Halloween Has Rolled Around, And That Means An Inevitable Rise In “Halloween Is Bad Because Of SRA”

System Internet Safety (Resource Post)

System Internet Safety

System Internet Safety

A Quick & Dissociated Guide To: System Internet Safety

Be Careful What You Share About Your System

How To Keep Yourself Safe From Fear Mongering & Misinformation

How Social Media Can Distort & Misinform when Communicating Science

Understanding & Avoiding Armchair Psychology

Understanding & Protecting Yourself From Syscourse

System Responsibility

Tips From a Tumblr Vet (10+ Years on this Hellsite)

Tips for Kids Online

Social Media Tips for Teens

Online Abuse Resources

The Online Harassment Manual

Speak up & Stay Safe®: A Guide to Protecting Yourself From Online Harassment

How Doxers Find Your Info & How To Protect Yourself

How To Stay Safe From Doxxing With A VPN

Tip Sheet: Keeping Adults & Kids Safe on the Internet (TW: csa)

Behaviors To Watch Out For When An Adult Is With A Child (TW: csa)

How To Asses How Toxic A Group is

Warning Signs That a System is Toxic

System-related Abuse

Reporting Online Abuse

Reporting Cyberbullying

Reporting Online Child Exploitation

why do people say programming doesn’t exist and that it must be false memories? /gen

Lots of reasons.

Most people don't like to think about other people getting hurt. They also especially do not like to think that children are being hurt. And even more they do not like to think that child abuse is occurring while someone else who could have stopped it was there. This is why when child abuse survivors of any kind tell family members/friends who weren't abusive that so and so abused them, the immediate reaction is typically denial. Whether they accept it later on or not, the initial reaction is usually defense and denial. Even when they do accept it there is often a degree of "how could I have missed that" that these individuals express either to the survivor or to their own friends. People want to keep and uphold the view that most people around them are good. The concept of "groups of people who all decided to abuse children together" is contradictory to that worldview so they discard it, but if you ask them about specific things like child soldiers and trafficking that they have probably heard of (and also probably associate with Poor Uncivilized Third World Countries(tm) instead of happening in their own countries), they will usually say that's real.

Another reason is that most peoples' idea of programming is from media, mostly revolving around like...super powers or a person becoming basically a robot or they think it's all like cults in the woods or whatever. They think TBMC is some sci-fi thing, they don't know what it looks like, and they aren't thinking about the abuse part. And I do think that it kind of sucks that MC is the term because it does sound like some sci-fi/dystopian thing just from the name. It sounds very silly if you don't know much about it. In reality it is pretty boringly based in psychological responses to torture.

Another reason is that FMSF was very successful in their smear campaign despite being made up nearly entirely of parents who had gotten successfully sued for child abuse by their children. The fact that academics even marginally acknowledged them was a mistake IMO. Not to say that I'm not like the other girls but if a group of parents like this started making shit up around me I would simply roll my eyes and ignore them. Unfortunately, psychiatric abuse exists and the famous ones kind of screwed everybody else. Most famous one being Sybil. Instead of getting mad at psychiatric abuse occurring it became a focus on how DID itself is fake and abuse memories a person has discussed in therapy is therefore also fake.

Another is a community issue. There are individuals who saw RA survivors getting attention from court cases and decided that they would Also like to get attention and would make up stories which would eventually get debunked OR they sounded so fictional (because they were) that most people then assumed that all RA survivors were like that. There were and still are also survivors who were so desperate to be believed that they would tell their stories in great detail--except their stories usually also included lies that their groups told them which discredited them. Most of these are lies that the average person would find ridiculous and factually incorrect and so nobody would believe the rest of what they were saying.

