The Most Fun Part About Having A Serious Dissociative Disorder Is Finding A Password Protected Document

It's a grey goose for dinner kinda night ifkyk

I'm very lucky that I am privileged enough to access paratransit where I live but hear me out:

It sucks that this bus is 85°F because another rider (older than me by several decades, maybe more than twice my age) asked for the AC to be turned down, and it's triggering a migraine, but it sucks more that I'm too much of a people pleaser to ask if she could put on her sweater so I don't pass tf out.

I have a medical issue that's triggering sensory flashbacks multiple times a day for the last couple of weeks and I'm SO TIRED AND OVER IT.

There were people complaining about how I'd ruin my rapists life by reporting him but I'm 32 fucking years old and cant function like a normal human. Someone complain about how they ruined MY life.

Being sex trafficked as a kid in broad fucking daylight in the United States is dystopian af, and gave me a dissociative disorder. I'm on three psych meds. Every time I go to the hospital or a new doctor, they see "PTSD" in my chart and tell me my symptoms are anxiety, and that has almost killed me THREE TIMES.

My trafficker is free. My rapists are all either free or dead. The one I took to trial got everything expunged from the records. Somehow he even got the news articles taken down.

And I'm just... Still here. Still trying to cope. Still living in fear of people who probably don't think of me at all.

So I'm reblogging this from a fandom person I follow but it's on brand for the shit I post so, hello! I have OSDD and CPTSD (both of those disorders have a HUGE amount of symptom overlap and are caused by severe, prolonged trauma). I have different types of flashbacks, triggered by different things, so I'll try to organize my answer below but please be aware that my answers might be triggering especially for anyone who has experienced childhood sexual abuse and/or child trafficking. These terms are just what I use to discuss them with my therapist, so idk if they are official terms or not.

• Tactile flashbacks, also called tactile hallucinations

In these, I am entirely aware of where and when I am, but I feel sensations that were occurring during my trauma. It's usually triggered by experiencing pain from old injuries. For specifically (TW!!!!), I occasionally get nerve pain in my vulva from an injury where I was penetrated with an object and it damaged my cervix severely. Sometimes that nerve pain triggers a tactile flashbacks, where I can feel hands and the object touching me exactly the way it felt when it was really happening. It is so realistic that the first few times it happened, part of me was shocked that I wasn't bleeding or hadn't sat on a knife or some weird shit. It makes it feel like I don't even have pants on. It's fucking disorienting and PAINFUL and scary.

I've spent years training myself to show it as little as possible if it happens in public, because it's not the kind of thing that's easily explainable. But the added stress of hiding it triggers me even more- because hiding was an important job I did to cover up for my abusers, so hiding pain is both instinctual and triggering now- that it kind of just makes it worse. So if I'm around someone, they might see me grimace or shift on my chair a bit, I've also heard that I get pretty pale, but I almost always lie and make up an excuse like cramps, which people tend to believe.

But in reality it's horrific and once I'm in privacy, I am pretty useless for the rest of the day unless I have a close friend or my husband around to help me stay grounded and get back on track.

•Emotional flashbacks

This happens a lot when I'm triggered by an everyday normal occurrence that in normal life, is totally fine, but in my past was something I used to know whether or not I was in danger. Probably the most annoying one is the sound of dishes clanging as someone puts them away. If that happened in my childhood, it meant I hadn't put away the dishes in time, and would be punished (but not grounded because my parents were fucking monsters- punishment for me was things like being locked in very small spaces, being forced to braid my hair in high pigtails and hairspray it and go to school looking stupid, not getting food for a few days, having things thrown at me, sometimes the dishes themselves being physically broken on me).

So imagine what a child's emotions might be, knowing they're about to undergo a severe punishment- fear, regret, remorse, defence, desperation- and then transplant all of those emotions into my 32 year old body. It makes me have some wacky ass responses to my husband putting away the clean dishes. I've spent YEARS working on it but we've been together since I was 19, and just last year I got to the point where I could let him put dishes away without me actually yelling at him, or apologizing, or crying. Thank god for therapy.

Emotional flashbacks can really have drastic, immediate control over my behavior, which makes them pretty dangerous when it's not a situation as innocuous as putting away dishes. It's very hard for me to control what I say and do during these episodes, and it's one of the reasons I was diagnosed with OSDD, because my therapist thinks that when I have emotional flashbacks, I dissociate and another part of my personality kind of takes over. And it really is a dramatic personality shift. Still a part of me, but a much younger version. I used to have total amnesia of these episodes and only knew they were happening because my husband would explain them to me. Now I manage to stay conscious (sometimes called co-conscious by people in the OSDD/DID communities) but still have partial amnesia. It makes it very difficult for me to understand what someone is saying to me long enough to formulate a response that makes sense. It's horrible and really challenging to hide or control.

