#syscovery story

[cat-collections-agency]

Kinda a syscovery story thingy?

Cw: anti endo mentions, fakeclaiming, mentions of delusions. Politics. This isn't a vent.

Had a mental breakdown in an agere server, got scared, pretty sure I was getting fake claimed by mods, then left out of fear. I was deeply afraid. I watched a lot of the 'fake disorder cringe' videos because my yt got flooded with them, was sorely confused but just wanted to understand more. We..surrounded ourselves with a lot of anti endos since all the agere, and other spaces we knew of were the case. And I was too scared to ask questions since I was so used to them being answered with: it's endo stay away or endos are bad.

I remember when we were first learning about systems. It was with an ex who was anti endo, they refused to explain things outside of anti endo values. I remember first questioning our singlethood. It was because of a dream we had that took place in a living room. Papyrus, jevil, spamton, Kris, Chara, and Berdly were all there. Talking about someone called 'bunny system.' Woke up confused, and distressed asked my ex about it before looking for the on tiktok and getting more confused when I couldn't find anything.

I chalked up that OG dream as a weird: lol my kins are just bugging me. I chalked up any thoughts into kins. It was until another sysmate appeared to a different ex(they were a lot nicer but still anti endo) who then brought it up to me that I finally started to somewhat accept things.

At the time we were helping run an agere server when a member and I became friends due to both being therians. They asked me privately if I was pro endo, and I responded with 'I don't really know much about systems and don't really have an opinion' (I should reiterate I was scared of systems especially endos) I got accepted into a pro endo otherkin server. it was so accepting. I never felt like I could be so open about our identity.

I stayed for a while until eventually leaving around the time IRL friends started to become major asses. Calling us names, claiming we liked genuinely gross shit, said we infantilized disorders like autism snd adhd whilst simontaniously saying we had those things. "You're trying so hard to be different." Delusional, Manic, saying they'd never actually wanna hang out with me to my fucking face. The worst part was in a gc I happened to be in and said something only to get told to 'shut up nazi lover.' reason? I liked countryhumans and hetalia at the time. (Yes my identity at the time revolved around Prussia at the time but fuck off.) I even got doxxed (not location.) In a server full of ppl who hated my guts. I feared they were going to dox my emails, address, some of these ppl went to the same school and I was terrified for my safety. I thought I'd get my ass beat over something I didn't understand/didn't even know was truly happening. Since none of those assholes told me anything.

Lynx showed up around that time and blocked our existence. Kni 100% chalked everything all of us to delusions, for a full year blood refused to engage with the things we liked. Especially UT since that was how we met those horrible ex friends. For a while we watched nothing but nature documentaries, while clinging to our rocky long distance relationship with the nicest ex we had even tho they were barely around. (They live in another continet) kni did hurt us a lot, and I totally understand why. He was carrying so much pain and believed we deserved to be punished for being shit.

eventually our IRL identity as Sonic appeared with a vengece and I showed up. The sheer menesfestation of the little sense of identity not related to being a horrible freak that was left. I did my best to make friends I kept at arms length, made sure we were close to the staff at our school. I made sure to maintain our grades, toom care of us so we wernt starving every single day. I took care of us since I was needed. Even made us a new discord account so we wernt terrified of long in and be met with nothing but harassment.

I joined pro endo servers such as Blue buddies and clung to them as our security blanket. Not as active in them as before but still. Didn't have any friends in those servers. I didn't care, we were with people who were more accepting and that's all that mattered.

I did make a friend eventually, and Lynx reached out to another system as a reply to a sourcecall (really wanted sourcemates.) Around this time we wanted a Tumblr that wasn't connected to fanfictions for a fandom we were no longer into, and to once again avoid talking about our plurality around antis/not on our og therian blog, so we made this account.

After making this blog I believe the first system we engaged with(aside from previous mentioned ones) was crystal cluster. I think it was 'ship art' i made 4 them, that kinda started our communications/lh. from then we branched off and started to accept ourselves more, and though we hide our plurality from anyone IRL we don't hide from it online.

IDC if the ppl on r/syscringe or r/fdc find our accounts. Idc if antis try to put me down and shame me for not hating our existence or the existence of any plurals that aren't solely traumagenic/expirences in the range of their acceptance. I'm done living in fear of what others think of me. I'm done worrying if I'm a bad person for supporting people whose lives are different dtom mine. I'm done hiding, I'm done being afraid of existence, of US.

You can hate me all you want. I do not fucking care. I love my sysmates, my insys partners, I love my friends. You cannot and will not change that part of me.

Also thank you crystal cluster for being the friend that's allowed us to finally fully be at peace with our existence.

Yes I'm still delusional btw.

