#thanks for acknowledging that we're plural

[catgirldragon]

BREAKING NEWS: whoever is leaving eggs on these dragons' doorstep likely does not plan to stop

I wouldn't want them to ^.^

[afniel]

I am seized with a burning and sudden need to Get Super Weird With It except I'm also going to meet my partner's other side of the family soon and if I happen to Get Even Slightly Weird With It where they can see it, I will probably get to experience being the butt of uncle jokes, so I cannot do that right now.

But the moment nobody is looking I'm going to be so goddamn bizarre on purpose and who's going to stop me? No one. Definitely not me.

(And maybe I'll declare Fuck It We Ball and paint my nails anyway. Who give a shit. Well, unless my partner specifically doesn't want me to do that, in which case I guess I'll take it off again before meeting anybody.)

[starlit-harbor-citizens]

This is really just a personal ramble about my experience with plurality, and a positive experience with a friend of ours. There is a VERY brief mention of neglect, but it's not going into detail. There's also mentions of fakeclaiming and fakeclaimers, so take this as a warning!

Yesterday I actually had a really positive experience with a friend and talking about being plural? We both are plural in our own ways, and I won't go into the details of their plurality because that's just disrespectful and an invasion of their privacy.

However, I feel like they'd really like the pro Endo side of Tumblr, because a lot of what we talked about really was in support of non-traumagenic plurality. I remember a part of that conversation really consisted of us just saying "Who's to say that the human brain can't just do that in abnormal situations?"

Now, to further on what's meant by "abnormal situations", examples of that are, obviously, trauma, but also severe isolation. Hell, willing a system into existence could be considered abnormal. Obviously, there's 10 million things that could fit into that category of abnormal situations, but these three are just the examples I can think of off of my head.

It was just nice to know that someone we know outside of our psys also agrees that plurality is possible without trauma. We've had to deal with fakeclaimers, and associated ourselves at one point with said fakeclaimers (never again) because we just wanted a sense of community with plurality. Seeing harmful ideals like that really affected us, and we still struggle with the thought of "What if we are faking?" It's hard to deal with, and definitely a part of us that we're going to have to work on healing.

I've acknowledged that our system most likely doesn't fall under DID or OSDD standards. We didn't receive heavy formative childhood trauma, the most is a bit of neglect from our caretaker at the time from what our birth giver told us. It's taken me a while since syscovery to acknowledge that "yeah, no, your origins are in some way, non-traumagenic". That thought, when we were first discovering our system about a year ago and only knew about traumagenic plurality, meant that we were faking. We knew we weren't faking, as our experience was very real. It's taken us up until very recently to acknowledge that it's okay to not be fully traumagenic, and that we're not fully traumagenic.

We tried for a while to rationalize us being traumagenic, but that's really not the case. And, that's okay. I'm okay with that now. My conversation with that friend of ours brought up these feelings, in general. If anyone reads through this all the way, I appreciate you for reading my insane ramblings lol (/silly). But, seriously. It's okay to be non-traumagenic in origin. Plurality can just... Happen, willed in or not. Thanks for coming to my ted talk lol

-Ambrose

[qenmaicha]

I was wondering if you might talk more about being a quaker unitarian universalist and what that's like and what it means for you. The more I read into quakerism the more I realize I align with it to a degree I didn't think I would. Though, I will admit to not being as knowledgeable about UU

thank you so much for this question :) apologies it took me most of the day to get to it - i wanted to sit with it a bit, and also i had to work lol. this is a little messy and probably not well-written as i was watching tv and very sleepy while writing it, but i hope you'll bear with me.

being a quaker uu, to me, is about having a real, personal experience with the Inner Light or the Divine or God that is within me, and within every person, while also being committed to the uu values of pluralism, inclusivity, social justice, and respecting everyone's own search for where the Spirit is guiding them. i also really adore the uu idea of "love at the centre," because i think that really resonates with my own view of God. God loves us, is within us, and is compelling us to love one another. as quakers, we call ourselves Friends because that is what we try our hardest to be - Friends to God, and Friends to His children.

while neither quakers nor uus are creedal faiths, i do allow the quaker testimonies known as S.P.I.C.E.S to guide me, and try to follow them to the best of my ability:

i try to live simply, focus on prayer and necessities... but of course, even i'm not perfect haha. we all have cravings and wants. i simply try to temper them as best i can. i'm 4 months sober, and my faith has helped me so much.

i try to live peacefully. i used to have a lot of anger and hate in me for those i felt had wronged me. this is something i still wrestle with. but the more i breathe out this anger and try to exemplify this ideal, the better i feel. it isn't always easy to temper my words and thoughts, but all we can do is try.

