The Kill Switch (Adult Content)

 The following should not be read by persons under the age of 18.

Again, this is not an advice or gossip column. But I will say this: you know someone with a dissociative disorder, you don't mess with it. It's not a good idea. Playing with fire. If you have to, you keep them grounded, you don't try to save them. There is no saving someone in dissociation. You can tell from the eyes. The faraway look. Sometimes it is simply a chemical or drug reaction. For me it's not that simple.

I've seen it with other people. A man with PTSD. War vet. Faraway. The Theranos founder. Never met her. No doubt in my mind that she was dissociating. You don't do that much, go that far, have such a dark past, fool that many people, or crash that violently without disconnecting and reconnecting to reality. If she doesn't have a dissociative disorder, then I'm Donald Trump.

That said, I think I have it all mapped out. Now I'm going with numbers, to protect my privacy. Anyways, there's 8. I have the origins and the activities, and the time periods and circumstances of activation more clearly mapped out. I wanted fewer because the more you have, the harder it is to learn and to control. They have similarities and differences. They were created and activated at different times. Certain people and places bring different ones out. Certain memories bring different ones out. 

With classic PTSD, it's a specific set of memories and triggers. With complex PTSD or DID, it really does get complicated. Multiple sets of memories, skillsets, triggers.

When one or more of these sets gets too activated, it can look like Bipolar. It's more like a system overload or dissociation. The drugs suppress the dissociation. They don't make the past go away. That's why they are called anti-psychotics. Psychosis is a permanent break caused by chemical imbalances that generally require medication to suppress, and they respond to that medication. I don't hear messages in the world. I don't see external patterns. They are internal messages and patterns, and they stay internal until you work them out and even then, the memories are still there but they don't trigger dissociation. The antipsychotics simply disable me for a time, with dissociation still running in the background.

Generally, when that happens, I feel unsafe. Then I have the kill switch. That starts with telling someone. A professional. Gotta shut it down. Like a computer. I try to keep it simple. System overload. Shut it down. Maintenance time. Take me offline.