Toxic Red Flags You Do, To Yourself. Aka; Self Destructive Behaviours

Gentle reminder that sharing what your disability is completely up to you no matter how “visibly” disabled you are. No one should make you disclose what your disability is to anyone you’re not comfortable with. You can choose to say as much or as little as you want.

what is hc-did?

Highly Complex Dissociative Identity Disorder (HC-DID) is a specific structure and function of DID.

HC-DID stems from C-DID, or polyfragmentation. in C-DID, you can see many fragments of alters, lack of other coping skills besides dissociation, subsystems, an active inner world and more.

C-DID comes from trauma being integrated into day to day life, becoming inescapable with no other way to cope.

HC-DID is similar to C-DID in these ways, but differs with the types of traumas that were ingrained into day to day life. HC-DID can be a result of RAMCOA/TBMC. these types of abuse purposefully change the way the system works or how the alters behave/interact with others.

HC-DID systems frequently have programmed alters or a collection of programmed alters (side system), programmed behaviors, extreme amnesiac barriers, hierarchical system structure and very rigid and complex rules and organization.

many HC-DID systems, such as myself, only find out about their programmed status through programmed alters fronting and attempting to either return to the abusers, attempt to harm the body, or other types of programming. i will not be discussing programming in depth, as it can be very triggering.

the difference between the types of systems is important. it will determine the type of therapy needed and the therapist will need to be RAMCOA/TBMC informed to avoid triggering any programmed alters.

C-DID and HC-DID are not the same thing!

“Having DID is rare-“

Ok and being a beekeeper isn’t the most common profession ever but I sure see a lot of them when I search “beekeepers” in online spaces.

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

Alter Roles

Host -  Co-Host can also fit into this definition. These alters handle day to day life for the most part by fronting the most. These alters can also grow up being completely unaware to the system growing up. This however, doesn’t apply to every host but can due to the foremost fronting.

ANP - Short for apparently normal part. Almost if not all systems will have an apparently normal part. These are grounded and rational individual alters.

Protector - These alters handle protecting the system. Mostly from trauma but other situations can and do apply. 

Trauma Holder - Alters who hold onto trauma are labeled as such. They handle often the memory of the trauma or emotions that come with dealing with said trauma mentioned.

Caregiver - This term is most popular with systems that have 1 littles. They are in charge of taking care of the littles and their needs. They also commonly help others in the system, especially the body.

Gatekeeper - Gatekeepers are in charge of managing switches, triggers. Another common thing gatekeepers control and or help take care of can include access to memories.

Helper -  Those who assist in the helping managing the system. Similar to gatekeeper.

Introjects - Alters who split off and resemble a fictional character and or often times real people as well.

Middles - Child alters. Except, this can fall under only 12-17. Age range may vary from system but it used to describe tween to teenage alters rather than tiny children. 1 Littles - Like Middles, Littles are a term to describe child alters. This however only includes babies, toddlers, and kids. E.G. 1-11 year olds. Again, age range may vary by system and doesn’t apply to everyone but that’s the typical standard.

Persecutor - An alter that typically harm the body. This can be siding with an abuser, negative. These alters can also commonly be introjects of an abuser. They typically have protective or protective induced logical behind their actions. They not to be demonized and are fully capable of healing, their actions however are not to be blatantly excused. Non-human Alters - These alters are - as self explainable - non-human. They can present as an animal, religious figure such as an angel or demon, or even a ghost or spirit. They are however not limited to these.

Sexual Alters - Alters that are formed to handle sexual abuse, trauma, so on. Do not guess their toleration to sexual acts because it varies between systems and alters. Just because they split off to handle sexual trauma does not mean they are comfortable with it.

to those of y'all who want the feeling of sh but don't want the blood or the scars or smth:

one: take a paper mask and take out that bendy metal thing out of the top, you can hurt yourself with it but it doesn't really leave marks. it's hard to even make yourself bleed (but it is possible) but it gets that feeling of hurting yourself. it doesn't really hurt that much but it's better than nothing when you're about to break, but please use a clean mask.

two: cut your nails too short. people don't really question it and it hurts for multiple days, but be careful. your nails are dirty so wash your hands regularly.

three: scratch yourself. literally just nails against skin- BUT BE CAREFUL!!! its very easy to get carried away with scratching and if you go too far it'll just be the same as using a blade but less sanitary. your nails are dirty.