i try to live with integrity, by treating others with kindness, acknowledging that we all have Light within us, and letting my actions speak for me. i do my best to avoid even the smallest of white lies - but again, i'm not always as good at this as i would like to be.

i value community. in every group i am a part of - be that Meeting, work, my college classes - i try to bring my best, most authentic self to it and empower everyone else to do the same. i try to remind myself that we are all interconnected and we're all trying to do our best in this life - even the people i can't stand or disagree with. sometimes that's way easier said than done!

i value equality. we have differences in culture, religion, skin colour, identity, and more, but we are all human and equal to God. i consider it a principle of faith to not only be committed to activism in social justice where i am speaking, but also centering and listening to other voices who have experiences that i have not. i try to listen to and respect positions that i do not and never will agree with, so long as those positions do not harm or invalidate others. again, this is easier said than done.

finally, i value stewardship. we only have one earth, and to respect it is to respect one another. i can't say i'm, like, a vegan hippie or anything, as cool as they are, but i do my best to live as sustainably as i can.

as i've tried to reiterate, i am not always the best at following these. i do my best to honour and affirm the Light that is in everyone and hope that they will show me the same grace, but after all, we're all only human :)

if you're interested in more Quaker resources, I cannot recommend enough QuakerSpeak on Youtube and Thee Quaker Podcast. as for UU, i'm canadian so i usually rely on the Canadian Unitarian Council for info on them, but the UUA is larger and probably has more US and international resources :)

i hope this was suitable and i'm sorry it got so long!!!

[akashirl]

Miguel!!! I wanted to ask you what your opinions are on the headcanon/idea that bc of his DID, Sei suffers from memory gaps depending on who's around and amnesia sometimes? im curious how u and ur ship interprets him in the sense of his plurality :3

hello! first of all, thank you so much for asking! it warms my heart that some people are curious about my relationship with sei, be it because of his aspects or mine. that being said, i'll try to make myself clear!

let's start off with his switches. he's able to mask it pretty well when a switch occurs, but he can feel himself getting dizzy when letting a side of his taking over. that applies to both oresei and bokusei (they both feel dizzy seconds after a switch, as they're trying to adapt to their surroundings outside of headspace and need a few minutes to locate themselves. they're pros at acting natural though.). since oresei is the "core" (gosh, i detest this term), he gets to spend most time with me and he is fronting around 60% of the time, so it's quite an amount. bokusei is still trying to acknowledge himself as more than just a protector to the body, but it's quite difficult for him at times so he stays in the shadows. he wants oresei to be happy with his friends, even if that means that he will have to stay watching him from innerworld.

when bokusei does come out, it's usually to help with oresei's exhaustion or when he feels a slightly bit endangered or intimidated. i've been trying to get boku to come out more often without those particular reasons, since i'm in love with him and miss him a lot. ore encourages bokusei to front as well, but it's not always that easy. he doesn't value himself enough. still, the balance is not that bad.

when ore or boku are fronting, the other can watch, listen and even speak to the one fronting. it's called "inner communication" and it works just as described. they often play games inside his head, and you'll see sei sitting in a dark room "talking to himself".

there are small amnesia gaps between the two. like, at times oresei would front and find his homework already completed, without the memory of having even started it -- of course this is due to boku doing them prior to the switch. sometimes, when boku is fronting and has to do something, i promptly tell him "your brother has already done that" and he feels a bit out of place. my sweet boy, i really wish he saw himself as anything other than just a tool. but that takes time, and we're getting there.

what does happen at times is when i'm playing basketball with ore and we're almost done with the game, boku fronts and demands i play with him as well, unaware of how his stamina is wearing off and how tired we both look. then he notices that and gets a bit gloomy that he hasn't had the proper time to spend with me or with the others playing ball, like he loves to do.

they're similar to eachother, but are still two different people. that means we have different dynamics and there are some things that boku likes to do that oresei doesn't and vice versa and i'm very mindful of them. that includes taste (you better pray that one of them doesn't front while eating something they dislike) but strangely, i pulled both of them. i'm literally a mary sue. nerf me.

when we leave notes to eachother, boku and ore always sign below so i know who's speaking to me. (and they have different handwritings.)

one thing that happened once was when we were sleeping (in the same dorm room), ore fronted during the night and came to hug me because he hadn't been with me the entire day.

it's (love)² and i wouldn't want it any other way...

