I Suspect Quite A Few People On This Site Don’t Realize They Are Struggling With The Effects Of Chronic

rusalki are not mermaids. stop translating the word "rusalka" as "mermaid" and stop calling rusalki "slavic mermaids". it's confusing, it's misleading, and it's simply isn't true. the association of rusalka with a western mermaid and undine began in 19th century, when russian empire poets wanted to adapt a popular western motif of a sorrowful water maid that is unrequitedly in love with a mortal man. this literature character of rusalka has nothing to do with actual rusalki folklore and cult.

rusalki are natural undead spirits that are connected to slavic ancestral worship. they don't have tails. they are not in any way connected to the sea: only lakes, ponds, and rivers. often, they're not even connected to water at all: there are forest rusalki, field rusalki, meadow rusalki, etc. they are in close relationships with their human kin: during the spring and summer, they are used in agricultural rites and are believed to help with farming and raising crops. rusalki were sacred to slavic people. the "week of the rusalki" festival, when rusalki are believed to walk on earth and visit their relatives, is celebrated to this day. to call them "slavic mermaids" is very diminutive of their actual role in slavic cultures.

Things we as a RAMCOA survivor want non-survivors to know

This is going to be emotional but this has also been a long time coming. Most of our 34 drafts on this account have been on this topic and today something happened that was just the last straw for us. If you are not a survivor sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. It's our turn now. You are privileged comparatively on this regard- whether you like it or not.

Do not silence RAMCOA survivors in favor of people with "false memories"

I have no idea why this is something that needs to be said because you would assume it would be common decency but apparently a lot of non-RAMCOA survivors seem to be completely unaware of how fucked up it is to say.

Not only has false memory syndrome been thoroughly debunked- but the only time someone has anything close is when they have a disorder that makes them prone to delusions. In which case that is a delusion. Stop blaming survivors who are working to recover and possibly save the lives of others who currently as you read this are actively being tortured, for a disorder that most people are born with and has literally nothing to do with us. Stop using "some people have delusions" as a backhanded way to harm RAMCOA survivors.

I am sick and tired of people making it clear they care far more about people with "false memories" than they do for real torture survivors.

Do not tell a RAMCOA survivor to their face you have had false memories of the torture they actively endured. It is incredibly insensitive and is a mockery of the torture they experienced.

And if one more "person" makes the claim that RAMCOA survivors talking about our experiences, the things that were done to us and others, is putting people with a disorder we didn't cause in danger- I will snap. We didn't give anyone a disorder- we didn't manifest your fucking delusions. You can work through your delusions in therapy- we have physical and mental injuries that will never fully heal from our REAL experience. It is such a disgusting and selfish thing to do. You are not allies- you are harming all survivors.

Stop telling RAMCOA survivors to never look into things

It's funny how this is often done in order to try and aid and help us, considering not having the terminology almost got us killed.

Non-ramcoa survivors telling RAMCOA survivors that talking about RAMCOA is dangerous and they should never look into it are actively harming programmed systems by triggering silence programs and making them self-destruct and get less access to aid, community, and terminology to be able to explain experiences to a medical professional and there has been little to no proof that learning about RAMCOA has ever killed a RAMCOA survivor.

People who push this idea that "it's too dangerous for you :((" and shut down all ramcoa survivors and then try to destroy our community terms like HC-DID (highly complex; this is used to described programmed systems that are polyfragmented and their complex structures) because of some idea of being a glorious savior to us- are just being incredibly selfish and insensitive. It has never been about helping us, not ever. It has been about you and people like you wanting to feel like you're oh so cool and good and special. That you "really care" about the likes of the poor weak incapable RAMCOA survivors.

We don't need to be babied. We fucking crawled out of the bowels of hell itself and have been through things that people often don't survive. Some of us have to fight programs every day- before and after knowing about our survivor status. Omega programming didn't start when we learned about RAMCOA- it first kicked off when we were nine years old. You failing to educate yourselves on the way programming functions yet insisting on speaking for us and people like us is infuriating. We are not children and even the ones that are do not fucking need you to baby them.

