Hello! It is a positivity blog for anyone who is under alterhuman umbrella.
The intendent audience are those under alterhuman umbrella, but orthohumans can interact, too. Not every post may be alterhuman specific, but alterhumans are still the intendent audience.
Blog inspired by @/positivitygenic.
Hate won't be tolerated here. If you spread any hate here, you will be blocked.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I don't promise to answer all of them, though. (Furthermore, if you think your question is important, I'd prefer that you sent the question to the askbox, because I get so many notifications that I may miss questions in reblogs or comment).
Also, you can request positivity posts, but write your request in a clear way, please.
Stances:
Pro-endo
Pro-physical alterhumans
Anti-KFF
Anti-radqueer and anti-transID*, anti-radnormal
Pro-para, anti-contact
Anti-censorship, anti-harassment
*I do not really care about harmless transIDs like "transblueeyes", though.
I also run blogs: @otherlink--culture--is, @otherlink-memes, @i-suggest-otherlinking and @slavic-alterhuman-culture-is. Feel free to check them out.
Folks with sexual dysfunctions, you deserve a space to talk about your struggles. You deserve to talk about your disabilities without being silenced. You deserve to be able to talk about your experiences without it being treated as a "joke". You deserve to be able to talk about your disabilities without judgement. You deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.
A lot of people in our inbox ask whether their experiences are normal.
First: Normal does not equal good or bad, healthy or disordered. Normal means that something is accepted or statistically common for a given population. It doesn't make an experience more or less real. It just means you might see it more or less often.
Second: Normal is relative. Different groups of people will have different experiences and opinions, and what's normal for one person can be abnormal for someone else.
Because the normality of something depends on who you're comparing yourself to, and because people have a lot of different norms and opinions...
At some point, your experiences are absolutely going to be abnormal to others. They'll be weird, unusual, hard to explain. They might be normal in one place and extremely abnormal somewhere else.
Seconding this, and I'll also add: when you find yourself asking "is this normal?" it might be helpful to take a step back, and figure out which question you're really asking, and figure out which questions are more useful to ask.
For example: a lot of people asking "is my experience normal?" are actually asking "is it valid for me to experience this?" They want reassurance that what they're experiencing is Real and that they're not a Badwrong Faker. Frankly speaking, not only is "is this normal?" not a very useful question for this situation (as said by OP, whether something is normal doesn't mean it's good or bad), neither is "is this valid?" Your experiences are your experiences. They are not going to go away just because they're more or less common in a given population, nor are they going to go away just because someone else told you they aren't real.
Some questions to consider asking instead:
How is this affecting your life and others' lives? How many of those effects are from the experience itself? (as opposed to cultural stigma, other people's reactions, your personal reactions, etc)
How do you feel about the experience, and why? What is driving you to seek validation?
What can you do about what you're experiencing? (Other than kick it into a box and pretend it doesn't exist. That tends to not work.) What kind of support do you need?
Your identity deserves to be respected by others. Even if it seems "too complex" to them, even if it seems "too weird" to them, even if it seems "too silly" or "too childish" to them. Your identity still deserves to be respected. And you have the right to stand up for yourself when someone's disrespecting you.
The following essay is best understood if you have read these posts beforehand:
- https://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/657145929223307264/
- https://aestherians.tumblr.com/post/672387556530405377/
Word count: ~1800
Estimated reading time: 6-7 minutes
There are some characters that are "literally me" in the sense that their journeys, their personalities, their trials and blessings, and their fears and comforts match my own to an often-uncomfortable degree. We are like twins separated at birth, like doppelgängers in everything but appearance, or like soulmates that were never supposed to meet. They are not kintypes. I don’t feel like I am these characters on any level. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it feels as if these characters are me. But identifying as something is not the be-all end-all of identity and there is a lot of room for different relationships and identity facets outside the scope of kintypes.
Part I: Defining Otherheartedness
I won’t appoint myself as the arbiter of what is and is not a hearttype. I don’t think any one person can define “otherhearted” in a way that accurately represents every person who uses the term. Otherheartedness was originally coined with only real-life animals in mind, and as having an element of voluntarity, but these traits don’t describe most of the otherhearted folks I’ve talked to. To some users in the original coining thread, otherheartedness was also used as a psychological alternative to the (at the time) more spiritually minded therianthropy.
