DID Short Films

Something I really enjoy is watching short films about DID :) it's always intriguing to see what sort of representation can be showed in a few short minutes, and just how much care and attention to detail is put into it.

I don't have the energy to do a full review of each, but here's a lil list of my favorite short DID films, along with some trigger warnings!

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Petals of a Rose

Triggers to watch out for:

Things I love about this short:

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Alter

Triggers to watch out for:

Things I love about this short:

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Alters and Me

Triggers to watch out for:

Things I love about this short:

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I'm sure there are others that are good too, but that's my list for now! I tried to choose ones that didn't lean too far into horror trope editing or twists so they're safe for anyone to watch :) I might add to this sometime in the future if I see more

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy! Feel free to let me know your thoughts or share some of your favorites with me, you know I'm always curious to hear about this stuff

This is my fan translation of Kairi Seidouitusei Shougai no Chiguhagu na Hibi by Tokin! I love this manga so much. It’s a wonderful autobiography about DID and a representation with a tone we don’t usually get in English. Tokin-sensei gave me permission to translate the prologue and share it with an English audience because I know so many people would want to read it! I am not going to translate the entire text, but I do really really want to encourage people to submit it in this month’s Seven Seas interest survey!! Please help support Tokin-sensei’s wonderful work!

(Submitting with the Japanese title I wrote above or a link to this post would be best for clarity, my English title is not a literal translation)

As a college student, currently really hungry with nothing to eat, I understand how hard it can be to get food. Sometimes you really just don’t have the money to eat and when you do, you waste it all on fast food instead of stocking up on cheap things because you’re so tired of Ramen Noodes and canned food you could barf. So, I’ve composed a list of recipes and resources that will fit a college kid’s budget and appetite. Don’t go hungry! <3

Ramen Noodle Recipes:

Mug Meals:

Microwave Recipes:

Recipe Generators

Other Resources

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

pdfdrive.com

Art by cro_swim

Posted with Permission (reprint/edit and/or commercial use prohibited)

Structural Dissociation - (C-)PTSD, BPD, and Dissociative Disorders as a Spectrum

WARNING: This post lists examples of traumatic events and SH/suicide; while it's not in-depth, if you have trauma that triggers you even when only mentioned, please tread carefully.

What do PTSD, C-PTSD, BPD, and OSDD have in common? Well, a hell of a lot, but this post will touch on how they all fit into the structural dissociation model, which essentially puts dissociation on a spectrum. While the model isn't perfect, it's a commonly accepted psychological theory among those who study dissociation. Learn about it under the cut!

(Reblogs are encouraged- help spread mental illness awareness and information!)

DID vs. OSDD: What's the Difference, and Why Does It Matter?

Depending on which circles this post ends up in, many people who are reading this will know of Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. (If not, don't worry, there will be a brief overview in a little bit!) However, lesser known to the layman is Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD), a catch-all for dissociative disorders that don't fit under any other named dissociative disorder. There are four types of OSDD, but I'll be focusing on type 1 here. Read beneath the cut for in-depth info, sources, and some personal thoughts!

(Regardless of whether or not you have a dissociative disorder, I'd encourage you to reblog! Mental health awareness and education are crucial.)

Had a few people say that they found this tiktok that I made to be a pretty good representation of what inner communication sounds like as a DID system. I’ve seen people do this on tiktok before and they usually make it seem very schizophrenia-like or more along the lines of psychosis. I have experienced a psychotic break, and the difference between DID and psychosis is pretty big to me. So I made my own.

Please do not judge my poor audio editing skills😂 I was trying to make voices pitches different to make it obvious these were different people talking, as if the colored commentary wasn’t enough😂

Shockingly (/j) I have been shadowbanned on tiktok, I’m assuming because of saying the word “fuck” and “shit” out loud🙄 If you want to support this video on that platform, feel free to click here and like or comment.

There’s nothing severely triggering discussed here, but know that this is going to have overlapping voices, some of which talk briefly about being worried that the abusers will find us, and another makes a slight crying sound. Other than that, I tried to make this a seemingly standard conversation that we’d have.

For those wondering who is talking— Jules is purple, James is pale green, Brett is teal, Alice is yellow-green, Valentine is the darker red color in the middle, and Foster is the red color with the deep voice at the end. Scattered about are also some trauma holding child parts, a non-traumatized child part, and a persecutor.

Hope you like. :) I will probably make more of these mundane conversation style videos because I feel like people don’t realize how honestly boring most of our convos are. Things get chaotic, sure, and things get silent too. It’s not always an action packed extravaganza in there😂 Plus this was kinda fun and passed the time while waiting for my wife to get out of work. If anyone has topics they think would be cool to include in a conversation video, I’d love to hear it!

Enjoy!

-Jules

Free Trauma and Dissociation Books

This is the link to Google Drive folder containing these books. There is a list below of what is in the folder. Please consider reblogging so these resources are available.

Disclaimer: I have not read all of these to completion. I have not researched all the authors. Please do your own research if you have concerns.

I wanted to recommend a picture book. Its not about DID, but rather emotions and suppressing them. Its called Out Of A Jar by Deborah Marcero

In it, our main character is suppressing their emotions one by one and storing them in jars. I found it very relatable that their motivation tended to be fear and shame, which are two things those of us who have trauma are very familiar with. The flat nothingness the character felt down be related to dissociation a bit

I don’t want to imply that this is a book with DID, but Its very relatable and applicable to how I approach having parts; by letting them Just Be.

