Ahh, you're welcome. Dissociation is a type of natural human coping mechanism that exists in almost everyone. It's essentially your mind running away from what's already there, to different extents. It's usually not a problem at all. It becomes pathological/a serious problem only when it causes serious disruptions to your life and functioning and serious distress.

If your thoughts about T are all either positive or nothing, that's a good starting point. After spending numerous hours on detrans forums I've learned that the best way to approach transition isn't to make sure you're 100% certain before you start, it's to readily listen to your authentic feelings and change your approach/plan if you find it no longer works/something works better. Many people who detransition don't suffer the life-ruining regret you see in mainstream stories, they are able to eventually make peace with what's already done and cope with life. It's better to emotionally prepare what you're going to do if you do regret, than to prevent the possibility of being wrong/changing your mind (you can never eliminate that possibility). In fact, many of the serious regret detrans people often started 100% sure and stuck to one idea of transition for too long despite lots of warning signs popping up.

Well, my struggle isn't statistically common even among the trans/detrans experiences I've read. I'd say don't worry about it getting this bad if similar problems haven't ever popped up before T.

I've been having significant periods of feeling cis female and having reverse dysphoria (from not being feminine enough) far into childhood, and it got worse as we started presenting male and using a male legal name. When it came to considering T, I kept on going from certain I wanted the T effects to dreading the thought of starting T and back, rapidly.

Around May last year, there were some serious emotionally damaging conflicts with my parents over the issue. After that crushed me, there were a few times I'd suddenly feel like the way I've seen and presented myself my entire life was a lie, I wouldn't have genuinely liked any of the things I had in my room, or made any of my major life decisions, or made the friends I have now. I couldn't remember feeling genuine dysphoria in my life, but I could remember quite a few instances along the way I really liked being feminine and being a girl.

I'd cry like I've arrived at an enlightening epiphany. I'd want to run out and tell my parents their daughter is back but there's be an internal thought process convincing me to wait another few days before saying a word to my parents about it. So I'd go on the trans server and my chat with my close friends and type long-ass essays about the epiphany, that I had been absolutely wrong believing I was trans the whole time, I genuinely felt cis and don't feel real dysphoria, wanted to start my life properly as cis, didn't want to be called my chosen legal name at all (though I couldn't figure out a new name on the spot) and asked people to call me she/her or she/they. Everyone I knew were really supportive and they just told me they're really glad I figured myself out.

Next day, I wake up, wear the full female uniform to school. Think about how I regret cutting my hair in the first place and I would never get my long hair back anytime soon. When I step into school it's like stepping into school for the first time, getting to know my classmates for the first time, etc. even though I know I've been attending school for months. I also felt like it was wrong being there, that I should be back in 2020, attending my old school. It felt like someone else was living my life after that. But I felt so relieved about being cis, but I also felt really apprehensive, as I felt like I had to overthrow everything about the life I've crafted to be my authentic self, not just gender wise, but the entire personality I've been assuming of myself and interacting with people as.

Then within a day of the initial shift, something in my brain snaps and the regular me would take over, remembering watching quite a bit from the above happen. I'd get seriously annoyed, like "that was fucking ridiculous. I don't feel cis in the slightest way. Why would I feel cis, jump to conclusions so impulsively, or go on such melodramatic rants? I knew it. I'm 100% sure I have serious dysphoria. Now I have to take back all my words from my friends."

The entire cycle happened a few times both before and after T, and each time looked scarily similar except I didn't feel new in school. I knew it was seriously suspicious of OSDD1b/DID but dismissed it as a real possibility because (1) I just wanted to believe those detrans episodes were coping mechanisms to repress so I could be confident starting T (2) I didn't believe I ever had childhood trauma and it's impossible to legitimately have "alters" without serious childhood trauma (3) it's so rare, you're just a teenager, you're probably just overthinking. Same way I dismissed the possibility after some thought when a completely different but equally drastic shift kept happening around 15-16, during which I kept intentionally emotionally abusing my close friend over text, then feeling genuine crippling guilt and the inability to understand why I'd want to harm him, then going back to harming him, repeat. It was extremely toxic and abusive and it was my fault as a whole I didn't stop those messages from being sent. At that time I also wrote rants to myself, referring to my "usual" self as "you" and the self I was experiencing as "I". After all this I still didn't want to believe I had alters (and had to treat their desires as equally authentic and deserving of consideration), so I basically pushed my way to go on T to see if it could fix my perpetually nerfed brain despite vehement internal opposition.

