my thoughts on da subject: I don't think I'd really say that your system is really "built around" BPD so much as your BPD and OSDD are both responses to trauma that you experienced growing up

if a plant is forced to grow in a jar for most of its life and you take the jar off, the plants leaves being small are not built around it being short, neither are is it being short built around it's leaves being small.

your BPD IS your parts. BPD is a complex dissociative disorder. it means you have multiple (unelaborated) parts that contain trauma responses not attuned to the present day. your parts and system did not form 'around' your BPD. it formed at the same time your BPD did. you 'cordoned' off trauma responses and internalized feelings. they're on the same spectrum. to me it would be like someone saying "I feel that my DID formed around my CPTSD," if that makes sense? the trauma made the parts. the disorder is just the word we use for the presentation of those parts, and the presentation of your parts just happens to be described by both disorders criteria accurately

I think the first step to addressing a lot of what you bring up here is to stop framing or understanding healing and recovery and the destruction of any parts at all in any way. everyone has grown with their parts. most systems are working in tandem unknown to each other years before discovery. the thing your describing is something Janina fisher mentions in the book I have in my pinned tweet - parts are often very interwoven within a systems life to the extent it is a skill that needs to be developed sometimes to untangle in order to understand yourself better.

recovery does not ask you to survive on your own. it asks you to survive with what you have inside of yourself already in healthier ways. if you're feeling shut out... why aren't you empathizing and finding ways to connect and to understand why they're shutting you out?

the goal is not to get them to conform to you or do what you say. the goal is to understand each other better and work towards something that is better for everyone involved. it's about learning to say "that must be difficult for you to deal with. I understand why you want to shut me out. is there anything I can do for you to help? can we work together a little bit?"

okay, so first off- your feelings are completely valid. there is no "should" or "should not" when it comes to forgiveness. if you don't think you can ever forgive, that is okay. no one is required to forgive harm, especially harm that has deeply affected them.

that being said, it might be helpful to shift away from thinking about this in terms of "crimes" and "forgiveness" and more toward understanding why something like this could happen within a system. systems don't exist in a vacuum- DID forms as a response to trauma, and that means that the ways parts behave are often shaped by that trauma.

sometimes, parts can end up reenacting trauma dynamics. not necessarily 1:1, but in ways that reflect what the system has been through. this doesn’t mean it’s "okay" or that it shouldn’t be taken seriously, but it does mean that looking at it as "one part committing a crime against another" is oversimplifying what’s actually happening.

trauma reenactment is a well-documented thing in dissociative systems. parts may take on roles they've seen before (victim, perpetrator, rescuer, etc.) as a way of making sense of what happened to them. this isn't about "choosing" to be abusive; it's about internalized dynamics playing out in a way that feels almost automatic. the key thing here is that those patterns can be worked on, but that requires awareness, accountability, and a commitment to breaking the cycle.

for the host (or any part) to choose forgiveness, that’s entirely up to them. forgiveness is personal, and it doesn’t mean excusing or forgetting. it just means deciding how they want to relate to what happened. for some people, forgiving a part might feel freeing. for others, it might feel like betraying themselves. both are valid.

what’s more important is working towards whatever happened doesn’t happen again, and that the system is working toward understanding why it happened in the first place. that might mean therapy, internal communication, setting internal boundaries, or just taking time to process things.

so no, you’re not wrong for not forgiving. your feelings make sense. and if your host does choose forgiveness, that doesn’t mean what happened wasn’t serious. it just means they’re navigating it in a way that feels right to them.

(i'll add to this post on twitter some pages from my finding solid ground workbook that might help in addition to this answer) the distinction between “me” vs. “not me” when it comes to internal thoughts or voices is honestly... not that important. people get caught up in trying to prove something is an alter or a part before they engage with it, and that actually just makes everything harder. the real question should be: “is this communication happening? is it distressing? do i want to address it?” not “is this me or not me?”- janina fisher in the book in my pinned tweet does have some really helpful info on making the distinction, though.

if something feels like it's coming from a separate perspective, has different emotions than what you’d expect from yourself, or is acting in a way that surprises you, then it makes sense to approach it like communication from a part. but even if you decide “no, that’s just my own thoughts,” that doesn't make the experience less real or less worth addressing. writing them down might help as well - if i couldn't reasonably expect you to do long division in your head, why should you expect yourself to figure out a much more complex problem? getting it onto a page will probably help.

the fact that these dialogues cause you distress and you feel the need to push them away is important. because whether or not you call them parts, they’re still something inside you that’s trying to process things. shutting them down forcefully (which is a super common response, no shame) can actually reinforce the fear and distress around them. they might be showing up because they need something—maybe to be heard, maybe to express something you haven’t been able to consciously process yet.

and as for headspace? not necessary at all. not everyone with DID/OSDD has a visualized internal world, and not everyone has distinct experiences of switching. the fact that you don’t have an obvious headspace doesn’t mean you’re not experiencing parts—it just means that your brain doesn’t work that way.

so what do you do?

