So… I Got A Notification From The State Department At Like 8 PM Pacific That My Passport Was Approved,

your mistake is thinking healing will always feel good, and not often like molting while clung to dead tree bark

{ By Anna White from " Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith" }

This is going to be a hot take to some, but I think people with CDDs should step back from using online platforms and avoid them if they're too sensitive to getting influenced by them. Especially if they're a newly discovered DID person.

Like genuinely... My experience with DID (symptoms wise) was funnily enough better before I discovered I had it because yeah, I had really bad barriers, but I wasn't constantly encouraged into amplifying them?

With that I mean that I often see public platforms encouraging and promoting splitting alters? Which for me it just resulted in having me and my own alters even more confused about everything?

Genuinely, I still struggle with this shit it's so annoying, because my first instinct is to separate myself more and more instead of at least lowering the dissociative barriers. And seeing public spaces completely encouraging it and in general encouraging stuff like "sourcemates only chat" is just- idk... I don't think that's how you treat dissociative barriers? Feeding into introjects believing they ARE that character/person is the same thing as just believing that character from that universe was taken out of it and put in your head which is completely nonsensical for DID. It can certainly FEEL that way but it is not-

I don't generally do a whole lot of graphic trauma dumping in therapy anymore because I'm usually trying to ~figure things out~ and ~implement systems to help me live~ and talking about horrific shit doesn't necessarily help me do that.

But today I definitely spent half an hour talking in detail about some of the injuries I received at the hands of my stepfather and mother and Woo Boy did my therapist have some Looks™ about it. She definitely corrected it right away but a few times I caught her being like 😬👀, and I hate it but at the same time it's validating as fuck.

Like yeah, therapist, it's fucking cringe inducing what they did to me. It was bad. It was, in fact, ~very bad~.

Idk it's been a hard two days guys. But I'm out here surviving it.

Skills you shouldn’t have to learn to survive yet child abuse forces you to:

moving around without making any noise

moving around the place without turning on the light

locking/unlocking doors in complete darkness

staying stoic in the face of screaming, threats, and violence

pretense of being calm even if in deep panic

perfect pretense of being fine even in the middle of breakdown

silent crying, crying without making any noise or even tears

doing physical work while crying or injured and not stopping

sensing when someone is angry or stressed because now they’re a danger to you

comforting and calming people down in desperate attemt to lower the amount of danger you’re in

recognizing a person by their footsteps, or a car by the noise it makes when turning to a stop

turning all injustices and anger inwards and making it into self hatred

hiding scars and injuries

expertly making excuses for marks or scars on yourself

dissociating in a second if there’s danger of new trauma

repressing mountains of trauma

surviving emotionally completely on your own

be normal about people who wear diapers. be normal about people who need colostomy/catheter bags. be normal about people who need to wear pads or pad their mattress. be normal about incontinence. it’s not funny or weird or gross, it can happen to anyone of any age, and it’s frankly embarrassing that some of y’all can’t be normal about the aspects of disability that ick you out

I just spent three hours writing a 2500 word letter to my stepmom explaining how fucking stupid it is for her to keep insisting I was "spoiled" when I was actually literally trafficked and paid for all of the "things" my mother gave me with my own fucking body. I doubt I'll give it to her. but still. i wrote it.

Fuck I am so far from okay right now

Not me listening to The Little Mermaid soundtrack and crying about not feeling like a person anymore after my TBI