Transcript: Episode 83
83. Guest: Ashton Parker (The Infinite System)
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
***Interview Begins***
Interviewer: Bold Font
Interviewee: Standard Font
So, my name is Ashton Parker. I am part of the Infinite System or the Infinite System. I don’t know which one we’re going with right now. What else did you ask me? Darnet!
That’s dissociation. Right?!
Yeah.
Just introducing yourselves - whatever you’re comfortable with.
Oh, okay. I got it now. [Laughs] So, my name is Ashton Parker. We’re part of the Infinite System. We run a website called DID Self-Help. And we discovered that we had DID two years ago actually…around this time actually, funny enough.
So how did you find out you had DID?
So, I was actually in the military at the time, which was crazy.
Wow.
And I felt this overwhelming sensation of… I need to cry. And I felt this overwhelming dread, which had never happened before. So I didn’t understand. And I was very confused. I was very shocked. My partner was on skype with me at the time, actually. And I was just so nervous and encouraged me to let it all out, to talk about it, to work through it. And in that there were many mood fluctuations.
I went from being a child to being an angsty teen to crying to laughing to -- it was a whole mess of everything. And at the end of it, my partner just sort of looked at me and said, “You might have DID.” And I was shocked. I was like, “No. That’s not possible.” So, I went to work the next day and I played around with it in my mind and I thought, It’s quite possible that I could have it. And so I started operating under the pretense that I did have it. And the two people that fronted were two Alters in our system, who I now know very well.
And it was such a strange experience and a strange way of finding out, but now here we are.
How did you deal with that at work?
Oh, it was chaotic. We had to sort of very quickly figure out how to cope through this. I know some people… they may be at home. They may be unemployed. Whatever their varying situation was -- for us,the military is very high stress. If there’s anything mental health related, or anything seen as off, we just -- we didn’t know what was going to happen. So, for our own personal safety, we had to very quickly figure out how to cope. And it was very hard, because specifically me, this was the life that I lived. This was the life I had known.
And I would have Sarah, one of the Alters that came out first, she was five, would be playing Zelda for hours on end. And it would feel like I was always catching up on sleep. So, we sort of had to quickly sit down and complete a simple structure of okay, you’re not allowed at work, but you can come up, you can play for a while. But you have to share, you have to share with others. And it was sort of this jump started way of okay, I have to deal with this now. And that was I guess a good thing, because it set us up for how we are now. But it was also insanely stressful at the same time.
So, how did you learn about DID once this sort of unfolded for you and you realized that’s what was going on?
So, specifically I looked up on the internet, and it was a whole lot of “there could be this, or there could be that or there could be this.” And I was like, “I just can’t do this. I need to find someone, somewhere, who has this condition and I need to listen to them.” And actually, I stumbled upon Multiplicity & Me on YouTube. That was one of the first places that I gravitated towards, and I was able to watch some of their videos and start to understand. And I was like, “Well, I’m a genius. I’ll go on Facebook and see what other groups are out there…you know…what other resources are out there. Who can I talk to that can help me make sense?”
And I was seeing alter, protector, gatekeeper -- I was seeing all of these terms, and it made me want to look more into this specifically. Not that I would commend specifically, but it was just the route I personally took.
Yeah - a bit of your journey.
Yeah. It was an interesting part of my journey too.
So, how did you use those resources to learn about your system?
So, specifically looking at other systems… what they would call themselves -- how they would interact with themselves. I would see people who would have not so great days, but then would have great days. So I would pick up the bits and pieces from around people, but most importantly, I looked towards myself. Because I would see things that people would say that was not my experience. And I would see things that I couldn’t understand, because I just didn’t have it. And so I looked towards Sarah. I looked at Sarah to see her eagerness, her child-self, her whatever else you wish to call it. She was herself. All she wanted to do was sit around and play Zelda. How could someone -- how could a disorder that comes from trauma create someone so innocent, so loving, so caring, so inspiring? And she was actually, probably, the one that made us look towardS ourselves to figure out what can we do? Who can I listen to - out of all of these terms and all of these names? There has to be someone that…for us…there has to be someone in our system like this. So, who can we contact? Who can we go to? Who knows some information? And who trusts me with that information?
That’s amazing. So you were able to use some of those online resources, but are a good example of being able to differentiate between what resonated with you, and what was just not your thing, or not a part of who you are.
Yes. And also, as a note of caution, not everything put on there is -- may not be the most correct way of talking about it. So, it’s not -- and I would never recommend this as the end all, be all - like this is where you go for all of your factual information. A lot of the terms they were using, I went on Google, I went to various websites, and looked at all of this, and looked at all of the different resources that were out there as well.