four: intentionally nick yourself while shaving. pretty self explanatory, just don't do it on your youknowwhat that shit hurts way too much and there is lots of bacteria there only do it on your legs and arms or idk chest?

five: pour wax on yourself. it's not that dangerous as long as you're careful and is a kink for some so idk you could say it's for that ig. be careful youre messing with fire.

six: wear slightly too small clothes (specifically underwear). it hurts and you shouldn't do it for a long period of time or a lot but if you wanna be in pain while going shopping or smth it'll definitely hurt.

i dont encourage s3lf h4rm and i encourage recovery, but if youre going to sh please do it safely and take care of your cvts!

pls tell me if the info here is wrong or a bad recommendation or anything ill try and fix it

Do you have any advice for how to approach a situation where you find out that the system is much bigger than you originally thought and there has been like another group of people functioning deeper inside your mind because I just found out that our system runs so much deeper than I thought it did and it's kinda freaking me out.

Thanks

(Also I love your blog)

Hey anon,

I've had this in my ask box for a few days trying to figure out how to answer this in a way that would be helpful and insightful. A big goal of mine for my future is to be able to educate people and help people with and without CDDs who are in places that I or my wife/friends may have been in the past. This situation you're describing is something I went through right around mid August. The only reason I actually know when I started learning these things was because I have a frantic email I sent my therapist with the subject line "Ah shit, here we go again" with a screenshot of that very quote from GTA. It's an inside joke between our therapist and I because it seems like whenever something really wild happens that I really didn't see coming I preface with "Ah shit, here we go again." and that's how she knows it's going to be a doozy of a session or email.

(small TW ahead for mentions of unaliving oneself, nothing detailed, just mentioned)

So in all honesty I feel like I don't have super proper advice for you in this regard. Not in the way you may have been hoping or wanting, as I am still new to learning parts and subsystems. I know about four subsystems right now, other parts keep alluding to something else that's hidden from me that's like a Big thing, and it's a...it's a lot! I understand how you're feeling to some degree here. The very first time I started piecing together the subsystem stuff I swore I was ready to do the unalive. And uh, unfortunately, I almost did because of parts who were created to commit suicide in this very instance. I wasn't supposed to know about that stuff. Past suicide attempts seem to line up with that same narrative. Every time I was learning something I was not supposed to know, one of our secondary gatekeepers would throw a suicidal alter into the front and essentially let it happen. Thankfully, we've had either our spouse or other alters be able to step in at the last second, parts that don't want these things to occur. We're working on deconstructing that particular program now and it's been fairly successful, thankfully.

I talk about that not because I think all systems with subsystems or whatever happens going on in your system have suicide programs, but because this information you are suddenly learning is likely meant to be hidden. Subsystems typically don't occur for shits and giggles. From my limited knowledge (reminder, I am not a professional at this so if anyone has better info than me or any additional info or resources, please say so) of subsystems, typically they form for specific purposes. One purpose could be to separate various traumas at different time periods of the system's life. So for example, we have an entire subsystem (our largest subsystem as far as I know) dedicated to our very early life trauma that began long before our RAMCOA type abuse occurred. Those things happened likely around the ages of 3 to 5. The RAMCOA abuse occurred around age 7 or so, as far as I'm aware. None of the main system or any of the other subsystems were aware of the early life subsystem, only our gatekeepers knew about them.

Other reasons subsystems can occur is to separate a specific type of abuse that the system/brain finds particularly disturbing and needs to be separated from the rest of the system. We don't have these, but I've heard of folks whose main system typically has the "less severe" trauma and subsystems hold "more severe" trauma OR trauma that needs to be kept completely deep down and away from the front area, like CSEM production OR incest with a member of their household that they have to live with all the time. If you're around that family member all the time you're not going to be able to function if you have even an inkling of those things occurring, so your brain might separate all of that into a subsystem to keep the rest of the system safe. While the rest of the system might deal with other forms of trauma such as neglect, medical trauma, emotional abuse/manipulation, bullying, etc.

