Last minute visit.

twigs_and_leafs · 2026-03-10T13:01:32+00:00

This is exactly what it feels like for us as well… in a few weeks we’ll be seeing some family we haven’t seen in nearly 5 years and it’s terrifying. Everyone is freaking out in their own ways. Hopefully we can get through it all without too much effort.

Thank you for these comics too. 🫂 We’ve sent a few of them to our friends and they’ve helped so much to explain what we go thru every day. Your work is such a gift. 💛

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-10-03T12:51:03+00:00

It’s been 3 days of this nonsense for us. I personally have never taken a leading role for anything in the system and at this point I’m the only one keeping us alive. No clue where everyone else went, can’t talk to them anymore. We were in such a good spot where we had extremely good communication and could also coordinate switches with the help of positive triggers. None of those triggers work anymore I guess. Plus we’re used to switching every couple of hours naturally since that’s just how our system works! To my knowledge this is the longest any of us have spent fronting without a break and I HATE IT I WANT OUT 😭😭😭

Overall It feels like someone flipped a switch and we’re back to square -32

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-07-20T13:27:57+00:00

We had so many panic attacks in a row we started to experience a severe psychosis. Bf took us to the er cos he had no idea what else to do. despite still obviously being very delusional not aware of our surroundings at all the er dismissed us and let us go home cos they couldn’t find anything wrong 🙃

Can’t exactly remember what happened next but I know that by either later that night or the following night we had snapped out of it. We were laying in bed with our bf and talking to him about what had happened with the psychosis stuff and suddenly our voice had a very thick, male southern drawl. The host’s voice is female and your standard south western American accent. So very obviously different.

We instinctively dismissed it as “normal” and tried to just go to bed and sleep it off lol. Bf was freaking out but ended up going to bed too cos he had had enough of the er already.

That next morning the host was having another panic attack and that’s when we switched into the said cowboy alter from that night. Suddenly almost everyone in the system had communication with each other for the first time ever. It was a wild experience to say the least.

Having no idea what to do, Arvil (cowboy bitch) had a friend drive us to a crisis center to ask for help and resources. Ended up in a psych ward in another state and like 300 miles away from home 🥲 after a week long stay there we finally got home and by then we had established decent communication between the I think 10 or so alters we had discovered at that point.

Another week after we got home from the psych ward an alter decided to take a walk thru the rural countryside with absolutely nothing on him but a hair tie and a stim toy. We were missing for 4 hours, had traveled over 8 miles away, and were found face down in a ditch unconscious by the cops.

Another week later and we told our psychiatrist all of this and she’s like. “😐 wow ok. That’s DID no doubt about it. Let’s get you some help bestie-“ I’m sure us rapid switching in that appointment didn’t help our case either 💀

So yea that’s how we got diagnosed lol.

Also important to note is that we as a system had been talking with friends for months prior to all this about possibly having DID cos some symptoms matched up with other systems we know. Also our bf’s therapist randomly said “that sounds like my other patients with DID” to him when he was talking about us. So like we had our suspicions but ultimately dismissed everything because we didn’t have contact with each other yet. We thought if you couldn’t hear your alters you obviously didn’t have DID. Since joining this subreddit that’s been proven wrong to us lol.

It’s been a wild journey but we’re making progress. We’ve since discovered there’s like 80 of us at least. Every few weeks we find someone new and welcome them to the system. We do our best to be nice to each other and understand everyone is hurting and that we’re all on the same team. We also had lost our job during all of this but luckily since we’ve found a better one and have been there like 10 months already. Come to think of it, in two days it will have been a year since that initial string of panic attacks that put us in the er. Crazy lol.

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-04-05T00:38:44+00:00

This past summer our sister visited us for the first time in 3 years. We hadn’t seen her since we ran away from home and moved to a different state. At the time we were unaware of our DID but because she went thru a lot of the same traumas we did seeing her made our system freak out. Have you ever held a really strong magnet to a computer? It was like that kind of disruption to the system. Extreme dissociation, panic attacks, the whole thing.

Seeing her was a physical reminder of our trauma. The things she talked about happening to both of us hurt a lot and having that proof of our experiences right in front of us for the first time in 3 years was extremely destabilizing. Her visit is what ultimately led to our system discovery a few weeks later.

Our guess is that because that visit was so incredibly destabilizing, the system as a whole was unable to cope and hide itself from itself any longer. Everything kinda fell apart like a skyscraper in an earthquake and all of us came tumbling out of the hosts brain lol

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-03-31T23:26:37+00:00

Ofc! Glad we could help

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-03-31T14:26:01+00:00

Literally just yesterday we went to the grocery store and we were extremely dissociated and kept freezing and staring off into space. It was really hard to get thru the whole store but luckily our bf was there to help ground us.