I can see some benefits to this vagueness. It would be helpful to have a term that functions as a catch-all for any identity that doesn’t fit into other categories, and which can be interpreted in many different ways. But I don’t think ‘otherhearted’ is the best candidate for this.
We’re in a bit of a hey-day of new identity terms being coined. Both widely useful terms like endel, othervague, and constelic, and more individual terms like folcintera and fictanthrope, have all been coined within the last year. Many more terms have been proposed, most of which have fallen to the wayside. The community thankfully self-regulates like this: If a term isn’t useful, no one will use it. If people use a term, there must have been a need for it.
I don’t think ‘otherhearted’ was intended to have a prescriptive definition like all these new terms do. That is, the definition given by its coiner was intentionally left up to interpretation, and its coiner didn’t correct people when they used the word in a way that strayed from the definition. Which contrasts with the very prescriptive nature of most of the terms being proposed these days.
I’m usually more of a descriptivist, i.e., I believe language is defined more by its usage, than its dictionary definitions. But in a community like this, which concerns itself with defining identities and ontological phenomena, I don’t think language descriptivism is very useful. After all, descriptivism is what led to the redefining of ‘kin’ that has happened on TikTok, as described in my previous essay.
It’s too late to prescribe a definition to otherheartedness. It was coined more than a decade ago and is so widely used nowadays, there’s no way a new definition would gain a foothold. But we can observe how people use the term to describe themselves and try to narrow it down to its essentials. To do so accurately and in-depth would require an essay of its own, but, in short, the only part of the original definition that I see people use today is “identify with.” The original definition included four other qualifiers: Identifying as fully human, specifically identifying with an animal, the identification being similar to a totem, and the otherhearted experiencing shifts as a way to become closer to the animal in question. Aside from the ability to experience shifts (though not necessarily as a way to connect with a hearttype, usually just as a side effect of being otherhearted), I don’t see the other qualifiers being used at all today.
So, we’re left with the very vague “to be otherhearted is to identify with something.” In and of itself, I don’t think this concept is worthy of its own term. Every individual on Earth identifies with something: Family members, job titles, personality types, fashion movements, colors, songs, stories, traditions, and so on. We want ‘otherhearted’ to be a useful descriptor of an identity facet, not a vague word to cover the breadth of the entire (non)human experience.
The real questions then become: How can we understand the phrase “identify with,” through the lens of defining identities/self-perceptions? And how can it be understood in a specifically alterhuman way?
The most straight-forward answer is that your identification with something has to be strong enough to impact your sense of self. In fact, I would say whatever you define as a hearttype has to be inseparable from the way you conceptualize your identity (of course without being something you actually identify as, as that would instead make it a kintype). For example, your hearttype could be something that has affected your development as a person, affects your personality, has altered your course in life, and/or influences your actions. To count as an alterhuman phenomenon, the identification would have to be somehow outside of the scope of what’s considered a “normal” human experience, but that I will leave up to interpretation!
Part II: Synpaths, vaguetypes, and paratypes, oh my!
Delving into the background, meaning, and use of otherheartedness might have felt like a bit of a digression but it was, unfortunately, necessary. Most of the following identity words were created prescriptively, so examining them will be quicker.
Synpath was created in 2015 to describe “something you identify with on several levels.” It’s the broad and vague term that ‘otherhearted’ could have been, encompassing everything from concepts to animals to characters. It’s meant to cover things that resonate with you, things you relate to but which aren’t necessarily a strong part of your identity, things you share a lot of traits with, and more. In this sense ‘synpath’ is a bit of an umbrella term. It can cover a multitude of experiences, the same way ‘otherkind’ can include anything from archetypal therians to original character fictionkind. In practice, it’s mostly used as an alternative to the -hearted suffix, usually just because “[name] is my synpath” rolls off the tongue a bit better than “I am [name]-hearted.”
Othervague is, similarly, an umbrella term, though in this case it was created to encompass every single identity facet/relationship that doesn’t fit neatly into any previously established categories. The term is inclusive of those who simply don't wish to bother with specific labels and definitions.