[everythingwasnormalhere]

Cool! What was Cartman's reaction to finding it out?

kk so this is funny,,, at first pre-syscovery cartman was terrified. well, just as anyone would be if they were getting posessed on a daily basis ig XD

they progressively started being more aware of their memory problems and behaviour changes, but until 17 they just paid it no mind (at 17 mae put them in danger and they were scared so they told kyle, kyle told the others, and they all tried to help cartman figure out wtf was going on)

now, they were playing heroes with kenny one night (all their other friends were busy), and kenny offhandedly mentions "you know, this might not be the best time but i think you're a system". grim (the coon) was fronting, and he was like "not a good timing but the fuck is that" and kenny explains it the best he can (he's not a system and he doesn't know that much, just the basics)

but grim, that bastard, just. doesn't mention it to anyone else in their system 😭 so a couple days later kenny asks them "so, did you look into what i told you?" and cartman (sam or collins fronting) is like "wdym". kenny notices he doesn't remember so he just lets it be

instead kenny tells their other friends, they're confused "what do you mean cartman has other cartmans, in his head" "i had enough with 1 cartman there's more??", but after some thinking they decide that yup, cartman is most likely a system

now there's just telling them

they try to find the best moment and stuff, yk to not upset cartman and everything,,, but then while they're hanging out kyle just bursts out after the most obvious switch ever "cmon dude there's no way you don't know you're a system stop pretending". collins who just got to front is all "what's going on???😭😭" while kenny's trying not to laugh, and then they all explain and since collins has more memory sharing than others, everyone else half-remembers :)

since then they start trying to communicate between headmates with notes and stuff, also using their friends as a way to send each other messages, although they master insys communication eventually :) and obvi at first it was confusing but soon they just felt glad to have figured it out<3

[nexus-nebulae]

oh my god. that one "oc" we wrote who had DID that we came up with before our syscovery. that was not an oc. oh my god cody and blake why did you take five years to make yourselves known to us-

[sophieinwonderland]

My point remains that it does happen that one is introduced with the concept of alters and then they suddenly have alters, not because they have DID, but again, because they have high suggestibility, prone to fantasy, etc.

Fun story of our syscovery and how tulpamancy helped the shit out of us in those early days:

Anon would almost certainly say our syscovery was exactly this "auddenly having alters". We were reading about genders on a fandom wiki and stumbled into terms for systems. Then suddenly someone in the back of our head questioned if we were a system and in short order there were like, 4-5 folks in here.

We started to struggle with the idea that we saw something cool and made it all up. But Moxie pointed at the tulpamancy community and said "if we weren't a system before, then you just speedran a tulpa so what's the problem?" And holy moly was that a doubt killer. Enough of one that we were confident enough to go back to therapy, which eventually led to our DID diagnosis.

I don't know really how to tie this all together, or how to articulate my point, but like, it's so unproductive to try and prove something isn't "really" going on. It doesn't matter if we suddenly gained headmates or they were there from the start (at least not when just getting to what's happening in the moment).

Oh and tulpamancers are fucking dope!

-Faye

This is a great post and I don't really know how to add on to it... So I'm just going to say thanks so much for sharing your story and perspective, Faye! 😁

Have an awesome day!

[nikitasys]

LIFE WITHOUT FILTER AS A TRAUMAGENIC POLYFRAG+PARTIALLY PROGRAMMED DID SYSTEM

TW : vent, rant, ramcoa, programming, su!c!de mention

(I'm in desperate need for advice, for some kind of guidance or support from other progged systems who may have gone through something similar to what we're describing in this post, or not but who may have ideas of what might be going on with us.)

I stg life has been so exhausting & I just have to unmask & say it SOMEWHERE.

We're a relatively newly discovered+diagnosed system since I realised we were one in August/September of last year (2023). Before that we had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder for several years.

When I first realised we were multiple, I progressively began discovering the other alters. The whole process (we're also in trauma therapy) was difficult & messy but overall as days went by I personally felt more & more satisfied to see/feel how much progress we were making, even with all the highs & lows it entailed. I got to meet & learn to know a few alters, we were able to work on some of our problematic in-sys dynamics & slowly but surely understand ourselves better, both as individuals & as a whole.

Long story short, we were PROGRESSING.

Then things got even messier as our trauma therapy caused even more lifting of the dissociative amnesia in our childhood & we progressively realised we were polyfrag & had been through RAMCOA & programming. (That happened end of February/beginning of March 2024)

The whole process was getting more & more chaotic & distressful but we (me + the rest of our group of main fronters) were pretty determined to figure things out & keep on going forward, which was extremely annoying to a bunch of programmed alters who immediately tried their best to keep us quiet/isolated & make us feel insane/terrified by trying to make us go back to our primary abuser, OR convince our psychiatrist to put us on antipsychotics & hospitalise us, OR leave the place we live in to go who-knows-where & ghost everyone we knew, OR off ourself etc... in a nutshell, it was really freaking hard.

But some of us were determined to keep trying to do what was best for us, to keep trying to get better, to gain at least some kind of free will, to LIVE.

I'm sorry, this post is way too long.

But anyway, now it's been a few months since I just don't know what's going on with us anymore. The veryyyy little visualisation I could have of our innerworld is gone, all the main fronters seem to have truly disappeared (mass dormancy?) as well as the vast majority of alters we had identified up to this day. It seemed that I was frontstuck for a long while, & now it's been a few weeks that alters just randomly pop up (whether they front or stay co-conscious) & then disappear almost immediately after as if nothing had happened & I just... I feel so lost.

