NinaAlex
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We're going to talk about a few things officially belonging to the psychiatric realm (autism, PTSD, being trans depression and plurality), although we only consider some of these a psychiatric disorder (PTSD, depression), the others that are diagnoses, are all things that are simply a fact of how our brain works.
I'm trying to reflect on these experiences, sometimes in some detail (TW: talk of suicide (no details), depression, dissociation, derealization, depersonalization as well as transition) and how they relate to our interest, and later need to wear diapers.
Out of these autism was the first one we had diagnosed, we had know we were depressed since before our first puberty hit. It's hard to miss, when you're feeling sad a lot of the time, and start thinking about ending your own life. We've actually not gotten a diagnosis of depression, until after we've been depressed for 25y, and the psychologists more or less went off out own evaluation of being depressed, probing for a few things, and quickly agreeing, yep, we were depressed, sometimes to a very worrying degree.
For years that one diagnosis, and that self diagnosis was our theory of why we felt like shit so often. Autism kind of gave us a way to fix some things, and while they helped improved things, they never really touched the deep wrongness we've always felt. It would take another eleven years until we finally accepted that we were trans.
But I'm skipping ahead here.
Back before we knew more than that we were depressed and suicidal from time to time (it's odd how one normalizes the regular urge to end ones life after a while), we started wearing diapers off and on. Partially because we liked the smooth crotch (not knowing why), partially because they helped a lot with a problem we have with not always noticing when we needed to go to the toilet, and partially because they just felt nice, and for some parts of us they just felt right.
We didn't really know about our little ones yet, but we know now that while we had them locked away, mostly because while the body ran on testosterone onlt those of us least effected by our emotions were not a danger to ourselves, they did get some impressions of what was going on, and had some influence here and there. To them, the diapers were incredibly reassuring, going back to a simpler time, before the trauma they carried. I'm sure their feelings definitely influenced us back then.
So after I knew about being autistic, and kind of allowed myself to be weird, and started giving up on ever being normal, and thus allowed myself to be 'not normal', I started wearing 24/7 at one point.
I had this more or less medical reason, where concentrating on something I would kind of dissociate from my body, and not notice my bladder. Only when it became painfully full, and I was about to have an accident, did I notice, and instincively I cramped my bladder shut. Once in the bathroom, with a toilet available it could take up to an hour to convice my bladder that, yes it's OK to empty now. I had been wearing diapers on and off whenever these episodes were more likely, but I could have them on a regular day, simply by being too into a book I was reading for fun.
So as I was doind my Masters, I started wearing 24/7. This completely solved that problem, helped with one aspect of gender dysphoria (I didn't know that name at the time, but it was clear I was hella dysphoric), freed up a lot of mental resources (that were checking on my bladder from time to time), and generally helped to calm aspects of my inner working that I know know to be my little headmates.
The thing is, with transition, we got access to our emotions, with that ADHD, PTSD and our plurality, that had been masked, became more apparent. But frequent dissociation, derealization and depersonalization got a LOT better, also transition put my depression into remission (after 25y of depression you don't really lose that diagnosis ever, partially because how easy it is for your brain to go back to "Oh, if it gets bad, you can always end yourself"). Back then, I simply couldn't see myself in the mirror. I always saw a dude that I knew should be me, but who I could never think of as me, and trying to do so was actually painful. I lived like that for about 25 years.
Well as we started to connect to our headmates, we realized that three of them are littles, with the smallest one being 2-3y old, and the other two being about 7 and about 11 years old. It's for Tina (our 2-3y old) that diapers are an important part of helping her be calm. Without them, she's very anxious, and that anxiety (like all emotions) are reflected into the system, and mildly affect all of us. But also the other two seem to be reassured about being in diapers. I guess to them it's something from the time when ther world was still all right, before the trauma.
They don't come out often, and only when they feel very safe, but doing childish things (like watching a particular childrens TV series from our childhood) can let them surface. I've noticed that when stressed, this stress would often make them stressed as well, and they'd need more reasuring moments, and actually leaning into bottle feeding, pacifiers and other childish things, definitely helped for those times. Nowadays, with better internal contact, I can often just interact with them in our internal world. They've actually built a small playground in there.
However since we've been wearing 24/7 for over 13 years now, our control is pretty much limited to being able to go for a little while without a diaper, if we concentrate on it (5-10 min after a shower work), or in situations where we usually don't need to pee anyways (sauna). Any other time, once we stop constantly paying attention, we'll suddenly wet ourselves without much control at all. We sometimes realize our diaper is definitely wet, half an hour after changing, and not remembering wetting it at all. We are surprised by suddenly peeing in the shower or in the bathtub. So, we don't think getting fully out of diapers, if we wanted to, would be something we could realistically archieve. Not that we want to. After 13y they have become very normal for us, as has wetting them without much consious control. Sometimes we notices as it happens, sometimes we don't.
However we suspect if we did plan to give them up, we'd have three little ones, with a ton of anxiety (not just about not wearing a diaper) to deal with, and likely more flash-backs and dissociation.
Diapers were also very ususeful for full dissociative episodes, because the worst ones (althought they are not too frequent) last 3-4h. While wet pants or a painful bladder could pull us out of dissociation, that simply wouldn't happen, since our body is so used to letting go, that we've dissociated with a dry diaper a couple of times, and were definitely not dry anymore after coming back out of dissociation. Also, we suspect if our littles wanted to, they could just switch in, or use milder dissociative states, to simply take over my bladder, and just keep wetting on automatic.
