[source] [source]

Are there any RAMCOA-exclusive terms the system community needs to be aware of?

I know system hopping, system resets, and shell alters have had their meanings butchered, but then I see some debate about if "sidesystem" is RAMCOA-exclusive (or at least only experienced by RAMCOA survivors), as well as how gatekeeper and polyfragmentation aren't RAMCOA-exclusive but often have their meanings that tie back to that erased.

I... Can't think of any.

Terms being exclusive to RAMCOA¹ is kind of tricky as 1) most people who have gone through RAMCOA have little awareness of it, both in their own memory & not being aware of the terminology and community 2) RAMCOA is a continuum, meaning it's hard to define what is or isn't "enough" to qualify as RAMCOA, and 3) there are few rules as to how a system copes with stress & trauma. Further, a lot of the language around RAMCOA is community-based, or from specific high-control abuser groups; it's just damn hard to track where things come from. I can say though that sidesystem has its roots in the larger community and I know multiple "regular" systems with sidesystems⁠—hell, we were using "sidesystem" before we gained more awareness of our OA⁠— and shells exist in other forms of multiplicity, specifically some OSDD-1a presentations.

System hopping & system resets are weird as well, as they describe phenomena that is related to RAMCOA, and I'd argue really a facet of the control and shutdowns with systems who have survived RAMCOA, but we did not come up with those names at all. System hopping is often used as a threat by abusers (like used in combination with something like twin programming), and resets can be programmed-in "rotations" of fronters, but... They are what the wider plural community called them, and what some survivors have adopted because they're now recognizable terms.

That being said, I do think the community should be more aware of how the history of OSDD & DID is based in the study of RAMCOA. I see so many younger systems now ignore or even mocking the concept of RA, lumping the entire phenomenon in with the Satanic Panic (even though many of us survivors were literally born after that ended), or buying into False Memory Syndrome rhetoric. I've literally seen folks saying "there's no evidence that repressed memories exist" as if we haven't proven that scientifically over and over again. I think it's an issue of folks trying to distance themselves so far from stuff like the Satanic Panic & more modern iterations like Qanon that they leave survivors like me behind. It reeks of respectability politics, and victims are exhausted with the decades of fakeclaiming.

I think we should be less worried about if certain terms are exclusive to RAMCOA survivors and more concerned with actually meaningful support, like looking into the research on it, knowing the history of our fight for recognition and The Memory Wars era (for example: do you know where the RAMCOA acronym comes from? Do you know what the Grey Faction is? Can you recognize how misogyny was weaponized, and how social services were targeted by politicians by using us as a pawn?), and recognizing harmful rhetoric.

(Sorry for the huge dump of text!!!)

¹ For the record, there are certain terms that are exclusive to RAMCOA by means of, well, that being in the definition; programming, for example, is... Obviously RAMCOA specific. However, almost all forms of abuse require some kind of conditioning so saying "conditioning" is RAMCOA exclusive is false. See? It's tricky.

I lost the posts we wanted to respond to, but I think I remember what we were gonna say

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA with vague examples, syscourse?

Highly Complex DID

What “Complex” Means:

From what we’ve read, it seems like Complex refers to the specific disorder’s criteria. C-PTSD is PTSD with a different presentation; in this case, multiple/prolonged trauma causes difficulty tracing symptoms in the same ways as other PTSD cases. C-DID is DID with a different presentation; here it’s more intricate mechanisms that lead treatment down another path. Even CDD, which is dissociation into self-states instead of one dissociating self-state. The C just means that thing, plus some extra. There are going to be cases where a Complex patient is actually more simple to care for than a non-Complex patient — it’s just a matter of narrowing it down with more criteria.

Highly Complex:

As far as I know, there are no other communities that use Highly Complex as a label. It’s a specific word to whittle down the topic even further; C-DID but with more specifiers. For HC-DID, the specifiers are programming and structuring. Every human who experienced programming and lived is a RAMCOA survivor. Not every RAMCOA survivor considers themself a HC-DID system. Some survivors didn’t form systems at all. Others don’t think their system qualifies. Maybe people just don’t want to identify themselves this way. Even if it were a medical diagnosis — it’s not — forcing people to use labels they don’t want is rude at best.

What RAMCOA Is:

RAMCOA stands for Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, Organized Abuse. Surviving any of those is enough to belong in the community.

Ritual Abuse - maltreatment (of anyone) including ceremonies or traditions. It can be anything from religious sacrifice to underage marriage.

Mind Control - manipulation of psychological processes. I genuinely don’t know if there has to be negative intent or a specific plan from the abuser to qualify, but even targeted McDonald’s ads make use of mind control (probably not abusively, I’ve never looked into that).

