Why do people need to appropriate a mental illness so much that they say their imaginary friends are alters? Just get over the fact that you have imaginary friends and not a serious illness. Coming from someone who has it, you don’t want to have it. Why is it that you have to make it harder for abuse victims who have this illness just so you can look cooler? It angers me when I see people who say “You don’t need DID/OSDD to have headmates” because where did that originate from? I have a guess: A non-reputable source. Not a professional. Get over yourselves. Headmates aren’t an identity label or roleplay.
They might have soulbonds… more of a spiritual experience with outside entities than multiplicity. They can do things like front, but they’re not a part of DID/OSDD. Soulbonding info in general is hard to come by on tumblr, but @fromfiction has a lot of writing on it.
@hamiltoes Hi there, OP. First of all, the term ‘headmates’ originated in the non DID/OSDD multiplicity community as a way to talk about people sharing a mind who were not alters caused by mental illness– in other words, a way to make sure they weren’t appropriating language and space from the mentally ill.
Not everyone who experiences headmates fits into the DID/OSDD box, and you’re absolutely right, they shouldn’t be intruding on spaces that are meant for DID/OSDD sufferers!
Unfortunately, as a culture we lack a lot of language to describe experiences outside the norm, and for some people who experience multiple minds in one body, the only language or venue to discuss it they have ever heard of is through DID/OSDD, and so they think that they have that when they don’t, and they try to fit themselves in that box and interact in those spaces when its not appropriate.
There are definitely people who fake mental illnesses like DID for attention, and that’s terrible and unfortunate. Those people should not be invading spaces meant for the legitimately traumatized and ill. However, some people who may be considered DID ‘fakers’ are actually just misinformed and lack any other context to discuss their very real experience, which has nothing to do with mental illness.
There is a term specifically for people who share their mind with a bunch of fictional characters and that term is ‘soulbonder’. Its a term that’s over 15 years old and I’m trying to repoularize. Soulbonders don’t have DID and shouldn’t be in DID spaces, but unfortunately a lot of people just don’t know the difference!
You can read more about soulbonding on my blog here: http://soulbonder.tumblr.com/
That helps a lot, really. I’ve read a lot about soul bonding and yeah I don’t really think it should be included in DID/OSDD spaces. I think it’s just better to keep the two separate because they sound loads different. And I definitely agree with you on the misinformed bit, there’s tons of misinformation spreading about that harms people constantly.
I’m glad that I could help! I used to be closer/more active in the multiple community and there was always a ton of misinformation and miscommunication, which is really unfortunate!
I hope that word about soulbonding gets back into the community and its more widely known, since I think it would benefit a lot of the people who get labeled as pretenders in the DID/OSDD community spaces.
Its not my place at all to go into DID spaces and talk about soulbonding, so I hope that more people with DID/OSDD could maybe point people like that towards soulbonding communities. I think that would help a lot to ease the tension between the two, and help those with DID/OSDD feel safer, and those who are having a different experience find a community that’s right for them.
