Latest Posts by liongirlofficial - Page 2
"A Shirt Made of Fire", Vardges Petrosyan (translated by metamorphesque)
I very much relate to this. it is frustrating to me that the parts of dissociative disorders that people almost exclusively focus on are, well, the parts. but much of the time that isn't actually the primary way my life is affected. it doesn't always actually matter WHO I am right now, but the side effects of living a fragmented life are difficult to manage.
i feel like we don’t always talk about the smaller ways that having a dissociative disorder (and not being “out” about it) can really disable a person— i’m in a choir, and idk how to explain to the musical director that SOMETIMES i am a soprano and have no trouble hitting high notes while other times i feel like i physically cannot sing that high. or how sometimes my guitar feels like an extension of my body but sometimes i don’t even remember how i’m supposed to hold it properly. or in art therapy when i only sometimes have access to my adult level of artistic skill while sometimes i have the skill level of a five year old. my dissociative disorder very much disables me, and this is something i don’t see people talking about outside of the ways that PTSD disables those with dissociative disorders. what i mean is that sometimes i do not have the ability to do very basic tasks. dissociative disorders are developmental disorders, and i am very much developmentally disabled much of the time.
i don’t plan on ever being publicly out about my dissociative disorder in a non anonymous setting. i have a hard time even talking about my parts in therapy even to the clinician that diagnosed me with DID. it feels unbearably vulnerable and not safe to tell people about my parts. i feel like we’re seeing more and more people on tik tok start talking publicly about their DID, and while that may be very helpful for them, i honestly can’t imagine ever being fully out with it like that. keeping it secret is what has kept me safe, it is how i survived the last twenty years of my life. my experience with DID also does not line up with most of the DID content i’ve seen online— and i don’t mean this to invalidate those whose experiences are different than mine, it’s just that it can feel really lonely and isolating to have a dissociative disorder that doesn’t fit with the worlds preconceived image of what a dissociative disorder looks like. this is part of why i typically just say that i have dissociative disorder instead of DID.
tldr: dissociative disorders can really impair basic functioning and i feel like people forget that when they focus so much on the parts of DID that are more sensationalized in the media.
suffering exists in our resistance to change. our attachment to impermanence. our desire to hold onto what has already been let go of.
this is going to be difficult -> i am capable of doing difficult things -> i have done everything prior to this moment -> this difficulty will soon be proof of capability
