Trauma- based Systems

[sightless-light.livejournal.com]

Hello, all!

I've recently had a problem.  I've had someone I considered a dear friend tell me that he didn't believe I was a multiple because I am not a trauma- based system.  Now, while I understand that there are trauma- based systems out there, I do not believe that all multiples are.  I know I'm not a trauma- based multiple.  I know for a fact that 2 of my soulbonds are previous lives, one is a walk in, and one just recently moved in, but isn't really a personality.  More like an entity.  One of my best friends is also a non- trauma- based System.  Autumn and wRaith have been together a very long time, on top of her being a medium for others.  I wanted to know if anyone else believed as I do (or doesn't) and why.  Thanks for your time!

-Heather, of the SightlessLight System

Comments

[ghostcreature.livejournal.com]

i agree. with you, rather, because we're not a trauma-based system either.

[liferain.livejournal.com]

Vi is a trauma split, but I know for a fact that there are others out there who have had no trauma and have this variation of functionality. A girl in my class at college is a multiple and she's had a pretty good life, with no major trauma to speak of (and heck, there are more individuals in that system than there are in mine, haha; it's just Vi and I, whereas she had up to 20).

I'm sorry that your friend doesn't trust your word. :(

[cirape.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, this system is not trauma based. Unless you count (self imposed) isolation as trauma.

[crystalseraph.livejournal.com]

We aren't trauma based, to our knowledge, though they have helped in times of distress.

[lion-azure.livejournal.com]

Non-trauma based system here. The host has gone through trauma, but we weren't around for that. In fact, we popped up around the time our host was the happiest she's ever been in her life. So much for the old "you're just coping mechanisms" line.

[freakshownia.livejournal.com]

We're not trauma-based either. I think most people in this community will agree with you.

[20splinters.livejournal.com]

Some of us are trauma splits, but we were already multiple when those happened! We don't honestly know if we're trauma-based or not, and believe it is possible for both types to exist and become completely functional.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh, that thing crops up all the time... the "it has to be trauma-based" assumption, that is.

Not sure if your friend is into doing some serious reading or is going to insist on sticking by what their Psych 101 textbook said, but there are some pretty interesting reports of historical cases in which there didn't seem to be any trauma as a precipitating factor for someone's becoming multiple.

(Of course, yeah, I suppose someone could blow it off with "well there must have been trauma at *some* point and it just wasn't reported," but... eh.)

[kyouketsusha.livejournal.com]

No trauma here. :) We know more non-trauma-based than trauma-based, I think!

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

Same with us.

[krystale.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I believe in non trauma, but we suspend disbelief. I think that walk ins and past lives (although personally I don't believe in past lives being able to be here, they are us, not with us, just my opinion and experience) are valid. Otherkin and all that as well. But I believe that even for walk-ins something has to cause a crack in the mind. Now... here's the thing... I don't believe all trauma, just like all stress, is neccicarially bad, I can't think of any, hmm... maybe rollercoasters? I hate those... but whatever. I think that if it happens early enough in life it needn't be a very big crack, and I personally think this is where "non trauma" multiples come from.

[cactus-guys.livejournal.com]

We're not a trauma system. A few of us (Sophy definitely, Lynn to an extent) are trauma splits, but we're not all built around trauma.

We think that the first 'split' happening, sort of opened a door, and now that's open, lots of other people, even if they're unrelated to anything external, can drift through. :)

[scarol.livejournal.com]

We are not trauma-based either. We hope your friend gets educated in this matter.

-Emmiline

[polishedbones.livejournal.com]

not entirely sure if we're not trauma-based or not (long story), but we don't think the origins or 'cause' or whatever matters- you're plural if you're plural. *shrug*

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

We're trauma-based. I didn't believe in non-traum-based multiplicity for a long time. I felt that those who claim to be so had repressed the memories of whatever trauma. Until we became close friends with a system that is, without a doubt, not trauma-based. Talking to them, there is no way to discredit their multiplicity. And I do believe them when they say there was no trauma in their past. They are quite sane and quite lucid. There has been one event, that has been disclosed to us, that could be catagorized as traumatic, but that would not result in as many members as share their body. So I agree with you, now, that non-trauma-based multiplicity is a very real thing. I am sorry your friend chooses not to agree. I hope he will be more open-minded one day.

