I promise this is just coming from someone who wants to learn, and I apologize if it sounds hateful or rude for what I'm about to ask that is not what I want at all,
but when it comes to systems, DID, plurality, from what I have heard, it is something extremely extremely rare, and something that most people under the age of 25 the body isn't even supposed to like "reveal" until older. I'm just confused and I would really like to hear from someone who actually is plural and not just from like Google
is being a system, DID, and plurality even the same? And the only plural people I have met irl have like 25,000+ alters of dsmp characters (I ofc know not everyone who is plural isnt just fictive and it's all different)
just a very confused person who isn't plural and I would really like to learn and be educated !! I would really like to understand more and hate unreasonably for something I don't understand
you can be plural without having DID. there's not really much else to it. DID is one form of plurality. it's not the end all be all of plurality. there are even other dissociative disorders like OSDD that get cast by the wayside when people adopt this kind of mentality. there's so much more to plurality than DID. also, there is no set age at which the symptoms at DID become apparent on the outside. i've been having dissociative symptoms since i was a kid. my alters were active and present even as a teenager!
relying on medical statistics alone for DID is a bad idea because most professionals who are capable of diagnosing someone with a mental health condition don't even know what dissociative disorders are or what they entail. my own therapist has known that I have DID the entire time i've known her, but she has told me that currently, she can't help me with it, because she has not received training for it. dissociative disorders are nowhere near as rare as we think they are, one has to consider that a number even as low as 1% - 2% of the global population is an absolutely massive number of people!
saying that DID is "extremely rare" in this case in order to discredit non dissociative plurals is an appeal to authority. it's appealing to the medical industry who refuses to take it seriously in the first place. the amount of professionals i've had who pointed out that i have dissociative disorders vs. the ones who never commented on it at all is pretty staggering. this is due to a lack of proper research due to lack of funding, not because DID is genuinely that rare. the reason there isn't more research into plurality in general is because of a lack of funding. medical studies and organizations require funding. if they don't see money in it, they won't do it.
DID is still a heavily stigmatized condition. things haven't gotten much better since it was renamed from Multiple Personality Disorder. people with dissociative disorders are still treated like shit in medical settings, so to me, it makes no sense at all whatsoever to pit dissociatives against other plurals because no one takes ANY of us seriously, it's not non-dissociative plurals' faults that we're not taken seriously. it's the medical industry. there are no medications to push for DID. DID does not respond to medication. this already makes a lot of doctors not want to interact with it at all, because there's no commissions for medications prescribed.
"And the only plural people I have met irl have like 25,000+ alters of dsmp characters."
i'm pointing this out gently, i don't think you're a bad person, but this is sooooo mean, please don't be that mean and judgmental about other people, plural or not. please consider how those people would feel if they heard you talking about them like that. even if you don't view them as plural, you shouldn't think it's okay to discredit their lived experience. what are you getting out of phrasing it like that? even if that person turns out to not be plural, please do not judge other people based off of things like this. you don't live inside of their head. you don't know what's going on in there.
i'm not entirely sure why people think this way about introjects and fictives, but they're an extremely normal part of the plural experience! one of the most well known DID systems of all time, Truddi Chase and The Troops, had not only fictional alters (Elvira) but also factual ones as well (Mean Joe Green). this is not new, nor is it isolated to non dissociative plurals. introjects and fictives are extremely normal. it doesn't mean someone is faking just because they've introjected someone, or someones.
hope that helps, in general, please understand that the only lived experience that you are the arbiter of is your own and you cannot tell someone else what they're experiencing, no matter what. plurality will look different for every person, system and so on that experiences it! the sooner you accept that the easier your own life will become. it's not hurting you for someone to have headmates that you don't like. that's their business, not yours, and that's actually a very freeing thing!
great addition from the tags:
