Introductions: Who We Are

Hello, Erif here. A new blog needs some kind of introduction, obviously. Shawn already wrote a good explanation about why we're here, so I offered to continue by posting about who we are. The FAQ from our former website will be posted in its own post when I finish with this.

It's never easy to know where to begin when talking about our system. This is probably because there's just a lot to it- many things going on at one time, 30ish constantly growing and changing people, and a ton of disagreements on how we should or should not describe ourselves as a group. For example, I'm currently trying to get permission to post a little bit about each person in our group, but it's not working because some of us are more privacy-conscious than others. I would like to post some of our art, but people disagree on which art is better or whether or not we should post art at all. I could attempt to talk about our life history, or our experiences as a group, but we even disagree on how those should be explained, what details are important, etc etc etc.

So I suppose the place to start is simply by emphasizing that we are a system of around 30 individuals, depending on how you count, and that what I really mean when I say that is we are different individuals. We have different thoughts, feelings, goals, interests, values, needs, ways of speaking, physical mannerisms, perceptions, and interrelationships with one another.

We have quite a few things in common as well, including our body, our family (inside and outside)- obviously we all live in the same place, share the same amount of time, and have the same outer world relationships, though to differing degrees. When we look in the mirror, we see the same face, although none of us identify with it. Because of these superficial similarities, people naturally assume we are facets of one person, or moods, or don't believe we can be different when we look so outwardly the same. But that's incorrect, because as soon as you look below the surface, we each have the characteristics of a full mind. And if we are allowing ourselves to be seen, the differences are very striking.

We don't often show ourselves to people. Usually, we'll dampen our mannerisms in most contexts, and just come off as a bit eccentric. We went through a period of time when we told many people we knew about being multiple. We came up against too much stigma, and landed in an uneasy place with many of them, where No One Talks About the Thing. The problem is that, as it turns out, telling people that you just realized you've spent your whole life sharing your head with other people who you assumed weren't real but then, in a surprise twist, they actually were, mostly just evoked disbelief and fears about us "going crazy". Which was laughable given how lousy our mental health had been pre-realization, and how quickly we bounced upward when we realized we needed to approach ourselves as a family instead of one massively confused individual.

It's difficult to explain who we actually are because there isn't a decent cultural narrative around being plural. Basically you get to choose from Victimized Multiple Evoking Pity/Horror or Do You Have a Serial Killer Alter I Don't Know Who's Going to Kill Me in My Sleep?!. We subscribe to neither of these tropes, because we've found them to be extremely damaging for us: we already spent too many years being terrified of ourselves, and we prefer not to be defined by the victimization we've experienced.

We have been told by mental health professionals that we qualify for the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. However, we disagree as mental health professional(s) ourselves. The diagnosis of DID requires the client to experience distress or difficulty functioning due to being multiple. As we have figured out how to make our plurality into an asset rather than a detriment, and by anyone's standards are living a full- possibly overfull- life at the moment, we do not qualify. We may present just like anyone else we know who embraces the DID label, and tend to share a lot of characteristics. But we don't have DID and are unwilling to be labeled as such. Who we are is not a disease. It's weird, and complicated, and occasionally frustrating, but it's beautiful and it's right for us.

We do deal with a lot of post-traumatic stress as a group, which is diagnosable, though we generally avoid being labeled with those philosophically problematic DSM acronyms. I'm not claiming we don't struggle with mental health issues as separate individuals, either. Some of us cycle through depression. Others tend towards anxiety. Some of us are more impacted by traumatic events, or different traumatic events. We have been through a lot of therapy, as individuals and for our group issues. And we believe in the power of therapy because of how much it has helped, though there have been plenty of times when it has done us harm.

We are currently working on a PhD in psychology, which will take us several more years to complete. At some point, we'll need to post about how we manage all of that, because it's more than a full-time job. Basically, we are currently dividing our time by tasks, with job time and free time for each system member. We each choose a job team: taking a class, working on our clinical training, working on our research project, driving. Self care jobs are also assigned, like managing food and exercise, keeping our living space clean, etc. Free time includes doing art projects or socializing with friends. Naturally, when free time is scarce, there can be a lot of conflict over it. Fortunately, as a fully co-conscious system, we are able to easily communicate, though negotiations and resolving conflicts can be time-consuming.

Lately, a lot of our conflict and negotiation has involved how to manage our gender dysphoria, which we all experience to varying degrees. As a group, we identify as transgender and non-binary. Individually, we have our own gender identities. Basically, our gender is as complicated as you might expect it to be, because trying to assign a gender to a mixed group is a bit absurd. But we have a lot of shared experiences with other trans and/or non-binary people, such as taking various transition steps, so it works. Being precise when there are a lot of you is a bit impossible anyway.

I feel like this wandered a bit. Or maybe a lot. I've discovered a lot of essay topics as I write this. Trying to talk about ourselves is never simple or easy. This will be the first of many attempts.

I'm being heckled for taking so long to write this. Until next time,
Erif

FAQ

Plural (n): More than one person sharing a single body.

System (n): A network of connected individuals who influence and partly direct each others' behavior.

Vocabulary

What is plurality?

The plurality community is comprised of those who identify as more than one person sharing a single body. It is an umbrella term that includes some people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, multiple systems who are undiagnosable or refuse diagnosis, people with imaginary friends, and people who create other people in their head on purpose, among others. The plurality community is widely varied and doesn’t agree on very much.

What terms do you use to describe yourselves?