[pthalo]

eh, I feel it's best not to get into the splitting hairs arena of whether one event was traumatic enough to create alters and whether it was traumatic enough to create a lot or only a few. Every person is different and everyone has their own mountains to cross and burdens to bear. What is minor to one is major to another and what is major to another is unbearably hard or laughably easy to another.

Case in point, when we were hospitalised, there was a girl who had been flashed by her uncle once at age 12. She wasn't touched, she just saw his parts for a second or so then she left and told her mother and after that she never had to see her uncle again. I think he was even prosecuted for it.

At the time, we were about 15 and like most 15 year olds we were doing that awful self pity thing and the world revovlved around us, yada yada. We knew that what happened to her was wrong, and didn't say anything to her about it, but internally we felt that it wasn't that big of a deal what she'd been through.

As a result of the incident that happened to her, she became schizophrenic, hearing voices and having hallucinations and she was bulimic and she coped with her abuse a lot worse than we coped with ours (we coped pretty poorly for a long time as well and we're multiple but schizophrenia is worse.) She was in pretty bad shape. Eventually, she had to be discharged to a higher security facility than the one we were at and like most teenagers would do under similar circumstances, those of us who were in the trauma group (there was a special group at the hospital that met on monday's for abuse survivors) were gossiping about her.

One of us (in this system) said that we felt it was really weird that she had been so severely affected when it was just one little thing that had happened to her. I cringe writing this now because we see how wrong it is, but we 15 at the time and kinda self-centered and wrapped up in "I had the worstest childhood in the world! no one else has the right to ever be upset about whatever happened to them! yay!" yeah. and so one of the girls who wasn't in trauma group asked what we meant, and it was explained briefly what had happened to her, either by us or by one of the other girls in trauma group and that girl, who had never been abused said "that's horrible! that's really bad. i can't imagine what it must have been like for her!"

And that's true. For a person living in a system that has been raped and otherwise abused over an extensive period of time, especially at the immature age of 15, something like what happened to that girl seems trivial. But she was obviously horribly affected by it, her life was forever changed, she was quite clearly suffering from it. Does it really matter whether someone else lived through years of the stuff while her abuse only lasted a few seconds? No. And I bet she's still working on healing after all these years, that's how bad, to her, that second or two was.

Now, I'm not saying that your multiple friends are really trauma based because of that one incident, that's something only they can decide. They could well have been born that way, or the incident might have created it. Only they can know, I don't live in their system, or even know who you're talking about (nor am I curious really) so I can't tell you can't tell you anything about them. I'm just saying that from the outside, we aren't able to judge whether an incident was "bad enough" to do whatever damage is currently apparent.

(and whether having lots of alters is a sign of damage or just "the way things are" kind of like left handedness vs right handedness is an entirely differenty debate.)

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thankyou for your verbal vomit. What happened to your friend was horrible. And would be traumatizing. My friends are members of this community and have seen my comment. The one you felt the need to write this shit load of information as a response to, for some reason. And they were grateful for my response and including them as an example. I am not them, you are not them, but I know what they have told me and they have said they were born this way and I believe them. End of story. Bye bye.

[pthalo]

I can't figure out what part of my comment upset you, but I appologise for it. As I said, when we made that statement, 7 years ago, we were quite immature, and your comment that what happened to them wasn't bad enough to create that many alters reminded me of the thinking that we used to engage in, but later learned that it was faulty, and so I shared with you what we'd learned because you seemed to be making a similar mistake. I can't figure out what the rest of your comment means, but I'm glad that your friends were happy about your comment and was not implying that I felt you were wrong to use them as an example.

