I sit here, on my parent’s couch, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in May, watching my mom play Lego Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Boba Fett sits beside me, back against the arm of the chair watching the TV screen and me, Mewtwo has curled up on the floor, napping, and Legolas is reading a report sprawled out on the loveseat, snacking on a pack of his favourite comfort food: Saltines. Over at the kitchen table, one of my guards (a Jem’Hadar I believe) is putting a new Ketracel-white package together for my regiment. Sitting outside on our deck in the warm mid-Spring air is my Cardassian guard, Dukat, pleased with the warm sun; on the deck near him sits our lazy lynx, Bubastis (Bubba), who happy soaks in the sunlight. I talk for a minute with my mom, then smile over at Boba Fett who is engrossed in the game.
This is a fairly typical afternoon. I can’t see them, but I can feel them. Each has a unique energy print, and this energy print becomes an image in my mind.
I’ve had people write me off as insane, most recently between a couple of friends who wanted to stage an intervention. This report is not looking at the validity of soul-bonding. This is a psychological view to look at the question: Are soul-bonders crazy?
My own mental health background is varied. My grandmother has post-traumatic stress disorder and OCD. My aunt has OCD, my mom has OCD and depression, and my dad has ADD. I was formally diagnosed with ADD, but managed to keep it under control without the use of medication and I have been informally diagnosed with paranoia, and social anxiety disorder. However, in these cases I think I should point out, I began soul-bonding before I was informally diagnosed, as I began soul-bonding at eight, and was informally diagnosed at twelve-thirteen after suffering from intensive bullying from the age of seven to fourteen.
I was also informally diagnosed with pathological lying, mostly because I had to invent a diagnosis to make the soul-bonding acceptable to my former peer group. Only a few of these friends are accepting with soul-bonding, the other ones are more likely to stage an intervention.
When researching groups that have criticised soul-bonders as being crazy, they list three main mental illnesses as the cause: dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and plain delusion.
Why Soul-Bonding is Not DID
I will tackle each one of these symptoms in order. This is a general list of symptoms that can indicate DID:
1. Auditory hallucinations of the personalities
2. Multiple mannerisms, attitudes and beliefs that are not similar to each other
3. Loss of time and/or memories
4. Depersonalization, or the feeling of watching oneself act and having no control
5. Unexplainable body pains, particularly headaches
6. Flashbacks of abuse and/or trauma
7. Depression
Soul-bonding is defined as a phenomenon in which you hear fictional characters, either created by you or someone else, in your head. Sometimes they come when you are writing a story and a little voice says “no, it happened like this”, or “you’ve nailed the villains personality perfectly!”. In regards to the symptoms, yes, you do experience an auditory phenomenon. However, couldn’t you be experiencing “auditory hallucinations” when you’re talking to yourself in your head? I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the skeptics here: yes, soul-bonders hear voices.
Some soul-bonders talk about “fronting”, where they allow a bond to share a body, so the bond can interact with another person. Some bonders say that during one of these episodes they have a foggy memory of what happened, others say they share-consciousness, meaning they are fully aware of what the bond is doing, and can stop the bond if they need to. I myself fall into the latter category. This has caused some people to believe that soul-bonding is a less extreme model of dissociative identity disorder. Tying “fronting” into memory loss: not all soul-bonders lose their memory. My bonds have a LJ account, and I am always fully aware about what they are typing. Of the soul-bonders I’ve talked to, none of them have experienced any form of memory loss, from foggy memories to complete blackouts. So, you could say that, though some soul-bonders regularly share a body, it is incredibly rare for a true soul-bonder to black out. [Editor's Note: Some SoulBonders do "go away" when their 'Bonds front, but in that case it is mutually initiated and a consensual surrender of consciousness, not an involuntary loss of time.]
Depersonalization is a psychological phenomenon in which the patient reports watching his or her body do something without being able to react. In all my research, I have yet to find any true soul-bonder who has said that they have watched a Bond do something without being able to react themselves.
Anyone can attest to a random ache or pain, and soul-bonders experience this no more or less than a person who isn’t a bonder. If they do, it’s often a psychical illness or injury that is causing the pain.
Though it is unfortunate that child abuse and trauma occur—to about 40 million children a year—this is not always a catalyst for mental illness or soul-bonding. I don’t know the statistics on this, but we can assume there are some soul-bonders who were abused, however, I can tell you I was never abused, and I still became a bonder. It’s impossible to say conclusively that abuse, or even lack of abuse, will cause someone to become a soul-bonder.
