sideblog of a questioning plural system; Likes/asks will come from another blog. this blog may contain triggering content but will do my best to tag things appropriately. blog is run by an adult (mentally and bodily).
Minors may interact, but I probably won't reciprocate outside of public interactions (likes/reblogs, askbox, etc). If you're a minor, please respect this boundary and do not DM me unless I need to quickly be made aware of something regarding my blog.
I swear a lot and tend to USE CAPS for emotional emphasis.
Personal posts from the blog are either tagged as "#mine" or "#brain soup"
More about who's running the blog...
Posts referring to the Self™️ will swap between I/me and we/us. Collectively in "meatspace", we are nonbinary/agender and use they/them pronouns. Bodily we are in our late 20s.
As we are still very early in our exploration of whatever the hell is going on "up there", we are refraining from using popular terms that assign roles to parts such as "core/original personality", "host/cohost", "persecutor", "little", etc. Please do not use them for us. We prefer language that describes what that piece holds, responds to, or feels like to us instead. (Example: you may see posts or tags referring to "little-me", a younger part who we associate with the trauma and emotional distress from a particular age range. They do not use the blog but will likely be referred to often.)
I am not claiming to have a diagnosis of DID, OSDD, UDD, or any other dissociative disorder. The only thing I've got on paper is PTSD from a rough life. I already doubt and shame myself enough as it is, I don't need your bullshit and will not tolerate it.
I may have opinions you disagree with. That's fine! In fact, I'm even open to civil discussions over our different perspectives. HOWEVER, if you're just going to argue or call me names, save both of us the energy and just block me.
That being said, THIS BLOG WELCOMES PLURALITY IN ALL ITS FORMS!!! You don't have to understand or agree with someone's point of view to respect their existence. Take your "syscourse" and shove it up your ass.
If you're one of those weirdos out there who thinks it's reasonable to send gore to people's inboxes, you're an abhorrent human being and a fucking coward, and you need to take a reality check and get off the fucking internet. What is wrong with you.
that's my buddy, they're young and small and deserved better than they got so I carry them on my shoulders so they can feel big and tall and I get them treats because I want that little kid to smile
It's always a bit of a weird experience seeing the plural tags flooded with introject-related posts.
On the one hand, I'm glad that introjects and introject-heavy systems have found more acceptance in the community. That hasn't always been the case, and there's still a long way to go when it comes to getting people to treat introjects with basic respect- you all deserve better than the shit people put you through for existing.
On the other hand, we can't relate. At all. None of us are fictional introjects, and while we could debate about whether the brain radio is our childhood radio, that doesn't line up with the usual introject experiences that are talked about either.
The plural tags become harder and harder to feel welcome in when the experiences that are primarily talked about (and almost expected) in those spaces are ones that you don't share. It's a little isolating. I wish there was more visible diversity in plural spaces than there has been for the last decade or so: that more people felt safe talking about their experiences, even when they don't match expectations or norms.
I doubt that day is going to come while the plural community is as partisan as it is, though.
I want to highlight some tags from @multiplydifficult:
there's also the assumptions that everyone that came from outside the head in some way & their exomemories are fictives from other universes & from stories
and @pluraltv:
we are octive heavy but we still don't relate to a lot of the posts either dw op. it's just. so focused on fictives from popular sources it stinks. we're not that. and tbh while we like talking source occasionally it's not anywhere near the most important thing for us, we'd much rather discuss other plural stuff, and we especially don't wanna be treated like blorbos. yuck
and @televisionsyndrome:
i feel the same way. we have introjects but none of them are currently active, and many introjects i thought i had weren't actually real. thats not an experience ive seen people talk about very much at all. it just feels like so much of the community is skewed toward a certain kind of system that is broadly appealing to a lot of different kinds of people, and im just not one of those people.
(Emphasis mine.)
I want to be very clear that there needs to be room in the community for fictives of all sorts. I've seen what happens when that's not the case, and I much prefer the community where fictives are allowed to exist as fictives.
At the same time, however, there needs to be discussion of other experiences, and there needs to be space for experiences that are unappealing, uncommon, or "weird".
We need to be able to hear from brainmade systems, from systems who don't introject from popular media but source instead from their own characters and abusers and family and friends, from systems whose introjects don't have memories or past lives.
We need to hear from systems who don't see themselves as entirely separate people. We need to hear from systems who see themselves as more separate than is considered "acceptable". I want a chance to read posts from fragments in a trenchcoat, from people who refuse to use a collective name or identity, who can't keep a headcount or don't want an aesthetic member list, who don't fit the very narrow concept of "system" normalized in the community. Show me posts from people who break the boxes.
I want to see the systems who are spiritual, but don't believe in multiple universes or reincarnation. Show me the thousands of lived realities that I haven't even thought to look for because they're so decentered that there's no space or language for them in the community.
Show me the psychotic systems who can't separate their psychosis from their plurality. Show me the traumatized systems who can't extract trauma from the way they exist today. Show me all the other nuanced interactions with trauma histories and Madness that can happen.
Show me everyone excluded from discussions for being a little too weird for the community. You deserve a place here if you want one. You deserve to have someone see you as you are instead of forcing their reality over yours.
I want to talk both trauma and spirituality with you in the same breath. I want to say "screw all that" and hold hands while we learn how to live in the present, even as the past chases at our heels. I want to care less about where we came from, and more about what affects us here and now, what eases our paths through the future. We have bigger problems to face in the world than making yardsticks for which of us look sane or insane enough to be "believable".
Systems that are nothing like us have taught me so much. Systems that have things in common with us have helped us feel seen and saved us effort learning what works. All of you have something to share, something to teach, and something to learn.
I want to hear from you. I need to hear from you. We all do.
And if you need any more reason to share your experiences?
For every system that feels welcomed by community norms, there are a dozen others who feel like outsiders to the community that was supposed to welcome them. It adds to the sense of isolation that a lot of plural folks experience when living in a culture that treats plurality as a disease or aberration. Even the people who are supposed to relate to you have very little in common with your experiences.
A lack of diversity causes problems. It impacts supports offered to all sorts of systems. Advice for getting along with your group often fails as soon as your system doesn't match the advice's underlying assumptions. Some people have no better option than figuring it all out on their own, one mistake at a time. No one should have to struggle like this. If there's nowhere else to turn for help, then the communities meant to support someone are failing them.
A lot of times, there's no path in the community to find advice that works if you don't fit the norm. The way to solve that problem is to make space for other experiences in the community: to let other voices be heard, and to share your own voice in turn. Don't change the norm to some other type of system; kill the need to have a norm at all.
There are folks in the community who will be glad to know that you exist the way you do. You might wind up surprised at how many people will say they look up to you for that. Talk to us. Show us that you're here. Let your people find you.
Be weird. It's okay. We'll be weird right beside you.
-----
For the research-lovers reading this: we recently learned about a pair of search terms relevant to this issue that you may want to read up on. "Hermeneutical injustice" (systemic lack of access to frameworks or language to understand your own experiences):
"Fricker characterizes hermeneutical injustice as involving a lack of concepts, on the part of the disadvantaged group, to capture some important aspect of their experience."
...and "hermeneutical enclosure" (being swamped by frameworks that don't work, making it all the harder to understand yourself):
"...hermeneutical enclosure, wherein one’s conduct is preempted by another’s interpretations such that behaviors are pejoratively assigned a fixed meaning in advance."
You can't use what you don't know exists, and it's hard to build your own framework when the world around you insists that you use one that isn't working for you. These two concepts are huge aspects of the problems caused by the lack of visible diversity in the plural community.
it really is interesting how most adults really only see child sexual assault through the lens of how it makes THEM feel. it's not really about the actual harm that comes to the children, it's about how they, the adult (the real victim) feels about the fact that a child or children got abused and taken advantage of.
like one time I saw a vid of some dudes who tricked some guys into thinking they were going to meet up with minors, instead they forced the two dudes to fight on camera. it's voyeurism, it's not about protecting children it's about the good feeling YOU, the viewer, get inside when you watch this happen.
or like I was arguing with some people about CSA being punishable by death. i don't care if child abusers die, let me say that. wouldn't care if they all killed themselves to a person. but there is a REASON child advocacy organizations will tell you that executing convicted pedophiles is a bad idea, and that's because it will lead to more children being killed to hide the crimes of the abuser.
But if you argue against THE STATE executing pedophiles, people start pulling the "ohhhh wow defending pedophiles. this the hill you wanna die on?" like no dude I just think about the effects of policy outside of the fucking feel-good yummies in my tummy I get from seeing someone I don't like punished.
Yesterday was what's probably the first conscious experience I've ever had feeling myself be "pushed back" while someone else "steps forward". I was trying to calm a younger part and someone else stepped up to continue the task I was doing. Then, when seeing my pet bird, they seemed very... Fascinated. Like they weren't used to the idea of having a bird in the house (we adopted them almost 3yrs ago). When they spoke they did so in a lower register than mine and had a slight... Not exactly an accent, but a bit of a drawl. Used some different vocabulary too.
I can count on one hand the times I've felt the sensation of "someone else" being there, not just a stream of thoughts in my head; if there is something going on "up there" [knocks on head, hollow coconut noise] it is extremely covert (which i know is how dissociative disorders work, but still.)
Normally I feel like I'm just lying to myself or something but this was different. It wasn't a quick momentary thing I can brush off, they stuck around for at least a few minutes, and I was very aware of the fact that my connection to the body felt more like I was watching through a VR headset. They (he?) SPOKE. Out loud. That's NEVER happened before.
I don't know what to think or feel about it, honestly.