Within 2 weeks of going on T and having my brain finally work, the detrans episodes started happening again and childhood trauma kind of resurfaced, so I figured out I had Complex PTSD and got diagnosed with that and DDNOS within my first month on T. I now had to properly consider if I legitimately had alters, took a few months accepting them, then started realizing that my memory also had serious issues. It has since been a huge struggle and my long-term memories have been chopped up much more to forget there's so much wrong with my life and my brain. I got diagnosed with DID 2 weeks ago, which was about 6 months on T.

I still don't believe I have DID (most of the time). I say I've been diagnosed in place of saying I have it. Something something too young, became aware too early, so it's fake. Most of the time I straightup don't remember all the times I struggled with obvious symptoms so I start believing I don't really have them. I've recorded my debilitating struggles in detail but the parts of me active during those times intentionally avoid learning and thinking about more problems so they don't read those. I'm not going to force it because I know the brain isn't ready and it'll make things worse. You can say that DID is the reason I struggled with my transition so immensely and persistently. Regardless of what you think it is, it was one hell of a pain, and I rarely see the issue among all the trans/detrans experiences I've read.

It's almost 5am. Didn't sleep. Going to school tomorrow.

I don't know what happened to our will to get our shit together. I guess parts with that function have been tired since our unrealistic hope things will resolve soon and life would be smooth and happy died more and more. That was the only thing that fueled an intense will to strive for the best, from the time I was 6, to the time I turned 17.

I don't care. I'm enjoying the moment, since I don't have many moments to enjoy. That's what I live for. Doesn't feel like 5am anyway.

---

We were okay if we had OSDD1b because the struggle between parts have been undeniably well-known and causing severe issues for years. But since the moment DID diagnosis became a real possibility that dawned on us, we began developing a whole cast of new parts with much less awareness and much more amnesia. They front most of the time now. Since the first one formed, we've been developing a lot more problems with motor control whenever uncoordinated parts (usually those with big differences in levels of awareness) fight for control and attempt to change their percentage of control. Doesn't help that these new parts are extremely avoidant. Even if they know part of the "lore" about having parts and the recent diagnosis, they actively drown us out to prove that we're faking and they're the only one in control. They also ignore serious responsibilities like schoolwork that only switching to limited functional parts can help them really do because they don't want to discontinue their consciousness. At least one of them is trying to use severe BPD (we don't meet the BPD criterion, the only symptoms we are abnormal in comparison to the average untraumatized neurotypical person are the dissociative ones) or having a brain tumor since childhood as an alternative explanation for the symptoms. It's frustrating but we lost a lot of the ambition and intense agency to self-help so we're not really caring.

I'm tired as fuck. God dammit.

---

I feel fine. We should get some overdue work going but I don't know how to do them, only that one part does.

---

Not sure if he's even able to function. We have only 2 hours to sleep from now, is it even worth it?

I think my experience, among many others, pretty much proves that some people have a neurobiological need to take HRT/not take HRT. T cleared up my brain so much it went from 10% pre-puberty function (clarity, processing speed, depth of thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception) to 100% pre-puberty function. My overall mood wasn't worse during puberty and before T at all, my brain just didn't work regardless of how I felt.

