the shadow system

a place to be us; multiplicity and all.

[systemofshadow]

hello. we're a system of 7+ that wanted a place to put our plural experience in words somewhere, and a place to reblog posts about plural experiences.

fair warning, you may see a bit of syscourse on this blog, but i will do my best to tag it and keep it to a minimum. i believe all systems are valid, and always will.

i hope you enjoy your time here, as i hope i do.

i realize the way i refer to our alters (by first initial only, for privacy reasons) could be confusing, so i'm tacking this on for those who are curious!

S (current host) — that's me! i'm who will (usually) be using this blog. though sometimes i get a bit blurry. since i'm (almost) always up front, and don't often lose memories between switches, i can't always tell if someone else is influencing our descisions or co-fronting.

she / they pronouns, same age as the body which is 30.

T — frequent co-fronter. loves the art of tattoos and minecraft. bisexual nonbinary guy who likes to wear skirts and is very upset about the body not being as tall as he is.

he / they pronouns, age 20-ish.

W — previous host and frequent co-fronter. she was host when we were a teenager, and ended up fusing with our other previous host from when we were a young adult. always helps me (S) stay calm while cooking. loves neon green and black.

she / they pronouns, age 21.

N — doesn't co-front frequently but does enjoy making jokey comments and aiding in the fun kind of chaos. like T, loves the kareoke bar in the basement of headspace. bisexual as fuck.

she / they pronouns, age 21-ish.

M — used to co-front often, but no longer does. there were some complications in telling her apart from another alter. likes the colors light blue and yellow, mostly wears black. the communal areas in headspace house are based on her 'actual' home.

she / her pronouns, age 21.

E — previous host and the reason we know we're a system! while T and M co-fronted frequently before we figured it out, it was only when E fronted that we started to dive into research. also the first person to get a room in headspace! loves squishmallows and her caretaker, A.

she / her pronouns, age slides 4 - 9.

A — the caretaker of the system. first alter to ever exist as far as we're aware, dating back to "imaginary friend" status back when E was the host and the body was four. always providing comfort to those who are distressed. for a while, i (S) went by A in headspace, thinking she'd gone dormant and naming myself after her, but she got her name back once she made it clear she was still here!

she / her pronouns, age 25.

L — trying her best to no longer be a persecutor of the system. was our only non-human, ageless alter before she fused with a previous host (known as R). now in a qpr with A, she is working on healing her religious trauma and being kinder to the rest of the system. loves the collor yellow. finds it important you know that she, like A, is an asexual lesbian.

she / her pronouns, age 24.

P — our therapist alter. since we hadn't been able to speak to a therapist irl, she developed in order to help us through the hardest parts of our mental illnesses. started appearing back when W was host. tries her best not to judge us, but i'm pretty sure she's tired of my shit /lh.

she / her pronouns, age 45-ish.

M (2) — no relation to M other than her first initial, and i'm not entirely sure if she exists. other alters have mentioned her, but i haven't been able to meet her. would be somewhere between a previous host and a subsystem alter of N's. she's a big old question mark, but deserves to be mentioned nonetheless.

she / her pronouns, age slides 12 - 15.

i may expand on now-fused alters and other question-mark facets of our system at a later time, but trying to reduce everyone down to a few important sentences has been super tiring for us so that will have to wait! hope this helped clear some things up about our system :3

[paparoach]

she's just a fictional character to YOU. i know her personally though

[mossywetandrogyny]

@funnier-as-a-system

[gazeldhazel]

being plural but not knowing how plural is literally a constant "who said that" bit. who fuckin quipped that. no come back here and say who you are

[cookiethebirddoll]

the idea of headmates needing to be distinct is so pervasive. even in the plural community here, there feels like theres this unspoken expectation that being plural involves very distinct and discrete personality states. or at least that you should be able to make a pk that has all of your headmates. because all headmates should have a name and discrete identity apparently. i dont hate pk but it definitely reinforces that idea that systems need to be structured in a specific way

it leads to a lot of hurt. a lot of people fighting their brains to try to fit into a specific idea of plurality. or just deciding they cant be plural or that they arent plural enough

[cookiethebirddoll]

basically everyone i know who is plural can give some specific number of headmates they have and all their names. and like that's great if thats how it works for them. but i wonder how many of them are hurting themselves to categorize themselves like that

[cookiethebirddoll]

also like it's ok for the structure of your system to be unclear. its ok if you dont understand how it works. its ok if you dont even feel that system is the right word for it. theres so much diversity in how plurality presents itself and there is no such thing as not plural enough or whatever

[kachimattou]

plurality is kind of like transgender, in that once you understand the concept and how it works, like a third of all media ever made can be interpreted as a allegory for it if you try hard enough. and you don’t even have to be plural (or trans) yourself to notice it

[unfamiliar-ghostly-system]

Validity doesn't come from exclusivity.

I think this is important because I've seen this mindset end up being used against traumatised people, and trauma and its impacts in general. But also because I think some people on this platform are deeply insecure in their identities as plural / or systems and are projecting that onto other people with identify that way.

Some people on this app need to hear that it's okay for others to have the same or similar experiences as them, and that's okay (and that it's not personal). Ican't stresss how much some would benefit from decoupling themselves from other people's posts.

