We tried making this blog before and fell into a spiral of shame and worry that we werenât really plural. Weâre trying this again- and weâre making a promise to ourselves not to delete because we feel afraid. Whether the outcome is âwe are pluralâ or not, this is meant to be an archive, and it shouldnât be forgotten- even if we become ashamed of it.
Alright, weâre going to try actually being active in this blog for a while, which means ways to distinguish whoâs posting and whoâs not. Might update this post later if things change.
Hunter - things Hunter reblogs will be tagged âhunting trophiesâ, and his original posts will be tagged âhunterâs licenseâ
Blake - things Blake reblogs will be tagged âBlake RBâ, and his original posts will be tagged âBlake OCâ
Asher - things Asher reblogs will be tagged âAsherâs collectionâ, and their original posts will be tagged âAsherâs thoughtsâ
Dakota - things Dakota reblogs will be tagged âDakotaâs favoritesâ, and their original posts will be tagged âDakota talksâ
Miranda - things Miranda reblogs will be tagged âMirandaâs memorabiliaâ and her original content will be tagged âMirandaâs musingsâ
Edit:Â Adding in:
Ulyssa - things Ulyssa reblogs will be tagged âUlyssaâs stuffâ and her original content will be tagged âUylssaâs shitâ
Unknown - things we arenât certain who reblogged will be tagged âLighthouse RBâ, and things we arenât certain who made will be tagged âLighthouse OCâ
Edit 2:
Qwerty - things qwerty reblogs will be tagged âqwereblogsâ; things qwerty posts will be tagged âqwertypingâ
Some posts might have tags from more than one person- that will probably be on purpose, since cofronting isnât uncommon for us. This post will be tagged with all 10Â 14 16 tags so that we (and anyone reading this) can access the appropriate tags easily.
From a very avid pro endo, plural shouldn't be synonymous with system. It's not that hard to say systems and plurals. You exclude so many people when you use only one or the other. Please, guys.
Anyways weâve made some good progress on the whole âare we plural or notâ thing! âS a bit complicated but the answer is firmly âyes, kind ofâ. Currently weâre using the description âplural but not necessarily a systemâ, because weâre sure as fuck more than one person but not 100% sure weâre multiple people at once. Sometimes itâs like thereâs multiple people at the same time, but most of the time itâs just one person. If the others still exist during that time theyâre far enough out of focus as to be completely unnoticeable.
Listening to Epic the Musical and went to join the discord server, only to find this:
I'd like to preface this by saying I am a member of a DID system that experienced intense childhood trauma. We identify as "mixed origin", meaning in our case we do not believe trauma was the ONLY cause of our system, but we do believe it likely played a part in the formation of our multiplicity. Now, onto talking about this screenshot.
1. Pluralkit's creators are inclusive of nondisordered systems. It's one thing to say "no OCs" (which pluralkit is fine with, but some servers simply aren't for purposes of ACTUAL roleplay and that's fine), but to say "only OSDD/DID systems are allowed to use this" and imply that all other systems are "roleplaying" is just bog-standard anti-endo bigotry. Also, UDD and other lesser-known disordered systems are of course excluded.
A reminder that the creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation, the DSM-V-TR, the ICD-11, and the APA all recognize the existence of nondisordered systems, and that they haven't met a high enough standard of proof to claim explicit causation via trauma of dissociative disorders. At this juncture, every actual scientist abides by the cardinal rule of statistics - correlation is not causation - and another important basic rule of logic - that "x causes y" does not prove "ONLY x causes y". Or in other words, neither the converse nor inverse of a true statement are automatically true. In mathematics, these logical fallacies are referred to "affirming the consequent" and "fallacy of the inverse".
2. Short of someone actively telling you "I am faking a mental illness", you CANNOT tell if they are. It's not possible even for psychiatric professionals to determine this, let alone random laypeople. Even screenshots "admitting" faking could be photoshopped, but more than that - that rule makes the server unsafe for every SINGLE system, even those with OSDD or DID. On what grounds do they claim a system is faking? Having the audacity to claim that our narrative of our own experiences is most reliable and that we are capable of determining our own origins? Having too many or too few alters? Enjoying aspects of even disordered systemhood? Achieving functional multiplicity?
Fakeclaiming when done to any kind of system, but ESPECIALLY disordered systems, will often severely worsen dissociation and internal communication and can even make amnesia more severe. Even most professionally diagnosed disordered traumagenic systems struggle a lot with doubt, in part due to the very nature of the disorder, which often is a response formed as coping skill for severe trauma which masks itself from both external and internal scrutiny for safety.
