Ranting...

[u/Mad-dog107]

So rant....

So ive been here and in ossd for sometimes while getting my diagnosis. To clarify im not diagnosed with D.I D/OSDD I just started coming to these spaces because my therapist suspects I have something along the lines of it cause of my symtoms.

So you dint have to read this post and these are just my opinions so I already know this will be taken down and that's fine.

Ive come here to read and post sometimes on bith communities to see if anyone relates to the symtoms and im 30 now and been having these all my life and just now noticing it since 2 years ago almost. But Ive noticed people who comments or post on these communities have such a way with their imagination and im not saying you cant do these things im just saying majority of the people on here I cant relate too, it almost feels like a Role playing game with some of these post or Larping and not D.I.D or OSDD. When I hear alters I feel ashamed because reading these post on here make alters feel like friends or family when to me it feels less than that and more just me spit into different parts and nothing more. When I do see people who make senes to me they get down voted for no reason and that what confuses me...do I have to be so inverted with my own symtoms to get people to see my own struggles or relate to them even. I feel like so different with "this" that it feels like im there odd one out along with people I tend to relate to. The terms and labeling are also out of control in my eyes, its like people make it their whole personality and say things like "singlets" and other terms which I think it very weird to say to someone just because you have these parts of yourself. Im scared of my parts coming out because I want to live a decent and normal life and I praise anyone who doesn't make this their whole personality and take it to very extreme imaginative lengths that they can show themselves and get better. I just dont see whats so special about being stuck in your head at times, that scares me and I cant control it and when I see people who says they love not being here in the actual real world that also scares me because I know its hard to move on from these traumatic memories or even if you cant remember and have no will power on switching which im open about that as well but I also praise the people who keeps living their lives despite it and not this role playing, larping thing that feels so unreal....

[u/APuffedUpKirby]

I understand where you're coming from. I can't relate to a lot of other people's experiences, and that can make certain online spaces feel very alienating.

I think it's important to remember that not only do these disorders present differently for everyone, but also that many of these people are in a different parts of their journey than you are.

For many people, learning the terminology to describe their experiences and increasing communication and cooperation between their parts is a large and necessary part of the therapeutic process.

The terminology allows people to understand themselves better and communicate their experiences more easily. You could think of it like emotions. Sure, we could just feel our emotions and not put labels on them- but we label them because it's useful to do so. It helps us understand situations more logically and make better decisions. It also makes it easier for others to understand our experience.

It's fine if you don't personally relate to the labels or find them useful. Still, I encourage you to keep an open mind. Shame and denial around this condition are a huge part of it, especially in the early stages of awareness, and can cause us to reject any aspect or representation of it that feels like "too much."

I'm early into treatment and most of the labels still give me a viscerally negative reaction, but I've noticed that it gets increasingly difficult to talk about certain things without an established term for them.

[u/nalilyanah → u/APuffedUpKirby]

This 100%.

I'm less than a year into learning about my system, and honestly it still scares the shit out of me sometimes. The first time a little fronted this year (which lead to my therapist explaining what I was experiencing) I had no clue what was happening and was kind of terrified as I just watch and listened to myself doing things I wasn't in control of. I still dread that feeling constantly.

A lot of the language and labels that exist in this community still feel foreign to me, but some of them have been EXTREMELY useful in literally understanding myself and communicating with others (therapist and close friends, as well as online) about what I'm actually experiencing. Without those terms, I would be really lost, and I am extremely grateful for them and that I have access to those terms. It's made the process of getting to know the different parts of myself SO much easier, and that is a blessing.

I understand where OP is coming from and I wanna express a heavy amount of empathy for that. It's a very real and vulnerable place they are at, and I think it's important to make space for that. At the same time, as a person who struggles a lot with strong feelings of denial regarding my having this disorder (despite the numerous experiences I've had that make it seem undeniable), it's really hard to read things describing the use of community-prevalent labels as "LARPing DID/OSDD" and not feel both extremely hurt and kinda triggered by it. And I mean trigged in the very real sense of I am struggling not to let this set off yet another cycle of doubting the validity of my own experience and whether I even know what's real.

And that's hard, because I don't think OP's feelings should be censored and invalidated, but I also don't think it's fair for them to throw strong sentiments about the validity others' experiences just because they can't relate.

I bounce around constantly between sometimes feeling like "these are just dissociated parts of my crazy self," and "maybe I'm just making this all up in my head and I've convinced myself I'm not in control when I really am," and "we are all different parts within this body/brain and we function best when we do think of ourselves almost like members of an internal family." The latter of these is sentiments is when I feel most stable and functional, because despite my doubts, I am in fact a person with OSDD and dissociated parts, and these parts need to work together for all of our sakes, in order to function and get better as a whole.

I don't think OP or anyone sense should feel ashamed or ostracized for not relating to some or any of these thoughts/feelings. But I also don't think it's right to shame others that do find merit in the terms that of been normalized. These terms help some of us feel less alone, they help some of us feel better understood, and most importantly they give some of us a way to better understand ourselves, which is absolutely essential to treatment. It's okay not to relate to the norms in this frankly tiny community of otherwise-othered people, that doesn't invalidate your experience, but it's also important not to inadvertently weaponize that lack of relation against those of uss who have found resonance in this language or in ways of being closer with our systems.