It's all just so frustrating you know ? To me it truly feels like something MAJOR happened inside both to our innerworld + all the alters & I'm being deliberately locked away from the truth of what it is. I feel like I'm being punished, & tbh I probably am. I'm in a lot of denial about our programming but the whole thing definitely feels like one (or more ?) internal handler/programmer has been orchestrating some kind of system reboot or hardcore scramble or... I DON'T KNOOOW 😭 I just don't know anything anymore. It's like nothing ever happened & it's particularly distressing, you know ? It is SO weird to know deep down that massive stuff is going on inside yourself but at the same time you know nothing & it all makes me wonder if I ever knew anything in the first place ? These thoughts make me dizzy af. It just feels like since syscovery there was overall progress happening, & now there's just nothing. As if everything had been suddenly turned off & restarted or... I just don't know.

Anyway. I realise no one will read this post entirely, but if for some reason you are doing it, first of all congrats & also, THANK YOU.

Don't hesitate to contact us via DMs or comment if you have any questions or advice, we'll be more than happy to answer you to the best of our abilities. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR HELP 🙏🏻

— host (I think?)

[plurality-is-mundane]

our syscovery story probably counts: the old host (well, prior to integrating into me) went to get a spicy chicken sandwich, because hey, that was our most common lunch in high school and its nostalgic. well apparently, a trauma holder thought so too. and they're her favorite food. so she fronted to eat it. and the host was very confused why he suddenly felt like our high school self, and suddenly having gender feelings that were completely opposite to what he normally felt. and suddenly was reminded of some very distressing things. this event prompted him to do a lot of self discovery. amd now here we are. - mirror shards system (🌑)

.

[in-mutual-weirdness]

On Dating My Partners

Here is a personal essay on being in a singlet-plural relationship, originally posted on cohost (RIP) and subsequently onto dreamwidth as well. Enough people liked it both times that I'm sharing it here as well.

So, dating and plurality are topics that get covered a fair bit online, when you know the right places to look. Tumblr's got a not-insignificant corner, even if I don't go looking for it. Unfortunately, the broader public not knowing a ton about plurality also means that there's a lot of facets of my relationships that I don't really get to share or talk about. I had a handful of opportunities to write about it recently, so now I'm making a big ol' post about it here. In case it helps people learn, or understand something a little better, or maybe gives some folks an idea of what their lives could look like.

Also! If you want to hear more about dating from plural folks themselves, I'd recommend you check out the work of LB Lee (on dreamwidth and itch.io), and the many videos available on the plural events youtube channel, the archive for the Plural Positivity World Conference. There are other written accounts on people's personal blogs and youtube channels, but these are the ones I personally go back to often.

--- 2 Girlfriends, 1 Butch, and Assorted Roommates in a Trench Coat My partner(s) and I started dating when we both thought we were cisgender. We'd figured out our respective flavors of queer, more or less, but transness was something that emerged over the course of our relationship together. There's nothing quite as fun as t4t high-fiving on the escalators as you swap places in the gender binary.

Of course, even with our established baseline of queerness (and even after my partner had already spoken to me about being nonbinary), I was nervous coming out to them at the time. It's a big deal after all, to tell your partner that you're not the person who you (or they) thought you were. In a lot of ways transness is an unfurling of what was already there, and a partner who is flexible and compatible enough will be able to accept this change as who you are, and keep growing alongside you. But also. How do you know if the person you are going to become is someone who will be compatible with them, or if they will stay compatible with you?

All this to say, I think in a very real way, our existing experience with coming out and transitioning in the context of a relationship prepared us both to better handle the syscovery when it happened.

I'm not gonna like, go into it in a lot of detail. That's really not my story to tell. I will say that I owe a lot to the educational and outreach efforts of folks who were already out and plural, from the 20-teens onward. My partnersys sorted their selves-discovery out with the help of some close plural friends and many good written resources around plurality, questioning, and figuring things out. Meanwhile I'd also benefited from casual internet friendships with both that same system and other systems who I'd met among other internet communities. As many of y'all already know, few things help better than simply getting to know people from the identity/affinity group and these folks becoming part of your normal. And several of them helped me way at the beginning when all of this was new and a little confusing and scary because it was new and not yet known or predictable.

Eventually, people in the system started taking on names, and figuring themselves out as individuals. And that's when I started getting to know them as them and not just as the gestalt single person I'd known up until then. And being able to do that has been one of the best parts of my relationship.

One of the major, baseline requirements toward respecting plurality is being able to treat different system members as independent autonomous people. Yeah, they're a collective in the sense of being all in the same body, and there's gonna be a degree of memory & knowledge sharing depending on the system in question. But like, they're still separate entities from each other, which means you gotta forge a relationship with each of them as individuals. What was once a relationship with a single person now is a multifaceted web across multiple people, with different comfort levels, boundaries, and personal tastes. That was the first major piece of advice I got, when I binged through a DID youtuber's channel[1], and watched the video their partner made.

In his case, he spoke about how his partner was Jess, the system host (not all systems have one, but this one did). The other system members were all distinct people who he forged unique relationships with. Some of them were still interested in physical affection/intimacy, while others weren’t, and they were simply roommates/friends. Even though they weren't all dating, however, he saw forming a relationship with them and getting to know them as an essential part of his relationship with Jess, and part of his duty as a partner. These were important people in her life, after all, and at minimum he didn't want to be an asshole. So he spent time with all of them, talked to them about their interests, and did stuff they liked together. No matter who was out, he respected them as a person, respected their autonomy and their boundaries when they differed from his partner’s, and didn’t treat them as peripheral or disposable, or do things like ask them to bring his partner back out, please. (Fewer ways to make someone feel unwanted than to directly ask them to get someone else instead. They have a place in this body and in this world as much as anyone else in the system does.)

