Impromptu Discussion of Dissociative Identity Disorders & Telepathy

Instructor: Wayfarer
Date: February 9, 2020 (Sunday)

Seminar: Topic: Impromptu Discussion of Dissociative Identity Disorders and Telepathy in #social-hall

Wayfarer: Dissociative disorders were my clinical focus, so I have a particular fondness for it. The biggest problem as I see it with treating DID ityool 2020 is the Internet, as the Internet is the source of all problems.

Kate Embers: Honestly many plural people aren’t that more fucked up. It’s just that psychology knows just about nothing about trauma and few therapists actually want to deal with it. ||I’ve been rejected by more than one therapist because they just didn’t wanna treat trauma categorically.|| So it’s less of a thing of traumagenic plurality being super difficult rather than a lack of skill on the professional’s side. I’d argue that things like Borderline, Bipolar, or Psychoses can be much harder to treat than that.

Wayfarer: Specifically, it’s that people embrace internal models of psychodrama that were previously not particularly common, and these become self-reinforcing structures. It’s not a separate issue, ultimately, from diagnosis identification.

Kate Embers: Can you elaborate on that?

Wayfarer: Indeed so Kate. When I say they are “fucked up” I mean that endearingly.

Wayfarer: I can, yes.

Clovers: Oh my, what a time to stop by.

ceahhettan: What a time to decide I needed a break at work, yup.

ShadowRain: hands out popcorn

Wayfarer: Starting from the top even tho you have some background here: DID is a form of dissociative disorder where the mind reacts to trauma by compartmentalizing into crystallized personality states. To prevent ego damage the ego crystallizes the personality state into the form that it was in at the time of the trauma. This crystallized personality state does not grow or adapt but remains fixed at the point of trauma. In DID, that personality state can and will evolve, grow, and learn to handle the trauma state and protect it.

Vampire of Death: I don’t mean to interrupt, but apparently there’s a possibility that I may have some sort of disassociative disorder so this is very informative for me.

Wayfarer: Historically, that’s about the end of it. The personalities don’t differentiate, take on names, or so on. They aren’t “separate personalities,” they are fractured personality “moments” of the original person. This is the norm.

Wayfarer: I confess that I did my studies prior to DSM5, which recategorized things. I’m going to use DSM-IV nomenclatures moving forward. The psychoanalytic theory underlying DID hasn’t changed, just the labels for diagnostic categories. They’re slightly more precise under DSM5, which makes them handier for clinicians, but the underlying complex is not different; it’s still, fundamentally, a dissociative response to trauma.

Kate Embers: Frankly the whole DID/OSDD model is also getting some major criticism from the plural community for being utterly inaccurate and arbitrary. Then again Germany still works with MPD so that’s an improvment…

Wayfarer: So, back in The Day of DSM-IV, DID was a very rare diagnosis because it requires the ability to identify personality states, sometimes by name. Much more common was DDNOS. We commonly see regression in trauma cases with dissociative disorders, because the personality reverts to the state it was in at the time of trauma when it’s faced with similar stressors.

Wayfarer: It is those things yeah, though there’s also the problem of the object studying itself and the inability to objectively appraise one’s own unconscious goings-on when the very nature of the disorder is such that you are not aware of all the unconscious goings-on. The “plural community” being a thing is actually a large part of what this ramble will resolve to, actually.

Wayfarer: So, historically, DID as it is now labeled almost never happened. Like, it was unheard of in the literature. That’s not to say dissociation was unheard of; in fact, dissociation was one of the first ego defenses identified and categorized. It’s loose, incorporating derealization and depersonalization as well as compartmentalization with those features, but it was identified early.

Wayfarer: Sybil legitimately fucked a lot of things up. Not because the case “was fake” or whatever, but because an adaptive internal psychodrama that one person developed was publicized as “the way this presentation works.”

Kate Embers: (Dissociation was more well known than most people admit, see 2000 yard stare)

Wayfarer: Because it was published for mass consumption and not for a clinical audience in clinical language, it hit mass awareness. Suddenly, people saw this as an option. The mind is super pliable, especially the traumatized mind.

Wayfarer: A psychodrama previously used for treatment, that is, “identify personality states, give them names, and interact with them mentally to avoid maladaptive responses” became a “way that people are,” it became an identity.

Wayfarer: Dissociation is actually a very effective ego defense, and it’s pretty adaptive for kids that are stuck in shitty situations. It works for kids. It doesn’t work for adults – it actually can cause Big Problems for adults. The Problem is not dissociation, it’s bad outcomes resulting from dissociation. Dissociation is a defense.

Wayfarer: Clinically, we want to keep that defense but pivot it to something more adaptive. 1000 yard stares suck shit when you’re trying to drive a car but you’re triggered by something on the radio or whatever. They are not good at work when you’re overloaded and your response is to check out for 20 minutes while your brain sorts its shit and counts its spoons.

Wayfarer: One way this was done, as it was in the Sybil case, is to identify the personality states as discrete personalities and negotiate or otherwise work with them. This was a clinical tool born of Rogerian therapy though there are elements from a few different models. You basically want to personify the frozen personality state so you can say “yes, sorry, that does suck and you did a great job of protecting me from it, but I need to drive a car right now, can you check back in 30 minutes?”

Wayfarer: This is an internal psychodrama. It’s mind-theater.

ShadowRain: Internal Family Systems Therapy was a thing as well

Wayfarer: Because of Sybil, though, a bunch of people started thinking “oh, people have other personalities sprouting out whole cloth all the time, that’s what MPD (at the time) is.”

Wayfarer: Then the Internet happened, and suddenly people with traumas and disorders started congregating to form support groups. Except, without the supervision of clinicians, those support groups actually serve the purpose of reinforcing clinical symptoms.

Wayfarer: When we identify with a group, as a member of a community, that is very important. It fills a very important emotional need that all people have. We are biologically driven to be part of an “in group.” Unfortunately, when that “in group” is a support community, we feel a need to reinforce our membership in that support community. It causes clinical worsening, straight up.

Wayfarer: Using DID as an example, someone with DDNOS (or whatever the new nomenclature is) might find their way to a support community online. They know they have dissociation and they can recognize those symptoms, they can identify crystallized personality states as taking over but they don’t necessarily identify them as distinct personalities.

Wayfarer: They join a community, and a bunch of people are posting “I am/We are Plural and I have a hundred alters and some are kids and some are old people and some are…” and that person wants to be a part of the community. Suddenly, they start thinking, “oh, maybe my crystallized personality state that comes up when I’m stressed is an alter and I didn’t realize it?” They identify it as such, and welp we’re off to the races. A DDNOS patient is now a DID patient because they are adopting the symptoms of others so that they can feel welcome in a community.

Wayfarer: This is not “they are pretending to be plural and really aren’t,” it’s “they are doing a clinical worsening and creating a system of alters.” It’s legitimate, but it’s not healthy and it’s not adaptive.

Wayfarer: You see a similar problem with, for example, the bipolar community. Support groups meant to help people help each other actually result in people clinically worsening because in-group belonging pressures cause people who might have been hypomanic previously to do full mania so they can guarantee their place in a community.

Wayfarer: DID is a lot more well known, basically, in 2020, but it’s also more virulent, largely because there’s a lot of information available to people with less severe forms of dissociation who can, of course, worsen. Like, people with DID don’t become people with DID through magic, it’s an internal psychodrama that arises as a result of trauma. Of course other traumatized people can learn and reproduce that effect.

Wayfarer: Just as tulpa people could successfully self-induce DID symptoms by practicing. That doesn’t make DID fake or made up, and I’m not saying it is, except inasmuch as all internal mental activity is born from the people who are doing it, right?

Wayfarer: Basically, when people begin identifying with their disorders and embrace those as points of personal identity like gender or names or whatever other made up social constructs, they undermine the process of actually healing because healing would mean literally destroying their own identity.

Wayfarer: Because we like to have an identity and take comfort in that, it becomes very difficult for clinicians to work that out. People who decide “I am a person with bipolar disorder, that’s who I am” are very difficult to treat because, well, they don’t actually want to improve, because improving would mean destroying who I am.

Wayfarer: So, too, with people who identify as a member of a community. In-group membership is a powerful pressure. Again, I’m not saying it’s “fake,” I’m saying that providing a framework for a not-great clinical position to people who are vulnerable as a result of trauma or so on has probably done more harm than good, and it’s why incidence of DID is way up.

Kate Embers: I’ve never really seen it in that context actually. Makes sense, though. I’ve seen it with other mental patterns, actually. Where people learned that X is a symptom of something and then took a (sometimes even non-pathologic) trait of themselves, interpreted it as such, and then exaggerated it to validate their doubts through that.

Wayfarer: Yeah exactly that!

Wayfarer: When people with ADHD get together and start sharing with each other their symptoms, they start kinda mimicking them so they can feel like they really belong.

Vampire of Death: Oh, that happens in all of the internet communities, really. People mimicking symptoms and traits of others with a similar condition to fit in.

