#i only tagged syscourse for blacklisting purposes

[evernoddingaudience]

This post is going to serve the purpose of stating what I know I experience, with regards to "plurality" or feeling as though I'm not the one in control of my actions. As far as I'm aware, I do not have a dissociative disorder and I am not identifying with being plural or single until further introspection and research allows me to better understand myself. I am doing my best to refrain from using any specific diagnoses or diagnosis-specific terms, as this is meant to be clarification about symptoms and issues only, without the bias of any psychiatric label.

So far, the best way to sum my understandings up is to say that I am divided between my internal and external selves. While I mostly identify with the internal part- the part where my consciousness and thoughts reside- my external self has gained such a level of automaticity that it doesn't need my input and operates almost autonomously, which then widens the split between myself. I generally refer to the external self as 'the other part' or 'my body'.

Additionally there may be other parts of myself that I am unaware of; I indeed have a suspicion that there's at least one more chunk of repression blocked off somewhere that I've not been able to find, though the amount of which it might affect me is unknown.

I find myself doing or saying things without being wholly aware of them, and only processing what has happened afterwards. I've never experienced dissociative amnesia (unless you count my childhood), but in stressful situations I often 'go away' in which I stop existing as a conscious entity. I cannot think or feel, I have no judgement or opinions- it's as if time has paused for me. My awareness that something isn't right depends on how stressed I am; if I'm extremely overwhelmed, not only am I not aware something is wrong, I'm not aware of anything. Only after I 'restart' when I've relaxed can I access memories during this time; I can picture the scene, I can remember the words and sounds, but they're distant and have no emotional impact no matter how intense the event was.

Yet, in the stressful situation I am still able to move. I can still speak, I still act and interact with others. I even still seem to make decisions. However, looking back at what happened, the decisions made would not be the ones I would make.

This may get ramble-y so I'll add a readmore:

Even when I am somewhat present, I never have full control. This other part of me has the ultimate say in what we do and what we say. There have been many instances, even in calm or relatively peaceful circumstances, in which I have wanted to say or do something and did not move despite clearly wanting to. This almost always only happens when other people are involved, and not when I'm alone. Commonly, I'm 'awake' but daydreaming instead of controlling the body, which is a whole other thing and also debatably affecting my sense of plural-versus-single but if I talk about that, it won't be in this post.

I have assumed a few things from the way I've acted outside of my intentions. The main goal of this other part seems to be safety (which makes sense, considering at least part of my issues are trauma based). 'Safety' is possibly understood by this part as what I have divided into a few different positions, ranked by how much they seem to be prioritized:

1) staying invisible, looking normal, and sticking to the status quo.

2) preventing intimacy or genuine emotional expression.

3) getting out of the situation, or at least getting through it.

First, my body employs a lot of autistic masking despite my wanting to just chill and behave naturally. This results in an odd experience in which I'm distantly aware of purposefully fixing my facial expressions and tone of voice and holding myself still but it's also not purposeful at all and is often not how I want to present myself.

Next, my body sometimes stays quiet even when I have something I want to add to the conversation. This is especially intense if the conversation is emotionally charged or if the thing I want to say might be too vulnerable. Additionally, if it apparently decides something hits too close to home, the body can even edit a script I've already thoroughly planned mid-conversation which... is not even something *I* can do, so??? I also am prevented from hugging or initiating physical contact if it comes from a place of actual want on my end (which, to be fair, is incredibly rare anyway).

Last is pretty self-explanatory. I always try to leave a situation if I can do so without being called out on it (because staying invisible takes priority), and if I can't, I just bear it. I don't meltdown or get visibly upset even when I feel like it's killing me inside, because that would draw too much attention. This one is not that abnormal and usually something my internal self already agrees with. The action isn't the problem here, it's the fact that I don't have a choice either way.

Crucially, despite everything I've said above, I feel no personhood from this part. I don't hear any distinct voices, no alien feelings, no frustration or disappointment when I try to fight against it. I don't think it has any sort of identity or agency of its 'programming', so to speak. I can't get into its space or understand its reasoning and it does not feel like me but it also doesn't feel like anyone else.

(As an aside, I'm gonna feel like an asshole if I ever find out that I've been trash talking an actual person/alter this whole time lmaoooo)

One of the hardest things about this, and the reason that I've only recently been bothered enough to look into it is because it's also just so helpful. It's so necessary for me to function enough to live. I can't speak without extensive scripting, I can't deal with ever-changing plans and schedules, I can't deal with the sensory overload of screaming children, I wouldn't entertain casual friendships, I wouldn't agree to the social outings or activities that get me out of the house... Etc.

Beyond the external help, I feel it's also necessary for me as a being. My internal self just feels so weak. I don't know what else to call it. I feel like if I ever fully surfaced and had to even look at someone in first-person point of view, it would kill me. It would wash me away, engulf me, and erase me in any way that matters. I just don't think my sense of self is strong enough to face other people.

If I'm paying attention to myself, there is a clear distinction between this phenomenon and executive dysfunction. Executive dysfunction feels like a “can’t” whereas this feels like a “won’t”. When I struggle with the former it’s usually related to task initiation and lack of momentum, and there’s always a reason even if that reason would seem silly to someone who doesn't experience it (i.e. there's too many steps, I don't know where to start, I'm sitting down and I need to be standing, I've arbitrarily decided I can't do this until XYZ happens, etc.). When my body decides for me though, I don't struggle initiating; I can get up and move and I can start a conversation but I am stopped or redirected (or perhaps I should be using active voice "I am stopping or redirecting myself"?) when trying to do certain things. The two symptoms may both be present when I'm not doing something, but there's a clear internal distinction between them. Not to mention, it doesn't explain the time when my body decides to add actions and words.

