What Counts As TBMC?

I have a question, for systems whove never switched before/have someone frontstuck, how do you deal with that? Like how do you get them unfrontstuck? Our host has been frontstuck for two years and we dont know what to do and we’re desperate at this point

here's some resources for switching:

https://plural.systems/posts/switching/

https://www.feathersong.org/plural-howto/feathers-guide-to-fronting-and-switching/

https://gist.github.com/Xe/b97203769acb3dfa761f#malfaels-guide-to-switching

https://write.as/within/switching

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/1cigb6/selfawarebots_switching_guide/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/2f7ysm/guide_so_you_wanna_switch_do_you_really_might_be/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas/comments/5gaqye/a_quick_switching_practice_selftest_miniguide/

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/plural/comments/gk4a0z/learning_to_switch_voluntarily/

a lot of these are for tulpas, but should still work for any system

Cult Survivor Resources

Because we have seen and been given almost no cult survivor resources whatsoever by others and have in fact been discouraged from getting help (yes shockingly enough the idea that deprogrammers should not be talked to seem to be a pressure from those whoa are so called allies to victims of cults), we have decided to make our own resources document.

Google Docs

Cult Recovery Resources

Read Before You Research This document is a series of sources compiled by a cult survivor with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This m

This is something we will keep updating as time goes on. We find resources like this to be very important especially our inclusion of dates that could cause discomfort, and why they are, as well as support group information and information on cult mind control. We are sick and tired of people telling us that it is bad to get help especially within the system community. No other space ever has treated us so strangely for our background.

In one of his books, Kantor offers insight at other facets of AvPD that exist beyond the DSM criteria, that are often overlooked (and aren’t easily explained by other disorders).

On “classic” avoidants (Type I):

“(…) profile of pervasive shyness and fearful isolation. Within this class, variations of severity exist on a continuum. Some of these individuals live by themselves or with their family, either staying at home and not socializing at all, or socializing only with a few selected individuals, attempting to meet people but having difficulty connecting as they try, but fail, to form sustained and sustaining relationships. Others form relationships that are only partially avoidant: limited in degree or of reduced intensity such as bicoastal marriages; serial monogamous relationships; or relationships that are stably unstable, dysfunctional because being with unattainable partners makes the relationships unlikely to come to fruition, or if they do, sooner or later, they are destined to dissolve.”

A fear of flooding and losing control of various impulses due to overstimulation (…) disturbing inner peace (…)

A fear of failure, accompanied by a paradoxical (masochistic) fear of success (…)

Self-criticism due to self-condemnation by a harsh, unforgiving, shaming conscience, causing one to become guilty over legitimate desires and ordinary (but to the avoidant extraordinarily shameful), interpersonal foibles (…)

Relational idealism consisting of a disdain for relationships that appear to be imperfect, originating in excessive expectations of oneself and others (…)

Covalent characterological features, including histrionic (oedipal) rivalry that buries the potential for closeness, intimacy, and commitment under competitive struggles with others—as Gabbard notes, “entailing an aggressive demand for complete attention… associated with a wish to scare away or kill off all rivals… [with the competitiveness] interwoven with a sense of shame” obsessive fretting about the correctness and propriety of one’s interpersonal actions (…) paranoid suspiciousness about the negative things others are, or might be, thinking; depressive alarmism and pessimism that nothing will ever work out as hoped and planned for and the worrisome fear that if all is not already lost, it soon will be; excessive “don’t make waves” passivity, accompanied by a paradoxical fear of passivity and so a need to be on constant alert and continuously active to assure always being in complete control of everything about one’s relationships; extreme dependence possibly leading to a codependent relationship with one person to avoid having to relate to any and all others (…)

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Excessive Defensiveness

Avoidance is not a static, but an active, dynamic condition—what Millon and Davis call an “active detachment,” that is, one with important defensive components. Sullivan describes avoidance as a “somnolent detachment,” the protective dynamism “called out by inescapable and prolonged anxiety.” (…) What is avoided is an allusion either to a temptation for the warded-off drive or to a feared punishment or both.” Therefore some observers, emphasizing how the avoidant inhibits important aspects of living to reduce (social) anxiety, suggest that the term inhibited personality could substitute for the term avoidant personality disorder. Avoidant detachment is made up of the following defenses, among others:

Identification with the aggressor. Avoidants create expected losses actively to handle the possibility of experiencing unexpected losses passively, for example, “I fear your rejecting me” becomes “I reject you to avoid being rejected by you.”