Vampire of Death: Sometimes it’s because they’re posing and insecure and need identity and sometimes they are real, but they just don’t want to get called out as fake for not being a carbon copy of someone else.

Vampire of Death: It’s pretty sad, tbh.

Wayfarer: Yeah, any online community is prone to this. You’ll see similar shit even in the OEC, right? A kind of acting out of cultural markers that identify someone as a member of an “in group.” Because the “Plural community” exists, people will clinically worsen in order to ensure their bona fides as a member of that community, you know?

Vampire of Death: That’s why I’m so pro self-identity.

Vampire of Death: And pro sense-of-self.

Vampire of Death: I see it in the OEC all the time but it’s actually reinforced by the culture ultimately because they begin to gatekeep due to bad behavior that takes place in the community and that usually leads to people drawing from inaccurate charts and google searches rather than from the people in their groups themselves because arbitration is hard, google search and then copy pasta the first did chart to represent the disorders is easy.

ShadowRain: Like empaths… the most sensitive overwhelmed mess is looked up to as the greatest/strongest empath. The more they are a victim of their “abilities” the better.

Wayfarer: It’s an ugly problem because at the same time it’s good that people don’t feel alone or unsupported. Like, in-group membership is a straight up biological need, and it can be hard to have that need met when someone is a trauma survivor who may feel isolated, even more so because they can’t talk about the trauma without reverting to a crystallized personality state that they don’t usually have access to.

Rose Cinderfall: whoa, i need to catch up on all this

Vampire of Death: I’ve also seen people from the plural community just generally being degenerate, science denialist pieces of shit that cause a lot of trouble for people who are genuinely in need of help, telling them to avoid treatment in favor of spiritual healing.

Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer, i am definitely not messing around with DID systems anymore

Vampire of Death: I recommend spiritual healing after all else fails, I have no intentions of ever telling someone who needs medicine or medication to avoid those measures to prove I’m some kind of god, you know what I mean?

Chirotractor: The ability to filter is an important skill

Vampire of Death: Discernment.

Wayfarer: The nature of DID is such that it’s deeply existential. One of the major failings of psychology/psychiatry since like, 1950 is that it abandoned its philosophical foundations entirely except, basically, in France and parts of Eastern Europe.

Vampire of Death: I suck at filtering, that’s why I don’t tend to type here because I can’t handle the stupid juice from most people no offense to anyone here.

Wayfarer: So because it’s a unique existential thing, because it’s so mired in philosophy of mind, it’s really easy for people to turn it into a spiritual Thing.

Vampire of Death: Yeah, it makes sense, not to mention how prone the OEC / OOC’s (Online energy / Online Occult communities) are prone to conspiratorial thinking. It all adds up into one giant clusterfuck of sad.

Wayfarer: DID forces really fundamental questions about what a Self is and what an internal experience Is Like and what are the qualia of consciousness and so on so on. Modern psychiatry is super poorly equipped to deal with this because of the embrace of the biopsychosocial model which mandates scientific positivism.

Chirotractor: that’s just what they want you to think @Vampire of Death

Vampire of Death: Oh nooo! They’re gonna get me!

Kate Embers: Though I do have to ask. Let’s say we have a traumatized person who has some strong dissociation going on already but not to the extent of “full-on DID” with amnesia, fighting headmates, and so forth. Couldn’t that actually help them? Like, they probably already have several different trauma responses, they might have an unstable sense of self because of the trauma, and so forth. Already for the reason that childhood trauma is rarely “singular” in the sense that there’s one exact type of trauma, so there’s usually several kinds of trauma depending on age, context, and perpetrator. Couldn’t it help these people to give their “tendencies” something more concrete and identifyable in order to sort the mess out that C-PTSD is?

Kate Embers: Yea that biological model of mental illness can go right into the trash bin if you ask me.

Vampire of Death: Yes, Kate, and I say that from personal experience that spirituality and such has helped me with trauma. Spirituality was before modern medicine of course it is a tool but it isn’t often used corectly, and tends to be abused. The problem with being an abuse survivor or trauma victim is that it is hard to discern who to trust and who you shouldn’t trust and that makes life very hard for anyone who has no anchored person in their life to guide them through the personal struggles that they are experiencing and save them from certain delusions in their thinking as they progress. A lot of people tend to exacerbate it and abuse them more, and it becomes a never ending cycle, sometimes unintentionally.

PatchesTheCoydog: the person claims it was a moment that’s alike something that happened to them sometimes, and that the actual damage is due to me saying it might be possible to erase an alter via telepathy, and that i was glad i didn’t do that that made the alter panic, and split into other alters.. according to them” They might know how their mind works and this is what caused issue I have to note.

Wayfarer: Right, it was originally a tool for that person exactly. The origins of DID as we know them now are using psychodrama adaptively to negotiate with crystallized personality states. We go, “okay, this person encounters [trigger] and when that happens, they become 11. Let’s take that 11 year old and call it something, and then when the 11 year old takes over, we can say “hey buddy not right now, let’s hold it together.” It’s not unlike telling someone to “forgive themselves” for being a victim, through a psychodrama where they say “okay, this did happen, but I’m not at fault, and it’s okay, I forgive myself,” etc etc

Wayfarer: “I didn’t know, I couldn’t have known, and it’s okay” or so on.

Rose Cinderfall: “The “what else can I do” is “basically nothing, let shit sort out.” DID is a style of psychological self-defense, it will do its own thing and protect itself. The person will probably be fine. If not, then you’re learning an expensive lesson in “actually, psychic shit is real and has real consequences.” It will be what it will be. ”

Okay. I have already told them I will not use telepathy on them anymore.. I don’t want to risk it. So there is no further danger, and I hope they’ll heal naturally over time. I know this is not a game, just, usually, in people without DID, doing this doesn’t end in disaster because I deliberately choose to only read, not modify unless i have a very good reason because I realize the mind is enormously complex and I don’t know what i’m doing when it comes to the mind and I don’t want to be irresponsible. What happened here was accidentally causing an alteration even though i intended to only read..

“Destabilize the person mentally? entirely possible. Get rid of an alter? no. As long as it was an accident and not something where you were trying to change things on purpose AND you don’t go fucking around with it more trying to “fix” it, they’ll probably settle back out in a couple days.”

Destabilizing the person mentally is what I believe actually happened due to the accident yesterday. When i referred to “erasing an alter”, what i had actually meant was surpressing the alter such that they are temporarily no longer active, this was a miswording out of haste to the person yesterday.

Vampire of Death: Yeah, it’s like consoling that piece of that personality instead of just going WHY DID YOU TALK thaoesutheaotrshurt and yelling and bashing them like most people tend to do without realizing that it’s a lot of pain behind that behavior in the first place.

ceahhettan: One thing that’s always been useful for me is something I learned a while back– stepping back a behaviour and seeing whether at the time that behaviour and tendency is disordered. Is it causing disorder in my life, etc.

ceahhettan: It’s difficult to do on one’s own, mind.

PatchesTheCoydog: Because we like to have an identity and take comfort in that, it becomes very difficult for clinicians to work that out. People who decide “I am a person with bipolar disorder, that’s who I am” are very difficult to treat because, well, they don’t actually want to improve, because improving would mean destroying who I am. ” If nt being bipolar would actually be an improvement is a somewhat subjective value judgment. I dn’t want to ‘improve’by having ‘less symptoms’ at all perosnally so reinforcing clinical symptoms while also learning better ways toc ope with them is exaclty what I want probably. For one way this can actually be positive… becoming less embarassed abut pursuing intense interests after esxposure to autistic community if have history of having those suppressed.

Wayfarer: Like I said, dissociation isn’t bad, it’s not disordered. It’s a very effective way to survive when a person is traumatized. It just becomes a problem usually in adulthood. Kids don’t die or lose their jobs when they stare into space for an hour to protect themselves from a horrible event. Adults do. And so the goal of treating a patient with dissociation shouldn’t be “cure the dissociation,” but rather, “find other, more adaptive ways to handle the trauma” and, eventually, “resolve the trauma.”

ceahhettan: Yeah.

ceahhettan: And also, be able to identify it quickly and develop coping strategies etc.

Vampire of Death: It is very difficult to step back and realize disorded thinking, amen to that.

Wayfarer: It’s only sort of subjective? It’s been poorly applied historically but every single psychiatric disorder requires that it has to prevent a person from functioning in the world or cause that person distress.

ShadowRain: Getting all caught up in the names, ages, and favorite colors of a hundred plus alters can be a way of avoiding the “resolve the trauma” part, rather than a help though. it’s a balance.

PatchesTheCoydog: “Functioning in the world” is entirely context dependent and subjective

Wayfarer: So it’s a little less subjective than people think, but again because of the biopsychosocial model a lot of clinicians skip that requirement.

Wayfarer: It is and it isn’t?

ceahhettan: Well, right. But some of what disorders a thing is individual, some of it is social– yeah. There’s objective and subjective.

Vampire of Death: It prevents me from functioning in the world according to the people in my life, so I guess I have a disorder but I don’t see it as that.