We don't really see any reason to get out of them again though, and we doubt we could. But since we've accepted diapers as a part of our lifes several years ago, they are here to stay.
I'm trying to reflect on these experiences, sometimes in some detail (TW: talk of suicide (no details), depression, dissociation, derealization, depersonalization as well as transition) and how they relate to our interest, and later need to wear diapers.
Out of these autism was the first one we had diagnosed, we had know we were depressed since before our first puberty hit. It's hard to miss, when you're feeling sad a lot of the time, and start thinking about ending your own life. We've actually not gotten a diagnosis of depression, until after we've been depressed for 25y, and the psychologists more or less went off out own evaluation of being depressed, probing for a few things, and quickly agreeing, yep, we were depressed, sometimes to a very worrying degree.
For years that one diagnosis, and that self diagnosis was our theory of why we felt like shit so often. Autism kind of gave us a way to fix some things, and while they helped improved things, they never really touched the deep wrongness we've always felt. It would take another eleven years until we finally accepted that we were trans.
But I'm skipping ahead here.
Back before we knew more than that we were depressed and suicidal from time to time (it's odd how one normalizes the regular urge to end ones life after a while), we started wearing diapers off and on. Partially because we liked the smooth crotch (not knowing why), partially because they helped a lot with a problem we have with not always noticing when we needed to go to the toilet, and partially because they just felt nice, and for some parts of us they just felt right.
We didn't really know about our little ones yet, but we know now that while we had them locked away, mostly because while the body ran on testosterone onlt those of us least effected by our emotions were not a danger to ourselves, they did get some impressions of what was going on, and had some influence here and there. To them, the diapers were incredibly reassuring, going back to a simpler time, before the trauma they carried. I'm sure their feelings definitely influenced us back then.
So after I knew about being autistic, and kind of allowed myself to be weird, and started giving up on ever being normal, and thus allowed myself to be 'not normal', I started wearing 24/7 at one point.
I had this more or less medical reason, where concentrating on something I would kind of dissociate from my body, and not notice my bladder. Only when it became painfully full, and I was about to have an accident, did I notice, and instincively I cramped my bladder shut. Once in the bathroom, with a toilet available it could take up to an hour to convice my bladder that, yes it's OK to empty now. I had been wearing diapers on and off whenever these episodes were more likely, but I could have them on a regular day, simply by being too into a book I was reading for fun.
So as I was doind my Masters, I started wearing 24/7. This completely solved that problem, helped with one aspect of gender dysphoria (I didn't know that name at the time, but it was clear I was hella dysphoric), freed up a lot of mental resources (that were checking on my bladder from time to time), and generally helped to calm aspects of my inner working that I know know to be my little headmates.
The thing is, with transition, we got access to our emotions, with that ADHD, PTSD and our plurality, that had been masked, became more apparent. But frequent dissociation, derealization and depersonalization got a LOT better, also transition put my depression into remission (after 25y of depression you don't really lose that diagnosis ever, partially because how easy it is for your brain to go back to "Oh, if it gets bad, you can always end yourself"). Back then, I simply couldn't see myself in the mirror. I always saw a dude that I knew should be me, but who I could never think of as me, and trying to do so was actually painful. I lived like that for about 25 years.
Well as we started to connect to our headmates, we realized that three of them are littles, with the smallest one being 2-3y old, and the other two being about 7 and about 11 years old. It's for Tina (our 2-3y old) that diapers are an important part of helping her be calm. Without them, she's very anxious, and that anxiety (like all emotions) are reflected into the system, and mildly affect all of us. But also the other two seem to be reassured about being in diapers. I guess to them it's something from the time when ther world was still all right, before the trauma.
They don't come out often, and only when they feel very safe, but doing childish things (like watching a particular childrens TV series from our childhood) can let them surface. I've noticed that when stressed, this stress would often make them stressed as well, and they'd need more reasuring moments, and actually leaning into bottle feeding, pacifiers and other childish things, definitely helped for those times. Nowadays, with better internal contact, I can often just interact with them in our internal world. They've actually built a small playground in there.
However since we've been wearing 24/7 for over 13 years now, our control is pretty much limited to being able to go for a little while without a diaper, if we concentrate on it (5-10 min after a shower work), or in situations where we usually don't need to pee anyways (sauna). Any other time, once we stop constantly paying attention, we'll suddenly wet ourselves without much control at all. We sometimes realize our diaper is definitely wet, half an hour after changing, and not remembering wetting it at all. We are surprised by suddenly peeing in the shower or in the bathtub. So, we don't think getting fully out of diapers, if we wanted to, would be something we could realistically archieve. Not that we want to. After 13y they have become very normal for us, as has wetting them without much consious control. Sometimes we notices as it happens, sometimes we don't.
However we suspect if we did plan to give them up, we'd have three little ones, with a ton of anxiety (not just about not wearing a diaper) to deal with, and likely more flash-backs and dissociation.
Diapers were also very ususeful for full dissociative episodes, because the worst ones (althought they are not too frequent) last 3-4h. While wet pants or a painful bladder could pull us out of dissociation, that simply wouldn't happen, since our body is so used to letting go, that we've dissociated with a dry diaper a couple of times, and were definitely not dry anymore after coming back out of dissociation. Also, we suspect if our littles wanted to, they could just switch in, or use milder dissociative states, to simply take over my bladder, and just keep wetting on automatic.
We don't really see any reason to get out of them again though, and we doubt we could. But since we've accepted diapers as a part of our lifes several years ago, they are here to stay.