We are not mental health professionals. While one of us is training to go into the field of psychology, we are not your therapists or psychologists. Do not take anything here as diagnosis or fact, but rather a nudge for consideration.
It's important that in these contexts you keep an open mind, since it can be incredibly damaging to box yourself into something without consideration for other causes or sources.
Cultural Appropriation
Therianthropy In Witchcraft | Ethical Taxidermy | Quadrobics
Maladaptive Daydreaming | Psychosis | Dissociative Disorders
Info
Info
Info
Info
What you're experiencing might not be anything at all, but rather a severe and maladaptive detachment from reality and deep immersion into your own daydreams and imagination. You get so caught up on focusing on it that your brain starts to believe it's actually real and, as a byproduct, you put labels to your experiences based off of what you feel is real, but is not actually your reality.
Maladaptive daydreaming, in most cases, is compulsionary, meaning it is difficult if not impossible to control it when it happens. This is important to recognize because you may see this and think it doesn't apply to you because of it being consistent and repetitive, but in reality maladaptive daydreaming is what causes these things to be so frequent and reoccurring and repetitive.
That being said, this is not to completely invalidate your experiences. As aforementioned, maladaptive daydreaming causes these daydreams to feel like your reality, so while your experiences directly may not be grounded in reality, it doesn't mean your emotions and reactions to that are invalid or fake.
Just be sure to be mindful of yourself and be more aware of grounding yourself in the moment. It's easy to get carried away. It happens to the best of us!
This is not a diagnosis or fact about your experiences.
Please seek out professional opinions before claiming anything for sure. stay safe!
Psychosis is a symptom of psychotic disorders, or other mental disorders if they come with psychotic features. The core of psychosis is that it is not fully based in reality, and there is an extreme lack of being able to reality check yourself, or be reality checked by others.
This is hard to gauge when you don't have a professional means of assessing it and, in a lot of cases, scenarios of therianthropy, otherkinity, or other similar subjects can be equated to psychosis even when it is not.
This can be extremely damaging to mistake one for the other, and should only be done after an extensive period of research and self assessment and, if available, professional care as well. If you are a minor, do not blindly self diagnose yourself with psychosis until you have researched extensively.
An important method of addressing psychosis is acknowledging if these experiences ever cause you distress. Symptoms of psychosis are called symptoms for a reason, they are disorderly and cause active harm and distress to the person they are effecting, or people around them.
It should be prefaced that if you are experiencing delusions, you should be precautious about forcibly reality checking yourself until you are in a position with a professional to do so for your own safety. You should only begin addressing this if your beliefs are actively causing you distress and active harm, or it's causing harm to the people around you. However, in a lot of cases, even if you are to reality check yourself, it does not make the delusions go away.
That being said, delusions are unshakable beliefs that are not grounded in reality. These delusions feel like your reality, and it's incredibly difficult to get yourself out of the mindset of believing them.
A huge sign or indicator that someone, or yourself, may be exhibiting delusional behavior is if they do not acknowledge reality in of itself. For example, in therianthropy, if that person is refusing to acknowledge that they are currently in a human body and are subject to human life with responsibilities. Or within the fictionkin community, if that person closes themself in a two-dimensional box and limits themself to their kin's interests, personality, etc.
If you are experiencing delusions related to your identity, this does not make you "more valid" than or above people who do not, and it is not an excuse for minimizing other people's experiences with their identity. These delusions should not be encouraged or entertained.
There are many different types of delusions. It would be impossible to go over every single type here, so we recommend reading up on them here.
Under no circumstances should you build upon, contribute to, or entertain someone's delusions.
Appropriate ways to approach someone who is exhibiting delusional behavior includes, but is not limited to:
Acknowledging and comforting them (Ex. "That sounds really scary, do you want to talk about it?"), do not challenge or argue against their delusion, remain calm, without challenging, question the logic or reasoning behind this delusion.
More here
If you are seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting something that is not actually there, that is a hallucination. Hallucinations can come in a lot of different manifestations, and can be anywhere between very vivid, to more conceptual things like presences.
It can be difficult to tell when you are hallucinating. Hallucinations can either be persistent, or only last for a few seconds and go away in a blink of the eye. Hallucinations are also not always indicative of a psychotic disorder, and can be a byproduct of stress, lack of sleep, or other psychological, physical, or mental disturbances.
If you are continually hallucinating, that is not normal, and is not caused by typical meditation, spiritual practice, or other means. Hallucinations are a symptom and are indicative of another issue being present. Please don't ignore this if you are hallucinating, and go seek professional care as soon as possible.
This is not a diagnosis or fact about your experiences.
Please seek out professional opinions before claiming anything for sure. stay safe!
This section was written by someone professionally diagnosed with schizophrenia.