It is not worth risking this harm to "protect" systems this doesn't even help, much like it's not worth say, denying SSI to 90 percent of people who need it just to keep the extremely small fraction of a percentage of fraudsters (who are willing to try to live in conditions of extreme poverty without ever being able to marry or save money) from getting it.
(It also seems to stem in part from a pluralmisic society which obscures and erases the very experience of plurality, so that many of us don't discover the labels for our experiences until late enough in life that it shatters a long-held view of ourselves that we then have to contend with as a fundamental shift in our understanding of ourselves. A similar thing occurs with trans people in transphobic societies doubting our transness due to spending our whole lives thinking we were cis, but just in the wrong way, and that everyone is miserable trying to be their assigned gender at birth.)
3. "Alters under age 13 are not permitted to speak in this server as per Discord TOS." Discord's TOS is entirely dependent on legal age and therefore bodily age. Littles and middles are childlike entities in an adult brain and body, and it is therefore up to each system to determine what is safe for their own non-adult members to handle. While some littles and middles may be very like actual children and therefore their systems restrict their activity, some systems have littles and middles that are perfectly capable of using the adult brains' faculties to safely navigate normal interactions. Note that this isn't a restriction on nsfw interaction, which is strictly prohibited in the server iwrc, which while offensive when done "for littles' safety" is at least something reasonable to refuse consent to interact in that capacity with a little for your own personal comfort.
4. "Factive alters sourced from EPIC collaborators are required to speak through an anonymous proxy or base profile when interacting with the server". So, essentially, the comfort of singlets is more important than the health, functionality, and safety of systems. It can be destabilizing to have to mask or pretend to front as someone else.
It is also saying "it's not okay to be openly an entirely separate individual with your own life, consciousness, and experiences, simply because you were unintentionally created by someone's brain based on a different living individual". In this case, the people saying this also believe the only possible reason for this unintentional influence on an alter's existence is due to a severe mental disorder - that they likely believe is only caused by trauma. (They likely consequently believe alters can only be SPLIT through trauma!)
So what they are in effect saying is "if trauma caused a person to exist inside your brain whose formation was influenced by one of us and who therefore shares a name and maybe mannerisms with one of us, they are not allowed to be openly themselves around us". Imagine if an autistic person who often mirrored mannerisms shared a name with them!
5. Re: the last point. They claim that people using pluralkit are people, but notably, they only recognize them as individuals. They do not recognize the personhood of non-parts based systems. "When speaking with someONE who uses pluralkit, remember you are speaking with A real PERSON". Now, they could be referring to the individual alter fronting at the time (and just not acknowledging cofronting out of ignorance or forgetfulness). Except for the damning line:
6. "Please note that Pluralkit is a bot used by INDIVIDUALS with DID/OSDD to facilitate communication". Now, I wanted to touch on, once again, that pluralkit's creators are open to and even intend for the bot to be used by nondisordered systems and even roleplayers. Once again, I have no issue with servers not allowing its use for roleplay purposes, since that doesn't dehumanize any actual systems nor refuse to recognize the personhood of individuals within any systems. But also... they literally are refusing to recognize the existence of actual DID and OSDD systems who identify as multiple people, not individuals!
While it is possible that the creators of Epic the Musical were simply trying to create a safe space for systems and are simply ignorant to the harm that sysmedicalism and creating a culture where fakeclaiming is allowed and even encouraged DOES, I find it more likely that a moderator, creator, or system that is close to one of the above is a sysmedicalist.
Below the cut for brevity of this post is a primer on system discourse (syscourse) and sysmedicalism for those that may not be immersed in the plural community.
Tl;dr of the part above the cut: This server is unsafe for even DID/OSDD systems, discriminates against and violates the autonomy of littles and factives (misunderstanding what littles and factives actually ARE in the process), and does not recognize the actual personhood of alters and headmates and multiplicity of disordered systems. This is just ableism, and extremely disappointing as a DID system that is a fan of the musical.
For those that don't know, sysmedicalists are plurality's version of transmedicalists. They believe that the only way to be many people or parts in one body (which is what plurality is) is to have a severe mental disorder that causes extreme distress and dysfunction, as a result of severe long-term childhood trauma, usually between the arbitrarily named ages of 9 and 12. Like transmedicalists, they believe that multiplicity is inherently a mental illness, and that you can't be plural if you don't experience extreme distress around it.
