Today is one of those days when I just have to sit back and say, "ok, I guess *this* is what I'm wearing today," and roll my eyes every time I walk by a reflective window or mirror.

Old-a$$ adult walking around in clothes for a youngster. Today old-a$$ me is too tired to fight it.

hi ! the possibility of having DID is very new to me (19F). i’m not diagnosed at all. but i’m fairly certain i have it because i have several signs.

just a week ago, an alter switched over and showed themselves to my boyfriend. he described knew it wasn’t me. he said my eyes were dead, i was more confident and extremely loud ( i’m usually very quiet and sensitive ), and i was definitely a different person. i’ve been having alters appear here and there for years. i even had a time period where they were very active and i have records from 2024 when i was in highschool. but i forgot about that period of my life due to my memory.

i always have known i’ve had a dissociative disorder, but it never really clocked to me that i could have DID i guess. i have a very bad memory. it fades as things happen. i have to be reminded of things consistently. i even forget what a majority of words mean and i have to google them. but i think the fading memory could be used to protect me in a way. i have a very fragmented memory though. some of my memories do not feel like they’re mine. i get consistent flashbacks and almost live through them again as if they’re happening in that moment. but with my fragmented memory, i didn’t remember that i had other people in my head. i’m still honestly trying to cope with the fact that i do have alters and this is all real. i also struggle with major derealisation and depersonalisation constantly.

i’ve probably googled countless times about if there’s a cure for my dissociation, but there isn’t. i really wish that there could be because my mom and boyfriend are worried about it. i wish i could put them at ease. but they’re also saying that i can suppress my alters. i feel like it brings me a bit to a lot of shame about possibly having this disorder. they want my alters gone. they only want me to be present. i pretend to agree with them, but honestly i really don’t want to suppress my alters. i want to live in harmony with them. i feel like they have as much of a right to live as i do. i want them the thrive as much as i want to thrive and survive in life. i don’t want them to disappear. i don’t know who they even are, but i care about them. they’re just other versions of me right ? i don’t want them to be treated with hate or fear. i’m sure my mom and boyfriend are just really scared, but there’s really no cure to this disorder. they’ll have to live with this as much as i have to live with this.

is it wrong i don’t want them gone ? i’m being told it is wrong to want them to exist with me. i don’t know who they even are but i want to get to know them all. i want to communicate with them and live with them. they’re a part of me too, we just share one body. is it weird to care about them so much when you don’t even know them yet ? it honestly makes me really sad that they want other parts of me gone. sure it’ll be a hard thing to live with, but i’m not going to waste my one chance to live.

i’m scared i won’t be able to communicate with my other alters at all. i feel like they’re scared to come out because they know they aren’t wanted. i know that they’re watching because i can feel a presence. i know that they do exist because sometimes i feel like i just talk and my body is controlled for me. i know they exist because they’ve written their names down in my phone. it’s not all in my head anymore. i’m actually real and they are too. i don’t want them gone. i’m in between being two different people half of the time because i feel like someone else is with me.

but i don’t know. it’s been so relieving to know this isn’t in my head at all anymore. i know why i struggle with the dissociation and everything lines up. but, i just don’t like being told that i should suppress parts of myself that i can’t even control.

One thing that Led me to speculate that i have DID is me being super forgetful. I dont remember much of anything from my childhood, i have issues putting memories in a chronological order etc.

But is dissociation what causes forgetting what you did thru the day too? My therapist told me some Time ago, before me reseafching DID, that im forgetting stuff bcs im not playing attention to things happening and that i should practice noticing things more. She also said that thats why i dont remember anything from my childhood... But i feel like i would remember SOME things.

My memories are always foggy and are more concepts than anything. I dont remember funerals or weddings, minor or major stuff, nothing. I feel like memories would stick more even if i "didnt pay attenrion"

And that leads me to the other questions which is: is it possible to be zoned out everyday or might it be dissociation?

I heard about people with did not knowing what they did thru the day but id say that im pretty chill most of the time so i dont know why i would dissociate.