Lastly, many RAMCOA survivors are simply not palatable. A lot of us are not the cutesy socially acceptable kind of survivors that people feel pity for and want to give a blanket. Many RAMCOA survivors especially when they first get out or first start processing this are aggressive, lash out, behave erratically, make no sense to anyone, have no/low empathy, say very socially inappropriate things, etc. This goes double if isolation from the rest of the world was a big part of the abuse. And to be clear I do not mean like...ghosts their friends or is a little snarky or has a breakdown sometimes in a cute little corner with quiet little sobs. I mean shit that you would get shunned by polite society and get the cops called on you for. The ones that don't escape (either stayed in or the group dissolved/faded over time) tend to be more stable appearing than escapees but they're still not the type of survivor people care about.

if it’s ok to ask what exactly counts as experiencing tbmc? does it include manipulation and gaslighting.. childhood torture? what exactly is mind control how does someone know if they have been through that? is childhood torture in general considered ramcoa as well or must it meet specified requirements?

Okay so we ended up getting hit by a shit ton of stuff in our life so we've been a bit less active here- sorry it took a while to answer.

First we have another post we have made discussing some of the stuff surrounding TBMC. You can find that post here.

Second, this is a religious sight that is trying to make Christianity more healthy and safe and trauma informed, not fully our cup of tea but it has an interesting page on TBMC here. (Mention it's religious and which religion because it can be triggering)

Now onto us actually answering things ourself.

what exactly counts as experiencing tbmc? does it include manipulation and gaslighting.. childhood torture?

TBMC as we have previously mentioned is known as Trauma Based or Torture Based Mind Control. Childhood torture very often is done for the purpose of mind control, in which case it would fall under TBMC. Most childhood torture is RAMCOA but not all of it falls under TBMC as TBMC is more known as the result rather than the traumatic incidents that it takes to occur the way RAMCOA generally defines the experiences.

TBMC is also not something only children can experience. The experiences of children born into it or raised with it at a young age will be different than an adult introduced to it later in life, but it is still TBMC all the same. There is no cut off age for when torture magically can stop affecting the wiring of your brain. Humans are malleable, and bad people will always know that. Governments will know that too. TBMC is rampant among governmental agencies.

All TBMC is manipulation- but not all manipulation is TBMC. TBMC is done with the goal of rewiring your brain and making you behave in very specific ways. It's meant to make you do things you would not otherwise or believe in things you would not otherwise. It is intrinsically linked to programming. Programming can be done to individual alters (induced by programmers targeting a specific self-state or state of mind or associating certain traumas with specific orders/tasks/etc to make an alter be attached to a specific behavior or task or idea), and system-wide or on the whole of the person (think strong unwavering loyalty common in many cults that refuse all evidence of being in a cult).

Gaslighting might get used within TBMC but it is not inherited to TBMC and by itself would not produce the same effects as TBMC.

what exactly is mind control how does someone know if they have been through that?

Oh man this is where it gets very tricky. There is no exact answer to what mind control is as it happens in a variety of different ways. Mind control is basically manipulation of someone's thoughts and behavior that then become intrinsic to the person and last far after they were programmed. It's more than just being made to believe strange things- it's internalizing them to such a degree that they impact your day to day life and view of the world as a whole.

Us being a decade away from the cult and having no reason to go back but having an urge even stronger than our OCD compulsions at times to go back is one type of programming we experience. We also have what presents as agoraphobia- but do not have fear of open spaces and can get groceries fine and go to work and school without issue. This is actually our self-isolation program that tells us when there is no obligation we should never interact with anyone else- there is no reason to. Unless the reason is to proselytize- and since we do not have the faith we once did, that is no longer an option. It's a deeply internalized behavior and belief that sticks even when we logically know it's bad. We are aware it is stupid and unreasonable but we physically cannot break out of it (where we are in recovery currently that is).

It's hard to tell for sure if you have it or not. One thing we had that should have been incredibly fucking obvious to us but wasn't- was that we excused the abuse one of the people in our life put us through as "he was just trying to train us". Never occurred to us that the fact he was "training" us made it worse. It was basically self-defense but not for actual defense type stuff if you catch my drift.

There can also be signs within your behavior. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate OCD and programs as well because some programs can be pushed back on the same way you can with OCD compulsions. However in our case most of our programs are just innate and incredibly difficult to stop ourselves from doing if we can at all. Realizing you have behavior that you struggle to physically stop and have no wish to engage in and do while consciously being aware you do not want to do them and this happens often- was one of the big signs to us. (And again it's a very complex issue because of different mental health concerns that could be tricky.)

is childhood torture in general considered ramcoa as well or must it meet specified requirements?