I also really liked the art in this one too :)

Would you like to see me make more picture book recommendations if I find more that give me DID vibes?

Waking Madison Review

DID Movie Review

Facts -

Movie name: Waking Madison

Date of Release: 2010

Fiction or Nonfiction: Fiction

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Not explicitly; ‘Possible MPD’ is noted on doctor papers

Was the person with DID presented as evil for having DID? No

Major Trigger warning list:

-          Attempted Suicide and threats of suicide

-          Self harm

-          Abuse in the name of Christianity

-          Hospital and mental ward scenes

-          Blood

-          Screaming, pleading

-          Flashing and blurred images

-          Verbal abuse (Guilting, insulting, threatening, possible gaslighting)

-          Physical abuse implied but not explicitly shown

-          Attempted drowning

-          Sex scenes (one of which turns nonconsensual after a switch)

-          Implied child sexual abuse but not explicitly shown

-          Drug use, smoking

-          Bondage in a hospital setting sort-of way

-          (If there are more, please let me know)

Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): Possibly a 6 to a 7 at most?

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): 7 or 8 (some parts really resonated with me)

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 5

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers): To start off with, I was prepared for it to be a much more triggering movie than it turned out to be. Compared to other media that’s shown explicit abuse scenes, I was thankful that Waking Madison seems to cut off just before in most cases or leaves it as words in the other alters’ mouth. Or in many cases they don’t even say, but it’s heavily implied and obvious. The suicide attempts, although we see the aftermath(cleaning up blood, being bandaged), we don’t see her cuts or bleeding (save for one scene later on that’s quickly cut off)

The story broken down goes like this: Madison is a woman with DID. She’s had many suicide attempts she doesn’t seem to remember and mysterious hospital visits in her life. No friends, no job, living in a shotty area of town. She’s decided to lock herself in her apartment for 30 days until she finds out the root of what’s wrong with her.

The ‘side plot’ is about a therapist(Dr. Elizabteh)  who’s working in a small mental ward with three other patients, all survivors of child abuse. As the movie goes on and Madison herself shows up in the ward, it becomes increasingly more obvious that all the patients are actually different alters/parts of Madison and this mental facility is her inner world.

In a heart-wrenching twist in the end, we find out that Dr. Elizabeth is actually one of the parts too – a child’s version of an adult to save them all, the illusive Helper.

Waking Madison is a confusing movie. Even coming from the already spoiler-ed point of view of knowing the whole twist was that she had DID and picking up on typical DID cinematography tropes(like the use of mirrors), some points of this movie still caught me off-guard and a bit befuddled. I think it’d be worth a rewatch with the full perspective of knowing the story and seeing if it’s more cohesive than I thought. Mild confusions aside, it really seems like a movie that’s made less as a horror trope and more from a very personal understanding of DID and trauma and the separation and truths about alters being parts of one whole. It’s what I wish Sybil was, I think.

Actually, I might go out on a limb and say that the confusion of the movie is almost purposeful. What is the time? What does it mean to be real? Is any of this real? All these were prominent themes in the movie. A very good representation of what it’s like to live through dissociative fugues.

The characters are written like real parts in the way that they interact. Nondescript positions of where eachother stands socially with one another that feels extremely true to my own dissociative parts experience. An obvious persecutor part that holds a lot of hurt and has a way of getting in the other’s heads in the way persecutory parts tend to. The age-sliding young part felt very real to me. A sexual protector who makes herself seem bigger and older than she actually is(like stating the abuse happened at 16, when she was really 13) The therapist part who, when broken down, was really a traumatized child all along.

If you’ve seen the last few(?) episodes of Moon Knight, this whole movie is basically the whole inner world scene there, but uncondensed.

What they got Right in my opinion:

-          The relationships and strains between parts felt very very real to me, even if the conflict was triggering at times.

-          The portrayal of confusing lost time. The obsession over what is real and what isn’t. The obsession with wanting to become real all hit home for me.

-          The switches weren’t dramatized with shitty horror music from what I remember(I don’t pay much attention to the score but it’s a trope that grates on me and I would’ve noticed)

-          Madison used warmth from the candles and hot candle wax to ground! (I hardly ever see grounding in DID media!)

-          The use of notebooks and video recordings as a means of communication. The communication between parts being a step in healing

-          Parts being seemingly simple stereotypes, as if they were a traumatized child’s idea of what the world should look like. 

What they got Wrong in my opinion:

-          The abusive mother was implied to be mentally ill in a nondescript way. While I know this is true in many abuse cases, there comes a very slippery slope when it comes to depicting that in media and should be approached with caution

-          The whole ‘nobody actually matters but the Host’ trope. Disappointingly disregarding the other parts into integration is dated

-          Seemingly hallucinating other parts to actually be seen there. I don’t know If this is something that other people experience, but it’s not something I’ve heard about being a DID symptom

-          The paper at the beginning stating her possible diagnosis to be ‘MPD’ (This is just a nitpick more than anything, because there are people who were diagnosed much earlier who still identify with MPD)

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to watch?: If you regard the triggers listed above, then yes, actually! I think there’s a lot of relatable DID content in this, like it wasn’t just made to be an interesting side accessory or horror show for someone without DID.