Paratype is a monster of my own making. I came up with it in 2018 and have yet to write a coining essay, but it basically includes every connection and relationship you have with something, that only exists because of your pre-established identity. For example, I have hearted-like feelings for bulls, but these feelings only exist because I am a bison. If I weren't a bison, I would not feel connected to bulls. Ergo, my bull connection is an off-shoot of my bison theriotype - bulls are a paratype to my theriotype. This also includes hearted identities; I am unicornhearted and feel connected to okapis because of it.
Comfort characters are just what it says on the tin - characters that bring you comfort. Beyond that, it's very vague. A synpath can also be a comfort character, as can a kintype or hearttype or any other type of identification.
Kardiatype is a word for a past life that had a profound impact on your personality and/or core identity, and which still affects you to this day, but which is no longer something you identify as.
Experience-taking is the process of taking on traits of a character as you read/watch/play through their story. It's often the cause of cameo-shifts and tends to fade away after a while, though it can cement itself into a more permanent type of identity, such as a fictotype or hearttype.
Constelic refers to people who adopt (and may discard) identities throughout their life with relative frequency Constels (the identities that are adopted) can be of varying intensity and presentation, from something as personal as a kintype to as separate as a comfort character.
Clicking is when you strongly relate to something, which is a purposefully vague definition. It was coined as a potential replacement for kin-as-a-verb.
Part III: Umbrellas are the mothers of invention
As I mentioned in the introduction, I experience another type of identification-with, which I feel is distinct enough that I don’t want to just lump it under an umbrella term. You thought you were reading an analysis essay? Ha! This was a coining essay all along >:)
As with all words, you can choose to use this or not. It's an opt-in label. If you'd rather refer to these types of relationships as synpaths, hearttypes, or any other previously mentioned word, you're more than welcome. But I feel like the identity deserves its own word, and not just be lumped in under the synpath umbrella.
I've decided to call this type of identity a "simile", which is typically defined as "a figure of speech comparing two unlike things" and its synonyms include metaphor, analogy, and likeness. In the context of alterhuman identity, similes are all about self-recognition through the other. They are characters, animals, themes, objects, and concepts that cause you to recognize traits that already existed within yourself. Rather than affecting your sense of self, as kintypes and hearttypes do, similes merely reflect what was already there. Looking at your simile feels less like looking in a mirror and more like looking at a portrait - a representation - of yourself. The character (if the simile is a character) can be used as a representation or a metaphor for yourself.
This is quite different from a hearttype - in a way, kinda the opposite of a hearttype. My hearttypes are just as integral to who I am as my kintypes are. I wouldn't be the person that I am if I weren't unicornhearted or spiderhearted or Tarzan-hearted. These other character relationships, my similes, don't affect who I am as a person. Instead I feel an identification with them because of who I was prior to knowing about them, and I wouldn't be a different person if they weren't in my life. Basically:
Hearttype: "Feeling this relationship has led to the person I am today"
Simile: "Being the person I am today has led to feeling this relationship"
In other words, this is what a simile is:
Lastly, a quick copy-pasteable definition: A simile (in the context of alterhuman identity) is a character, animal, concept, or object, which reflects or otherwise represents who you are, without actually being a part of your identity. A simile may be described as a metaphor for who you are.
My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.
If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.
[image id: a comic with four panels, titled "how to apologize" in orange all caps. each panel has the same two figures, one is pink and one is orange.
the first panel reads "1. express your remorse." at the top and says "I'm sorry or I apologize", with the phrases "I'm sorry" and "I apologize" in speech bubbles coming from the orange figure.
the second panel says "2. take responsibility: name the thing you did wrong." at the top. the orange figure says "I didn't do my part of the team project."
the third panel says "3. show that you understand how your actions affected the other person." at the top. the orange figure says, "it must have been frustrating to do everything on your own."
the fourth and final panel says "4. promise to try to change your behavior or offer to help fix the problem you caused." the orange figure says, "I will work harder in the future. what can I do to help today??"
the bottom of the image reads "it's hard to admit that we were wrong. it takes courage but you'll feel better afterwards." in the bottom right corner is the signature, "Elise Gravel". /end image id]
[PT: Stop watering down and censoring words! /End PT]
"Plus-sized" "Big-boned." "Fluffy." Fat. Fat is not a bad word. Skinny is not a bad word, buff is not a bad word, so why should fat be? Fatness is a natural body type. Stop making fat into a bad word. (Also, plus-sized pisses me off because plus WHAT? It implies a specific body type is "normal" and that being fat is "plus that.")
