Types Of Protectors

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.]

my depression tips:

* whenever you go to the bathroom, try to do one hygiene task like brushing your teeth, moisturising or washing your face, bc ur already in there so you might as well

* leave out clothes in the bathroom so if u feel like you have the energy to shower you don’t have to waste time on picking out clothes, you can just get straight in

* if u wanna shave but you don’t have the energy, u can get an electric shaver and shave in bed, you won’t get as much hair off but it still does something

* get some of those one time use, water free toothbrushes and keep some next to ur bed, and use some water and any empty bowl or container to spit the toothpaste into. you can also keep a mini mouthwash next to your bed

* for food, try to get ready made meals and frozen meals. i keep a mini fridge in my room with drinks and snacks so if i can’t make it down to the kitchen i have something to fuel my body with

* if u can’t clean your room, make a list in order of priority (mine is floor, bed and surfaces) and whenever you feel like u can or u get a random burst of energy, just do a little bit

* keep a waterbottle next to your bed, and if you have clean tap water refill it whenever you go to the bathroom. i usually use fizzy water and squash so i feel like i’m drinking soda but it’s much healthier

* if u can’t get out of bed but wanna feel more clean, change your underwear and your shirt, then use some dry shampoo and wipes on ur armpits and sweaty areas

* if u have pets, make them a priority bc they need you to live, and they care about you so much, so spending time with them will make u feel better and loved

* if u can’t brush ur hair, don’t tie it up bc it will turn into a rat’s nest and you just don’t wanna have to deal with that. even detangling it with your fingers is better than nothing. also braiding it will protect it

* if u can’t sleep, lying still and closing your eyes still is rly good rest, and if u don’t wanna be alone with your thoughts you can listen to a podcast (any true crime or mythology ones are my fave)

* buy multiple pairs of ur comfort outfits so you always have something you want to wear to change into

* try to get up and open your window to air your room out of the smell, incense also works well to cover it

* to keep you entertained, here are some ideas:

* listen to ur fave songs, podcasts or an audiobook

* browse some social medias (tiktok, reddit and tumblr are my faves)

* join a discord server and just kinda idle on that and watch ppl chat

* play a mindless game on ur phone or if u have a handheld device like a switch (on my phone i love life is strange and on my switch i’ve been playing legend of zelda: breath of the wild)

* read some fanfics on ur phone (all the young dudes is a must read)

* kids activity books of ur fave fandoms are rly fun

* read some webtoons (heartstopper is amazing)

* watching a game play through on youtube (minecraft and skyrim ones are my faves)

* rewatching ur comfort movies or watching some funny cartoons

* if u have a laptop, download sims and play that

Are you enabling people in your life?

Do you find yourself... * Lying or covering for other people? * Making excuses for someone else's crappy behavior? * Blaming yourself for someone else's crappy behavior, shortcomings, mistakes, etc.? * Swooping in and redoing tasks you've asked someone else to do, that you feel aren't getting done the "right" way? * Helping people who didn't ask for your help, or who said no when you asked if you could help them? * Giving people advice they didn't ask for or seek out? * Feeling resentful when you take on all these responsibilities for other people, even though no one forced you to? * Feeling used or taken advantage of? * Projecting your feelings onto other people? (i.e. When your partner's leaving dirty socks on the floor is no longer about dirty socks, but them not caring about you) * Feeling like you're being taken for granted or that your hard work is not being appreciated? * Feeling drained and exhausted, because you're taking on your own responsibilities plus everyone else's, and you're not taking care of your own needs? * Nagging or micromanaging? * Doing things for people that they are capable of doing for themselves, and should be doing for themselves? * Trying to manage other people's feelings or moods? * Always going along to get along? * Feeling like you're spread too thin? * Not having time and energy to do the things you want and need to do, because you're too busy taking care of everyone else? * Letting your needs fall by the wayside? * Feeling like others are not "pulling their weight?" * Feeling like you're doing more work than other people in your life? * "Checking in" a little too frequently when you delegate a task to someone else? * Always in a state of stress, chaos, and worry? * Worrying about how or whether they'd survive without you? * In an intimate relationship, feeling less like their partner and more like their parent? * Spending money you don't have or can't afford to spend on "helping" the people in your life? * Always getting sucked into drama you don't need to be involved in? * Giving out ultimatums? * Attempting to set a boundary, but then caving? * Doing things out of a sense of guilt or obligation? * Treating people less as people, but as fix-it projects? * Thriving on being the rescuer, the fixer, the go-to person, etc.? * Deriving a sense of self-worth and identity from such? * Feeling like a doormat that people wipe their dirty feet on? * Feeling responsible for other people's choices, feelings, words, and behavior? * Expecting people to read your mind, then getting upset when it turns out they can't? * Feeling like you're giving and giving and giving, and they're taking and taking and taking, and not giving you anything in return? * Trying to change other people's behavior? * Getting into one toxic relationship after another? * Feeling like you're a magnet for toxic people? * Feeling like you're losing yourself, or aren't being true to yourself? * Wearing too many hats? * Resenting the people in your life? * Not having an answer to the question, "Who are you outside of your role as _______?" * Constantly worrying about what other people will think? * Saying "yes" when you really want to say "no?"

