Lets hear it for the voices in my head 👏👏👏

Altair | they/them Median system

[prairiemountain]

Okay, I'm making Gan actually do the thing.

The Jovians, our syscovery

So, turns out, we are a traumagenic median system and have been since we were very little. It appears we're one of those preexisting systems who took to Tulpamancy, though that's not to say there aren't created headmates. Wren was never a singlet, and as we got better at identifying fronters Wren quickly started having an identity crisis. So having finally made it to the other side, we are the Jovians:

Io - host - Previously the felt identity behind Wren. They aspire to be "good", whatever that means at that time and place

Ganymede - co-host - a man made of emotional detachment and sarcasm

Europa - gatekeeper - the other gear of detachment, it controls the body directly

Callisto - trauma holder - the oldest and most heavily cratered moon

Metis - protector - he makes sure we can handle our shit if it comes to that

Galileo - archivist - observes from afar to learn as much as he can.

Sandstorm - co-host, delight - a tulpa who carved out a permanent spot for himself by developing a new role

Bart - tulpa - I projected onto this man so hard he appeared in my brain and stuck there

Most of the tulpas turned out to be preexisting headmates filling in a constructed sense of identity, like Rune maps to a mix of Ganymede, Metis, and Europa. It was so hard to spot for years because few of the Jovians have a defined felt sense of identity, we have high co-consciousness, and lot of it was both hidden from ourselves and masked from others. But all the years of blind searching for something was worth it. It's good to finally know who we are.

[spinality]

[wejustworkhere]

perceiving, perceived

[thankyoumoon]

I can never seem to explain why these feel like different things to me even though they look the same on the outside

[bodysitting]

somehow, we just keep getting away with it!

[prairiemountain]

We find it hard to describe our relationship with each other as the Jovians. It's somewhere between partners, siblings, best friends, and your own limb. This is a set, do not separate.

[plurality-canon-events]

Canon plural event is being blurry, and a friend guesses who’s fronting and they’re RIGHT. Hey I don’t even know who I am how did you do that. Magic

[the-ungovernable]

We experience two types of switches

This

And this

[changelingcoded]

“oh and theres a second girl me too but thats normal everyone has that”

[cat-boots]

lil girl things

[semiplural]

The Problems with Emotional Amnesia

So it turns out that it's really hard to give someone a fair assessment of your system's overall mental health needs when your brainmate's crisis feels completely inconsequential to you.

[mismatched-mittenz]

Often see lots of posts about being fictive-heavy, but not the opposite. We really only got one (1) fictive. Hard to not feel out of place...

[prairiemountain]

y'know theres a lot that I can deny about my past plurality, but I can't deny all the seemingly random times throughout my whole life that I had to stop myself from saying we/ours/us.

On retrospect because we tend to have multiple facets conscious at once it was probably a co-con/co-front situation.

[singtiple]

Plurality, as conceptualized in peer-reviewed research:

Plurality, often also called multiplicity, is "having more than one self in the mind and body" (Eve & Parry, 2021).

Plurality "is not a diagnosis" (Eve, et al., 2023) and is "a broader concept than DID" (Christensen, 2022).

Plurality is "a broad term, which encompasses a range of experiences" because "people have individual conceptualizations of what it means to be ‘more than one’" (Eve, et al., 2023).

Plurality is "a term coined to be more inclusive than only that of traumagenic multiplicity" (Christensen, 2022).

Not all people who experience plurality will identify as a 'plural' or 'multiple.' Plurality is a useful umbrella term for the experience of more-than-oneness "but not necessarily a term reflective of one's identity or self-expression" (Christensen, 2022).

"[N]ot everyone who identifies as multiple will want or require mental health intervention for the condition they experience" (Eve, et al., 2023).

The concept of non-traumagenic plurality does not hurt DID research. "[T]he research confirming DID as a trauma-based disorder is doing just that: confirming traumagenic DID, the disorder, not Plurality, the identity . . . Distinguishing between the two does not need to invalidate either" (Christensen, 2022).

The idea that plurality is inherently disordered is a product of Western culture. "Within Western linear frameworks . . . there has been an emphasis on the ‘healthy self’ being integrated and whole" (Eve & Parry, 2021). "In indigenous cultures, esp. shamanic societies, a polypsychism (i.e. many selves) prevails" (Scharfetter, 2008).

Fakeclaiming and anti-endo / anti-plural rhetoric is traumatizing. "[H]aving a condition such as multiplicity that is not generally validated and recognised in a community can be, in itself, traumatic. Even if trauma does not precede the development of multiplicity, trauma-informed care would still be appropriate for many young people who seek help for multiplicity" (Parry, et al., 2021).

[headfriendsdiarycomic]

Turns out I’m not stupid I just have a disorder :)

[strangerconnection]

You'll get it eventually.

[changelingcoded]

you can do this but Watch Out