Reclaiming Post!

I am just going to say this outright and bare with me until the last paragraph. The idea that "the few people who are faking this disorder aren't actually hurting real people with DID or taking away resources" is demonstrably false. I check around sometimes for other people looking for dissociative specialists and ever since ~2019/8, if I call and ask a therapist if they have experience with DID their questions are "does this person spend a lot of time on social media" and "have they actually been diagnosed with DID before." I've met therapists who took their dissociation specialty off of their websites because they kept getting tons of calls from people who were seeking a diagnosis and they could not keep up.

This trend where large amounts of people are claiming to have RAMCOA and polyfragmentation within the past few years, which a significantly smaller number of specialists believe in and treat, IS going to detrimentally affect survivors even quicker and harder than general DID where there are a larger amount of people involved both professionally and not. I called this a few years ago that sometime in the future polyfragmentation would be commonly considered a "fake marker" (just as prior community trends turned into "fake markers" like introjects and kid parts) and that's already started.

We need to be able to talk about community issues like this from a practical perspective for people who need those resources, without it turning into a validation discussion or a discussion about malingering or pointless discourse. We need to step away from "shoulds"--yes it is true that practitioners should not let these things affect their overall care, but it does and simply saying it should not be that way doesn't fix anything. We need practical discussions that say "We are at this point. Now what?"

Question, would maladaptive daydreaming about the torture also, counties as creative expression of the trauma? Also, please stop calling us out/j

On expression of trauma in childhood through creative means

(CW/TW: Abuse, Torture, Trafficking, etc.)

I've seen lots of survivors of various kinds of abuse, particularly RAMCOA, post recently about how either one of the first signs they were abused in that way, or something they rediscovered/recalled later on, was that during childhood they often re-enacted traumatic scenarios or scenarios similar through games, or playground role-playing. Expression of trauma and abuse through creative means is very common in childhood - scientifically, it's more difficult for anyone to express their trauma through verbal means than it is through art, or etc, and this is the basis for art & play therapies commonly used with children and younger patients. It's a recognised phenomenon in psychology that there are certain markers in children's art for trauma, as it alters one's self perception to go through these experiences, especially in youth. So, in reference to RAMCOA/OEA in particular - recreating these situations in childhood games is perfectly normal, and if you feel this is an experience that resonates with you, you're not at all alone.

RAMCOA changes one's perception of what is normal, and intentionally so, and so to see a child express this through games which would ordinarily be much more domestic - like playing house, whereas a survivor might reenact a scene of torture, or an imagined trafficking ring - is a child survivor expressing a scenario which is normal for them without having to acknowledge it verbally through any means. This extends again to art, and writings, etc - if you look back on the "ordinary" parts of your childhood, and feel the trauma bleeds into those regardless, this is perfectly normal. Even if you feel that at the time you shouldn't have known about those things, or that you didn't see them with nearly the weight that they should have carried - all of this is okay. Everyone works things out at their own pace. All of us survived.

— Muse

Here are some resources on childhood trauma expression through art:

Psychology Today

When Trauma Happens, Children Draw: Part I

When trauma happens, children draw.

Frontiers

Children’s drawings as a projective tool to explore and prevent experiences of mistreatment and/or sexual abuse

Reality shows us that situations of mistreatment and sexual abuse in childhood are still seldom visible, despite their high prevalence aroun

You can't pick and choose which mental illnesses you support.

Yes, keep supporting people with autism and ADHD.

Keep supporting people with Depression and Anxiety.

But also support people with Schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Also support people with ASPD and NPD.

Also support people with OCD and BPD.

There are so many more, and you should support these people with them.

They are struggling with these.

They did not choose to have these.

Lineart by @theywhoshantbenamed

Colours by @freshwolfprofessoreggs

Hi, I noticed your post explaining HC-DID, and I was wondering more about sidesystems? And hoping for some help on how to label ourselves.