In that learning curve, what do you feel was most helpful? And what do you feel was difficult that you had to figure out how to navigate?
I would say the most difficult thing was coping with the fact of how I was now getting out of the military, which was something that I wanted to do, because I knew that this lifestyle was no longer conducive for me. But I was so worried -- excuse me -- about getting a diagnosis. And what if this isn’t real? What if this is not what I actually have and this is all just a lie? And it comes from the negative side of being on the internet, and being on Facebook specifically, where some people don’t trust the validity of others, which therefore can feed into your self doubt.
That was a big thing for me. I always doubted myself, and I still do. Even with a professional diagnosis, I still doubt myself. But on the flipside, with that professional diagnosis, it now proves what I had suspected, what both my partner and I had suspected. And in those good things, I have a family now. Through all of this work that I’ve done through crying and -- it’s not been pretty. It’s not been easy. It’s not been fun. In some aspects… there have been some aspects of it, but all of this grunt work has led me to this, where I can say that I think we’re doing okay. And I think that us as a system is doing quite well.
I know a lot of people from my system. I have garnished their trust. And one of the things I will always say is that I feel honored to have their trust. It’s not just about specifically for me…trust and compartmentalizing everything like that. No. They trust me with that information. They trust me to share only certain bits, and to keep most of it to myself. And it’s my job as host to judge their character and to see if they’re really worth this information. And the fact that some of the most traumatized people in our system trust me to do that is just mind boggling. It’s crazy.
It’s a big deal.
It’s a huge deal for me, personally, and it makes me so happy and so loved and so cared about. And it just means that what I’m doing for the system is working, and it’s important to them. And that’s what I strive to do every single day, is to make my family proud.
How does that shift things when there’s internal communication and starting to build trust amongst yourselves, and working together a bit more as a team in respectful ways?
So there’s not always respectful People. And I think that is something that you have to take into account - not everyone is respectful. Not everyone is going to listen to you or is going to hear you out. I think a big thing is approaching them where they are at. Specifically for me, personally, I grew up in a very far right household. There were things that were said that I would never say in my life. But there are people in our system who hold those beliefs. And I have to understand that from where we came from, there is bound to be someone who resonates with that. Because this ideology of racism and homophobia and transphobia was pushed on our mind over and over and over again. And eventually someone’s going to believe it. And I have to understand that my past also impacts my future. All of these beliefs…we all have to work together where we are at.
For example, one of the main alters that we met at first wasn’t very happy. He would lash out at other people, but we found out that by meeting him at his level and by talking to him, he just didn’t trust people. He didn’t trust easily. So, in order to make sure that no one talked to him, he was rude to everyone and pushed them away. And I don’t think that’s something I could have ever known if I did not communicate with him on his level - where he was at specifically.
I am just processing the positivity that you have. Not that it’s not hard and not that it’s not distressing and like the hard work you mentioned earlier, but just trying to process your perspective of being a source of support for yourself and a source of positive perspective… understanding why different ones are there and what their role is and how to respect that even when they themselves are not respectful. The different --
Mmhmm. I think it comes from specifically as a child, we were sort of left to cry alone. We were left on our own. We were left to our own devices. We didn’t understand at the time what exactly was going on. And it was never really properly explained to us why we would have these sort of massive outbursts. And so we would just basically learn to cope with it on our own. If we were crying, we would be sent to our room. And that’s sort of where we thrived. We viewed it as our personal little safe bubble. And we could rely on ourselves when all else fails. I think that’s where this need to look to ourselves, and to look and see what we can do personally to help ourselves comes from.
So, what do you think that other DID systems need to know or would be helpful for them to know?
Not everyone is going to have a story like this. Not everyone is going to have this “easier process.” It comes in different ways - discovering that you have a system, working through that you have a system. Each system is unique. I don’t speak for everyone. And you may have a similar experience, or your experience may be vastly different. But sort of taking in all of this by looking at someone that you trust in the system. It could be someone that fronted first. It could be someone that you’ve never even met. It could be someone that’s qualified in a protector role, a gatekeeper role. It could be whoever…whomever…there we go. Whomever you feel that you can confide in the best, because they have lived the system life for a long time. They have lived in the reality. They know they’ve lived the system life for a long time. So leaning into someone who you can trust who’s inside you, for me is the most calming thing. It made my life so much easier, because someone could explain to me how this all works, how this has been working for as long as I’ve lived. I was 21 when I found out. I’d been working for x, y, z amount of years. And so, how do I fit in? And by looking and asking them? Well, I’ve already fit in. I’ve already been part of this. I’ve already gone back inside and come out and gone back inside and come back out.