• instead of immediately rejecting these thoughts or voices, try pausing when they come up. you don’t have to accept everything they say as truth, but you can acknowledge they’re there.
• if it’s safe, you could try responding in a non-hostile way. something as simple as “i hear you” or “i don’t know how to handle this, but i want to understand” can go a long way.
• journaling might help, if that feels less scary than direct internal dialogue. you don’t have to force yourself to believe in parts, but just writing down what’s happening and how you feel about it can make things clearer over time.
• if something takes over and speaks for you, even if you’re unsure if it’s “you feeling out of it” or “someone else,” that’s still something to pay attention to. you don’t have to have a clear answer right now.

bottom line: the communication is important no matter what it is. don’t let the pressure to define it keep you from handling it in a way that helps you feel better.

i also wanted to say that some of what you're describing could also be related to OCD, especially the repetitive, intrusive nature of the thoughts and the distress they cause. OCD can create compulsive inner dialogues, including arguments, reassurance-seeking, and rehashing past conversations or future scenarios over and over. the fact that you feel the need to push the thoughts away and repeatedly tell them to stop could also be compulsions in response to distressing intrusive thoughts.

this most recent time i got dx'd i searched for dissociation/trauma specialist therapists near me, chose someone from the practice's list of therapists, and then emailed to schedule an intake appointment and then kind of just progressed from there. i had been like "i know i have a dissociative disorder and complex trauma" during the initial phonecall but i wasn't seeking diagnosis so much as i was seeking treatment, a dx doesn't change what the treatment is for dissociation and trauma. if you really wanted to you could literally just be like "im interested in trying to get a better idea of what i've got going on" or literally just ask "what is the assessment and intake process like?"

yeah, so the thing here is that you're saying you weren’t traumatized by the abuse, but everything in your question points to the fact that you did internalize harmful ideas about what is and isn’t acceptable treatment of a child. that’s what makes it traumatic, not necessarily whether or not you personally feel traumatized by it in a way that you recognize.

like, the punishment for not doing chores should not be to hit a child. full stop. but because it was normalized in your environment, you don’t question it, and you even see it as something that could be justified. that's how trauma works—it gets into how you see yourself, the world, and what you think is just “the way things are.”

plus, your idea that abuse is only truly abusive if it’s random isn't actually accurate. abusers always have a reason—whether it’s control, punishment, or even just stress relief for them. but part of the trauma response is internalizing those reasons as if they make the abuse make sense or be somehow deserved. in reality, you were a kid, and kids mess up, and the appropriate response to that is teaching, not violence.

so, objectively, yeah, you might not label your experience as “traumatic” in the way that some people think of trauma (flashbacks, nightmares, etc.), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t shape you in a way that shows clear trauma patterns. the normalization of harm is trauma, even if you don’t immediately recognize it that way.

I want to start off by saying that switching in front of your therapist isn't a requirement to be diagnosed - literature on the subject says that relying on these 'overt window's for diagnosis usually misses other important signs because you're looking for something big, when really what therapists should be looking for are smaller things. the DSMV even changed the criteria and info about DID to say that self reported altered states is acceptable as well.

therapists who are well informed are not looking (or requiring at least) outright signs of switching or behavior, they're looking for changes in perspective and relation to the world.

that all being said, you could always explore the topic with your therapist and tell them that sometimes you feel like your perspective has changed (or outright say "I feel like I switch during therapy sometimes") and that you're struggling with a compulsion to keep 'acting' normal. they'll help you (or should at least) explore why this is and what you can do to help improve this or work towards something more functional for you

no one is ever like anything forever- there's not a single static person on this earth.

i think a lot of this is easier to grasp in hindsight obviously but I want to point out here that you don't know that you'll be fractured and dissociated for the rest of your life. you feel like it. and what you feel is important! it's important to acknowledge that. but you can't properly acknowledge it until you recognize that you can't know the future, and that "knowing" these things doesn't make room for you to be able to process.

trauma wires us to equate survival with permanence ("this pain will never end,") but life is motion. rivers change course. seasons turn. so do people.

when you say, "i’ll be fractured forever," you’re borrowing a script from pain, not truth. trauma loves to collapse time and say: "This is how it’s always been, so this is how it’ll always be," but that’s a survival reflex. not a crystal ball.

I think it might help to ask yourself the following questions:

• “what if ‘fractured’ isn’t the final word, but my starting point?”
• “what if my capacity to adapt surprises me?”
  
• *“what if healing looks nothing like I imagine?”

the mind you have today isn’t the mind you’ll have in 5 years. New tools, relationships, and insights can (and will! shift how OSDD impacts you over time

my immediate answer is "if you're asking this question you're probably not on the right track for actually understanding these concepts" but the more 'accurate' answer is that the DSMV does not decide who has OSDD vs DID based on these distinctions and afaik does not mention them at all. BPD is ctagrozied broadly as having secondary structual dissociation too and that's definitely not mentioned in the entry for that

I don't want to assume your intentions genuinely but I find a lot of the time focusing on these distinctions is not really helpful, having read The Haunted Self a few times. the entire book is very much full of "some people" and "typically" and "usually" that I think answering anything beyond "it's not exclusively secondary because barely anything in TSOD is exclusive" would not be accurate to the themes and premise of structural dissociation outlined in the book