Organized Abuse - maltreatment that involves multiple perpetrators collaborating in their perpetration. If two people meet at a bar and then hurt a child together, that’s enough. It can be elaborate groups like churches or criminal groups, but the only requirement is more than one perp.

It can be one or a mix of any, but it’s still RAMCOA. Usually, the DID community uses RAMCOA to talk about surviving programming (Trauma-Based Mind Control for the purpose of creating a system), and we label our systems Highly Complex.

Extra Criteria:

To be Highly Complex, survivors are usually closest to C-DID. But wait, there’s more!

HC-DID systems also receive:

Programming - I only know of TBMC being used to split off dissociative alters, but I’d budge on that if someone knew otherwise. Abusers control the child (body) by causing calculated suffering until they get the results they want. Perps split off alters with goals in mind for them, and continue to break them until they fit the desires of the abusers. This control extends to every other aspect of HC-DID, and is the reason another label exists at all.

Layers - different dimensions of innerworld. Sometimes this looks like literal other realms inside, but it could also be like floors of a building or planets or other separate worlds. Layers are often assigned a name or cue that allows outsiders to maneuver a system’s landscape from the external world. Perps don’t go in as much as they bring out, by assigned alter or other cued manipulations.

Subsystems - alters with alters, except also programmed. Cues are assigned to each subsystem alter as well, usually related to the subsystem as a collective. Just like programmed singlet alters, subsystems can be arranged by outsiders for memories, tasks, etc.

Sidesystems - kind of multiple systems within the metasystem. Groups might be contained in a separate innerworld pocket, unwilling to communicate with other alters, or otherwise unreachable in the same way other groups are. These sidesystems usually have a collective task, or function as a whole other system in the body. Details of what they do and why are also conditioned.

Programs - conditioning attached to cues. Programs might force amnesia, give body memories, set off chains of tasks, or any other typical or atypical system capability. Programs might be perceived as wires and buttons, or files, or whatever else programmers decide.

Not all HC-DID systems will have the same level of programming. Not all programmed systems will be more “complex” that other systems. Having a term to describe our unique experiences helps a lot of survivors to feel understood, especially if they’re already open about their past.

RAMCOA survivors are kept in a strange position online and irl. We’re used as examples of “unimaginable trauma” and “extreme abuse”, but are largely told to sit down and shut up; we’re too dangerous to speak up about what was done to us, too unbelievable, or too much at all. Finding help is a nightmare, sucks butt for everyone involved, and is fairly necessary for long term recovery. Like many systems, we beat the odds time and time again to call ourselves “survivors” instead of “victims”. Like many systems, we are rejected by most of society. Unlike most systems, we are a secret within system communities.

Being Complex is not being special, it’s just a haughty way to say there are extra requirements. Recovery for many systems is already a stretch. For HC-DID systems, we are healing the impossible.

Satanic Panic, The False Memory Foundation’s Shaky Origins, and Why You Should Believe RAMCOA Survivors

(TW: mentions of RAMCOA, False Memory Foundation, child torture & death, cults, trafficking)

Pretty disappointed to see a fairly popular and well known blog on tumblr is encouraging the idea that RAMCOA doesn’t exist. Just came across this post and was pretty bummed to see the comments too.

For those that agree with them (most of my followers won’t but who knows who will stumble across this), please know that RAMCOA has been going on for much longer than the Satanic Panic. The Satanic Panic was fabricated in an effort to discredit RAMCOA survivors. It was supported by the False Memory Foundation, which was created by a man (and his wife) trying to prove his daughter’s repressed memories of trauma involving him did not really happen. [Explained further in the third article further down in this post]

For the record, false memory/planting false memories has been disproven, it’s not possible to fully plant false memories in patients. Some memories can be altered to an extent because memories can be disjointed and influence from others can cause memories to shift slightly, which is why it’s not encouraged for trauma patients to share exact detailed memories with each other. For example, if two trauma patients were abused by their father and had a similar situation happen and patient A spoke about their experience in detail, if both fathers wore glasses and patient A describes their father to have black rimmed glasses, patient B’s memory might shift to believe that their father also had black rimmed glasses, even though his glasses were gold rimmed. However, it’s not possible to fully plant memories that do not exist in a patient’s memory. The “base memory” so to speak has to be there in order for any alterations to occur, and those alterations that are possible are often rather minuscule, such as glasses or whether or not their abuser had facial hair or not, or the color of the person’s eyes. Not an entire scene of RA. [Again, explained well by the third article below.]

Repressed memory has been proven to exist. (Though it’s more accurately called dissociated memories by clinicians) It can even exist in people who have traumas that happen in adulthood. Pieces of a traumatic event may go missing in a patient’s working memory, and they may not retrieve it until they are ready to process the memory and all the emotions and information that comes with it. However, it still exists stored in the brain, just in a different area than working memory. It’s why triggers to the traumatic event (that the patient may not even realize are triggers until they occur) can cause flashbacks and memory resurfacing during said flashbacks.