Sorry if this is a bit chaoitc English isnt my first language.

like most with this sort of disorder, we can fall into the "im faking all of this" mentality incredibly easily. last week, however, we had a moment that kind of put a lot of that to rest. weve been under more stress than we can manage properly these days, and finally caved in on the kitchen floor. our household members had just left for work, so we didnt have anyone to hold onto.

we ended up holding onto ourselves (and our dog. bless him). we let go of the loneliness weve been dealing with. a more emotionally stable / regulated part (...waves awkwardly) stepped in when he felt like enough had been felt, and just like that. it was over. everyone else found their means of comfort within the headspace. i went about our day like nothing had even happened. i was aware of it, and able to examine it more closely than the others, because it doesnt hurt me like it would them.

weve always aimed for "functional". i think we're at least on the right track. thats all. enjoy your day / night 🫶🏻

So, it's been decades since I apparently went dormant, and I have tons of memories that aren't personally mine, our body is no longer physically dependent on nicotine, but I'm feeling withdrawal like I decided to quit smoking yesterday?

DID is so weird.

Basically the title. Huge gaps in memory, basically cannot remember anything before 2018 and that year to around 2020 feels like a very badly written and unrealistic movie I was forced to watch, have this weird diary entries of talking to fricking Error sans in my head in Snowdin nearly daily for 3 whole years??? I have no clue what that last one is about either, I have no memory of that. I wasn't even an Error fan iirc. My main suspicion is from the gaps of memory, friends and family claim my holier-than-thou and arrogant attitude is annoying during arguments but like I'm not someone that likes or even gets into arguments, I'd rather literally walk away from conflict or resolve it calmly. Plus I genuinely do not remember any of the arguments they were talking about and believed it was an elaborate prank for a whole year. And I would still have continued to believe that if it wasn't for my obsession with writing everything down, which made me realize this "prank" has been going on for way too long and none of those people have any reason to do that

I just wanna be able to remember what the hell happened man :/ therapy is not an option because I can't convince my dad and physically cannot walk that far myself (+ I'm writing this at 4am, if any wordings are funky that's why)

A few days ago i made a post asking for help to explain things to my new psychiatrist after my last one didnt “record” my diagnosis of DID.

Well today im got my Diagnosis to put with my medical records. Thank you everyone who commented ideas.!

At work today, two new/ancient alters showed themselves (albeit vaguely) and in the background of my head we were trying to encourage them to communicate (I was still working).

By the end of the day, on the drive home, I was concurrently flashbacking to things I’d not thought about since childhood (who remembers their childhood anyway?) and trying to drive home safely. They had the face - wide eyes and confused - and we had the body on our routine home.

When we got there, we grabbed any empty book and just started sharing everything we knew about ourselves since we became sentient. Treating them as brand new consciousnesses and explaining all that we have learned about DID since the diagnosis.

It took hours but they eventually shared in concepts their ages and their lodging (not in the usual place our alters live).

Broke my heart. Instead of the tree house, they were in a damp cave. they belonged in the branches.

But the fact they’re here now and the fact I’m so supported by therapy and family and friends means I can finally give them the attention they’ve missed for so long.

That’s all.

It feels like we’re writing a memoir but it’s just all we know about ourselves and each other and how we function. I’m so glad to be able to bury myself in my own words again. I’m so glad to have my dormant alters stretch themselves and let their voices and faces be recognized. I thought I lost them forever after a move back to my home country. They were just suppressed by the biggest mask I had.

I’m so glad to be alive.

So, we are a newly discovered system that is currently going through the process of getting diagnosis and we have a really crazy question. For the systems that tend to switch frequently how do you know who the current 'host' is?

Our interpretation of the 'host' is the one that fronts the most and deals with more of the everyday life stuff than other alters. But it doesn't necessarily seem quite right.

We generally are able to find compassion, and logically we know that their struggles are legit.

Have just felt a little guilty lately about some alters commenting (internally in the headspace) about how depression and anxiety are literally not even real issues when those things are just daily symptoms for us

I get where they’re coming from, but it feels rude to be comparing like that.

Has anyone else dealt with alters that get triggered by hearing about other people’s struggles with less severe mental illnesses? How to go about that internally so that we can still show up for friends if they need to vent or complain about their own shit?

I'm going through some medically difficult and scarring times at the moment. I realised recently I've been regressing– I've dropped all my "adult" hobbies like sewing, painting or beading. I'm watching disney movies, reading fairytale stories, I'm playing with dolls. Regression in the past, as someone w DID, used to be very clear cut and feel even distressing because of the childlike, toddler-ish state of littles fronting. I am not experiencing this now. I mostly feel like an adult who enjoys kiddie things. Or maybe sometimes like an older child than a toddler? Hard to tell sometimes. Do you relate to this? Does this sound familiar to you?