PatchesTheCoydog: I’m not going to agree with you and I don’t want t get banned for calling yu an asshole so ut of respect fr this place I’m bowing out f conversation. Death to psychiatry, long live freedom

PatchesTheCoydog: Goes to do smoething else

Wayfarer: Like, we have a shitty world that has requirements on people that suck a lot and it’s unreasonable to think that people should be super happy being capitalist drones, right? But it’s not unreasonable to think someone should be able to perform ADLs, order a meal, etc etc.

Vampire of Death: Functioning for me would be like having my own place to live, possibly having a car, etc, I live with my family, etc.

ceahhettan: And someone can subjectively feel like they’re doing fine and being very much less fine. Someone can objectively have it together and be a fucking mess.

Wayfarer: lmao, you’re welcome to call me an asshole and I wouldn’t ban you for that anyhow, and seeing as I left mainstream psychiatry as an academic field because I think it has fundamentally lost the plot in a pursuit of medical legitimacy that never should have mattered, I kind of agree with “death to psychiatry.”

Vampire of Death: Yeah, that’s why it’s harder for me because I think maybe I ‘am a mess’ but I don’t really know, or can’t tell because what makes me happy is a lot less than what makes other people happy.

ceahhettan: There’s also another thing I’ve learned, being able to meet myself where I am. I’m not good at it always. But it’s been an important step to figuring out how to live independently (semi independently) as an adult.

Wayfarer: My hot take is that you’re projecting onto what I’m saying with an idea of what you think I should be saying based on other conversations you’ve had in the past, and I can’t fault you for that!

Rose Cinderfall: i am pleasantly surprised to see wayfarer’s stance on psychiatry…

Kate Embers: Not gonna lie, I did and do use plurality to cope with my trauma. But with the background that already in my childhood and teenage years I’d show strong tendencies in that direction. They were just never discovered because my parents and former teachers and basically any adult had negative knowledge of psychology. So, like, I realized that sometimes I responded in a freeze type manner, sometimes more in a flight manner, sometimes more in a fight manner. And there were ocassions with memory loss, changed behavior, things that I did but couldn’t explain to myself. And later on I actually learned how to purposely create headmates and it still happens accidentally just because my mind knows how to do it and keeps making use of it when it sees fit.

Rose Cinderfall: oh gosh so many blocks of text i need to catch up on!

ceahhettan: For instance: I can’t tie my shoes probably over half the time. I learned how just fine as a kid, but between a billion things a lot of the time it is an ADL that is just too fucking much.

Vampire of Death: To be honest, Ceah, I need to work on that to be honest. Just meeting myself where I am.

Vampire of Death: It’s really important to do that.

Wayfarer: I know, Kate, or knew, or whatever in the weird psychic way one does when having a conversation. I appreciate your bearing with me through the long explanation but I am glad it wrapped up to communicate my idea correctly. I also have a personal connection to the subject, so there’s that.

ceahhettan: Guess what, though. Not being able to tie my shoes? Doesn’t matter. Most of my shoes don’t have laces.

ceahhettan: I think we’ve all got somewhat personal on this topic, yeah.

Wayfarer: Of course.

Clovers: Velcro ftw?

Rose Cinderfall: I view plural systems as I encounter them in communities as a mix of damaged individuals, individuals channeling entities, and entities having permanent residence in some individuals.. aka possession

Rose Cinderfall: is that rational?

Vampire of Death: Yeah, we got a little personal but it’s alright, I’m fine with it.

Vampire of Death: I feel better about opening up here today.

Wayfarer: And like, with the shoe tying thing, yeah. You aren’t invalidated as a person if you can’t tie your shoes. But you do need to attach shoes to your feet. So, use adaptive technologies like velcro, or get help from others, or whatever. It doesn’t mean “it’s fine to not be able to tie shoes,” you know?

Kate Embers: It’s frankly a point of view I’ve never really heard in that manner. I did hear the over-pathologized and bigoted versions. But that one is new frankly ^^ Which isn’t bad of course. Can’t say I disagree a whole lot with you either.

Vampire of Death: That’s rational, Aria. I’m a mix of both.

Vampire of Death: Rational meaning it is a belief claim, rather than a prescriptive claim about those communities.

Wayfarer: The response here shouldn’t be “shoes are bullshit and having footwear is The Patriarchy.” That might be the case, a lot of the time it is actually exactly the case and the expectation itself is complete bullshit, but for now we have to deal with that, and use those adaptive technologies or realize that people are going to think less of us, whether that’s just or not.

ceahhettan: Cousin, yeah. It just means that I’m not never going to be independent because I can’t tie my shoes. Which I mean, I’d been told a few times.

ceahhettan: (I fucking showed them, tho.)

Vampire of Death: Hell yeah, dab on ’em.

ceahhettan: Speaking of which I should go find a parking space. Back in a bit.

PatchesTheCoydog: And like, with the shoe tying thing, yeah. You aren’t invalidated as a person if you can’t tie your shoes. But you do need to attach shoes to your feet. So, use adaptive technologies like velcro, or get help from others, or whatever. It doesn’t mean “it’s fine to not be able to tie shoes,” you know? ” Why not? It’s assumed too be fine thar yu can’t participate in the chemical signalling trees use. It’s assumed to be fine if you can’t flyut of the stratosphere and live in the vacuum of space. It’s assumed to be fine if you’re not the greatest athlete in the world even even if it might be nice t be one but if yu’re not it doesn’t invalidate you being awesome at nuclear physics or whatever(nor invalidate the fact you spending less time n athletics is probably contributor to success in field you do well in). I’m horrible with shoe tying too, though did learn eventually. Got lots of shit for it but the people who think less of me for that? Literally pee on them.

Wayfarer: Kate I appreciate that. It’s a position I’ve come to over a lot of philosophical wrestling over many years. It’s not easy to balance because the systems in play are often not great, but I try to examine my own beliefs and ideas and not be a shithead patriarchal mental imperialist, which unfortunately a lot of my psychological colleagues are even if they don’t mean to be or consider themselves such.

Kate Embers: Something I’d like to add to people embracing their symptoms… It’s a coping mechanism for many. Especially with conditions that are on the more severe end and where people often don’t immediately perceive it as something negative. Especially if it’s considered something permanent. It can be pretty soothing to see your struggles in a positive manner, even if that isn’t always the healthiest thing. But if you’re drag some stuff with you for your entire life and you see it as something bad and evil and destructive that can be really hard to cope with.

Rose Cinderfall: I was born to a father who works in psychiatry (he is now retired) and he forced a lot of his views on me. But I disagree with many things in psychiatry, and much prefer how psychotherapy approaches things, in some cases. Add to that the fact that i practice empathy and telepathy, which also does affect my views on it all.. I dislike how psychiatry focuses solely on biological mechanisms to try to explain mental things. And it’s tendency to use drugs to surpress symptoms rather than going after the root cause..

Wayfarer: I’m not sure where you point is there, Patches. I didn’t say the tying shoes was important, it’s the attaching shoes to your feet part that matters, because stepping on shit is bad and it’s difficult to live life in the world we find ourselves in without something attached to our feet.

PatchesTheCoydog: My point is there are lots of ways to attach things to your feet and lots of people actually do wlak barefoot. So trying t imply someone is bjectivcely inferior for is something that should get you peed on

Wayfarer: Whether you tie shoes, velcro, slip them on, whatever, having shoes on yr feet is important, for better or for worse. We can say that that’s bullshit because the world we live in is unjust, but, alas, it remains the world we live in. Disability-as-identity is a bad thing, and we should try our best to achieve justice for everyone.

ShadowRain: Rose: I view plural systems as I encounter them in communities as a mix of damaged individuals, individuals channeling entities, and entities having permanent residence in some individuals.. aka possession It irks me a bit, tbh, to see people calling entities that they are channeling (however frequently) “alters”. Just because you hear someone in your head doesn’t mean that they live there, and doesn’t mean they are a part of you. It just means you hear them mentally because that’s how telepathy and communicating with spirits works :/

Chirotractor: tying shoes is optional but god forbid you wear socks with sandals

Wayfarer: Right, Patches, I agree with you, and literally said that thing.

PatchesTheCoydog: (especially when reasons for having difficulty with often carry other things like different points of view). If society was built around people flying then not flying would be a severe issue.

Wayfarer: Like I said, I think you’re projecting a position onto me that I do not have because you are used to people having that position.

PatchesTheCoydog: Yu said that thing while also touting the pathology paradigm that I believe the point you’re agreeing with and saying invalidates because of how absolutely contextual and socially constructed it makes what abilities are valued.

PatchesTheCoydog: I think you’re midway between the standard psition and mine and I still think yuo’re wrong

Rainsong: Chiro, rather: Unless you work at a university. Socks with sandals is pretty common where I work

Vampire of Death: Socks with sandals are my jam @Chirotractor.

ceahhettan: Cousin, I’m going to disagree with you in part? a bit? on disability-as-identity, there. Because there’s aspects where it’s very much a decent and healthy coping mechanism, which are fine and entirely different from tumblrkids “lolofjksksks I’m disabled I’m a toaster”… which is less fine.

