Nsashaell System

The whirlwind of the semester is coming to an end. It feels weirdly sudden. But that’s probably because of the days project.

The days project is something we can only do at times when we have extra days off. We make a list of everyone and then schedule an entire day in front for each person. The first time we did this, it was before we started grad school, and it was a fun experiment. We recorded each person talking about their day and made a video. At the time, there were 21 of us. Because we were only scheduling around family events and various errands, it took about two months to complete.

We learned a lot of important things, like who has an easy time fronting alone rather than cofronting, who likes what activities, who tends to hover near the front when different people are there, etc. We also learned who gets scared to leave the house, how different people like to dress if they can pick, that it’s really really nice to have the freedom to do what you want without other people in your brain suggesting things they want to do instead, and who has what levels of gender dysphoria.

After that initial days project, we used a modified version during breaks. People chose 1/3 day, ½ day, or full day and that cut down the amount of time required. Because most of the system either can’t hold the front for a full day without help and most people just want to work on a project for a few hours, that had worked very well. Everyone was still satisfied. We did that abbreviated days schedule for the next four years during winter and summer breaks. We didn’t bother to record it. We had been documenting our grad school experience through semester check in videos instead.

Then there was the pandemic. During quarantine, breaks and work and school were all kind of mixed together. We also descended into a very traumatized state and only emerged from it after going on an antidepressant. So when the summer semester of 2021 was over, and we only had our dissertation to do this year, we decided another full-on days project would be a good system reset. So this fall, my dissertation team worked on our only major semester task. And 3-4 days per week, we scheduled ourselves and our systemmates for full days of fronting.

It can be very disorienting. When others have full command of the front, and you aren’t really paying attention to their activities, it seems like days completely disappear. It’s not like I can’t find out what happened if I ask or search through our memories, but I’m constantly confronted with this sense of surprise at the date when I come out to work. My team was quite productive, making plenty of progress and keeping up with our goals. And the rest of the time, our system of 38 people each had a full day to decompress, do our hobbies, go places we enjoy and immerse ourselves in the present moment.

On their days, some of our members worked intensely on projects for hours at a time without interruption, while others took the opportunity to read a book, watch tv, or do nothing all day. Newer system members did self-reflection activities and took the time to learn about themselves. The kids enjoyed running amok, coloring, watching their favorite movies, or learning something new. Our hair got cut short, our nails got painted and repainted, we got a ton of exercise from everyone’s hiking and neighborhood walks, and we spent a lot of money on toys from the Japanese gift store. Tons of art projects were done, family members and friends were visited, we went to the science museum and the zoo, and hung out a lot with our dogs.

The project took four months to complete. The resulting accumulation of video clips from everyone totals 2 hours and 40 minutes. We remembered there can be something very healing about just being in the front without needing to worry about others’ desires and plans. It was the reset we all needed. We now feel ready to refocus and finish our degree.

This week was our systemversary, meaning the anniversary of our discovery of plurality. On the week of Thanksgiving, 2011, our friends House of Chimeras sent us the Aestraea’s web glossary of plural terms over a private message on the Daemon Forum. We had reached out to somewhat obnoxiously ask too many questions about plurality and they had graciously begun educating us. When we read terms like “fronting”, “co-con”, etc. for the first time, our brain had jammed. We had known there was more than one person in our brain for a long time. Never once, until that day, had it occurred to us that it might actually be okay to be us.

So here’s to that life-saving conversation and our 10 year systemversary. To my systemmates, I love all you crazy people, and I’m happy to be alive and together.

-Calen

A 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 able to participate in the Plural Positivity World Conference this week by presenting a session about our graduate school experience, and got a lot of great support and positive feedback about our session. People found it especially useful to hear about our team system of organizing tasks during the semester. I think it might be helpful to people for us to really flesh this out in essay form. So, I’m going to go into detail about how we manage our fronting time.

Our current life is divided into 3 kinds of time periods: semesters, breaks (which for us are usually a month or more), and holidays (we celebrate solstices, equinoxes, and important personal dates). Each of these time period types have a different strategy for fronting assignment. For semesters we use a team system; for breaks, it’s called a day system; and for holidays, it’s a free-for-all type schedule. I want to stress that these scheduling strategies are mainly for times when we are able to be intentional about fronting, which is about 90% of the time. We definitely have some days when we are struggling emotionally with something or another, and people get stuck in front against their will. When this happens, we just have to roll with it.

First, I’ll discuss our semester strategy: the team system. During the semester, we have various tasks, such as taking classes, our clinical training, research tasks (for example, we will begin work on our dissertation this year), and driving to and from all those things. We also have responsibilities at home, such as cooking, cleaning, gardening, and pets. Additionally, we have self care tasks such as exercise, body care, our own therapy, and sleep, as well as spirituality-related tasks. Each of these categories becomes a team.

