multiplydifficult

[multiplydifficult]

Oh moood. We actually really hate the term "endo" because of it's association with syscourse, we hate how people are often like "endos are valid :)" because it's just a reminder of syscourse (if no one disagreed they wouldn't feel the need to say that! No one says "singlets are valid" because no one says they aren't.) and just the fact that plural stuff here is 90% arguments; anger & debunking.

We also came here from Masto in the hopes of finding actually-useful information & people describing & discussing their experiences (which is 90% of how we learn about ourselven, by comparing & contrasting). There's the odd decent post, which is a big part of why we stay. (we do also end up posting the odd syscourse-related thing but not often.)

Masto is decent for systems if you just want to be able to exist openly as a system, but for information & discussions on plurality, yeah, it's got nothing. And it's hard to scroll through archives.

I wish there were more posts simply discussing the wide range of experiences grouped under "plurality" in a neutral way, rather than as a rebuttal of someone else's opinion. Everything is phrased as being somehow in opposition to something else, be it overtly or implied. When you've been away from the community for a while, that's jarring to see because you haven't necessarily been exposed to the thing that is being countered.

I came back to the plural tags here on Tumblr after a few years away because I was confused and looking for help understanding my experience. I also tried Reddit, but that's dominated by overly clinical perspectives and the same questions being asked over and over. I tried the Fediverse, but barely found anything except personal intros. I tried Pillowfort, but the plural communities were extremely low on activity.

In the end, Tumblr was still the only place where I found some useful information ... but at what cost??

A little bit of syscourse here and there may be acceptable or even necessary, but where's the rest of the conversation? I'm especially looking for traumagenic/adaptive experiences that don't match the typical DID narrative and general discussions of how all of this works that aren't overly clinical.

[multiplydifficult]

We're literally about to graduate into a healthcare profession and throughout our entire degree we have had drilled into us:

The patient is the expert on their own experiences.

The patient is the expert on their own circumstances.

The patient will have their own perspectives on their own experiences and you Must both understand and respect this.

We must work collaboratively with the patient as this provides the best outcomes. We need to ensure we are not deciding what the patient must do, but use our expertise to advise them and allow them to come to their own informed decision about which available option is best to take.

You in fact do not know yourself better than medical professionals. We see alof of posts saying how "i know my brain better than medical professionals" no. You don't, they are called professionals for the reason that they have studied and gotten degrees in specific fields. - Riley

[multiplydifficult]

Joke: The reason we wanted to take on a "leadership" / coordination role within this group project was so that we had an excuse to type "we" instead of "i" in emails to people.

[multiplydifficult]

i have now sent an email in polite-ese, to be summed up as "i'm booking these appointment times in an hour. You can let me know by then when you're free, or i'm just gonna make the appointments and you can either show up or shut up."

Also one of those appointments is with the supervisor, so if someone doesn't reply at all i'm gonna start asking 'hypothetical' questions about what happens re: grade if someone refuses to participate.

Gaaaah group projects are the worst it's been literally three days and I am suffering

(meme: yeah yeah the 'group projects are the worst,' we've all seen it)

Tuesday:

topic (community projects working with organisations) & group allocations sorted.

In a group of four total (me + 3)

We have the option of meeting with the relevant staff member on Thursday or Friday.

One of my group is, for some reason, on the other end of the country and videocalling into class.

One of my group confesses that they booked flights out of the country for a few days starting tomorrow. We just had holidays. We will have holidays in two months! They tried to minimise disruption to classes based on the Official timetable we had, which does not schedule in the SELF-DIRECTED PROJECT TIME, THAT WE KNEW WELL IN ADVANCE WAS GOING TO BE A SELF-DIRECTED GROUP PROJECT. Also sometimes those timetables change last-minute.

Of the two that are away, one agreed to video-call in to the meeting, the other "had an appointment at both meeting times"

Thursday:

I drive to the meeting time we agreed on. I check my phone before leaving the car. Staff member has said that the rain is now a "category red rain warning" and we aren't really supposed to drive if we can reasonably help it. Whoops. Me and one group member agree to postpone the meeting.

I send another email out with 4 pieces, one which was time-sensitive about the meeting, WHICH I MENTIONED IN THE SUBJECT LINE.

The two that are away don't reply.

Friday early morning:

I make an executive decision to email the community staff member asking if they are willing to postpone the meeting until Monday. I CC in my group mates. None of them reply.

The staff member is on leave on Monday.

It's now as of posting this, forty minutes past the originally-planned Friday meeting time.

Just like.. ugh.

I get that the groupmate on holiday is well, trying to have a holiday, but it IS term time and we DO have a group project. They need to check their fucking emails.

I'm sure they'll be great to work with once they're back, they usually prefer to get on with their work and get it done quickly, but right now? They're being a Problem.