The only people we have ever seen proclaim talking about how "speaking on RAMCOA is bad and dangerous!!!!" are one of two groups; Non ramcoa-survivors speaking for us, and RAMCOA survivors with a program actively causing them to say this. In case you don't know much about programming, there is programs that make you try and silence both yourself and other people. This is one of the most well known types of programs. I am sorry to say this but we genuinely believe that most if not all RAMCOA survivors saying this are having a program run.

People pushing this message onto us literally triggered our silence program for so long we couldn't say much to our therapist until we learned terminology. It took that for us to be put on a disappearance watch list. This community idea could have gotten us killed. We were in literal danger because we could not manage to tell our therapist about our experiences because others had said the very same words our abusers did. "Don't tell anyone."

RAMCOA perpetrators do fucking everything they can to make sure we never speak. You are aiding abusers by contributing to our silence and you are possibly sending people to die. This is not a thing I can be lighthearted about. This is something that has made our system have alters that deeply hate and despise anyone who contributed to it with us and the same to anyone who may have done so to others.

Edit: For those who struggle to interpret this- no we never said you should randomly spur of the moment look into RAMCOA with no safety nets. That should be common sense. We also literally never said that anywhere. I don't know why people are so incapable to read what we say. We're autistic we say what we mean.

hi,i was wondering if you have any tips on figuring out wether i might have alters/more distinct parts/a system or ”only” experience dissociation + memory issues + unstable and changing identity/sense of self (i dont mean that those are lesser problems or less severe, idk a better way to word this sorry) i know a therapist would be ideal but im unavailable to get one, at least for a few years.

Hey anon,

I'm sorry you had to wait a bit for me to answer, I really hope you'll still find this post! 😊

Though honestly I don't really have a clear cut answer. I think you can only find out by experiencing - and honestly I wish I'd done more experiencing myself, rather than trying to figure everything out by reading any and all literature I could get my hands on.

Regardless of what the right diagnosis/explanation for your symptoms would be (and I'm assuming it's psychological - but please always get memory issues checked out with a doctor if possible), the workbook by Janina Fisher could perhaps help a bit (it's called 'Transforming the living legacy of trauma').

I'd suggest trying some tools for what you're experiencing, and that's really a hit and miss. By which I mean, you'll probably try a lot of things and some of them will work and some of them will not, and some may not work now but when you try them again a year down the line, they may be useful then.

Some things that you could try to see for yourself if it helps a bit:

Practice grounding exercises (and there's LOADS of these, google can offer a lot), and for instance the emotion wheel (google has images) can help familiarize people with what feelings they are experiencing

Keep a diary/planner, something to keep track of your days. This can be as detailed or not as you want. Personally I'm really attached to my paper planner in which I just note down all my activities (I also add in spontaneous plans afterwards so later I can look back and remember what I did on which day). Other options are online agendas (like google for instance), apps like daylio, etc.

Writing. More like a diary. Stream of thoughts. What do your different sides of self have to say? Regardless of how "defined" your sides/parts are and what "label" would fit them, it doesn't do any harm to just write. Many mentally completely healthy people use language like "well partially I felt X, but partially I felt Y!" and stuff like that, you're not gonna do yourself any harm by approaching different sides of yourself that you experience with curiosity.

Try 'practical' things for any other things you struggle with. Usually this boils down to working towards a healthy sleep hygiene, creating a nice/safe space for yourself in your (bed)room/house if you can, finding things you enjoy doing (hobbies etc.), basic self care (hygiene, food, moving your body a bit if you can etc.)

Depending on the situation you're in currently (e.g. whether you still live with parents/carers or whether you have your own space, whether trauma is ongoing or not etc.), not all of these things may be possible for you and that's okay too.

Honestly, anything you can do to work towards general taking care of yourself is great. Also, if you can, write down what you experience. Write down how you experience dissociation and the other things you mentioned without diving into "but what diagnosis is this!!" (though yes I am fully aware how hard it is).