With us, we refer to what is basically two systems within the body as a “front system” and “back system”; The front system has had a lot of known alters, within the hundreds, but none of them had any knowledge of any RAMCOA trauma until recently when we discovered what it was, and triggered a lot of programs for ourselves. It was only after this that the back system started actually showing themselves. Their alter count is supposedly incredibly high, divided in a lot of subsystems. We’ve heard things about thousands..? However, our front system does not have thousands. But we feel like we’re equals. We feel weird calling ourselves a sidesystem just because we’re only learning of our RAMCOA trauma now. We’re the system that’s been stuck dealing with everything since then and we are just as important as all of the back system. But, can both of us just consider ourselves two systems within one body and call it a day? Or would that be strange? Any extra information you have on sidesystems and subsystems within HC-DID would also be helpful. We hope to discover other terminology that resonates with us on this subject.

Thanks for your time :)

Honestly terms are just for using at your own discretion. Even if the way you function fits a specific term- you don't have to go along with it. Our what we thought was the "main" system turned out to be what we learned was a side-system. They have decided to use this term themselves but if any of them in it don't use it they'd be allowed to with no worries- just use another term- or not use it at all.

The sidesystem in our own system has been what we were aware of first and more often. We do see our sidesystem as equal to all our programmed/RAMCOA aware (formed in it organically) subsystems. Our main grouping which we consider a sidesystem also has a lot of subsystems within it. Sometimes things can get incredibly complex.

We also eventually found out about our own RAMCOA history because of triggered programs. It was pre-looking into RAMCOA in our case and more so happened because we were digging in our childhood already because of organic alters trauma. I'm sorry you went through all of that- those kind of experiences really suck.

Again you really have no obligation to call anything a sidesystem if you don't want to. Honestly I think the terms you're using as "front and back" can be really fitting and if they work for you? No problem using just that. And honestly yeah- I think it'd be reasonable to view it as just having multiple systems in one body. Hell we sorta do view it in that way ourselves.

As for extra information. I actually kinda want to make a post going over some structures that may show up in HC-DID systems. I think having something we can link back too in the future will be useful. Unsure when that will be out but I will begin working on it today at the very least.

A comic about the spectrum of responses to stress - we talk alot about the more extreme ends of this and trauma, but the more subtle and every day responses can be harder to spot. if we can understand our own and other’s responses better, problems Are easier to confront and blaming is less likely to happen :) hope it’s helpful!!

rusalki are not mermaids. stop translating the word "rusalka" as "mermaid" and stop calling rusalki "slavic mermaids". it's confusing, it's misleading, and it's simply isn't true. the association of rusalka with a western mermaid and undine began in 19th century, when russian empire poets wanted to adapt a popular western motif of a sorrowful water maid that is unrequitedly in love with a mortal man. this literature character of rusalka has nothing to do with actual rusalki folklore and cult.

rusalki are natural undead spirits that are connected to slavic ancestral worship. they don't have tails. they are not in any way connected to the sea: only lakes, ponds, and rivers. often, they're not even connected to water at all: there are forest rusalki, field rusalki, meadow rusalki, etc. they are in close relationships with their human kin: during the spring and summer, they are used in agricultural rites and are believed to help with farming and raising crops. rusalki were sacred to slavic people. the "week of the rusalki" festival, when rusalki are believed to walk on earth and visit their relatives, is celebrated to this day. to call them "slavic mermaids" is very diminutive of their actual role in slavic cultures.

“One of the great tragedies of all forms of abuse is that the abused person can become emotionally dependent on the perpetrator through a process called traumatic bonding. (…) This is a bitter psychological irony. Child abuse works in the same way; in fact, children can become more strongly attached to abusive parents than to nonabusive ones. (…) Almost no abuser is mean or frightening all the time. At least occasionally he is loving, gentle, and humorous and perhaps even capable of compassion and empathy. This intermittent, and usually unpredictable, kindness is critical to forming traumatic attachments. When a person has suffered harsh, painful treatment over an extended period of time, they naturally feel a flood of love and gratitude toward anyone who brings relief, like the surge of affection one might feel for the hand that offers a glass of water on a scorching day. But in situations of abuse, the rescuer and the tormentor are the very same person.”

— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?, 2002

People can jump on my ass all they want for this but it’s actually super shitty to treat a RAMCOA survivor like shit because they share too much information. And I don’t mean being angry at them, I mean harassing them, bullying them, and refusing to respect them as a survivor even if you don’t like them as a person.

You need to keep in mind that despite the risks of what they’re doing, they still went through these things. They suffered and still suffer. And above all. They’re a human being. Be fucking considerate of that.

I don't feel like theres a lot of resources or just even thought given to systems still like. In it. Still in, or adjacent to, the abusive or traumatic environments culpable for the development of this coping mechanism in the first place.

People will talk about persecutors and self-harmful system members, honestly, it feels like pretty much only in the context of a safe or safe-adjacent environment. And I understand. This community is really recovery focused, especially because a lot of people only realize they're a part of it because they're in recovery. When it's such a large portion of the community, its expected that they pay so much focus to it.

But when you are newly in this community, trying to work & communicate with other system members, regardless still having to heavily use that coping mechanism in the "maladaptive" way, and everyone is talking about you and your essential work & role in your system as "that one asshole trying to help, but little do they know the danger is gone and now all they are is a huge prick! ohohohoho! persecutor positivity 💖" it's just. It's honestly just infuriating.

For one! Does your persecutor feel safe or are you just telling them it is? Second. Some of us (persecutors) in the community still have to do our fucking jobs. I feel wonderful for people who can afford different coping mechanisms, whether they are still in the overwhelming environment or not. But some of us cannot. I can't always afford to have a caretaker making sure everybody feels fine and safe, sometimes I just need to get a trauma holder (who really can't fucking be here) out, and keep them out. And sometimes, that means you're gonna be fucking mean.

I just want some sympathy for who I am now. Not some fictionalized ideal of myself that "exists in the future", when this isn't needed anymore. I don't want the only narrative I hear about myself (and other persecutor types) to be that not only am I protecting myself in a "really bad way", but I have no place in this community or even my own system until I am no longer doing that. 'That', of course, being 'keeping my head above the water'. I want people to understand that the work I do can and does help, I'm valuable now, not just "in the future" when I've been fixed reformed into a protector.

I'm probably blowing this specific issue way out of proportion. I just want to feel like I'm not just automatically percieved as "that 'internally-abusive' POS every system has", especially when we as a system know it helps our situation overall, and people do seem to know that persecutors act that way for a reason. I am still experiencing that reason. Yes, there are... times when my expertise should not be employed, I do understand that I can cause unnecessary harm those times, and me and our caregiver get into spats about that kinda stuff. But as our caretaker he also understands that my "bad" actions are necessary sometimes, I am valuable even like this, (and also that he's lot better at gauging whether something needs to be persecuted away than I am, so it can be hard not to get carried away sometimes ime)..... but most importantly, he understands that I am as much affected by the situation we're in as anyone else, and right now, as long as its efficient in just getting us out the other side, anything goes.

I know I'm hurtful. I know that when we do get out of this, a lot of those resources on becoming a """""reformed""""" persecutor will suddenly probably be very helpful to me. But there has to be more sympathy (focus, resources, etc) for people in this community that still have to use these ("maladaptive") coping mechanisms. Constantly talking horribly about members of your community that are not only that way for a very understandable reason, but often have to keep being that way just so they don't end up dead, is. Not very productive or healthy for the overall community imo.

I don't really know what else to say. People still in this shit, people who need to use the skills they adapted regardless if its '"healthy", or pleasant, or palatable, we need this community. We are already here, and every single one of you has been in our place once, even if you were not aware of it. Please. Please have sympathy for me. My actions. Who I am. There is no other way I can be right now. Please.