[queerautism]

Some people really seem very focused on the idea of what other people's experiences say or imply about their own, in a way that frankly doesn't make a lot of sense. People talking about their own experiences and their own identities aren't talking about yours.

There's also a lot of focus on the idea of experiences or symptoms being exclusive to certain identities or disorders in order to be valid. Which is not really how anything works.

[mindwrms]

if you need someone to tell you this let us be that person: yes you can still be a system if your parts are just different versions of you. yes you can be a system if you have trouble communicating or cant communicate at all with your parts. yes you can still be a system if your parts dont have names of faces, but are just feelings and states of being. yes you can still be a system with no set host, or frequent fronter(s). yes you can still be a system without being able to tell who’s fronting at all times or if youve switched. plurality looks different for everyone, dont just assume that because your plurality doesn’t look like someone else’s that what your experiencing isn’t plurality.

[poliwhirl-plurplexed]

They need to add an update to plurality where you have multiple bodies and your singlet friends can see them

[semiplural]

States of Being

We were trying to explain to some friends earlier that saying "this person is in front" and "this person is co-conscious" isn't always the most useful phrasing for us because either of those terms can mean a lot of different things. We have our own words that we like to use to describe where folks can be in relation to our awareness.

The states on this chart are still a bit of a simplification, as we flow between them and it's more of a spectrum than a discrete set, but they're close enough to the actual language that we use to do the job.

[th-compl-x]

Reblogging these images in a format that'll be easier for mobile users to read. Hope that's alright. 👍👍

[identitty-dickruption]

I'm not convinced one ever "processes" trauma. I think we move through it and around it. and it moves through and around us. and maybe it defines us in different ways across our lives. but I don't think there's some end-point where everything has been Processed and Understood. because some things are simply un-processable and un-understandable. and I think sometimes holding yourself to some standard of No Longer Being Traumatised is unhealthy and unrealistic. but what do I know I'm just another bitch struggling through ptsd

[t4timekeeper]

an “original character” is like a kind of brain parasite

[welcome-to-the-mindscape]

@funnier-as-a-system

[whitepeopletwitter]

Hamster wheel

[999moreyears]

@funnier-as-a-system

[funnier-as-a-system]

[ID: a Twitter/X post by girl on the hill (@ Mom_Overload) that reads: Being in my brain is like trying to have a conversation with myself but someone keeps interrupting and that someone is me / end ID]

[bulletcreep-deactivated20250911]

plurality on tv : ahhg..watch out my...EVIL ALTER!!!! HE'S COMING OUT!!!! HES GOING TO JEFF THE KILL YOU!!!!!!

plurality in real life:

friend: is something wrong

me: (staring off) Somebody is mad.because i want the pink donut

[ravenfleesfire]

A doodle one of us made as a visual aid to help compare with another system how it feels like it works

[isabelopaque]

did you guys know about this oc stuff. you can just make a guy. big if true

[isabelopaque]

but watch out. theyre in your brain now

[k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl]

I should be able to temporarily give control of my body over to an extrovert that can get me into fun social situations before putting me back in control so i dont have to deal with the whole social anxiety panic lead up to a fun thing

[hyperoperationfractallisation]

@funnier-as-a-system I'm not plural but this post is to me

[patricia-taxxon]

i need to soapbox about DID more, because its kinda like being trans, you'd think that you'd notice if you had it but that's just cultural osmosis giving a skewed impression, statistically you probably wouldn't. statistically you need to do rigorous work to notice.

[patricia-taxxon]

you might have entertained the idea once and discarded it because u have put DID in this box of rare implausible fantastical mental disorders when it is simply far more mundane than that.

[transhumanisticpanspermia]

it's still unbelievable to me how well my system was hiding, if i hadn't tapped that first domino of "trying IFS in therapy" all my alters would still probably be covert. but trying to talk to parts was enough to bring them out of hiding so they could enlighten me on how they've been driving my behavior for decades

[actualized-animal]

something i think about a lot is how the sensationalized perception of DID as being this extremely rare disorder that only occurs in response to the worst possible kinds of abuse imaginable makes it so much harder for people to realize that they have DID. i mean, for one, even for people who have been through those kinds of abuse, complex dissociative disorders are defined by the obscuring of trauma, meaning it’s extremely common for dissociative systems to just not even realize they were abused or traumatized at all. but also, that level of abuse is not required for a dissociative system to form at all. it’s not like a dark souls status effect where once your trauma bar fills up enough you get DID; the disorder is a complex response meant to allow the mind to cope with severe chronic stress at a very young age, and there are lots of things that can contribute to that— any kind of abuse, neglect, bullying, isolation, disability, neurodivergence, queerness, etc. these factors tend to compound. autistic people, for example, are both far more susceptible to stress and far more likely to be traumatized, and so we also have a higher incidence of dissociative disorders. it took me so long to realize and internalize that my experience of being emotionally abused by my mother while also growing up queer and autistic was “bad enough” for my brain to respond by developing DID to protect me. i’d completely written it off as a possibility before then, because, like the original post said, it’s far more mundane than people are led to believe. that’s why i think spreading awareness is so important.