Autopersonification Thread

Discussion in 'Brainbent' started by Elph, Jun 18, 2016.

  1. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    Malicious Intent sounds like my Malade, and I'd probably name it Malice if it was in my head. (A lot of mine have names that are French for various concepts related to their nature, e.g. Malade=sick.) Or rather, have Malice be a name and Malicious Intent a title, like how I have a part whose name is Eleanor and whose title is Nell Cottonwool.
     
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  2. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    Reviving this thread to mirror this post from my vent thread. It is very long
     
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  3. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    There's at least splitting!me (who, for some reason, has been known to use different pronouns. What.) and one of my OCs (but I don't know what they're exactly representing).
    Headspace is also a thing I kinda have, but I assume it's from maladaptive daydreaming.
     
  4. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    ....this all sounds very strange to me because I don't have these. I occasionally refer to my brain as a separate entity, but outside of that I don't really have....sub-personalities that are still me, or people who are a "step above imaginary".
    what's it like? and what does 'a step above imaginary' even mean?
    sorry to kind of barge in, I am just....curious.
     
  5. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    @chaoticArbiter
    Sorry, I'm not going to explain this very well, because words are not my forte. What's it like? A lot of it is like having there be a person leaning over your shoulder, watching everything you do, and commenting or otherwise giving their opinion on what you're doing. Except the person is in your head, always there. The "step above imaginary" thing is just to say, that they aren't something I'm consciously keeping alive in my head. In fact, I don't know that I would choose for them to be gone if I could; not only would that be emotionally draining (literally) but they're not exactly under my control.
    Don't feel bad about barging in, the phrase is "curiosity killed the cat" not "curiosity killed the Eevee." So long as you're not a cat you're fine.
    *looks at my avatar*
    wait shit
     
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  6. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    hhhhhhhhhhhuh.
    I mean. given the whole DID thing, I can get pretty much all of this.
    I guess I'm just kind of....curious about how it's different from DID. like, idk, I also get my systemmates just kinda hanging out watching what I'm doing and offering commentary/advice/terrible ideas/opinions. they kinda phase out sometimes because dissociative barriers but they're always....There. and I don't consciously keep them alive and they are very much not under my control. they don't even like to listen to me lmao. I'm just sorta wondering...how is this different from DID? outside of lack of dissociation and them not controlling your body at times.
    ....which I suppose are kind of defining factors of DID, but I'm wondering if there's anything else different.
     
  7. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    They're probably not actually conscious, at least in my case.
     
  8. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    From what I can tell? Not much. I'm pretty sure that they aren't fully conscious though
     
  9. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    weird.
    so they're like....not you....but not fully conscious?
    attempts to wrap my head around this
     
  10. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    In my case, at least one is me, just with a sharp personality change. The others... I'm not sure they're not me? I'm not sure if I consciously come up with their answers or not, which I know sounds weird.
     
  11. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    squints
    how can it be you but not you
     
  12. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    I don't know either!
     
  13. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    It is pretty much different because of the lack of dissociation and them not controlling your body, but also because I don't think it's necessarily caused by trauma. Influenced by, sure; I have like 4 different personifications of the consequences of my trauma, but if art and poetry and other-ways-humans-express-themselves are anything to go by, autopersonification is incredibly common in all kinds of people.

    Another difference (for me, anyway): with imaginary people, I can choose traits for them - appearance, names, that sort of thing. With these, instead of picking something, it's more like I'm guessing Rumplestiltskin's name. "Is it ___? Or ___? How about ___? Do you have blonde hair, are you tall or short, what are you wearing?" and the answer comes from them, not me. But lots of people, including those who are not traumatised/mentally ill, talk about this kind of thing - writers especially; I've seen a lot of writers talk about how some of their characters are like this, "living" of their own accord rather than consciously built. So maybe it's a common human tendency, and that's why trauma can cause people to develop DID, because it exacerbates this tendency and combines it with structural issues?