[soviet-siscon]

Does your disdain for fauxcest apply to intra-system relationships? I'd consider it to be just a very easy to hide kind of regular incest, because physically speaking, we were born to the same parentage and are genetically identical, we just happen to be in the same body. This also does mean my older (formed earlier than me) sister has direct access to my body and can do many things with that, which is nice and morally correct I would say.

The one thing is that I guess there's not exactly the same social stigma necessarily, but at the same time if I admit to the things happening between me and others in my head in the wrong place I could wind up institutionalized so I think it counts enough. Also we can't get each other pregnant but like, neither can other t4t lesbian sisters unfortunately

[obligatory disclaimer that everyone has different interpretations and internal experiences of plurality and also that I'm not a psych bootlicker]

personally I wouldn't call that incest, certainly incestous desires play into it but like....ok don't crucify me because it's hard to explain but my personal understanding of plurality is very much in the "this is kind of all make believe but that's a cood thing" camp, where it's very real and part of people's lived experience but it's not like some innate physically portioned off parts of the brain or a spiritual thing on anything. which is to say that roles and personas being played are very capable of having meaningful lives and relationships with eachother but it's not something that extends outside the realm of the systems body into the physical world where "incest" as an action or even feeling occurs.

i certainly began to process a lot of my feelings through my system and have and have had people who have motherly and sisterly roles for me, but we're meaningfully 'related' inasmuch as someone is 'related' to themselves before losing their memories or something. they're seperate personalities sure but the body is the same and the complicated and incest like relationships that can form feel (to me at least) is like a manifestation of feelings and a way of acting them out more than an actual physical example of it.

(my really controversial take is a lot of people, myself included, play up the degree of separation and discontinuity for various reasons. that's not a bad or lying thing, that's just how it actually happens. a mental behaviour barrier saying you're not supposed to know that is just as impactful as a physical one. that "playing a role" is a very significant aspect of it and i think a lot of ppl are very understandably insecure about that because they don't realise it's ok to acknowledge and doesn't mean they're lying. it just takes a very different form to what people think of in movies and stuff)

the reaction to telling someone that is very much an extension of psychiatric violence moreso than incest taboo (although it plays a role i suppose). but in general I'd say that saying you're in love with your sister and saying that you're in love with your sister who lives in your head invokes rather different (but sometimes interconnected. see incestuous feelings being treated as mental illness) forms of punitive institutional violence.

I hope this doesn't come off as invalidating or anything! I'm very very happy for you and your sister, that's very lovely. this is just my personal feelings on plurality as someone who very much tried to escape into her own head about it (The feelings™) and it didn't really work. it's a topic i really enjoy thinking about and have evidently put a lot of thought into over the years. I love getting to hear other people's thoughts on it and my personal conception of my selves doesn't have to mean shit for you and your lives. thank u for the question it was fun on my brain

[sophieinwonderland]

r/FakeDisorderCringe doesn't know what biblical canon is, atheists are offended by saying God is plural, and other people casually throwing out some blasphemies and ableism!

👎

For uncreative title.

Atheists Pretending To Be Deeply Offended...

So, let me guess, you're not actually Christian are you?

Those guys sure aren't.

So weird how people pretend to be offended over a religion they aren't even a part of.

(Let's be real though, that's most of the tulpa discourse.)

Oh... you considered converting.

That clearly gives you a say in this conversation. /s

Meanwhile, my host actually lived the religion. He was Christian through his teenage years, and as a child helped his mom teach Sunday School and went to sleep every night on a Noah's Ark pillow.

Sorry, I distracted from your point. We're thieves stealing from a religion. 🙄

Okay, let's talk "canon!"

I just... I LOVE this whole conversation! 🤣

THIS is actual cringe.

Does anyone see the issue here?

I'll let u/AdSuccessful3533 spell it out. Possibly the only person with sense in the thread.

It's not just Catholic Canon either, but Biblical Canon! Like, there's a whole Wikipedia article on it!

The sheer self-righteous ignorance of r/Fakerdisordercringe (and r/systemscringe) never ceases to amaze me.

All of these people so bent out of shape over the use of "canon" to describe biblical text as if that's not been in use for hundreds of years!

"Something a middle schooler would say."

The Heresies!

That's correct. This is NOT the modalism heresy.

Modalism suggests God is a single unified being who reveals himself in different forms. God being plural would mean that God is three beings in one. This is completely in-line with the views of Trinitarianism.

An example of the modalism heresy would be more like this...

Comparing God to Optimus Prime, arguing that they're just different forms like Optimus Prime in a truck form vs him in a robot form, is modalism.

But if modalism isn't enough, we've got some tritheism too!