Some sources explaining the False Memory Foundation and the harm they’ve caused: [a good overview of a woman who was major in the development of the idea of repressed memory being a myth, by a researcher of child psychiatry], [while this is a psychology today article, I think this explains well how misused the idea of FMS - false memory syndrome - is.] [A comprehensive article explaining the roots of the FMF and how the studies used to “prove” false memory are terrible and easily debunked, with several assertions from professionals in the field.] I want to add that while the FMF has dissolved and rightfully so, the British False Memory Society is still alive and well, as well as the Satanic Temple’s Grey Faction, and both groups still cite False Memory Syndrome as being real and claim that RAMCOA survivors have false memories of their abuse.

However, before Satanic Panic happened, people were starting to actually believe in the existence of RAMCOA and the concept of DID was brought into the mainstream. A survivor on tiktok has a very good video on this situation. And that scared people, especially the abusers themselves who didn’t want to get caught. That’s when the False Memory Foundation stepped in on the heels of Satanic Panic and literally rewrote the textbooks therapists learned from, and basically taught everyone that repressed memory doesn’t exist. Any therapists that spoke about their patients’ experiences with RAMCOA were sued. Therapists stopped wanting to treat RAMCOA patients for fear of being sued and/or losing their license or being told they planted these memories in their patients’ heads and possibly losing their licenses. It led to generations of old therapists not treating RAMCOA patients and generations of new therapists learning it doesn’t exist.

But it does exist. To outright deny that child torture cannot exist is absurd. 1-2% of reported child abuse falls under the definition of child torture. [source, TW: photos of children with serious injuries from torture included on page 7 of this document] For the record, my abuse was never and has never been reported, and most survivors—RAMCOA and non-RAMCOA, whose trauma falls under the definition of torture—never reported or plan to report.

Even if you find the mind control aspect to be far-fetched, ritual abuse most certainly does exist. I’ve seen videos on the surface web on fucking tiktok of all places of child torture and ritual abuse. Organized abuse such as sex trafficking and labor trafficking does exist. Two out of those three things in the acronym are well documented to exist. And for the record, ritual abuse and cult abuse even in adults can cause extreme mind and identity alteration, upwards to the point of nearly being mind control. Look up OSDD-2 in the DSM-V. Look up just about any cult survivors testimonies and hear how they talk about how they nearly became a different person within their cult, how the cult uses torture and mind altering drugs to get their initiates to commit terrible acts of violence to each other. Now imagine if that same stuff were happening to a child whose mind is significantly easier to mold and change. Even if the child RAMCOA survivor does not develop DID, it can cause extreme conditioned responses in which the child (or now grown adult or teen) will still do the responses even now because as a child they were threatened with torture or death if they didn’t do it.

Mind control is essentially an extreme form of conditioning, and with the plethoras of research on DID and how it functions, it’s not even a difficult concept to grasp that a cult member might learn how to split new alters in a child via torture and then manipulate those alters to do what they want individually. Anyone who knows fuck all about DID knows that alters can be triggered out via positive and negative triggers. All mind control programming is, is creating a specific trigger for a specific alter and then when that child is exposed to that trigger, that alter comes out and does the task it was taught to do—usually via torture, manipulation, and threats of harm to the child or those the child loves. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp, and with how long TBMC (torture based mind control) programmers have had to perfect their work, it’s no surprise that they’ve learned how to make alters do extremely complex tasks or hold onto specific functions, always at the ready for their specific trigger.

RAMCOA research doesn’t exist in mainstream spaces because it’s nearly impossible to be taken seriously because of people who claim it doesn’t exist when it’s not even a complex topic to understand. They just don’t want to accept that it exists. The concept is terrifying, harrowing, and at some times almost absurd—and that combination makes it easier for people to put their blinders up and decide it doesn’t exist. [Edited to add: On top of this, what little research is done on it is steeped in conspiracy theories that often have roots in antisemitism. While I’ve asserted that Miller’s deprogramming books are good reads for RAMCOA survivors, she does often sound conspiratorial, and quotes Svali, a known antisemite. While I don’t think RAMCOA is exclusively related to the Illuminati stuff she often talks about, Miller’s work cannot be completely discounted because of her beliefs of where the abuse originated. Where it originates matters much less than the fact that it happens. However, not from dark, underground, secret societies—but from normal places like churches, children’s own homes (yes, RAMCOA can be done by a single parent to a single child, it just may look different than say, a trafficking ring), trafficking rings, militaristic groups, political cults, etc. I wanted to put the above put there because I know someone is going to come at me and try to say the researchers who talk about it were conspiracy theorists. Yeah, they were. Maybe they were the only ones willing to talk openly about it because of the fact they’re conspiracy theorists? I don’t know. However, I think it should also be noted that just because the researchers sucked doesn’t mean the information taken from them isn’t useful when you weed out the conspiracy stuff. For example, a LOT of modern understanding of medicine was taken from Nazi and Japanese experiments during WWII. Arguably some of the worst doctors on earth. Do we discount everything we learned because they were horrible, evil, people? No. While those who studied RAMCOA went about it in shit ways, that doesn’t discount the information learned completely. Likewise, much of modern psych understanding came from roots that included incredibly unethical experiments that would never be allowed today. Do we throw out all of that info too? No, we don’t. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold these people accountable, I’m saying we cannot throw out all discussion of RAMCOA because the doctors who talked about it were shitty people.]