Unfortunately, as much as I genuinely feel male at times and can't stand being physically female, I genuinely feel cis female for quite a significant chunk of the time, get reverse dysphoria, and am horrified at the T changes. During the first 5 months, I got convinced I was never trans, it's all placebo, and tried to taper off T multiple times, but my brain function goes down the lower my T levels drop every single time, no matter how I subjectively feel my gender. I rushed into T on my own accord because I couldn't stand living a brain that was so nerfed I couldn't experience anything close to what I'd call a "life", and I can't go off T because of the same reason.

At this point, I don't consider myself fully trans or fully cis but I've finally figured out why I struggled so much, and decided to stay put on a regular dose of T indefinitely. The physical changes have been a net positive since I don't have my functioning hindered by debilitating dysphoria anymore, but I'm honestly not on HRT for the physical changes because I don't have any consistent idea of the type of body I'd like to have.

I wish the neurobiological differences (which can be extremely drastic for some) made it into mainstream discourse. HRT is so much more than the physical changes.

I'm wondering if some vision problems could be to do with derealization. I wear glasses and notice how my vision changes from really sharp to quite blurry very quickly, and when it's blurry there's often more derealization. Like, it's hard for you to focus your vision.

Don't know what eye doctors could do about that but I'm curious to hear if anyone has fixed their vision problems through something external.

I understand. Our one(s) have been like this for years, when we finally took accountability and barred them from abusing others, the inward abuse doubled down. Recovery sabotage, endless "stfu and kys" comments that we don't care about but seriously harm the EP(s) with self-esteem issues, encouraging EPs to SH, calling them a coward if they hesitate, saying "if you won't do it I'll do it for you," etc.

They all develop from trauma responses turned unhealthy. The ones that criticize us to no end are trying to rid the thoughts/actions they feel resulted in trauma in the past, and prevent us from doing anything that could get us traumatized again. The ones that think of themselves as perfect but blame us for everything we do in the harshest way possible are trying to vent their frustrations with our life and our perceived shortcomings without feeling guilt directed at themselves. The ones that are extremely sadistic and emotionally apathetic are convinced that we have to kill our humanity to not feel hurt again, and beat the worst of the worst at their own game to always be the perpetrator, not the victim, because of the horrific stuff they knowingly went through. Of course there's also the desire for revenge.

As much as I understand they're coming from a place of serious hurt, I feel extremely frustrated at their behavior too. Doesn't help that they see themselves as separate and superior to the rest and do not care about what we think or feel. Empathy doesn't work, whatever we say either proves their point or makes us a weak pathetic idiot.

It's quite normal to remember some actions of other alters in a subjectively detached way ("that happened" or "apparently I did that" instead of "I can remember how it was like doing that") without any treatment, but it's a different thing from realizing there are alters/those are from alters and not yourself/they are an alter and so are you. The brain's very good at hiding the chunks of actual memories it's unable to access at the moment so you also don't feel like something's missing unless you're forced to recall. Your brain also fills up gaps with unassuming placeholder memories so you may think you can recall everything when you try to recall your day (unless someone else/information flow from an alter points out that it's completely factually incorrect.)

The flow of information/knowledge can naturally happen quite often so I don't see why some alters/parts cannot remember anything others do at all. It's a necessary thing to survive even if you're not aware where this information is coming from. But that kind of flow of information is very different from actual access to information expanded through fusion. It's either just factual descriptions (can be of emotions if you're good at describing them) without the ability to recall the actual subjective experience, or rarely, emotional baggage without the full story. I get the former a lot when I actively try to recall something in daily life. Growing up, my parents would ask me about my day in school but I always felt like I could only remember as much as if someone else was telling me about what happened. I didn't exactly know where that information was coming from but I realized I wouldn't know anything about my own experience other than what my "internal monologue" tells me. These "internal monologues" would never voluntarily identify themselves as different people from me because we were all just quite confused what's going on but also pretending to be normal as much as possible.