More info on psychosis
Dissociation in this instance is separating yourself and, literally, disassociating yourself from either your own body or identity, or your surroundings. This can cause a maladaptive way of thinking and can develop very unhealthy maladaptive coping mechanisms.
This isn't to say that all dissociation is inherently unhealthy or damaging. It depends on the severity, and context.
Dissociation is broken into two separate branches:
Derealization, and depersonalization.
Derealization is dissociation from your reality. This can mean dissociation from trauma, your surroundings, other people, or anything that is outside of you.
Depersonalization is a dissociation from self. This can mean dissociation from your body, your senses or emotions, or anything that is directly involved with your mind and body.
Dissociation is a very common thing, and everyone experiences it at some time in their life, with or without disorders. It is a natural coping mechanism that is built into everyone's brain as a means of coping with trauma and stress, although everyone experiences it at different severities.
What defines dissociation as disordered is if it greatly interferes with your life or self, and interrupts your ability to live life normally. This can take the form of memory loss/gaps, identity confusion or instability, fuzziness or fogginess, and a more 'floaty' sense of self.
Experiencing these symptoms does not automatically mean you are a system.
Depersonalization and Derealization disorder | Dissociation in PTSD
Dissociative Identity Disorder and Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (abbreviated to 'OSDDID'), are trauma-based dissociative disorders that only form in childhood between the ages of 5-10 years old as a byproduct of severe or repeated childhood trauma. This is not something that can be obtained through spiritual means, by choice, or through trauma later in your life.
Between said ages, you have naturally present "ego states" where your identity is not fully developed. Trauma that occurs can cause dissociative barriers to form between said ego states to form what is known as 'alters', or 'parts'.
Alters take on many different roles, all of which would be impossible to cover here. If you're interested in learning more,
here is a general list of alter roles and identities in OSDDID systems.
Those with OSDDID are commonly referred to as 'systems', but not everyone with OSDDID feels comfortable or identifies with that term.
To preface: Introjects are not equitable to being kin to any degree, and should not be compared or grouped in with the kin community.
Your kintype is adding on to your already developed and existing identity, whereas being an introject makes up the foundation of your identity and is how you split, or 'formed', and you grow to form a unique identity around that.
'Introject' is an umbrella term for alters that are internalized representations of pre-existing people, characters, media, etc.
There are factual introjects (known as factives),
that are based around things that exist in real life, such as real people,
or fictional introjects (known as fictives),
that are based around things from fiction, such as characters from cartoons.
As aforementioned, being an introject is something that you are formed with upon splitting as an alter, and is exclusive to OSDDID. It's not something you can choose, nor is it something that can be acquired or discovered from spiritual means. It is the basis, core, and foundation of your identity, and you have no pre-existing or structured identity outside of it, and you have to grow and develop your own identity on your own.
It's important to mention that while introjects are not equitable to being kin, those with OSDDID and especially introjects can have a stronger connection with being kin, and can influence their identity on a stronger level.
This isn't to say that they are 'more valid' than those who are non-systems, just that the feeling and experience can be a lot more intense and personal due to the trauma they experienced, and their identity's foundation already being structured around things outside of their physical body.
It is common for introjects to form in reflection to the trauma they had experienced to get them to split in the first place, whether it be in reflection to how they were treated, or what their brain found would be necessary to help them in surviving said trauma, and is incredibly necessary for dissociating and separating from the traumatic event.
Similar to introjects, nonhuman alters are alters that form with the identity of a nonhuman thing- such as animals, objects, demons, angels, etc.
This is also not equitable to being kin, as it is the core basis of the identity that the alter forms with. They may connect with it on a similar level as those who are kin do, but not all nonhuman alters do.
By definition, this is not too different from non-systems with nonhuman identities, aside from the context of alter formation rather than a spiritual / psychological connection, or by choice.
Similarly to introjects, nonhuman alters commonly split in reflection to the trauma they had experienced to get them to split in the first place as a means of survival. Their nonhuman identity is, in a lot of means, necessary.
Pseudomemories are false memories that alters can develop or split with. These memories often reflect real life experiences or trauma, but put in a different context, setting, or applied to a different identity, as a means of dissociating yourself from those experiences.
Not all pseudomemories reflect real life experiences, as there may be 'filler memories' to string the bigger memories together and make the overall structure of those memories feel more real and believable.
These are most common in introject or nonhuman alters, but alters that do not fall under those identities can experience them too.
These are not kin memories, as pseudomemories are no more than coping mechanisms to distance from trauma and make trauma less severe, or make it easier to cope with said trauma.
This is not a diagnosis or fact about your experiences.
Please seek out professional opinions before claiming anything for sure. stay safe!
This section was written by someone who is professionally diagnosed with DID.
More info on dissociative disorders