What Doesn’t Kill You Can Make You Weaker

Hi. This is a whisper reaching out to those of us who didn't become warriors after trauma & ab*se.

So Content Warning for insinuated ab*se/trauma, & here's something for you.

((It's okay to reblog this but please don't add on to it in post (adding on in the tags is okay).))

~Lyle & Nico

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“What Doesn’t Kill You Can Make You Weaker”

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“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”

“What doesn’t kill you makes a fighter”

Survivor (Destiny’s Child), Fighter (Christina Aguilera), Warrior (Demi Lovato), Stronger (Kelly Clarkson), plenty of songs about someone who says their trauma made them stronger, a warrior, a fighter, a survivor play on our radios, in our stores, in our lives.

And while that’s admirable, it’s not the only option.

What doesn’t kill you can make you weaker.

Or, to be more accurate, what didn’t kill you makes you feel weaker and changes how you act.

Because what doesn’t kill you doesn’t MAKE you a fighter. YOU make you a fighter.

But the thing is, ‘the same water that hardens the egg, softens the potato’ (/paraphrase of an ancient proverb). Just because you’re put under pressure doesn’t guarantee you’ll “get a thick skin”, become a warrior able to handle trauma, whatever.

Some of us melt. Some of us become softer. Some of us weaken.

Some of us become sensitive to the most miniscule insult, the slightest harsh tone, someone setting the groceries down a little too hard, someone talking a little too loud, someone moving just a little too fast.

And that doesn’t make us bad people, or stupid, or “too sensitive”. Some people aren’t meant to be hard warriors. Some of us are lovers, not fighters.

We exist. I exist.

So here’s to those who got softer, those who got more sensitive, those who became hypervigilant, those who made themselves smaller, the fawn and freeze and flight/avoid and normalize responses, those who feel like they should be stronger, those who are too afraid to raise their voice and become a “warrior”, those who can’t stand up to their abusers.

Here’s to those of us who didn’t become warriors, fighters, or stronger. You are valid. I see you, I hear you, I feel with you, I hurt with you, I believe you.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are not existing wrong. Our world celebrates the loud warriors, but you are just as important.

Survival is still rebellion, even if it’s silent rebellion.

Citing outdated research is something I've started seeing a lot of lately. This time I will focus on people utilizing Kluft's 1988 Complex MPD paper to state that polyfragmentation can be as low as part counts in the 20s, that polyfragmentation is "poorly defined and debated," and that severe abuse does not need to occur for polyfragmentation to develop. So let's break this down.

Research is considered outdated if it is 10+ years old (and in some fields, anything 5+ years old). This paper was published 34 years ago.

Kluft's sample was 26 people with 26+ parts, 24 of which are AFAB and 2 are AMAB, 94% white. This is extremely small for a research study and not At All representative of any population.