Despite what tumblr and other social media may show you, it's extremely common and normal for people with complex trauma disorders (such as CPTSD, DID, OSDD, etc.) to not become more aware until they're in a safe space, which often correlates with adulthood. And also despite what tumblr and other social media may say, it's totally fine to explore "parts of self" without knowing whether you have DID/OSDD or not. Honestly many different kinds of therapy are aimed at teaching people how to listen to all of themselves. It's just that for people with DID/OSDD/CPTSD, there is more dissociation between these parts.

Okay long story short, there's not really a lot you can do but at the same time it's a LOT you can do. You can read things (though this can be triggering and destabilizing), you can practice general mental health self care, you can work on some skills such as grounding. And I think maybe these things sound small, but actually they're massive and working on these things can be really difficult already. And working on these things can also cause a LOT of improvement already!

For now I'd suggest trying to approach your experiences as "parts [of me]" and just adjust along the way based on what you experience. It's okay to be wrong, it's okay to self-diagnose, it's okay to not have access to therapy (though I wish I could everyone that wants it a good, reliable, safe therapist), it's okay to not know what you are experiencing. And regardless of what you're experiencing, you can take tips/tricks from different places. I don't have DID, but a lot of tips/tricks for people with DID help me too. Some don't, but that's okay too. And regardless of what you're experiencing, you're not alone and things can get better.

Good luck anon, and feel free to send me another ask if you have more questions! <3

PS - just to be clear here, everything I just wrote is based on my own experiences. I am not a therapist, I am not a mental health professional, and what I say is not "the only truth" or whatever. I'm pretty sure I forgot a bunch of useful things, and it's also okay if people don't like this reply or don't relate to it or don't agree with it. Just wanted to add that, sorry 🙈

“Having DID is rare-“

Ok and being a beekeeper isn’t the most common profession ever but I sure see a lot of them when I search “beekeepers” in online spaces.

Hi, I noticed your post explaining HC-DID, and I was wondering more about sidesystems? And hoping for some help on how to label ourselves.

With us, we refer to what is basically two systems within the body as a “front system” and “back system”; The front system has had a lot of known alters, within the hundreds, but none of them had any knowledge of any RAMCOA trauma until recently when we discovered what it was, and triggered a lot of programs for ourselves. It was only after this that the back system started actually showing themselves. Their alter count is supposedly incredibly high, divided in a lot of subsystems. We’ve heard things about thousands..? However, our front system does not have thousands. But we feel like we’re equals. We feel weird calling ourselves a sidesystem just because we’re only learning of our RAMCOA trauma now. We’re the system that’s been stuck dealing with everything since then and we are just as important as all of the back system. But, can both of us just consider ourselves two systems within one body and call it a day? Or would that be strange? Any extra information you have on sidesystems and subsystems within HC-DID would also be helpful. We hope to discover other terminology that resonates with us on this subject.

Thanks for your time :)

Honestly terms are just for using at your own discretion. Even if the way you function fits a specific term- you don't have to go along with it. Our what we thought was the "main" system turned out to be what we learned was a side-system. They have decided to use this term themselves but if any of them in it don't use it they'd be allowed to with no worries- just use another term- or not use it at all.

The sidesystem in our own system has been what we were aware of first and more often. We do see our sidesystem as equal to all our programmed/RAMCOA aware (formed in it organically) subsystems. Our main grouping which we consider a sidesystem also has a lot of subsystems within it. Sometimes things can get incredibly complex.

We also eventually found out about our own RAMCOA history because of triggered programs. It was pre-looking into RAMCOA in our case and more so happened because we were digging in our childhood already because of organic alters trauma. I'm sorry you went through all of that- those kind of experiences really suck.

Again you really have no obligation to call anything a sidesystem if you don't want to. Honestly I think the terms you're using as "front and back" can be really fitting and if they work for you? No problem using just that. And honestly yeah- I think it'd be reasonable to view it as just having multiple systems in one body. Hell we sorta do view it in that way ourselves.