People sign up for teams on a volunteer basis, meaning that they are freely chosen. People sign up for a team knowing that they will be responsible for those team tasks until the current semester ends- they have the option to switch teams next semester. Sometimes, people will change teams in the middle, but we only let people do that if they are really hating their current task. We want people to commit so that there’s some consistency, and we balance that with wanting everyone to feel fulfilled with their various jobs.

Below is an example of a recent team signup sheet for this coming semester. I’m going to show you what it looks like in two stages. The first stage has the opinionated people who really really want specific jobs, or to keep the jobs they had last time. In the second stage, gaps will be filled in with less opinionated system members.

Stage 1

1. At the top, you’ll find everyone’s initials in the system. This is for our reference, to make sure we don’t forget to assign anyone to a team in Stage 2.

2. The class team has three subteams because we are registered for three classes this fall. Each class will end up with two people on it.

3. On some teams, including the research team, people have different assigned roles. In this case, I’m in charge of writing and Shawn is in charge of presenting.

4. Our clinical training team will be further subdivided (ex. notes, supervision, group and individual therapy) once we get a sense of the responsibilities at our new site. More may end up added to this team once the semester begins as it tends to be one of the more resource-consuming teams.

5. Our driving team tends to be between 3-4 people, but this semester our classes are online due to the pandemic, so one driver will be enough. In prior semesters, drivers were assigned routes and/or times of day (ex. morning commute to campus).

6. Our therapy team is in charge of managing internal trauma reactions, trauma healing work, and assigning different members to go to therapy. They are also in charge of determining whether the direction of therapy needs to change or we need to set a boundary, etc.

7. The sleep team is in charge of getting ready for bed and falling asleep. Some of us are better at sleeping than others, so we tend to have certain good sleepers on this team.

8. The spirit team is in charge of keeping us in touch with spirituality during the semester by organizing house events or simply making sure we go outside when things are hard.

9. We have a couple of teams in charge of our somewhat excessive number of pets.

10. The Body team is in charge of keeping us well-groomed, clean, as rested as possible, and exercised.

Once the initial signup is done, the remaining people choose from what’s left.

Stage 2

Note that now, the initials have been crossed out, indicating that everyone has a team. Gaps have been filled in. We have a heavier focus on home tasks this fall because of the pandemic, so more people are assigned to teams such as cooking and cleaning than would normally be. Lately, we have noticed a tendency to stay in and not get exercise, so we have allowed that team to be one of the largest, in the hopes that people will place more time emphasis on exercise and body care.

Every day once this schedule is in effect, we will check in first thing in the morning and establish who will front that day and in what order based on our responsibilities for that day. Only one member of a given team is necessary to do most tasks, so the team is responsible for deciding who is out for their tasks when.

We have found this system of job assignment to have a number of benefits for us. It gives us some variety in our jobs semester to semester. Even if you enjoy a job, for example, taking classes, you may need to take a break by joining a different team every so often, because it’s understandable not to want to do the same thing year after year. It also allows people to test out new tasks temporarily. For example, some of our teen members have tried being on a class team in order to experience something new and for their own personal development (with supervision by adults, of course). Because people can move freely between jobs when a new semester begins, they can try something out, decide if it’s a team they would like to do again in the future, or if they want to return to a more familiar team. In this way, people can discover new interests and even talents.

Additionally, having every task handled by a team means that any system members who are struggling with their mental health have other team members they can rely on if they are having a bad day. The teams serve as a support system within tasks so that no one is doing their job alone. And having one task to focus on means that it is easier to focus on your own responsibilities without getting overwhelmed by other systemmates’ stress. For example, if Shawn is presenting something at a conference, I don’t have to micromanage that or worry because that’s not my job. This keeps our group anxiety down when we stick to our own responsibilities and trust other teams to do their work.

That about does it for the team system during semesters. We have an entirely different fronting schedule during breaks. We call this the day system because we share whole days in groups of 1-3. The way it works is that we list people under categories of whole day, half day, 1/3 day or no day depending on how much time the person wants. Then we devise a schedule that can last between 10 days and month depending on how much time people have requested. After the entire rotation, we do this again, with people choosing new options for the following rotation. Usually we have a day or two between or within rotations that are free for anyone to come out.

When breaks come around, we’re usually all exhausted, and so a number of people may not want to front at all, or may only come out during one rotation, or may just want a few minutes on free days. It’s not uncommon for some people to stay inside for an entire break to recover before the semester starts again. Anyone who does want scheduled time will choose how many people they want to share their day with. Based on this, people are grouped and their initials are placed on our calendar so that we know who is supposed to be out that day.

We aren’t very strict during day system times. The priority is placed on the scheduled fronters for that day, but if they decide they’re all done halfway through the day, then others are allowed out. The point is to give people the ability to prioritize their projects and/or relaxation, without anyone else in the system pestering them to hurry up or do something else. Someone who is fronting on a given day also must do daily tasks, like body care, pet care, and cooking. This makes it a very different experience than the team system as people do a variety of types of tasks on their days. We find it to be a refreshing change from the strict semester schedule.