Wow.
But I just don't remember. And so by looking at it in the way of this is how it has been, nothing really has changed except for my awareness of it. I mean granted, fronting and things like that add in a whole new aspect and a whole new layer. But for me personally, I’ve been doing it. So, me knowing that I can now do it, I think was kind of exciting for me.
That’s a powerful thing I think - to just step back and recognize that even though now I am learning all these words for things, it’s not that something new has happened other than we have a word for it.
Mmhmm.
It just --
And now I can put all of this together. I can start to put all of the pieces together. It’s like putting together a puzzle, but it was a puzzle that already existed. And finally, after over a year or so of work I think, or maybe 6 or 7 months…I don’t exactly remember when… Our main gatekeeper showed up. We remember it very clearly. He was sitting on an old chair, staring right at our partner, saying this is who I am.
Wow.
And I just -- all of the work was worth it. To know that this person who has a main job in our system, and has a very important job in our system, could not only identify himself, but identify himself by name, and give my partner someone to look to, someone to ask, someone to talk to. And it made communicating easier, because we now had a name with this person. And we now had someone that if all else failed, he could help. And that was just the most -- it was just a big relief for us.
You bring up an important point about having a partner or a support person who understands DID, and is able to sort of be with you on that journey. What is that like?
It’s crazy. The amount of cross-system relationships that go on is wild, and we have to manage it and stuff like that. But the amount of support that is received, because our partner also has DID. So, we’re both sort of on the same basis and we understand that not everyone has a supportive partner, especially with DID. But having someone there, either a therapist, either a friend, either a Facebook friend, someone who is there who can relate to you, just based on terms and based on the very simplistic idea, was extremely helpful. Even if they’re not able to be right next to you, it’s someone to share your accomplishments with, someone to share your struggles with. The reason why support groups, especially on Facebook or Reddit or wherever else people flock to, forums and places like that, they have so much impact, because you can relate to that person’s experience or some aspect of it.
So, connecting you to a supportive person I think is absolutely important…as friends are important. Having people that you can turn to, having someone you can talk to, share all your drama, share everything else with, but know that they will understand that very basic idea of DID.
I feel like I can really sense your authenticity in sharing this, and part of that is because I experience that view myself in Orlando. And when we were super anxious, and struggling even to get out to go to sessions, like out of our hotel room --
Mmhmm.
And wanted to spend time with you all and connect with some of the other people who are there and other systems who are there, it was really scary, and really difficult. And everytime, I was like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” You were like, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re fine. Take care of you. That’s what’s most important.” And you were just reassuring in that way. And that’s what ultimately actually made it safe enough to try.
Wow, I had no idea. That’s always our motto. We always live by the fact of take care of you, before you take care of others, because you cannot take care of others, if you cannot take care of yourself - really and truthfully.
Yeah. And it was a fascinating experience, because once we were able to finally go out there and we met you guys at that table that first night, you were just there, and already understood and already were okay. I didn’t have to also fight through all of that, and get there, and go defend myself, and explain myself, and “this is what’s going on.” You guys just got it. And that was a profound experience to realize these people understand.
It’s so crazy. And the one thing about the DID conference is the fact that everyone basically understood. The thing was, the truth be told, I was just as nervous as you were. I was stepping way out of my comfort zone. Truth be told, I live in my apartment, and I don’t really go anywhere. I interact with the online world, but that’s about it.
Right.
I mean, because I have my partner, I therefore can go out other places. But my partner pushes me to do all of that. So, truth be told, I was really nervous. I was wondering what it was going to be like. When we did that specific meet and greet, I was like, “Oh great, I now have to interact with people. People are going to look up to me and I don’t know what to do.” So, by talking to those people specifically, it sort of helped me realize, “Okay, you’ll be fine. They actually seem to get you.” And specifically for you all, we saw the struggles that you were facing, and we can empathize with that and understand that, because those are struggles that we’ve had too. And we may come off as more confident than we actually are sometimes…just because that’s our nature.
[Laughs] Right. Right. How did you get from those kinds of moments that are so raw and really shared to developing this website and becoming sort of a resource about DID?
So, it started when I was in Florida actually. I was with several people and they run websites, and they do work. And I just kind of felt like, wow, this community is out there, and while I’m a part of it, and while I’m doing alright…what am I doing for it? And I tossed and turned it in my head. I was like, “Well, I could do this. No. I could do this. No.” If you take a look at my YouTube channel, there’s like three videos on there.