•Visual/dissociated flashbacks

These have only ever been triggered by sex, and they're very similar to the way flashbacks are portrayed in the media, like in movies. Either all or most of my visual field changes from the current situation to a traumatic sexual abuse memory. I completely dissociate, have no idea where I am or what's happening, but the difference from this and movies is that even within the memory, I don't understand what's happening. I don't go into it with my knowledge of what's happening and 15 years of therapy, I'm right back in the exact mindset I was when it was happening, just with the added idea that something is very wrong. Sometimes it feels like I'm asleep in a nightmare, sometimes it feels like I'm literally living it. They don't last more than maybe 30 seconds or so, and my husband tells me that he knows it's happening because my eyes get really wide, I go totally limp, and don't respond except in a way that's similar to how people might talk in their sleep. Once I come out of it, it's straight to having a panic attack, which as you can imagine is kind of awkward when you're in the middle of trying to fuck your partner. My husband is amazing about it all, but when we first got together it scared the shit out of both of us.

•Some other notes: I often try to ground myself so that I don't dissociate during or after a flashback, but for years the only way I knew to ground myself involved pain. I eventually tried to switch to methods that would hurt but not injure me (pinching the skin between my fingers, punching my thighs). But now I do grounding in a way that doesn't hurt myself- or at least I try to. I talk to myself, out loud, to remind myself where I am, what year it is, what's happening, etc. I do breathing exercises, sing loudly, try to hold a conversation. All of those things can help me stay in the present moment. Unfortunately they don't always work, but hey ya can't win 'em all.

@z-mizcellaneous-z I know that's a LOT but lemme know if you have questions or want any more details/info! I'm happy to share!

Call for People who Have First Hand Experience with PTSD

(Part of The Research Game, question by @z-mizcellaneous-z)

We are wondering if anyone who has first-hand experience can share with us what PTSD flashbacks look or feel like to you, as well as what it might look like from the outside perspective (such as witnessed by friends/strangers).

(please only share if you're comfortable. You can also send me an anonymous ask instead!)

Everyone else, reblog this around until we can find someone who has the answer!

(Otherwise, there's a Youtube channel I know of that aims to spread awareness of PTSD and may help you here: https://youtu.be/vdLfrJSzMY8, though it's important to note she has Complex PTSD, which is slightly different and is characterized by prolonged trauma rather than a single event)

ima be honest if I wasn’t bipolar I’d conceal carry. I am so fucking done with abled people assaulting me and getting away with it. If you threaten my life casually I should be allowed to return the favor. get the fuck away from me. don’t fucking touch me. don’t fucking grab me. don’t fucking push me. I am a pipe bomb. I will kill both of us I swear to fucking god

What are the odds that a bot with the same name as one of my rapists' daughters follows me today lol fml

"Have you considered that depression is causing your pain?"

"Have you considered that constant pain is depressing?"

After a year of trialing other injectable migraine treatments that barely worked because our insurance company changed the formulary- my appeal was FINALLY approved & I get to go back on the medication that actually helped!!! Never in my life have I been more excited to stab myself in the stomach, lol.

found this today

Please use these terms correctly. Not doing so will deeply harm the people who actually have experienced trauma, gaslighting, triggers, and people who have NPD.

thirty-four

bday comics: thirty-three

AN: I have an acquired brain injury, and always have a lot of feels about it on my birthday! so, disability bday comics are now a thing :)

[ID: a ten panel comic drawn in simple black ink with messily drawn borders.

One - I sit cross-legged on a sofa with an open laptop in front of me. Text reads: "And what do you do for work?" "I'm on disability." "Oh. And is it permanent?" "I mean. It's been over four years since my mTBI."

Two - Frame zooms in showing just my torso and chin. Text: "So yeah, probably."

Three - I sit forward on the couch with elbows on knees and chin resting on folded hands and sigh. It shows my whole body. I am a white non-binary person with a curly mullet, glasses, and wearing a t-shirt and ripped jeans. Text: The doctor calls me "dear" as she ends the call. It's been a long year."

Four - I stand and walk away. The image shows just my legs and the couch behind me. Text: When I first got injured, permanency was the scariest possibility. The idea of a lifetime of pain and fatigue made survival feel impossible.

Five - I stand holding a cupboard open, my back to the viewer. The open cupboard shows that it's very full of mugs and tea supplies. Text: It's not so scary, anymore. And it no longer feels just like surviving.

Six - A close up shot of a kettle steaming. Text: There's still grief, trapped under my ribcage. But I think there always will be. I've had to put away so many dreams, said goodbye to who I once was.

Seven - Close up shot showing hot water being poured from the kettle into a handmade mug. Text reads: But in the space left empty, new things have grown. New hopes. New dreams. New understandings of myself.

Eight - Close up shot of my hands holding a steaming mug of tea. Text: This injury might be permanent - but it might not be. No one really knows for sure. I love my life. I love my body, and my brain, all the messy disabled parts of it.

Nine - A full shot showing me sitting on my sofa again, and holding a large blanket out in front of me, as if getting ready to wrap it over my legs. Text: If this is the rest of my life, then what a gift to live it. I'm not done growing, hoping, grieving, healing. Still trying, and trying, and trying.

Ten - I sit on my sofa with the blanket wrapped over my legs, leaning against a cushion. I am sketching in a ringed book held on my lap, and my tea mug rests on the blanket beside the book. I am smiling slightly and look content. On the wall behind me is a quilted progress pride flag. Text: It's messy, complicated, and beautiful. But isn't that what life is?

The comic is signed h. graves '23. End ID.]