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Decided to post something a little bit different.

Tell us about your favorite part of your system.

This could be something inner world, specific headmates, specific relationship dynamics, talents, skills, quirks. Whatever. Tell me something about you and your system that just makes you happy.

We'll go first.

One of our favorite parts of our system is how we protect and step in for each other whenever things become too overwhelming. Whenever one of us struggles with intrusive thoughts or strong ideation there is always someone ready to step up and bare the brunt of reality while the other member takes a break inner world. It's been the key to our survival and I cannot thank everyone in my system enough for it.

Also just the absolute comedy show that fronting can be when there are too many people co-conning.

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System art of our inner world without context.

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Would love to build community with other Indigenous systems. If you're out there please feel free to send an ask or dm us.

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OMG FELLOW INDIGENOUS SYSTEM! Do you take questions about ethnicity as well?

We're open to most any questions. Just depends on who's around on if they get full answers 😅

But also Ha’ah’hey (hello) friend!

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One of the parts of being a system that absolutely gets on my nerves?

Inconsistent art skills 😭

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We're bored. Ask us about our system.

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I got beef with some of em but at the end of the day we're stuck with each other so might as well love each other even if I'd like to punch one or two in the face sometimes 😅

REBLOG IF YOU LOVE YOUR HEADMATES!!!!

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So anyway. Some of the biggest steps we took on our healing journey were:

1. Finding a culturally competent therapist. I cannot tell you the absolute game changer that was. FOURTEEN YEARS of therapy on and off with predominantly white therapists who couldn't understand how race and ethnicity played into my trauma lead to very little progress. And frankly, inappropriate takes and comments. Our first therapist who came from a similar culture and could actually identify those connections lead to more understanding and healing in the first few months than the previous fourteen fucking years. Seriously. Culturally competent therapist are a god sent.

2. Was reconnecting with our tribe and learning from our medicine person. Just having conversations about the place of plurality within our specific culture and the roles it plays truly helped us move past alot of lingering dissociative barriers. It's also reshaped how we interact with each other and has brought with it a sense of harmony we struggled to maintain beforehand.

One of these days we may share a more nuanced explanation of the second point but don't feel like it right now.

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Ok I've been told by my system mates that I've harped on the 'plurality isn't inherently disordered' train for enough posts in a row 😅 That isn't what this blog was supposed to be centered on. We'll go back to posting nonsense about our system now. Maybe we'll share some system art or something idk. Apparently I'm being 'too confrontational'.

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Just wanted to share the Boundaries with normality threshold section of the ICD-11 which states that the experience of multiple personality states in in of itself is not inherently disordered. I think this is an aspect many in the DID community often overlook. Plurality isn't exclusive to the DID community. Plurality isn't always disordered or indicative of a mental disorder.

Link below

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btw 'syscourse' and plural infighting isn't accomplishing anything. back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the only communities and resources for plurals that were widely available were for and by non-traumagenic systems. the only people who were advocating for normalizing and accepting plurality on a large scale were non-traumagenic systems. if you did research into plurality 10 - 15 years ago, most of the results that came up would have been experiences written by spiritual and natural plurals.

many people at the time were expressing their dislike of forcing every single plural to identify as if they had trauma- many found this insulting to themselves, and rightfully so! no one should be forced to identify in a way they don't agree with just to rightfully be a part of a community they already occupy. this obsession with "you can only be plural if you have trauma" has only come about extremely recently. i found out about plurality through the otherkin community. i was actually told about DID by someone in the spiritual plurality community. people don't seem to understand that most non-traumagenic systems have respect for traumagenic systems and don't gatekeep their spaces to prevent us from entering.

older plural spaces on the web like healthymultiplicity accepted all plurals. the goal of the community was to show that you can live as plural and not have it be a tragedy or something to "fix". if anything, folks with dissociative disorders owe a LOT to non-traumagenic systems for pushing to normalize plurality without implying that we HAVE to integrate our headmates and try to stop being plural. a huge part of the early online plural community was there to push that plurals can and do live happy lives and shouldn't view their plurality as a bad thing

it's not going to make singlet society see us in a better light. it's not going to get people to understand plurality better. it's not going to get us better mental health resources. it's not going to improve the quality of care for dissociative and traumagenic systems. all you're doing is bullying someone else that you don't understand simply because you don't agree with them.

you're not going to recover from your trauma or understand your own plurality better by denying the existence of other types of plurality. you're not "making the community safer" by gatekeeping. telling other people how their brains work is policing their identities. whether or not you want to accept it, if you forcefully kick endos out of plural spaces, you are the cop you claim to hate.

fighting with people on your own team will never net you a victory. to every other dissociative and traumagenic system: endos are on your side. you are wearing the same jersey. you are made of the same flesh and blood. enough. come together to share your similarities instead of fighting over differences. celebrate the diversity that plurality offers. don't take someone else's identity personally. someone can share the space with you without having to match exactly how you identify. diversity is what makes a community thrive.

