Dissociative Identity Disorder and disorders like it have been misunderstood and misdiagnosed since the beginning. People have misdiagnosed these disorders as everything from Borderline Personality Disorder to demonic possession. None of that is true.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) are developed as the result of a child experiencing severe, prolonged trauma. This trauma could be abuse, neglect, multiple invasive surgeries in childhood, multiple natural disasters, or anything else that would make a child afraid and feel unable to escape. As a survival response, the brain prevents the child's mind from forming one cohesive identity as it does in most people. It instead keeps the trauma divided in separate "containers" that each develop their own sense of identity. These are commonly referred to as alters, though some may call them parts, headmates, personalities, or something they personally feel describes them best. A person who has developed multiple parts in this way is referred to as a Multiple or a System and lives life experiencing multiplicity.

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Thanks to endless negative representations in the media, Systems have been conditioned to live in fear and shame should someone discover their multiplicity. Many are too frightened to seek help from friends, family, and even professionals. We here in the Entropy System decided this needed to change. Being Multiple isn't shameful. It is a sign of survival. All the alters in a system were born to help a mind survive terrible things and had to work to work together to get through it. From our perspective, that is something to celebrate! We love each member of our system and we are proud of how far we've come together. We want other systems to feel this way, too.

 

That is why we proposed System Pride Day and the System Pride flag.