To be or not to be (a journey thread)

I really understand where you're coming from with the elephant metaphor.. I used to be really active on here, but left after a while. kind of forgot I was ever here, so it was a surprise to come back and see so few of the OGs I remembered from before.. glad to still see some familiar names, but it's definitely a quieter board than several years ago.

I guess the best we can do is just try to keep it alive, help when we can, and be true to ourselves in doing so? but I agree about missing some of the longtime posters.

Thanks violette thanks rea it means a lot that you replied so quickly. If I remember rightly vortexvoid is a tean heavy system the teens thread has all but died unfortunately (personally I think it should have been pinned under the littels threads so we could find our hang out space as and when we are around but hey ho)

Violette you are probably right about new spaces. We are on tumblr but the DID community on there seams to be mainly minor bodied or early 20s systems with a focus on how to survive DID as a student. Facebook is all identity politics and sanitising the disorder so that even mentioning the fact that you have a mute alter in a speaking body gets you at best fakeclaimed. (We have been harrased on Facebook and threatened with doxing due to having a mixed gendered system.)

One of the beauties of this forum was the diversity of body ages and backgrounds. Nowhere else have I seen an Italian discus with a Russian, a Frenchman, an Afro-American and a brit the relative pros and cons of each others medical and educational systems and how both in combination with societal roles influence access to therapy.

We haven't really talked about our DID beyond this forum and the Discord servers that are system friendly, and even at that, not all of the ones on Discord are exactly friendly. It took our friend S getting harassed in several servers for them to set up an invite only server that is mostly systems and friends or significant others of systems.

Unfortunately, we've seen the toxicity of far too many people in every community out there. We've been harassed in the past for being intersex and lesbian while in LGBTQ+ spaces. We have two alters who are mute...but that is also probably wrapped up in our autism. However, it took some of our alters a long time to speak because they were told not to speak. And while we don't have a mixed gender system any more, we know people who do. Often times such harassment just seems to show a lack of understanding of the bredth and scope of DID and OSDD.

We do wish more people were posting here. It would be nice.

Take care,
Violette

As this thread quieted down and some of the people who guided us at first have left or rarely post, we've become more active on Reddit, but use it more to respond to others. We almost never post there to ask a question.

And here, we update our journey thread sometimes, but we really miss a lot of the older systems that were here when we first joined in 2017.

But Eliseahorse, you offer a lot of wisdom and your comments are much appreciated. I don't think anyone should hold back from saying what they have to offer just because they feel "too new," or not far enough along on their journey.

A friend of mine has set up some sort of statistical analysis of people who interact in DID spaces and the results are roughly that, the more you have knowledge of DID and set up to learn and heal, the less you need the community to validate you, the more you become critical towards the behaviors of the "validation only" people, the smaller your circle. It seems that healing is a mountain to climb and the higher you get the less people you find who are on the same level than you.

It's frustrating but the healed-er you become, the lonelier it seems to be.

Or maybe I'm the one becoming cynical here and/or misunderstood what the friend explained to me.

Think you're unto something there or rather your friend is maybe? Let's settle for both. You're both onto something.
I think it's both inward and outward. Having all these people with you all the time and then healing and realising more and more that you're moving away from those people inside you as well as those around you who are going through what you went through is lonely.

That's why we need to hear more people who have gone through the journey so that the healed people feel validated too. Plus, it'll help people who are struggling to heal too because they'll see what they're working towards.


I'm glad you're here Eli, for your experiences and wisdom and general attitude.

~ Grey

I think Kit first joined here in 2018 looking for answers. I think we were away for a short while when the stroke happened but still found our way back though not able to remember whether we had an account on here what it was etc ...think we've changed our name 3 times on this forum! but finally gone from individuals looking for help ..to recognising we were a system.

Several of us are on different forums mainly health related ..some just for video games (to encourage Bobby to communicate more) but all of us agree this forum has helped us the most in understanding ourselves as a system.

Thanks everyone. X

Sometimes amnesia can be fun sometimes it can be useful and other times well...