I wish I could decide it doesn’t exist. I have permanent scarring that proves what happened did happen. I have doctor’s visits that prove I am disabled because of the traumas I went through. I have a DID specialist who didn’t even know programming to our extent even existed before our parts started telling her what they went through and she heard it from our own mouth. She had to learn how to deprogram us on the fly because she’d never done so before. So fuck off with your “oh, RAMCOA patients only have RAMCOA because they’ve been influenced by their therapist to believe they do” bullshit.

I relive my traumas in flashbacks and nightmares daily. There have been periods in my healing process where I couldn’t leave the house without someone with me for months. I couldn’t hold a job for nearly a year. I didn’t know any of this happened to me until I was in my 20s. I thought my memory was just bad and the only parts of my childhood I remembered were little blips of good things, usually involving my parent that was not involved with the cult or memories with friends at school or when I was hanging out with my sports teammates. Living with this stuff is hell. You think I want to live with this stuff? If I could permanently erase it all from my memory forever I would. But I can’t. I don’t have that luxury.

It happened. And I’m not the only child it happened to, both in the area of my country I live in and in areas all over my country and the world. This is not an isolated phenomenon. It is more common than anyone tends to realize (though still rarer than most DID cases, thank fuck). I was lucky to survive. I survived because they wanted me to. I saw a lot of children, teens, and adults who were not as “lucky” as I was. If you won’t respect survivors and their stories, at least respect the ones who didn’t survive. They didn’t deserve their final moments to be so full of pain. All of the children in these groups deserved to be loved and cared for and treated with softness and compassion. So do adult survivors like me and many others.

If I could end on one thing, it would be to urge the doubters to have some fucking compassion and empathy for people who have been through things they cannot even begin to understand. My past feels like a nightmare I will never be able to escape. I cannot erase it. I can only try to heal from it. So heal I will do, and in the process I will continue to speak the truth of my experience as safely as I can.

You want proof it’s real? Survivors are your proof.

WE are the proof.

[Edit: changed some wording for clarification + added a section after rereading a couple hours later]

[Edit 2: I realized I said my abuse has never been reported, I meant my RAMCOA related abuse. Want to make that clear. I reported sexual abuse done by my church to CPS and nothing came of it. CPS actually wrongfully claimed that since they had no reports existing of that church harming kids they wouldn’t pursue it since it happened so long ago, when a cursory google search of said location shows they’ve been reported multiple times and all reports were dropped. Why, I’m not sure.]

Things that don’t make you a bad person:

Displaying “scary” symptoms of mental illness

Being diagnosed with multiple disorders

Having one or various personality disorders

Being diagnosed with NPD, BPD, or ASPD

Having very low empathy, or no empathy

Having symptoms that cause anger, emptiness, or paranoia

Having triggers or “strange” personal boundaries

Needing extra help or accommodations

Having intrusive thoughts about upsetting or scary topics

MARCH 2022

Read:

Changing Your Mind Can Make You Less Anxious

Life in the Stacks: A Love Letter to Browsing

Excerpt from We Learn Nothing, by Tim Kreider

World wide open (How deep brain stimulation changes a person’s sense of confidence)

How to gain more from your reading

Assertiveness is a virtue that anyone can develop with practice

Lies and honest mistakes

The Pandemic Did Not Affect Mental Health the Way You Think

The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?

Curiosity Depends on What You Already Know

“Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal

Imagine you could insert knowledge into your mind: should you?*

Want to know, even if it hurts? You must be a truth masochist

Mental disorders are brain disorders - here’s why that matters

Forget morality

Unlocking the ‘gut microbiome’ - and its massive significance to our health

Our Little Life Is Rounded with Possibility

In praise of habits - so much more than mindless reflexes

How Social Media Shapes Our Identity

The Forgotten Women of the Antibiotics Race

Diagnosis as Detective Work: Lisa Sanders and the Art of Not Knowing

Do Brain Implants Change Your Identity?

