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bodyetal[Riley’s foreword:]
this iz written from my experience, + while im rlly frustrated at the lack of writing on this from the perspective of ppl like me, i don’t like writing informational stuff @ all. i kant write in a professional style, i’m not rlly that good of an educator, and more importantly i dont want 2 be. instead, this is being written (@ my request) by my headmatez, using only my perspective. u kan think of it as an interview.
i would like 2 politely ask that system hosts with experiences of dormancy (either their own or of mourning a headmate’z) not make this post about themselvez. trust me, i kno hostz experience dormancy trauma. it’z the only kind ive ever seen discussed.
———
Dormancy is rarely talked about, and when it is, it generally only focuses on the host perspective.
Discussions of how dormancy can be traumatic to the dormant person only focus on hosts/cores (or headmates who believed themselves to be hosts) returning to a life that no longer “belongs” to them. Discussions of non-hosts going dormant generally focus on how distressing that is for the remaining people who miss them. The closest we’ve gotten to something that acknowledges dormancy-related trauma for non-hosts is headmates returning from dormancy to a world that is either much safer or much more dangerous than they remember, but not really on how they may feel about the dormancy itself.
We have seen nothing on the experience of being gone—asleep, dead, comatose—and then returning to a world where you are not even seen as a person, capable of real suffering or deserving of basic respect. We certainly haven’t seen anything acknowledging it as trauma, one that is uniquely suffered by people who are not perceived as hosts.
Traumatic invalidation is near-ubiquitous for plural folks, but it is especially compounded for non-hosts. Headmates who are not as identified with the body, present in daily life, or longstanding are frequently treated (by outsiders and hosts alike) as less real, less important, and/or lacking moral status. For decades, the prevailing psychiatric opinion was that treatment for MPD required denying the personhood and destroying the agency of any non-host entities. That is no longer considered true by experts, but remains both the most popular assumption of the public and the opinion of some practicing psychologists.
And though many would prefer not to think too hard about it, it cannot be ignored that the doubt spirals so often engaged in by hosts inherently deny the personhood of non-hosts, in ways that are both damaging and rarely adequately addressed. Space is often not given for non-hosts to process these experiences—it is not rare for hosts to process those feelings on their behalf, treating their headmates’ traumatic invalidation as their own personal burden (or a vessel for their guilt).
That is enough to be utterly traumatizing on its own. Now imagine how it combines with the trauma of losing weeks, months, or years of your life. Then imagine how that combines with the trauma of realizing you were unmourned, forgotten. In some cases, your absence may have been celebrated—if not directly, then implicitly by a culture that deems your existence a symptom of disease.
We say imagine, but really, we mean ask. Ask someone that happened to, because if you know a few plurals, you almost certainly know someone who experienced it. Maybe you just need to ask your headmate—how does that feel? (And we do mean it—ask them. Just don’t expect a response, and especially don’t expect one you’ll like.)
We have a short answer: it feels horrible. It is traumatizing, and many who experience it are never given the chance to process it as a trauma. Almost unanimously, those we’ve talked to who’ve experienced it say the worst part is realizing that it is provably a fact that no one cared that they were gone. How do you ever believe people really care about you again, after that? How do you believe them?
Many develop PTSD, but to our knowledge few receive treatment. Riley developed PTSD with a comorbid sleep phobia so debilitating that, during one particularly severe episode, they (and the Body) did not sleep for three days. It took over a year for them to be able to go to sleep or switch out alone. And despite this, it was two and a half years before they received any amount of PTSD treatment. The main reason for that was simply that it wasn’t “high priority,” for reasons that are both private and irrelevant; the relevant point is that they went unhelped for years, and that they’re still extremely fortunate in that we don’t know a single other non-host who ever received specialized PTSD support for their dormancy.
We don’t mean to only focus on the misery, or on trying to get hosts to understand how this uniquely impacts not-them. Maybe we would leave it at that if there was anything that covered recovery, but there really isn’t (we’ve checked). So we do want to say that, while this is horrible and under-discussed and there is a massive dearth of resources, it is not hopeless for non-hosts recovering from this. We plan to make a separate and more practical resource. In the meantime, we have loose advice.
First and foremost, if dormancy traumatized you, you are allowed to consider it a trauma. You harm no one by considering it trauma—and you may harm yourself by denying your experience. It is extremely common for people returning from dormancy to experience post-traumatic stress, including to the point of developing post-traumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder. If that's true for you, you have the right to consider yourself to have developed PTSD. (For what it's worth, Riley's PTSD is functionally indistinguishable from another headmate's PTSD due to body trauma.) You have the right to use PTSD resources, and you may find them to be very helpful, though we've never found anything that felt specific enough. (Sorry.) Grief and disability trauma resources were the most relevant.