To be a [identity]medicalist is to pathologize and medicalize an experience that is not inherently either to the point of claiming all nonpathological and nonmedical forms of the experience don't exist, and usually also involves defining an identity primarily by the severe distress it CAN cause in some individuals, staging an arbitrary standard of suffering as a prerequisite that if not met is grounds for fakeclaiming anyone who derives any happiness or positivity of any kind from said identity.
They claim that a term coined and primarily used by trans systems is transphobic, because "transness isn't a mental disorder and systemhood is!" They fail to recognize that like transmedicalists truly believing transness is only a mental disorder incorrectly, they are also clinging to a claim that only the disordered form of a wider experience of being "many in one" is valid or real, and that everyone else are just "fakers" "stealing resources from real trans people/systems".
See iirc @livseses wonderful post for further similarities on transmed and sysmed arguments, which I will link later if I can find.
On the other hand, even psychiatric professionals, in an industry known for disregarding the experiences of neurodivergent and mentally ill people in favor of the narratives that neurotypicals with degrees in the subjects of our lives make up based on their external experiences of us, agree that nondisordered systems can exist. Most now also believe that trauma is not a prerequisite for plurality.
The DSM acknowledges cultural experiences such as mediumship (not all of which are from closed practices), and the ICD goes further to state that the same experience of "two or more distinct personality states" they describe as one of the requirements for DID does not "indicate the presence of a mental disorder". They also use cultural multiplicity as one example, clearly stating that the same experience of multiplicity present in DID can be present in the absence of a disorder.
These disorders are also very purposely not categorized in the "trauma disorder" section of diagnostic manuals, but rather in a section for "dissociative disorders". Even personality disorders, which are well-recognized as being mostly traumagenic in origin, are also not categorized as trauma disorders, for the same reasons of both lacking a high enough standard of proof that trauma is the only possible cause, as well as for the simple reason that dissociative and personality disorders are much more highly self-similar than they are to trauma disorders. Anyone claiming that "DID/OSDD are trauma disorders" and that to claim to the contrary is misinformation is themselves spreading anti-scientific misinformation.
It is also worth noting that by all modern definitions of disorderedness, a mental disorder requires either distress or dysfunction (and in some cases, both). Therefore, a DID or OSDD system that achieved functional multiplicity would not longer be considered functionally disordered.
Traumagenic is the term used to describe systems formed due to trauma. There is zero proof whatsoever that the trauma that forms a system is required to occur in childhood, and in fact seemingly previously healthy war veterans have been acknowledged in medical literature as displaying symptoms of complex dissociative disorders. While there is not a high enough burden of proof to discount the possibility that every single case was just a covert system's presentation made overt by the recurrence of trauma or development of PTSD, there is likewise not proof that trauma that occurs later in life (particularly for neurodivergent individuals with developmental disorders, as the parts of our brain involved in multiplicity often develop in different orders or at different rates.
Endogenic is the term used to describe systems formed for reasons other than trauma (and by most members of the community, for mixed origin systems that were not FULLY formed from trauma. The coiner maintains that full lack of trauma is required for "correct" use of the label; see my previous posts about the harm of prescriptivism and the ludicrousness of defining a term for an identity you don't claim and a community you are not in).
Endogenic does not necessarily mean nondisordered, as anything from trauma occurring after initial system formation to simply the brain's "wires" getting crossed, so to speak, may be able to cause a dissociative disorder even in the absence of the usual stimuli of trauma. Basically, if your brain has a "push in case of emergency" button, there's always a possibility however many failsafes are built to prevent this happening that it will accidentally be set off in the absence of an emergency. Likewise, traumagenic does not inherently mean disordered, as in the case of previously disordered systems who achieved functional multiplicity, or again, weirdness in an extremely complex organ we barely understand causing the brain to push the emergency button but only part of the stuff that is supposed to be caused by the button happening.
Plurality is simply a form of neurodivergence. People can be multiple consciousnesses or "people" (the defining of which falls more under the purview of philosophy than psychiatry) in one body without there needing to be a reason. Assuming singlecy (being a singlet, a nonsystem) is the default is as based in pluralmisia as assuming being straight is the default is based in homophobia.
It's also worth noting that the majority of psychiatry and psychology, as soft sciences, are based entirely in self-reporting. While yes, dissociative disorders can obscure knowledge of trauma until a system is ready to process said trauma, in the absence of any other notable amnesia or other disordered symptoms, it's actually more likely just from a logical standpoint alone that a person is simply right about saying "there are multiple people in this body" than they are unaware of trauma, let alone just "roleplaying" or "faking". There are simply too many endogenic systems for that to be the case.