Besides the tritheism... it's really hard to take people who are calling tulpas appropriative seriously when they don't even know basic facts about the most popular religion in the world.

Also, the part about System not being a term for a person with DID is technically correct. System is, rather, the term used for the total collection of all the alters. But it is very much a term used by psychologists and it's accurate to refer to the Trinity as a system in this way.

Also, if the Tritheism bothers you, don't worry! We're going to go right back to modalism.

The H2O metaphor is controversial for the same reason as comparing God to Optimus Prime. It suggests God is simply changing form to become these different things.

Miscellaneous

Can you show me that rabbit hole?

I'm the one who Tweeted that, and have NEVER been on the OSDD sub.

Who do you think I am?

No... it definitely doesn't sound right. Religion shouldn't just be a thing for neurotypicals.

If one believes in God, then surely God made all people, including those of us who have mental illnesses. Why should Christianity and biblical references be kept away from people with mental illness other than ableism?

I mean, if by in peace, you mean without endogenic systems, then no. You can't.

We're here and we aren't going away. Ever.

And we exist in all spaces, including in your churches and your religious communities. And Christian systems shouldn't be expected to hide who they are because our existence bothers bigots like you.

We're going to share this world, and we're going to share spaces. And that includes churches and religious spaces too. Deal with it. 🤷‍♀️

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank everyone at r/fakedisordercringe for giving me the free material. For a subreddit that's designed to laugh at people for supposed "cringe," you all sure are a goldmine for it! 😜

[our-inspire-verse]

Things i wanna say about my plurality

The title. The misconception and medicalization of "DID" VS "Plural"

I wouldn't say i have DID. I don't use the DSM-V and i truly believe it's an ableist tool used to try to control the unwanted that make "normal" people uncomfortable. I am a multiple, i am plural. I am multiple. You can call it anything but DID/OSDD. Even if i used those labels before, I don't identify with that and it makes me wary.

Waking up, blackout memory, and how switches feel. I'm still Micheal, we all are to varying degrees but also are piloting the body and playing the game of our life

I have what they label as "grey outs", where only part of my memory is affected, or i feel dissociated/separated from the memory. My feelings may be distant, my thoughts or opinions may change over it, but I don't just forget things between people. We're all 'Micheal' and remember our life.

Diagnosis. Self is more than enough, I'll always know me more than anyone else. Medicalization isn't safe.

I will not tolerate anyone Anti self diagnosis. That makes no sense and you aren't a safe person. Unfollow or block me now because i will not be nice about it. People have been extremely exclusionist and bigoted about something that puts me in danger. They want to be documented by their government and medical system as what some people would label a threat, be my guest. I will never.

Communication with me. How to stay in touch, keep track etc.

you don't HAVE to remember ANYTHING. if you just respect it, I'll thank you. If you engage with it at all, I'll appreciate it. If you do happen to remember or engage more deeply, you're allowed into my more personal life. All I'm asking is that if you want REAL updates on my life, you're going to have to acknowledge the plurality. The entire crew. We're ALL Micheal. It's unacceptable to pretend it isn't there if you want to be my friend or family.

Identity. We Are all Micheal but we have entire lives and identities that don't all align with the body. We are all just as real as this life

This includes us, fictive or whatever, being able to remember our past lives. As Sherlock being a crime solving brilliant detective. As Zim/Inthrum, being an Alien who came to earth. We all pilot this body and live this life together. We all love our person and each other, are a functioning and hard working Team. Always.

[funnier-as-a-system]

Heyy I'm that game concept anon! Wanted to say that it's been absolutely lovely to read about different systems' experiences!! Nice to see we're not alone lol. I'm usually pretty confident in what we have going on, and people around us (in college) somehow are... supportive, even tho they don't understand what I'm talking about like half the time, but that moment bent me out of shape a little. Glad to report that I'm now back into the proper confident shape yeehaw :)

Also in my first ask I somehow failed to mention this, but the whole deal with the "romantic connotations" was literally just my teacher making it up himself. Like as much as I wanted to show my relationship with my husband/co-host one for one, I wasn't originally going to make the game characters have a romantic relationship. Cuz platonic relationships are very important too! And overall the goal was to show how alters should have better in-sys communication and collective problem-solving, when possible (and NOT bully each other for 'stealing' each other's life, and NOT bully the persecutors for being mean without trying to figure out why they're mean and without trying to help them, and NOT bully other alters for acting like they do without learning their reasoning, like we did, unfortunately.) I guess husband's 'Protective husband' energy was just too intense for the teacher to handle lol. But NOW I do want to incorporate in-sys dating. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

(also please take care!! That's a lot of asks to have wow. Hope you're doing well!)