DID TV Series Review

Facts -

Series name: United States of Tara

Run time: 2009 - 2011

Fiction or Nonfiction: Fiction

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Yes, it’s mentioned several points throughout the show that Tara was diagnosed sometime before the show takes place

Was the person with DID presented as evil for having DID? No

Major Trigger warning list:

-          Suicide mentions and self harm, and a suicide attempt

-          Drug use, smoking, alcohol

-          Sexual scenes, exploration of teenage sexuality, underage sex/fetish work(nomexplicit but pretty gross)

-          Mentions of varios kinds of abuse, mostly sexual abuse

-          Grooming and stalking

-          Minor violent scenes

-          Emotional abuse, neglect from mentally ill parents

-          drowning

-          Ableism

-          Homophobia

-          General dark humor?

-          Some pretty explicit language and swearing

-          (If there are more trigger, please let me know!)

  Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): Maybe a 4?

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): 8

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 2, last season is a strong 9(I don’t usually push thru it)

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers):

United States of Tara is the trashy DID show and I actually unapologetically love it. If you take it from the perspective that this is a dark comedy with a lot of drama thrown in, I think it’s actually very fun to watch so long as you keep the triggers listed in mind. I know it’s known to be the ~super stigmatizing show~, and maybe it is in some ways we’ll discuss in a moment, but I’m asking you to see it from this perspective: literally everyone in the show sucks. Even the minor characters have some shitty qualities to them, so Tara doesn’t hugely stand out as being evil for having DID. She just happens to have many shitty qualities and her parts reflect that, honestly.

A basic summary: Tara, a mother of two teenagers, struggles through daily life both in normal parent-y ways and in having Dissociative Identity disorder and the effects it has on the people around her. Her husband believes he can fix her. Her son is struggling with discovering his sexuality and complicated attachment, her daughter wants to grow up too quickly and chase after her romanticized dreams. Her sister can’t seem to figure out how to grow up, struggling with her own repressed trauma.

It’s a three-season series so I can’t talk too extensively about each episode, so I’ll try to summarize it up by season, mostly focusing on Tara

Season 1 thoughts: On the surface level, right away, it seems like Tara’s alters are used as a gimmick or an excuse. In many ways they are. Heavily stereotyped and a bit ridiculous and as if they don’t have the entire self in mind when they act out. But to me it makes some sense because the amnesiac walls are obviously very high for these alters and they all have opposing views on how they want to live their life. By the people around her, they’re seen as a hassle, a burden, and something everyone wants to get rid of. No one is asking ‘why are you here’(well they are, annoyedly), they’re more asking ‘When are you leaving already?’ The saving grace from this season is probably the proof that suppressing Alters is not how you help them heal, and the therapist makes that very clear as well. The show writers knew what they were doing, I think.

There’s some interesting points of accuracy to my own dissociative experience even in season 1. Buck is ridiculous, but he’s protective in his own right. He has a reason for being the way he is. It especially resonated with me when Tara and Max were setting up to make love, and when Tara lost her nerve, Buck was there to take her place in a protective way.

We see substitute beliefs portrayed in Alice’s episode about wanting to have a baby and believing It to be true. Even the therapist points out what this means and again, Max isn’t listening but the show writers understood what they were doing here.

We see Tara telling people about how DID works time and time again. She has a very up-to-date understanding of her disorder and explains her experiences in such a way that it punches me with accuracy to my own feelings.

What I don’t like about season 1 is all throughout, the characters around her act as if Tara’s disorder isn’t just a burden, but a sacrifice to live around. I think in some part this is due to, yknow.. all the characters being shit. But in the last couple episodes of Season 1, in a DID-specializing psyche ward, the goal of many patients is to fully integrate their alters in a way of ‘getting rid of them’, as if they’re a burden to deal with across the board. I’m warning you on this because while I love United States of Tara, this mindset really snakes its way into my own and plays up a lot of my insecurities about being a burden, especially to my fiancé. : (

Season 2 thoughts:  I believe this season boots off after the confrontation with a past abuser and finding..Deeper truths are still stubbornly hidden. Tara gives up and suppresses the Alters once more. Obviously this doesn’t work, though it is seen as ‘everything’s moving smoothly now that I’m pretending the problem doesn’t exist’. It doesn’t last for very long of course.

I like Season 2 a lot. This is the season that Tara and her sister Charmaine are finally coming together to find out the truth and try to heal together. The way the writers handled the weird sisterly bond of growing up in trauma together with both fierce protection and resentment is.. Extremely accurate to how it’s been for me and my siblings. The way that Charmaine gradually goes from calling the alters an excuse to becoming understanding is.. A weird deep healing thing for me. I recommended my also possibly-probably-most likely multiple sibling to watch the show just for those episodes. I think it’s one of the many things I watch the show for comfort though.

There’s also that last scene in the last episode of season 2 where her husband Max, under the altar, declares that he’ll be what each and every part of her needs him to be for them from here out and I just 🥺 I’m sorry, this isn’t really part of the review, but it was a lot like the many loving binding promises words my fiance’s said to me and it made me tear up a little, okay?

As for the DID handling in this season, I’d say it was a good continuation from the first. They really delved into the topic from a knowledgeable perspective and no longer treated the audience like DID is a New and Special thing. I think the ‘burden feelings’ were less for this season as we moved into an actually healing arc. There was nothing fantastical or dramatized that wasn’t already in the first that I can recall.