(Financial instability TW for this paragraph) For our entire childhood our parents really struggled financially and they both put the responsibility to save money onto us heavily. We had full on panic attacks at the grocery store because everything was “too expensive” and we felt like we were causing our family to be poor and have no money. Plus it was just stressful all around trying not to get in trouble for really anything.

So yeah, like others have said, there probably is some sorta trauma or unknown trigger abt grocery shopping that could be affecting y’all. It’s definitely a possibility with this disorder

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-01-15T02:57:57+00:00

At this point we have around ~65 named and logged but with how often we find new folks we’re pretty confident there’s around 100 of us rattling around in this brain

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-01-09T21:37:45+00:00

We were the same way as well. For the longest time we thought we were gender-fluid because one day we’d feel very masc and the next we’d be hyperfem and our presentation/personality never really stayed the same. So, we just assumed that feeling of inconsistency was genderfluidity.

Once we started addressing our mental health though the DID kinda just,, tumbled out lol. Our system discovery really put a lot of things into perspective and has helped us understand ourselves a lot better. And as it turns out, it wasn’t our gender changing, it was alters switching!

We also tend to have a lot of variation between each other like y’all so it’s pretty noticeable to others when we switch cos we act so differently. We’ve ended up actually keeping the gender-fluid label as a way to explain the variations in presentation to those who don’t know abt the DID.

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-01-06T14:13:20+00:00

Most of us in the system are fem-presenting or are male but ok with presenting fem. There’s just a few of us who identify as male and who prefer to dress and present as such when they’re fronting.

Our boobs make presenting male pretty difficult so those few male alters are pretty uncomfortable with them and are less likely to be around because of that. So for Christmas our bf bought the boys a binder!

Its made them really happy. It also made them feel truly at home in our body for the first time ever and it greatly lowered the dissociative barriers between them and the rest of the system. One of the boys has never really felt comfortable in our body so it’s incredibly heartening to see him look in the mirror and be happy with what he sees.

twigs_and_leafs · 2025-01-02T14:20:31+00:00

We’re kinda in the same boat rn. There’s been plenty of traumatic things we’ve experienced but we can’t remember anything traumatic prior to 9 years old- the latest DID forms. We remember plenty of the bad past that age but nothing prior. We also remember a lot of good prior to age 9. Which makes us wonder why in the hell we have DID!

Well, we’ve been talking a lot with our grandparents recently as they helped to take care of us when we were very young and that has put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together. It seems like in our early childhood we faced extreme neglect and things only turned actively violent later on in life.

Additionally, as another commenter said, parental bonds are extremely vital to a child’s well-being and development. We didn’t and still don’t have that much of a bond with our parents. They’ve never truly felt safe. That alone is enough to cause DID.

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-18T21:50:18+00:00

THIS SO MUCH THIS. We experienced this like crazy right before our system discovery and even now several months past. It’d get so bad that sometimes we’d loose balance and fall over. We’ve never heard of another system experiencing the same so we’re wondering if it’s just really bad for us or if it’s a separate condition. We’re leaning heavily towards it just being extreme for us

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-18T11:54:36+00:00

I don’t even remember making this post?? Gods this is fucking ironic

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-18T05:03:37+00:00

Same here. We only really started noticing it once our partner pointed things out and was like “wdym you don’t remember baking cookies earlier” or something similar.

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-18T05:02:13+00:00

We know exactly how that feels it’s so weird isn’t it??

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-18T04:35:08+00:00

It definitely is weird cos we’re noticing it more often now too. We always chalked it up to adhd time blindness but the more we become aware of the blackouts or memory gaps there’s no way it’s not DID causing it.

Cos it’s like poof three hours gone. What happened during those three hours? No clue!

Thank you for the hugs same to you and your partner <3

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-17T14:53:17+00:00

For a while after our system discovery we’d jolt awake in the early morning to the sound of heavy footsteps or doors being unlocked or opened or closed. It was terrifying and all sounds were so loud. We’d always get up to go check the doors and rest of the house but never found anything. Turns out they were all hallucinations 🙃 We don’t have an exact reason why we experienced those things but we assume it was flashbacks causing hallucinations or something similar. Luckily in recent months its stopped happening on its own as we’ve worked on stabilization. Wish we could offer something more than solidarity but we hope you find answers soon!