We personally consider it to fall under that because more extreme forms of abuse tend to end up with the same issues but there is debate. The most common things people know of that fall under RAMCOA is trafficking and cults.

However if you are trying to determine if something you have already known to experience counts as this term there's a few things you can do.

Does it fall under RA/Ritual abuse? It can hard to tell but I suggest just looking up basic information on what RA is conceptually (if you are in a good mental state and/or have a professional to fall back on and if possible a safety net of friends or family). RA is a very vast concept.

Did you experience TBMC or another form of mind control? If yes then automatically the label applies to you. This also goes for hypnotic mind control and substances used for mind control- as they are also important but less talked about forms of this.

Did you experienced organized abuse? This is a group partaking in abuse towards you. Whether it be mandated or the norm by something like a cult, or a criminal ring, etc. It's a bit hard to get into right now for me.

The only requirements are that you experience RA, MC, or OA. You can experience multiple- RA AND MC for example. Or just one. OA or RA. We struggle mostly with MC as we grew up in a cult that kinda worshipped the leader almost (but nobody would ever admit it even though they quote shit he says online like bible quotes). Which is why we talk about it so much, but it's not necessary to be a RAMCOA survivor.

It's okay to take time to figure out the extent of trauma you might have gone through. It's okay if you fit or don't fit any particular label. All trauma is incredibly important. There just tends to be a lot of subgroups of people with specific experiences because of how it impacts their daily life.

does RAMCOA always involve sexual abuse by default? We relate to some experiences of RAMCOA survivors but we don't feel sexual abuse was exactly the main focus of the abuse, in fact the sexual abuse we experienced was actually completely unrelated as far as we're away. feel free not to answer if you're not comfortable, we just can't seem to find a clear answer to this question anywhere.

100% No. CSA and SA are often a part of RAMCOA- a lot of people do experience it if they experience RAMCOA- however not a single one of the 3 types of abuse that it covers requires CSA/SA. We had this confusion ourselves for a while at first because we had no memory of CSA whatsoever- sadly we learned we were wrong on that front but even before we had learned we still were a RAMCOA survivor even without it. Hope this helps.

Do you have sources for any of the things you've been talking about lately (the different programming types, hc-did, basically all of it)? I'd really like to do some more reading on this stuff but I've found a grand total of One book and most of the rest of the stuff is social media posts with no references, or references to other social media posts :(

Our top three “sources” are usually our system, late night conversations with irl friends, and social media.

The biggest issue isn’t actually a lack of resources, but a lack of good resources. Survivors put out material before they realize they got something wrong. The clinicians that work with us are the same, and the first generation of papers were shots in the dark and fear of lies that hadn’t been exposed yet.

There’ll be a lot about a big, networked Cult, usually either the Illuminati or Luciferians. Plenty of government conspiracy theories, references to projects that sometimes do get evidence. Then there’s the regular racism and Christian lens.

If you’re looking for overviews and definitions, they got taken down here are some good websites:

https://www.ra-free.org/complexities-of-identifying-ritual-abuse - not a lot of information, lists studies and professionals

https://endritualabuse.org/full-article-index/ - lots of good articles, some really helpful, others had me cocking my head

https://www.cherylrainfield.com/articles-cult-abuse/ - more about the author than the issue, some useful links on that page

There used to be more. Two others, one about spin programming and one about colors, are still up, but a little out there. You’ll know if you see them

Some books with more details. Not good books, just books:

https://ia803208.us.archive.org/34/items/BecomingYourself.Miller/BecomingYourself.Miller.pdf - the single best thing I’ve found and I still have complaints, this version is unformatted but free

https://ia803400.us.archive.org/28/items/chainless-slaves-annotated/Chainless%20Slaves%20-%20Annotated.pdf - I didn’t like it, lots of certain language for iffy concepts, has a list of programs and alter roles

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=89e823aedc9c69ffd8d715757c86878af27c37c9 - not a fan, also lots of funky ideas and hate-based rhetoric, has lists of programs and cues

There are lots of survivor autobiographies and outsider opinions, but I don’t have free links to those

Keep in mind that getting out of a high control group sucks ass, and most accounts (even if they claim to have healed) have the remnants of the abusive ideologies.