Hey there!! It's great to hear from you again!

I'm really glad you're feeling better after what happened. So, your professor was just seeing romance where there wasn't any, huh? Feels like a common theme with professors whenever someone writes about any kind of close relationship – maybe it's due to amatonormativity, or maybe in this case it's just your husband's "protective husband energy", as you say, haha. But I'm happy to hear that you've continued working on your project with passion, and that you have people who support you!

I'm also happy to learn more about this game concept you're working on, because it sounds very cool! Everything that you list are important things for systems to learn, though I find many systems struggle to learn them when they first discover their plurality. As we said to a friend once, with how strongly the idea of "one body = one self = one life" is cemented into everyday narratives, it's difficult to unpack that and accept that your body and life may not be only your own, thus making it difficult to accept your system and respect your headmates. Of course, this doesn't excuse rude or cruel behavior between system members, but it's a common reason we've found for conflicts that occur shortly after syscovery. So, I find the fact that you're not just acknowledging but showing these conflicts and the process of improving relationships (with the word "relationships" being used in a general sense here) between headmates in your game to be a very good thing!

Thank you very much for the follow-up – and for the concern, haha! We'll be alright, but I think we'll soon have to create a specific tag for all these asks about intrasystem relationships. Maybe "datenight musings" will work? Hm, we'll workshop it.

[the-crystal-femmes]

Explaining our plurality to our mother really took a toll on me.

I'm glad she accepts it and understands what I was talking about, but at the same time, we're all very nervous about it. I don't know if she'll continue to acknowledge I'm not just one being, instead like.. 5+, but I also don't want her to accidentally set anyone off now that she knows they're there.

I actually did tell her that she's talked to Ula before. She seemed to take that well, and kind of laughed when I admitted he has a British accent.

I also really appreciate her actually thanking Pearl for the dishes being done, because I really wanting zem to have credit on it.

I also did explain what everyone does. How it's most likely Pearl with dishes, how Ula will help with food alongside Pearl, yadda yadda..

- YP

[anendoandfriendo]

WE NEED MORE POSTS TALKING ABOUT BEING SYSIAN AND PLURILLEAN AS LEGITIMATE ORIENTATION TERMS OUTSIDE OF BEING ASPEC.

That doesn’t make y'all invalid if a system is sysian or plurillean and that DOES make them aspec.

But not acknowledging this as a separate orientation reeks of sysmedicalism to a lot of us (as in, us, Rusanya), we see a lot of things that do this that aren't intentionally sysmedicalist but are like Just There as a direct result of plurmisic oppression (see: our vents about how roles are used, how people assume endogenics cannot have CDDs and how that implies to the world we're magically immune to trauma! regardless of your actual intentions, and similar vents).

Critical analysis skills are in fact at an all-time low and that includes being sociologically-minded, we finally figured out the words for it, thank fuck. Being able to treat a thing as legitimate as well as justified while also understanding some of the nastier aspects of the history of that thing does not suddenly mean you're endorsing the nastier thing lmao, that's like saying because you're using roman columns you're like, wdk, entirely and fully devoted a dead empire and everything it has ever said and done and condone every single tiny thing it did in the name of its wars and atrocities etc etc etc.

You get what we mean?????

But because (from our observations) that skill is just so blatantly not there for so many people everything is read in bad faith and it's assumed our intent is to attack when our intent is to, like, point out something we percieve is an actual problem. Like. Constantly. We feel like we cannot talk about things we percieve as issues (or at least, if not issues, maybe just things that are unacknowledged) pretty much ever lest we get disembowled by the online community. Jeez.

Saying it one more time: we could be wrong here, but our observations have indicated that a lot of people do not have adequate skills to identify the actual repercussions of living in a society. Not just the things that are told to you, but also what is NOT said, what is simply assumed, and what the meanings of words are to the normative power versus what YOU are saying.

And in order to like, discuss actual issues. And. Not rip people apart. That's...do people understand that is a necessary skill to have so you don't fall to propaganda, for starters?

We feel like this explains a lot of things (not in their entirety but as a common thread maybe?):

Antishippers

Sysmedicalists

Transmedicalists

Any -medicalist to be honest

People who fell down the alt-right pipeline in some way unintentionally (so, pretty much all of the above but like, can be its own thing too so worth mentioning)

And like, probably way more, but. Like. We know we're rehashing an ages-old discussion with ourselves especially when we say "propaganda exploits that type of ignorance and unwillingness to analyze things," and so, when we say "words MEAN THINGS" what we generally are saying, so, when you're deconstructing them, you HAVE to understand how those words are used when a normative power applies them to a marginalized one.