The Promise and the Peril of Virtual Health Care

Adam Savage on Lists, More Lists, and the Power of Checkboxes

What We Get Wrong About Joan Didion

How to find focus

Biotechnology Greed Is Prolonging the Pandemic. It’s Inexcusable.

Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid

In praise of possibility

Empathy is, at heart, an aesthetic appreciation of the other

‘I Can’t Stop Trying to Be Perfect!’

Reports of a Baleful Internet Are Greatly Exaggerated

How to Unlearn a Disease

Can Reading Make You Happier?

Expert by Roger Kneebone

Watched:

Vaccines & Freedom

Succession - The Toxic Culture of Success

the problem with plastic surgery

L to the OG: How Succession Uses Music**

Peaky Blinders (S6)

Dopesick

Listened To:

I’m still going round the same playlist as last month

Went To:

Life Through A Royal Lens @ Kensington Palace

Swan Lake @ Royal Opera House

Does McLean Hospital Have Ties To MK Ultra?

Claims made, the evidence, the known facts, and the falsehoods.

CW/Brief: This talks about a government ran mind control project that took place in 1953-1973. Claims recently have resurfaced as a reaction to a contentious video that was released. This video was greatly contested by people with DID and professionals in psychiatry and psychology alike for it's poor handling of subject material and violation of ethics. This will not go fully in depth on the tactics used but addresses more recent claims about the hospital that originally hosted this video. There will be usage of words like torture. This also will mention a prolific case where the victim ended up becoming a terrible person- murder may be mentioned. This case was only brought up due to its prolific nature.

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Terminology used

RAMCOA: A specific subset of purposeful abuse, known to primarily be done by groups. Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse.

TBMC: Trauma/Torture Based Mind Control.

Mk-Ultra: A government run CIA project/operation meant to try and mind control agents and civilians alike. This has heavy ties to TBMC.

Syscourse: System based discourse that tends to happen surrounding plurality or multiplicity (a self-schema) and DID/OSDD-1 a dissociative disorder that often has the Alters be highly focused upon. Syscourse usually culminates in fights between those with "endogenic plurality" and "CDDs" (CDDs are known as Complex Dissociative Disorders) we engage in this on our main and mention it as it does tie into the sorts of reasons the claims surfaced recently.

TLDR; There are possible and reasonable claims that McLean plausibly could have had a hand in Mk-Ultra in the past. It is fact that they have ties to Mk-Ultra, by association with Harvard Medical. The ties do not by any means implicate them in any form of guilt. There is no evidence that McLean for certain ever had any involvement in the past, however it is plausible. There is absolutely NO reason to suspect the hospital currently in the year of 2023, fifty years after the project (if they even had any hand in it), has been closed. The resurfacing of this discussion happened due to victims of similar experiences (TBMC/RAMCOA) becoming triggered by the aforementioned video and finding this information out and not doing their due diligence to handle any of it with the care it deserves. This was not the time to bring this up, this is a separate discussion that should have never been tied to the video. The current way the claims and accusations are being handled and the fear mongering is a net negative both for this discussion and for causing unnecessary distrust in doctors who are there to genuinely help. Additionally there are false claims mixed in with the true ones, such as the claim that McLean continued to partake in horrific experiments until 1987, which has no source other than a known conspiracy theorist.

Full Post

We were planning to stay fully out of syscourse for a little while but seeing as things/discussions for RAMCOA got crosstagged as syscourse we ended up running into something that we want to thoroughly stamp out the idea of. To preface this, yes, we are a RAMCOA survivor. The full details we have stated ever are very minimal, we are purposefully hiding a shit ton of things. However what remains is the fact we are a victim of TBMC, our RAMCOA was more focused upon MC than any other aspect. As such we took a very specific interest in this situation. Feel free to tag this post as syscourse if you want, we do not consider it such ourselves as this pertains directly to a type of trauma.

There is actually a loose connection to be made between McLean hospital and MK-Ultra. McLean Hospital had ties to Harvard Medical, which has been purportedly linked to MK-Ultra. The one declassified governmental mind control project.

This dates back all the way to 1977, this is not the only claim of Harvard's involvement either. In fact anyone who is morbidly curious may know of a famous case very, very well. Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber. It is a known fact that this man was a victim of MK Ultra and experimentation by Harvard. This has been known for a very long time.

To be clear TBMC does not excuse murder. We as a survivor of TBMC ourselves are not a danger, however it must be recognized that in some cases people are not criminally responsible due to their mental functionality. This is similar to a case where someone pleads insanity- the actions are heinous and still were UNDENIABLY his doing. We are not saying he should not be blamed, nor are we making light of his victims. Explanations are not excuses.

Some minimal sources.