"Differability" "Differently abled" Disability. Disabled. Disabled isn't a bad word, disability isn't something to be ashamed of, and watering down terminology isn't fucking helping anyone.
"Neurospicy" Neurodivergent. Can we stop quirkifying neurodivergence? Neurodivergent people can be quirky, but please stop saying "all my neurospicy folks" and "neurospicies" and whatever. If you like these words for yourself, thats one thing, but stop using it unironically on other people!
"Sewerslide" Suicide. Stop censoring the topic of suicide, for the love of God. People suffering from suicidal ideation and people who have committed suicide deserve so much better than this baby talk.
"Unalived" Died. Murdered. Suicide. Whatever you mean.
"Grape" "Graped" Rape. Sexual assault. For fucks sake, VICTIMS DESERVE BETTER THAN HAVING A FOOD ITEM USED FOR THEIR TRAUMA.
"Seggs" "Smeggs" "Smex" "Sezz" Sex. It is sex.
"PDF" "PDFile" I would say pedophile, but ya'll keep using that word incorrectly, so I'mma say what you usually actually mean - child predator. (Please learn the difference between pedophilia and child predation and educate yourselves about paraphilias [link.] Stop demonizing mental disorders, there is no such thing as a "crime disorder.")
And don't get me started on the replacing letters with numbers. 1 as I, 3 as E, @ as A, etc. Not only is it inaccessible to screen readers and dyslexics, but it also is giving into censorship culture.
Speak up against it! Complain about it! Stop just conforming to the bullshit rules that companies enforce! Stop playing idly along with purity culture, paramisia, rape apologism, victim isolation and loneliness, ableism, suicidism, and fatphobia! Stop, just stop!
Censorship and needless rewording makes people feel ashamed or afraid to speak out! It prevents awareness and education! It reinforces stigma!
[PT: Censorship and needless rewording makes people feel ashamed or afraid to speak out! It prevents awareness and education! It reinforces stigma! /End PT]
A role in which a headmate holds feelings of denial that they may have, that a fellow headmate may have, or a disorder that the system collectively has. This denial is not limited to disorders that are linked to systemhood.
This term has no DNI, anyone can use this. Anyone can make a flag for this. We consent to this term being uploaded to pluralpedia.
Androgynous enben (nonbinary people) don't owe you femininity or masculinity.
I see people saying "nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny" all the time, but let's remember that androgynous nonbinary people get feminized and masculinized all the time, and thus the reverse statement is also true and important.
Do you think it's possible to fake being plural even to yourself?
One or two genuine questions to you, anon, before I give my usual spiel on "I think I'm somehow faking it unconsciously and I think I should be ashamed because the fact that I can't stop faking it makes me morally bad":
What would it actually mean to fake plurality?
What does it mean to fake anything, in plain language (and ideally without moral weight attached)?
What makes a thing fake?
The usual spiel on secretly faking it:
First, if this is about you: try to turn it off for one week. Or a day, whichever feels better. All of it. I don't mean pretend that it doesn't exist, I mean stop doing it altogether. Just stop. Snap of the fingers, cold turkey, stop.
You are actively doing it, aren't you? Like, intentionally? You know you absolutely do not identify with the plural label or any plural experiences, that none of this has any possible application or interest to you, that plurality is completely and utterly irrelevant to your life... but you're putting in a large amount of intentional effort to appear as though you're plural for reasons that you don't understand whatsoever? Even if you really want to stop sometimes?
Why are you faking that instead of, I don't know, faking your way into a massive celebrity party or something? You must be talented, and this sounds like it would be exhausting to juggle. Compared to seeing the inside of a nuclear reactor or getting into a festival for free, this is pretty boring as far as pretending goes. Why keep it up? What are you gaining for all that work, especially when you'd be socially fucked if someone called it out?
It's not intentional? You keep trying to stop and you can't? It's not going away no matter how hard you try to change it?
You're probably not faking It. Sorry.
"fake", verb:
- tamper, with the purpose of deception (source)
- "counterfeit", to imitate or feign especially with intent to deceive (source, source)
- one does not fake without intent.
If someone is faking something, then by definition, they know. It's an active and intentional effort, something that they have to put energy and work into sustaining, something that's a relief to turn off. They can turn it off, and they know this because they are intentionally choosing to pretend to have an experience they do not actually, "objectively" have.