Masochism. Self-sacrificing, self-abnegating, and self-punitive responses are an avoidant’s way to counter forbidden desire. Avoidants commit a kind of social suicide to punish themselves for what they consider to be their unacceptable instinctual urges. They suffer now to avoid suffering even more later.

Repression. Repression is the avoidant’s way to detoxify anxious thoughts and feelings by suppressing them, then acting as if they no longer exist (…)

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Associated Characterological Problems

Obsessionalism. Avoidants are worrisome individuals (…) often rigid, inflexible people who, stuck in routine, have difficulty adapting to unexpected life changes. Also, ambivalent about relationships, instead of settling in to a given relationship, they do and undo it: attempting to relate, becoming anxious, pulling back, then trying again either with the same person or with someone different, ad infinitum (…)

Paranoia. Avoidants are hypervigilant individuals who fear something bad can or will happen to them (…) They take impersonal matters far too personally and see rejections that are not there as a clear and present danger, or actual attack. A difficulty with basic trust leads them to become highly skeptical of everyone, convinced that no one will show them any goodwill whatsoever, and certain that either they will trust everyone and get burned, or trust no one and get dumped (…)

Depression. Avoidants tend to be depressed individuals with intense negative moods (…) They hold the pessimistic view that when it comes to relationships, there is no sense even trying since there is little chance of ever succeeding. Depressive cognitions prevail (…) so that they readily come to believe that any sign of disinterest in them constitutes a turndown, a turndown a rejection, and a rejection an epochal tragedy (…)

And “counterphobic” avoidants (Type II), who are avoidants who unlike the “typical” ones, manage to form connections, albeit in turbulent ways.

Type IIa avoidants can generally maintain superficial, short-lived, relationships with people and the subtype, “mingles”, jump from relationship to relationship unable to settle and not minding quality.

Type IIb avoidants, “seven-year itch”, can form proper bonds with others but for a limited time, because they burn out or become disinterested as time passes.

Type IIc avoidants, have severe codependency tendencies.

Really what you’re doing is making RA systems who aren’t polyfrag less able to access your community

RAMCOA is classified as “extreme abuse” for a reason. And especially MC, which is really why the HC-DID label is a thing at all.

MC quite literally breaks a child down so the abuser can create whatever they want and make the child do whatever they want. The process that abusers use to create MC-based systems is inherently complex and will as such create an extremely complex and multifaceted system structure.

The label “HC-DID” harms no one. Nobody is being forced to use it. It is a label for a smaller group of severely traumatized people to create a community under.

Things that don’t make you a bad person:

Displaying “scary” symptoms of mental illness

Being diagnosed with multiple disorders

Having one or various personality disorders

Being diagnosed with NPD, BPD, or ASPD

Having very low empathy, or no empathy

Having symptoms that cause anger, emptiness, or paranoia

Having triggers or “strange” personal boundaries

Needing extra help or accommodations

Having intrusive thoughts about upsetting or scary topics

why do people say programming doesn’t exist and that it must be false memories? /gen

Lots of reasons.

Most people don't like to think about other people getting hurt. They also especially do not like to think that children are being hurt. And even more they do not like to think that child abuse is occurring while someone else who could have stopped it was there. This is why when child abuse survivors of any kind tell family members/friends who weren't abusive that so and so abused them, the immediate reaction is typically denial. Whether they accept it later on or not, the initial reaction is usually defense and denial. Even when they do accept it there is often a degree of "how could I have missed that" that these individuals express either to the survivor or to their own friends. People want to keep and uphold the view that most people around them are good. The concept of "groups of people who all decided to abuse children together" is contradictory to that worldview so they discard it, but if you ask them about specific things like child soldiers and trafficking that they have probably heard of (and also probably associate with Poor Uncivilized Third World Countries(tm) instead of happening in their own countries), they will usually say that's real.

Another reason is that most peoples' idea of programming is from media, mostly revolving around like...super powers or a person becoming basically a robot or they think it's all like cults in the woods or whatever. They think TBMC is some sci-fi thing, they don't know what it looks like, and they aren't thinking about the abuse part. And I do think that it kind of sucks that MC is the term because it does sound like some sci-fi/dystopian thing just from the name. It sounds very silly if you don't know much about it. In reality it is pretty boringly based in psychological responses to torture.