Besides communication of information, "co-consciousness" is another common way one can remember some of what another part feels or does. Basically, you can simultaneously have parts conscious and running in the background when one part is predominantly experiencing life and having control of it. So the ones in the background may remember a brief factual synopsis of what happens, usually incomplete and missing a lot od details. They can remember factual descriptions of other parts' emotions if they're good with words, but even then, it's hard to understand or empathize with other parts' emotions. For those with a higher degree of fragmentation, even if having co-conscious parts is a default state for functioning, every part may still have a large chunk of the time where it's not their turn and they do not retain any memories.

It should be noted that some alters/parts may be completely/partially clueless even after a very clear finding out about what's going on. The dissociative barriers usually vary between parts/alters, some parts can have a huge difference in their level of awareness of distress/disorder/trauma. The level of awareness among one person's parts can range from thoroughly understanding what is going on, how it works, why it started, etc. to being completely unaware that there are even other parts or anything wrong with their life. I have been diagnosed and in the early stages of treatment, but right now, there is a number of parts in each of these levels of factual awareness:

1. factually unaware that the disorder exists, that they're diagnosed with it, that they have other parts, and even that there's anything wrong with their life. Freaks out at any knowledge that there's something wrong with this brain or this life. Do not understand why they have to cooperate even if they are able to hear internal communication.
2. somewhat factually aware that there are other parts but do not know it is a disorder, generally cooperates when there's internal communication for them to hand their time over. Very avoidant of thinking about anything that's wrong, ignores obvious signs of amnesia so they can focus on their functioning roles.
3. factually aware of the diagnosis but believes we are misdiagnosed since "it's nowhere near that bad", because they cannot remember the numerous instances of obvious symptoms throughout their day and ignores/dismisses any part that comes up by suppressing them and calling them fake. Feels as if they remember a lot of the day, but in reality, when we in the background hear them internally recall, they recall an unamusing default account of what that day in the week typically looks like, which contains obviously wrong facts like when we ate our meals and who we ate our meals with.
4. factually aware of the diagnosis and remembers most of the struggles with symptoms and internal conflict, so finds the diagnosis believable (no matter how much they hate it and wish it weren't the case). They don't know everything but have a good general idea of what other parts there are, how they are like, and what they tend to do.
5. same as above but retain memories of reading up a ton, so they have a very thorough understanding of why they have the disorder and how most of it works. These don't deal with most of the actual distress so they can analyze and intellectualize the situation, and factually know an overview of the problematic without getting overwhelmed. I'm one of these parts and I've been spending an abnormal amount of time explaining the disorder to random people because I honestly don't want to lose my consciousness and I'll lose it once I start doing something else, which requires other parts to take over.

Co-consciousness can be wild when you are a level 5 awareness part and have a part with level 1 awareness in predominant control. It's funny and sad to observe how they're completely unaware I'm there but I'm aware they're there, how they cannot recognize someone but I can, how they have no idea what is going on but I'm absolutely clear about it. They cannot read my thoughts but I can sense and observe theirs.

With all that in mind, I believe it's not too difficult to realize you probably have alters and study them if something makes you investigate hard enough. People with DID/OSDD are actually found to be extremely "introspective" (some of us speculate it's due to the ability to think about "your" emotions and actions from a completely separate perspective). So with enough abnormalities causing enough problems in your life and making you so distressed you go all in figuring out what is wrong with you, you'll almost certainly run into information about DID/OSDD online and resonate with some of it. Becoming aware of alters and actually believing you have the condition are two separate things. You're probably not going to believe you actually have the problem for a good while, even when you become somewhat aware of how your brain works, even when you start recording obvious symptoms, even when you get the diagnosis.