The Atlantic

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber

A series of purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of scie

Exploring your mind

The Harvard Experiment that Led to the Unabomber

Although he participated in a Harvard experiment and is extremely smart, Ted Kaczynski is now serving time in a maximum-security...

These are only one of many many articles, videos, deep dives, and talks about this situation and the irreparable damage that the way human experimentation in the USA has messed people up in more recent times.

If you had any awareness of the general situation surrounding these things you would realize the claims are predicated upon a long standing history of Harvard Medical specifically having definitive ties and accusations to ties with MK-Ultra. The accusations have not arisen out of thin air, this isn't a new claim, this has been brought up numerous times in the past. These claims came well before the current issue surrounding one man's horrendous presentation on DID- the DSM-4 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th Edition) even was made after accusations of Harvard Medical being tied to Mk-Ultra.

Harvard Medical spawned McLean Hospital

People are making an association and are wondering if this was one of the ways that Harvard Medical along with the CIA accessed victims. This wonder does however have no definitive answers from what we can gather and should not be treated as fact.

Additionally many people have reasonable and not unfounded fears that said practices never truly stopped. However, these for the current day and year, 2023 are unfounded claims. A reasonable fear or reasonable feeling still does not always denote truth in what is feared. It is reasonable for us to fear the Christian faith given our history, however it factually is not pure evil and can be practiced healthily. (Not a great comparison but we had to think of something)

The debunked accusations of specifically McLean hospital being involved was from 1987 in which a conspiracy theorist claimed McLean was still doing these horrific experiments and tortures. The thing that was disproven was that they had continued to be involved, not that they had never been involved. To our understand the difference in these two cases is that there is numerous possible claims that McLean may have been involved in the past but only one which claimed this from a very untrustworthy source.

There is currently no evidence to prove they were not involved. However there is also seemingly no evidence to prove Mclean Hospital were involved as well. Due to the connections in administration in that time period, it is reasonable to conclude that it is plausible that Mclean did contribute all the way back when MK-Ultra was active, just as much as it is reasonable to conclude it is plausible they did not.

Does this mean it should be treated as fact? No. But the RAMCOA survivors who immediately learn of these connections and assume the worst are having a reasonable emotional reaction when paired with what RAMCOA survivors like us have experienced. The feelings are reasonable, but the fact of the matter in many cases just seems to not be there.

By denying the plausibility you are plausibly denying the experience of victims who are still alive to this day. As such many people (us included) still feel weird about definitively saying that there is no chance this happened in the past. However we must be fully aware and acknowledge that there is not enough evidence of this being the case, therefore it is wrong from a factual point to say that they were involved.

Again, does this reflect the modern day?

Absolutely not. I would say that to our knowledge the majority of doctors at the hospital who are (especially) younger than their 50 are not involved nor should be implicated. Anyone who was a child when Mk-Ultra launched and/or concluded should be automatically removed from a list of possible perpetrators. Additionally it will only harm what we do believe could be good doctors who had no idea of these things, many people today are far removed from things like Mk-Ultra, many if not most may have had no awareness of the past allegations.

You can address the fact that worries or claims that McLean Hospital or Harvard Medical today are doing this as false, without fully denying the plausibility of a dark past. Especially when it comes to Harvard Medical.

(Side note, just because something came form another organization does not necessarily mean they did the same practices. Additionally, I would argue, given the history of government projects only those directly involved with the experimentation would be aware of what was occurring and not all workers even within the hospital).

We took it upon ourselves to look into it initially- we already knew about the Unabomber being an Mk-Ultra victim, we only recently knew he had ties to Harvard Medical. And yes, we have found a few claims that the specific hospital he was put in when tortured was McLean, but those have only been on articles that require one to sign up or buy fully access which we are not doing.

Please just try and understand why some RAMCOA survivors have reacted the way they have, do more than just look on reddit or see that one lunatic claiming McLean was continuing on Mk-Ultra in 1987. Because what many are doing is resorting to a long time form of systemic oppression against RAMCOA survivors. The default of calling all of them delusional and conspiracy theorists. It is not delusion to see something so similar to your experience and make a connect even if it is faulty, delusion is another mental health issue entirely.

Acknowledge how things can be emotional reactions, while also acknowledging the bits of truth within those reactions. We do not think that this being brought up in response to specifically the DID video is good- we think it creates fear and leads to fear mongering about hospitals and doctors. This is something that should be brought up and addressed in its own right. But the timing was poor, and the reasons behind it were filled and fueled with people who were triggered in a variety of ways and were not actually discussing it out of concern for the victims. (We are usually not big on what the motivations behind something are but when your motivations end up seeping through and possibly harming an important discussion it does become a concern.)