I don't know anything about what's going on with the one that's on the other end of the country, so I don't want to be too harsh, but like. It is term time. We have a group project. Check your fucking emails.

The third one has been mostly good at replying but she hadn't replied to the last email.

Like ffs, I need to know. Can they do this afternoon? Or can we just.. pick a fucking time on Monday? The person is sorta pottering at home on school holidays for leave and would be willing to have the meeting then, though I'd rather avoid it if reasonably possible.

I hate the lack of clarity. I hate messing around the staff member like this, and just to top it off, I'm the one that's been emailing the staff member It's MY name on the emails. So I feel like it's ME that's looking irresponsible, when there's nothing I can do about my groupmates NOT CHECKING THEIR EMAILS.

[multiplydifficult]

Gaaaah group projects are the worst it's been literally three days and I am suffering

(meme: yeah yeah the 'group projects are the worst,' we've all seen it)

Tuesday:

topic (community projects working with organisations) & group allocations sorted.

In a group of four total (me + 3)

We have the option of meeting with the relevant staff member on Thursday or Friday.

One of my group is, for some reason, on the other end of the country and videocalling into class.

One of my group confesses that they booked flights out of the country for a few days starting tomorrow. We just had holidays. We will have holidays in two months! They tried to minimise disruption to classes based on the Official timetable we had, which does not schedule in the SELF-DIRECTED PROJECT TIME, THAT WE KNEW WELL IN ADVANCE WAS GOING TO BE A SELF-DIRECTED GROUP PROJECT. Also sometimes those timetables change last-minute.

Of the two that are away, one agreed to video-call in to the meeting, the other "had an appointment at both meeting times"

Thursday:

I drive to the meeting time we agreed on. I check my phone before leaving the car. Staff member has said that the rain is now a "category red rain warning" and we aren't really supposed to drive if we can reasonably help it. Whoops. Me and one group member agree to postpone the meeting.

I send another email out with 4 pieces, one which was time-sensitive about the meeting, WHICH I MENTIONED IN THE SUBJECT LINE.

The two that are away don't reply.

Friday early morning:

I make an executive decision to email the community staff member asking if they are willing to postpone the meeting until Monday. I CC in my group mates. None of them reply.

The staff member is on leave on Monday.

It's now as of posting this, forty minutes past the originally-planned Friday meeting time.

Just like.. ugh.

I get that the groupmate on holiday is well, trying to have a holiday, but it IS term time and we DO have a group project. They need to check their fucking emails.

I'm sure they'll be great to work with once they're back, they usually prefer to get on with their work and get it done quickly, but right now? They're being a Problem.

I don't know anything about what's going on with the one that's on the other end of the country, so I don't want to be too harsh, but like. It is term time. We have a group project. Check your fucking emails.

The third one has been mostly good at replying but she hadn't replied to the last email.

Like ffs, I need to know. Can they do this afternoon? Or can we just.. pick a fucking time on Monday? The person is sorta pottering at home on school holidays for leave and would be willing to have the meeting then, though I'd rather avoid it if reasonably possible.

I hate the lack of clarity. I hate messing around the staff member like this, and just to top it off, I'm the one that's been emailing the staff member It's MY name on the emails. So I feel like it's ME that's looking irresponsible, when there's nothing I can do about my groupmates NOT CHECKING THEIR EMAILS.

[multiplydifficult]

Hello! We really enjoy your account. We like to see the many different types of plurality existing, especially endogenic ones. While we are not endo, seeing healthy and non disordered plurality is very motivating for us, as that is our goal to attain.

We saw your recent posts regarding tulpamancy and dissociation and had some questions! As a Traumagenic system, of course we are well versed in the feeling of dissociation, but for many who have experienced trauma and dissociate bc of this, it’s very uncomfortable to be dissociated. For my system, this is one of our biggest issues right now, and we are working to try to lower dissociation episodes and dissociative barriers (especially while triggered). How does the dissociation feel for those who train it or will it? Is it just as uncomfortable (for example does it feel as if you are depersonalized or derealized?) or something else?

We are interested as endo/tulpa practices involving dissociation (if not uncomfortable like trauma related dissociation) could be beneficial for Traumagenic systems like ourselves to possibly shift our dissociation to being more comfortable and less debilitating.

Not sure you will have an answer and of course it might not be super clear cut.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for all the work that you do standing up for systems and all the education you share.

We wish you all the best!

Hi! 👋

I think the dissociation that we train is going to be a bit different than a DPDR episode. Mostly because the moments when everyone is detached from the body are going to be while meditating or in a similar state, and they shouldn't last long.

There have been occasions here and there where we will experience blendiness or confusion about who we are and those can be pretty distressing. I am not sure how similar these particular states are to derealization or depersonalization though.

Generally, we try to only do the detachment thing while switching.