If you are genuinely a system you are traumagenic systems can only be formed by trauma
(I've been informed this ask was /nm but my point still stands)
in my opinion DID and plurality is heavily under-studied so who the hell knows if endogenic plurality is possible or not and fighting over it and gatekeeping resources over discourse stances isnt gonna help
I was in trans discourse spaces in 2019 and its the exact same rhetoric here- the people who believe it's medical vs the people who believe its personal identity (its somewhere in the middle and fighting over "fakers" isn't gonna get us more acceptance- we need to lift each other up not push each other down)
People talk to themselves. Thinking out loud, quiet thoughts to themselves, notes to self, a near constant need for communication.
Just because I know MY problems come from trauma doesn't mean I don't notice the way that EVERYONE talks to themselves, in one way or another.
Or has to work through thoughts by separating themselves into pieces and parts. Planning for possible discussions, revisiting conversations, empathy itself is like putting yourself into someone else's shoes. Having a dialogue (a discussion between two or more parties) makes sense, makes it easier to understand yourself, like it's hard wired into human biology, how would I know "myselves" without something or someone to bounce off of; even if that someone is "me".
It came built into your brain with your freaking Xbox. It's arguing semantics on an issue that ultimately doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of life.
Even if life didn't get me a shit ball and I wasn't stuck like this, I would still probably go to myself for help because I have to help "her" anyway. I would still probably have this internal dialogue because it just makes sense to me, to everyone on some level or another.
And if so many people, when under any distress, have themselves split to better handle the problem (life), then maybe it ain't an "origin" issue. Maybe it's a human feature.
Plurality is just another way to cope, whether it's gained from trauma, whether you've always been like that or whether it is a consciously cultivated skill, it really doesn't matter.
Humans are weird and fascinating creatures and we do the darndest things to function
-> i think a lot abt the phrase "the stars are real, the constellations aren't." the experiences are more than real, but the exact labels and categories we use for them are arbitrary. it doesn't make them not useful or meaningful. it just means that the lines aren't Baked Into The Universe and are instead constructed by us. you can even draw different constellations for your own night sky like who gaf
-> lots of ppl say that all systems are traumagenic bc it's what the dsm-5 says. you know. the manual of disorders and diagnoses. they're not going to write about endogenic and nondisordered systems in the dsm-5 bc that's not what it's about
-> "if you are genuinely a system" 🚬
i think the whole fakeclaiming thing comes from this sort of. defensiveness? i experienced this w depression where i was sorta defensive abt what "actually" counts as depression bc i spent so long trying to prove to myself that my experience "counts" and it felt wrong to see ppl come to the same or similar conclusion w/o as much struggling. but policing people on their experiences n saying no it doesn't count unless it's THIS, then ur just faking is exactly how u end up making ppl jump thru hoops just to have their experiences recognized
As a questioning system myself I'd like to add: the only thing fakeclaiming / gatekeeping is gonna do, is chase people further away from resources that can help them. It will only heighten their denial and their suffering, and adds to the isolation they're likely already experiencing.
Even then, if someone believes they're a system for a while, and they find out later they were wrong, why is that a bad thing? It does not steal resources from others. It does not put others in harm's way. It isn't bad to be wrong - if anything, it might strengthen solidarity with those outside of your bubble!
They learn more about themselves, and more about the experiences of the community they were a part of, and will be more likely to advocate for said community(ies) in the future because of their experiences.
I am a Tumblr Old™️. I've been on this cursed site since 2010. Practically a fossil, I know. I've witnessed nearly every bit of gatekeeping discourse this place has ever seen - most coming from my own community - and every SINGLE time, it's the same song and dance:
Goalposts keep moving, people get mad over stupid petulant crap, and the most vulnerable people are hurt.
This isn't a competition, so stop acting like it.
(Also do not go mincing my words bc I don't have the energy to add disclaimers. Use some critical thinking and put your strawman arguement away.)
Annoyed by the sensory experience of having hair and fighting the urge to just shave it all off by reminding myself there would be some select people who'd be very pissed off if I did that
Well i just came to holding a huge chunk of hair with scissors already halfway through it so that decision was made for me. Gotta finish the job now i guess.
Annoyed by the sensory experience of having hair and fighting the urge to just shave it all off by reminding myself there would be some select people who'd be very pissed off if I did that
Well i just came to holding a huge chunk of hair with scissors already halfway through it so that decision was made for me. Gotta finish the job now i guess.
Annoyed by the sensory experience of having hair and fighting the urge to just shave it all off by reminding myself there would be some select people who'd be very pissed off if I did that
Well i just came to holding a huge chunk of hair with scissors already halfway through it so that decision was made for me. Gotta finish the job now i guess.
Annoyed by the sensory experience of having hair and fighting the urge to just shave it all off by reminding myself there would be some select people who'd be very pissed off if I did that