The last reason that subsystems might exist, and this is only our personal experience because I have never met another system whose subsystems are like this, but subsystems may exist to keep certain parts of memories separate from the rest of the system. Which, I've mentioned I was going to go into our system structure in more detail before and so I'm not going to do a deep dive in this ask, but essentially as abuse was escalating, our system realized that a single alter cannot hold the entire memory of abuse that was occurring, and so what happened was we'd split a fragment (which our system labels as "china dolls" even though they're really not that) and they get cracked apart and split up, essentially. So one subsystem holds only the pain of that particular memory, another subsystem holds only the emotional toll of that particular memory, another subsystem holds only the visual or auditory sensations of that particular memory, etc. So, in essence, for a single occurrence of trauma, a splitting pattern happens where we end up splitting anywhere from 2-5 fragments to hold bits and pieces of a single memory. So those subsystems keep those fragments separated so that we don't have to be overwhelmed by the entire memory being whole.

From all of the above information it's probably going to make subsystems sound like a super horrific thing, and while I really want to be comforting and help you through this with some encouragement, subsystems are typically because something happened that needed to be kept completely separate from the rest of the system, which is usually not a good thing.

However, to actually answer your question, how to cope? Um. Good question, because I'm barely coping with my own situation right now. BUT, one thing that has helped me kind of stop freaking out about it is that I have accepted that I will learn things when the time is right. Every time I've tried to go digging or I got curious or something I regretted it. I learned very quickly WHY these things are separate. I learned as a host that I really really should not fuck around because I WILL find out, and it has pretty much every single time been far more devastating that I could have even imagined.

So my advice to you is "Don't go digging!" Because often, system information (especially if you're currently in therapy with a specialist) will become known with time. Be patient. Don't do the "nosy host" thing unless you are in an environment where you have someone who knows what's going on and can keep you safe in case you learn something very distressing that will make you want to go down the sewer slide. Being a system is not a fun time when you're discovering this stuff. I'm very open about loving our system and loving our parts and thanking them for what they've done for me, but that doesn't erase how difficult and scary it can be when you start learning things that you never knew you never knew. Hang in there, anon. DMs are open if you want to discuss this further. Anyone is free to DM or send asks about these things and I'll answer when I can. :)

-Dorian

(Note: Endos please do not interact with this post, as subsystems are a product of serious trauma and are not something that I think could ever be replicated in the way that a traumagenic system's subsystems would occur. They require extreme levels of amnesia and are typically complex, something that a created system would very likely not be able to replicate in the way like OP and I are talking about. This post is for folks with trauma-based CDDs only, not other forms of plurality.)

I did not just see an endogenic system coining terms for "programmed headmates" as in the realms of computers. You do not just say shit like that lightly. You do not understand the kind of harm that does to programmed systems like us. Please please please don't do things like this.

You are literally describing RAMCOA experiences. You are adding more harm and confusion to survivors like us. This has nothing to do with you being endogenic it has everything to do with how this is harmful to RAMCOA systems. I understand the system travel should make it clear it's not about DID- but honestly if you have actual programming something is very wrong. If you have internal programmers you are not endogenic- you are likely a RAMCOA survivor. Please please do not refuse to look into mental health aid and treatment. Please do not engage in this. It is dangerous.

Please you do not understand how desperate I am for people to listen to this- you are describing effects of mind control on systems.

We are going to finally go and try to chart out / document our system / known parts for our old/current therapist and since we make a lot of organized sheets and stuff for fun I'm sharing a copy of a template for alter information ^^ Feel free to use / make a copy and use on your own and modify and all.

Its BASK + Extra stuff that we find relevant to our system

Google Docs

Copy For Others

Sheet1 Name:,TEMPLATE Picture / Description / Self Depiction,BEHAVIOR:,Important Notes: AFFECT: SENSORY: KNOWLEDGE: Role:,NOTABLE DYNAMICS

I learned about compassion fatigue for the first time when I was a 911 operator for two and a half years. Now I’m experiencing it not from a particular job but from moving through life for so many years stuck in the constant “fawn” trauma response. I compulsively gave and gave and gave for so long that I now have literally nothing left. When I first stopped (for survival) compulsively giving to people out of an empty cup I realized I really had no sense of identity outside of helping people... I was overwhelmed with feelings of fear, obligation and guilt... I’m on a journey now of learning to give to myself before I give to anyone else and it’s honesty really hard. It feels “wrong” but I know that’s conditioning from my childhood. I learned I had to abandon myself to survive. Now my body is forcing me to listen to my needs.