I feel like this post needs some sort of additional serious trigger warning, but I also can’t pinpoint anything specific that can be put in a typical TW.
The most I can generalize what we’re talking about in this is stuff with the extreme polyfragmentation our system possesses.
-Legacy
-=-=-=-=-=-
“What the hell’s going on?! Can someone tell me please? Why I’m switching faster than the channels on TV?”
…
…
…
Our therapist and other sources we have seen and researched commonly tell us that rapid-switching is qualified as something along the lines of “2+alters/switches in an hour”
Now, I’m not going to go into exactly how often we switch. But it’s a LOT more than that.
We do this…all the time.
24/7, 365(.25) days a year.
Our brain…is soup.
But we thought this was normal.
Or at least “normal within the DID community”
I…thought that being abused to the point where the only function your system has is simply to *function* was “normal” to some degree.
Our therapist has been increasingly alarmed as we have began to delve into some of the really bad things we have been through. Things that, while there is surely a place and a time to talk of them (obv not in detail) somewhere…it’s not right here and right now.
Whatever part of our brain’s function alters form from…splintered to pieces.
Parents and parental-units should not be allowed in any way to let their child’s or child-unit’s brain to become so pixelated that it could be an immaculately detailed pointillism or cross stitch pattern.
I wonder if our time fooling around on Microsoft Paint when we were younger caused us to ponder things such the “resolution” (we didn’t have this word at the time) of the picture was depended on the amount and density of the pixels.
It feels sometimes like our brain took that a step further and decided “Hey! If there were more of us, we can better masquerade as ‘just one’!”
“…it’ll be the most detailed pointillism…”
“…the most intricate of Teresa Wentzler dragon cross stitch patterns…”
“…the biggest diamond dots…”
“But unless someone looks really closely…they’re not going to know a thing!”
[Insert crazy/insane anime serial killer laughter here]
Our brain decided “ah, yes. (John mulaney voice) surely *more* alters will fit in the same space”
Yeesh…
No wonder we’re tired and tense all the time.
No wonder our DID-specialized therapist who doesn’t force integration in the slightest told us (more like warned/braced us) that our alters integrating to some degree was basically inevitable.
[We lost our thought trail]
…
…
…
Welp, I’m honestly surprised we keep our thought trail that long. Idk how many alters were all strung along there to type this much.
Blah.
At least the whole point of this post is rapid-switching, right?
What if I told you that we switched four different times since the previous paragraph/sentence?
Now, obviously you can’t see how quickly we’re typing. But it’s not that terribly slow (even with it being on our smart phone, so we’re just thumb typing. Get us on a computer with a keyboard and we message insanely fast {ah, our good old memories of former forums/chatroom days where we would be rushing to reply in a bustling “thread”})
And there we added who knows how many alters more.
Holy fuck
…
When our wife/partner-system looks at us and asks “how do you function?”
This is what they are asking about.
No wonder our therapist has also been strongly urging therapy twice a week, and having at least one of them be dedicated purely to emdr, and the other one for whatever is needed.
Idk if we had more of a point that we wanted to share, but growing more self-sware about this part of our experience is terrifying, so I want to end this post here before there’s even more “stream-of-consciousness” revelations and try to play some Stardew Valley for a bit to calm down and stabilize a bit
♤♡ It will be interesting to see if our amnesia blocks this post from our memory◇♧
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Responses
Under periods of extreme internal or external stress, we sometimes rapidly switch – we refer to it as “revolving door switching” because the revolving door just keeps going round and round. <laugh> But that is not our usual. I can’t fully imagine what it would be like to do that all the time! Y’all deserve a reward for being able to function like that. <3
I think therapy 2x a week works well for DID. If we could afford it, we’d do it all the time. As it is, we alternate and go 2x one week, 1x the next, 2x the next, etc. Our therapist isn’t covered by our insurance, which sucks, but finding a good DID therapist is hard. If you have any way to go twice a week I highly recommend it.
Tbh, it is fricking miserable. We can’t keep threads of conversations very easily aside via text, and even that we’ll tend to switch paragraph to paragraph to paragraph if not sentence to sentence
We’re currently trying to stabilize to some degree while retaining the knowledge of just how severe it is bc I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve been able to see this more clearly and not just plaster more amnesia over it ^^” we’ve been in tears on and off all day today so far, because it’s hitting everyone like a bag of dictonaries.
We have a high level of skill in improv, and that combined with leaning into our (probable ADHD) has been the only thing that keeps the illusion that we’ve been carefully maintaining for at least the last decade, if not our whole life
I think it’s also very much a large chunk of the reason our therapist has been pushing us towards getting on disability…because this is completely unsustainable.
We actually a trip out of town tomorrow for doctor appointments, and we found a gift card for Barnes & Noble we had tucked in our wallet, and our wife/partner-system and us are going to split what’s left on it and try to each get a small thing while we’re there!
Our therapist is thankfully covered by our insurance, so that’s been something we’ve been trying to be very grateful for. We’re currently just waiting for them to have another available opening to get us in, and then we’ll be changing our availability at work to make sure it works!!
I had to laugh at the improv. We had a “corporate training” improv team come to Microsoft when I worked there a few years ago. Surprise, I was one of the very best at improv situations. It’s like, “if you guys only knew…”.
There is nothing wrong with going on disability when you need to. We were on disability for the first few years. I mean, it sucks, but it can also be a lifeline.
Yeah…we were talking with our therapist this morning and they affirmed that improv is the only thing keeping us afloat right now…it’s insane ^^” the last few days, we’ve been able to look at how bad it all is a little more, and oof. All the tears and meltdowns ^^” because it is so freaking bad…
It just feels like it’s going to be forever until we’re actually on it. (Currently in the midst of the appeal process…and on a waitlist for nueropsych evaluating…which is gonna be a WHILE…blah)