Some systems do date as a collective, where every member participates in the romantic relationship. My partnersys does not, however, so our relationship is much more like the one from the youtube channel. Three of the most common fronters are my partners (the aforementioned two gfs and one butch [Edit: at time of this repost, we're now married]). The rest of the system members are either close friends, or similarly are people I care about because of their connection to the system and my partners. If they don't show up externally often, I may not be very close to them, but like. They're still people in my family unit and household.

All of us are tied by our mutual connections to the members I am dating, and our lives intersect closely due to us living together and all the system members sharing a body. Not all of the system members share romantic love with me, whether due to incompatibility, personal disinterest, or stuff like "being 12 years old". To a degree, I was already used to dealing with these sorts of incompatibilities or drastic changes in boundaries - they just used to manifest as shutdowns where my partner would suddenly withdraw from affection and not want to be touched. Some of that was more typical "I feel like shit and don't want to be touched", but some of that was also people with very different boundaries sharing a body in an atmosphere where they were socially expected to be available and receptive to touch at all times, and failing to do so was a mark against them as a Good Partner. (Even if I knew to respect sudden withdrawals, none of us are immune to societal messaging.) If anything, knowing what's behind it has made it much easier to accommodate and meet everyone's differing needs. It's made me better at being a truly safe person to be around, because I know they're there and can respond accordingly.

It is nice being able to date my 3 partners. In the same way that transness is an uncovering of what was there, I recognize aspects of each of the system members in ways they acted before discovering plurality. We have the many years of previous relationship history to build from, but it is a joyful thing to get to learn each of them as themselves. The things they like, the specific dynamics we build between each other, the ways they understand themselves and their relationships. All 3 of them are therian and bring those aspects of their identity into their relationships as well (i.e. ways they like to give/receive affection, ways they structure their relationships. The wolf has his pack, and one of the dragons has her hoard - each valued, unique, but never given primacy or ownership over her. I will be her husband, but she won't be my wife.) Getting to know them means each of them get to be loved as themselves, and like. Yeah, I am loved many times over because there are more of them. I love the cheerful energetic affection of Quinn, the gruff protective masculinity of Ace, the devastating femme elegance of Orchid. Each of them show up so differently even within the same body - in language, in voice, in mannerisms. I love how each of them love me in different ways, and how that feeds different facets of me. I love being shared by them, and the ways they'll tease me about each other. I love the act of caring for each other, and the ways those make our collective lives better because their needs are being met.[2] I love the ways that these have all added to my life.

--- Intersections with Polyamory: or, Sharing the Trenchcoat On top of me having this web of relationships, each of them also have their own partnerships with others. Some of these are spread across multiple bodies, and some of these are other folks within a single system. I make the distinction because sharing a body and therefore having to share consciousness and control of said body imposes some practical limitations on your daily life.

For one thing, you straight up cannot control who's at the wheel at any given time. Some systems have no control over switching, but even those who can control switching and consciously hand off front time to each other don't always have that control. Sometimes people might white-knuckle from stress and get stuck in front, to the point that even if they try to let someone else show up, they'll resurface by accident. Sometimes people run out of steam sooner than expected, or are struggling with something that makes being present too painful, and have to hand it off to someone else. Others might spontaneously show up because something has pulled them to front, or they get so excited they barge past everyone else.[3] They might be one of your partners, they might be someone else. It means that even if you're dating multiple people and hold them in equal esteem, you won't always get to spend as much time with them as you want. Or they might want to spend part of their limited slice of front time talking to other people, who they also have relationships and obligations to. Time is still a very present constraint, when the same 24 hrs and limited physical energy must be shared across multiple people.

Even if you can request people to get someone else...well, see what me and that other partner said in the previous section. That is not a request that can be made lightly, if you value everyone's autonomy. If you make someone feel unwanted, or disrespected, or less important/real than the others, you are Being A Dick. And that unequal treatment causes internal conflict for the system. Simply from a pragmatic point, you make shit worse for your partner if you cannot be nice to the people sharing their head.

In terms of how that impacts relationships and communication, for me it means having to save shit for the next time they're around. If I want to talk to Ace about a book we both read, I gotta wait til he's around. If I found some cute gay art for Quinn, I save it if she's out of town, so to speak. Yeah, if I post the link in our DMs, she'll be able to see it eventually, but I can't just keep spamming Quinn-links into the channel when someone else is there. It gets tiresome for them, especially if their interests don't overlap.

Their level of internal communication means that I can mention stuff to others and they can usually pass it on, or have a solid guess on what that person's response would be. For example, when I wrote a book review post and talked about reading it with Zanj (one of the "roommate" suite), I sent that passage to Quinn for a onceover before hitting post. Zanj eventually also showed up to comment directly (another reason to be careful with direct communication - you may unseat the current person in front if the person you've summoned crowds them out). For bigger things, like taking on a roommate or making travel plans, or anything that needs direct input from everyone, you do just gotta wait. The opinion of one person won't necessarily reflect the opinion of another, and while they can discuss stuff internally to reach a collective decision, that shit also takes time. Some folks may be difficult to reach, or they may need to resolve an impasse first.

