#but couldn't find the personhood within myself to do so

[stinkbeck]

my cottagecore toxic yuri cousins who claimed to have good taste totally ruined me for a second there lmfao

[system-of-a-feather]

I haven't read but I absolutely want to answer these cause they're fun questions. For context, we are/were a polyfrag DID system that currently identifies as a "fully fused multiple".

1- Does your experience of plurality feel inherently disordered to you or not, independent of whether or not you have a CDD?

Absolutely not.

If you asked me in the past, I might have said yes or something more in the middle because back then, I was really deep and struggling with dissociation and I really couldn't separate my plurality from my dissociation. Back then my dissociation and my plurality were inherently tied together; in fact I didn't identify as plural because of the way I experienced my plurality w/ dissociation. Back then, my plurality was inherently my DID and my DID was inherently disordered.

These days though, I still identify as and experience plurality without / with minimal dissociation and having actually gone a lot more into Buddhist reading / understanding / studies and just generally looking at a lot of Eastern Philosophies and Spiritualities, plurality is absolutely not something that is inherently bad or disordered or even abnormal.

Personally, I find my experiences with plurality to be inherently HEALING and PROTECTIVE and INSIGHTFUL. Plurality has let me really understand myself a lot better, let me explore and utilize my skills way better, and find greater peace within myself, my life, and the world.

I honestly fucking love it and I'm ever thankful and grateful to be able to operate in the world with this perspective, framework and flexibility / fluidity of mind and mental state as I found it gives me the flexibility and open mindedness to really enjoy life regardless of the situation and I see a lot of people that don't practice that suffering a lot in the world.

I genuinely think people would benefit from adopting and incorperate a plural frame of thought into life (not necessarily BEING plural, but taking the lens and bring it into their life); and ya know, they already do that in therapy. Its IFS and its super helpful.

2- How do you think about personhood and identity, collectively and individually?

I don't believe in it 😂

Like that sounds like a meme but I really don't believe that "personhood" or "identity" is anything particularly concrete, real or even a necessary thing. I subscribe to the Buddhist opinion that the experience of "self" and "identity" and "me/I" is inherently just an illusory thing that comes with our human condition that we all experience and putting much emphasis on those sorts of things tends to just add to confusion and complexity as they don't really genuinely exist.

I think trying to find out "who you are" or "what makes you YOU" or "what traits do I have" and what not are approaches to life that are wild goose chases that waste a lot of emotional energy and time in your life trying to answer. This applies all the way to alters / headmates / parts. They are neither individual people nor parts of my individual whole; because I don't even think "I" exist in any real concrete way. They're as much parts of me as I am part of this world. If my independent existence is valid and considered a "person" despite me being a part of the whole world, then their independent existence is valid and considered a "person" despite them being a part of me. It's like matryoshka dolls honestly.

I do acknowledge though that personhood, identity, and sense of self is something everyone experiences whether or not the concept of personhood or self is "real" and those experiences OF personhood and self are real without a doubt and so theres a lot of complexities that come when talking about it.

I don't think a single post could explain my thoughts on personhood and self BEYOND how I see it for myself and my overarching perspectives on the topic in general, because I think when we bring in all the different backgrounds, cultures, contexts, trauma histories, etc of an individual person and how those influence how they perceive and experience personhood and self, it gets insanely complicated and I absolutely do not think "everyone should just acknowledge that it doesn't exist like I do" because that's my way of thinking that works for me with my background and history.

Personhood and self is something that can be immensely important and impactful to the individual and while I think it's illusory, that doesn't mean its inherently bad or not something that is critical, important and sacred to other people.

So generally speaking, I don't believe in it. I play with it and respect the experience of it because its a good and fun experience and can help me better dismantle a lot of things that are causing me pain and suffering; but I don't really believe in it and find discussing and debating what makes a person a person a really pointless and overly complicated discussion.

That said, I think it really depends on the cultural and personal background of the individual and I have more complex feelings and thoughts about personhood when I change the specific lens away from just my own and what not.

Personhood / self can mean a lot of things at once and I really dont' think there is just one understanding and what not to it, thus why I like these sorts of chatters.