We use the phrase “multiple system” because we are on the very individualized end of the plurality spectrum, with obvious switches and very differentiated mannerisms. We think of ourselves, not in terms of DID theory’s personality system, but in terms of a family system (see definition above). We use the word “plural” in identification with the larger community, and describe our overarching gender identity as “non-binary” because we each have separate gender identities, and "transgender" because we share experiences in common with other trans people, including gender dysphoria.

What do “switching” and “fronting” mean?

As a multiple system, we are able to take turns controlling our shared body. The person controlling the body at a given time is “fronting” and changing to a different fronter is called “switching”. In our case, we almost always have total control of when we switch and to whom. Some systems tend to work well with more than one person fronting at once, blending together or both paying attention, but this doesn’t work well for us. We front individually; otherwise, we interfere with each other’s motions, balance, and motivation.

What is a subsystem? How does it work?

A subsystem is like a multiple inside the head of a multiple: what seems at first to be a single system member turns out to be more than one. We have one subsystem with three members who can only be present in our headspace one at a time.


Life Inside


How do you communicate with each other?

We think at each other, conversationally. It “sounds” similar to reading aloud in your head. We can also sense each others’ emotions when we think about each other.

How do you tell each other apart in your mind?

Our thoughts and feelings are flavored with synesthetic sensations of color and texture. For example, Shawn’s thoughts are blue and feel light and airy, while Allandra’s are pink and feel electric. Our thought voices also “sound” different, like Aethros’ deeper voice contrasted with Liona’s high-pitched one. It’s very easy for us to tell each other apart.

Where do you go when you aren't in front (controlling the body)?

We have an imagined place in our head called a headspace. We create it, so it can be whatever we want. It has a castle, forest and prairie, and we each have our own private spaces in there. Functionally, it provides a "space" where we can reliably find each other to communicate.

What do you mean when you say someone's "watching the front?"

There are different levels of nearness to the front, and it’s possible to be focused on the front without being in it or in the headspace. Think of it like an in-between zone. The fronter has a sensation of someone else hovering right around our shoulders, looking out through our eyes, but not controlling anything. Often, people in this position will discuss things with whoever is fully in front or make annoying or amusing comments about what the fronter is doing.


Daily Life


Who fronts the most often?

We divide our time into task-based teams. For example, we have a Class team, an Errands team, a Driving team, an Exercise team, etc. These larger teams are currently subdivided, for example, two people may take one class, with one of them responsible for homework and the other for attending. People are also entitled to free time outside from team tasks, though this gets very difficult to schedule when our life becomes busy.

Do you have drama with each other?

All the time. We work it out and usually get along, but the drama is still inevitable. There are always disagreements about major aspects of our life that we slowly work towards consensus on by having meetings, journalling, and making sure everyone is heard.

Do you have to learn everything more than once?

We have always shared our semantic, or fact-based, memory. When we discovered our plurality in 2011, we were able to combine our episodic, or daily life, memories into a single source, though individual memories still mean more to those who were present at the time. And in 2016 we began the process of creating a shared procedural, or muscle, memory system by addressing trauma-related blockages in therapy. This allowed us to learn motor tasks once and have them translate to all other members. So the answer is, mostly not anymore.

Do you change clothes every time you switch?

That would be extremely inconvenient. We have a mostly shared wardrobe at this point, and people deal with wearing whatever someone else put on, though sometimes they don't like it very much. :P

Do you have different talents?

Definitely. We each have activities we’re really great at and others we’re hilariously bad at. Each of us has multiple talents and anti-talents, and we coordinate our activities in order to use everyone’s strengths to best effect.

Do you all have different opinions on things?

We have wildly differing opinions on everything from religion and societal issues to more mundane things like preferred species of pets or who to hang out with. Our individual opinions change slowly over time, just like a singlet’s, and we differ on which opinions we consider to be important. In other words, our opinions about our opinions are also varied.

Do you all have different friends in real life?

We have a variety of friends in real life, and we differ on which of them we get along with best. There are subgroups of systemmates who are closer to one friend or another.

This all seems so complicated. How do you keep track of everything?

We don’t. Who we are, what we think, how we interact—these things just happen, playing themselves out with a natural consistency that we do nothing to enforce. Trying to ignore each other or make our interactions and personalities go away was always much more draining than simply allowing ourselves to be who we are.

What do I call you/What pronouns should I use?

We like to be referred to using they/them. We have a nickname we chose that we prefer over our birth name, if we need to be called by a single name, but we prefer to be recognized using our separate names and pronouns if at all possible. We also respond well to being called Nsashaell, though few people do that offline.


Who We Are and Aren't


Who was first?

No one was first. We have been multiple for our entire lifetime and believe it to be our natural state of being.

Where do your names come from?

We name ourselves nowadays, but we sometimes used to name each other. We enjoy fantasy names that sound interesting and whimsical, so many of us are named in Elvish languages from Tolkien’s works. Other origins include turning words backwards and mixing up or taking names from foreign languages. Almost all of us have a last name as well as a first name, and some even have a middle name.

So which one of you is -legal name-?

Our birthname is only that: a name people called us growing up. We use it less and less because it’s always felt more like someone we were pretending to be rather than a name that described us, and we feel more and more weird about its femininity as time passes.

Oh, you mean you're like 3 Faces of Eve/United States of Tara/Sybil/the guy in Split?

There is a long history of sensationalized and derogatory portrayals of multiple personalities and DID in the media. Instead of using them to learn about plural people, it’s better to meet actual plurals and read the things they have written about themselves. Hollywood will continue to use plurality as a cheap laugh, a frightening twist, or a tired trope for years to come. Don’t listen to them. Listen to us.

-Calen