Season 3. Oh boy. This is known as the horrible and bad season and I have to unfortunately agree. I believe the show was run by someone else at this point, and since there wasn’t a season 4, they had to cram a lot of finished ends where there wasn’t room for them.

I think Bryce is a bit more intense than other persecutor parts I’ve seen in media. I (sort-of) have an abuser introject and with my experience, even at his most intense down moments, the intent for how he behaves is still protective in nature. Can we make the argument with Bryce? Maybe? But I fail to see his protective motives, even if I pull back the layers of ‘these characters are just shit’ and ‘this is written to be an interesting tv show most of all’.

I think what they needed with season 3 was a season 4. More time to actually peel back their own layers and explore what it really means to be a persecutor part. It’s unfortunate that it got cut off so short and the actual answer to healing herself in the end was.. A suicide attempt and literally killing Bryce off. Which as we know, doesn’t work.

I think to cover up for the cut season, there was a lot of misinformation strewn in to the DID presentation. The alters were stripped back to be stereotypes again.

The only good thing from this season was probably the other character’s developments and one of the first episodes having a scene where all the Alters are coming together in co-consciousness.

Overall, I think United States of Tara takes a bit of unneeded flack. As being The Worst Show For DID. I don’t know yet if that’s true. I think a lot of it is down to it being one of those shows where everyone sucks, a bit like Sunny In Philadelphia. There is a lot of stigmatizing trash, sure, but when I take it with a little bit of salt, I come out really enjoying the show.

 What they got Right in my opinion:

-          No childhood trauma shown explicitly onscreen, no screaming or horror music for switches. You don’t know how much this shit bothers me

-          Multiple counts where misconceptions about DID are corrected and talked about openly. They refer to it as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Even if the characters aren’t getting it right, there are many points where a therapist has a stronger understanding of what’s going on(in the first season at least)

-          The parts relationships as they come together and the amnesia barriers lower. I’m really partial to Buck and Alice and how they’re shown to have some complexities behind being a part of a system. (I think T has some of this merit too, but they really do her dirty)

-          The subtle ways in which trauma effects the characters everyday lives and attachments. Tara struggles to have intimacy, Charmaine struggles to have a stable relationship. All of it is very rooted in trauma responses

-          Suppressing your disorder may look like it works for a little bit but it doesn’t, really.

-          Handling introjects and substitutes beliefs. Though I think Moon Knight did it a little better, it was nice that they went into this too.

-          That the lack of something important from a parent(love, stability, protection, ect) can also cause major trauma

-          -They had Gregory and the Hawk start off one of the episodes and I just hold that close to my heart, haha <3

What they got Wrong in my opinion:

-          Killing Alters off doesn’t mcfuckin work my dude

-          The whole ‘Host is the True Person’ narrative throughout. (Imo, no part is more important than the other, no part is a ‘hassle’ or a ‘burden’.)

-          Integration/fusion ‘gets rid’ of parts

-          Although they may feel like it, introjects of abusers are not actually abusers and shouldn’t be ‘killed off’ as a means of healing.

-          Just…Avoid season 3

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to watch?: Tentatively, yes. There may be more triggers than I listed. I really like the show myself because it’s like the junk food of DID content. Easy to watch and not all that good for you, probably

Just really keep in mind that ‘burdensome’ theme, it might get in your head too.

DID Book Review

Facts -

Book name: The Half Life of Molly Pierce

Author: Katrina Leno

Date of Publication: 2014

Fiction or Nonfiction: Fictional, young adult

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Not explicitly, Dissociative Identity Disorder was only brought up twice, but it appears to be.. the accepted case…?

Was the person with DID presented as evil for having DID? No

Major Trigger warning list:

-          Major Character Death

-          Violent car accident

-          Lots of descriptions about blood

-          Suicide ideation and attempt

-          Integration/fusion that doesn’t feel wholly.. wanted?

Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): 2

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): maybe 2-3?

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 3

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers):

It’s hard to know what to say about the book because it’s very vaguely written, and most concepts, I feel, are left more as implications.

The story starts off with Molly having woken up, driving her car. Evidently she’s missed school, and she’s missed it many times and she knows so. She goes on toe internally describe all these periods of missing time and classic symptoms of dissociation – loosing large, unexplained gaps of time, feeling disconnected with one’s self and the people and world around her. Ending up somewhere she can swear she wasn’t just minutes ago – but it’s been hours or days.

Then a seeming stranger has a violent accident and.. Just straight up dies. In her arms. It’s very shocking, actually, I didn’t expect for it to happen so suddenly. He said he knew her in his last moments, and called her by a different name – Mabel.

Honestly, it was a little triggering that all this happened, and it was an intense emotional scene, but Molly didn’t have the context to any of what was going on. It’s a specific fear of mine, forgetting someone extremely important to me and something happening to them in the time I don’t know. (Secretly, I have all my parts make sure they know who my fiancé is and how important he is just to safeguard something like this from happening > <; )

Molly, through a blurry journey of confusing grief, starts deconstructing what’s been happening to her and looking for answers. She starts having flashbacks to how it all lead up to this moment, in a linear that goes backwards from the accident. Slowly unravelling who Mabel was and who these people in her life were to her.