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It's wild that this even needs to be said but DID isn't the only form of plurality. DID doesn't own plurality and it's extremely fucking racist to claim otherwise.

'What do you mean racist?'

I mean claiming that disordered plurality is the only type of plurality that exists/is valid completely disregards cultural/Indigenous knowledge and experiences on the subject. Viewing plurality solely through the lense of the 'western medical model' invalidates traditional knowledge and roles of plurality in a plethora of cultures.

I have even seen DID systems actively calling those forms of plurality 'fringe' or 'spiritual and thus less valid' which is wildly inappropriate. If your view of plurality looks down upon cultural/traditional/Indigenous knowledge and forms it's based in racism.

What's even more wild is traditional/cultural knowledge of plurality is often times far older than the western acknowledgement of DID/OSDD 1a/1b.

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Weird system complaints:

"What the fuck am I suppose to do with only two arms!?!" Angel on a regular basis.

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Frequently Asked In-System Questions

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Whomst the fucketh?"

"Who the hell was that??"

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The over medicalization of plurality is harmful.

Fakeclaiming of systems that differ from your own is harmful.

Questioning the validity of systems with good communication or few disruptive traits (i.e. dissociation, dissociative amnesia, memory blocks) is fucking harmful.

The hyper/sole focus on how traits of Dissociative Identity Disorder can be a burden is harmful.

Claiming only disordered systems are valid is harmful.

Truly I don't understand how others don't see it. The DID part of the plurality community in particular is so focused on proving that other systems suffer and that the suffering is what makes you truly DID that they completely forget to ask themselves what a systems might look like after they've healed or worked past dissociative barriers. So much surrounding syscourse is so fixated on providing your trauma was severe enough or that your life is disrupted enough to qualify as a system to others. But what about systems who've healed?

Syscourse is so quick to call functional systems fake that it seems like many truly believe you can't have multiplicity without being severely disordered. Not only is that categorically not true but it perpetuates the idea that you can never heal. That you can never overcome the symptoms of DID that are most disruptive. That you can't find harmony or equilibrium with your system.

Systems can heal from their trauma. Systems can coexist in harmony. Plurality DOES NOT need to be painful. Functional multiplicity is real and attainable.

Plurality is not inherently disordered.

I could go on but I don't want to write a book. Open to questions, comments, etc.

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Damn I'm late to the party but just found out picrew has a friggin app 😱

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The lense of plurality through whiteness is not a mistake. It's an intentional attack not only on bipoc bodied system but also on non white cultural acknowledgements and knowledge of the nature of plurality.

Even within the limited scope of acceptance of plurality in colonized culture, the only form that is given any merit is that which seeks to state that plurality is inherently disordered. Plurality is only seen as valid if it inconveniences the person. It completely washes away any other form of plurality or cultural understandings.

It often paints the very existence of plurality as disordered rather than the negative effects of trauma on that plurality. I.e. dissociation, dissociative amnesia, lack of communication, etc.

And because we live in a society that chronically and systematically devalues bipoc trauma, DID is seen by many (incorrectly so) as a 'white disorder'.

Plurality can exist without trauma.

Bipoc trauma is just as real as non bipoc trauma.

The disruptive symptoms of DID does not discriminate based on race but the presentation of those symptoms may vary based on a myriad of factors.

Culturally incompetent doctors are more likely to miscatagorize/ignore/underestimate trauma symptom presentation in non white patients.

Plurality in in of itself is not inherently disordered and insisting so is inherently racist.

Racism in the plural community is a real problem. Racism in the medical community is a real, dangerous problem.

Pour one out for DID/OSDD systems of color that go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because the psychiatric institution dismisses them.

Pour one out for all systems of color who feel isolated because the online community often conflates plurality with whiteness.

Pour one out for systems of color who get called racist or appropriative because their systems incorporate aspects of their own culture, but people automatically assume they must be white.

Pour one out for systems of color whose voices are silenced because of their ethnicity.

Uplift non-white systems. Talk to non-white systems, not over them.