I still prefer hearing from other survivors what happened, and I find it easier to validate people I can easily contact. I’ll keep the webpage if I find anything I can’t just Google, but this is what I can pull right now.

It’s not great, buddy, but it’s something.

Feel free to reblog for sample size & add comments in the tags.

RAMCOA stands for Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, & Organized Abuse.

MD Glossary

Note: Some of the following were coined by the MD community and definitions may not be found via traditional sources. Some terms are defined by their relevance to MD(eg. kinesthetic activity), wider definitions may be found elsewhere.

Acronyms

AU Alternate Universe

CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CF Compulsive Fantasy

ConLang Constructed Language

DD Daydream

ICMDR International Consortium for Maladaptive Daydreaming Research

ID Immersive Daydreaming

IDer Immersive Daydreamer

MaDD Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder (this is a Tumblr tag which people sometimes use in place of ‘MD’)

MD Maladaptive Daydreaming

MDer Maladaptive Daydreamer

MDS Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale

OC Original Character

SelfDx Self Diagnosed

Note: MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) is sometimes mistakenly used as an acronym for Maladaptive Daydreaming.  

Adaptive [Behavior] (source) Actions, skills, and behaviors that humans develop and use in order to perform basic skills, be able to cope with novel situations.

Alternate Universe (source) A descriptor borrowed from fanfic communities used to characterize works which change one or more elements of the source work’s canon. An AU may transplant a given source work’s characters to a radically different setting, shift the genre in which their adventures occur, and/or alter one or more of their professions, goals, or backstories.

Behavioral Addiction (source) A non-substance addiction, related to Impulse Control Disorder, a repeated failure to resist an impulse, drive or urge to perform an act that is rewarding to the person, in the short-term, despite long-term harm to the individual or others. 

Benign Masochism (source) An enjoyment of negative sensations and feelings thought to be possible in the context of feeling safe and reflecting pleasure at mind over body.  MDers report actively seeking the experience of aversive emotions. See also hedonic reversal

Constructed Language (source) An artificial language, for example one invented for a film, TV series, or book.  

[Daydream] Binge (source) An occasion when an activity is done in an extreme way.

[Daydream] Block (citation needed) Term adapted from ‘writers block’.  A temporary state during which the MDer experiences an inability to create or proceed with their fantasy plot, sometimes resulting in a distressing failure to immerse themselves in daydreaming as they are accustomed to. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (source) A common type of talk therapy (psychotherapy aimed at helping you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so you can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way. MD researchers currently recommend CBT to address problematic daydreaming behavior.

Compulsive Fantasy (source) Coined by researchers in one paper which asserted that Compulsive Fantasy was  a more accurate description of subjects experience than Maladaptive Daydreaming.  See also Maladaptive Daydreaming, Daydreaming Disorder (MD)

Coping Skill/Strategy/Mechanism (source) To invest one’s own conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict. Can be adaptive or maladaptive.

[Daydream] Crash (source) When a person comes down from their daydream world or escapism and reality hits them.  Alternatively, when daydreams no longer have the same effect they used to, and the MDer has to prolong that good feeling by revisiting their escapism or face negative experiences associated with facing reality.

Daydream (source) Typically begins spontaneously and is experienced as an ongoing series of brief associated thoughts or images triggered by internal or external stimuli or cues and deals most often with current life concerns.

Daydreaming Disorder (MD) (source) Official name of Maladaptive Daydreaming; Extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal, or vocational functioning. See also Compulsive Fantasy, Maladaptive Daydreaming

Default Mode Network (source) A group of brain regions that show lower levels of activity when we are engaged in a particular task like paying attention, but higher levels of activity when we are awake and not involved in any specific mental exercise. It is during these times that we might be daydreaming.