Frustratingly, everyone but Molly evidently knew who Mabel was. I guess because she wasn’t ready, it’s revealed that Mabel had everyone agree to act like nothing was happening. Including her therapist, which I found very odd. Wouldn’t a therapist want you caught up to the present and know what was happening if you asked?

Unfortunately, this is a trope with DID in fictional media – One part knowing everything and seemingly having no symptoms of memory loss or dissociation themselves or even always knowing and always having had the words for it. This is the way the typical DID killer trope emerges, with the all powerful killer that leaves the poor helpless ‘main’ or ‘host’ out of the story on purpose. I hardly see this to actually be the case; even with seemingly omnipresent alters, there was some point of life where they might’ve not known, or not had the words for it at least. In my own case, when there’s something that’s Known, it tends to be a little infectious among parts in due time.

(Of course, if you’re really as fugue-heavy as Mabel and Molly yourselves, I’m sorry if this all is actually really accurate! Maybe this is the perfect book for you, even. But to my own case, I feel like it’s a non-killing DID killer trope in use)

At one point, there’s the recognition that DID is formed in the midst of trauma. And it’s just said.. That they don’t… Fit the mold. As if they just have a special case of DID that has no trauma? (because the trauma she experienced early in the book was after she already has DID) There might’ve been some disorganized attachment we didn’t see, but from what I could see portrayed, Molly’s family is very loving and accepting and attentive. It’s heavily implied that Molly ‘purposefully created’ Mabel, and that she’s there to be the happy one whereas Molly is the one to hold all the depression. Trust me, I’d never tell anyone that their trauma ‘isn’t enough’ to have DID, because all trauma is subjective. But there was no implication to go off, really.

In the end, Molly learns everything and has all of Mabel’s memories, so Mabel integrates and that’s that. I don’t know if it’s accurate or not because I’ve personally not experienced fusion that I know of, but rather than the ‘fuller’ feeling that I’ve seen people write about, Molly’s left with an empty nothingness about it, just a vague feeling that it should’ve been Mabel to take her place, not the other way around. It wasn’t a choice that Molly made either. With the implications that lead up to it, it seems as though Mabel’s choice to integrate was that ‘she’d just had enough’.

What they got Right in my opinion:

- The first chapter seems to describe feelings of dissociation very well. For a little bit there, I thought it felt very accurate with the way it was described. Maybe the author personally experienced some dissociation themselves?

- There were a few instances that Molly did things to ground herself, and I always think that’s a nice thing to see. Especially in the funeral chapter, she made great effort to ground herself by pressing her hands to the wall, or going outside to feel the cold.

- When talking about the childhood photos feeling skewed and off when it was clearly Mabel and not Molly, just.. The not-me descriptions felt very accurate to me.

What they got Wrong in my opinion:

-I don’t have enough experience with dissociative fugue to comment on how accurate it is, so with my previous claims above, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!

- The ‘flashback’s are fully like.. They’re like movie scenes, every time. Maybe some people have full flashbacks all the time, with coherent flow to the memory and unobscured details, but it’s very rare for me personally. They’re also a controlled flow of memories, where Molly starts deciding one day she can just.. receive them. …they’re not distressing to her, really… Hm. Maybe they’re not flashbacks at all

- I don’t really think it is dissociative identity disorder. Depression with a side of dissociation maybe, but I’ve never known anyone to split purely from depression. It’s also said that ‘Molly created her’, but it’s hard to say if that’s prose or if Molly did create her somehow, like an endogenic system

- Mabel seemingly doesn’t experience dissociation or time loss herself

- I wouldn’t think a therapist would be on board for keeping something in the dark between parts like that? I could see family and friends agreeing, sure, but I’m not sure about a therapist actively not helping when it’s asked of them to help now

- It’s a minor gripe, and I get you can’t show the whole recovery process in one book certainly, but it’s a slightly annoying trope that finding out the truth tends to be ‘the end of it all’. In my own experience, the ‘finding out’ was just the beginning.

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to read?:  Personally, not enough resonated with me to be worth reading again or suggesting to someone else to read. It’s certainly on the extremely low side for triggering in media I find, but it also.. Just doesn’t have a lot to it.

I wanted to like it for a casual read and enjoying the characters being themselves, but it’s not… Suuperr…Fleshed out? 

I wouldn’t recommend it for a book about DID. 

DID Book Review

Facts –

Title:  First Person Plural

Author: Cameron West, Ph. D

Date of Publication: 1999

Fiction or Nonfiction: Nonfiction, a Memior of the author’s personal life

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Yes, the therapist diagnosis him explicitly with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Is the person with DID portrayed as being evil? No, but there is some self-loathing for having this diagnosis all throughout

Major Trigger list:

-          Self harm (cutting, blood) (Explicitly described, starts in the first chapter)

-          Incestuous Sexual Abuse (Explicitly described many times throughout)

-          Physical Abuse(only mentioned in one chapter, but it was triggering to me)

-          Emotional abuse

-          Forced eating disorder (explicit, but only one chapter mentions it)

-          Surgical/medical details that are pretty gross tbh

-          Self-loathing, internalized ableism

-          A couple of perfectly fine sex scenes, but there’s one that stops when a little switches out

-          Vague mentions of suicide

-          Denial

-          Feeling like a burden/relationship strains from one partner having DID

Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): 6-7(probably higher for other people)

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): ack, like 9

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 2-3(probably much higher in normal situations)

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers):

First Person Plural is a personal memoir by Cameron West, that follows his and his wife’s story of his diagnosis and trying to raise their young child amidst the chaos. It’s not a fictional story, so I don’t know how to go about judging it really, so bear with me.