So as a system we have VERY different ideas on what a good movie looks like. Generally who spends the evening with our other half is dictated by the movie being watched because while some of us would have nightmares watching a tense thriller like solaris, others are knee deep in hard-core horror that involves canabalism etc. Its a mechanism that workes for us. Our SO is a big film buff and we enjoy watching the thrill he gets from films so being able to tap out and hand a movie over to another alter should we find it not to our taste is handy. Up until now we had thought this was something we did consciously.

This morning we were discussing with our SO as to why one of us wouldn't watch particular film again and was sceptical about anything from the same director. When ex persicutor said it was the sex scenes the SO replied well there was plenty of sex in "film" and you enjoyed that was it because last nights film was hetrosex? Expersicutor was like but you don't actually see any sex in "film" its just two dudes walking into a bush and then the camera pans away, last night was explicit.
SO was like dude "film" has 5 very graphic gay sex scenes you seriously didn't see those?"

So now we are wondering who has been editing the gay sex out of films. Also going to be an interesting talk with a coworker at some point as we had recommended "film" as a sweet gay coded romance. Ah well

ArbreMonde wrote:A friend of mine has set up some sort of statistical analysis of people who interact in DID spaces and the results are roughly that, the more you have knowledge of DID and set up to learn and heal, the less you need the community to validate you, the more you become critical towards the behaviors of the "validation only" people, the smaller your circle. It seems that healing is a mountain to climb and the higher you get the less people you find who are on the same level than you.

It's frustrating but the healed-er you become, the lonelier it seems to be.

Or maybe I'm the one becoming cynical here and/or misunderstood what the friend explained to me.

Hi, friend in question You're going a bit further than the actual conclusion

First, note that the data are from the French side of the multiple community only - but the French side is quite influenced by the "extreme" sides of the English community. We have less diversity of opinions on the French side, compared to the English side.

The actual conclusion is that we (French speaking countries) have a community focused on experience sharing and validation seeking. One of the theme the most talked about to answer the "Do you want to add anything about the community?" question at the end of the survey was the legitimacy of systems and the importance of the "real vs fake DID" debates. Even the ones who like the community talked about this theme in a way or another (some to say the community was too much on this legitimacy question, others to say they think there are too much fake DID in the community...).

So people who perceive the multiple community in a good way like it for the experience sharing + validation-seeking purposes. They like finding people with the same experiences, the same POV, to see their symptoms be normalized.

The ones who perceive the community negatively think it lacks proper support, they don't find the resources and the help toward healing they hoped to find.

They are also 3 other factors that influence the positive vs negative perception of the community.

First, the "diagnosis status".
The self-diagnosed-only people are more prone to perceive the community positively.
The self diagnosed-then-diagnosed people start by perceiving the community positively, then within the range of 4 years, it totally shifts toward a negative perception.
I didn't have enough answers from diagnosed people to extract data out of it.

Second, the age of the person.
The younger (18-25) people see the negative aspects of the community, but tend to overlook it and focus more on the "sharing and validation". They see the community not in black-and-white, but more in shades of gray. The only defensive behaviors they talk about is not engaging in certain parts of the community.
The older ones progressively become more and more critical and defensive toward the community. The 26-35 starts to worry about how DID is seen on the medias because of the community, to identify precisely some members of the community as "The Problem", and to question the legitimacy of other systems.
The 36-50 are the one who see the community as a whole as toxic and sectarian, without any nuances in their judgment. They are the one who worry the most about the image of DID and DID community on the medias, and they focus a lot on the "are they real or fake DID?" question.

And third, the way the person use social medias.
The fact people have successfully built their own subgroup, and do not have to directly engage with the whole community on a regular basis, is another factor that allows them to see the community more positively.

So yeah, if your goal is healing, if you are in therapy, if you are older than 25, if you don't have a DID support group of a reasonable size that provide you good support, then you are more prone to see the community negatively and to feel isolated.

But ArbreMonde isn't wrong. If we think further, in a community based mostly on experience sharing and validation of symptoms, the more you heal, the less you have to share about your disorder, the more you have a chance to ends up alone if you didn't build yourself a friends group that can follow your pace.

And building a subgroup in a large community is extremely hard. People tend to think the larger the community, the easier to find friends, but that's not the case at all. The larger the community, the quieter people are. Only the louder ones are seen, and they tend to be the same on each social plateforms.