In the abstract of the paper it states this: "48 of the 76 cases reviewed [...] had dual (2) personalities. Another 12 had 3 personalities. Only 1 individual, a patient with 12 personalities, had more than 8." Emergent research at the time was beginning to show higher parts counts--it cites several authors that put the average as 2-10, 6.3, 13.3, 13.9, 15.4, and 15.8. All of these studies had sample sizes less than 100 (mostly sub-50) except for the 15.8 number which had a sample size of 355. Kluft outright states that alter count is being investigated at that point. Note the vast majority of these studies, including the emergent research, output a lower alter count than is considered average today.

Kluft states that "Somewhat arbitrarily, [he] defined extreme complexity as the presence of at least twice as many alters as the upper limit of the modal range of 8-13, ie 26 or more." Key note here is that this Kluft's personal definition of complexity (not a widespread consensus) at a time when alter count was being openly investigated as essentially an unknown (he is using the upper limit as in the extreme end of averages per the previous emergent research indications, not that this was now widely considered the average alter count). Kluft was one of the very few people who even dealt with complex cases, with most of his colleagues opting to pass them onto him (as is noted in the paper), so essentially there was very little besides his own personal opinion to go off of.

Kluft notes that his observed rate of seeing complex MPD cases "constitute approximately 15-20%" of his patients, and that his "experience with very complex cases began in 1975." This means that of the cases he was seeing over the past decade, only 15-20% of his DID cases had 26+ parts. Or, 80-85% of his clients had fewer than 26 parts.

Kluft's phrasing in this paper that "chaotic and unsafe" home environments are a pathway to complex MPD has been used lately as "proof" that polyfragmentation does not need to occur from RAMCOA or severe abuse settings and can come from simply having an unstable home environment. This is a cherry-picked phrase and should not be used as evidence, because of the next point:

His findings for people with 26+ parts: 100% experienced "long-standing severe abuse." 46% had abuse histories that were documented legally in the 70s or corroborated by witnesses. It is nearly impossible to win a court case NOW against your abuser, much less in the 70s, and having witnesses to abuse is also a marker that the abuse was severe as abusers tend to abuse when others aren't around--for them to escalate is heavy. Not to mention the 70s were much stricter about what was considered abuse. 92% were incest survivors. 58% experienced "vicious torment." 35% were RA survivors. The exact percentage isn't listed but Kluft states that in addition to the 35% RA survivors in his sample, another 1/3rd (~33%) stated that others "manipulated their condition"--due to his grouping the two together I am inclined to think that there were likely overlaps in experience with RA and this, though we can't be sure. It's important to keep in mind here that the alter count is 26+.

What this study states is not that polyfragmentation is ill-defined in 2022. What it states is that in the 1980s, researchers were still trying to figure out what the average alter count even was. Much less polyfragmentation.

This study states that among a small group of people with 26+ parts, all of them had severe abuse histories and the overwhelming majority were incest survivors. This is evidence AGAINST the claim that polyfragmentation can occur in merely unstable households, not for it. Its evidence is that severe abuse is needed to develop above average alter counts, quoting Kluft with the phrase "the more traumata, the more alters." The fact that in a study for 26+ parts, over 1/3rd were RA survivors is a significant marker of this.

Not only this, but it is evidence AGAINST the idea that high alter counts in DID are common at all. If 80-85% of Kluft's patients had under 26 parts, it would indicate that above average alter counts in the 26+ count are a minority and that would indicate that having 100+ parts would be even more so.

Now, current evidence does not support the idea of a tit-for-tat "every trauma = another alter" idea that Kluft put forth. Current evidence shows that 50% of people with DID have 10 or fewer parts, which doesn't discount Kluft's experience of 80-85% of cases having fewer than 26, but does make it more unlikely given our higher average alter count now (as in, it is likely a higher number of people have 26+ parts than Kluft thought). Currently there is a stable definition of polyfragmentation as 100+ parts (with implied complexities), for the past ~15+ years, through the training provided by OEA SIG of the ISSTD and various texts including Christiane Sanderson's Counseling Adult Survivors of CSA. But this is why we should not use decades old research as if it wholly relevant--we can use it as a reference point but it is not accurate or up to date. It's also why cherry-picking phrases in research can lead one to wildly different conclusions than what it actually stated.