There have been some DID systems who reported that tulpamancy methods have helped with their dissociates of symptoms.

Which makes sense to me. Because it's not just about teaching people to dissociate. It's about teaching control over the dissociation. And it's also about teaching the association part as well. At least in regards to switching. You aren't just learning how to detach from the body but how to attach to it. How to reconnect with the senses whenever you have lost that connection.

For this reason, I could imagine it being beneficial for DID systems to study and practice at least some tulpamancy methods.

In theory, knowing how to switch in at will should also be able to help whenever you are experiencing other sorts of dissociation by grounding you to the body. I won't promise it's a perfect solution that will work for everybody, but I do think it could at least be worth a try. 🤷‍♀️

As to what it feels like, since the dissociation is in relation to somebody else fronting, it depends on whether you are present or not. If you stay present, it's a bit like being in the passenger seat of the body. Somebody else is in control and you can't really feel anything physically unless you try to focus on it. Otherwise, only the fronter is going to be feeling. And only they are moving the body. You are just there as a voice in the head of the fronter.

If you aren't present though at all, then you just aren't there. You aren't even the voice. And the next time you gain awareness, you suddenly realize all the things that happened while you weren't conscious. Because even though we don't have memory barriers per se, we also don't automatically have all the information.

A notable example of this came from one time when almond hadn't fronted for a while and then she saw a new chicken coop in our yard. She was initially surprised to see it, and then the memories of my host helping to build it came flooding in after that. She technically had free access to all of the memories, but she didn't automatically know until the sight of the coop triggered them.

Thanks for the kind words and I hope I was able to answer your questions! Wishing you the best as well! Have a wonderful day! 😁💖

[multiplydifficult]

So we definitely need to give this a reread in the next few days when we can give it more proper attention, but we mostly wanted to acknowledge we've seen it and give thanks for the effort and time you put into the reply.

Some initial thoughts:

We hadn't realised until reading this, but we had trouble thinking of these parts as dissociated because i don't think there's any real dissociation of memory between the parts - and turns out i've mostly been interpreting "not well-integrated" as "has memory gaps" and dismissed the idea of focussing on integration out of hand.

We'll also have a look and a real good consideration of the mindfulness info - last times we really tried mindfulness was in the early stages of managing sensory issues, and it was mostly just unpleasant to pay attention to how bad we felt when we didn't have the skills to do much about it.

(MultiplyDifficult, is a side blog). Kia ora, i was wondering if i would be able to got a little bit of direction / guidance from you around fusion (just to be clear, we don't want a full complete solution). I think to help you give a more useful response we'll have to explain a bit our situation & where we're coming from in a reblog, which might be kinda long. We wanted to check you're happy for this before shoving a heap of info at you!

Ayo wed love to give share some insights wr might have so Imma respond to this so you can reblog with any info you wanted to add ^^

[multiplydifficult]

Full Integration, Final Fusion, Functional Multiplicitly, and General "Spirituality"

(Disclaimer: this is a very long post)

Heyyo, this is a bit of a hodgepodge of connected topics that I was thinking on this morning. For those that don't know, after like three months of being a really solid fused whole, we really decided that we needed to redivide back into our core parts to recenter, rebalance, and reorganize ourselves since our fused whole was loosing sight / vision of the "plot". We don't consider this "splitting" because we are still in - what we like to call "full integration" - and we don't really engage in much dissociation when we do this as the means of how we do this largely stems from the way we perceive, engage with, and view the concept of "self" and "identity." Our system highly values the mastery and art of a very fluid and ever changing sense of identity and self. This morning - thank you Chunn brain for batting our collective brain from the usual urge to get out of bed and get started with our day to give us time to really sit with our inner selves - we spent about an hour and a half and a small half hour nap just laying there thinking among ourselves and I wanted to share a few.

I think at the moment I am still mostly a fused whole and I had considered trying to go to Ray or Lin for them to write this, but it didn't feel right to go to Ray brain and Lin brain directly told me "Dude, this thought line started with Riku-dominant fused brain, trying to have someone else write it would be a disservice to the reflection. Let Riku or Riku-dominant fused brain do it, it's their thought." and you know, fair point. I think I'll use this post as a temporary "bye few thoughts" and love letter to our parts as a fused whole before leaving it to the individual specialists to do their things.

So introduction to this post aside, hello and temporary soon to be farewell before I choose to temporarily redivide into my main parts. Today is May 15, 2024 and I'm gonna document this a bit for when I come back whenever that is and kind of see if my fused-whole perspective and nature changes - mostly for myself. Online I go by Feathers, irl I just go by our chosen name.