From @rayssyscourse (this post), two questions for general conversation: 1- Does your experience of plurality feel inherently disordered to you or not, independent of whether or not you have a CDD? 2- How do you think about personhood and identity, collectively and individually? (our answers under the cut)

Plurality and Disorderedness: We actually sort of have two different answers to this! The distinction between the two of us (e.g. me/L vs S), to us, doesn't feel inherently disordered at all. Sure, it's complicated, and there are aspects of the situation we'd change if we could (it would really be nice if S could have his own body back, for example), but the mere fact of us-being-two-of-us, of having two senses of self in one head instead of just one, feels no more or less disordered than being a singlet. It doesn't feel like the only reason we're separate is lingering trauma/emotional baggage pushing us apart, and there's no sense of wrongness in the feeling of each other being different--we're just different, and that's actually really neat in a lot of ways. However, for S's median facet subsystem thing, the answer is a little different. (Trying to paraphrase his emotions/wording for it secondhand here) To some extent, some of the ways in which his facets can get pushed apart/lose "collective cohesion" does feel inherently disordered to him. It's less that "having facets" feels inherently disordered, exactly, and more that the degree of estrangement and conflict between his facets (which fluctuates!) feels directly related to his mental health at the time, and whatever issues he's wrestling with. Being able to go in and single out and work with a facet that's having a hard time feels like a useful processing strategy, but needing to do it a lot, or having a facet get stuck 'out in the cold for too long' feels bad, and reflective of something Wrong. Personhood and Identity: Again, two different answers for our two different 'versions' of plurality! S and I feel like two different, closely connected people. Either of us could be a singlet alone, without the other--and in fact I was a singlet for a long time, at least as far as we know--although we do like each other a lot (<3) and like being able to be a team together. Calling either of us just "a part of the other" feels reductive and even a little demeaning--not to mention just...incorrect, at the base of it? One of the metaphors we like to use is "it's not that he has half the box of crayons and I have the other half; we each get to use the whole box of crayons, we just draw different things with them". With S's median facets, though, he/(they) very persistently and vehemently feel like they're all...part of the same overarching identity? They're all him even when they disagree or have differences (there's a line from a song he likes that he often points to for it: "We are the warriors who learned to love the pain/We come from different places but have the same name"), there's a core, unifying sense of self they all share even when their 'cohesion' gets disrupted by something difficult to process that he can't quite seamlessly internally reconcile. We have some internal nicknames for some facets/'themes' that show up a lot (because the number and nature of his facets isn't static, too), and internal headspace appearances can vary, but they don't have different names because, in his words, "I'm still me, there's just....sometimes a lot of me, who don't all agree".

(Several of our friends have joked that we're the actual IRL version of the system joke "I don't have DID, but my headmate does!", and honestly that's not a bad way to describe it X'D)

[evernoddingaudience]

So what's your biggest issue?

I'm sure there's several different ways I could answer this question; I can narrow it down to two.

This one I'd tell a psychiatrist, "The worst thing is the exhaustion. I'm so incredibly tired all the time, physically, mentally emotionally. I can't remember the last time I felt rested, and I never seem to wake up all the way. I spend my days living half-asleep, half-dreaming, searching for a way to fully open my eyes. I strain myself to wake up every day, to be pulled from a full immersion to a foggy imitation but I then strain myself to find slumber- half-asleep is half-awake too. My mind never seems to run out of things to tell me, conversations to keep up, stories to share, and I am, as we all are, a slave to my body."

The other one is not something a psychiatrist wants to hear about; it's not likely treated with medicines and exercise. Something I'd tell a psychologist, a therapist perhaps, "I'm struggling to be a real person. I seem to be lacking the thing that makes everyone else alive and genuine. I cannot act, you see. I am profoundly unable to do anything other than think. When you see me move, see me talk, see me react, you are seeing a machine acting out its own will- or lack thereof. The being who lives in the world around you is not me as you may have been fooled into thinking, for I only exist in fantasies. Sometimes I attempt to persuade this body of mine to act in accordance to my wishes, but it is only that: an attempt. Within this physical reality, I have no autonomy, no control or personhood of my own. I am all passive. I look through my eyes and I look from inside and I watch, dispassionate to everything. I am untouchable. There can be nothing which phases me, nothing which moves me, for you cannot move a thought. My salvation and my prison, this situation I couldn't bear to remedy.

To kill the onlooker inside is to kill oneself and if I haven't killed myself in one way, I shall not do so in another."