    It's also interesting to see that you think this is so similar to DID, because I've always struggled with the fact that it most definitely isn't DID/OSDD - like, it's categorically Not That - and therefore found it difficult to find a space to talk about it without sounding like I'm co-opting the language of DID for something different.
     
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  14. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    It is very confusing. I still haven't fully figured it out but writing it out makes me feel better.
     
  15. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    For me? It's part of me, but it's not me. It feels like a different internal narrator, and it's "me" because it's coming from my own head and isn't actually a different voice and is only one facet of "me" in the sense of the person who interacts with the rest of the world. And even if I invite it to do so, it can't pilot my body, or the entirety of my mind.
     
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  16. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    basically this. I asked one to try taking control and she couldn't.
     
  17. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    hmmmm. I mean. that's also....sort of DID-like, in that you don't choose their traits? but mine usually just flat-out go "my name is ____", they don't make me guess. I guess the other thing that's different is they kind of come into being with.....a purpose? a reason? like, a distinct Thing they are supposed to do. they don't just sort of....exist, they have a Job In The System in order to Keep Things Running Smoothly.
    as far as this being the reason people can develop DID....idk! there's a cutoff age for DID, and it's pretty young--9 years old. if you don't have DID by the age of 9, you will probably never have it. and sure, you won't know you have it right away--in fact, most people with DID don't find out for a while! but there will be signs of it existing all your life, you can't just spontaneously develop DID at age 12. OSDD has a slightly later cutoff, but even then it's like, 10/11. it's apparently caused by your personality not....integrating properly? still not honestly clear on what that means, but. these sound like they develop later in life, or can develop whenever, so I guess that's also a marked difference between this and DID.
    that and the whole "me but not me" thing. my systemmates are very distinctly Not Me, and I am very distinctly Not Them. maybe they came from me originally but they are not me in any sense. very not me.
    so I guess it's not as similar to DID as I first thought, but it does seem to have some similarities?

    huh.
    this is.....weird to me.
     
  18. Technicality

    Technicality All's fair in love and shitposting

    @chaoticArbiter Most of the people that are here did come for a reason, actually. I'm here and have been since I was born. Sam was originally like the devil sitting on the shoulder, giving bad advice, which is how I got over a lot of self-hate by directing it onto another person (sort of, in a roundabout sort of way) without actually hurting anyone else. She's not like that anymore and I am trying to take responsibility for all my actions. Mallory (Mal for short) was sort of the same way but had more distinctly evil ulterior motives instead of just being kind of lazy. She mellowed out when Sam/me stopped trying to repress her and just let her be in headspace. I can't make more of these people consciously, they just sort of...appear. If I try they sort of are just empty shells that crumble into mental dust. I could wrap my head around this a lot better if I could do that because then I could say that all of them must be truly imaginary but they aren't because I can't just imagine more into existence. They have to appear on their own. Which begs the question: Where are they coming from?
     
  19. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    I think there's a difference between me-when-I'm-splitting and my other autopersonification character thingies. It's just that it's kiiiiinda easier to consider them (Technically her? Well, technically me, I guess, but that would be confusing in that sentence) a different person since my personality changes pretty sharply when I'm splitting but said other personality is always consistent (@ugh!). It probably is kinda dissociation-related as I'm pretty much always dissociating when that happens, though obviously not actual DID because there's no amnesia involved. I think it might be a BPD no-stable-personality thing. Meanwhile, the other "people" never do much more than say stuff or show up in daydream-headspace. Though Sol has almost completely dictated a story to me once. (which was confusing since they had literally just shown up, I was trying to write a worldbuilding thing and they were like "Hey, hi, this is an in-universe narration and I'm gonna say stuff now")
     
  20. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    I cannot answer that question, but those purposes are more....abstract than I am used to, I guess? with DID it's sort of like...."this one's purpose is to manage day to day life. this one's purpose is to take over and react to situations where the system needs protection from any perceived threat. this one's purpose is to be a trauma holder. this one's purpose is to manage care of the body."
    I think the most abstract we've got is an alter whose purpose is basically an expression of vulnerability. since neither I nor anyone else in the system can express or deal with feelings like that, that's her job.
     
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