I'm a (mostly, technically non-denominational independent, but most of my views and perspectives come from and align closely with) Zen Buddhist. I'm nonbinary vaguely transmasc (not really though?) intersex individual with the pronouns of they/them. I am extremely pro-endo and if I honestly felt like sticking around longer, I was thinking about writing a much more nuanced essay on tulpa-terminology discourse with my current reflections as a fused whole and as a pretty avid Buddhist but, unforunately, unless one of my parts still shares the same insight AND interest, that essay will have to wait for me to potentially be back (hey, Riku or Chunn might still want to who knows). I dunno what else to say, I love bird, Bleach, walking, driving, listening to music, video games, writing, art? I dunno man, I'm just me.

Documentation aside anyways, I gotta figure out where I want to start. I think I will actually piss my high-school English teachers off and start with the LAST thing in the title card. I might loose a lot of close minded white anti-endos here, but hey, if you are that close minded, then its your loss cause I'm just talking about late-stage recovery as a person with diagnosed DID that is considered polyfragmented. It's a fun conversation to have with other people with DID aiming for recovery so, if you're hell bent on hating people talking about plurality form a non-DID lens enough to disregard cool information, that's your loss. (Thank you XIV brain, crediting that to you for part of our goal today)

Buddhism, Spirituality, Plurality and Our Perspective of Full Integration

According to Buddhism, and one of the largest concepts and principles of Buddhism that we believe the most in and actively work to practice and cultivate the mindset of - is that the concept of "I" and the concept of a singular, distinct, and separate self from the world and others simply does not exist - only the experience and illusion of experience exists. I was talking about it with @quoigenicfromhell in DMs since they were interested in talking shop about Buddhism.

To save myself a whole effort of rewriting a discussion on how one can hold together the clear sensation of existing and being an individual with the idea and Buddhist understanding that the "self" does not exist, I'm going to copy a little bit of what I wrote in response to them. If it doesn't make sense cause its in a bit of Buddhist jargon, then oh well, I'm lazy, it's written for an audience that has done some reading and looking into Buddhist thought so RIP yall srry not srry (Thank you Chunn brain lol)

Honestly the development and understanding of holding those two things together (the non-self and non-existence with the clear experience of self and existence) is largely a lot of exploration on the understanding and respect for the experience without applying too much value or regard to said experience. Its kind of a hard thing to understand just based off of words alone and like all things Buddhism, its one of those sorts of things you really gotta sit on and explore in your own mental space, but like

The experience of self and personhood and existence is a denied concept in Buddhist thought, but its not a bad or incorrect thing, the experience of self and existence is kind of considered an inherent expression of life and the world and while its important to be cognicent that it is an illusion that can cause suffering and muddy an individuals ability to see Things As They Are, the experience and illusion of self is additionally an entirely natural thing to experience and is an important part of being able to, well, be

I kinda of personally perceive it kind of similarly to say a part in a system. Innately the part is not (at least in my experiences of systemhood) a literal entire separate being and thats an important thing to acknowledge for a number of reasons (life organization and direction, system accountability, etc) but its would also be incredibly foolish to completely ignore that the part operates, experiences themselves, and lives in the world (both inner and outer) as if they were an individual of their own

In the same sense that a part in a system can be seen both as an individual and a part of a whole / collective depending on what perspective and demands the moment needs. An individual can be seen both as the individual expression of a self informed by the arguably incorrect illusion of isolation OR as a part of the whole worlds expression depending on what serves the moment the best. I largely kind of see myself as part of a system that is the world much like I see my parts as part of a system that is "me". While the self may be an illusion, its not an experience that can be denied and it is an innate expression that in its own right can prove to be a great teacher So you deny the concept of a self but respect and revere the experience and innate natural expression of self

With that context in mind, while we do not believe in the concept of self and find that trying to seek out a concrete idea of a singular person and singular self in society is a source of extreme suffering, stress, and displeasure, we DEEPLY revere and honor the expression of self. As we see it, in a complete ideal and impossible the world would be in perfect harmony if we let the world express itself as it naturally does. We find that the experiences of self - in whatever form they take - are inherent and natural expressions of the world as a whole and to try to shape oneself to fit a specific image - may that be societally imposed or internally / personally imposed or a sense of envy or any sort of clinging or desire to a specific version / image of self - is a disrespect to the innate beauty found in the natural expression and a means of adding disharmony into the world.

As a result, our system and whole aims deeply, above almost all else to exist simply as we naturally would in any moment time to time. If we find that something we are doing with our sense of self is drawn and influenced too much on a "I should" or "I want" or "I wish" or "I hope" then we tend to pause, self reflect, and ask if we are actually existing in our natural state, or are we trying to fight against our natural state of self to fit into a self-imposed idea of what we "should be".

As a result of that, our system deeply values our flexibility, fluidity, and ability to change any aspect of ourselves, any opinion we hold, any identity label we consider, and our overall presentation in all ways and forms to a very high level. The desire to be consistent and predictable serves us little in simply practicing on "being" and finding the true and simply-run life that we want. That then results in why our system so casually flips around in system size, fusions, redivisions, how we refer to ourselves, etc. We find very little value in committing to labels and concepts and do whatever is natural for us.