As for extra information. I actually kinda want to make a post going over some structures that may show up in HC-DID systems. I think having something we can link back too in the future will be useful. Unsure when that will be out but I will begin working on it today at the very least.

hi! do u know anything about the term “childhood torture” vs general childhood abuse manipulation and gaslighting… and mind control vs manipulation and gaslighting? some people also say though who go through childhood torture are also automatic ramcoa victims but I’m unsure abt that? if it’s done by a family and not an organization would it still be ramcoa? or what exactly is sadistic or severe abuse vs regular abuse.. bc I see a lot of people specifying ramcoa as the most severe abuse or talking about “severe abuse/trauma” vs regular abuse ..

To be honest I do not think RA/OA is the "most severe abuse" nor do I think it is particularly conducive to rank abuse on that kind of scale. Yes some stuff is objectively pretty bad but I think framing RAMCOA as "the most severe" is the exact reason that so many people are suspecting they have RA or polyfragmentation: because they think that it would HAVE to be really bad if they are experiencing the things they are, when in reality whatever it is they experienced was clearly already really bad. (And since we're on this topic, being triggered by RAMCOA or other forms of extreme abuse does not mean you are a survivor. Even nonsurvivors get triggered by this)

Also again RAMCOA is not all equivalent. A trafficking survivor will not have the same experiences as a child soldier nor are their experiences now somehow equivalent. If we insist on using a scale like this then I would say if you are alive you have not experienced the worst thing, because most "worst things" to experience will kill you.

"Childhood torture" is not really a specific term, it is just a type of experience, similar to 'sexual abuse' or 'physical abuse'. It is torture you experienced in childhood, with no other requirements.

Torture can sometimes be conducted by a single individual, though it is difficult and will not be effective for any sort of psychological control. Torture conducted this way is not for any end goal but for the perpetrator's emotional release. So not every torture survivor is a RAMCOA survivor. Most of the time, torture does have an organized abuse component, for various reasons but the most glaring one being the amount of resources required to torture a person without anyone else finding out, which is why many torture survivors are RAMCOA survivors. Torture typically has both a physical and psychological component. Gaslighting is not torture. Manipulation is not torture. Gaslighting and manipulation can be a part of torture but there is kind of a big difference between something like waterboarding versus gaslighting. Legally, torture is very loosely defined but this is more due to the wide variety of methods people come up with in torture that courts want to be able to define as torture, not that torture is itself vague or difficult to differentiate. For example, forcing people to drink until they get water poisoning and slowly die is a documented form of torture. Which is a really weird thing to do and probably not something a court could come up with listing if they wanted to do a list of actions that qualify as torture. An example of psychological torture would be being forced to watch or participate in someone you love being tortured or killed.

The term severe sadistic abuse is really hard because it IS vague but there is not really a good way to term it without getting into details that can be triggering. Severe sadistic abuse in academic writings includes torture and terrorism survivors, and frequently cites the Holocaust as an example. If that gives you a good baseline idea of what the line is. I think when discussing academic terms it is important to remember that terms are created because they serve a function. If severe sadistic abuse was equivalent to gaslighting, manipulation, they would not have created the term because both emotional and psychological abuse already exist as terms. For example, gaslighting is only a term because it is not just lying but an explicit and intentional attempt to manipulate someone's perception of themselves and their reality and make them reliant on an abuser to tell what is true or not. If "lying" or "manipulation" fit then there would be no need for the term.

do not know how to word my feelings on your post, but it feels very strange to say that because your DID experiences are misery, that means DID itself is miserable, and to imply that non-DID-having bodies can't experience being a system is weird.

yes, what you went through sounds awful, and yes, DID to you would be miserable, but DID does not mean misery. it means (some level of) disorder. for people who are polyfragmented (especially through things like RAMCOA/TBMC), yes, this CAN mean a LOT of misery, but us systems who do not suffer with that same level of misery aren't less of a system because of that difference.

while you can explain your experiences as more painful in your perspective, playing trauma olympics and denying other people's own experiences is weird. it's heavily invalidating, especially as someone who would probably fall under a disordered traumagenic diagnosis, and who loves their system and who sees it as hope and not misery (as it is the light in the darkness, the company that protected me through terrible things. that is not misery for me)

(also, most endogenic systems are not claiming to have DID, not self diagnosed or professionally diagnosed. it is a different kind of plural systemhood that is not connected to having DID. so to say that being endogenic is taking away "everything that DID is about" is just... strange.)