Another reason is that FMSF was very successful in their smear campaign despite being made up nearly entirely of parents who had gotten successfully sued for child abuse by their children. The fact that academics even marginally acknowledged them was a mistake IMO. Not to say that I'm not like the other girls but if a group of parents like this started making shit up around me I would simply roll my eyes and ignore them. Unfortunately, psychiatric abuse exists and the famous ones kind of screwed everybody else. Most famous one being Sybil. Instead of getting mad at psychiatric abuse occurring it became a focus on how DID itself is fake and abuse memories a person has discussed in therapy is therefore also fake.

Another is a community issue. There are individuals who saw RA survivors getting attention from court cases and decided that they would Also like to get attention and would make up stories which would eventually get debunked OR they sounded so fictional (because they were) that most people then assumed that all RA survivors were like that. There were and still are also survivors who were so desperate to be believed that they would tell their stories in great detail--except their stories usually also included lies that their groups told them which discredited them. Most of these are lies that the average person would find ridiculous and factually incorrect and so nobody would believe the rest of what they were saying.

Lastly, many RAMCOA survivors are simply not palatable. A lot of us are not the cutesy socially acceptable kind of survivors that people feel pity for and want to give a blanket. Many RAMCOA survivors especially when they first get out or first start processing this are aggressive, lash out, behave erratically, make no sense to anyone, have no/low empathy, say very socially inappropriate things, etc. This goes double if isolation from the rest of the world was a big part of the abuse. And to be clear I do not mean like...ghosts their friends or is a little snarky or has a breakdown sometimes in a cute little corner with quiet little sobs. I mean shit that you would get shunned by polite society and get the cops called on you for. The ones that don't escape (either stayed in or the group dissolved/faded over time) tend to be more stable appearing than escapees but they're still not the type of survivor people care about.

Human Bill of Rights

GUIDELINES FOR FAIRNESS AND INTIMACY

1. I have the right to be treated with respect.

2. I have the right to say no.

3. I have the right to make mistakes.

4. I have the right to reject unsolicited advice or feedback.

5. I have the right to negotiate for change.

6. I have the right to change my mind or my plans.

7. I have a right to change my circumstances or course of action.

8. I have the right to have my own feelings, beliefs, opinions, preferences, etc.

9. I have the right to protest sarcasm, destructive criticism, or unfair treatment.

10. I have a right to feel angry and to express it non-abusively.

11. I have a right to refuse to take responsibility for anyone else's problems.

12. I have a right to refuse to take responsibility for anyone's bad behavior.

13. I have a right to feel ambivalent and to occasionally be inconsistent.

14. I have a right to play, waste time and not always be productive.

15. I have a right to occasionally be childlike and immature.

16. I have a right to complain about life's unfairness and injustices.

17. I have a right to occasionally be irrational in safe ways.

18. I have a right to seek healthy and mutually supportive relationships.

19. I have a right to ask for a modicum of help and emotional support.

20. I have a right to complain and verbally ventilate in moderation.

21. I have a right to grow, evolve and prosper.

http://www.pete-walker.com/humanBillofRights.htm

Resources!!

There are many masterlists of resources for or about plurality, but we thought we'd make one about sites and posts that have been extremely helpful to us. Some resources are about overall plurality, some about headspaces, even some about alterhumans. This is a catch-all for helpful things and will always be in progress as we find more. If you would like us to add something, please tell us!

The Plurality Hub by the Heretic System

The Alterhuman Hub by the Heretic System

Alt + H: The Alterhuman Advocacy Group by Alt + H

The Chimeras Library by House of Chimeras (liongoatsnake)

Developing Internal Communication - Starting With The Basics by Kathy Broady MSW

All the Resources You'll Need to Build Your Own Wonderland, Headspace, or Inner World by Sophie in Wonderland

Power to the Plurals by The Plural Association Nonprofit

Here for the Plural Folk

Healthy Multiplicity by LB Lee and The Zyfron System

Tulpas and Mental Health: A Study of Non-Traumagenic Plural Experiences by John Doe, Jacob J Isler

Endogenic Systems by Plural Culture

More Than One

Plurality Resource

New Alter Rundown by the Heretic System

Plural Terms by Cluster Brains in collaboration with The Trifecta Collective and the Polybius Network

Multiplicity Database Systemology

A Tulpamancy Resource Site

Quick'n'Dirty Plural History by LB Lee

System Internet Safety by Sunflower

Pluralpedia

Alternatives to "System" When Choosing A Collective Name by The Xenodelic Effect

Tips if You're Having Trouble Visualizing Your Inner World by the Orange Orchard System

