![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Introductions: Who We Are
Jan. 7th, 2020 08:43 amHello, 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
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
