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Dreams and Thoughts
Jul. 22nd, 2020 08:21 amA couple of nights ago, we had a marvelous dream. We were at this massive cool old mansion that was full of old stuff- collections, books, artifacts, like a museum. It belonged to one of the conference organizers who are friends of ours. The conference was taking place at this house. Plurals we knew, and some we didn’t, were wandering around everywhere, talking. Groups congregated in the massive kitchen, which had an island stretched all along it where plurals had laptops open. There were window seats and living rooms full of plurals. Simultaneously, everyone was holding an ipad, because some people were communicating through Discord instead of talking out loud. This was completely normal, and some of the conversations were using both modalities at once.
We were having what felt like very important conversations. Systems who needed advice about getting organized were seeking us out. We were trying to help plurals who were newly discovered. At another point, we were talking to plurals who had developed selves-confidence and receiving advice about how to empower ourselves. We had the sense that blind spots we had were being helpfully revealed. We had a conversation with a group of other plural therapists, and exchanged career advice while drinking tea by a window.
The dream was like a deeply satisfying, perfect hug. It summed up last week beautifully. We are still processing the massive amounts of information and the intensity of community feeling. We still have sessions to finish watching, and last year to watch as well. At the same time, we’re having a lot of thoughts about moving forward and what the future could look like.
It’s hard to imagine a time when plurality would be considered okay by the general public, when media representations will no longer feature serial killer alters on the one hand and talk show interviews that pathologize plurality and exploit trauma for shock value on the other. It’s hard to imagine a time when plurals will stop being subjected to harmful treatment by clinicians, guided to repeatedly re-traumatize themselves, get blamed for their therapists’ bad decisions, and suffer as a result of outdated and singlet-centric treatment guidelines. Sometimes the weight of the current state of the community is overwhelming to us- the homelessness, the lack of financial stability, the crises without appropriate support that doesn’t make everything worse. Listening to the stories of plurals and the level of trauma that has been actively caused by people with our career choice- we’re so angry at the things that have happened to people, and there’s no way to undo that, no way to fix it.
We feel a sense of urgency to get our degree so that maybe, just maybe, we can offset the abuses that psychology perpetuates. People are dying, getting re-traumatized, being turned away and left with no help because of being plural every single day. At the same time, what can we possibly do? Even if we spend our entire life training other clinicians to treat plurals with respect, will that make a substantial difference?
This thought haunts us because we are joining a profession that has historically done huge amounts of damage to people like us. At the same time, we believe in the power of psychology to be harnessed for the good of plural people, which many plural people don’t. We know that things we’ve learned can help, if used in the right way. But there’s no roadmap to restructure the way psychology treats plurality. There’s no existing framework for positive plurality that humanizes people in the system and can give plurals their full potential back. We have to make one, and it seems very overwhelming. How do we convince psychology to listen to plural wisdom? In psychology, you can’t just bust in and declare something and be taken seriously in any way. We have a number of ideas on where to start with this, but just thinking about the enormity of the task is overwhelming.
We have years to think on this before our degree is in our hands. We’ll need that time. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to wrestle with belonging to two groups that are at odds, hearing plurals blanket-hate psychologists and watching psychologists destroy plural lives out of disdain and ignorance. And try not to let the hopelessness get to us.
-Niara
We were having what felt like very important conversations. Systems who needed advice about getting organized were seeking us out. We were trying to help plurals who were newly discovered. At another point, we were talking to plurals who had developed selves-confidence and receiving advice about how to empower ourselves. We had the sense that blind spots we had were being helpfully revealed. We had a conversation with a group of other plural therapists, and exchanged career advice while drinking tea by a window.
The dream was like a deeply satisfying, perfect hug. It summed up last week beautifully. We are still processing the massive amounts of information and the intensity of community feeling. We still have sessions to finish watching, and last year to watch as well. At the same time, we’re having a lot of thoughts about moving forward and what the future could look like.
It’s hard to imagine a time when plurality would be considered okay by the general public, when media representations will no longer feature serial killer alters on the one hand and talk show interviews that pathologize plurality and exploit trauma for shock value on the other. It’s hard to imagine a time when plurals will stop being subjected to harmful treatment by clinicians, guided to repeatedly re-traumatize themselves, get blamed for their therapists’ bad decisions, and suffer as a result of outdated and singlet-centric treatment guidelines. Sometimes the weight of the current state of the community is overwhelming to us- the homelessness, the lack of financial stability, the crises without appropriate support that doesn’t make everything worse. Listening to the stories of plurals and the level of trauma that has been actively caused by people with our career choice- we’re so angry at the things that have happened to people, and there’s no way to undo that, no way to fix it.
We feel a sense of urgency to get our degree so that maybe, just maybe, we can offset the abuses that psychology perpetuates. People are dying, getting re-traumatized, being turned away and left with no help because of being plural every single day. At the same time, what can we possibly do? Even if we spend our entire life training other clinicians to treat plurals with respect, will that make a substantial difference?
This thought haunts us because we are joining a profession that has historically done huge amounts of damage to people like us. At the same time, we believe in the power of psychology to be harnessed for the good of plural people, which many plural people don’t. We know that things we’ve learned can help, if used in the right way. But there’s no roadmap to restructure the way psychology treats plurality. There’s no existing framework for positive plurality that humanizes people in the system and can give plurals their full potential back. We have to make one, and it seems very overwhelming. How do we convince psychology to listen to plural wisdom? In psychology, you can’t just bust in and declare something and be taken seriously in any way. We have a number of ideas on where to start with this, but just thinking about the enormity of the task is overwhelming.
We have years to think on this before our degree is in our hands. We’ll need that time. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to wrestle with belonging to two groups that are at odds, hearing plurals blanket-hate psychologists and watching psychologists destroy plural lives out of disdain and ignorance. And try not to let the hopelessness get to us.
-Niara