Can you explain what a shell alter is and what their purpose is? /gen

Shell alters are a dissociated system member who is fronting all the time, or almost all the time. They often lack elaboration. Shells work as an interface between the rest of the system & the outside world by never leaving front, and having the rest of the system either blending with them temporariality or being forced into co-consciousness. This serves a few purposes; make the system more covert, mask inter-switch amnesia, blunt or filter out emotions/urges/etc. from the rest of the system, and more. It's uncommon, but there can be multiple shells one system, serving different subroles.

In some cases of OSDD-1a, the shell is the "unified" identity. Think like, if the system is made up of "angry Sarah", "scared Sarah", "work Sarah", etc., that shell would be the "Sarah" identity.

They're most commonly seen in OSDD-1a, but can come up in other forms of multiplicity, like DID, but typically when RAMCOA is in the picture. Although it can be daunting, healing with a shell is possible. You can reached out to them, they can be integrated, they gain more elaboration, etc etc. Whatever healing path works for you.

We don't have a shell, but I'm sure some pwDID/OSDD on this hellsite (affectionate) have talked about their experiences with them more in depth. There isn't a ton of research on them — many sites point to Alison Miller's books, but there's no actual like, raw data, just summations of what's she's found in her practice/case studies — so take that as you will.

Each shell is a different, and different systems may use slightly different definitions. Hopefully this was a good overview. -Aisling

In one of his books, Kantor offers insight at other facets of AvPD that exist beyond the DSM criteria, that are often overlooked (and aren’t easily explained by other disorders).

On “classic” avoidants (Type I):

“(…) profile of pervasive shyness and fearful isolation. Within this class, variations of severity exist on a continuum. Some of these individuals live by themselves or with their family, either staying at home and not socializing at all, or socializing only with a few selected individuals, attempting to meet people but having difficulty connecting as they try, but fail, to form sustained and sustaining relationships. Others form relationships that are only partially avoidant: limited in degree or of reduced intensity such as bicoastal marriages; serial monogamous relationships; or relationships that are stably unstable, dysfunctional because being with unattainable partners makes the relationships unlikely to come to fruition, or if they do, sooner or later, they are destined to dissolve.”

A fear of flooding and losing control of various impulses due to overstimulation (…) disturbing inner peace (…)

A fear of failure, accompanied by a paradoxical (masochistic) fear of success (…)

Self-criticism due to self-condemnation by a harsh, unforgiving, shaming conscience, causing one to become guilty over legitimate desires and ordinary (but to the avoidant extraordinarily shameful), interpersonal foibles (…)

Relational idealism consisting of a disdain for relationships that appear to be imperfect, originating in excessive expectations of oneself and others (…)

Covalent characterological features, including histrionic (oedipal) rivalry that buries the potential for closeness, intimacy, and commitment under competitive struggles with others—as Gabbard notes, “entailing an aggressive demand for complete attention… associated with a wish to scare away or kill off all rivals… [with the competitiveness] interwoven with a sense of shame” obsessive fretting about the correctness and propriety of one’s interpersonal actions (…) paranoid suspiciousness about the negative things others are, or might be, thinking; depressive alarmism and pessimism that nothing will ever work out as hoped and planned for and the worrisome fear that if all is not already lost, it soon will be; excessive “don’t make waves” passivity, accompanied by a paradoxical fear of passivity and so a need to be on constant alert and continuously active to assure always being in complete control of everything about one’s relationships; extreme dependence possibly leading to a codependent relationship with one person to avoid having to relate to any and all others (…)

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Excessive Defensiveness

Avoidance is not a static, but an active, dynamic condition—what Millon and Davis call an “active detachment,” that is, one with important defensive components. Sullivan describes avoidance as a “somnolent detachment,” the protective dynamism “called out by inescapable and prolonged anxiety.” (…) What is avoided is an allusion either to a temptation for the warded-off drive or to a feared punishment or both.” Therefore some observers, emphasizing how the avoidant inhibits important aspects of living to reduce (social) anxiety, suggest that the term inhibited personality could substitute for the term avoidant personality disorder. Avoidant detachment is made up of the following defenses, among others:

Identification with the aggressor. Avoidants create expected losses actively to handle the possibility of experiencing unexpected losses passively, for example, “I fear your rejecting me” becomes “I reject you to avoid being rejected by you.”

Masochism. Self-sacrificing, self-abnegating, and self-punitive responses are an avoidant’s way to counter forbidden desire. Avoidants commit a kind of social suicide to punish themselves for what they consider to be their unacceptable instinctual urges. They suffer now to avoid suffering even more later.