Sharing the trenchcoat here also refers to the complications of dating multiple people in the same body. It is important that you not forget who they are. I've had moments where one person was out more consistently for a very long stretch of time, and when a different partner was out for a while, I treated them like the first person out of habit - got surprised by something the second partner did differently, or when they expressed an interest that the first partner didn't have. If you can see how that would be frustrating or hurtful to people who didn't share a body - congratulations. You now know exactly why that felt shitty for the second partner.

It is also important that you share independent time with each person. Yes, they have collective memory, so a date night I enjoyed with Ace is something that all three of them can remember (and I'm pretty sure Quinn stole his leftovers the next day for lunch). But like. This follows once again from the basic principle of "they are independent autonomous people." They will want different things. One may enjoy much more casual intimate touch, another may be asexual and disinterested in that kind of touch. The ways you banter with each other or spend your time together will be different. And like, shared memory doesn't mean they will feel the same immediacy to that memory - memories Belong to the person they happened to, even if you share the same brain. Quinn and Orchid know about the date, but they don't feel connected to the memory in the same way because it happened to someone else. If I want to date them, I have to date them. Otherwise all I'm giving them is secondhand affection and care. Not a great way to prove that you care about and value them as a person.

At the same time, this relationship arrangement is also different from previous poly arrangements I've had with people across multiple bodies. It's certainly cheaper to find shared housing with three partners if they're all in the same meatsuit. I don't have to navigate travel or scheduling in the same way - they handle the sharing of time among themselves, according to ability and circumstance. I just wake up and see who's around that day. And even if they're not in front, they can still be around. I have physical tokens and reminders around - a plushie they like, or a necklace they own. I already liked keeping orchid flowers in the house for personal and cultural reasons - now I have one more. The person who's in front may also pass on commentary or reactions, and I briefly get to glimpse them from their life inside. They all have a shared collective history, and we draw from the same 8-year accumulated bank of in-jokes and shared language. They rotate in and out of my daily life with ease, immediacy, and fluidity. It was different from the much slower work of building from scratch with someone entirely new. But it is nice to do that work as well. There is a different kind of novelty in getting to know someone with an entirely different life history, or physical body. This doesn't diminish the value of my partners, or make them less real as individuals. Just a difference in circumstances.

--- Why write this post? Plurality is pretty damn normalized in a fair few corners of the internet. I can track my arc of education and acclimation from stigma to familiarity. But that didn't mean I was prepared for it to enter my life in this way. It's been a net good, but a lot of it was stumbling through a significant period of uncertainty and having to figure shit out as we went. Some of that is unavoidable, because paradigm shifts are kind of just like that. My partners couldn't tell me shit they hadn't figured out yet, and they had to establish their own baselines first before we could reach a point of stability. I think about transition and relationships, and the difference between partnerships that do or don't survive a gender transition. It's no mistake that as more people become familiar with transness, there are more relationships that survive intact. Sometimes people change in a way that does make them incompatible, and that's always a possibility even with partners who do understand and support you. I would be lying if I said that all of this was easy, or that it didn't require a lot of effort and patience along the way. And sometimes that is a source of incompatibility as well.[4]

But also I don't think it takes a saint to date a plural person, anymore than it takes a saint to date a trans person, or a disabled person, or to date interracially. The partner from the youtube channel knew very little about DID when he first started dating his partner as a teen. But his reaction to hearing her say there were other people in her head was to go, "okay, so when can I meet them?" Stigma and oppression make things harder, by exerting pressure on relationships and priming people toward suspicion, scorn, and fear, instead of the curiosity and open-mindedness necessary to support you as partners. It is scarier to face down a paradigm shift in your relationship if you have no understanding, or a misinformed understanding of what that change will entail. I think about "trans widows" who see their exes' transitions as harm done to them, or see their exes as fundamentally dishonest or deceitful people. I think about common public perception of plurality, and the ableism bound up in it. I think about what I might have done with my fear and confusion, had I not found safe and reliable sources of information, had I not already been cross-trained through my immersion in transness, had I not had safe avenues to process and handle those raw feelings without dumping them onto my partner(s). I think about what would've happened to my partner(s), had their selves-actualization come at the cost of a foundational relationship they'd built their existing life around. There is a world where this went much, much worse. I know the outcome we got is not something that everyone gets, and christ but I want to make that a little more common. I want to help even one person get a better outcome. So here's my amateur roundup of things you need to know, if a partner comes out as plural.

Don't panic. It may introduce a lot of new problems or factors you don't know how to deal with yet. But you can and will learn. People have done this before, and will be able to tell you how to do it. You just have to find the people and places to ask.