And here are the two important points:
Faking is an intentional act. If someone is faking something, then they know for absolute certain that they are faking something. Intent is required to fake something.
The concept of "fake" plurality relies on the idea of an objective state of the self/selves: some existential, absolute truth about whether someone is plural or not.
On point two:
We have no metrics to determine an absolute reality of the self for absolute certain. There are some physical characteristics that have been noticed in brain scans comparing DID systems against controls, but regardless of whether you believe in inherent differences in brain structure, most of us can't get a brain scan on a whim, and we don't have much of this kind of data yet for most other plural experiences. (Tulpamancy brain scan study when? Has that come out yet?)
We also have no idea why consciousness exists or where it's located, if anywhere. It's enough of a slippery issue for the concept of the philosophical zombie to exist: how do we know that anyone else is conscious? We don't. How do we know that plurality is an inherent or objective property of a body? We don't.
Do I believe that faking plurality is possible at all?
Sure. I think it could be done and I've seen it confessed to. I don't think that hunting for "fakes" or accusing strangers of faking their experiences is going to help anyone, though.
I do think sometimes that if someone were to fake this in the long run, then they would have to be very careful that none of it took on a life of its own. I've met a few accidental tulpamancers. It happens.
Do I think it's common to fake plurality?
No. It's a lot of effort for fairly little reward given that some people still think Split is basically a documentary.
Do I think that faking plurality can be done without knowing it?
No. A person might later find that another framework or explanation works better for them, but that doesn't mean they were secretly faking plurality. It means that they have an experience, and they found a different explanation for that experience that worked better for them. Good for them.
You need to understand there's no hard line between system and singlet. The line just gets blurrier and blurrier the harder you look. Where's the tipping point from a singlet into a median? What counts as enough dissociation to be called a system? There's no objective, concrete answer to these questions. So if you feel like calling yourself a system makes sense of your life, then just go do it.
Since linktypes that aren't fictional characters nor animals aren't really discussed: objectlinkers, songlinkers, conceptlinkers, plantlinkers etc., feel free to share any info you want about your linktypes or 'linking journey, whether in askbox, reblogs or your own post (feel free to tag me or send me a link to the post since I wanna see posts about your experiences).
your existence, your identity, and whatever disorder or conditions you may have, are real. it doesn't matter if people think that they're trendy, who you are is real in every regard. your joy and your pain, your plurality and so on, all valid and real.
Since today I saw I got a certain submission, I wanted to say:
If you want to talk about your experiences with alterhumanity, make your own post, or find a blog that allows submissions about your experiences with alterhumanity. (If you don't wanna do it on your main blog(s), create a sideblog. If there isn't any blog that allows such submissions, you can create one yourself).
This is positivity blog for sharing positivity and maybe from time to time some submissions that are described as "alterhuman joy".
I'm aware that I'm reblogging some posts about others' experiences but, honestly, I prefer reblogging posts like that than receiving submissions about that. (Idk, personally, I think it's better to post your experiences on your own blog, but if you really want to post them anonymously on Tumblr, then look for a blog that allows anonymous submissions about that).
Shout out to non-binary people who do want to be seen as a third gender.
Shout out to non-binary people who seek any form of androgyny.
Shout out to non-binary people who have a strong sense of gender and are not completely "opting out" of gender.
Shout out to non-binary people who do want to belong in a certain box and care about labels.
Shout out to non-binary people who care about being misgendered and are not gender-apathetic.
Shout out to non-binary people who consider themselves cis, or neither cis nor trans for any reason.
Shout out to non-binary people who consider themselves cis, or neither cis nor trans due to being intersex.
Shout out to non-binary people whose identity has a reason.
Shout out to ALL nonbinary people who are considered "stereotypical", get little positivity, and every time their identity is mentioned, it's to remind other people they don't have to be like them.
"Nonbinary is not a third gender" for some people it is. "Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny" but we're allowed to desire it. "Being nonbinary is a rebellion against gender roles" if it is for you, cool. But my gender is not a political movement and not everyone feels comfortable with statements like this.
Bonus: shout out to all alloaces, aroallos, and non-SAM aspecs. 99% of all content under asexual or aromantic tags is just aroace stuff
If you experience any changes in body control (switching, possession, etc.), then establish some form of consistent, asynchronous external communication with your system. External communication has a major benefit: you can still talk to each other across switches (asynchronously) even if the inside of your mind is a mess.