As with the previous paragraph, there also seems to be a distinction between this phenomenon and autistic masking. Autistic masking is a bit hard to define because it's more of a personal experience that changes based on one's environment. Masking is intentional. That doesn't mean it's always conscious or voluntary, but at some point you decided to imitate certain actions and modify your behaviors for some reason or another, typically as a child. If you can bring awareness to yourself and your actions, you can stop the masking, though sometimes this takes practice to do this consistently. There are several ways I do mask, both through the conscious part of me and the bodily part of me. If it’s my masking, while it may not always be a conscious effort initially, I can change the behavior if I notice it. If it’s part of my body’s actions, the effect I have is limited as with every other action my body decides to make.

I welcome any questions or comments anyone may have! I'm trying to better understand myself and clarify my experiences (and therefore learn what to do about them) so if you relate or have resources or whatnot, feel free to contribute

[ablednt]

It’s so wild to me that so many sysmeds have convinced singlets that they only way to stay “neutral” on syscourse is to exclude endogenic and nontraumagenic systems. Let’s go ahead and switch up some dialogue here shall we?

“If you’re allistic and you want to be an ally to autistic people you can’t support self dxers because REAL autistic people are the only ones that matter”

“If your cis you have to put tucutes and nonbinary people on your DNI or you’re being transphobic to trans people with dysphoria and actual real genders”

“If you’re not a lesbian you should only be supporting goldstar lesbians, allowing anyone else in your space is including yourself in intra-community discourse”

“Why do you say you aren’t involved in ace discourse if you reblogged that post with an ace pride flag in it?”

“Ummm actually that person you reblogged from is faking being trans :// they have dog/dogself pronouns and are a transphobic piece of shit if you care about real trans people you’ll delete the post and block them.”

Like do y’all hear how fucking stupid all of this sounds? How is it that we’ve let them frame “neutral” as “unquestioningly supporting all of my stances”??

And you cannot be framing this as “listening to trauma survivors” because there are literally hundreds of traumagenic, DID/OSDD having even, systems who call this shit out for what it is and are blatantly against the exclusion of other systems.

So I reiterate, to stay neutral it is REQUIRED that singlets do not exclude any system of any kind. Here are the only truly neutral stances a singlet can have on system related experiences:

Fakeclaiming anyone is ableist and disgusting no matter who it comes from, singlets should not interact with people who go out of their way to harass and gaslight others. 

Systems should not be harassed for things that are often confusing (introjects, innerworlds, cofronting, rapid switching, medianhood, monoconsciousness, common/shared memories etc.)

Certain terms are harmful and should be avoided (example: the term tulpa specifically NOT self-made systems as a whole should be avoided, the term traumascum has almost never been used unironically but we all collectively agree that it is Bad LMAO.)

Media depictions of plurality/systemhood as serial killers, shapeshifting beasts, and similar (split, the crowded room, etc.) should be boycotted

Psychiatric abuse of systems is a real issue that needs addressing in antipsych and neurodivergent spaces

Valueing psychology over the lived experience of systems is, as a singlet, inherently toxic and abusive when psychiatry is notoriously ableist against systems in particular. (With “leading theorists” like Van Der Hart being openly pluralphobic and having physical abuse cases against patients with DID)

None of those things skew towards any one side of the system community and for sysmeds to claim otherwise is to admit that their community is not one of systems existing but a hate group. Not allowing endogenic systems as a whole to interact however, IS INHERENTLY involving yourself in syscourse.Use your braincells everyone please. 

[anyone trying to debate on here is getting blocked literally just get a real hobby lmao + only tag as syscourse if you have to for blacklist purposes this isn’t that either]

[a-dragons-journal]

The syscourse tag is full of stuff form you. Maybe you should like, not do that

I tag it for blacklisting purposes, because a lot of people don't want to see it (fair) and I don't want to make them unfollow me, and for that reason I'm not going to stop tagging these. I've been positively flooded with asks (compared to my usual, I mean) regarding this whole thing for the last two days, so that's probably why there's been so many. I don't really control how many asks I get about a subject or how fast they come in (and I usually try to respond to people as fast as my time and energy levels allow), so.

In addition, while I suppose I shouldn't be surprised people actively follow discourse tags on Tumblr (I assume that's why you know this, feel free to ignore this whole paragraph if I'm wrong and you just happened to check in on it at the right time to see this whole mess), I might.. gently point out, if I may, that if you're following a tag dedicated to people arguing, often rather viciously, with each other closely enough to have noticed that there's a lot of posts from one particular blog there in the last couple of days, that's... probably not very good for your (general "you", not necessarily you specifically, anon) mental health? Even when I ran an active antikin-response blog, I didn't do that, I've only ever responded to things posted in our community tags. Engaging in discourse is one thing; actively ensuring that you're embedded in a space where these kinds of arguments are happening on a daily or near-daily basis is another, imo.

Obviously that's not really my business, it's your business to manage your own mental health, but... just a thought, if I may be so bold, and feel free to ignore it of course.