Be supportive. Selves-discovery is a complicated and scary process. They're gonna be uncovering a lot and learning a lot of necessary skills on the fly. And you, as an established stabilizing presence in their lives, will be an important source of support through this process. Be ready to listen to them, no matter how strange or contradictory the things they're saying might sound. They may describe things that sound physically impossible, like phantom limbs, or having teleported into the body from somewhere else, or feeling like they're a different age, ethnicity, or species from the body. They may vacillate between believing they're plural or thinking they're a fraud and it's all fake. Believe them about what is true for them in that moment. Brain stuff is weird and symbolically driven - your perception, especially if it's persistent, is real enough to directly impact you, and flat disavowal doesn't make the impact or perception go away. You have to respond to the impact, and do what makes your life easier to live. Even in a case of clear-cut denial, when you see pretty clear evidence of plurality, you have to meet the denier where they're at. Otherwise you'll piss them off or make them feel unheard.

Be a safe person. If they ask you to keep their confidence, keep it. If someone new shows up and they're really scared/confused/sad/angry, help them de-escalate. They may not know who you are, or who/where they are, and need grounding. Find out how they're feeling, and what they need, and help them get it if possible. You may need to use the dementia toolkit (i.e. if they ask for something that isn't possible/safe, like "going home" to a place that no longer exists). Try to meet the need that's driving the request, whether that's feeling safe, or having autonomy, or wanting something familiar. I've sent scared kids off to work with a childhood stuffed animal, and while that didn't fix everything, it did help them calm down enough for an adult member to take the helm.

Give your partner space to discover things. This is the most important lesson I learned from transness in relationships. Open a trans subreddit or online community space and you will find stories aplenty of partners who tried to bargain folks out of their identity, or who imposed their desires over a trans person's exploration and self-definition. The same thing applies here. I kept my theories and thoughts to myself unless I was prompted. I let them tell me who they were, and asked questions about things I was curious about so I could learn more. And I also gave them space to be uncertain, so they could figure things out at their own pace instead of being forced to provide false reassurance or certainty. If they changed their name and pronouns, if they wanted to start presenting differently then they had before, I didn't get in their way. It will be new and will take some getting used to, but the principle is similar to transness. Here are people who have never gotten to develop an independent identity. You gotta let them do it. They will be happier this way.

Build your own support network and knowledge base. This may be difficult if you don't have many people in your life who know about plurality. My partner(s)' syscovery was also the creation of a new closet to maintain, and I needed safe outlets to handle my stress and uncertainty. For the latter, this meant turning to youtube and educational resources to learn things and dispel uncertainties. For the former, this meant hitting up online community spaces which had no connection to my partner(s) and asking folks who were knowledgeable about plurality to help me out. I could be scared, or frustrated, or messy, and return to my partner(s) after releasing that shit so it didn't drive my behavior toward them. You may also end up turning to loads of different people for their experience in completely unrelated things - an AAC user friend helped me a lot with supporting a system member who didn't talk out loud. You truly don't know what new experiences or identity axes each system member will fall along.

Respect everyone in the system. This includes angry or self-destructive folks. They may show up and try to sabotage shit, or say really angry and hateful things toward you or your partner. You don't have to lie down and take it, but you do have to remember that they're still part of the system, and they may likely be a permanent resident. They're also caught up in a situation they cannot control, with people they have to share a brain and body with, and cannot reasonably make any distance from. It would be surprising if no one flipped their lid from time to time. Try to establish trust and understanding - show them that you're willing to respect and listen to them. That is a much better basis for establishing improved relationships once they calm down, and are given the choice to cooperate with the collective.

I hope this was helpful, and thank you for reading. When I originally posted it on cohost, I'd intended it mostly as a chance to talk about my relationships and as an educational guide for singlets. What followed was a lowkey overwhelming amount of positive reception from plural folks, and I'm kind of jazzed as hell that I could write something like this well enough that many of y'all liked it too. So thanks for your cosign, I'm glad I could make something useful and good. Also! I would love to hear from others about their relationships. A lot of this stuff is individual, and I wasn't able to articulate some of the major points from here until coming across folks who experienced it differently. And it is nice hearing people talk about their relationships, and to swap stories with each other. ----------

[1]: For those curious, it was MultiplicityandMe. Very much a textbook DID system, and while I had to move past the DID framework into other forms of plurality (which can function in very different ways), their videos helped me a lot during the early syscovery days. Coincidentally, they achieved their final fusion goal right as I started watching them. [2]: One of the fun ones is that Ace is chronically sleepy as hell, due to being really badly understimulated. He needs a lot of physical activity, so recently I've started just fucking wrestling with him whenever he shows up. It is like night and day, how much happier and energetic he gets afterward. And even though I can't actually beat him, or get tired before he does, it's still just Fun to do. At the old apartment, he'd also sometimes just fuck off for an hour long walk, to basically the same effect. [3]: A particularly affectionate member once had to be "picked up like a puppy dog and dragged 10 ft back" after they stole someone else's designated cuddle time. It was extremely endearing [4]: I knew folks who broke up with partners because their exes couldn't adequately handle their mental health challenges. If you have frequent panic attacks, and your partner tends to spiral out instead of being able to calm you down, that's a major incompatibility even if this person is otherwise perfectly lovely

[antisyscourse]

heya!! we’re kinda curious, how does dating as a plural system work ? we are a system, but we’ve never dated anyone ever (except for maybe some blossoming in-sys relationships, 👀 i know what you are, unspecified sysmates. plus even before our syscovery we never dated anyone…) i’ve heard that it varies a lot (very understandable!!!) with maybe one headmate dating someone or the majority of a system dating someone. if anyone was comfortable with sharing their experiences or stories, we’d love to learn!

ooh, we have a lot of experience with dating actually!! we've only dated other systems, so we have been what you call "partner systems"!! for us, that's when the systems are collectively considered taken by each other as a whole!! but certain alters still had platonic relationships or other kinds of relationships aside from romantic with the partner sys. a lot of our alters were dating in all cases!!

systems, what is your experience with dating?

