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/