do not know how to word my feelings on your post, but it feels very strange to say that because your DID experiences are misery, that means DID itself is miserable, and to imply that non-DID-having bodies can't experience being a system is weird.

yes, what you went through sounds awful, and yes, DID to you would be miserable, but DID does not mean misery. it means (some level of) disorder. for people who are polyfragmented (especially through things like RAMCOA/TBMC), yes, this CAN mean a LOT of misery, but us systems who do not suffer with that same level of misery aren't less of a system because of that difference.

while you can explain your experiences as more painful in your perspective, playing trauma olympics and denying other people's own experiences is weird. it's heavily invalidating, especially as someone who would probably fall under a disordered traumagenic diagnosis, and who loves their system and who sees it as hope and not misery (as it is the light in the darkness, the company that protected me through terrible things. that is not misery for me)

(also, most endogenic systems are not claiming to have DID, not self diagnosed or professionally diagnosed. it is a different kind of plural systemhood that is not connected to having DID. so to say that being endogenic is taking away "everything that DID is about" is just... strange.)

I am not playing the trauma Olympics by saying that what I went through makes me miserable. For you to suggest acknowledging my existence as a trauma survivor is invalidating is really not good.

Also I should clarify: you can love parts and even most of your system, but you cannot deny the fact that it is born out of misery and so it is not all sunshine and rainbows. It comes with PTSD, or one of its forms.

Also, endogenic is taking away everything DID is about because the only scientifically recognized way to be a system is with either DID (or a variant like HC or C), OSDD-1, or UDD. And these, like all dissociative disorders, are trauma disorders. To me being endogenic has always meant cherry picking a glamorized version of the symptoms of these disorders, as I said in the post.

“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.

Some Roles within DID/OSDD Systems:

Protectors:

Protectors are alters who assume the responsibility of safeguarding the system from harm, both internally and externally. They may manifest as fierce, assertive, or even aggressive identities, employing strategies such as vigilance, hypervigilance, or assertiveness to shield the system from perceived threats. Protectors may emerge as a response to past trauma, aiming to ensure the safety and survival of the system.

Caretakers/Nurturers:

Caretakers or nurturers within a DID/OSDD system play a pivotal role in providing emotional support, guidance, and care to other alters. They exhibit qualities of compassion, empathy, and tenderness, offering comfort and reassurance to those in need. Caretakers often act as a stabilizing force, fostering a sense of security and nurturing the well-being of the system.

Gatekeepers:

Gatekeepers possess the crucial role of managing access to memories, trauma, or specific information within the system. They act as a protective barrier, regulating the flow of information to prevent overwhelming experiences or triggering events from inundating the entire system. Gatekeepers ensure that the system maintains a balanced and manageable level of awareness regarding past experiences.

Host/Primary Identity:

The host or primary identity is the alter who assumes the role of fronting and interacting with the external world most frequently. They often serve as the primary point of contact and may possess the most comprehensive understanding of the individual's life experiences. The host identity typically manages daily responsibilities, social interactions, and the coordination of tasks within the external environment.

Executive Managers:

Executive managers are alters who possess organizational skills, problem-solving abilities, and the capacity to oversee the functioning of the system. They excel in coordinating tasks, managing schedules, and ensuring efficient communication and collaboration among alters. Executive managers often contribute to the overall stability and productivity of the system.

Child Alters:

Child alters represent younger aspects of the individual's personality. They assume childlike roles within the system, embodying innocence, vulnerability, and curiosity. Child alters may hold memories, emotions, or experiences from specific developmental stages and may require nurturing and support from other alters within the system.

Communicators:

Communicators serve as mediators, facilitating internal communication among alters within the system. They bridge gaps in awareness, mediate conflicts, and ensure that information and experiences are shared effectively. Communicators contribute to the cohesiveness and integration of the system, fostering understanding and collaboration among alters.