The final symptom, depression, is one of the most common chemical imbalances among humans. Due to how common it is, it is a symptom that is not exclusive to soul-bonders. If every soul-bonder was depressed, then it would mean everyone who was depressed was a soul-bonder, which is not the case. Though I suffered from depression when I was younger, I’m happy to say that I no longer have it, and it was just a phase in my life.
Copyright 2010 Quetzal Zotz, reproduced with permission.
This is a fairly typical afternoon. I can’t see them, but I can feel them. Each has a unique energy print, and this energy print becomes an image in my mind.
I’ve had people write me off as insane, most recently between a couple of friends who wanted to stage an intervention. This report is not looking at the validity of soul-bonding. This is a psychological view to look at the question: Are soul-bonders crazy?
My own mental health background is varied. My grandmother has post-traumatic stress disorder and OCD. My aunt has OCD, my mom has OCD and depression, and my dad has ADD. I was formally diagnosed with ADD, but managed to keep it under control without the use of medication and I have been informally diagnosed with paranoia, and social anxiety disorder. However, in these cases I think I should point out, I began soul-bonding before I was informally diagnosed, as I began soul-bonding at eight, and was informally diagnosed at twelve-thirteen after suffering from intensive bullying from the age of seven to fourteen.
I was also informally diagnosed with pathological lying, mostly because I had to invent a diagnosis to make the soul-bonding acceptable to my former peer group. Only a few of these friends are accepting with soul-bonding, the other ones are more likely to stage an intervention.
When researching groups that have criticised soul-bonders as being crazy, they list three main mental illnesses as the cause: dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and plain delusion.
Why Soul-Bonding is Not DID
I will tackle each one of these symptoms in order. This is a general list of symptoms that can indicate DID:
1. Auditory hallucinations of the personalities
2. Multiple mannerisms, attitudes and beliefs that are not similar to each other
3. Loss of time and/or memories
4. Depersonalization, or the feeling of watching oneself act and having no control
5. Unexplainable body pains, particularly headaches
6. Flashbacks of abuse and/or trauma
7. Depression
Soul-bonding is defined as a phenomenon in which you hear fictional characters, either created by you or someone else, in your head. Sometimes they come when you are writing a story and a little voice says “no, it happened like this”, or “you’ve nailed the villains personality perfectly!”. In regards to the symptoms, yes, you do experience an auditory phenomenon. However, couldn’t you be experiencing “auditory hallucinations” when you’re talking to yourself in your head? I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the skeptics here: yes, soul-bonders hear voices.
Some soul-bonders talk about “fronting”, where they allow a bond to share a body, so the bond can interact with another person. Some bonders say that during one of these episodes they have a foggy memory of what happened, others say they share-consciousness, meaning they are fully aware of what the bond is doing, and can stop the bond if they need to. I myself fall into the latter category. This has caused some people to believe that soul-bonding is a less extreme model of dissociative identity disorder. Tying “fronting” into memory loss: not all soul-bonders lose their memory. My bonds have a LJ account, and I am always fully aware about what they are typing. Of the soul-bonders I’ve talked to, none of them have experienced any form of memory loss, from foggy memories to complete blackouts. So, you could say that, though some soul-bonders regularly share a body, it is incredibly rare for a true soul-bonder to black out. [Editor's Note: Some SoulBonders do "go away" when their 'Bonds front, but in that case it is mutually initiated and a consensual surrender of consciousness, not an involuntary loss of time.]
Depersonalization is a psychological phenomenon in which the patient reports watching his or her body do something without being able to react. In all my research, I have yet to find any true soul-bonder who has said that they have watched a Bond do something without being able to react themselves.
Anyone can attest to a random ache or pain, and soul-bonders experience this no more or less than a person who isn’t a bonder. If they do, it’s often a psychical illness or injury that is causing the pain.
Though it is unfortunate that child abuse and trauma occur—to about 40 million children a year—this is not always a catalyst for mental illness or soul-bonding. I don’t know the statistics on this, but we can assume there are some soul-bonders who were abused, however, I can tell you I was never abused, and I still became a bonder. It’s impossible to say conclusively that abuse, or even lack of abuse, will cause someone to become a soul-bonder.
The final symptom, depression, is one of the most common chemical imbalances among humans. Due to how common it is, it is a symptom that is not exclusive to soul-bonders. If every soul-bonder was depressed, then it would mean everyone who was depressed was a soul-bonder, which is not the case. Though I suffered from depression when I was younger, I’m happy to say that I no longer have it, and it was just a phase in my life.
Copyright 2010 Quetzal Zotz, reproduced with permission.