First Person Plural is a very explicit book. It’s not only explicit for the trauma, the same level of description reaches around all aspects of the story. As such, it can seem a little awkwardly written when he describes himself, the people around him, and his inner experiences. It really feels like you’re reading his pure thought process on a page, really. It can be a little hard to follow, but it makes sense to me the way that DID just does. Symbolic, attached to things in important little ways that all kinda make sense, at least to ourselves.

I’d been reading this book while going through my own very triggering week of understanding and accepting(tentatively) my own incestuous past, so it’s hard to gauge how triggering it will be for other people. In many ways it’s the only thing that could really reach with me. It was a board of wood I clung to in a stormy sea. I blew through all my normal avoidance and triggers as a result.

I wanted to be honest there as a reflection of the book – it does not fuck around with vague words for abuse or is hesitant to name exactly what it was – incest, rape, childhood sexual abuse. I assume this bold use of wording is a greater reflection of Cam’s overarching acceptance that happens by the end of the book. He’s no longer in denial when he’s writing this. I imagine it must’ve been empowering for him to write it all out like this in a sense. But again, if this is really triggering for you, there will be better books out there.

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Alright, the story. We come into it with the first chapter that clearly takes place much later into the process with an explicit self harm scene.

When it goes back to the start, we’re met with Cam and his wife and their son, and they’re a very happy and normal family. But Cam’s chronically sick with a sinus infection of sorts and has had multiple surgeries but to no avail. (It’s kind of a little-talked about aspect of having a severe trauma disorder; many of us are physically ill because there’s simply nowhere else to go with this stress than to internalize it into our bodies. The body keeps the score, right?) He seeks help with something more experimental, which eventually leads him to having therapy, and seemingly his constant physical illness is lifted in time as he delves into the core of his issues: mental illness.

Cam starts having cryptic depersonalization episodes where he starts watching himself do things that he wouldn’t do himself – hiding in the closet, writing notes In the night, hearing voices, ect ect. The ‘just discovering’ phase of his healing process Is veryyy relatable to how it was for me. A lot of ‘what the fuck!!!!!’ and no words to describe it. He starts having explicit flashbacks too, reliving memories very quickly and delving into them in therapy.

His wife, Rikki, is alongside Cam through all of it. She’s as open-minded as she can be for someone who didn’t know a lot about DID to begin with. She’s very accepting and fairly welcome to parts being around her so long as it’s not around their young son. A good few of the chapters are in her point-of-view, and her struggles and grief as they go through all this together and feels the weight of helplessness especially when things seem like they only get worse and worse. It gave me a bigger appreciation for my fiancé, who’s been in the exact same position for years with me (minus having a kid)

Denial and acceptance are a major theme of the book overall, and as it progresses deeper in, it feels as though the denial grows stronger and more insistent. Fearful of ‘the mess he’d made’ by exploring the diagnosis of DID, Cameron tried for a long time to suppress having symptoms, and finds himself self-harming very regularly and growing more distant from Rikki. The body and parts keep the score, and ignoring them and pretending they’ll all go away will only do more harm than good, after all. I’m thankful he was honest about all this, it was enlightening to read, but it must’ve been hard to accept having a personal hold on Denial’s Rake like that.

The climax is when Cam finally accepts his diagnosis and all parts of himself after a very confronting stay at a Collin Ross Institute in Texas. Not only Cam accepts his diagnosis, but the other parts come to when they realize they’re all patients there and learn to accept eachother. The therapist there helps him explain more clearly the weight of his acceptance and constant efforts to Rikki, and they have a happy ending.

I really liked the ending where he got ice cream for himself, and spoons for each of his parts to enjoy in the privacy of all of them with themselves 😊 It feels like something I’d do too and was kind of a beautiful and simple conclusion to say he’s going to love himself from here out. It was extremely satisfying!

This book is not an easy read, but since I was in that very same dark place once again, it really was the only thing that reached down into my depths and met me where I’m at. No trigger warnings, no fucking around. I’m glad I read it, even though it was intense.

That said, I wasn’t actually going to rate memoirs on this blog very much because I know they’ll probably be some of the most intense. I plucked up books purely as they showed up in my search on the library app, and I’d seen the title so many times I wasn’t actually sure what it was going to be! Lol oops. Oh well, now you have a new Bunnib review

What they got Right(relatable/up to date) in my opinion:

-Chronic illness being a major part of a survivor’s life seems pretty accurate, just going off what I see with me and my friends (hi)

-The diagnosis was accurate, all the linguistics seemed up to date if that’s important to you. I like that rather than calling them a system, he calls them My Guys. (makes me think of the Personas/the Council for me). There are several points throughout the story that its explained by therapists, his wife and himself where they explain accurately what DID is and how the name was changed from Multiple Personalities to Dissociative Identity Disorder.