We wish this post had more useful information, but we hope it at least has relatable information. The experience is often a devastating one, and made much, much worse by isolation and invalidation. So while we still intend to make a more comprehensive resource, we at least hope to make it clear that anyone who's experienced dormancy is not alone.
this iz written from my experience, + while im rlly frustrated at the lack of writing on this from the perspective of ppl like me, i don’t like writing informational stuff @ all. i kant write in a professional style, i’m not rlly that good of an educator, and more importantly i dont want 2 be. instead, this is being written (@ my request) by my headmatez, using only my perspective. u kan think of it as an interview.
i would like 2 politely ask that system hosts with experiences of dormancy (either their own or of mourning a headmate’z) not make this post about themselvez. trust me, i kno hostz experience dormancy trauma. it’z the only kind ive ever seen discussed.
———
Dormancy is rarely talked about, and when it is, it generally only focuses on the host perspective.
Discussions of how dormancy can be traumatic to the dormant person only focus on hosts/cores (or headmates who believed themselves to be hosts) returning to a life that no longer “belongs” to them. Discussions of non-hosts going dormant generally focus on how distressing that is for the remaining people who miss them. The closest we’ve gotten to something that acknowledges dormancy-related trauma for non-hosts is headmates returning from dormancy to a world that is either much safer or much more dangerous than they remember, but not really on how they may feel about the dormancy itself.
We have seen nothing on the experience of being gone—asleep, dead, comatose—and then returning to a world where you are not even seen as a person, capable of real suffering or deserving of basic respect. We certainly haven’t seen anything acknowledging it as trauma, one that is uniquely suffered by people who are not perceived as hosts.
Traumatic invalidation is near-ubiquitous for plural folks, but it is especially compounded for non-hosts. Headmates who are not as identified with the body, present in daily life, or longstanding are frequently treated (by outsiders and hosts alike) as less real, less important, and/or lacking moral status. For decades, the prevailing psychiatric opinion was that treatment for MPD required denying the personhood and destroying the agency of any non-host entities. That is no longer considered true by experts, but remains both the most popular assumption of the public and the opinion of some practicing psychologists.
And though many would prefer not to think too hard about it, it cannot be ignored that the doubt spirals so often engaged in by hosts inherently deny the personhood of non-hosts, in ways that are both damaging and rarely adequately addressed. Space is often not given for non-hosts to process these experiences—it is not rare for hosts to process those feelings on their behalf, treating their headmates’ traumatic invalidation as their own personal burden (or a vessel for their guilt).
That is enough to be utterly traumatizing on its own. Now imagine how it combines with the trauma of losing weeks, months, or years of your life. Then imagine how that combines with the trauma of realizing you were unmourned, forgotten. In some cases, your absence may have been celebrated—if not directly, then implicitly by a culture that deems your existence a symptom of disease.
We say imagine, but really, we mean ask. Ask someone that happened to, because if you know a few plurals, you almost certainly know someone who experienced it. Maybe you just need to ask your headmate—how does that feel? (And we do mean it—ask them. Just don’t expect a response, and especially don’t expect one you’ll like.)
We have a short answer: it feels horrible. It is traumatizing, and many who experience it are never given the chance to process it as a trauma. Almost unanimously, those we’ve talked to who’ve experienced it say the worst part is realizing that it is provably a fact that no one cared that they were gone. How do you ever believe people really care about you again, after that? How do you believe them?
Many develop PTSD, but to our knowledge few receive treatment. Riley developed PTSD with a comorbid sleep phobia so debilitating that, during one particularly severe episode, they (and the Body) did not sleep for three days. It took over a year for them to be able to go to sleep or switch out alone. And despite this, it was two and a half years before they received any amount of PTSD treatment. The main reason for that was simply that it wasn’t “high priority,” for reasons that are both private and irrelevant; the relevant point is that they went unhelped for years, and that they’re still extremely fortunate in that we don’t know a single other non-host who ever received specialized PTSD support for their dormancy.
We don’t mean to only focus on the misery, or on trying to get hosts to understand how this uniquely impacts not-them. Maybe we would leave it at that if there was anything that covered recovery, but there really isn’t (we’ve checked). So we do want to say that, while this is horrible and under-discussed and there is a massive dearth of resources, it is not hopeless for non-hosts recovering from this. We plan to make a separate and more practical resource. In the meantime, we have loose advice.
First and foremost, if dormancy traumatized you, you are allowed to consider it a trauma. You harm no one by considering it trauma—and you may harm yourself by denying your experience. It is extremely common for people returning from dormancy to experience post-traumatic stress, including to the point of developing post-traumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder. If that's true for you, you have the right to consider yourself to have developed PTSD. (For what it's worth, Riley's PTSD is functionally indistinguishable from another headmate's PTSD due to body trauma.) You have the right to use PTSD resources, and you may find them to be very helpful, though we've never found anything that felt specific enough. (Sorry.) Grief and disability trauma resources were the most relevant.
We wish this post had more useful information, but we hope it at least has relatable information. The experience is often a devastating one, and made much, much worse by isolation and invalidation. So while we still intend to make a more comprehensive resource, we at least hope to make it clear that anyone who's experienced dormancy is not alone.