Repression. Repression is the avoidant’s way to detoxify anxious thoughts and feelings by suppressing them, then acting as if they no longer exist (…)

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Associated Characterological Problems

Obsessionalism. Avoidants are worrisome individuals (…) often rigid, inflexible people who, stuck in routine, have difficulty adapting to unexpected life changes. Also, ambivalent about relationships, instead of settling in to a given relationship, they do and undo it: attempting to relate, becoming anxious, pulling back, then trying again either with the same person or with someone different, ad infinitum (…)

Paranoia. Avoidants are hypervigilant individuals who fear something bad can or will happen to them (…) They take impersonal matters far too personally and see rejections that are not there as a clear and present danger, or actual attack. A difficulty with basic trust leads them to become highly skeptical of everyone, convinced that no one will show them any goodwill whatsoever, and certain that either they will trust everyone and get burned, or trust no one and get dumped (…)

Depression. Avoidants tend to be depressed individuals with intense negative moods (…) They hold the pessimistic view that when it comes to relationships, there is no sense even trying since there is little chance of ever succeeding. Depressive cognitions prevail (…) so that they readily come to believe that any sign of disinterest in them constitutes a turndown, a turndown a rejection, and a rejection an epochal tragedy (…)

And “counterphobic” avoidants (Type II), who are avoidants who unlike the “typical” ones, manage to form connections, albeit in turbulent ways.

Type IIa avoidants can generally maintain superficial, short-lived, relationships with people and the subtype, “mingles”, jump from relationship to relationship unable to settle and not minding quality.

Type IIb avoidants, “seven-year itch”, can form proper bonds with others but for a limited time, because they burn out or become disinterested as time passes.

Type IIc avoidants, have severe codependency tendencies.

I suspect quite a few people on this site don’t realize they are struggling with the effects of chronic trauma. In particular I think more people need to learn about the symptoms of C-PTSD.

Distinct from general PTSD, Complex PTSD is caused by prolonged, recurring stress and trauma, often occurring in childhood & adolescence over an extended period of time. There are many risk factors, including: abusive/negligent caregivers, dysfunctional family life, untreated mental/chronic illness, and being the target of bullying/social alienation.

I’m not a mental health professional and I’m not qualified to diagnose anyone, I just remember a million watt light bulb going off in my head when I first learned about C-PTSD. It was a huge OH MY FUCKING WORD eureka moment for me—it explained all these problems I was confused and angry at myself for having. The symptoms that really stood out to me were:

Negative self-perception: deep-seated feelings of shame, guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, and stigma. Feeling like you are different from everyone else, like something is fundamentally ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ with you.

Emotional avoidance of topics, people, relationships, activities, places, things etc that might cause uncomfortable emotions such as shame, fear, or sadness. Can lead to self-isolation.

Learned helplessness: a pervasive sense of powerlessness, often combined with feelings of desensitization, wherein you gradually stop trying to escape or prevent your own suffering, even when opportunities exist. May manifest as self-neglect or self-sabotage. (I remember watching myself make bad choices and neglect my responsibilities, and having no idea why I was doing it, or how to stop myself. Eventually I just stopped caring, which led to more self-neglect.)

Keep reading

i’ve been told by a lot of people that robot alters who do what they’re told are from programming only. this is really scary to me because i did not experience that despite having an alter like that. i think if i had heard this as a younger system it would have made me very scared and convinced me of things that didn’t happen. can you share your thoughts on this?

Hi,

Blaming any presentation of DID or alters strictly on programming is a horrible idea. You're right that these kinds of claims are a major risk for false memories of ritual abuse, especially for young, newly diagnosed systems who are struggling immensely, still coming to terms with their symptoms and abuse history, and might be overly quick to take anything that older and seemingly authoritative systems claim at face value. I've heard of these types of claims going around for polyfragmentation, subsystems, internal worlds, and non-human alters. None of them are true. 

There are many reasons that someone could have a robot alter that does what it's told. It could be a metaphor for feeling like one's parents treated them like a robot instead of a child. It could have arisen from feeling like one's parents would have loved them more or punished them less if they were an obedient robot instead of a disobedient child. It could have been influenced by media that struck a cord regarding how robots were shown being treated or viewed by society. There's no reason whatsoever to assume robot parts or any other type of part automatically indicates any organized abuse, let alone programming.

There is no single or even combination of factors that can definitively indicate that someone experienced ritual abuse, programming, or any other type of trauma. Only actual memories (preferably continuous or spontaneously recovered, not recovered through hypnotherapy, creative writing, dream interpretation, or other potentially suggestive processes) or external corroboration of abuse can be trusted. No one should ever retroactively make assumptions about one’s abuse experiences based on adult symptoms, and no one should ever deny or downplay adult symptoms because they don’t have any of the causes that the individual has come to expect. That isn’t how mental health or DID/OSDD-1 work. That is how the Satanic ritual abuse panic got so incredibly out of hand. 

I’m glad that you were able to recognize that your robot part doesn’t indicate programming, and I appreciate you alerting us of this and giving us the opportunity to debunk it. 

I hope this helps,

Katherine