Additionally, another large aspect of Buddhism our system deeply reveres and appreciates is the acknowledgement that there are "Buddhas" - or in less Jargon terms, potential for everything both internal and external to be teachers and guides into finding a sense of peace and simplicity in the world - and that it is deeply important to cultivating peace, happiness, and insight to actively always be seeking out the "Buddha" in everything and everyone. It's important to reflect, engage with, and talk with those "Buddhas" as they are the best and number one way to gain the insight that brings happiness and peace into life and removes excessive suffering and stress.

As many Buddhists agree (at least of the Mahayanan branches), everyone is inherently a Buddha because the world and everything is a Buddha. The only issue people have is that they can not connect, hear, and see clearly enough to be in that state due to a large number of human conditions - one large one being the aforementioned illusion of self.

Having lived my life as someone with DID and having gone through a lot of trauma therapy, self reflection, communication and coordination with my parts, and all that to the point we have reached functional multiplicity over a year plus ago and been able to hold a fully fused state for over three months, I feel like its a given to say that of ALL things in the world, the "Buddha nature" of my parts have been the best and most insightful teachers I've ever had. We revere each other's strengths and specialties greatly as each of us have taught the other great strengths, great understandings, great insights, and great appreciations that have collectively brought us so much peace and happiness. It's not to say any part is "enlightened" because each part is also deeply flawed and struggling in their own realms, but it is largely by working and talking and supporting one another and ACTIVELY looking to one another for insight and lessons about the world and our existence that we are able to reach a uniquely peaceful space.

For us, its an incredibly important practice - both for self care and in the art / spirituality of Buddhism - to regularly talk and engage with these specialized and uniquely-wise (and uniquely stupid - thank you XIV) parts of ourselves to gain deeper insight and overall understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

In the same sense, it is why - despite being completely capable of operating as a fully fused whole - we regularly choose to INTENTIONALLY redivide into our parts. And no, its not us "splitting again" or even really throwing up any real level of dissociation / dissociative barriers. If anything, we usually do this through meditation and mindfulness.

It's a Buddhist practice, its not a mental disorder and its not stemming from the same mechanism's DID stems from. It might operate *based* on the foundation our history with DID stems from, but at this point in our healing, the way our system operates at functional multiplicity that is intentionally chosen to be that way AFTER reaching "final fusion" has a number of differences from how it operated before we reached general full integration.

Again, for those more familiar with the tulpa-terminology discussion, you might be able to see where I would have a long post delving into a highly nuanced and more middle-ground perspective of that syscourse from the paragraph above this one, but I'm gonna leave that cause I already know this post is long and it would detract from the purpose.

At this point, my system is mostly an "intentionally created one" to Western label standards. We personally do not see any significance or binary in plural VS singular people beyond it being a label some people identify with and not. Plural VS Singular is a false binary perpetuated in white, western, and european society and while I respect that perspective and view in a space that is primarily filled with white, western, and/or european individuals, I am going to firmly state that and expect you to give me that same respect. (and if you refuse to give me that same respect, then you are close minded and being very white / western lmao <- thank you XIV, again)

And so the other related but slightly different topic away from the more philosophical, esoteric, mysticism sounding topic of Buddhism...

Full Integration, Final Fusion, and Functional Multiplicitly

At this point, what we used to call "Wishiwashi Recovery" we kind of have taken to just calling "full integration" generally as a means of really breaking apart the suggested categorical and boxed binary of "final fusion" and "functional multiplicity" as our own experience and discussion with other systems at and near full integration have made us realize that the difference between functional multiplicity and final fusion is FAR more a spectrum than it is two seperate categories. Some systems stick to one end, some to the others, but the largest difference is in external and internal expression of the parts and less any fundamental or biological / clinical difference; at least not in terms of integration. (Note: Integration =/= Fusion; Integration is the general connectivity and accessibility of parts with less / limited / no dissociation)

It's a false binary to say Final Fusion or Functional Multiplicity and its why a lot of the "ones bad and ones good" syscourse is dumb. They're two heads of the same Doduo and they should be kissing. (JOKING, thank you Riku-Aya brain)

With that said, our system, as we've made clear, regularly and freely practices sliding and flying all over that spectrum as just how we like to engage with ourselves. We change between the two as we see fit and having spent probably like 9~ months in functional multiplicity and 3~ months in final fusion I wanted to share some pros and cons of both sides.