Why would total amnesia around exactly the chronological bounds of the trauma, despite a system not having any periods of time missing from their memory, be the ONLY symptom experienced? In a society where even if you HAVE a disorder treatment is often inaccesibly expensive and the majority of people regard anyone who identifies as multiple as "insane" at best and "dangerous and needing to be locked up" at worst, what is to be gained from identifying as plural if that's not truly who you feel you are? It's the same tired arguments of nonbinary and nondysphoric/nontransitioning trans people in general just "pretending to be trans for fun". No one does that!
Also, traumatized people are not helpless crazy people that need "help" being paternalistically told what our "actual" experiences are because we're too ill to ever be right about our own lives and ESPECIALLY our subjective internal thoughts, emotions, and ways of experiencing the world and our selves. That's just extremely basic foundational sanism.
Some will claim it's not "for fun" but as a result of delusions or other mental illness that endogenic systems "claim to exist". They claim that delusional and mentally ill people need to be forced into treatment "for our own good", even if the alleged delusions are neither causing distress for us, dysfunction in our lives, or influencing us to act in ways which cause any material or quantifiable harm to others. And no, being offended by the existence of a subgroup of people within a marginalized group is not harm. That's just bog-standard bigotry.
This is also just basic sanism. It's the idea that if someone holds uncommon beliefs or is in any way abnormal, that those beliefs and abnormalities need to be suppressed and stamped out for "our" own good and for the good of society. It's the same (fascist) rhetoric that causes everything from autism [Coolsville sucks] spe/aks seeking a eugenicist "cure" for autism to white supremacy. Note: neither autistic people nor nonwhite people nor any other marginalized group are inherently "abnormal". They are simply minorities LABELED as such by those in power.
I know someone might try to take that line out of context to claim that I AGREE that marginalized peoples are abnormal, coolsville-sucks-style, hence my clarification and inclusion of that in brackets to make any bad faith actors have to at least black it out if they want to screenshot that out of context. That way, anyone bothering to actually fact-check will see immediately that they are twisting my words and acting in bad faith. I've been around the syscourse block long enough to know people WILL do this.
There's further arguments to be made that "normality" is simply a descriptor for things that do not significantly deviate from arbitrary averages and that abnormality itself is therefore morally neutral, but I digress.
I do however, want to encourage people to look into the subject of "mad liberation" for more on questioning and challenging the assumptions that anyone with any mental disorders or trauma is incapable of being a reliable source on their own experiences and existence.
Anyway, plurality has existed for as long as humans have been recognizably human. Many past and present peoples acknowledge forms of it, both in open and closed cultures. Most reputable psychiatrists and psychologists acknowledge the existence of nondisordered and endogenic systems, and further studies are being done into this form of neurodivergence already. The few professionals that don't are typically those like the ones present in the video released by McLean Hospital which fakeclaimed actual professionally-diagnosed disordered systems (which also goes to show just how fakeclaiming only ever ends up harming the people it's claiming to be used to try to protect).
Finally, "plural" is a term coined specifically to be inclusive of all systems, regardless of origin or disordered status. Plural was never a term that belonged only to disordered traumagenic systems, and to claim so is to actively speak over the inclusive systems responsible for coining the term and spread misinformation.
Tl;dr Endogenic and nondisordered systems exist, are valid, and should be believed about the ways they experience their own consciousnesses and brain. This is backed even by doctors in the field of "dismiss people who have abnormal experience of consciousness and supplant their narratives with what neurotypicals THINK is going on based on how we experience the actions of neurodivergent people. Trauma is not the only way to form a system, and intensely distressing mental illness is not the only way to BE a system.
The Epic the Musical server is unsafe for any systems, which as a DID system, makes us feel sad and angry and hurt.
Anti-en/dos, just block us. Even if you can come up with a new argument instead of the same repetitive and inane misinterpretations of scientific literature (or those actively disproven by scientific literature, no less) and pseudoreligious baseless beliefs about plurality, all I would do is tear apart the foundation of the new "argument" for bigoted exclusionism. I've already weighed more evidence than you've ever read, and I won't be convinced that this time the group just trying to live their lives and be accepted as they are is ACTUALLY harmful evil invaders faking and stealing resources because trust you bro. We also know more about our own mixed origins than you as a stranger are capable of ever discerning.
We've been harmed enough by fakeclaiming as a multiply physically disabled and neurodivergent queer traumaendo DID system to ALWAYS side with the people against fakeclaiming anyway, we BELIEVE minorities and especially neurodivergent people about what's going on inside their heads, and quite frankly, we just don't like exclusionist bigots (like you) and don't want exclusionist bigots (like you) interacting with our posts.