Vampire of Death: /s

Rose Cinderfall: @ShadowRain What about cases where someone is basically channeling an entity 100% of the time and they’re always present (partially) with the person, but sometimes the person speaks, sometimes the entity speaks? That’s not the entity being inside their body? The entity is still external?

Chirotractor: and it’s that sort of ivory tower intellectual that’s ruining the country! @Rainsong

Vampire of Death: Tumblrkids are just dealing, too at the end of the day.

Wayfarer: That’s fine. I don’t think I’m touting the pathology paradigm at all, is the thing. I am not presenting the exact same position as you, but I’m also not advocating the pathology paradigm you seem to think I’m advocating.

Wayfarer: @ceahhettan, there’s a huge gap between “disability as identity” and “recognizing one’s capabilities and limitations realistically”

ShadowRain: even if a spirit is possessing the person, they aren’t an alter. an alter is a part of the person, a possessing entity is still a separate entity

Clovers: Hmm… I think possessions would be a more interesting and productive conversation.

Rose Cinderfall: okay, that makes sense.

ceahhettan: Which also circles back to person first vs disability first language, which is its own question altogether. True.

Kate Embers: As long as it’s a spirit they’re external @Rose Cinderfall. Because at the end of the day, even if you’ve given them the ability to speak or even use your body, they’re still a separate being. You’re basically just sharing a physical body at that point, you’re granting them an interface so to speak. To not be separate anymore you’d have to merge and I’m not even sure if that is possibly achievable even in theory.

Rose Cinderfall: also.. wow, i haven’t seen PSC be this active for a long time!

Wayfarer: Man, I fought hard against person-first language in 2004 for all the wrong reasons because I was an ignorant imperialist patriarchal shithead stuck on a medical model of psychology that I thought, at the time, was valid and right.

ShadowRain: (Granted, then there’s alters who claim to be “walk ins” and the whole semi-otherkin thing and it gets really fucking messy.)

Chirotractor: I would like to skip into the future when psychology and magical shit are actually well understood.

ceahhettan: I hate person first language? It irks me. I don’t use it for myself.

Wayfarer: And it cracks me up that we’re looped back around to “person first language is invalidating” in some circles.

Kate Embers: The overlap between DID, voluntary plurality (aka tulpas), and spirit stuff is actually rather fascinating!

ceahhettan: But if someone else wants to describe themself as a person with disability or a person with autism, sure.

Rose Cinderfall: @Kate Embers i know right?

Kate Embers: It’s why I usually just say plurality and if necessary specify using traumagenic, endogenic, etc.

ceahhettan: I just don’t see the point of it, it’s linguistically clumsy, and it feels like I’m being walked on and ignored when I ask to use disability first language and am then told omg no ur wrong person first language.

PatchesTheCoydog: Cousin, I’m going to disagree with you in part? a bit? on disability-as-identity, there. Because there’s aspects where it’s very much a decent and healthy coping mechanism, which are fine and entirely different from tumblrkids “lolofjksksks I’m disabled I’m a toaster”… which is less fine. ” The version of this that goes a step further in accepting the validity of disability as identity while still being distinct from tumblr thing is kind of what I’m going for and maybe being abrasive about because past experience regarding discussing matters and some of treatment I’ve experienced in general world

Wayfarer: Because I was a big wrong moron in 2004. I use person first language for psychology because that was The Thing You Had To Do when I was in grad school or you’d get shitty referrals to disability services and have to go “hey, idiots, I am literally registered in this office, I think that this is a dumb thing when people do it with me” etc. And now I have that habit and it’s hard to break in its context.

ceahhettan: Nod, fair enough.

Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer, sorry but, I feel like my response to your earlier remarks got lost in the rapid waterfall of text here, and you may not have seen it. May i repeat it?

ShadowRain: I don’t think the waterfall has necessarily stopped >.>

ceahhettan: I could go park at a rest area 30 miles closer, but eh. This is close enough for tonight.

Rose Cinderfall: i know it hasn’t

Wayfarer: That said, there’s a distinction I’d make between acknowledging “I have ADHD, that is part of how I interact with the world, and I have to acknowledge and be aware of that because I cannot pretend it away,” and, say, “as an ADHDer I feel oppressed by society and it’s bullshit that I should have to focus on things”

Wayfarer: Like the other night I put ramen noodles in the microwave without water and melted them into some kind of horrible plasma.

Wayfarer: Because I am a distracted idiot.

ceahhettan: That’s about what I was going for wrt distinction. Also mood I’ve done that.

Wayfarer: And regardless of what I think about society, that’s just not adaptive. It is a disordered thing to put ramen noodles in a microwave without water, unless you’re trying to make plasma.

ShadowRain: “microwaved ramen noodles” <–I mean, there’s your problem right there 😛

ceahhettan: (In which we were going for the same point and just at oblique angles? As often happens.)

Wayfarer: Yeap. And that happens a lot because I approach this stuff a lot of the time from the viewpoint of a clinician but I live in both worlds.

Wayfarer: Like a fuckin

Kate Embers: I think you need a balance there. People genuinely shouldn’t be pressured to do things their state of mind doesn’t allow them to do. But at the same time I don’t think it’s necessarily always the best to go all the way with it.

Wayfarer: Disability Shaman

PatchesTheCoydog: And regardless of what I think about society, that’s just not adaptive. It is a disordered thing to put ramen noodles in a microwave without water, unless you’re trying to make plasma. ” Don’t beat yurself up over it. Shit happens.

Wayfarer: Standing in the liminal space between disabled and clinician

Kate Embers: Like I’ve seen Borderline people say they shouldn’t have to change because it’s who they are and they’re good that way and society should adapt to them… Which… No…

Rose Cinderfall: There is a lot i don’t know about Plural Systems yet and honestly, most of what I know about it has been through observation of people in OEC’s that have plural people in them. What i do know is that the way psychiatry used to look at it seems to be very wrong, but other than that i’m going by observation and trying my best to understand it.

Wayfarer: lmao I wasn’t beating myself up over it but I have not been able to get the smell out of the microwave. I am using it mainly as an example of “this is clearly not an okay thing to go ‘hell yeah I forget entire steps in a 3 step process’.” Like there are certain things that are just maladaptive. And I’m clear about that language – it’s not bad. I’m not an inferior person. But it’s a maladaptive behavior that does not help me achieve my goals of “eating, in the world”

Wayfarer: You know?

ceahhettan: V different than eating the world.

Wayfarer: But anyways yeah like, there has been a lot of good won through disability advocacy and part of that comes from disability being recognized as a condition that constitutes a class, but at the same time a lot of adverse effects happen too. Turns out the world is imperfect and kinda shitty but we’ve all just gotta do our best.

Chirotractor: tthere are other reasons wayfarer is an inferior person 😛

Wayfarer: Exactly.

Rose Cinderfall: I’ve found that when doing telepathy on plural systems, the alters or tulpa’s look to me like actual real seperate people and it can even happen that they do things within their “internal world” and i say what they did and it reflects what they did. It’s almost like a pocket realm with entities. But I know that it’s all some sort of abstraction of what’s going on in their minds, still though, the way it comes through in telepathy makes it both easier to understand plurality, but also more difficult because so much abstraction seems to be involved @Wayfarer

Wayfarer: Anyhow tl;dr DID is a mess and there are a lot of reasons it’s a mess and lmao at someone going “man, this person has DID, better just put my entire ass inside that head unprotected to take a look around”

PatchesTheCoydog: Yes, but you can recgnize that that’s an incnvenient way abut how your mind works without seeing the general way yur mind works as being a negative thing/a disorder. It’s within that specific context a barrier which yu need t deal with but a. doesn’t as you say make yu inferior b. doesn’t mean you aren’t ALSO being oppressed by society in many respects as an ADHDER even if that specifically isn’t an example of it and c. if your type of ind were the majority, this would probably be implicitly accommoddated for in ways that you wouldn’t have to think abut it. Maybe all microwaves would contain lists of “remember how to do this” instructions r yu’d have ben taught coping methods that were really well-studied from kindergarden or something

Rose Cinderfall: also, for the record, “man, this person has DID, better just put my entire ass inside that head unprotected to take a look around” is not what i did ._.

Wayfarer: I think that having microwaves with lists of “how to do this” instructions is something I should be responsible for in general and not something that should be mandated because I recognize myself as the exception in this case. But … all the other stuff, I’ve been saying? So, yeah, glad we agree.

Kate Embers: @Rose Cinderfall Actually what you’re seeing their is their own mental realm. Effectively similar to where dreams take place.

Wayfarer: Let’s pivot to the more interesting topic of telepathy and DID!

Wayfarer: Yeah, Kate, your experience is consistent with my own there. So you have a couple things in play!

Wayfarer: One is that people who identify as Plural usually have embraced an internal psychodramatic model that is actually defined, where as most people have not done that.

Vampire of Death: This is probably pivoting the topic but I guess there’s more than one person here. I wanted to ask for a little while about something that had to do with physically affecting someone in real time with energy work. What I mean by that is putting something such as a mark upon their skin using intent / will power.

