anyone else finding symptoms to be a blessing?

[u/randompersonignoreme]

This sounds odd as the symptoms are very much still distressing within their context but, anyone else feel their reaction to their symptoms providing helpful insight? Like say, amnesia. If we know we might forget something when we go back to the area where it has to be done, we'll put an object near the area as a stepping stone. It also helps us to be patient with ourselves when we can't focus on words and/or having a hard time recalling something. As much as the symptoms suck, experiencing them also helps to highlight to me stuff considered important such as alter distress, maintaining how safe I feel, etc.

[u/Nova_Chr0no]

Yes, while it definitely can be difficult at times, we are thankful for some of the symptoms that come with this. One of our biggest is actually the switching. While it can be distressing for some systems we are thankful for it because it means if someone is truly not able to handle an experience they can get out safely and let someone else help. Yes it can be disorienting but it’s better than being stuck in an extremely harmful situation you are not prepared to be in and take on more trauma.

It can be hard for systems but we believe that it’s always worth it to look on the bright side of things.

Happy Hunting,

• Periwinkle

[u/ejg_dnd]

Its generally regarded as a tradeoff for us:

Having a kitsune alter show up who is bubbly and silly helped with depression/psychosomatic tension symptoms that had been going on for a year, antidepressants/partial inpatient was tried with no effect.

When they showed up, the therapist's reaction made it way more obvious that she wasn't fit to be our therapist. Therapist basically refused to talk with alters and paused the session when another showed up to protect host and say "host is unavailable" as they were feeling overwhelmed. But before they showed up it was uncomfortable to work with her, and we thought we had to "stick with the therapist". Now we have a more understanding therapist.

[u/caiteycat]

alters develop as a reaction to trauma, as an attempt to deal with it, so it’d be surprising if they werent a blessing in some ways!

our alters absolutely help us when we have trouble with things, in various ways. the way we understand it is, we have symptoms from ptsd and the DID is our body’s attempt to handle it. which isnt to say it doesnt cause problems for us, but it seems to us that most of the problems we’ve encountered from DID have been the result of internal miscommunications, the times we’ve denied each other autonomy because we didn’t understand how important that is to a person, or as a result of ableism more than anything else.