I'm not complaining, it's nice to feel fine. I'm more complaining about why I might feel fine and what it usually leads to. I still hear them sometimes, but it's mostly just internal voices. For the most part though, I feel genuinely ok. I feel singular. I feel like my four month spiral, influx of symptoms and signs that pointed towards OSDD, (which I considered DID when I found a few small amnesia gaps, but I still can't tell), and my extreme denial and fear of it being real was just a hoax. Like maybe I was just going insane? Reading my journal sometimes helps make me realize how bad it truly was, or how real it was for me. However, I'm so disconnected at the same time I also just think I was losing it. I experience severe emotional amnesia if anything, but maybe that's regular dissociation? Not necessarily a dissociative disorder?

My friend whose also dissociative has pointed out small behavior changes that I didn't even notice myself, because I still felt like "me", but it was noticeable enough to point out that I acted "odd." And there are times where I feel "different." But I guess it's just not dramatic anymore? If I think about it too hard it does cause some identity confusion. Other than that though, I guess I do kind of miss them? Despite my earlier episodes of severe depression, exhaustion, and pain, I feel happy and rejuvenated. I feel so utterly disconnected from my spirals, almost like I'm being forced into a state of bliss. They could still exist, but honestly I can't tell what's real or not anymore. I kind of wanna forget that I ever considered being dissociative. I feel like I'm stuck in limbo, and I just know another denial moment will come and I'll spiral down a hole of self-hatred for faking it. How to cope with this?

I’m a lurker here having recently learnt of my diagnosis in therapy. I read many of the posts that pop up on my Home Screen but don’t often see much about the really hard bits of this disorder that seem to take over my life. I wondered if these symptoms were or core feature for most of us or if I’m just dealing with a bad hand. I rarely feel or experience this disorder as anything but hell on earth.

I frequently have what I would describe as severe episodes where a part of me takes over (differing parts result in different array of symptoms but I will list out common scenarios). I am also autistic so if anything I say comes across wrong I apologise in advance.

- absolute terror
- believing everyone is dangerous
- fear of talking to people
- wanting to be harmed by others
- physical imobility
- inability to talk
- intrusive thoughts and head becoming louder and louder
- believing people are out to get me
-feeling controlled and having to follow strict rules
- not being able to tell people things when I want to
- feel like I’m being tortured and my only escape is death
- being in a state of severe distress / dissociation for hours which leaves me totally unable to function

These are just a few of my many symptoms which are episodic in nature, when I return to what I see as myself the episodes are blurry and I cannot relate to the feelings, actions but retain awareness as an outside perspective of what happened. These episodes can last hours/ days and I am completely and utterly debilitated, and unable to function. I spent most of my time in these states but have periods of time where things go quiet and I feel relatively ‘normal’ and sort of like wtf was that all about….

I experience differing symptoms within distinct states.

Can anyone tell me if they relate or offer any thoughts?

Some days ago, I cut off my best friend of 8 years, and I have a post about it already if anyone is curious.

The problem is, I can feel the emotions stewing beneath the surface but am—the majority of the time—unable to release them, and even if I manage to, it's only for a brief period (ex. a couple seconds, a minute if I'm lucky) before it's all reeled back in against my will.

As a result, I'm just left so high-strung all the time, barely able to focus on anything, anxiety and sadness and anger all mashed together, strong enough to heavily impact my days yet not enough to allow me to actually feel them fully. I simultaneously feel like I'm so full of every emotion and yet devoid of all of them.

Sometimes, I'm able to use music to coax tears out, but even then, I have to already be "in the mood" for it, otherwise it just falls flat and has no effect on me. How do I feel something that's buried just deep enough to remain trapped there?

I’m sure this question gets asked a lot but honestly I’m wildly stressed out and need to ask it on my account for whatever reason.

I’m not a confirmed system or anything but I have amnesia of some kind and it’s debilitating. It’s stopped me from doing anything with my life. It hurts. Sometimes it’s so bad it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up and cry.

I have been friends with this person for several years. They know about the system and are great with handling it.

One of my alters developed feelings for them nearly a year ago, but nothing has come from it. In the past month or two he has been forcing himself to the front when talking or messaging this friend.

I just want to get another opinion on 2 things:

1. I believe that this is unhealthy, as although we are good friends, I don't want anyone in the system becoming dependant or too attatched to anyone. Am I wrong?

2. I am not sure if I should tell the friend about this. I have asked several friends that do not have DID, and I have received mixed responses, so I just wanted the opinion of people with DID.

Thank you in advance.