I would also like to put a disclaimer that this isn't meant to be "positives and why this side sucks" as much as it is the differences in life style according to our opinion and our experience. Both final fusion and functional multiplicity are absolutely WONDERFUL things overall and we love both states. If we got "stuck" in either, we would still be immensely happy. The purpose of this part is just to share certain differences in how we experience the two different ends. The Cons in these case are only "cons" relative to the "alternative" and not "to not ever reaching either"

Functional Multiplicity Pros:

A lot more clear and direct communication between parts internally that allows for a SHIT ton of internal banter, productive conversation about complex topic and perspectives from unique and diverse perspectives; the communication is a lot more intentional and a lot more in focus so its easier to properly sit and attend to the complex differences and sometimes conflicting directions

It's honestly just a lot of fun, not gonna lie. A lot more dramatic and extravagant expression + brain friends in a more overt sense

Easier to let certain parts of the brain take "breaks" - it's not the same as it is with not-fully-integrated DID but compared to Full Fusion, certain parts of the brain can "tune out" easier than not

More palatable to DID / OSDD spaces online

Easier to focus and use a wide variety of skills, interests, hobbies, and thinking patterns by simply just having a specialist part take their look at it

Generally easier to target specific boxes to look into as you process all the newly accessible memories and information from being highly / fully integrated

Final Fusion Pros:

Quick and a lot more inherent understanding of all parts on a general gut level without necessarily needing to fully think about everything and listen to every opinion and perspective; there is a lot more of an inherent understanding, trust, and awareness of the collective whole which makes decision making and seeing whats good for the system as a whole a lot easier

It's honestly way more calming, relaxing, and solid feeling. There is a unique sense of confidence, understanding, and trust within yourself and you have a HUGE arsenal of skills and interests that come from the combined parts that you've lived as

You are a lot more present and aware of your life and you actually get to live YOUR life and have all parts of yourself be engaged in life; no part feels really left behind or is caught off guard from having their brain partially turned off. The awareness is really present and engagement is so much more complete.

More palatable in real life and non-DID/OSDD spaces

Easier to simultaneously use skills from multiple parts at once; very much a jack of all trades all at once situation

Generally easier to integrate multiple complex and otherwise seemingly detatched boxes of memory and the past as you process all the newly accessible memories and information from being highly / fully integrated

Functional Multiplicity Cons:

Takes more intention, focus, and often time to get the same level of full understanding of the whole system when making decisions. It can be slow and it requires a lot more internal engagement which can make it harder to be fully present in life

Sometimes you can get what I call "lite" amnesia where a part was not paying attention and doesn't fully process what was going on / what is going on and so sometimes you get poor attention-driven "amnesia". It's small and easily recovered by simply going "hold up wait" and thinking back or asking another part

Harder to use skills from different parts at the same time; albeit definitely still possible and only "harder" relative to final fusion

Generally harder / requires intentional discussion between parts to integrate multiple complex boxes as you process all the newly accessible memories and information from being highly / fully integrated

Final Fusion Cons:

Less direct and overt bantering and discussion between parts (still present by the way, just less frequent and less overt). It can be a little less fun (still is fun cause they are sill there) and it can be a bit harder to fully see the extent of a more extreme perspective

It can be tiring and overwhelming to be aware and present so much for so long if you were accustomed to the breaks DID / OSDD tends to give parts

Easier to forget to use a lot of the skills and hobbies that may have been more niche to less-dominant and less-prominent parts; you don't "loose" the skills, you just aren't accustomed to using them as much so you can just kinda forget to use them

Harder to focus on a targetted recovered memory / information that you want to process and can sometimes be a bit overwhelming trying to connect a number of things at once

And this is all just to say that both are absolutely astonishing and great places to mentally be. The main point is that - for us - sometimes one state works better for us in the moment and another state works better for us later and that's completely cool cause - as aforementioned - the difference between plural vs singular is not a binary one for us anyways.

Anyways, I don't know how to wrap this up so I'mma just post it

Ideally today we will focus on cultivating our independent parts and return to Functional Multiplicity end of the spectrum so I guess tata for now

-Feathers

EDIT and PS: Anyone is allowed to add their thoughts to this so long it is in good faith.

[multiplydifficult]

Every single day people on tumblr say "what if the shit moral OCD tells you was true and living by it was the only way to be a real progressive"

[multiplydifficult]

Thanks for the tag, we had missed this despite an attempt to keep an eye out for it!

Our context (long):

We consider ourselves to be a combination of 'parts' (possibly fragments? we'll call 'em parts) with no real sense of identity, and 'people,' who do have a sense of identity. This is about the parts. Primary front (me) often feels more like I'm a collection of parts that's kind of... spread out, whereas when other people front, they feel more like just a whole person fronting. I believe these parts do switch around, but they don't typically affect my sense of identity, not at all in the way that switching with the people-headmates does.