Multiplicity and Plurality Wiki

List of Tulpa Guides by Vos

The Plurality Playbook by Lucia Batman and Irene Knapp

Plurality Resources by Rolal District

Endogenic Hub

The Plural Dictionary

System Sources by Cluster Brains

Resources for Faceclaims/Forms by Wild Tulip Field

DID Basics by Cleveland Clinic

Simply Plural Website (There is also an app version)

System Communication and Journaling by The Wonderland System

Do you have any advice for how to approach a situation where you find out that the system is much bigger than you originally thought and there has been like another group of people functioning deeper inside your mind because I just found out that our system runs so much deeper than I thought it did and it's kinda freaking me out.

Thanks

(Also I love your blog)

Hey anon,

I've had this in my ask box for a few days trying to figure out how to answer this in a way that would be helpful and insightful. A big goal of mine for my future is to be able to educate people and help people with and without CDDs who are in places that I or my wife/friends may have been in the past. This situation you're describing is something I went through right around mid August. The only reason I actually know when I started learning these things was because I have a frantic email I sent my therapist with the subject line "Ah shit, here we go again" with a screenshot of that very quote from GTA. It's an inside joke between our therapist and I because it seems like whenever something really wild happens that I really didn't see coming I preface with "Ah shit, here we go again." and that's how she knows it's going to be a doozy of a session or email.

(small TW ahead for mentions of unaliving oneself, nothing detailed, just mentioned)

So in all honesty I feel like I don't have super proper advice for you in this regard. Not in the way you may have been hoping or wanting, as I am still new to learning parts and subsystems. I know about four subsystems right now, other parts keep alluding to something else that's hidden from me that's like a Big thing, and it's a...it's a lot! I understand how you're feeling to some degree here. The very first time I started piecing together the subsystem stuff I swore I was ready to do the unalive. And uh, unfortunately, I almost did because of parts who were created to commit suicide in this very instance. I wasn't supposed to know about that stuff. Past suicide attempts seem to line up with that same narrative. Every time I was learning something I was not supposed to know, one of our secondary gatekeepers would throw a suicidal alter into the front and essentially let it happen. Thankfully, we've had either our spouse or other alters be able to step in at the last second, parts that don't want these things to occur. We're working on deconstructing that particular program now and it's been fairly successful, thankfully.

I talk about that not because I think all systems with subsystems or whatever happens going on in your system have suicide programs, but because this information you are suddenly learning is likely meant to be hidden. Subsystems typically don't occur for shits and giggles. From my limited knowledge (reminder, I am not a professional at this so if anyone has better info than me or any additional info or resources, please say so) of subsystems, typically they form for specific purposes. One purpose could be to separate various traumas at different time periods of the system's life. So for example, we have an entire subsystem (our largest subsystem as far as I know) dedicated to our very early life trauma that began long before our RAMCOA type abuse occurred. Those things happened likely around the ages of 3 to 5. The RAMCOA abuse occurred around age 7 or so, as far as I'm aware. None of the main system or any of the other subsystems were aware of the early life subsystem, only our gatekeepers knew about them.

Other reasons subsystems can occur is to separate a specific type of abuse that the system/brain finds particularly disturbing and needs to be separated from the rest of the system. We don't have these, but I've heard of folks whose main system typically has the "less severe" trauma and subsystems hold "more severe" trauma OR trauma that needs to be kept completely deep down and away from the front area, like CSEM production OR incest with a member of their household that they have to live with all the time. If you're around that family member all the time you're not going to be able to function if you have even an inkling of those things occurring, so your brain might separate all of that into a subsystem to keep the rest of the system safe. While the rest of the system might deal with other forms of trauma such as neglect, medical trauma, emotional abuse/manipulation, bullying, etc.

The last reason that subsystems might exist, and this is only our personal experience because I have never met another system whose subsystems are like this, but subsystems may exist to keep certain parts of memories separate from the rest of the system. Which, I've mentioned I was going to go into our system structure in more detail before and so I'm not going to do a deep dive in this ask, but essentially as abuse was escalating, our system realized that a single alter cannot hold the entire memory of abuse that was occurring, and so what happened was we'd split a fragment (which our system labels as "china dolls" even though they're really not that) and they get cracked apart and split up, essentially. So one subsystem holds only the pain of that particular memory, another subsystem holds only the emotional toll of that particular memory, another subsystem holds only the visual or auditory sensations of that particular memory, etc. So, in essence, for a single occurrence of trauma, a splitting pattern happens where we end up splitting anywhere from 2-5 fragments to hold bits and pieces of a single memory. So those subsystems keep those fragments separated so that we don't have to be overwhelmed by the entire memory being whole.