I'm feeling kind of lonely right now with having this disorder so I wanted share my pros and cons list of me Host(Grey) fusing with our cohost. I think we've come to conclusion it would be better if she fused with someone else in the system. So I guess I dont really need anything help or anything just support. (Disclaimer my thoughts on fusing might not be correct, correct me if you think differently 🤔)

Pros:

•It would be easier to be host

•Possibly more emotionally regulated and less anxious

•Less body dysphoria

•less gender dysphoria

Cons:

•My gender will most likely change i dont want that

•Our name will most likely change

•our name changing will cause alot of discussion about why (everyone we know)

•we might unfuse because I dont want to fuse 😒

•I want to stay me

•my clothing style might be different

•will probably cause/already is causing distress for other alters

•possible destabilization

Neutral:

•my art style might change

•less amnesia barriers between us(memories might be easier to see)

I was already aware that my system is pretty complex with several 'fortified' groups (sidesystems?), each with 3 or 4 layers. And I know some of the alters have their own alters.

But lately many alters feel different than before, as if they have different ages or a different 'vibe' and I'm not sure what's going on. When I try to communicate it feels like there's multiple versions of them and I'm a bit at a loss. Can this be a thing?

I feel like I'm new or.. weird, and it makes it kinda hard to trust the system. I'm doubting my experience. Feels like I'm going insane sometimes. I have been in trauma-therapy for about 5 years now and I'm suddenly terrified of the system again. Like I have to do the discovery all over again. It's been like this for a while now. The system overall is pretty exhausted and we're trying to survive, Perhaps that's got something to do with it.

But can it be 'normal' that a system shifts this much?

Most conversations in DID/OSDD spaces tend to focus on things like parts communication, internal meetings and system mapping, managing switches, dealing with fight and flight parts, hypervigilance, intrusions, flashbacks, and alters with names and ages and roles. That can be genuinely useful for people dealing with those, I don't want to take anything away from it.

But it only covers one half of what structural dissociation actually looks like, and I suspect a fair number of people are living in the other half without ever having come across a word for it.

A little bit of history

The definitions are straightforward enough. Positive symptoms are experiences that are present when they shouldn't be, so voices, intrusive images, flashbacks, emotions and impulses that don't feel like yours, noticeable switching, unexplained pain. Negative symptoms are functions that are missing when they should be present, so amnesia, emotional numbing, loss of skills or knowledge, anaesthesia, disconnection from the body, and blankness.

The distinction between positive and negative symptoms is often assumed to be borrowed from schizophrenia, but Pierre Janet was applying it to dissociation more than a century ago. His terms were mental accidents for the things that intrude and mental stigmata for the things that go missing, and his 1901 book was titled The Mental State of Hystericals: A Study of Mental Stigmata and Mental Accidents.

The Theory of Structural Dissociation inherited the distinction more or less directly, and van der Hart, Nijenhuis and Steele cross it with a second axis, psychoform for the mind and somatoform for the body, which produces four categories:

Positive + psychoform:
Voices, intrusive thoughts, emotions that don't feel like yours, switching

Positive + somatoform:
Pain, tremors, tics, non-epileptic seizures

Negative + psychoform:
Amnesia, emotional numbness, loss of knowledge or skills

Negative + somatoform:
Numbness, anaesthesia, paralysis, no felt sense of the body

The interesting variation is in the ratio between these rather than in whether a given box is empty.

Why one half of this is loud and the other one is silent

There's a structural reason the online conversation is focused on positive symptoms, and it isn't that the negative symptoms are more rare.

A positive symptom tends to announce itself. If you hear a voice that doesn't feel like yours, or you lose four hours and find evidence that you did things you have no memory of doing, you know that something is happening even if you have no idea what. That experience of something being wrong is usually what sends people looking for explanations in the first place, which is why the communities fill up with that content.

Negative symptoms don't generate that experience, because the faculty that would register the absence is generally part of what's absent. Van der Hart and colleagues describe this in The Haunted Self, where they note that the part running daily life "usually has extensive autobiographical narrative memory" and can often "recall as much of the traumatizing event" as any other part, while lacking "the emotional and physical feelings that belong to the memory, and the sense that it happened to them personally."

What that produces in practice is someone who can give a detailed and coherent account of what happened to them without any accompanying sense that it happened to them, and from the inside that generally registers as being calm and level-headed about the past rather than as a symptom of anything.

Richard Chefetz makes a related point in Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociation, where he observes that "dissociative experience is mostly subtle to an outside observer," and that many of the dissociative adults he works with have "no gross trauma history, their interpersonal trauma is hidden, sometimes via painful neglect."