We would like to gently point out that the coiner of the term "endogenic", while they are and acknowledge fully that they are a trauma-formed DID system now, they believed themselves to be endogenic when the term was coined, so it's not a matter of coining a term for a community they weren't ever in.
While mixed-origin systems can of course identify as endogenic, the term is used by most people in the community to mean "any origin other than traumagenic". Partially traumagenic would still be partially traumagenic as well as partially endogenic by the way most people use those terms, so if you use only endogenic for yourself most people would assume you don't have any trauma origins.
Single color? Hard to pick one out of a whole world, but. Lots of teal and a deep rich loamy brown, like good solid dark mud. Also a lot of silver. Silver isn't like, a dominant shade color wise, but it's culturally a very important color.
Houses tend to look like they were made with Legos, lots of additions in wildly different shades because people don't really buy houses as a whole unit, they buy them in rooms and combine them together and take them apart like when kids move out and get their own place they literally take their bedroom with them and attach it to the common room of whatever shared living place they move to.
Black and steel grey! Itâs a lighthouse where itâs constantly storming outside. Itâs sort of an abstract height because we just add in rooms to different floors as needed. The beacon room is where we associate fronting with mostly.
Why use 'plural' in your blog name when it was specifically created to be an umbrella term for all plurals, including endogenics and non-traumagenics? Why not use a more specific term? Seems weird.
Because we do not believe that plurality can happen without trauma.
Using another term like "traumagenic culture" is weird because there's no other way to be plural.
Also plural was not a term that was created to be an umbrella for all plurals. It was a term that systems thought would be easy to use to describe their experiences because it means "many, more than one"
I knew this blog existed for a while and wasn't planning on responding directly, but for the love of the gods, there's only so much misinformation posted in the syscourse tag I can handle. And the confident erasure of plural history is where I draw the line.
At the time "plural," was introduced, there was ALREADY a word being used by systems to describe the experience of being "more than one."
That word was multiple.
"Plural" was popularized as an identity label as a nonmedical alternative to Multiple in the 1990s by The Vickis.
We don't claim that every multiple system/household is a happy loving cooperative one. What we do question is the *identification* of "real multiples" with the characteristics or symptoms of a psychological disorder. We go further: we question by what right or authority doctors and therapists are given sole jurisdiction over the definition of "an individual".
This is one reason our clan encourages use of the word "plural" rather than "multiple". "Multiple", even standing by itself, brings to mind MPD/DID, "multiple personality disorder", "dissociative identity disorder", which are specific diagnoses created by the medical/therapeutic community. "Plural" is a much more neutral word, more commonly heard in the context of grammar than psychiatry. (The other reason, of course, is that plural can be construed to have a broader meaning, applying to anyone(s) anywhere on the continuum who experience themselves as plural in some way. )
There would probably be less controversy over your blog's name were it something like CDDcultureis (although anti-endo exclusionism in CDD spaces still severely hurts mixed-origin systems) but you chose a name using a term specifically coined as a rejection of the medical model.
And then you spread misinformation about the origin of that term and erase the history of the plural community in the process.
I don't expect to change your mind on the existence of endogenic plurals. (Though if anyone is open-minded, I would direct them here.)
But please just stop erasing plural history and claiming that "plural" wasn't created to be a broad label when it very clearly was.
What the brain doin?? (Median System exploration journey for fellow questioning systems)
Hello!
I am making this post for those who think they are a Median System. I've noticed our community is small and that there aren't many recourses out there to compare experiences to. The few that do exist have been very helpful so I thought I'd add to the pool to compare and contrast with. In this post I will discuss how I reached the point of believing I am a Median System, why, as of right now, that label fits the best for me, and what my system is like on the inside.Â
(THIS IS A SAFE SPACE FOR EVERYONE REGARDLESS OF ORGIN, LABLE, KNOWLEDGE, OR IDENTITY)
How did I get here?