[Laughs]
Because getting on camera where you can see my face and talking about things isn’t really our thing.
Right.
It is, but it’s only when we’re feeling so comfortable to where we can do that. So we thought, How can we get this information that we have, this view that we have -- and our partner shares with us and we’ve heard that many other people agree with -- out into the community. We don’t have a sure face, but people knowing that it’s us and so we created a website. And it was founded on the idea of a lot of the work that I did for my system, I did myself.
I meet my therapist when she can. She’s a very busy person, and not at any fault to her specifically, but she sees a lot of people, and those appointments fill up very quickly. Sometimes I would go a month without seeing her. Sometimes --
Oh wow.
I would go two weeks without seeing her. There was a point in our life where we didn’t even have therapy.
Right.
The therapist that we had specifically didn’t really understand DID, and I don’t think would have shared our experience with it, and with an understanding, and would have listened. So there were several months worth of time where we had no therapist. So we had to rely on ourselves. We weren’t at the financial standpoint where we could go out of the VA hospital specifically. So we had to wait and wait and wait. And so I thought to myself specifically, All of this time that I’ve done helping me and helping us -- what if I share that for others to use? These tools aren’t just specifically my own, and I don’t claim to have invented all of them. But I can use them, and I hope that they help others.
I think that leaning on your system is completely valid. Believe me, I’m not saying, “Don’t go to therapy”, because if you can afford a therapist and you have the means to, by all means go to therapy. But the likelihood of finding a DID specialist, in your area specifically, could take years. I know someone that it took them four years to find someone. What do you do in those four years?
Right.
You go to therapy. You still talk to someone, but it may just not be about DID.
That’s what happened to us and had a period of about 10 years where we really struggled to find a therapist who could help. And now we drive four hours, one way, to see her, and then four hours back home.
That’s a long drive. We know someone who you’ve actually spoken to on this podcast actually - Dr. Barach diagnosed us.
No way!
Yes. So it’s a small connection. But he doesn’t take our insurance.
Oh right.
So therefore, I cannot go see him. So, that’s one DID specialist that’s gone.
Right.
So, for me specifically, my goal may not even be to find a DID specialist - just someone who’s willing to listen, someone who’s willing to say, “Hey, maybe I don’t know everything about this, but I’ll listen, and I’ll just let you talk about it.” Because therapy is valuable. It’s valuable to us. It’s valuable to my partner. It’s valuable to everyone. I’m no expert. I need help, even if I’m doing advocacy work. I’m always going to need to take care of myself.
But for some people, specifically me, and a few others, they might not even have therapy, or they may meet with their therapist once a week. That’s one day. There are six other days in a week. What do you do for those six days? Do you just chuck everything aside? Do you say, “Oh, I’ll go back to therapy next week, and we’ll deal with it then?” No. This is your life. This is now. If you are looking to better yourself in those six days, do something. Lean in towards your system. Take care of yourself as much as you can. Figure out a way to cope, because your therapist isn’t always there. Your therapist won’t always be there 24/7 to answer, but your system mates will.
That’s really powerful and inspiring. I know that it’s hard. We have to go so far. So for us to get to therapy, it doesn’t take much for something to go wrong for us to miss therapy. So, even now that we have found a therapist and she’s a really good one, we have those days between sessions like you said, and we’re too far away to have any extra sessions between, and there are times when because of the weather or whatever, we can’t get there. And it is really hard. And so being proactive about what you do the other days and what you’re practicing and working on actively and how you take care of yourself, I absolutely agree is just critical.
It’s critical because your system is looking towards you. Once you are aware that you have DID, word travels fast that you’re now the host. And they’re all looking at you, wondering okay, what are you going to do next? Are you going to prove that maybe I can tell you something, or are you going to prove that maybe I need to stay silent?
I never thought about it in that way. That’s really empowering - a lot of responsibility.
It is and it’s not just oh wow, I’m the almighty powerful host. No, somebody else is taking control, and they feel that they can do it better in the system. Vote me out? Okay, I’m gone. It’s all about this being the majority. I will never gain 100% and I know that. Not everyone’s going to like me. Not everyone’s going to agree with me. Not everyone’s going to be okay with what I’m doing…varying beliefs and what not. But if I can be in the majority to listen, to what I have to say, to trust me, to talk to me, to feel like they can nudge a little like, “Hey, can I come out and do this?” That makes my life 10,000 times easier.
I’m not just having someone forcibly remove me, and I don’t know what went on, and I don't know where I am, because that’s a big fear for us. We don’t want to end up somewhere where we have no idea where we are.
Right.
