. It’s this awful seesaw of emotions, and I call him all the time but can’t even remember what we talk about.

I guess I just don’t know how to navigate this.