-------

That's why we also fucking fixate on system roles so much we think, they're the most direct example that we can easily apply that is relevant to us in a way that makes them easy for us to deconstruct. "Role" to us has a very specific connotation and in relation to the normative power, a "role" implies a point of purpose. The way singlets call their friends a "protector" implies a personality trait as in "oh my friend is such a protector, you know?" but saying "my headmates role is a protector" implies a point of purpose, something that as far as we are aware, is a concept introduced by singlets and then forced onto our communities as plurals and systems.

We will never tell people to stop using words the way they personally like, but, for us, the way we can see this being fixed is...just saying "my headmate is a protector" or "she's such a caregiver haha" because it no longer implies a point of purpose.

And the point of that analysis is more about "is it even useful to imply a point of purpose" because, as much as we all hate it, we DO live in a society. It's not exclusionism to ask yourself WHY you use a label, and the pathways that could have led you to that and what the alternatives could have been or could be.

A point of purpose is the language of dehumanization when applied to systems and plurals. So, let's make it so even respectability politics is no longer respectable. Nothing would make a singlet more uncomfortable than forcing them to admit we are people and to wrangle their own language against them.

Do you understand what Rusanya is trying to say when Rusanya says all of this? 😖

[acorpsecalledcorva]

It's actually harder to find a psychologist or philosopher that views the self as a singular completely unified and cohesive being than all the ones who recognise and acknowledge that the human Psyche is inherently multiple in nature. In fact we likely couldn't develop DID if it wasn't.

Whether it's the ID ego and super ego, the conscious unconscious and the archetypes of the collective unconscious, bundle theory of the self, internal family systems, transactional analysis, all these concepts and ideas explore the fractal nature of the human brain to compartmentalise differentiated (and often conflicting) aspects of ourselves and call upon them when needed. Fuck, if you wanna get all Descartes about it then the fact that you can have conflicting thoughts and feelings about something demonstrates that it's actually "we think therefore we are and we're gonna have a fight about it".

What makes a CDD brain different is Dissociative barriers. It's like having a room full of people all screaming "I'm Spartacus!", they've all been working together and communicated together to agree that they're all Spartacus. If you start putting walls up between them so they can't coordinate their efforts then some aren't going to know that they're Spartacus, they might start yelling that they're actually Caesar, or Brutus. It's these walls in the way that lead to disorder and dysfunction because consensus can never be reached, they can't even argue about it they just know what they have available to them. That's why communication is such an important early step in recovery. Eventually you bring down the walls, get everyone working in sync, and if they want to they can start calling themselves Spartacus again. They're still separate people but now they fight under a single banner.

Even for someone without those walls though it's very common to have factions and groupings and teams to emerge leading to internal conflict. There's nothing stopping those factions from choosing another identity for themselves. In fact it's incredibly common for them to do so. The characters you meet in dreams are you, they're part of you, they're just temporarily taking up a different identity and personality to act out a training simulation to help you process information and at the end those parts are reintegrated back into being you and calling themselves Spartacus again. Well what if they decide not to? What if they do it while you're awake? What's actually stopping them? The lack of walls between them doesn't force them to be a single identity, the presence of walls just prevents CDD parts from becoming a single identity due to a lack of access to the rest of the brain.

It really is just a societal thing that puts far too much significance on external appearance as being indicative in any way on the inner experience. Just because I look like one person on the outside doesn't mean I'm one person on the inside. Just because I look like a guy on the outside doesn't mean I'm a guy on the inside. Just because I look like a 20(ish) person on the outside doesn't mean I'm 20(ish) on the inside (or actually 20(ish) thank you estrogen)

P.S. obviously this isn't a comprehensive or universal understanding of the selves in the plural community, if anyone perceives themselves as working differently to this then that's totally valid and I'd love to hear how you experience yourself as I just think this is all really interesting

[queerautism]

The new endo hate blog has annoyed me greatly on the one specific thing folks like that always do.

Mainly that they do not care about racism as much as they act like they do. Many indigenous cultures, including mine!, have longstanding concepts of plurality within them. Some people from those cultures who are plural and whose plurality is intrinsically tied to these cultures are endogenic or classify as endogenic because it's the easiest label to use. Some folks are traumagenic in the same way and some folks do not care about how they're labeled. Ya know, it depends, like literally everyone else, lol.