I started learning about what plurality was in 2018 for a college psych course. At that point in time I just found it interesting; fascinated at how the brain reacted to trauma and why it would split off as a way to cope. A tiny part of me thought "am I....?? NAaaah!! I would know!! It would click and everything would all make sense and I would just know!!! Plus I don't have enough trauma." I developed a hyper-fixation on it for a bit but it fizzled out and I didn't reflect on it again for a while.Â
In 2021 I took a course that looked at the abstract ideas and philosophies behind what consciousness really is. I decided that for my final research paper in that course I would write about DID and other forms of plurality and what implications their very existence meant for how we define consciousness. After that, the hyper-fixation was reignited. I started to reflect on myself again but came to the same conclusions. Until, I met my now partner, who is a system, in 2022. They taught me a lot about plurality.Â
It's a bit fuzzy when I started questioning myself again or why. EDIT: I remembered! I ran out of ADHD medication and had to go without it for a couple weeks. For context, I haven't taken a break from my meds since I started them at age 8 and at the time of running out I was on the highest dose of really strong stuff. After this break I started to notice how much my meds suppressed my emotions and creativity, eventually I got more medication. I then started asking my partner more questions about how they figured it out they were a system, how they knew, what did they do, how did they navigate embracing it, etc. I was a bit obsessive about these questions and it wasn't hyper-fixation level obsessive, this was "I need these answers to survive" level obsessive. I started noticing anxiety around these questions that I had never felt before. Ya know, totally normal singlet stuff.Â
I started a notes app note titled "Psychological analysis of myself" after I had a panic attack that felt like someone else was having it through my body. Like genuinely, it snuck up on me (unusual for my anxiety I usually can see it coming a mile a way) and then it felt like my body had the panic attack without me, I was just there along for the ride. It freaked me out, which is why I started the notes app. I started diving into more research on OSSD and more nuanced experiences of plurality that never came up in basic psychology research.Â
Then the denial started. Heavy, aggressive, degrading, denial. I pride myself on have decent esteem and self love but this denial laughed in my face. I only felt this once before when I was failing a math class in 2019. It was the first class I had ever been so close to failing I tore myself apart about it. It was so unlike me to be so mean to myself. When having this denial dialogue in my head about how (aggressive language warning) I was attention seeking faker who was just lonely and wanted to feel special, it was always stated in âYou areâŚâ statements. For example: âYouâre just faking.â âYouâre stupid.â âI canât believe you think this.â When I would have these conversations with myself I would feel myself getting tired. Not tired in a way where I needed a nap but more like a drifting tired. I know this may be connected to dissociation, or switching (unclear).
So in my notes app I would write the thoughts out as they came. I realized I was having a chat with myself. A great app for honestly singlets and plurals to download is ANTAR. Itâs an app that lets you chat with you "emotions" to sort out emotional hang ups but if you label the emotions as your alters instead you can chat with your system! These conversations are why I didnât fully fall back into denial stage.
For a moment I did. I concluded that I was just being silly and dramatic and blowing things out of proportion. But having those conversations on my phone that I could go back to and look at didnât let me stay there for long.Â
I went back and forth on the denial thing for a minute only because I couldnât find label that fit how I felt about my potential system until I happened across Median System. There was the click. Everything fell into place. I sat and read the definition and just thought âThatâs meâ.
Why âMedian Systemâ
A Median System is describe asÂ
A median system (also called midcontinuum) is a system where members are not as distinct or separate from each other. It can be considered being somewhere between multiple and singlet.[1]
Some are dependent on a single individual, or the dependence can be mutual in that there is no central individual. Some median systems feel more blurred between themselves[2]. Others may also be based around a shared identity or kin.
The members of a median system are often described as aspects or facets. Some median systems may identify as different archetypes[1]. Despite being more fluid and similar, median systems can be very diverse.
Median systems are often opposed to multiple systems, with multiple systems experiencing more distinction between headmates. Some may also oppose it to partitionary systems, but in fact, median systems can be either partitionary or blurian, as variance in identity and presence or absence of memory sharing do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.
For me, part of the reason that I was in such denial of possibly being plural was because I have little to no amnesia in my day to day but unlike OSDD-1b (which also lacks amnesia) I donât have distinct others. It felt like me all the time but sometimes adjacent. Someone described the difference as feeling like a snake with multiple heads rather that multiple snakes in a cage. And a Median system it feels like being an individual with multiple consciouses instead of multiple individuals in one body.Â
Other ways that I experience my existence are as follows:Â
I sometimes use plural first pronouns when referring to myself because before this realization I would be talking about myself and my brain as separate from me.
I used to joke that I felt like a system that just never fractured.Â
The way people describe masking but for me it feel like a more extreme level, where Iâm not TRYING to change my behavior, it just sorta happens and Iâm âsomeone elseâ. What I called masking felt more like skipping songs in a playlist to get to the right one instead of putting on a mask.Â
Another thing I experience is sometimes I expect to see a different face in the mirror and I get weirded out while still recognizing that, that is me and my face.Â
This one might be a stretch but I have seen other Median Systems mention it. I notice that proper singlets have 1 go to aesthetic. It may change over the years but that typically have 1. I have never been able to consistently identify with 1 aesthetic I typically cycle through several. Specifically for me it's punk, grunge, hippy, cottage academia, and dark academia. With a funky gender identity on top of all that.