I am not playing the trauma Olympics by saying that what I went through makes me miserable. For you to suggest acknowledging my existence as a trauma survivor is invalidating is really not good.

Also I should clarify: you can love parts and even most of your system, but you cannot deny the fact that it is born out of misery and so it is not all sunshine and rainbows. It comes with PTSD, or one of its forms.

Also, endogenic is taking away everything DID is about because the only scientifically recognized way to be a system is with either DID (or a variant like HC or C), OSDD-1, or UDD. And these, like all dissociative disorders, are trauma disorders. To me being endogenic has always meant cherry picking a glamorized version of the symptoms of these disorders, as I said in the post.

Reclaiming post!

hii I am going to be reclaiming the HC-DID term for programmed systems since the person that made it is an awful antisemitic conspirator.

HC-DID means "highly complex DID". It is a term for ramcoa survivors that were programmed to have DID. It exists because the experiences between a programmed system is different than those of CDID systems that aren't programmed.

HC-DID is NOT meant to be a trauma olympics term, it is just a modifier to differentiate the experiences that programmed systems have.

Something I've noticed is how some CDD systems (and general trauma survivors) sometimes treat "extreme" trauma like a fictional concept when trying to valid themselves. I understand where "you don't need to go through RAMCOA abuse/a war/a dictatorship/etc to be a system and have cptsd" comes from and I fully agree with it. Some shitty ableist singlets can be very annoying with how they only accept trauma when it's "extreme" trauma. But I think the way some people talk about it sometimes just makes it sound off. I don't know it's just the way some people phrase it like "Not everyone traumatised is living in a war zone 🙄" makes me really uncomfortable. Like it's not the faults of people who have gone through "extreme" trauma that some people are ableist and uneducated

Also, people who go through those do exist? Like idk most people I see talk about it like it's some far-off vague fictional out-there concept and not like, a thing that real people experience and go through? Like RAMCOA abuse is real and valid (I'm not a survivor myself so I won't talk about it a lot but I felt the need to bring it up because the way some people talk about it is just weird), people who have lived through wars exist? and their trauma is valid, people who have been trafficked exist and their trauma is valid, people who have been tortured exist and their trauma is valid, people who have survived genocides exist and their trauma is valid, and people who have been in cults exist and their trauma is valid. In general, people with "extreme" trauma exist and their trauma is real

Survivors of "extreme" abuse/trauma shouldn't be made to feel like their trauma is too taboo to mention. Or feel like they can't talk about it out of fear of "invalidating other systems". All trauma is valid (including "non extreme" trauma). I think validating traumatic things that aren't usually viewed as trauma by the average person is good but please try not to bring down anyone else in the process

hey there! if you dont mind me asking, what does programmed mean coming from a traumagenic system? ive only ever seen endos use that one so im curious what it means to someone who Legitimately has DID. /gen thank you! :-)

Hi, I'll answer this the best I can.

Programmed means that someone has undergone trauma programming. It's not exclusive to dissociative systems either - a singlet can also be programmed.

If you've been trauma programmed it just means that somebody has purposely used a more "organised" form of abuse to change or control you, and it leaves an imprint on who you are.

In systems this can mean having alters who behave in a way / have an identity that suits an abuser's preference, but it can also be done to singlets in small ways such as an abuser programming you to have a phobia of something.

But essentially, it's when an abuser has purposely used abuse and/or stressors to change the way you think or behave.

Honestly I don't know how an endo could claim to be trauma programmed bc that would mean they're not endogenic. To be programmed you literally have to undergo immense trauma that's how it works. But that's what it means anyway.

- Leo