[pthalo]

Oh, and she wasn't really our friend, she was just some random kid we knew at the hospital a long time ago. Obviously it was horrible and traumatising; you can tell that by her reaction to it.

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

I already said it was traumatizing and horrible. Perhaps you didn't read my former reply to you.

[pthalo]

My comment meant "yes, I agree with you when you said that what happened to the person in question was traumatising and horrible; it is obvious."

[basketthecase.livejournal.com]

Ah, my apologies then.

[pthalo]

It's okay. :)

[basketthecase.livejournal.com]

Wrong journal. This is hold_me_coldly. Xc)

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, why is this worth getting upset over? People disagree all the time on this community. I don't agree with a lot of what is said here, but usually I don't say anything, because if I were to argue it out over every last point I disagreed with, I wouldn't have any free time left. Besides, part of the point of this community is to share different ideas/theories/paradigms, not to come to a single "one, right answer." I've been accused of trying to push people at what I thought was a "right answer" in the past, which is another part of why I don't jump in over every thing I disagree with, whether it's ideas about multiplicity that don't apply to me or ideas about other things seen as "disorders" and their cause and cure, etc, that are at odds with my own experiences.

Someone who disagrees with you is not necessarily attacking you.

-Lilac

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I was in a very bad place when I responded to their comment last night and I apologized. I see now what was meant by it and have let it go. Thankyou for your point of view.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Okay, thanks for settling it-- no harm done.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

What I'm thinking here is 'trigger not the cause'. A lot of other things -- I'm not necessarily talking about sexual abuse -- could have happened to her previous to the flashing incident. Also the flashing explanation lets her parents off the hook for any part they might have had in her deterioration.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

We're nontrauma ourselves.

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

Check out the verbal-vomit some shithead said to my comment about you guys. It's absolutely fucking... argh!

[phen0type.livejournal.com]

Please refrain from making personal attacks in this community. It is one thing to disagree with someone, and it is another to flame someone.

- Richard

[hold-me-coldly.livejournal.com]

Understood.

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

I don't have any clue how I joined the Kasiyan Group. Me and most of the others in The Clique started hanging out during the body's teen years. Maybe our trauma was high school because school sucked! Though there are some others in The Clique like Ginger Snap who joined the group like a couple years ago or whatever. I know she's not because of trauma. She just joined the group. What else. Hmm. The babies that are being born definitely aren't because of trauma. They were born to their mothers. I don't know what I"m talking about because I'm just bored. So ignore me. =^.^=
LeAnne

[seaclans.livejournal.com]

Some of us are trauma based I suppose. A lot aren't. And then there are people who live in the regions we do inside who aren't really us at all. I don't think trauma is a requirement. I'm not even sure that the trauma itself is the causitive factor in systems that are trauma based.

What I mean is, the people come into being or join, sometimes in connection to a trauma and sometimes not. Some current theories of mind development suggest that minds are made of agents, sub-personalities etc. For most people either they don't notice this or the agents blend fairly seemlessly.

I kinda think multiplicity is just a different way for a mind to organize itself. A variation as it were.

All this is without getting into the levels of spirituality or shamanism that may be a whole other sphere for explaining the process.

I think pretty much everything that is a new or different phenomenon to humans gets divided up into "this is how it is" and "it can't be that way".
At least for awhile. seems to be a sort of inbuilt rigidness for most people/societies. Eventually it all seems to loosen up more and accept added possibilities.

There's our two cents.

[pthalo]

we're trauma based. We believe in trauma based and "born that way" systems.

[gimmexbrains.livejournal.com]

For the most part, we're trauma-free. And I feel that there really isn't that many things that are truly traumatic in our lives anyways. Though there was a few phases in our lives that weren't so "bright and sunny" where certain people came out and fronted primarily.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Non-trauma based here. We've known groups that were both trauma-based and not.

[phen0type.livejournal.com]

We are non-trauma based. Although we've certainly dealt with our share of trauma, our separate consciousnesses did not originate that way. I do hope that helped.

Richard
Fen Group