I wrote this post on and off over the course of a few hours and I lost my train of thought. Please let me know if you have questions, clarifications, comments, or your own stories. My asks are open. I will probably speak more on this at a later date.
can I split my brain and become an endo system to avoid a horrendous mental illness focused on intrusive thoughts and memories of past ones? i.e separating that part of myself (the tendency to have intrusive thoughts and the memories of them) into a distinct entity which I can shunt away, or preferably, stake through the heart?
Probably not, honestly. Dissociating from parts of yourself does not mean those parts stop existing, or that you don't have to deal with them anymore. If anything you're probably more likely to make things extra complex and create more problems for yourself.
Plurality is not really a way to get rid of parts of your identity you don't like.
hi hello my plurality basically came out of this exact thing, though i didn't know that was what i was doing at the time, and i know others who have plurality regarding splitting off parts of themselves they couldn't/didn't want to deal with
first of all, i still have intrusive thoughts. if there is actually a way to put them on another headmate/alter and never experience them yourself anymore then i haven't found it nor have i ever seen it successfully happen.
most likely this is due to the fact that intrusive thoughts have a lot more to do with the way you react to them than the thoughts themselves. everyone has intrusive thoughts, and it's only a disorder when you can't process them in a healthy way without internal/external compulsions.
note: i am NOT saying in the slightest that having that reaction to intrusive thoughts is your fault or that you should be able to deal with them better or anything like that.
secondly.... if you put all those thoughts onto another thinking being that shares your head, it's a really good way to end up with a persecutor. i lucked out almost entirely because the moment i pushed the violent intrusive thoughts onto 'someone else' (who now goes by Caim but who i initially referred to as my Shadow), i also accepted that those thoughts were a part of myself and that they weren't going away. i forgave myself for them.
others i know haven't had that experience. and while i certainly believe persecutors and the like deserve compassion and space to exist, it's still a very messy situation that often causes a lot of pain on both sides.
and starting a thinking consciousness just to shun them and push them away for the things you dislike about yourself sounds like the exact same recipe that nearly cost my friend their life. they would be at least partly their own person, with their own thoughts and feelings, and if you intend to give them only negativity and then lock them in a box they will hate you for it. i'm sorry to be so blunt but i have never seen this play out any other way.
I aint found a way to kill the fucker so now im just here with it in a box hoping it *stays* in the fucking box and I don't get another conviction. I've got a handle on it *now* (and as a side effect i don't really experience anger anymore?), but its not healthy and there was a time I *didnt* have a handle on it. And someone got hurt.
For us, the intrusive thoughts were other system members all along. It's part of how we discovered we were plural from birth.
Long before we figured out we were plural, we found that we could negotiate and reason with our intrusive thoughts. And they'd go away if we figured out what they really needed (not necessarily what they were telling us to do, but what was driving them to tell us that).
Sometimes that was easy. Sometimes that was hard.
Some of them required that we come out as trans and transition.
A hell of a lot of them wanted us to recognize our plurality and accept them as the system members they were.
We still get some intrusive thoughts that are utterly unacceptable and ridiculous. Like racist ones. You can't negotiate with those, and you can't give them what they want. We can't entirely shut them out, either. But we can explain to them why we're not accepting what they're saying, and why they are wrong. And, after a while, they get tired of pushing.
And, that's if they're system members, like they are for us. Not all intrusive thoughts are from other system members. But, the thing is, they might be. Already.
If they are, shutting them out doesn't work. You can't kill them. You can't lock them up forever. You've got to treat them like people.
Thanks for sharing, that makes a lot of sense. Our intrusive thoughts are not related to our plurality personally, but I don't doubt that's the case sometimes, and it's a good thing to consider.
Definitely not necessary to separate oneself to learn to cope with distress.
Anon, If you have intrusive thoughts, as many do, please consider alternatives and learning new skills before separating yourself in this way. I strongly recommend re-framing. I think it has helped me figure out more nuance and make the intrusive thoughts less scary/painful than any other skill.
I used to think I could get rid of the other people in my head, kill them, dissolve them into myself, but is has never stayed.
No matter how I have partitioned myself in the past, and guarded my bits that I didn't want to look at, they always had a way of clawing their way up out of the dark to confront me as some Monstrosity built of my own suppression and neglect.
The less I identify with a divided aspect, the more distress it has caused overall.
The more I fight them, the stronger they have gotten. The more defiant. The more adversarial. The more destructive. The more willing they are to think "burn it all down" is a viable solution.