Wayfarer: Like, one of the early weeks in the course I’ll be launching in May or June is introducing the concept of an inner world / inner journey. We deliberately establish a symbol set to use for inner work. Rainsong does this with the “filing cabinet dude” and so on, as well. These are symbolic mental structures that work for navigating our internal mental world.

Vampire of Death: I’m merely asking about it in general. Possibility, plausibility, etc. How hard it should be to do, etc.

Konii: I found a little gem within the internet that correlates to psionics. Has anyone here heard of The Piezoelectric Effect?

Vampire of Death: I don’t like to make claims of ability like Aria, but I’ve had someone recently say this to me while practicing.

Six Stellar: oh hey we have DID

Rose Cinderfall: … Vadim.. i don’t like to make claims of ability either..

Konii: Sorry to interrupt.

Wayfarer: Plural folks often tend to do this stuff as a matter of course because the internal psychodrama has to take place somewhere. So you’ll have a rich and well defined internal mental world where the various selves have been shaped into mental forms.

Kate Embers: One thing to bear in mind with DID. People who have it have a very malleable mind. As such, if you make them believe you can do something strnog enough they can actually manifest that change just by that belief.

Rainsong: @Vampire of Death Yes, it’s been done before, sometimes by folks with relatively little experiences, so totally plausible

PatchesTheCoydog: I think that having microwaves with lists of “how to do this” instructions is something I should be responsible for in general and not something that should be mandated because I recognize myself as the exception in this case. But … all the other stuff, I’ve been saying? So, yeah, glad we agree. ” And everyne will be better off if recognize exceptions exist, in some ways everyone is an exceptin it’s just some have mre severe exceptions and there was a cultural thing of being much more accommodating towards exceptions(and recognizing stuff like fact frm an bjective standpoint it’s not wny worse than being unable to participate in chemical signalling trees use and stuff like fact in low light conditions blindness is actually evolutioniarily selected for so it’s entirely cntextual).

Wayfarer: And yeah Konii it’s a very well known thing with for example guitarists.

Wayfarer: Since it’s how electric guitars work.

Vampire of Death: What is it called to do that, @Rainsong ?

Rainsong: DMILs, or rather one of many aspects of same

Konii: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6908277 Check this out.

ShadowRain: @Wayfarer Wayfarer: Like, one of the early weeks in the course I’ll be launching in May or June is introducing the concept of an inner world / inner journey. We deliberately establish a symbol set to use for inner work. Rainsong does this with the “filing cabinet dude” and so on, as well. These are symbolic mental structures that work for navigating our internal mental world.

So like a roman room kinda set up?

Rose Cinderfall: Yeah, Kate, your experience is consistent with my own there. So you have a couple things in play! @Wayfarer did you mean me or Kate?.. o.O

Vampire of Death: Is that for me to look at? @Konii

Konii: Oh no

PatchesTheCoydog: This is probably pivoting the topic but I guess there’s more than one person here. I wanted to ask for a little while about something that had to do with physically affecting someone in real time with energy work. What I mean by that is putting something such as a mark upon their skin using intent / will power. ” This can be done. I’ve experimented with it on people with permissin and have changed pigment of skin in small areas for example

Konii: Just going on about what I’m looking into lol

Vampire of Death: What is that acronym expanded, Rainsong?

Vampire of Death: DMILs?

ceahhettan: Direct mental influence on living systems

PatchesTheCoydog: Direct Mental Interaction with Living Systems

ceahhettan: okay my recollection was slightly off.

Vampire of Death: Oh, okay.

Chirotractor: Freckle Deletion Services

Vampire of Death: I have recently witnessed someone healing someone who was ‘cursed’ with that affect.

Vampire of Death: The affect of the curse was DMIL.

Vampire of Death: It made the person go blind and crippled.

Wayfarer: Anyhow the thing is like, most people do not have a mental projection of themselves that is other than themselves but because in DID people are encouraged (clinically or by their communities) to have different identities for personality states and so on, so they will “appear” within the mental “world” as a distinct individual. And they are and they aren’t.

Vampire of Death: The healer is using energy work to heal them. And it’s working slowly.

Wayfarer: Like I said, DID brings up a lot of questions about for example the nature of consciousness and what constitutes a self and so on.

Vampire of Death: I’m impressed by witnessing this. I used to think faith healing was a meme.

Wayfarer: And an “alter” is a separate person and also is not a separate person, and it’s fuckin’ complicated, and psychiatry is really poorly equipped to deal with that.

Vampire of Death: It also gives me restored and renewed confidence to pursue this more. I had a goal when I got into this more seriously two years ago related to someone I care about who has a disorder I’d like to possibly try to heal one day.

Kate Embers: I’d love a philosophical answer to what consciousness is and isn’t but I think that’s setting a high standard.

Vampire of Death: But I also am not a good healer, so that sucks, lol.

ceahhettan: Okay wait a second. Most people don’t have a mental projection other than exactly more or less as they are?

Wayfarer: Psychiatry in general likes to go “I only experience one unified self, and so do most people, so the existence of other selves must be illusory,” but that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about “mental imperialism.”

Wayfarer: Most people only have a mental projection when they are deliberately being told to have a mental projection, like they need the instruction “imagine yourself …” right? And that mental projection will generally be how they are presently, and often it is more of a kind of … disembodied point of view? Kind of like a first person shooter game.

Wayfarer: Like there’s no body, just a point of view.

Wayfarer: Because we’re not used to experiencing ourselves from outside, so we imagine ourselves from the internal point of view.

Clovers: Pfft form is for the weak.

Wayfarer: In DID that gets weird, because there is that perspective, but it shifts about.

Rainsong: To make things more complicated for people looking at someone else’s mind clairvoyantly or telepathically, strongly imagined ‘people’ such as characters in a book the person is writing, can be mistaken foir an alter, by an inexperienced viewer

Rose Cinderfall: For the record, both me and the person i did it to felt very hesitant to do this. But the person wanted me to try anyway. I was already kind of doubtful how safe it would be to scan someone with DID that deeply

Rose Cinderfall: also

Wayfarer: Lmao agreed Clovers

Rainsong: Hi, StrawHatPro

ceahhettan: Okay that’s actually really interesting, huh. Also I… will poke some questions at you later, though.

Chirotractor: who the fuck experiences a unified self anyway?

Chirotractor: like how boring do you have to be to have one persona that you stick with no matter who you’re talking to

Rose Cinderfall: I don’t like to make claims of ability like Aria, but I’ve had someone recently say this to me while practicing. @Vampire of Death That’s rude. The amount of times i’ve told you i’ve felt uncomfortable with being public about these things.. this situation kind of forced my hand!

Kate Embers: There’s no such thing as a unified self

ceahhettan: ^ lol that yes, @Chirotractor.

Wayfarer: Kate my off the cuff answer is “an aggregation of experiences that has provisionally termed itself as a self” but like, I lean hard on Buddhism to deal with theory of mind and consciousness stuff and the punchline in Buddhism is “lmao the Self is a fake idea.”

ShadowRain: whispers Soul.

Wayfarer: lmao

ShadowRain: 😛

Wayfarer: The Soul is definitely a fake idea.

Wayfarer: At least the Self has relative reality.

Chirotractor: @Rose Cinderfall I’m pretty sure he was saying that he’s similar to you in reluctance to make claims

Wayfarer: But no ultimate reality.

Wayfarer: Souls don’t even have relative reality :v

Rose Cinderfall: ohhh..

Rose Cinderfall: oops.

Konii: pat pat

Rose Cinderfall: thanks. i misread that..

ceahhettan: Unlike sole, which is very tasty fish.

Wayfarer: No ceahhettan we’re done talking about shoes now

Wayfarer: The shoes talk is over.

Wayfarer: :v

Rose Cinderfall: i am still ill from what i did yesterday, and having trouble focusing on so many conversations at once

Chirotractor: shoed move on since there’s no soulution to the topic

Simica: Well this place is very active this afternoon lol

Wayfarer: yike Chiro pull up

ceahhettan: Fish not shoes! I’m hungry I guess.

PatchesTheCoydog: (StrawHatPro is somene I know bit from occult community who has mentined being interested in energy work approaches so thought would invite). There are too many different entirely valid approaches to take to the matter of ‘self’ to have a firm answer to any of questins. Ultimately everyne is going to default to whatever their preferred philosophical position is and duble down on whatever their preferred axios are ultimately robably.

Wayfarer: Flying too close to the sun there

ceahhettan: (Fish are friends, not shoes?)

Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer, did you read the stuff i posted or do i need to repost?

Chirotractor: wouldn’t… pulling up be the opposite of what “I should do then?

Vampire of Death: @Rose Cinderfall Is it rude to say a truth that you don’t like making claims of ability in public?

Vampire of Death: If so, I apologize sincerely.