And anti-endos don't care about our plurality regardless of how we might classify it. At the very best I've seen, they completely ignore it and say something about respecting indigenous cultures when pressed before continuing to call all endos ableist and harmful. More often, I've seen them continually dismiss the legitimacy of our culture concepts of plurality when they do actually acknowledge it. Sometimes they try to be subtle about it or might even try to be what they consider kind about it, but, shockingly, we don't appreciate it it and it's pretty awful of them to do.

Even if we're traumagenic the ways in which we think about and acknowledge our plurality are wrong. I haven't had many folks try to "correct" me on it, thankfully, but the ones who have were very much giving "I must educate you out of the good of my heart from your primitive ways" vibes.

Anyway, as always Rouke is cool and incredibly kind and Dave is awesome and y'all deserve love and support.

💜 Thank you!!

I think this is a great point that often needs more attention tbh. Thank you for sharing your perspective!

[sophieinwonderland]

For this anon

We are diagnosed with DID, and it was hell to go through because we had to go with a diagnostician (Who had to admit it was the first time she saw a case like ours).

I mainly wanted to have a diagnosis so I could be acknowledged enough for a proper trauma treatment, given my previous therapist was very insistent of "your trauma wasn't enough to be this unstable, so it has to be neurochemical"

When we saw this diagnostician, she did in fact acknowledge there was severe underlying PTSD (guess waking up throwing up because of nightmares isn't as common as one may think)

In the end all I found around was doctors who wanted to final fuse us by force when I told them explicitly I didn't find any issue with our plurality but actually trauma being shit (Take in consideration we're from a third world country though, one of them even was confused when I brought up the current ISSTD guidelines)

So basically when we figured we weren't earning absolutely anything from these appointments, we decided to take other approaches for our PTSD

We do have a psychiatrist, which isn't my first choice after 10 years of trying to know wtf was up with us and figuring it out on our own when I started hearing and taking advice from the guys in the back of my head

he checks on us once a month and then gives us our antidepressants and mood stabilizers which is-- the only thing that has had any positive impact on us (after taking 15 pills a day and sleeping 24/7 basically)

At the end of the story, we ended up going for mixed origins/spiritual origins for our system despite the diagnosis, because we reconnected with spirituality (Not religious and more unorthodox since we don't have guides) and taking this new path helped us cope with the trauma way better

My point with the story I shared isn't that you need to do the same and go for a spiritual journey, our story isn't the same as yours, and definitely what helps one may not help the other; but what I mean is that a diagnosis doesn't change that your system is real and valid; a diagnosis is only helpful if you aim to get specialized therapy, but, other than that, you have nothing to prove to anyone; only you and your system know the truth.

Hope you're okay anon; and you too Sophie! Sorry for the long ask :)

Thanks for the addition! 👍

[creatively-cosmic]

New pinned? Earlier today we got some tags on one of our art that reminded me that we never really went back and explained anything about ourselves, so. Gonna do it now.

Heya! We're Starry. This is our artblog.

We're a 20y/o genderfucked queer polyfragmented system with a lotta fictives. Pretty much everything here is based on shit in our brain. Heads up: We post Gore, Horror, and occasionally Suggestive content (tagged), along with artistic and partial nudity (which may not get tagged).

You might notice we never take acknowledging our plurality very seriously, or explain things regarding it much ever. That's... Pretty simply cause we don't want to put that on the internet for everyone and God to see. We're explaining it here because it's a part of our art and a frame of reference for a lot of things we make and say.

DON'T TAKE THIS POST AS ANY FORM OF A DNI. We don't want things we make to be treated any differently because of this. The works, writings, designs, and stories we put here are all from a place of concious thought and passion! While we call this blog more of a personal art archival, we do genuinely still put it online to share art that we've put thought, heart, and soul into.

For the record, to make things abundantly clear, we'll put a list of specifications under the cut. But in a nutshell, the main "boundary" I give a shit about is this:

Don't interact with our posts any differently than you would literally anything else. When you talk to us directly, just remember to not treat us like characters.

Thanks for reading. More below if you want more clarification.

Stuff that's fine:

We're fine with "doubles." You can be, kin, ID as whoever you want. If you relate to our stuff specifically, too? I promise that's fine. Awesome, in fact!

Comments/tags. Pleaseee comment on our art in fact it always makes our day. We see all that shit. Analyze, keysmash, shit you can even say some unwise stuff if you wanna. Don't hold back.

Fanart. Look if you ever got possessed to draw one of our designs I think we'd die for you on the spot. No questions asked, go for it.

Asks! Man, feel free to ask about anything. Ask about our stories, designs, opinions, experiences, whatever. Just don't ask about our trauma.

You can use our art as icons and such, just make sure to credit properly if it's in a public space ie social media or discord profile. Don't use it for any of that AI shit though.