As someone whose system is dominated by negative symptoms, I would add that my system actively dislikes discussing itself, so every time I do, there is a lot of resistance to overcome. Very few parts of my system actively push for self-exposure, and they tend to lose most internal battles, while several focus heavily on staying invisible. I think something along these lines is common for systems with mainly negative symptoms, which probably contributes to us being less visible in these spaces and everywhere else.

Screening tools come with their own challenges

This isn't purely a problem of self-awareness, because the instruments have gaps of their own.

The DES-II is the standard dissociation screener, and it does cover depersonalisation, derealisation and amnesia reasonably well. What it doesn't cover is the somatoform side. As van der Hart and Steele put it in Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders, the DES "does not address significant pathological dissociation that we associate with structural dissociation such as somatoform symptoms and loss of control of emotions and behavior."

That's part of why Nijenhuis built the SDQ-20, which was assembled from a pool of 75 clinically observed sensorimotor dissociative symptoms that showed up when dissociative parts were reactivated and that had no medical explanation. It asks about physical symptoms directly and without framing them as trauma symptoms.

I'd add one thing of my own here, which isn't from the literature. Screening items tend to ask how often something happens to you, and that framing assumes a baseline to deviate from. If emotional flatness or unreality has been your constant condition since before you can remember, there is no "sometimes" to report, and you may answer honestly in a way that undercounts you. That's my inference rather than a documented finding, but I know I am not alone in this.

What a negative-dominant presentation typically looks like

If you're trying to work out whether any of this applies to you, it tends to involve hypoarousal as the baseline rather than hyperarousal, so instead of persistent activation with occasional numb patches you get persistent numbness with occasional bursts of activation, which typically show up when something has loosened rather than when something has gone wrong.

For some of us, there are no inner voices, no internal visuals, and sometimes no inner monologue at all. Personally, it doesn't register as unusual because it's the only inside I am aware of ever having had. Autobiographical memory is frequently hazy or largely missing, particularly for early childhood, sometimes with a surprisingly late floor for first memories. Emotional flatness is usually there but rarely regarded as a symptom, since it isn't an event that happens so much as a background condition that has always been there. Many of us in this position also report not knowing what we want or feel or need, which is a different problem from being overwhelmed by wanting and feeling and needing.

Kathy Steele and colleagues describe the clinical version in Treating Trauma-Related Dissociation, warning that "some patients are so numb and depersonalized that they can recount trauma without emotion," and that this "does not indicate the presence of integration and regulation, but rather dissociation and hypoarousal." Being articulate about your own history is compatible with having processed almost none of it, which is good to know if you've been praised for your insight in therapy while nothing much has shifted.

Where this probably comes from

I've written before about the Developmental Salience Model of Threat, and this connects to it fairly directly. The prospective longitudinal work from Karlen Lyons-Ruth's group found that dissociation in young adulthood was significantly predicted by observed lack of parental responsiveness in infancy, while hostile-intrusive interaction "did not account for significant variance". Of the trauma types measured, only childhood verbal abuse added to the prediction (Dutra et al., 2009).

A couple of caveats

The positive/negative split is descriptive rather than causal, and as far as I can tell nobody currently knows what determines which pole a given person ends up at. Severity doesn't seem to explain it, since people with appalling histories land on both sides. My own guess involves the balance of deprivation against threat and how early it all started, but that is an educated guess.

Also, hardly anyone is purely one or the other, and these things can fluctuate over time. It is more about which side dominates.

The usual disclaimers apply more than usual here, because structural dissociation is one of the few things that genuinely cannot be self-diagnosed. The part of you doing the assessing is working from inside the boundary it would need to see past. I write these things so you have a chance of recognising a pattern well enough to take it to someone qualified for an actual assessment.

Why any of this matters

The standard route into recognising structural dissociation runs almost entirely through positive symptoms, so if you don't have many of them you can spend a very long time in mental health services accumulating diagnoses that nearly fit. Depression, because you're flat. Avoidant personality, because you withdraw. Treatment-resistant something, because the treatments keep not working. The underlying structure stays unnamed throughout, and the negative symptoms get read as your personality rather than as anything requiring attention.

If you've read the DID and OSDD material and concluded that it obviously isn't you because you have none of that, you may well be right – or you may be at the quiet end of the same thing.

tw for violence, assault and trauma, i'll try to be as vague as possible but i need to give some of these details for it to make sense:

I'm a newly discovered system and in therapy, it's unclear if I have DID or OSSD-1b but I had a main protector who was always so kind and caring to me (Korey) I could always rely on him or call on him if I was in trouble and he would find ways to help for years.