For holidays, we declare free days where anyone can come out. This includes trips (road trips, camping, flying somewhere), solstices and equinoxes, our birthday, scheduled time with external loved ones, etc. Usually we still make a list in the morning of the most enthusiastic people, and sometimes we celebrate extra days to accommodate everyone. For example, our birthday tends to entail multiple days of celebration.

Hopefully, this explains what we do in enough detail to be useful to others. It took us years to arrive at this way of dividing our time, and it will definitely be different for different plural groups- in fact, we know plurals for whom this system doesn’t work at all, who have better ways for themselves that wouldn’t work for us. In other words, this isn’t any kind of perfect method, but just ideas to consider. There are many ways that plurals organize time.

-Calen

I finally got around to watching a youtube video that friends of ours were interviewed for. I thought it was really good, and actually respectful in a surprising way; most plurality-related content not directly made by plurals tends to sensationalize or stereotype, but this one was okay. Here's the link if you haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7JK6pattE&t=467s


We have to admit we had kind of been putting off watching it, despite assurances that it was actually good. The reason for this is probably the fact that we tend to have a lot of confusing feelings after watching DID-focused content, such as people who identify with the DID label talking about their experiences, or academic literature or course materials related to DID as a diagnosis. Having plural friends and being in a psychology program tends to expose us to that sort of thing pretty frequently.

The confusing feelings come in different... flavors, I guess. On the one hand, there's some shame-trauma-triggery stuff from our complicated internalized ableism issue. Growing up, despite our entire extended family being full of people who have various and sundry neurodiverse issues, mental health was something our family didn't talk about. If it was talked about, it was talked around, with this dark implication of something being inherently wrong with whoever was experiencing the issue. Because of this, we as a group have a deep-seeded feeling that being different and having unusual mental characteristics means there is something wrong with us. That's been a focus of our therapy because it does need to be addressed for us to kick our habit of feeling ashamed about our plurality and trauma issues, which aren't our fault. Shame really doesn't help anything when you're trying to be accepting of yourselves.

But other flavors are a bit more intellectual. We feel unnerved when we encounter DID-related material because we are honestly very confused about our relationship with the community. We identify as plural, and have always argued that we don't have DID because we don't experience functional impairment from our plurality. We've also argued that the supposed cause of DID, early childhood trauma, isn't something we have experienced. Both of these things are technically true- we know how to diagnose, and you can't diagnose most things without functional impairment or distress. So we really aren't diagnosable in the sense of wanting/needing treatment for DID. We still haven't discovered the kind of magnitude of trauma in our childhood that would fit DID's cause- our PTSD comes from experiences that happened "too late" according to theory, and weren't severe enough.

So officially, we don't have DID, despite fulfilling all the other criteria, including the memory stuff (we have a number of workarounds to deal with that). But every group we've met who does have a DID diagnosis and/or identifies themselves using that acronym has so many similarities to us. Also, before DSM 5 added the functional impairment criterion, we did qualify, even if we were really against being diagnosed during that time. Talking to people with DID always feels like we belong, like we're internally doing similar things to deal with life. Those conversations always feel so familiar, like we're speaking with long lost family. The fact of the matter is that most of the people who really get us have DID and the reason we can relate to them is that we're DIDish.

This creates a logical issue. We don't want to identify with a disorder for something we don't believe is disordered in ourselves, but even though we technically aren't diagnosable, people with DID are our people. That's who we're most similar to, and who we understand most naturally. In a way, our completely justified identity label logic separates us out of a group of people where we most belong.

Watching this video, we were thinking about how similar we are to the interviewees. But because the video focuses most on DID rather than general plurality, and continuously emphasizes the trauma aspect and the idea that DID exists to keep people unaware of negative past experiences, it was also really alienating for us. Our plurality did function as a way of covering up our PTSD for a number of years, but trauma wasn't the cause for us. We were already multiple, and aware of each other from a young age.

We recently realized the cause of our multiplicity may actually be early childhood trauma in a previous generation, and that our mental structure was passed down one line of our family tree. It was difficult to uncover this because of how little our family is willing to talk about it, not to mention our own hesitation to talk about our mental health with them. But we recently realized that our multiplicity might have originated in childhood trauma after all- it just wasn't ours. We have a very limited knowledge of epigenetics, but enough to know that each generation uses the experiences of generations before to be born as prepared as possible for the world. We have never heard anyone else talk about multiplicity being passed down epigenetically rather than through generational abuse. But it makes sense.

Our story still doesn't really fit the official DID narrative, even if it has come a bit closer as we find out more. We're still left feeling uncertain about using a label that doesn't officially match and that is subject to change by mental health professionals. But I think we've slowly come to terms with the similarities over time. The question remains, how do we feel included in a community we belong in without fitting that imposed narrative?

-Shawn