Diminished Motivation (citation needed) Characterized by impairment in goal-directed behavior, thought, and emotion.

Dissociative Absorption (citation needed) A tendency to become absorbed in imagination or in an external stimulus to the point of obliviousness to one’s surroundings and reduced self-awareness. 

Distress (source) Occurs when we have excessive adaptive demands placed upon us; the demands upon us are so great that they lead to bodily and mental damage. Distress is damaging, excessive or pathogenic (disease producing) stress.  Required for a ‘diagnosis’ of MD. 

Faceclaim (source) A term used in role play games to describe a person used for the physical description of a character. Some MDers note that they used the faces of TV characters, actors or public figures to create their fantasies.

Fantasy (source) May be an elected pastime; elaborate and continuous, composed of pure imagination and directed at self-amusement, pleasure, distraction and escape.

Fantasy Prone Personality FPP (source) A unique constellation of personality traits and experiences that coalesced around a deep, profound and long-standing involvement in fantasy and imagination.

Hedonic Reversal (source) An enjoyment of negative sensations and feelings thought to be possible in the context of feeling safe and reflecting pleasure at mind over body.  MDers report actively seeking the experience of aversive emotions. See also benign masochism

Idealized-Self (source) An Idealized version of yourself created out of what you have learned from your life experiences, the demands of society, and what you admire in your role models.

International Consortium for Maladaptive Daydreaming Research (source) Website designed to promote scientific knowledge on MD by fostering studies on the developmental trajectories, phenomenology, psychopathology, brain function and treatment of MD. Also to understand the trait of immersive daydreaming, the non-pathological form of absorptive daydreaming, and its psychological and brain features.

Immersive Daydreaming (source) Fantasizing in a state of dissociative absorption, which is not inherently disordered or maladaptive. MD represents a subset of Immersive Daydreaming.

Kinesthetic Activity (source) Movement which stimulates or prolongs an MDer’s fantasy state.

Maladaptive [Behavior] (source) Actions or tendencies that don’t allow an individual to adjust well to certain situations. Typically disruptive and dysfunctional behaviors can range from mild to severe in scope, used as a means of reducing mental discomfort and anxiety but are not effective and can sometimes make it worse. 

Maladaptive Daydreaming (source) Extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal, or vocational functioning.

Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale MDS-16 (source) A 16-item self-report MD questionnaire that is rated on a 10-point Likert scale presented as percentages, designed to gauge abnormal fantasizing. 

Mind Wandering (source) A shift in attention that can occur without explicit or deliberate intention but which nonetheless incorporates goal-relevant internal information. 

Mindfulness (source)  A state of active, open attention on the present. MD researchers recommend mindfulness techniques to curb problematic daydreaming behavior. 

Original Character OC (source) Any character which is not infringing on a person or party’s copyright; a character who is not already in existence or an edit of an already existing character. 

Pace/Pacer (source) Walk at a steady and consistent speed, especially back and forth and as an expression of one’s anxiety or annoyance. Most common movement among MDers, other movements include jumping, swinging, hand movements etc. See also kinesthetic movement, stereotypic movement.

Para (source) Any character in a paracosm, typically one the MDer has an emotional attachment to.

Paracosm (source) A detailed imaginary world, often originating in childhood.  

Parame (source) The character one MDs as. May or may not also be the paraself.

Para(girlfriend/husband/brother/mother etc) (source)The girlfriend/husband/brother/mother etc of ones parame.

Paraself (source) The daydream version of the MDer’s self.

Reality Monitoring/Testing (source)  The psychotherapeutic function by which the objective or real world and one’s relationship to it are reflected on and evaluated by the observer. MDers retain intact reality monitoring and can easily distinguish fantasy from reality.

Self Diagnosed (source) the diagnosis of one’s own health problems, usually without direction or assistance from a physician. MD is not recognized as an official disorder, most MDers are self-diagnosed. 

Somer, Eli (source) The clinical psychologist who discovered MD and coined the term “maladaptive daydreaming”, director of the ICMDR. 

Stereotypic Movement (source) Repetitive, nonfunctional, motor behavior that markedly interferes with normal activities or results in bodily injury.