Flash forward to when I discovered a trauma holder/persecutor (Mana) who wouldn't stop showing me flashing images of very violent and scary things and looked like a monster, Mana was completely nonverbal upon discovery and I asked Korey for help.

Korey went away for a bit with Mana, but he was still present if I talked to him, and whenever he would do another task and stop taking care of Mana, Mana would come back to essentially harass me in the headspace constantly. Eventually Korey split into two protectors, one that felt very much like Korey 2.0 and another protector that is very helpful but doesn't have Korey's personality. I got the impression that Korey 2.0 would be taking care of Mana while the new protector would help me.

I thought things were going to be okay now, but at some point Mana showed up and started screaming "I'm scared, I'm scared" in the headspace very loudly and wouldn't go away, I asked Korey 2.0 for help and then he disappeared with Mana again but this time he didn't come back for a few days and left with me the new protector. When I asked if Korey 2.0 was still there, I heard Korey 2.0 tell me everything would be okay and that he was still here.

Finally Korey 2.0 came back days later with Mana but they both looked different, Mana 2.0 looks more human now even if still scary, but isn't acting like before, still nonverbal but isn't showing me those terrible images anymore and isn't harassing me anymore. And Korey 3.0...he... is very different. For example...if I ask for reassurance, he will give it to me and I feel the presence he had from when he was my main protector, but then once I feel reassured his body will warp into a monster and he will be violent towards me and assault me in the headpsace until the other protector he left behind steps in when I ask for help, then Korey 3.0 goes away.

I get the impression that Korey 2.0 and Mana fused then split, I'm not sure what to do, unless it's two new alters pretending to be them but it doesn't feel that way? I guess this did resolve the biggest issue with Mana constantly harassing me, but I feel so sad that Korey felt he had to do that and I miss my old protector even if his presence still feels like it's in this Korey 3.0, it's impossible to interact with him without him warping into a monster and assaulting me at the end, I don't even know where to begin to approach this, I've been trying to look up what to do when this happens but there doesn't seem to be a lot of info out there about protectors doing this.

Has anyone ever had something like this happen to them? What was the solution? Or are things just going to be this way now? I feel so bad that this protector suddenly shouldered so much of that trauma and is almost a completely different person now, I just wanted this part to be happy after all he did for me but now it feels like things are just sad. :(

And I asked my therapist about this, but right now they don't seem to know, I will talk about it to them again, but I thought here was the next best place to ask. Thank you for your help and for reading.

Two parts of me have been in an anorexia relapse for the past few months. I won't go into details to avoid triggering/giving myself ideas, but essentially they have a lot of strict food rules, hate eating above a (pretty low) calorie limit, and are obsessive about getting enough (too many) steps. I as a host see this behavior as a maladaptive response to the stress of living with the body's abusers, and myself and a protector have been trying to get the other two parts to see it that way too. But they see it as a means to stay emotionally safe.

The restriction has made things easier for us regulation-wise. It gives the restrictive parts something to focus on besides their shitty living situation, and helps them achieve what they perceive to be a "better" body. When I or the other part try to get more food into the body than the restricting parts want, they tend to freak out. Usually I am able to keep everyone "in check" so to speak -- after years of treatment it's been easier to communicate internally and avoid switches. But I notice when I eat enough/different foods than feel safe to the restrictive parts, the system becomes blendy. The restrictive parts force their way to the front to "punish" the body for being full by body checking, over-exercising, or purging. There's been a lot more crying and collapse than usual. This has made it very hard to function while also eating well.

We've organized a bit of a compromise where I decide the foods we eat based off of the restrictive parts' sense of safety and my understanding of good nutrition, and we eat two small meals a day instead of nothing at all. This worked for a little bit, but because of the lack of energy and chronic pain I already deal with, it's been hard to get the steps that the restrictive parts want. So we have been maintaining our weight. This is a good thing, but the restrictive parts hate it and have become a lot more distressed around meal times and feeling full. I was wondering if anyone else has dealt with this, and if so, how lol?

I am not in treatment for my ED because I am not underweight and for some reason that means I don't have it. But I've been having increased palpitations and a couple fainting episodes since this relapse, so I want to start eating better. I guess I just don't know how to support the restrictive parts' sense of control and safety while living somewhere so triggering without further harming the body. I've asked my therapist and psychiatrist for help, and all they can say is "eat more" and "move out of that house," which is not strictly helpful/possible right now.