From all of the above information it's probably going to make subsystems sound like a super horrific thing, and while I really want to be comforting and help you through this with some encouragement, subsystems are typically because something happened that needed to be kept completely separate from the rest of the system, which is usually not a good thing.

However, to actually answer your question, how to cope? Um. Good question, because I'm barely coping with my own situation right now. BUT, one thing that has helped me kind of stop freaking out about it is that I have accepted that I will learn things when the time is right. Every time I've tried to go digging or I got curious or something I regretted it. I learned very quickly WHY these things are separate. I learned as a host that I really really should not fuck around because I WILL find out, and it has pretty much every single time been far more devastating that I could have even imagined.

So my advice to you is "Don't go digging!" Because often, system information (especially if you're currently in therapy with a specialist) will become known with time. Be patient. Don't do the "nosy host" thing unless you are in an environment where you have someone who knows what's going on and can keep you safe in case you learn something very distressing that will make you want to go down the sewer slide. Being a system is not a fun time when you're discovering this stuff. I'm very open about loving our system and loving our parts and thanking them for what they've done for me, but that doesn't erase how difficult and scary it can be when you start learning things that you never knew you never knew. Hang in there, anon. DMs are open if you want to discuss this further. Anyone is free to DM or send asks about these things and I'll answer when I can. :)

-Dorian

(Note: Endos please do not interact with this post, as subsystems are a product of serious trauma and are not something that I think could ever be replicated in the way that a traumagenic system's subsystems would occur. They require extreme levels of amnesia and are typically complex, something that a created system would very likely not be able to replicate in the way like OP and I are talking about. This post is for folks with trauma-based CDDs only, not other forms of plurality.)

Do you have any resources for RAMCOA? Resources for like...the types of programs and stuff like that. We're going through things and trying to research and pinpoint things, but finding resources has been absolute hell. If you get this twice, I'm sorry. Our tumblr is kind of shit.

Hello! I have several resources that I think may be helpful to you:

This document (LINK) of "rare programs" and their descriptions, posted by @killercatboys.

Chapters 4 and 7 of Becoming Yourself by Alison Miller (LINK) discuss programming and chapter 7 includes an anecdote with specific programs and definitions. The entire book is really a great read and is geared towards survivors of RAMCOA, just be sure to take it slow and take care of yourself.

Common Programs Observed in Survivors of Satanic Ritualistic Abuse by David W. Neswald (LINK) - massive trigger warning for suicide, self-harm, and abuse.

Spin Programming: A Newly Uncovered Technique of Systematic Mind Control by John D. Lovern (LINK) - includes symptoms, implementation, and uses of spin programs; trigger warning for abuse/torture methods.

Healing the Unimaginable by Alison Miller (LINK) is geared towards therapists and professionals and includes more in-depth information about RAMCOA than Becoming Yourself does. Again, massive trigger warning throughout the book for RAMCOA.

Kinds of Torture Endured in Ritual Abuse and Trauma-Based Mind Control by Ellen P. Lacter (LINK) - partial list of torture methods used in RAMCOA; trigger warning for abuse, near-death, and torture.

Mind Control: Simple to Complex by Ellen P. Lacter (LINK) - describes twelve "stages" of mind control and programming, going from outward compliance to torture/trauma-based mind control; trigger warning for descriptions of abuse.

Some Indicators of Trauma-Based Mind Control Programming by Ellen P. Lacter (LINK) provides common indicators of TBMC; most survivors of programming will have many of these indicators, but their presence does not prove the existence of TBMC and their absence does not prove that one has not experienced TBMC.

Adult and Adolescent Indicators of Ritual Trauma by Ellen P. Lacter (LINK) provides indicators of ritual abuse in teens and adults; as with the last bullet point, their presence does not prove ritual abuse and their absence does not disprove it.

Child Indicators of Ritual Abuse Trauma in Play and Art by Ellen P. Lacter (LINK) provides potential indicators of ritualized abuse in children and pre-teens; as with the previous two bullet points, their presence does not prove ritual abuse and their absence does not disprove it.