TW: DISCUSSION OF PROGRAMMING, CULT MENTION (RAMCOA), AND TBMC MENTION. STAY SAFE!!!

Being polyfrag and having programmed parts is so weird. Like one example, having layers is super weird because I don’t even who know the host or co-host are. I don’t know who most of the system is, as our area only has around 22 parts (small for us). Though, I suppose it’s probably for protection as most are programmed and all but one (I think???) has nothing directly to do with any trauma.

Speaking of programming, our host is in huge denial of it!! In our journal xe’re like “yeah we have parts that literally follow a mysterious religious figure nobody has ever heard of and we have parts that are like practicing extremely loyal sex cult followers and parts for enduring TBMC as well as all the symptoms of programmed aka HC-DID but I can’t remember any of it so it must be quirkiness” like ??????? It’s almost as if you’re a supposed to be like that XD

And that’s not even mentioning how large our system is!!! We have exactly 90 logged parts, a little over 3/4s of which are fragments. I know Ellie and probably some others are also questioning if they’re a subsystem (in the alter with alters way) because of slight amnesia and slightly differing roles. And I know that the 90 known, even if nobody known is a subsystem, are not all of us.

We have times where we black out and we don’t know who fronted, but it appears to be somebody who hasn’t been logged. There have been times where we are doing one thing and all of a sudden we’re somewhere doing something we didn’t know we would do, and nobody knows who it was.

There’s so much to us, it’s like an iceberg except the parts of the iceberg don’t know the other parts, and the pieces of the iceberg above and below the surface don’t know the other exists. So strange!!!

Adhd really is like... bedroom is slightly messy it would be nice to tidy it some

bedroom is very messy I really should tidy up

bedroom is chaotic I NEED to tidy but my brain says no. Why. Whyyy.

I guess I’ll just have to watch where I step in here for the rest of my life. The mess is everywhere. I’m one with the mess.

A sudden Need to Clean™ makes you get the room looking like some fancy homes magazine cover, and you think “I’ll never ever let it get that bad again, and then...

bedroom is slightly messy (uh oh)

i’ve been told by a lot of people that robot alters who do what they’re told are from programming only. this is really scary to me because i did not experience that despite having an alter like that. i think if i had heard this as a younger system it would have made me very scared and convinced me of things that didn’t happen. can you share your thoughts on this?

Hi,

Blaming any presentation of DID or alters strictly on programming is a horrible idea. You're right that these kinds of claims are a major risk for false memories of ritual abuse, especially for young, newly diagnosed systems who are struggling immensely, still coming to terms with their symptoms and abuse history, and might be overly quick to take anything that older and seemingly authoritative systems claim at face value. I've heard of these types of claims going around for polyfragmentation, subsystems, internal worlds, and non-human alters. None of them are true. 

There are many reasons that someone could have a robot alter that does what it's told. It could be a metaphor for feeling like one's parents treated them like a robot instead of a child. It could have arisen from feeling like one's parents would have loved them more or punished them less if they were an obedient robot instead of a disobedient child. It could have been influenced by media that struck a cord regarding how robots were shown being treated or viewed by society. There's no reason whatsoever to assume robot parts or any other type of part automatically indicates any organized abuse, let alone programming.

There is no single or even combination of factors that can definitively indicate that someone experienced ritual abuse, programming, or any other type of trauma. Only actual memories (preferably continuous or spontaneously recovered, not recovered through hypnotherapy, creative writing, dream interpretation, or other potentially suggestive processes) or external corroboration of abuse can be trusted. No one should ever retroactively make assumptions about one’s abuse experiences based on adult symptoms, and no one should ever deny or downplay adult symptoms because they don’t have any of the causes that the individual has come to expect. That isn’t how mental health or DID/OSDD-1 work. That is how the Satanic ritual abuse panic got so incredibly out of hand. 

I’m glad that you were able to recognize that your robot part doesn’t indicate programming, and I appreciate you alerting us of this and giving us the opportunity to debunk it. 

I hope this helps,

Katherine