Therapy is not an option for us for a number of reasons. We don't have any of the usual trauma responses unless you count plurality, we don't consider ourselves to have experienced trauma, though I understand that our experiences with sensory issues (explained shortly) could be viewed this way, we don't find it helpful to do so.

I/we were dissociative our whole growing up to cope with our sensory issues - not sure how relevant this paragraph is, but here you go anyway: this lead to inattentive ADHD symptoms), and often "tunnel vision," a reduction in how much peripheral vision we were processing, and other limitations in our processing. This felt very modular to us, like a city experiencing some combination of "rolling blackout" (cutting out power to specific areas temporarily) and "brownout" (global reduction in available power) that we like to call a "rolling brownout." To hopefully clarify: now that we know about this, if we do start getting overloaded that we experience tunnel vision, we can literally just turn our speech off and our visual field opens up again. Because speech drains a lot of our mental battery, and if speech stops pulling power, that leaves more available for visual processing. (This also affects some other skills, but that's the gist.) This dissociative thing actually meant I spent my whole childhood & adolescence not actually consciously experiencing any sensory discomfort.

I've been thinking lately that I think it would be beneficial if (at least some of) the parts would fuse. Note that we prefer to have our people with an actual separate sense of identity to stay as they are at present.

All of the information relating to fusion that we've been able to find amounts to: a) get to know your headmates, and b) deal with your trauma

a) doesn't really apply here, I think? Because these parts don't have a sense of identity. I don't think there's any talking-communication between these parts of me the way there is with the people, because they're not separate enough to do that. But they're also separate enough that we seem to switch and I feel spread out and lacking that (somewhat) clear sense of identity that my headmates have.

b) we have improved out sensory management significantly over the past few years - literally, we were diagnosed with ADHD and on methylphenidate - we don't take it anymore and don't have those traits that got us diagnosed in the first place, despite the only thing changing between starting meds and stopping was improving sensory management. I know I've also got some tendencies toward passivity / avoiding discomfort over actively pursuing joy, and am quite prone to people-pleasing. I'm working on the first now.

But we've mostly read stuff about fusion as an unintentional process that happens naturally as a result of A & B above. I don't know that that will do the job, at least I expect only partially?

We also read a recent post you reblogged & I think added to? talking about some of the things that had changed since fusion, such as the day seeming longer, day-after-day feeling more continuous than feeling very separated by sleep, and a couple other issues that we hadn't realised until reading might very well be related to my parts switching around.

So basically, we were just kinda wondering if you (or any followers!) would have any ideas at all here for how to proceed with fusing the parts. We're not expecting a magic answer, just like... ideas. 'Cause we're pretty much at a complete loss for what to do here, and I suspect this parts-switching may have contributed to some minor issues on my last two placements (uh, I think this is like a short-term internship?) that I really don't want to have to deal with on the next, nor once I get into the workforce early-mid next year.

(MultiplyDifficult, is a side blog). Kia ora, i was wondering if i would be able to got a little bit of direction / guidance from you around fusion (just to be clear, we don't want a full complete solution). I think to help you give a more useful response we'll have to explain a bit our situation & where we're coming from in a reblog, which might be kinda long. We wanted to check you're happy for this before shoving a heap of info at you!

Ayo wed love to give share some insights wr might have so Imma respond to this so you can reblog with any info you wanted to add ^^

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The thing about ADHD is that the "lack of reward chemicals in your brain" doesn't just mean that you don't want to do any tasks that don't feel particularly yummy :(, it means that your brain will look at chores and tasks that need to be done like "doing this would be painful and tedious for absolutely nothing to gain from it, Do Not Do That." The same thing that your brain tells you about everything else that would feel really bad and hurt the entire time that you're dying. The part of your brain that stops you from doing the thing is the same part that keeps you from shoving your arm into a wood chipper.

With unmedicated, unmanaged ADHD, "I have to do this assignment or I fail and my life will be ruined and I die" feels like a SAW trap, every single time.

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If the scientific credibility of the medical vision is waning, its political justification has also eroded. Over the past decade, a new generation of psychologists have been studying the nature of mental health stigma: what it is, how it’s created, how to solve it. The consensus of this research is that psychiatry’s medical vision – and its language of ‘chemical imbalances’, ‘brain circuit defects’, ‘genetic abnormalities’ and so on – merely replaces one kind of stigma for another.

In particular, medical narratives tend to trigger three negative outcomes. They make other people want to distance themselves from the patient. They make patients pessimistic about their own recovery. And they evoke, in the patient’s mind, the idea that drugs are the optimal course of treatment. Perhaps the most troubling finding of the new research is that stigma toward schizophrenia – measured as a desire for social distance – has actually increased over the past 30 years, plausibly due to the greater acceptance of the medical narrative.

[...]