-The way Cam switches with other parts tends not to be fully blacked out, most instances seem to have some level of coconsciousness  and inner communication. I just found that and the descriptions of where Cam ‘went’ as a result to be very relatable too

-There’s a lot I could say was Right just because it was lived experience he’s talking about. There’s probably a lot lot lot more I could write here, I’m just getting tired and spacey =o=; the whole book is filled with ‘yup, that checks out’ to me

What they got Wrong(Unrealistic/out of date) in my opinion:

-It Is lived experience but I don’t think in most cases, knowing you have DID actually clears up most chronic illnesses. I’m not skeptical of how his worked out, but I wouldn’t think of this as a broad stroke for every trauma survivor

-I don’t know if it’s kind of a recent change, but right away getting into therapy, Cam’s processing trauma rather than going through the stabilization phases of DID-specialist trauma therapy. Again, lived experience, but its not a wonder it was so rough going through it like this.

…Honestly, I’d love to know if anyone has done the stabilization phase before hitting some huge trauma roadbumps though. My experience was very similar to Cam’s, but.. cut short.

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to read?:  Yes. Minding the heavy trigger warnings. It was noted in the end of the book, that if it made anyone struggling through the same feel seen and heard, then the book’s done it’s job. I would say it has for me so I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested.

DID Movie Review

Facts -

Movie name: What if it Works

Date of Release: 2017

Fiction or Nonfiction: Fiction

Was there a diagnosis of DID? Yes, but in the movie she calls it Multiple Personality Disorder

Was the person with DID presented as evil for having DID? Nope!

Major Trigger warning list:

-Childhood Sexual Abuse(nonexplicit, but there is a flashback shown)

-Attempted Sexual Assault

-an emotionally abusive relationship/manipulation

-Nonexplicit sexual scenes

-Ableism(the main characters called crazy, insane, generally insulted for having obvious signs of mental illness)

-Sudden angry outbursts/yelling/swearing

Subjective Review(this is how I felt about it) -

Personal triggering scale from 1 to 10 (1 being not triggering at all, 10 being a badly overwhelming experience that might cause personal harm): 1-2, (the climax scene may be more triggering as there’s the attempted assault)

Personal relatability scale from 1 to 10 (1 being unrelatable, 10 being OMG THAT’S ME!): 9!

Personal avoidance scale from 1 to 10(1 being eager to get on with it, 10 being impossible to finish): 1

My interpretation of the media(Includes spoilers):

Have you ever wanted a movie on DID that took the disorder seriously, but was still fun and light and romantic? Well What If It Works is the movie for you, then. It’s non-triggering and warm and gently funny, but it also takes the severity of mental illness very seriously. Something I see lacking in a lot of mental illness media, of it swinging one way with the evil/scary route, or the other, where it’s portrayed as a joke.

Onto the plot!

Adrian is an.. Auto-technician of sorts(? He’s into cars and technology and combines them to go vroom vroom pls don’t judge my simple mind) and he has a severe case of OCD, where most his rituals have to do with being kept clean and an extreme fear of bodily fluids. His OCD symptoms ramped up to a debilitating degree after a harsh breakup, and he since won’t contact anyone and has a tendency to fall into his ways and keep to himself. He’s socially inept and it makes me think he’s neurodivergent in a way too

He runs into Grace, first with his car, and next when she(as G at the time) bursts into his therapy appointment, thinking he’s the therapist she’s meeting with, and dropping essentially her own meet-the-alters/list of her sexual escapades. Here she starts talking about her boyfriend Sledgehammer, who seems like a bit of a dick

Sledgehammer is the man G’s in a toxic relationship with, as well as the top dog of their street art group. He’s setting up to have an exhibition, with G/Grace’s artwork being the centerpiece.

When Adrien starts stumbling more and more into Grace’s life, he inevitably starts learning about her parts in a very casual and respectful way that I really liked. He mentions going on a research binge after Grace asks, ‘How do you know about Parts stuff?’ (I’ve yet to see another movie call them Parts :0 ) She feels a lot more relaxed around Adrian and tells him a lot about herself, including her inner world(!!! Again hadn’t seen this much in movies), what roles her parts play, as well as the earliest trauma she remembers(a CSA memory with her babysitter) I loved that he firmly told her it wasn’t her fault.

They have a brief scene where we learn that they’re both extremely touch-adverse after G comes out to try and seduce Adrian, possibly to scare him off. (Adrian’s extreme fear of bodily fluids, Grace’s extreme fear of affection). Even after his outburst and wanting to hide away, he offers to take her out on a friendly/sort of date.

The more Adrian wants Grace in his life, the more strides he makes towards healing. In turn, Grace finds she’s communicating more inwardly and getting more in touch with her parts. Neither party is reverting their mental illnesses overnight, but their great strides are something to feel pride for and its so nice to see!

As Adrian keeps coming into her life though, Sledgehammer starts getting more apprehensive about his girlfriend wanting to be around another man. An art institute in Edinburgh offers Grace an exhibition of her own through Sledge, but he denies it for her both to keep her for himself and make sure she can’t succeed without him.

Around the same time, tensions rise as Adrians ex girlfriend comes back to lay her woes on him about her going to be married. Her extreme insecurities have seemingly always lead to her actually encouraging his OCD behavior and ‘keeping him crazy’ to make her feel normal. Something something she’s getting something medical done and she’s using it as an excuse to come back into his life

Tensions rise, there’s an outburst, but Adrian and Grace are obviously falling in love and aching for eachother from their situations. G tries to break it off once and for all with Adrian by breaking into his home with Sledge to have ~the sex~ there, and it seems to be a breaking point for him and they stop talking

Until after Grace’s messy breakup with Sledge, who comes in a rage to her apartment and drags her inside to be assaulted. Adrien is in the middle of one of his rituals, and can’t make it out the door, so he takes his car and bursts  through the wall to save her. She’s already knocked Sledge out, but the act of his heroism that he couldn’t make for his ex drives the emotional point home and they finally admit being in love with eachother and wanting to touch genuinely. We see them in the last shot holding hands :D

I wanted to write the whole thing out like this because there’s a lot I wanted to say about it! A lot of really great representation for mental illness and communication and healing and therapy, which is hard to find all in one movie.