Helpers:

Helpers are alters who possess specialized skills, talents, or knowledge that contribute to the overall functioning of the system. They may excel in areas such as creativity, problem-solving, artistic expression, or specific domains of expertise. Helpers contribute their unique abilities to support the system and aid in individual and collective growth.

Conclusion:

Roles within DID/OSDD systems showcase the multifaceted nature of the identities that exist within an individual. Protectors, caretakers, gatekeepers, hosts, executive managers, child alters, communicators, and helpers all play vital roles in the internal dynamics, functioning, and healing of the system. Recognizing and understanding these diverse roles is crucial for fostering empathy, facilitating effective communication, and promoting integration within the individual's journey towards wholeness and well-being.

Fun Trauma Things :)

Feeling betrayed when people defend or sympathize with your abuser(s)

Severe abandonment issues

Constantly questioning if you deserved the abuse

Am I actually a terrible person or am I just internalizing things my abuser(s) have said to me??

Purposefully seeking out toxic relationships to further destroy your mental health

Restoring to destructive coping mechanisms because you never learned how to self-soothe

Having a panic attack when someone raises their voice at you

Constantly reinventing yourself because you’re paranoid about turning into your abuser(s)

Never being completely certain which memories are real

Difficulty creating and maintaining close relationships due to trust issues

Tons of uncertainty regarding your religious identity

What if I’m just faking everything for attention?

Fluctuating between hating yourself and hating your abuser(s)

Hypersexuality and other forms of sexual dysfunction

Craving abuse and mistreatment and despising yourself for it

Denying yourself love and comfort because you want to suffer alone and you don’t even deserve it anyways

Picking up on the slightest change of tone in someone’s voice

Projecting the mentality of your abuser(s) onto everyone you know, because if one person who you’re close with can hurt you, so can every other person too!

Maybe I was the abuser all along? Maybe I’m just being manipulative and selfish and I’m actually a horrible abusive monster??

Minuscule, insignificant things reminding you of The Bad Memories and inducing a mental breakdown

Wishing your abuser(s) had just killed you instead of leaving you alive to suffer for the rest of your life

Dissociating for weeks on end, then suddenly having an explosive meltdown because you spilled your cereal

Feeling angry at everyone around you for never noticing the blatantly obvious symptoms of early-onset trauma

Persistent feelings of worthlessness, because if your abuser(s) don’t love you, it must mean you’re completely unlovable

Connecting the dots between traumatic memories and mental health issues you have while psychoanalyzing yourself in the shower

Inescapable suicidal thoughts at all times, always

Something I've noticed is how some CDD systems (and general trauma survivors) sometimes treat "extreme" trauma like a fictional concept when trying to valid themselves. I understand where "you don't need to go through RAMCOA abuse/a war/a dictatorship/etc to be a system and have cptsd" comes from and I fully agree with it. Some shitty ableist singlets can be very annoying with how they only accept trauma when it's "extreme" trauma. But I think the way some people talk about it sometimes just makes it sound off. I don't know it's just the way some people phrase it like "Not everyone traumatised is living in a war zone 🙄" makes me really uncomfortable. Like it's not the faults of people who have gone through "extreme" trauma that some people are ableist and uneducated

Also, people who go through those do exist? Like idk most people I see talk about it like it's some far-off vague fictional out-there concept and not like, a thing that real people experience and go through? Like RAMCOA abuse is real and valid (I'm not a survivor myself so I won't talk about it a lot but I felt the need to bring it up because the way some people talk about it is just weird), people who have lived through wars exist? and their trauma is valid, people who have been trafficked exist and their trauma is valid, people who have been tortured exist and their trauma is valid, people who have survived genocides exist and their trauma is valid, and people who have been in cults exist and their trauma is valid. In general, people with "extreme" trauma exist and their trauma is real

Survivors of "extreme" abuse/trauma shouldn't be made to feel like their trauma is too taboo to mention. Or feel like they can't talk about it out of fear of "invalidating other systems". All trauma is valid (including "non extreme" trauma). I think validating traumatic things that aren't usually viewed as trauma by the average person is good but please try not to bring down anyone else in the process