Wayfarer: I mean don’t repost the white noise bits like yes obviously I was talking to you and not Kate I just saw Kate quoted yo and my brain did a silly thing

Rose Cinderfall: @Vampire of Death no, i misread, i thought you said “I don’t like to make claims of ability unlike Aria”

Wayfarer: But if there’s something that needed my response I can scroll up or you can repost or w/e

Vampire of Death: Ooooohhhhh lol.

Rose Cinderfall: i’ll repost

Vampire of Death: Okay, I’m sorry anyway.

Wayfarer: Yeah don’t repost the white noise about your misunderstanding either

Wayfarer: lmao

Rose Cinderfall: apology accepted, even though you did nothing wrong

ShadowRain: ohgodswalloftext

Wayfarer: Walls of text gonna just respond to shit that pops out at my while my eyes slide over it

Rose Cinderfall: this entire conversation has been constant walls of text to me xD

Wayfarer: 1) there’s no such thing as Read Only Telepathy, I used to think there was but there’s not! Like, consciousness and experience are all set to 775, RIP

Wayfarer: Hmmm that might not be quite right…

Wayfarer: There’s no Read Only where you observe it without modifying it with your own experience.

Kate Embers: > There’s no Read Only where you observe it without modifying it with your own experience.

@Wayfarer Sounds like quantum physics

Rose Cinderfall: oh, that reflects exactly what i felt was happening…

ShadowRain: squints that’s kinda like saying you can’t just see a person without changing them

Wayfarer: If you observe it, you’re writing onto it at the same time. And the other person is usually going to have some knock-on effects from that, but you can kind of avoid it if you work really competently.

Rose Cinderfall: it was like my view of the entire Plural System was starting to affect their perception of their own system

Wayfarer: I mean, kinda, but I kinda jumped on it a bit aggressively.

Rose Cinderfall: in dangerous ways

Wayfarer: You can’t access someone’s mental world without projecting part of your own world onto it. We can’t directly access another person’s mind, we can only access our experience of another person’s mind. We always bring ourself into it, because we can’t do it not as ourself (and then there’s a bunch of stars and caveats and margin notes and shit here, like I’m making very general broad statements)

ShadowRain: and that (what Rose said) sounds like Wayfarer’s idea of the astral–malleable and therefore co-created by whoever is in the space…

Wayfarer: What Rose is talking about is exactly that, yeah. It’s not my idea of the astral but more of the “mental-astral,” like it’s Elsewhere but it’s a kind of localized Elsewhere rather than the Elsewheres of spirits or so on.

Wayfarer: Don’t muddle this up with astral stuff!!!!

Wayfarer: !!!!!

Wayfarer: !

ShadowRain: XD

Wayfarer: Hold on I’m gonna go skim more of that wall of text.

ceahhettan: But why nooooot. I mean sometimes using Elsehweres is a useful tool for understanding.

Rose Cinderfall: normally when I read someone, it doesn’t really change their view of the self much.. because they’re not a super fragmented plural system and basically the person usually doesn’t report any changes, has just experienced being read/scanned without anything having changed. So how does that work, then, wayfarer?

Chirotractor: well now I’m just confused

Vampire of Death: Does anyone have any technique on increasing internal personal energy?

Chirotractor: also you should probably be charging for this @Wayfarer

Wayfarer: You’re right I should be

Wayfarer: Everyone give me a tenner tia

ShadowRain: I’ll just put the discussion on the website as a class/discussion and call it a day 😛

Wayfarer: Okay so Rose the thing is you didn’t access that system without that system being aware of it, and a mind that is aware that it is being contacted reacts to that contact whether you want it to or not.

Rainsong: Most people have enough “selfiness” (?) to compensate from any observer-effect on their field, unlike, for example, a random piece of amethyst on the beach that ends up with all kinds of observer-shit in its field after a crowded-beach day in the summer

ShadowRain: Wayfarer: can’t pay you, but can give you exposure >:P

Rose Cinderfall: EXPO$URE

Wayfarer: Like if you telepathize someone who doesn’t know, you can observe sort of passively, but most people interact with that mind (to get specific information) which has knock-on effects unless we’re very good * ** *** etc.

Wayfarer: If you telepathize someone who does know you’re telepathizing them, their mind is going to respond accordingly. Fun fact, you don’t even have to actually telepathize them for that to happen.

Rose Cinderfall: that makes sense, Rainsong. Wayfarer, that also makes sense, but, i usually do this with people’s consent, to people who are not plural systems, and they don’t report any alterations whatsoever

Wayfarer: Yeah Rainsong’s got the right of it there. Your energetic body is the sense organ of telepathy, remember? We talked about the field and how they overlap and how to move around inside the field and how we can instantiate different thoughts or types of thought to locations in the field symbolically, remember all that?

Rainsong: Ummm, I suspect they aren’t self-aware enough to notice changes that are not-them vs them… especially if scanning them for some reason is actually useful to them in some way

Chirotractor: it’s funny when you scan someone and as soon as you start saying accurate stuff their whole aura just shuts down

PatchesTheCoydog: (You can se your mind to respond to peple doing so in specific ways)

Chirotractor: like ‘you asked me to do this :|’

Wayfarer: So you can’t touch to it without affecting it and vice versa. But most people don’t recognize the touch or the results of the touch.

Wayfarer: A million years ago I wrote a manual on telepathy along with an esteemed colleague and some shmuck

Rose Cinderfall: The Telepathy Manual?

ceahhettan: Okay I need to not read chat while I’m eating or imma spit-take my food, thanks.

Wayfarer: And in that manual I talk about how you get information from people by poking at their mind to make them think about the stuff you want.

Rose Cinderfall: i’ve been sending that to friends who want to learn about telepathy..

Rose Cinderfall: oh, that makes sense

Wayfarer: Oh gross it’s so old and dated, refer them to me instead :v

Wayfarer: I should probably update it, honestly.

Wayfarer: Should probably write a telepathy manual with that New Shit :v

ceahhettan: I mean you’ve been saying something about more topics for books.

Clovers: Just sell books

Wayfarer: Anyhow, tl;dr they may not recognize the thought as being caused by another person but that doesn’t mean it’s not.

Clovers: Don’t worry about updating old stuff

Rose Cinderfall: I experience it as if I am “inside” their mind, focus on the subject I want to reach, “get closer to that” as if I am projecting in something spacial, and then scan the information i receive. @Wayfarer

Wayfarer: Well I mean I would update it by making it a book I can sell.

ShadowRain: (also part of how people can mistake spirits for alters and visa versa… being able to identify me-vs-not-me is really important for mental health etc)

Rainsong: Much of telepathic suggestion works on the premise that the subject’s mind doesn’t recognise the thought as coming from someone else

Clovers: You’d just start over anyway…

Wayfarer: Yes, and when you do that they will have knock on effects in their consciousness that they may or may not recognize as coming from an infiltrator.

Rose Cinderfall: So, when i do that, I am instructing their mind to bring the information I am seeking, to the forefront?

Rainsong: Rose: that’s a pretty standard method, really

Wayfarer: Well yeah, I don’t even have a copy of the old thing. I’m sure it’s around on the Internet because nothing ever dies, but yeah I’d be writing from scratch. Anyhow I’m not doing that now anyways!!!!!

Clovers: Maybe later?

Wayfarer: That’s the norm, yes. There are some other ways to do it low key without them necessarily becoming consciously aware of it but the problem is that it’s hard to get anything concrete out of that, you end up getting abstract stuff that’s not super unlike the “pure information” experiences in astral projection or so on, and the problem with those experiences is it’s really hard to communicate them.

PatchesTheCoydog: On totally unrelated news… divination and some other things ssuggest that thing did last night worked ut so ne of obstacles to development I’ve had shuld be cleared out. Just sharing random good news, we return you to telepathy conversation. On subject of telepathy… if anyone wants telepathy practice partner feel free to DM me for!

Wayfarer: Yeah I will add it to the list.

Clovers: Patches, you should clean your keyboard.

PatchesTheCoydog: Yes I should

ceahhettan: Yeah your o key seems to be missing half the time.

PatchesTheCoydog: The o key IS missing.

Rose Cinderfall: @PatchesTheCoydog I would love to practice telepathy on you and use it to help you out in the ways you are looking for

Clovers: Buy a new keyboard?

Wayfarer: So the Problem of Telepathy is that let’s say Bob is a telepath. Bob doesn’t experience “other people’s thoughts.” Bob experiences “Bob’s perceptions of other people’s thoughts.” The words Bob uses to communicate those experiences come from Bob, not uh, Sally.

Simica: Mmm telepathy

PatchesTheCoydog: at least the part that’s a key… and I have a keyboard can connect, just refuse to.

Rose Cinderfall: not today though, i got damaged by that mistake yesterday. Have had a headache all day.

PatchesTheCoydog: ” I would love to practice telepathy on you and use it to help you out in the ways you are looking for ” I meant more as mutual practice thing. Honestly the thought of someone being in any kind of ‘helper’ relationship with me makes me have a near panic attack right now

ceahhettan: Funny enough, half of y’all are twice as loud when talking about telepathy as you are otherwise.

Clovers: @Simica ??