I really loved that these two people with mental illness, even debilitating, are worthy of love and not being alone. The therapist gently guides them towards leaning more into their love and sexuality and insists its healthy to. Them both breaking free of their abusive relationships by their own strength but also for eachother, is extremely satisfying to see. You really end up rooting for them both and I love love love this movie!!

What they got Right in my opinion: Where to start!! Hmm

-Controversial take: I don’t think Adrian’s depiction of OCD is a bad one. Yes it does lean into the (sometimes seemingly nonsensical) cleaning trope, but it’s said that the director based his OCD off her brother’s own experiences. Personally, my sibling went through a really extreme phase of their trauma-based OCD that really mirrored this depiction as well, right down to the washing things to an extreme and wearing gloves and even changing their gloves every time they touched something. I don’t know enough about OCD, but I don’t think it’s fair to label it as inaccurate just because it’s an extreme case. Some people really are ruled entirely by their mental illness and that doesn’t make them less worthy of love or space to exist, even in fiction!

- Oh in the start of the movie, Adrian runs into a group of drag queens and even though he’s very inept in conversation, the drag queens are not shown to be predatory and not portrayed as a joke beyond Adrian just being really awkward around them(but we find out hes just an awkward around anyone really). I just thought that was really nice

- Grace calls her parts parts and I find that really neat!

- Grace describes having an inner world (A house, where she can usually see all the rooms(not all the time) and have a vague awareness of all her known parts. There’s a heart-shaped clock at the top, which gets referenced in her art and various panning through the film. Maybe related to loosing time when switching?)

- Grace has an awareness of her trauma and that she has ten parts, and none of this is explained explicitly and I find that really really refreshing. She’s been in therapy for a while, she knows where she’s at. The audience doesn’t have to be in on everything and that is so sooo cool!!

- Grace is working towards final fusion!!!!! It’s not something her therapisy pressured her to go for, but a clear choice that she’s been working towards over time. Mag-fucking-nificant I love it!!

-G is such a striking representation as kind of a persecutor-protector part, or at least a part who has ‘puffy confidence’(A term I coined for me and my friend, about parts who ‘puff themselves up’ to appear stronger and bigger that they are. Spike is like this too in the movie) Her hypersexuality is portrayed really well. I actually really liked how she went into how disgusted they felt afterwards in a very dissociated way? I 1000% have parts just like G.

-Grace’s touch adverse and hyposexuality felt really accurate too. The inability to be intimate or even want to be touched really hits home with me. I love that the costumes are very telling of how she’s doing. The more layers she wears reflects her comfort levels. They don’t immediately come off for Adrian, either, but instead in the end scene we see she’s wearing one of G’s layers too… ugh I could ramble on this for hours

-The substitute belief/symbolism that Little held about drawing red teapots as a means of communication was extremely accurate. I found it even more so as Grace talk about it bluntly like she knew at one point, then gets confused when it actually shows up in her artwork. Her amazing friend even suggests it’s a means of communication and I liked that a lot

-described coconsciousness!!! The fact that not every switch(in fact hardly any) are blackout amnesiac

-Not DID but I liked how they portrayed manipulation with the ex girlfriend and Sledgehammer. The need to make their partner small and trapped with themselves out of insecurity is classic abusive behavior and it was handled really well in two different ways

What they got Wrong in my opinion:

-          I do think some of the OCD episodes were a bit ridiculous and Adrian shouldn’t have been surprised his car didn’t work after washing it very destructively. I can see the logic that drove him to doing it initially, but wouldn’t he knowwww afterwards? I think regre rather than surprise would work better?

-          It’s called Multiple Personalities by the characters, but I almost wonder if this was a choice to touch base on what people know about the disorder more commonly and just move on with it rather than a misinformed choice, because the director herself knows it’s called DID.

Would I recommend this to someone with DID to watch?: YES!!!! Yes yes yes!!! In fact, I’d even recommend you show it so someone who you might want to tell more about the disorder but don’t have the words for doing so yourself. It’s a lot softer and easier to swallow than other DID media without making a joke of it

I would also recommend you listen to this interview with the director about her intentions with the movie, because they really come from a place of personal experience and absolute love and goodwill towards people with DID and OCD. You can listen to it >>Here<<

A Sigh By Any Other Name Would Still Be A Sigh

I wonder how applicable this is to tablets, laptops and desk tops....

Also....it gives more insight into this meme:

But if we're thinking about it.....more oxygen in the body is the result of sighing, right? That extra breath is necessary and it helps more than one system in the body be more effective.

So a hypothesis would be that less sighing is less oxygen in the body, helping fewer cells in the body reach their potential, elevating stress which also hinders how effectively our bodies work - dare I say we'd be less intellectually engaged as a result of fewer sighs? 🤔

So practice deep breathing/meditation to counteract that effect I suppose...🤔