Hi friends! I've wanted to do something like this for a while. Since I've recently been officially diagnosed, I'd like to spread some awareness and information on
DID/OSDD to the community. This may be a long post so please bear with me!
DID stands for
Dissociative Identity Disorder which was previously known as
Multiple Personality Disorder. Similarly,
OSDD stands for
Other Specified Dissociative Disorder. They're grouped together because they both feature
altered personality states or "split personalities" that can take control of the body, just with varying degrees of severity. DID/OSDD is caused by extreme, repetitive, and unavoidable trauma before or between the ages of 6-11 years old. Essentially, the critical periods in a child's development where the personality solidifies. For those with DID/OSDD, in order to cope with the trauma, the brain did
not solidify into one personality, instead fracturing into many different pieces that work together to make a whole.
I personally have been diagnosed with
OSDD-1b, one of the two main versions of OSDD. Dissociation, depersonalization, poor memory, and loss of time are things I struggle with, as well as having around 25 other "personalities" that I share my body with. I phrase it that way because it's important for me to impart on you all that each "alternate personality" or "alter" (also called headmates, system members, etc.) is their own seperate person. I am myself, with my own likes and dislikes and opinions, and each one of them have
their own likes, dislikes, and opinions. Most of them even have genders/sexualities that are different from mine. Think of it like having a lot of roommates! We all live together in this body/brain and we work together to keep things functioning.
I also want to clarify that in the plural (as in being more than one person, essentially folks who are systems) community, it's considered very rude to refer to alters/headmates as anything other than people. They have their own appearances internally and are as real as any other person. The only difference is that they don't have their own physical body.
I've mentioned the word "system" a few times now! Systems are the term for people with DID/OSDD, we function as multiple people, like a collective group!
All of this being said, I'm sure some of you may have questions. I'll be happy to answer them as long as they're respectful. I won't go into detail about my own personal trauma, so please don't ask about that. If you'd like any more resources or information on DID/OSDD please let me know!
In terms of how this may affect WCC: we (as a collective) tend to use emojis to differentiate between alters. Not every alter is interested in interacting with WCC or the community. Those that are will change the emoji in our display name on the WCC Discord ("aspen || [emoji]") to signify that it's someone else. My usual emoji is the sprout (
)! We do go by Aspen in real life as our collective name, mostly because it's my name (I'm what's known as the host), so I don't think the others will mind if you continue to call them Aspen. They do all have their own names though, and if they're comfortable they may share them with you.
That, I believe, is all for now! Thank you for reading, and please let me know if you have any questions! Love you guys!