[ID: STOP! this is a syscourse free blog! it is a safe space for all systems, so please go away if you intend upon stirring up drama!]

[starmoon-constellation]

What's your syscovery story - how did you figure out that you're plural?

oh oh, I LIKE this question!!!!

So, we ultimately realised it because our now-husband kept pointing out the discrepancies between myself and another of us. We ended up registering PK proxies on January 21, 2023 and consider that our syscovery day!

[atlas-the-idiot-2]

Helloooooo, we're the strawberry system,, here's a sorta long intro post

First, our alters! With premade intros thanks to pluralkit!

(we're a system of 11 to our knowledge but will only be putting alters that are comfortable being known here/have proper intros)

★★★

Headmates

Mike (he/they/it)

»Things to be wary of/know: hello! I'm mike, I'm the main host if the system! I'm bisexual and on the aroace spectrum as well. I like long debates and talks, I'd like to say im pretty open minded as well. I like alternative rock, watermelon bubble gum, reading, writing, and musicals!

Macey (they/it)

»Things to be wary of/know: first up! Im fluid between he and she pronouns but i always use they/it pronouns! Now actually onto me! Im a bit scatter brained at times, my thoughts are like, alllll over the place! I swear a lotttt, i make lota typos at times so sorry if i mess up lolll! I like showing off, alternative rock, fast music, thrills, horror stories/true crime, and things like that! I swear a good amount too but I'm resisting just in this intro lmaoooo! I can also be rude or ramble sometimes! I hope i get to know lots of people!

All for one (he/him)

(yes, my source is mha, yes I'm aware, no i am not my source)

»Things to be wary of/know: i have low empathy so i wouldn't go to me for help on most subjects, I mainly front on harder days for the system or boring days, I don't say much to others, i can be a bit... Protective or cold at times, no I don't excuse my sources actions though i understand if some are hesitant to interact with me

Dreamwalker (it/he/they)

»Things to be wary of/know: I only really speak to the others in the system, though I'm down for long talks or debates, I'm not very open though i suppose

Atlas (they/she/he)

»Things to be wary of/know: hello, i am Atlas, I don't talk much to anyone. You probably won't meet me unless theirs a problem going on with us or someone's causing a problem.

Jewel (she/they)

»Things to be wary of/know: hiya, i mostly hold emotions i guess? So that makes me sorta sensitive in a way, i have high empathy as well, I'm very soft spoken as well and don't speak much so please be patient with me! Um, please use tone tags, I'm also a sorta slow typer

Rozie (she/they/xe)

»Things to be wary of/know: hiiiiii, I'm the more extraverted of the bunch, you'll probably hear lotsa stuff from me! That's it i think!

★★★

Stances

Syscouse: hooooo boy. We prefer not to interact with Syscouse too much because its generally a battle field but we are supportive of endos! We generally avoid anti endos too because they're very much less welcoming and don't feel as safe around them :)

We also block freely and will block almost all anti endos that actively participate in discourse so please block me as well :))

★★★

Extra info!

System type: cephaconscious

System origins: none of your business<3

Syscovery birthday: may 7th

Asking to front: no thank you!

Nicknames: depends on the person but mostly fine!

Pet names: only if we know each other pls!

Teasing: fine, pls make it clear (/j or teasing in parentheses!)

Dms/friend request: perfectly fine!

Flirting: ehhhh, again depends on the person, generally no

★Ways to refer to us★

Yes: system, voices, collective, council, alternatives, collection, plural, choir, headmate, sysmate, system member, homies, people, others, crew

Ehh: alters, multiple, gang, tribe

No: part, piece, shard

★★★

Thats it i think lmao! Byeeee

[andromeda-spaceship]

i love how our syscovery happened bc one of us tried to roleplay on their own using pluralkit

they didn't even come up with a story for the roleplay or whatever, the whole thing was just a regular conversation lmao

- Amy (she/her)

[sophieinwonderland]

Sophie! We got some more plural headcannon!

Disney's Dreamlight Valley is a story of a fictive heavy P-DID system going through a syscovery and exploring their headspace while working through some of their trauma and amnesia.

Idk where this verges into spoiler territory, so I'll just preempt this with "Spoilers ahead"

Okay so, this life sim game starts off with the classic "You quit your job and go off to live a simpler life." You find a place you used to daydream in your childhood and get transported to the titular Dreamlight Valley.

The place is in shambles because of The Forgetting that has caused everyone to struggle with memory issues and cut off various locations and characters. It's revealed in relatively short order that you used to spend a lot of time here with all of these disney characters. You uncover memories as you do stuff to help these folks out.

Eventually the villain shows up known as the Forgotten who's eventually revealed to be your "inner child" and otherwise described as a part or version of yourself. Eventually you free them from the dark place where they're trapped through things like, reliving the Forgotten's memories, and showing them that they are loved, accepted, and safe.