If someone chooses to embrace the medical narrative, it should be because they’ve been exposed to multiple paradigms and feel that this narrative makes the most sense for them. And if others, after becoming aware of these paradigms, choose to accept the TI narrative, then the best path forward is for them to connect with a community like PACTS that can give them the non-stigmatising support they need. But mental health professionals ought to put more time and effort into raising awareness of the neglected third path: we can embrace voices and visions as part of ordinary human experience, without accepting the literal truth of everything they say.

[multiplydifficult]

Origin discourse is so silly to me because it's like. With my irl system friends literally nobody gives a shit about origin. I specify I'm partially created because that's important to how we function, but I know about 8 systems irl and only about 2 have specified they're traumagenic, and it's not like they draw a big line between me and them. It's just they recognize their system started because of trauma. With the others that's kinda a really rude question to ask? You're more or less asking if they experienced trauma which, is rude? Is it just me who thinks that's rude?

I just think origin discourse is really stupid and people irl don't actually care why you're a system. What's more important is knowing what kind of accomodations are needed. If your system experiences amnesia between switches, if different headmates have different needs and abilities, etc. This stuff is independent of origin and is what actually matters when it comes down to it.

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[multiplydifficult]

System Communication and Journaling

Since we don’t know a lot to do with innerworlds, I focused on the communication part of today’s prompt for summer system education week.

I wanna share some resources I’ve found on system communication and journaling (which I’m a huge advocate for. Out of the many different ways we’ve tried to communicate, journaling has been the most helpful for us.) I also recently got a pre-set-up journal recommended by my therapist, and I’d like to share some of the things in there as well.

Ok, before getting into journaling, here are some general system communication resources I’ve found:

Internal Communication- The Core of Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder

Developing Internal Communication - Starting with the Basics

Reducing Amnesia - Developing Co-Consciousness

Integrating ‘new’ parts

Staying Organized with Dissociative Identity Disorder (talks about some different communication methods)

For journaling, my first source is about How to Journal for DID. I’d also like to note some tips:

In free journaling, make sure to put the date, time (if able), and name of the alter journaling. If you’re unsure who’s journaling, put who you might be, who you’re closest to, who you may feel like a mix of, or if you really can’t tell, just put Blurry (or Unknown, if applicable).

Try to write every day. Set a reminder for yourself on your phone or something if it will help, set aside some time to just write.

If you can’t think of anything to write, and prompts don’t help, just start writing. It can be anything, notes, activities, even drawings count. Also beginning to write makes it easier to continue and let ideas flow.

You can write to no one in particular or to the world, but you can also write to other alters. Some conversations can occur back and forth in your journal pages. Even if it takes a few days or weeks for the other alter to see your writing, it can still be helpful.

Read through your journal and re-read it from time to time. Are there entries you don’t remember? Or ones you vaguely remember but feel different reading them as you? You can also write responses to alters asking questions or writing to you.

If you want, feel free to mark out different section for different alters, or a section specifically for talking to others in the system, etc. You can mark them with small post-it notes or bookmarks, so you may know more easily where to look for certain information or notes.

Next I’m gonna share the sections of the journal I got, along with some resources to go with different sections (many are from did-sos.com, because man, it’s a great resource site). Some are relevant to multiple sections, but I’ll only write each one once. I’ll put these below a cut since this post is already turning out to be a little long.

Link to get this journal if you’re interested

Keep reading

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[TEXT ID: Title is Nurturing Personhood in The System Based on our experiences by @the-alarm-system .

1.Person Language

Identifying and labeling those within the system as their own people using word choice can greatly impact personhood and give a stronger sense of self to each and every headmate. Examples of person language over parts language is using headmate over alter, person over part, and other examples of this. It is also fun to personalize and discuss these desires with others.

Language examples:

-headmate>alter

-using we when discussing system agreements with outsiders(if safe)

-person>piece or part

2.Trust

Trust your headmates and your systemhood, fakeclaiming yourself can cause headmates to be upset and is also very dehumanizing. Trust their existence, respect their existence. Also realize trust your headmates in reference to the body, it is theirs as much as it is yours.

3.Discussing fronting times

In our experience, it’s good to ask those who enjoy fronting on when they would like to front or keep the internal door open to allow them to front when desired. This nurtures independence and personhood.

4.Personbased respect

This includes allowing them to make their own decisions if possible, even if you don’t personally agree with them and as long as they stay within system rules and hurt nobody. Another form of system personbased respect is respecting anothers items and asking before using them.

5.Talk to them like a friend

Speak to your headmates the way you would to a friend, ask how their day was, asl their opinions on things, have group conversations and see how diverse you all really are.

at the bottom in small text it says anti endos and radqueers do not touch. END ID]

[multiplydifficult]

the morbs descend, feel like a real Pagliacci rn

does anyone know about or have resources relating to anger spiking depression? more often than not it's more fury than despair that takes me off the edge and it's so difficult to calm down from pure snarling rage