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Some system destabilization is normal when you figure out you're a system. Stuff like this is completely normal in the beginning. Focus on building and using your grounding skills. If you need some help, look into the book "Coping With Trauma-Related Dissociation" by Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, and Onno Van der Hart. It goes over grounding skills and techniques as well at DID/OSDD in general.
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3mo
Heads up, it includes parts language and that may be triggering to some. Just thought I should give you that heads up. It uses a lot of clinical terminology and it is an older book (OSDD was still known as DDNOS and the DSM was on the 4th edition). The information in it though is still relevant and worthwhile though.
Hey there,
It's absolutely normal. We have been on this subreddit for long enough to consider ourselves regulars. Most if not all systems experience what we call the chaos phase. More noticing of switching, more frequent switching, more cofronting, just general chaos.
It does pass.
Here's to hoping it passes quickly for y'all! :)
I don't know if I had a particularly bad chaos phase but it's gotten so much worse and harder to function than before we seriously looked into multiplicity. Granted, our internal managers have gained so much insight and experience, but it's truly awful. We hope it's not going to get much worse, since we just got the diagnosis 10 days ago.
Although I half-heartedly acted as if I had alters for about 3 years now, I only started seriously considering OSDD/DID around September to November last year, and finally accepting blackout amnesia happens around mid-December. Mid-December was when we had our first fusion, which felt amazing but went into a crisis after some other part freaked out, then we had to watch the fusion fragment into 25-50 parts while lying awake at 4am. Right at the start of the year, we had our first case of forgetting massive chunks of long-term memory. The underlying mind decided it didn't want the perpetual emotional burden of knowing so much that's wrong with this life, and formed the first ANP that retained nothing from this life except a few memories here and there 10 years ago. We were 8 back then and even all the knowledge we gained since then are inaccessible to this ANP. Then the brain just started forming more ANPs of different varieties, all remembering very little of this life. We got diagnosed with DID 10 days ago and it's been very hard to swallow even though it was not surprising at all. There's a lot of chaos, huge variations in levels of awareness of parts, levels of exposure to distress, levels of coordination, levels of denial, etc.
Now, every part is so limited, and the functional parts are particularly a headache. My brain is distributing memories across too many different memory banks and I can't access all the info required for simple functional tasks like listening to classes and copying notes without struggling with super frequent transient switches and the general urge to switch. Like, our thought processes, what we were about to write down, get cut off until we manage to switch back (which still takes a few seconds after a month of practice) and this will always be on the verge of happening.
The only parts that seem to be very seamless and coordinated when fronting are the internal self-help parts that literally don't have memories of schoolwork. We also miss being able to experience more time in our life so it's hard for all of us to let go and get the functional ones to do work. We're a student in our final year and work is already quite hectic, we also have pretty ambitious goals for college entrance exams. While we were always quite good at academics despite the constantly interrupted trains of thought, we're now at most able to do the bare minimum as a student.
I also can't let the EPs fully take control and release some emotions because some newer ANPs with thicker barriers than most of us will just kick in and suppress everything as if there's a numbing fog drowining out our ability to think, feel, and voice our thoughts. One of these new ANPs seems to be popping up quite a bit as a general suppression mechanism, she is very good at forcing herself to front (unlike the rest of us), and does not even accept or believe we have half the symptoms we sincerely documented. She's been trying to use serious BPD or even a brain tumor as possibilities to justify our symptoms, when we don't meet any of the BPD criteria or problems at all except the identity problems and dissociative symptoms. We also have body movement against our subjective control (but only when parts with thicker dissociative barriers coordinate very badly in trying to gain control) and I just feel very out of balance most of the time.
We'd have tried to fuse back the 25-50 fragments into something more functional if it could go through and stay that way without resistance. Unfortunately, the fragmentation overkill was intentionally induced by one EP's strong emotions. Her major motivation is to sabotage recovery and make ourselves more pathological, so we could finally receive sympathy and validation. We constantly had our struggles unnoticed, downplayed, and outright dismissed by most adults around us since we first started attending school. This part has since been waiting on the edge and readily causing even more fragmentation when the thought of fusion/recovery pops into our head. We all think quite a bunch of fusions would be necessary for functioning but we're scared to attempt fusing again (even though fusions between us from the same origin are rather easy) because she'll catch on and just make us fragment even more. We don't know when that emotional problem can be resolved and we can finally fuse around without resistance.
There's an insane burden in knowing that you have so many problems to solve that could only potentially be helped by long-term therapy before the debilitating symptoms get better. Especially when the only hope that kept you alive and running towards improvement at full speed was the delusion that all your chronic chaos, inconsistency, struggle, and inhibition would go away very soon if you kept working on yourself.
Sorry for the rant. This had to go somewhere.
:) we all gotta get our thoughts together somewhere.
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3mo
You're super welcome! Have a great day! :)
Are you conveying this to your therapist? This happened to me and we spent a year working on emotion regulation, grounding and that the somatic feelings/voices/thoughts/emotions are important to acknowledge vs push away and nurture/respect the parts that are sending the messages. It’s been about 2 years since we started this process and things are much calmer (not any easier) but my body and mind aren’t overwhelmed with all the input. My therapist is also respectful of all input and speaks to my whole mind in a kind open way. Journal, self-care, relaxation, grounding and internal communication should help ease the chaos
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Yes, I can relate really hard. For now our answer to the constant blurring is there is almost always an alter in front (me) that is constantly blurring with other fronters. I presume it’s like this so we can easily mask and protect ourselves from further exposure- since i’m good at repressing everything an acting normal. Every day is different, some days it’s like you described- and others it completely quiet with a looming sense of sadness in the background. Everything is always changing so much in a few days I could realize I wasn’t blurring with people at all and im a bunch of fragments. It sucks.