i would like to clarify a few things prior to the rest of the post. i am not seeking an armchair diagnosis. i just want to share my experiences in a safe place & potentially get some pointers, reassurance, etc. so, please be gentle & kind ! and feel free to skip to the tl;dr for the summarized bit of my post ! sorry for shoddy reddit formatting.

trigger warnings: alcohol misuse, drugs (weed), and denial & similarly related thoughts

i am really unsure what to do or where to go from here. i am a newly questioning system and it honestly hasn't been going very well since my "discovery". it's been really hard for a wide variety of reasons. i sort've stumbled across my possibility of being a system because a system friend suggested i look into it based off of what i was telling them.

that was back in april and it's now september. i have been struggling with denial a lot since my discovery. i have done tons of research. i have read papers, scoured reliable websites, taken the mid & des-2 (albeit, on my own without the guidance of a therapist), and yet my denial and fear of being wrong OR being right hasn't gone away. every time i take the des-2 or mid, it always indicates that did or osdd is present. my mid scores point to having did, my des-2 scores are just below did, pointing to osdd.

i have gone through a lot of abuse and the more i discuss with loved ones, the more they tell me that my abuse was intense or severe. but it just... doesn't feel that way. i am so disconnected from that past that i would rather ignore it, go about my life as though it didn't happen, like i have been.

but, as of late, i have been misusing substances (weed, alcohol) to feel more like myself, more controlled, and grounded. this is probably in response to an uptick in dissociative symptoms (while sober, not as much when not sober) as well. it is counterproductive and i don't know why this is happening as i would've never done this before. in the past, i hated using anything more than once every month.

a list of denial thoughts i have had: - my recent uptick of substance misuse in the past 6 months is the reason that all these symptoms exist and if i just stop using, it'll all go away and have been some fluke - if i think hard enough about anything/everything, then i'll remember enough to disprove having amnesia - i am somehow manifesting my symptoms into existence, exaggerating or faking them. like, some extreme form of confirmation bias

i am seeking out further diagnostic clarification from the psychologist who diagnosed me in the past. my current diagnosis' are asd (autism), pdd (persistent depressive disorder), and ptsd. i will also say, i suspect a few other disorders are also at play, such as ocd bpd. i wonder if these are the actual causes of these symptoms and i am not actually a system. but, the main issue is i live in a state in the us that is VERY behind the other states in almost every aspect. i have searched, searched, and searched some more for some sort've dissociation (or even trauma) specialist and there isn't a single one in my entire state. i have used isstd and scoured through those "therapist finder" websites, nothing !

so, that brings us to the tl;dr and intention behind this post: what now ? i am a questioning system, unsure if i should be doing much more discovery on my own, with an increase in distressing dissociative symptoms. do i keep searching for professional help whilst doing my own research and self help ? do i stop in the meantime and pretend this discovery never came to light ?

thank you so much in advance. ;; please try to be kind and gentle. i am typically a thread lurker and this is my first time posting to reddit. o7