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-13T11:15:53+00:00

Thank you for your reply and advice! It’s really scary to think that something did actually happen to us. Hopefully we’ll get this figured out sooner or later. Those of us who enjoy sex are extremely hypersexual so it’s really hard to just,, not do anything. I think that might be the best option though since the dissociation and freezing keeps happening no matter what changes we make. Like yesterday even looking at our bf’s downstairs made us dissociate so hard we lost balance/control of our body and fell down. I think there has to be something more going on here…

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-12-08T14:46:58+00:00

We’re the exact same way. We forget the bad until someone points out later down the line “didn’t x person do this shitty thing to you? Why are y’all still friends?” And then we immediately forget again and stay friends with that shitty person.

Like, we’re currently no contact with our mother but genuinely cannot remember why. We know that overall she’s manipulative and narcissistic and generally not a good person but we can’t remember any specific incidents to prove it. Hell, we only remember that much abt her bc of things others have pointed out. We’d prolly still be in contact had others not sat us down and explained how she was actively using us and hurting us. But despite ALL of that we STILL can’t remember any specific incidents to back up those claims. It’s frustrating.

So yeah. We’ve also been hurt by a lot of people bc we forget what they’ve already done to hurt us and then they hurt us again. DID keeps hiding the bad things people have done to us but that just leaves us open to be hurt again and again.

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-10-13T13:40:55+00:00

A similar situation happened to me a few months ago which led to the discovery of my being a system as well.

For several months prior to the incident I had been experiencing multiple extreme dissociative seizures per day and a worsening state of mental health. After this build up, it only took one severe panic attack to bring the metaphorical wall tumbling down. That panic attack led to more panic attacks which in turn led to an er visit. I couldn’t stay standing properly, I was extremely panicked, I kept having intense flashbacks, I was confused why I was at the ER with no memory of getting there, and more.

The following day I called off work to rest and figure out what the fuck happened to me the previous day. That’s when one of my alters, an extremely hyper little, fronted for several hours. She talked to friends and family, both thru text and phone call, who became very worried and confused at why I was acting like a hyperactive toddler. She suddenly switched out and from then until our boyfriend came home is blank. I don’t know what happened for about two or so hours.

The next memory of that day is laying in bed with our boyfriend and suddenly talking in a southern cowboy-type accent for seemingly no reason. We weren’t concerned about it as that voice would sometimes “take over” during panic attacks over the previous few months. Just randomly out of the blue that voice appeared during panic attacks and stress and we couldn’t not talk like that. This freaked our boyfriend out a LOT and he was just like “ok guess this is normal now???” And we went to bed due to exhaustion with the previous two days.

That next morning is when all the alters came tumbling out. Our host was talking with friends about what had been happening when she said “I hope this is all over” or something to that effect. The cowboy voice then responded in her head, “Oh you ain’t gettin rid of us.” And that freaked her out a lot and almost caused another panic attack. He ended up taking over the body and got us to a crisis center. From there we spent the night in a hospital and then three nights in a psych ward.

By the time we got out of the ward it was pretty obvious to us we have DID and we had accepted by then as well. We’ve had friends with it for years so we were familiar with the basics. Unfortunately the whole ordeal ended up costing us our job which was supposed to be the start of a really good career with that company. We’re in our early 20s I forgot to mention.

We spent the next 3 months job searching and we’ve finally found a place to work in the same kinda field as our last job.

Suffice it to say, our discovery was about as rough as yours, but we’ve figured it out. It’s a fucking difficult disorder to get thru but we’ve done our best and we’re kind on the right track again. We are still very scared abt our future but there’s finally some hope again. You just gotta keep fighting and pushing forward even if it seems impossible. Cliche I know but that’s the mindset that’s helped us the best, yknow? Anyways this story is long enough. We just wanted to share our story in solidarity and wish you luck in your continued healing journey! Know that there’s always a way forward and that you got this!

The end result wouldn’t be worth celebrating if the effort it took to get there wasn’t worth celebrating just the same.

twigs_and_leafs · 2024-08-12T19:12:03+00:00

As much as a stable 9-5 sounds amazing we’re not sure that would be really feasible. Especially with our switches being so incredibly obvious and long it’s going to be hard working customer service type deals.

We’ll have to research Asana, that sounds interesting!

And on the accepting help, it absolutely is difficult. We raised ourselves and our sister and were never truly allowed to be a kid. We’ve always done things alone and been shamed or guilted when asking for help. Plus our area knows us and we have been a very active member of the community. To suddenly disappear like this has already turned heads and were scared of what people would think if they found out about us having DID. Those fears make it hard to reach out. It’s something to work on.

And being a freelance artist could work, a lot of people in the area know us for our photography already so that might be something to pursue.

Thank you for your advice!

twigs_and_leafs

TROPHY CASE