I'm one of those who figured out and got diagnosed "too early" because it gave me too many problems that I spent around 80% of my time trying to figure out my issues as a teen. I was very aware something was seriously wrong with my short-term memory when I was 11-14, but when I actually read about DID/OSDD at 16 and related to some of the struggles with identity, I firmly believed I had 0 amnesia, and also 0 childhood trauma, so even if my problems somewhat resemble the disorders, I can't possibly have the actual thing. I began having more and worse issues so I started seeking mental help when I was 16 and half, hoping it's Bipolar II and medications can make most of my problems go away, but a psychologist and a psychiatrist from different clinics said it was not. My friend happened to have a PDF of the entire DSM 5 so I started reading it. I remember getting absolutely terrified reading the section on DID because the whole section seemed to describe me so accurately, especially the differential diagnoses section. But I still firmly denied the possibility for a good few months, until childhood trauma started resurfacing and I got diagnosed with C-PTSD and DDNOS. That's when I seriously started considering OSDD-1b and trying to understand my parts, but firmly sticking to "I don't have blackout (complete) amnesia" because the struggle with parts is enough for me and no way I wanted it to be that bad. When I finally couldn't deny blackout amnesia anymore, I started finding alternative explanations to my problems that didn't involve DID. Even a DID diagnosis couldn't stop me, many parts are still grasping at straws for possible explanation it's something else. Some parts of me would rather believe they have serious BPD (I never had significant struggles with any BPD symptoms except the dissociative ones, professionals usually really like diagnosing my demographic with BPD but no one I've seen even brought up the possibility even though I started seeking help as a teenager with "rapid mood swings") or a brain tumor than DID. I'm not yet 18 and that gives me all the more reason to believe I exaggerated my way into a diagnosis.

Same. Last year before college. It sucks.

Sorry if this is extremely late. I typed out 95% of the comment and forgot to post it.

Sounds incredibly horrible. I'm not an expert but from my experience of rapid re-organization it seems that alters/parts/fragments are (at the core) manifestations of how the mind compartmentalizes its emotional memories, factual memories, skills, emotional ranges, etc.

Your mind can't delete those "contents", but with DID it can compartmentalize them by putting its contents in different boxes with dissociative barriers. Each box can have a lot of content or barely any content, but regardless, the barriers are there and each alter shows up as separate. What's in each box defines the traits, roles, and attitudes of an alter, and even a little change in contents may make a big difference in that (which is why alters can be so different and contradictory despite getting their contents from the same life).

All alters are valid and authentic but also temporary. The dissociative barriers that draw the borders between boxes are actually super fluid, they can get redefined as much and as frequently as the underlying mind deems necessary (unfortunately you can't consciously determine this). Basically your mind can take out the contents of some boxes and redistribute them when it deems necessary, make more boxes and redistribute, make less boxes and distribute, etc. and anything is possible. For instance, you can have 1 box of contents re-organize into 50 boxes within a very short time if your mind is somehow convinced to do that. Whether it's because it believes it can no longer cope with the current configuration, because it's convinced that another configuration is better, or even because it is convinced to fragment unnecessarily just to self-sabotage and make life more difficult (I'm still dealing with this and it happens on a whim).

Usually during more intense breakdowns or flashbacks, it's easier to overwhelm your mind and make it convinced enough to reorganize the barriers. Sometimes it's quick enough that before you even know it, some alters just completely change (because their contents have been re-organized).

I'd say don't worry about alters disappearing. You may never get the exact same box back to re-create the way you knew an alter, but everything in your alters will always be there.

After reading that review I do agree. There are quite a lot of valuable takeaways from that book but I have DID. The techniques don't work. I tried to read my own experiences into it and denounced my worse-off pure-EPs (as I have parts who know about trauma but still cope relatively well, it's about how much each part carries the burden of memory of the experience, not the facts) as emotional flashbacks at first.

What are your thoughts on The Body Keeps The Score?

That is amazing! Gives me so much hope as well, because I've been procrastinating so much.

Just any kind of (usually prolonged) overwhelming distress as a child, often with no one/nothing external to comfort you, so your mind (1) couldn't handle always having all the factual knowledge and emotions of what you were going through within its reach and (2) had to turn inward for comfort.

Don't try to dig into it without learning how to emotionally cope first. Don't assume you can cope already if you barely feel emotionally distressed/overwhelmed, because that could just be parts of the mind that cannot directly access trauma/severe distress. I made that mistake and thought I'd be able to take it digging up everything that's wrong with my life. Dissociation is a primary coping mechanism and if you try to dig up trauma and have no other ways of coping with it, dissociation will get worse.