So like, it strikes us as immediately plural coded. Obviously the protag and the Forgotten are plural, being split from each other (bonus points that they don't make you and the Forgotten fuse/merge/integrate). The Valley strikes us as their headspace. The protag goes through a major life change, which, can be a trigger for overt symptoms of DID in adulthood. And of course, all of the themes around amnesia and memories fit right in.

More speculatively, the various disney characters are non-fronting fictives. Interestingly, these characters eventually remember spending time with the protagonist as a child, or to have been around before the Forgetting (implied to happen years ago). However, one of these characters is Moana who's movie was in 2016 and Mirabel from 2021's Encanto. Which reminds us of a phenomenon of fictives existing in their systems before prior to the discovery or even creation of their source.

I'm sure that there's more we could go into, but those are the most solid points we can think of at the moment.

Anyways, good job Disney for accidentally making a great little plural video game. Or hey, maybe it wasn't an accident. This game hit our little pretty hard right in the feels regarding our own trauma so like, maybe this was all intentional!

This sounds so fascinating! Thanks for the description! 💖

I'm surprised to hear something with lore this deep coming from what amounts to a Disney lifesim!

[multiplicity-positivity]

before my syscovery i made up this story about a fictional country and it really influenced my system. i'm really fixated on it, some of my alters are from there, etc. i'm really starting to identify with this culture. pos for that? also advice would be appreciated. thanks.

Hi! We wrote a post for systems whose creative works have influenced their plurality. We hope it works for y’all and brings you comfort and joy! It’ll be posted tonight at 8:00PM EST.

As far as advice… we’re not quite sure what advice we could give you! I’m sorry, but we don’t really see a question here or understand how to provide advice as we’re not sure what you need or want help with in particular.

I guess what we can say is that our wife’s thoughtform is from the fictional star system she’s been developing for many years! They both work together these days in their worldbuilding efforts, and the world they created together has a really big impact on their lives overall! So y’all definitely aren’t alone in having a system that’s heavily influenced by an original creation! 😊

🌷 Corrie and 👻 Ghost

[pluralaita]

WIBTA for sending our system name to an ex?

For context, the main reason this ex (19/20M, can't be assed to remember his birthday; we'll call him B) broke up with us (20M collectively) was because we "made him uncomfortable" by openly (read: to about 3 people including B) presenting as a system when we made our first syscovery (before our host (let's call him A) went back to full denial for almost another year because of said breakup) back in early 2023.

It's also important to note that 1) B was *also* going through a syscovery, though his started earlier than ours (and we have no idea if he still identifies as plural) and 2) we use the same system name now as we did then.

Anyway, the story. B reached out to us a few months after the breakup (A was still in deep denial) through Discord, where B drunkenly asked for his things back (a couple clothing items and a stuffed animal, I think). A wasn't in a great place mentally, so he blocked B and proceeded to bury that memory as deep as he possibly could.

Fast forward to today, where a close friend of B (and an ex-friend of ours who we're still Discord friends with for some reason) DMs us saying "You should probably give [B] his stuff back". We actually weren't planning on ever giving his stuff back, but now I (Adult, F, romantic/sexual protector) have an idea.

I feel like it would be a little funny in a petty, almost sick and twisted kind of way if, when/if we ever did get around to doing that (we'd have to actually find everything that B gave us), we sent it with a note saying "Here's your shit back. -[Our system name]". Would we be the assholes?

[the-indigo-symphony]

☕️ for the ask thing! :3

☕️ — a story about some sysmates first meeting!

Oh boy hmmmm

Oh! We've mentioned this before, but one time, two of our factives (who have the same source) met and instantly did the pointing Spider-Man meme. I love little moments like that, they're great

Another story... when we were in the early months of syscovery, sometimes Nicky would panic and push away other headmates – sometimes just in the heat of the moment, and other times lasting hours or days. It was during one of these times that Jon-Jaymes showed up, was sympathetic to their plight while at the same time telling them they needed to work things out with those they'd pushed away + be more open to being a system, and then vanished into the night. Nicky took aer advice and worked things out with those they'd unintentionally hurt.

It's important to note here that Jon-Jaymes looks like an eccentric rich dude. Xe's all done up in an over-the-top suit. Thon wears two masks and a monocle. She's almost entirely achromatic. And ever since this first meeting he has behaved like a cryptid but still retains his aura of being the most reasonable uncle at the function. Bonkers headmate, but we love them for it.

[space-station-collective]

being plural and a cosplayer is so funny

especially cause we're introject-heavy, and i tend to go for cosplays of characters that i fixate/find comfort in

HOWEVER, this also means that those characters tend to introject into the brain

basically, i'm planning Crowley and Sal Fisher (sally face) cosplays, and both of them have had lots of input and opinions (my Sal "design" is really mostly just how our headmate, Sal, presents himself and looks)

i know that for those who we have cosplay pieces for, they always feel much closer to at-home in the body when we're wearing them. Grian wears our red sweater (for the cosplay of his source) when he can, that's a good example

actually, Grian and that cosplay were directly involved/the cause of our syscovery. that's another story, though. different post for that one!

-the host (he/they), Tommy in co-con (he/him)