PatchesTheCoydog: Hope goes well. If want help with headache can try helping with

Chirotractor: Sorry

Simica: @Clovers lol nothing

Rose Cinderfall: @ceahhettan is that why this entire conversation has felt so overwhelming and hard to keep track of?

Wayfarer: If Bob knows Sally, Bob can get those thought-impressions and communicate them using the words Sally uses, and it will be super on point, good shit, A+++ “wow, telepathy” grade stuff. If Bob doesn’t know Sally, then Bob will have to use Bob’s own words to communicate Sally’s thoughts. That’s usually fine. You’ll still get hits but it will end up being like the difference between “green” and “olive” – the color information is being transferred but they’re going to communicate that differently.

Wayfarer: That’s for surface thought stuff.

Rose Cinderfall: @PatchesTheCoydog mutual practice is okay too

Chirotractor: I think that being loud can be a defensive measure. If you think your thoughts loudly its harder to hear and be influenced by others

Clovers: Conversational trickery goes a long way

Rose Cinderfall: holy wow i am dizzy

Wayfarer: Being bored, too, seems to help actually.

Wayfarer: Well, helps not be read.

Wayfarer: Doesn’t help the influence stuff as much.

Rainsong: (“What the hell is ‘beige’?!?!”)

Rose Cinderfall: a color

Chirotractor: Did you know that chartruese is an orangey shade?

Chirotractor: I always thought it was more of a greenish burgundy

Rainsong: I thought it was a yellow-y pale green?

Rose Cinderfall: .. you just made me realize i need Vitamin C

Chirotractor: Well shit

Rainsong: checks with Google-sensei

Rainsong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(color)

Wayfarer: Anyhow yeah so if you’re doing unconscious stuff that you don’t want the other person to think about consciously (because they might recognize the intrusion, for example) you can keep things in the abstract but it’s going to be a lot harder to get it to words because you kinda have to “touch” the information in that same abstract “place” in order to prevent it from getting punted up to your level of consciousness.

Alexanderthegreat: Huh

Alexanderthegreat: So it is active in here today

Wayfarer: The chartreuse thing is fun because I actually think that was the word in the story that Rainsong is alluding to but I don’t remember exactly.

Wayfarer: I don’t think it was beige tho because I was like, 12 or 13, I probably knew beige was a color. But it was one of those weird ones.

Wayfarer: I wasn’t getting a good read on the actual color so I went “fuck it I’ll grab the word” and then I didn’t know the word was a color so I just called it out lmao

Rainsong: Yep. I couldn’t swear to which colour it was, either, to be fair

ceahhettan: Lol.

Chirotractor: yeah chartruese is my generic ‘strange colour’

Chirotractor: the actual colour I was thinking of was ochre

Wayfarer: I had chartreuse in mind so someone somewhere is maybe doing a telepathy.

Wayfarer: Ochre is a fake idea.

Chirotractor: which I thought was a much darker shade of red than it is

Rainsong: ‘Puce’ is another fun one: purple-tinged dark brown. Literally the colour of a dog-flea

Wayfarer: Ochre isn’t real.

Wayfarer: Ochre in my head lives next to like, burnt sienna.

Rose Cinderfall: Speaking of not putting things in words, I absolutely love pre-verbal proto-concepts

Chirotractor: I mean google says it looks a lot like egg yolks or curry spice

Unicornzilla: “Salmon is not a color” but mummy brown is a pigment.

Rose Cinderfall: they help me convey things when i am having trouble translating them to words…

Clovers: Probably because it’s more natural? @Rose Cinderfall

Rose Cinderfall: it is. I think in concepts, it seems

Clovers: Like for lowish level telepathic communication.

Chirotractor: everyone thinks in concepts

Chirotractor: that’s why they’re concepts

Clovers: It’s far better than words

ceahhettan: Salmon is an awful colour. Salmon, weird beige, and light lavender are my brains go to filler colours for blocking off folks from catching much.

Rose Cinderfall: @Chirotractor from what i understand, many people think in words?

Chirotractor: no

ceahhettan: Not coincidentally, those are the wall colours of the house I grew up in. They’re excellently boring and obnoxious.

ceahhettan: There are people who think in words. Fewer than you’d think however.

Chirotractor: people slap words onto their thoughts to pin them in shape and make them stay longer so they can act or communicate them

Chirotractor: thoughts are all vague yet specific diaphanous things

Rose Cinderfall: I think in a strange form that is not visual, audial, or tactile.. i think in “knowing”. I think about what i am going to say before i say it, and before i continue typing a sentence, but it’s not in visuals, not in audio, and not in feelings. I never really understood what else it would be, until i learnt about pre-verbal proto-concepts

Rainsong: Once lived in a house that was salmon with red shutters. Yes, everyone house on the block was just as ugly.

Chirotractor: congrats rose on having a perfectly normal average mind 😛

Chirotractor: or well.. fucked up for reasons other than that

Chirotractor: ugly houses are an artform we need to bring back

Rose Cinderfall: well in that case, before i learnt about proto-concepts, i didn’t manage to ask people and actually get an answer ._.

Rose Cinderfall: everyone would say “i don’t know” when i asked them what my form of thinking is

Chirotractor: I am sick to shit of suburban openconcept white and beige houses

Chirotractor: that’s because most people are morons rose

Rose Cinderfall: … okay?

Rainsong: How about open-concept crinsom chalets?

Chirotractor: No like actually most people just dont think about thinking

Chirotractor: Even if theyre literally training for telepathy

Chirotractor: Which i think makes them a bit stupid

Clovers: @Chirotractor what color is your house?

Chirotractor: Off-white

Rose Cinderfall: .. how would one not think about thinking and about thoughts, when they are training for telepathy?

Clovers: Just checking

Rose Cinderfall: that doesn’t make much sense to me

Clovers: My neighbors (two houses always in cul-de-sac) painted their house green. I really like it but don’t want to seem like I’m copying them so I’m thinking about going with blue.

Rainsong: tTo be fair, there are a lot of stupid people in the world)

Rainsong: (Exhibit A: the neighbour who does her makeup and texts at the same time… while driving through a roundabout in heavy traffic)

Rainsong: (Yes, her poor car has dings…)

Wayfarer: Everyone thinks in concepts but then turns the concepts into words, and importantly the telepathy happens at the concept point, and then when we turn them into words it’s our words. Understanding sensation vs perception is a really important thing when talking about experiences, turns out!!!

Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer: Do they turn the concepts into words when they communicate outwardly (i.e. speaking and typing) or before that? i rarely do it unless i try to communicate my thoughts. I have to translate from concept to words when i want to speak..

Wayfarer: Uh, I mean they definitely do it before talking because they have to do it in order to talk. Usually it’s at the point that it’s being transferred into conscious awareness and instantiated into a “thought” or so. But I mean “when it happens” is the answer I can give. “It varies”

Rose Cinderfall: okay

Rose Cinderfall: @Wayfarer Oh. Perhaps it will be useful to tell you what exactly went wrong in that session.. I tried to disconnect from that person (the plural system), but felt like i was connected deep into them at multiple points. So I tried to sense where all my connections were, including any possible connections in their brain that might be mine. I closed all of those, and that’s when the person suddenly said they didn’t know who they were anymore, that they didn’t know who was fronting, and that’s when i panicked. I figured some of the connections i closed weren’t mine. So I opened those i suspected of that, back up. They got back to their usual fronting alter as soon as i did that.. But afterwards, they claim that actually, there was never any danger, the alters weren’t gone, they were just having a moment alike those they have had before occassionally.

Rose Cinderfall: I don’t know which of us is right..

Rose Cinderfall: I’m just glad their system isn’t in shambles.

Wayfarer: My hot tip for dealing with life is to assume the person who has the experience knows more about the experience than I do

Rose Cinderfall: I know more about telepathy, they know more about their own disorder. So who do i assume knows more in that case?

Kate Embers: If psychiatrists had that belief my life would’ve been easier :joy:

Rainsong: Them

Rose Cinderfall: okay

Wayfarer: They’re the one telling you about their experience, you’re interloping. If they’re telling you it’s fine, go with that.

Wayfarer: And yeah Kate that’s the big problem with the psychological imperialism of modern medicine. When psychology pivoted to trying to be a medical profession it opened the door for the psychiatrists to act like they know more about a person than the person does. But that’s not how people or experiences work, and you can’t actually help people by trying to fix shit that you think is wrong instead of the shit they think is wrong.

Wayfarer: There’s much to be said for existentialist psychology, in truth.

Rose Cinderfall: being the daughter of someone who works in psychiatry is kind of awful. I am a fan of Peter Breggin’s stance on psychiatry…

Rose Cinderfall: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Breggin

Rose Cinderfall: he battled to ban lobotomy.. 🙂

Wayfarer: The goal should be to provide options and tools to patients to help them live the lives they want to live, rather than telling people how they should live their lives. There are some exceptions perhaps in things like major depression where the individual may not want to live a life at all, but even in those cases it’s worth exploring how we can support patients in their goals and in helping them change those goals when the goals are such as “killing myself” or whatever.