Hell, this is such a struggle and I've been trying every method I can find since 2016. Literally nothing worked reliably.

I set phone alarms with important info as descriptions and have them vibrate when I'm supposed to look at the stuff. I also wear a smart watch so my watch starts vibrating too. Set the snooze to every 10 minutes, 10x allowed, so if I can't get it taken care of yet I'd just snooze.

Seems to be unavoidable, but I only just started doing it, not sure how well it actually works because the last time I came up with something I thought was unavoidable (writing on my hand in permanent marker) I still managed to avoid looking at it for a long time. At this point? I'm honestly impressed, it's funny and sad.

"I am really scared that progress in integration/fusion means I'm faking, so I prevent and sabotage any of my recovery progress and intentionally make myself worse so it can finally be bad enough and be taken seriously" - a particular EP that has been causing a lot of self-sabotage in recovery. Literally using the hallmark logic of Factitious Disorder when she wants us to be taken seriously.

Like, we've literally been professionally diagnosed, people are listening much more, what more do we need to (so covertly) prove that our life is horrible? The rest of us are fucking sick and tired of how debilitating this shit is, especially the unnecessary fragmentation, it was already bad enough before all that went down. We're not trying to fuse anyone with traumatic content, we're just trying to get functional.

While I'm not one of the parts who constantly come up with excuses to fakeclaim the DID diagnosis, I 100% believe an important emotional part of us has legitimate issues in the line of Factitious Disorder. Growing up having all my struggles dismissed or downplayed by all the adults around me really did a number on me. Even getting my struggles acknowledged right now doesn't make the problem better. We need to work on this next time we go to therapy or we can never fuse any parts safely.

Even good representation can be triggering because it actively reminds you of your problems. The bunch of us who actually believe we have the disorder also have trouble being hit in the face with how bad it is (and how bad it can get) through seeing it in someone else. It's usually the scarily relatable traumatized characters that are the most triggering, even if they aren't explicitly shown to develop/have DID.

Fight Club isn't very relatable in the disorder mechanics it portrays, but hell, a lot of things about it hit way too close to home. When I watched it a second time with the whole plot in mind, I switched out right before the end and was a cold sadistic protector/persecutor for a whole day to shield away emotions.

I'm sorry you're going through all this while feeling like no one's really there for you, it's horrible. I hope this comment will help you in some way.

Realistically speaking, if i die, would anyone even care? Honestly no. Everyone would probably pretend like they were so nice to me and cry for a day and then the next is like i nvr existed. I don't want to be in this place anymore.

I felt like this for a long time in 2019, except I believed I was a burden and everyone would be happy to have me gone. Now, in 2024, I am infinitely grateful that I kept myself alive, I don't really care if people would rejoice or cry when I die. My life has never stopped being surreal and a nightmare in may ways (and it will never stop being like this for the foreseeable future), but so many things have been worth the neverending daily struggle. Even during the times I really hate my life, I can't honestly say I regret not Spoiler in 2019.

I know it's not realistic to expect things to get a lot better soon, but if you keep yourself alive, you're giving yourself a good chance you'll find it worth staying alive for (which does not mean your life has to be amazing). Please do not rob yourself of that chance right now. I passively gave myself that chance and it has been so worth it. I hope you'll stay like I did and find it worth getting there one day.

(The advice section + information regarding professional help)

I can't tell you I know how to solve your problems, but there are a few options that could make things less bad.

Try to find people who share similar struggles with you in real life/from here, it can be really comforting to talk about your shared struggles even when no one knows how to solve their problems.

