We've been thinking about our relationship with our plurality a lot lately, and I think it's so strange to think about how things have changed since our big syscovery five years ago. So we may as well talk about it here since that's what this blog is for, here's a very simplified year by year of our journey and struggles, as well all the weird mindsets we went through, going from endo-unaware, to anti-endo, to endo-neutral, to now both pro-endo and recognizing that a few headmates in here are non-traumagenic themselves ^^
Immediately after syscovery in year one we tried to delve deeper, find out who all's in here, encourage each other to be ourselves, all right out the gate. It went really well, although not everyone felt comfortable making themselves known or using a name, those who felt comfortable doing so didn't feel a pressure to mask. We had never masked before syscovery, so just becoming aware of our plurality didn't seem like any reason to change our behavior to fit in.
In year two, as we started telling people in our life about our plurality more widely and interacting in plural spaces (specifically CDD syscord), things started to change. Although the seeds were planted in year one of awareness to become like this because of the nature of many non-clinical traumagenic resources and spaces, in year two we really began to adopt a harmful and very rigid view on plurality, becoming very anti-endo (although we thankfully had enough conscious to not harass or bother any non-traumagenic systems ourselves). We started to police ourselves and how we experienced plurality, ignoring and denying our own experiences if they didn't perfectly fit the lens of systemhood and DID projected in these spaces. We were actively forming some alters non-traumagenically, and lying to ourselves that we weren't. We even lied about having a clear headspace at this time because it was seen as a necessity in the spaces we occupied. We had formed a headspace but it was blurry and inconsistent, since we really struggle with visualization. We put a lot of work into trying to create a clear headspace even though it wasn't helpful for us personally and we knew that, if anything meditating for it and putting in a ton of mental energy trying to maintain it took away time and energy that could have been put into other areas of our life or areas of our mental healthy that needed that care.
In year three of awareness we went really hardcore with masking our plurality publicly, something that caused us a lot of discomfort and distress in the long run. We didn't necessarily become less public about being a system, but we would do everything possible to seem like one complete person in spite of our plurality as to not 'inconvenience others' with our individuality. We wouldn't fully act like ourselves, and alters who did would be told directly that they need to chill out and stop by other headmates. We did this because our friends at the time treated us very poorly, communicating that their main reasoning was us being annoying without them being willing to communicate what we were doing that was annoying them so we could fix it. Masking our plurality was one of multiple ways we tried to make ourselves as small and bearable as possible to them. Internalized fears of being perceived as a 'faker' or 'attention seeker' definitely contributed to us doing this as well. We did thankfully get out of those syscord spaces around this time though, withdrawing from discord spaces as a whole. Eventually we met another system irl, and felt comfortable being ourselves to a degree around them. Before that, we were only allowing ourselves to unmask this much around a long distance friend (also a system) that would later become our amazing and very silly queerplatonic partner. However, we ended up with a host who had a ton of anxiety around the idea of leaving front at this time (Angel), and he had an insane chokehold on front for around six months (only fully leaving maybe five times). This meant that not only was barely anyone else able to get in front, but when they did they still had to mask. Of course, not everyone was willing to mask despite how general I'm being, Belial and a few others weren't willing to mask at all throughout this time. Understandably and rightfully so. By the end of year three we slowly started to change stance on non-traumagenic systems, adopting the take that 'they probably don't remember their trauma, or have some mental health issue that doesn't cause systemhood being mistaken for systemhood, they aren't faking intentionally' which is still a bad take. It makes the assumption that us, a stranger, knows random plurals on the internet's mind and lived experiences better than them. Which we do not. And still implies that they are still 'faking' something about their plurality in some way. Which is not cool to think about people. All around bad take.
In year four Angel let go of his position as host, and we started to try and figure out what was healthiest for us to do from that point. We realized just how much long-term damage had been done by repressing our individuality as alters, since not only were most of us feeling unhappy and suffocated, but barely anybody was able to properly fulfill their roles beyond a small percent of alters who's roles focused on socializing and social protection. But we had been living in this suffocated and repressed state for years, it felt impossible at the time to try and be ourselves again without causing confusion, being annoying, and creating negative tension in our platonic relationships. Great news though, we ended up restarting our social life almost completely from scratch after graduating high school and realizing just how poorly we were treated by a solid amount of our friends at the time, giving us the room needed to recover. We finally came around to understand that we held these harmful opinions on non-traumagenic plurality not because we truly had good arguments on why it's harmful, but because we were always told it was what we were supposed to think. We started doing research into arguments from both sides, and realized we actually don't see anything wrong with non-traumagenic plurality, and we had no right to discount an entire group of plural's lived experiences just because we didn't understand it. It felt crazy how quickly we changed opinions the moment we stopped forcing ourselves to think how we thought we had to, I think one of the main things that contributed to how quick this change happened was the fact we already involved ourselves in the broader alterhuman community. We also got introduced to a new group of friends by a friend we hold very dear, who turned out to be a system as well! We were public about our plurality with all of them, but still struggling to break away from the masking we had trained into ourselves previously. We socialized with them initially with this mask up, simply because we didn't really know how to socialize in a likable way without it.
And now it's year five, and we're learning how to break down this mask. We're in a polycule with two members of that friend group we were introduced to in year four, and love them very, very much. Not masking is much easier said than done after being trained to for years, some of us some days are able to be ourselves comfortably, some of us some days feel too scared to be ourselves in any sense and pretend to be another alter, some of us some days feel like we've lost our individuality and can barely remember who we are and what we like. It's also become clear that social stress often causes us to become very blurry and depersonalized for significant periods of time, when years ago it would often just trigger out our social protectors to resolve things so we can go back to business as usual and possibly cause an overlay of disassociation. I think this is likely because being open about ourselves on alter-specific levels and 'acting plural' in any sense is something our brain sees as vulnerable and endangering, and therefore in an attempt to protect us it just makes it hard to be ourselves for a while. Like great, our plurality occurred in the first place to protect us, just for our brain to decide the plurality is dangerous too, lmao. This is something we're working through as best we can, so our system can not only run as smoothly and healthily as it used to, but hopefully more so. We even already have the added perk of a better collective memory now thanks to all the trauma barriers we've broken down, outside of those previously mentioned blurry episodes since we lose a lot of memories and time during those periods. We're now not only pro-endo, but coming to understand that not everyone in here is traumagenic themselves. We're exploring and rediscovering ourselves, and step by step feeling more whole individually, and as a result feeling more whole together. It's taking a lot of work, but it's work that has already proved to be worth it.