Stuff that ISN'T fine:

I can't be damned to fill this out in any thorough way cause I don't really have any hard NOs, honestly. So this is just like. One thing, and it's an elaboration on the earlier bolded thing: Don't TALK DIRECTLY TO US as if we are characters. What I mean by this is... Us being fictives and talking about our stories doesn't mean this is a character blog. It isn't a roleplay blog. It's just us being us. Don't send messages or asks looking for someone specific, or expecting a specific reply, cause their source is your blorbo. And don't get shocked or offended when we inevitably act out of character in our posts, cause we AREN'T a character. We're people.

I guess this goes in hand with that but, don't tell us we're existing wrong as a fictive, alter, or system, too. I'll just block you. This is the only serious response anyone who might try to fakeclaim us is getting. I am not here to explain why we are the way we are, who we are, or what happened. Anyone engaging in """syscourse,""" please. Step back and understand that all that shit is, is sticking your nose into the trauma of strangers on the internet to decide if they're "correct" enough in your eyes. Nobody owes you their life story so you can decide if they're valid. Put your energy into something better.

[stormy-talks]

Hello. I am the anon that sent that ask to @/our-queer-experience about otherkin being insane. I was going through the responses and saw your comment, inviting me to ask anything.

I wanted to thank you.

And. Well.

I wanted to ask, why are you all so sure that this is not a mental health condition? Because after seeing the responses from different people, I'm still not at all convinced that you all are not insane.

Someone else answered with their experience and feelings about the topic and asked me to take a moment to consider if I believe that "you all being actually insane would mean that it is alright for me to be mean to you" or something like that and, honestly? No. I do not believe that. I would never be mean to someone for being otherkin, I am not going to argue with you or try to convince you you are human, I know you are not doing anything wrong, you are not putting yourselves nor anyone else in danger, you do you, it doesn't affect me. (but I'm still going to check myself for internalized ableism anyways.)

I sent another ask after that one, I don't know if you saw it, explaining this. The thing is that I don't want to just go on with my life thinking that you all are just clinically ill people. I want to at least try to understand, at least take a moment to ask questions and listen to the answers.

I know that there is a possibility that there is not something wrong with you, maybe it is something wrong with me. And I do not like being wrong. So if that's the case, I need to know so I can fix it. Acknowledging that I am being stupid is the first step to stop being stupid.

Also like I know it is not anybody's job to educate me and it doesn't matter what I think about you and your experiences. I am nobody and you all are still worthy of respect. Me not understanding something doesn't give me the right to be an asshole about it.

I am defending myself too much lmao sorry. This ended up much longer than intended.

I just want you to know that I appreciate you wanting to take the time to answer to me and explain this stuff to me, and that I am not coming from a place of hate and I don't pretend to "win an argument."

Well, anon. If you were concerned it's a mental health condition, I would hope you'd be an advocate for people with such an experience. But, with your use of the word "insane" in conjunction with "mental health condition", then I can only imagine you do not actually choose to be an ally to people with such conditions.

Bigotry in secret is still bigotry. On the outside, you'll be accepting and amicable. But you see us as insane behind anonymity. I also wouldn't call the use of "insane" internalized ableism. You did not internalize that.

There are a number of otherkin experiences ranging from psychological to spiritual to many more. There isn't really one way to explain otherkinity and invalidating one experience invalidates them all. So I won't spare you with "But some of them aren't psychologically otherkin at all! Sometimes it's a spiritual belief!" They're all real and valid experiences.

It's no different than plurality. In fact, it all fall under the same label of alterhuman. Sometimes it's something clinical, sometimes it's something more. We all have varying experiences with our bodies and our minds, and it doesn't always feel right to consider ourselves human. Something else pulls us away from that. There's a nagging feeling that our bodies and minds just aren't suited to the human experience.

Humans are complicated, but we don't always choose to be complicated.

You had the right idea by saying that we're not hurting anyone or putting ourselves in danger. You are so very close to being on the right track. Even if for some reason it's true that we are "clinically ill", how does that change the validity of our experiences? Yes, a number of otherkin are actually otherkin because of delusions, but they are still very much welcome in the community with open arms because they have very real experiences not unlike any other such identity.

Knowing why we're otherkin, not knowing why - it doesn't have any real effect on you. You can go about your day. But for us, we don't get to just stop being us. Instead, we have to fight to explain why being human just doesn't always work. We have to explain an identity not everyone fully understands. We don't know why it happens, but it doesn't hurt us. I think if anything, it helps us better understand ourselves by leaning into it.