It can be extremely helpful for you to seek professional help but you have to weigh your options carefully and I know the limitations. It sounds like you need external help with the self harm, but if you tell any counsellor/therapist/psychiatrist about it, they will have to inform your parents by law. I never had problems with overt physical self harm so I don't have a perspective on this consideration. School counsellors are only equipped to handle basic student life struggles, they usually cannot diagnose anything or help with problems like PTSD and other conditions you can develop from that. Psychologists are often also therapists (some use the term "psychotherapist"), psychologists can assess certain conditions and therapists can provide long-term non-medical treatment. Only psychiatrists can prescribe medications if you need them, and they are typically able to diagnose a wider range of conditions, but they don't work on emotional recovery.

I suggest you try to talk to your school counsellors for a start, but if they're all horrible, drop them. If you want to seek help beyond school counsellors, I suggest you go to a psychologist/psychotherapist who can figure out your problems and also provide therapy. If they say you need/could benefit from meds, then you find a psychiatrist to check the diagnoses and prescribe some meds for you to try. Please don't bank your hopes on meds to solve your problems, I made that mistake last year and was in for a harsh awakening. Many meds may not work/may make things worse for you in particular and many conditions cannot be treated with meds. Unless it's a chemical problem, therapy is often more crucial than meds.

Bad therapy is worse than no therapy, and it's not rare to run into terrible counsellors/therapists. If you want to get mental health services from the public route (via IMH), there is usually a 4-week waitlist for your first appointment (where you will only get to talk about your life history and briefly about your current struggles). I don't know if they allow you to choose your therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist, and I've heard from my friends that the quality can be really bad depending on who you get. Private therapy/psychologist consults cost about $200-300 per hour and there are a lot more options for you to choose from, but I'm not sure if it's feasible for your parents especially since ~10 sessions with a good therapist is the minimum it takes unless your problems are very straightforward. The first appointment will also be getting to know you and your life history. If you want to go to therapy, please try to choose a trauma specialist with EMDR certification even if you aren't working on any trauma. They're just generally much more reliable than the average therapist and have to actually know their shit to get an EMDR certification. Anywhere you get a professional you find questionable/unpleasant working with, don't be afraid, just drop them and find a new one.

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.

Definitely don't stop yourself from trying anything that may work :)

Personally hard, defined textures (not super smooth) give a sense of stability. My phone case has textures for friction on the power button so I like that. Also the rough edges of the handle of my water bottle. I like knitted fabric but that's not feasible to wear in my country's perpetual heat. You can try a few different things, my therapist made me try a few different things and it was helpful to find what felt best.

I'm closer to 17 than 18. Oldest 19, youngest 16 (legal age of consent in my country).

Try textures. My therapist got me to explore some and it's the only one that works without noticeable downsides.

Thanks for reminding me that it's not all downright horrible. The internal singing/music is quite a funny feature. Oddly enough, I often enjoy listening to internal music more than external music and I usually don't listen to any songs even though I habitually leave my earbuds in.

No energy. Drained as hell. 9 days since diagnosis, still trying to let a lot of things sink in.

Some ANPs once again went down the "maybe I rushed into a diagnosis and just have really bad BPD" rabbit hole. To gauge whether that possibility is even worth bringing up to my therapist/psychiatrist, I did a quick Borderline spectrum quiz to see how likely we have each BPD symptom. For context, all except one of us never got close to finding BPD symptoms relatable. Throughout one entire year of regularly seeing professionals (from two separate clinics because the first couldn't prescribe meds), no professional ever brought up BPD as a possibility even though I was legally female and struggling with erratic mood swings too short to be bipolar. Literally all our borderline subscales on the online quiz were extremely low except dissociation, identity diffusion, and emptiness. It's absolutely ridiculous to believe that all our symptoms are from undiagnosed BPD, but we can't stop those ANPs from onto conspiracy theory-grade alternative explanations for our symptoms. Denial is one hell of a drug.

But what can we do? My brain made pure ANPs for a reason. I can't force reality down their throats, it will only make them less stable which is disastrous since we lack coping mechanisms and have a very low activation energy needed to split.

No. There's usually just a general vibe, some only have a vague "type" of appearance, a few have more specific and detailed features than others. But I can't visualize them full body at once like I can visualize other people.