So, if you can have the little nudge of “Hey, can I sit down and watch a movie?” Or “Hey, can I come out later?” or “Hey, I really want to play this.” Or “I really like to have this.” It’s letting the system know that they are heard, that they can have a voice, and even if I can’t get it right now, or in the near future, I appreciate the fact that you’ve told me that this is what you’d like to do.
So what will people -- tell us your website and what people will find there.
Specifically we sort of designed it with this idea that it’s for systems. Right? For the DID community by systems. But that doesn't mean that because myself, and now another system, and we hope to have more -- just because we do all of the work doesn’t mean that you’re excluded from helping. We are always interested in this idea of I don’t know everything. I can’t know everything. There may be a brilliant idea out there that I would never know, but because I’ve never asked the community, how would I find out about it?
It’s this whole idea of creating this interactive space where you can be like, “Oh wow, that’s online! I made that! I wrote that! You can go find it on this website.” Because even if you don’t want to do website work, you don’t want to post articles, make blogs, whatever else, you can still point to something that you’ve done.
There’s a specific section on our website that is titled Alter Projects. So, anything that a system member has done, whether it be a house in Sims, a painting, a drawing, a poem -- we want to highlight the work and the creativity that is in systems. Making this whole idea of having DID more approachable.
And what’s the website? What's the address?
It’s called didselfhelp.com. And it’s this idea of we view that within the first week or so when you find out that you have DID, how you respond in that week sets up your entire healing process. And so, for us, if we can bring people to the website and to show this is how you can do this, this is how you can do this, you’ll be fine. Here’s a small list of terms. Here’s some places you can go. Here’s what we recommend. Here’s what helped us. But then also having other systems on board saying here’s what helped us. Because my method may not work for every single person, and it’s giving those people at the very start of DID, or however long they are on their journey, you can always look to improve.
If you’re struggling with something, i.e. communication, trust, safety -- those are three articles we have up currently. Organization is another one that we have up that written by the other system, The Phanspastic System, that’s working on the website with us.
It’s this idea of you can sort of pick and choose. It’s not like reading an entire book, where you have to sift through chapters to find exactly what you want. No. It’s right there. It’s in your face. You can read it. You can take notes. You can do whatever you want. It’s all about empowering a system to want to heal, to want to better themselves, to want to work together. There are so many systems that I see that are like, “DID isn’t fun. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else.” And I agree with that, but in that same idea, they therefore view their Alters as a burden or as a detriment to them or the fact they ruined their life.
And it’s that kind of negative system talk that I would like to counteract, that I would like to push against. That I would like to say, “It doesn’t have to be negative. It can be positive, but you have to put in the work for it to be positive.” If that makes sense.
It makes a lot of sense.
And also on there we have a little section for empowering photos or quotes that we’ve made that help us specifically. There’s one on there that talks about you’re valid. You’re loved. You’re cared for. That’s personal to us. That specific thing -- I don’t remember exactly what it says, but those are things that we don’t believe ourselves. And it’s all about adding this personal touch. We want you to sort of feel like you can come along this journey with us, see our site improve, see us improve. All of these things are things that we strive to tell ourselves. It’s not just we’re doing it because we want fame or money or anything like that. No. It’s because we’re taking literally what we view and putting it out there.
We don’t feel we’re loved sometimes. We don’t feel valid. We don’t feel beautiful. We don’t feel cared for. So, by pushing systems to better themselves, we’re also reminding ourselves to consistently push ourselves. We’re trying to say, “Yes, this is how you can help your system.” But if we’re not taking our own advice, then what are we writing it down for?
Right. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for what you’re doing.
You’re welcome. So also, another thing that we are going to start on our website specifically is looking at in depth articles. So looking at the DSM as that compares to various different disorders, and things like that. It’s more so for those that are looking for that more in depth look of how DID impacts us - looking at various studies, looking at all of the work that’s been done, but trying to put it in a way where it’s sort of easy to read, and easy to understand. It’s not up there yet, but it’s a work in progress.
Also, another thing is that we strive to make this website as disability friendly as possible. If you see something that is not disability friendly or we are failing in some aspect, you can always contact us. There’s a specific section on our website that says, “Hey, you can contact us.” And you can fill out a form. “Hey, I’d really appreciate it if you attempted to add blank or if you added blank.” Because we view that this information shouldn’t be available just to those who are able bodied. In the aspect of sight, of hearing, of using their hands, and everything like that - we’re trying to make this where this information is accessible to all as best as we can.
That’s really amazing…really amazing.
There you go!
I very much appreciate it. Thank you for talking to me.
Hey, you’re welcome!
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