Rainsong: Except in cases of malignant tumours, I presume? (re lobotomy) Kind of like the exception in de-clawing bans?

Wayfarer: Rather than imperializing people by telling them how they out to be.

Wayfarer: Specifically he battled transorbital lobotomy. Worth being specific there.

Rose Cinderfall: personally, this may be a bit of a controversial opinion, but i am of the opinion that before assuming someone is incurably depressed, one should look at the person’s life, see what they’re not satisfied with, and try to make their life a life they are satisfied with.. I am of the opinion that dissatisfaction and sadness with life and one’s current environment gets misdiagnosed as depression..

Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: https://breggin.com/psychosurgery-page/

Wayfarer: I mean, yes? That’s part of making a differential diagnosis between adjustment disorders and depression.

Wayfarer: Not a hot take, just a normal take.

Rose Cinderfall: then why does it seem to me like many doctors don’t bother to make that distinction and just put a depression diagnosis on the person and pop an SSRI into their throat?

Wayfarer: Because most doctors are bad at psychiatry, because of all the stuff I’ve been talking about all day about medicalization etc.

ceahhettan: Because many doctors don’t bother– what Wayfarer said.

Wayfarer: Especially most general practice doctors who usually have maybe one course on psychology and maybe a rotation on a psychiatric ward.

ceahhettan: And then you get treatment emergent mania and other such fun things.

Wayfarer: Your garden variety master’s level counselor or LCSW usually has a more nuanced understanding of psychiatry than a general practice physician.

Kate Embers: My C-PTSD was misdiagnosed as Bipolar type 2 and treated accordingly. Needless to say it didn’t work out. Because these idiots never bothered to check that it was actually my flight-instinct going overboard with me.

ceahhettan: Oh so. I was reading a trade journal the other day and the FMCSA is considering making a standard depression screening questionnaire part of the DOT physical. That should be funny as shit.

Wayfarer: As you said before, trauma is especially misunderstood. I think there are a number of social reasons for why. I reckon a just world fallacy plays into a lot of it, and also that there isn’t much a physician can do for trauma.

ceahhettan: (Drivers already lie on the DOT physical all the time. They’ll likely just lie on the questionnaire.)

Wayfarer: One of the problems of physicians is that they are not immune to the problem of “if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Psychiatrists can write prescriptions, so they tend to diagnose and treat things that you can treat with prescriptions.

Wayfarer: Conversely, therapists of various stripes can’t write prescriptions, and are more likely to make diagnoses that they can treat.

Kate Embers: If they did they’d realize that probably well over 10% of people have C-PTSD which in most cases comes from bad parenting and abusive partners (and most people become abusive due to shitty upbringing) and that’s a reality many don’t want to face. At least a little theory of mine.

Wayfarer: The truth is that all the evidence based medicine in the world has only reinforced that depth therapy is the only way to get enduring longterm benefits for clients, but depth therapies take time, which in turn means money, so medical systems continue to focus on magic pills versus talking to patients.

Chirotractor: Prolly doesnt help that patients dont always want to do the introspection necessayy

ceahhettan: I mean the introspection sucks shit. So.

Chirotractor: And would preffer a magic ‘fix me’ pill

Wayfarer: But yeah for the most part physicians want to diagnose things like bipolar disorder because bipolar disorder is treatable with medicine, so sayeth the literature, whereas PTSD usually requires actually talking to a person and doing the work.

Wayfarer: Yeah that’s certainly part of it as well.

ceahhettan: But in the long term it’s a better solution, especially with support provided through the process etc. And then you have to keep doing it! Forever.

ceahhettan: And I mean mood disorders don’t have a positive outlook with medication alone and no therapy. My aunt is a great example of that one. But.

Wayfarer: My hot take there is if you would rather have the disorder than do the work to make the disorder go away, then… okay? Job done. Ultimately nobody but us can fix our minds. Therapists can help, medicines can help, but the actual work is up to us. Some people don’t want to do that work, or more tragically can’t do that work, and that sucks and is because the whole world sucks and nobody said it would be fair.

Kate Embers: People prefer little work for an immediate reward over a lot of work with a delayed but greater reward. As a tendency. It’s in part something of modern society. “Instant gratification” as they call it. People want something and they want it now and they’re not willing to put in years of work in many cases.

Chirotractor: Meanwhile im having trouble finding a therapist who doesnt spout coping platitudes at me untill i shut up and then blame me for the lacknof progress

Wayfarer: lmao

Kate Embers: I’ve been searching for a public trauma therapist since June 2018. I am to this day not in therapy :joy:

Wayfarer: Kinda common unfortunately. Look into a psychodynamic therapist, though it can be hard to find one anymore.

Wayfarer: CBT is garbage and I am extremely vindicated now that the research is overwhelmingly supporting that position.

Wayfarer: It does well to suppress the symptoms but doesn’t address the causes.

Kate Embers: If you make research with the inner wish of proving it true you’re gonna find it true.

Wayfarer: The problem of science generally has always been that people have to do it. Alas,,,

ceahhettan: Mood.

Rainsong: Often but not always, cf desperate Soviet scientists trying to prove a materialist explanation for telepathy…

Wayfarer: At least now we’re starting as a whole to come around to the realization that there’s no such thing as an objective, unbiased researcher.

Kate Embers: I once went to a test session with a behavioral therapist and when I started talking about my trauma she kept interrupting me because I talked about my trauma and not about the here and now.

Wayfarer: Still a lot of fields suffering from that but it is slowly happening. Anyhow that’s why I’m a transpersonal~~~ psychologist.

Rose Cinderfall: when it comes to trauma treatment

Rose Cinderfall: i am kind of focusing my hopes on EMDR

Rose Cinderfall: EMDR has proven to be extremely hard to get over here, but EMDR is also rumored to be excellent at treating trauma things.. and Rainsong says it’s similar (or even based on?) EFT, so that helps, too.

Kate Embers: @Rose Cinderfall I’ve also heard lots of great things about EMDR but I can’t wrap my head around how it’s supposed to work 😂

Rainsong: (similar to – not based on)

PatchesTheCoydog: My hot take there is if you would rather have the disorder than do the work to make the disorder go away, then… okay? Job done. Ultimately nobody but us can fix our minds. Therapists can help, medicines can help, but the actual work is up to us. Some people don’t want to do that work, or more tragically can’t do that work, and that sucks and is because the whole world sucks and nobody said it would be fair. ” This is a false dichotomy. It’s possible to take a third option-“I love the way my mind works and fuck the idea it’s disordered and pee n everyone who tries to call who I am an illness. It’s a rare type of mind that didn’t come with a users manual thuogh so I need to learn to work with it, not fix it but find situatins I functin best in and deal with situatins don’t function well in as best I can. I’ll also actively encurage the parts of it I like even if other people call it a disorder because pee on them”

PatchesTheCoydog: (This approach I take. Also why I’m not so uch into therapists.. at least ne of reasons… but very interested in the ‘learning to do better with what I have and cope with’ sort of thing)

Wayfarer: Yeah man of course there’s a third way, that third way isn’t seeing therapists.

Wayfarer: So like, the therapist’s approach is irrelevant?

Wayfarer: You really really want to be on the other side of a fight here but like, nobody is advancing the positions you’re desperately projecting so :shrug:

PatchesTheCoydog: No, just responding. If not on other side of fight(which… not want to be, I do tend it for granted I am when comes to this subject thugh hence my baseline level of… why come across as look like am wanting to be n the other side of a fight) than pointing out that there’s a third option here is just clarifying.

PatchesTheCoydog: (That the third option is rarelyt acknowledged or mentined is one of the things that makes trying to take the third option more difficult)

Wayfarer: Fair enough. In this case we were talking about treatment approaches which kind of assumes a person wants treatment. In any case, no worries.

PatchesTheCoydog: With specific subject trauma-engendered stuff some kind of ameloriaton something evne I wuld want(just.. not going therapists for becauseof whole complicated thing).In general thugh when tlking abut if somene wants treatment and existence of third option the question needs to be asked of “do yu want treatment or do you want your life to be better and to have ways to deal with things that are difficult for you right now” which aren’t the same thing but often taken for granted that they necessarily are. Though yeah, I was kind of interrupting cnversation with my own issues and viewpoint on related matters which isn’t necessarily applicable here and apologize(though do think third option stuff needs discussed more in general). Hope all well/we return yu to regularly scheduled conversation/etc

Rainsong: Your point of view is important, too, Patches.

Rainsong: PTSD is damage, rather than an innate part of the person. So there are already differences in the basic concept.

Rainsong: To take a relatively neutral counter-example, being left-handed is hella inconvenient in modern North America, but there’s nothing technically wrong with it

Chirotractor: apart from it being immoral and a sign of malefic influence

Rainsong: PTSD is closer to having a fracture

Impromptu Discussion of Dissociative Identity Disorders & Telepathy

Instructor: Wayfarer Date: February 9, 2020 (Sunday)

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Instructor: Wayfarer
Date: February 9, 2020 (Sunday)