You might set up a journal, whiteboard, calendar, a "single user, multi-account" app like Mytter or Antar, sticky notes, etc. Anything goes as long as your system knows to check it occasionally (or at the least, in an emergency).
We recommend choosing an analog method for your fallback communication method if possible, as a power outage could take out a lot of digital methods. A spur-of-the-moment piece of paper left on a table is better than nothing, but it's less likely to work than a pocket notebook or bulletin board that every system member knows to use for communication if needed. You can always add an app or program once everyone knows where to go for your analog fallback.
Discuss how you want to treat each other. Keep it loose and informal for now- don't make any absolute Laws just yet. Think of it more like the quick agreements that roommates make with each other for practical reasons: "I'll do the dishes if you do the laundry".
A few classics: "try not to die, don't kill anyone else, don't get any tattoos as an impulse decision, and don't throw out things that don't belong to you."
Don't force agreements on anyone. If someone disagrees, then stop and discuss their concerns to find a better agreement. See: Consensus Decision Making.
Map your system, if it feels right. This can help you learn about each other, but it can also be soothing to feel like you have some understanding of who's in your head when you're being flooded with new system members.
Again, keep it simple. What do you actually need to know? What would help you in a practical sense? Start there, then branch out if you'd like to get to know each other better.
Consider making a simple guide to your life. If someone had to handle a day in your life with little to no prior knowledge of it, then what would they need to know?
Where should they check to see if you have any appointments? Are they responsible for feeding any pets? Where can they find money if they need it, and how do they know how much to spend? Do you have a job, and do they need to work it? Etc.
Hopefully you never need this guide, but it's a lifesaver for any unexpectedly amnesiac system members.
Focus on building bridges and trust. Get to know the folks in your head. Find ways to talk and just get to know them. Listen as much as you talk, if not more.
Learn to lean on each other for support, if you can. Trust is one of the most valuable things that you can have in a system. Trust gets you through a lot of tough situations. Give your system members every reason to trust you, and try to learn to trust them in turn.
If someone is hostile, then ask what's driving the hostility. Do they feel under-represented in your life? Does peace make them feel unsafe because they don't know where the threats are? Are they bored, scared, frustrated, or routinely unhappy?
What can you do to support them? What do they need to feel comfortable?
Don't worry about knowing everything. You're just figuring this out- give yourselves some grace for not knowing as much as everyone else seems to. (Besides, they know less than you think. I've yet to meet a system without a single mystery left in it, including folks who've known for decades, and many systems are forever figuring things out in one way or another.)
Ask for information when you need it and let your system explain itself over time; let your system set the pace. You'll get better information that way, and your system will learn that they can trust you to respect them when they say "no, don't touch that yet."
Screw plural community labels for now. Seriously. Screw figuring out origins or consciousness or whatever the linguistic dividing line of the month is. Don't worry about it. These words come and go. Get to know yourselves first.
Why am I suggesting this? Community labels will still be there when you've figured out how to work with each other in a practical sense, and your stronger understanding of each other will make it much easier to find whatever words you wind up needing. Hunting for words now is likely to get you stuck trying to cram a bunch of shifting unknowns into someone else's categorization system, and it might cloud your situation more than it clears it.
Given that you're still settling into the idea of sharing a head at all, getting into the nitty-gritty of labels is probably going to be less helpful than figuring out how to handle doubt and denial issues (or getting communication going, or learning to manage switching, or...), hence the recommendation not to worry about it.
That said: do use labels if you need them. Just remember that labels are tools. Don't let the tools use you.
Also, screw the discourse. If you listen to any one item on this list, make it this one.
Plural community discourse tends to be a little bit rancid in the "debating whether your experiences exist meaningfully in our spaces" way, and it will fuck you up as a new system. Get past the worst of your denial or doubt issues first to avoid worsening the "oh my god, am I faking without knowing it" hell brainworms. Please. I am actually begging you. Avoid the discourse until you've dealt with your own existential doubts.
None of these things are obligations, nor is there any rush to do them. It's just a cluster of things that I tend to suggest to newly discovered systems, and I realized that I don't think we've actually rattled these off on this blog yet.