And it is all still me. I am still responsible for all of it. Joined as a unit or divided and in strife.
I am old, though, and I am starting to learn that I really do prefer to not fight all the time.
We also sort of did this by accident- we struggled a lot with emotional lability and negative self-talk as a result of some of our conditions, and at one point Hunter had the idea to just. Start talking back to the negative self talk. Not trying to refute anything, just sort of like asking âokay, why do you think that? Do you think that saying it to us is productive?â etc, and then as a result of that, Ulyssa formed. Sheâs the manifestation of our unwanted emotions and thoughts, but sheâs also a person in her own right now, and having those manifestations be someone you can actually talk to has been remarkably helpful for us in learning to deal with them. We do think that itâs easy to mess this up and make it harder on yourself, but we donât think that itâs impossible to do safely and healthily.
I can understand that for many people with DID and OSDD, the existence of endogenic systems can be triggering. I understand that from their perspective, thereâs not an appreciable difference between endogenic systems and people self-dx DID and OSDD because they think itâs cool. I have my own opinions on whether or not that second group is anywhere near as prevalent as some might suggest, but Iâm willing to accept that that is the immediate association some people have. I understand that it can feel like your trauma is being trivialized by the existence of endogenic systems, and while I sort of want to say that you should probably figure out a way to reconcile the two, I feel more strongly that saying that would be unnecessary dismissive and divisive. So I think that itâs reasonable, overall, for people with DID/OSDD to want to create spaces which do not include endogenic systems, and for them to want to block out any mention of endogenic systems from their presence on social media. I think that it crosses a line to insist that endogenic systems are the ones responsible for undertaking these efforts, and I think it really crosses many lines to try and harass endogenic systems in the spaces that they create for themselves.
Please use the block button. Please create Discord servers and forums and meet ups for the group you want to be around. Just please stop harassing us for existing in a different way from you- it really fucking sucks.
plural culture is "how do you guys have such a good idea of what's going on in your systems at any time we can barely talk to each other most of the time teach us your ways"
So weâve been absent for a while- not just from this blog, but from Tumblr in general. Weâve also gone through the cycle we talk about in our first post on this blog of doubt-suppress-remember-engage several times, and that makes it a lot harder to post anything on here. This is basically just a heads up that weâre probably going to stay on radio silence for a while, although weâll be trying a bit more to post. This post is honestly just testing the waters for how we handle talking about our plurality online- weâll see how we handle it.
We made this blog before, but then deleted it about two weeks later after a bunch of shame and confusion. Weâd made a post saying something along the lines of âhey, we might be plural, we might not, this blog is going to archive how we figure this out.â Weâd just learned what plurality was and were trying to figure out if we âqualifiedâ or not, but shortly after we made the blog, all of the things we had been noticing seemed to vanish. We thought weâd just made them all up to try and feel special, and it sent us on a spiral of shame that ended with us deleting our previous blog of the same name.
Turns out it wasnât that.
One of our facets, who weâve been calling Dakota, takes the brunt of our RSD. Another one, Blake is really focused on masking and privacy. Blake started fronting almost all the time, and began masking everything, even from ourselves. Dakota started fronting too, and the combination of the sudden âlackâ of reasons to think we might be plural, combined with the most impactful RSD fed on each other, resulting in what we mentioned previously. Since then, weâve had some time to hash out our own emotions and self-perception, and weâre ready to try this again.
Weâre a median system; previously, weâve been using the word âfrontingâ to refer to whoâs the most influential, but weâre going to switch to using that and âviewingâ semi-interchangeably. This is because right now we see ourselves as facets of a single person- although depending on what happens, that might change. We envision ourselves as a lighthouse, with the lantern at the center being our collective self, and each of us as differently shaded panes of glass on the outside, which change the color of the light.
So far weâve identified five distinct facets; none of them are clear-cut enough yet to determine their own name, so weâve decided to name each individual as a collective, with the understanding that those names may change later. Our facets are Miranda, who manages being social with other people; Asher, who handles analysis, record-keeping, and scientific things; Dakota, who is the most heavily impacted by RSD and tends to take a comforter role; Hunter, who focuses on internal management and self-reflection; and Blake, who deals with privacy and masking. Multiviewing/cofronting is fairly common, although itâs easier for some than others: Hunter and Asher are the two most common members of a multiview, followed by Blake and Dakota, and ending with Miranda.
Weâre going to keep personal information off this blog, especially with respect to identifying information, but we plan to update periodically on how our journey of self-discovery (or selves-discovery :P) is going.
