So what's up with the Feathers anyways?
Hey all, I just wanted to make a formal post that I can attach to my pinned post explaining a few things that we - as a collective and system - are doing lately as part of our recovery since it's something I know might be weird in the standard CDD / system experiences found online.
For those that don't know, we are a diagnosed DID system that has fully fused (we personally dislike Final Fusion as a term the word "Final" implies stuff that doesn't suit us nor do we like the idea of any sort of finality). This just means that probably about 90% of the time, we operate as a fused whole of all parts of our system that we call Feathers, Fei, [irl name], or "the collective" depending on the setting and/or what flows better in text / conversation. This fused whole / collective is what you probably close to what you think of when you think of final fusion and us operating as a "singlet".
The remaining 10% or so are times when we actively choose to operate as individual parts / a specific part separate from the collective; most often this is either to 1) enjoy something in a specific way that a specific part does 2) explore a concept, topic, situation, interaction, event, etc from a specific lens or a diversity of lenses and engage in discourse with ourselves because we find that fun and 3) to assist in trauma processing. (See FAQ 1 below)
And so we've spent the past year? two? three? in a state of functional multiplicity then this weird hybrid of alternating between functional multiplicity and fully fused, and then almost a year of being a fused whole most of our time. We've become extremely resilient and very stable and most of our trauma processing and therapy goals have been explicitly about self improvement and reclaiming the last tight knots of trauma that we still struggle with. We have gained a shit ton of coping skills, self sufficiency, and honestly most of our days are a 8/10 if not better.
That said, even though we are fully fused, that doesn't mean we are perfectly integrated. While we have very very low dissociation / dissociative symptoms and access to all parts of ourselves without experiencing much dissociation, not all parts of ourselves has been fully processed and not all of our parts have found their niche in our fused whole. This also makes it so those parts are MUCH more prone to both being interested in and actively presenting as independent parts from the collective. (See FAQ 2 below)
Historically, our system that is polyfragmented has had one half / side of our overall system that has explicitly refused to engage with life which we respect through our recovery. (No I will not explain any questions on that being unhealthy, its not your place to judge.) We actually managed to reach full fusion without interacting much with those parts beyond through a liason (ie Lin). Because those part had a minimal role in our recovery and development of a fused self, those parts are unevenly integrated and repressented in our fused whole.
Thus, while Feathers / the collective is a fused whole of our entire system, Feathers / the collective is EXTREMELY biased in favor of the "main system" that has been running this blog since like 2018. By all means this is absolutely a sustainable place for us to be in; however, as we've been working in EMDR we've been hitting stuck points rooted in parts in the other side of the system that are harder to navigate and challenge because those parts are not as well integrated as the other parts and thus are less open to discussion and are more rigid. Those parts still operate more as explicit ANPs and EPs (think primary stuctural dissociation) when approached about trauma associated with those parts and it's been a challenge.
Adding on that those parts have been made more aware more often of life continuing forward, we've actually heard expressed interest in potentially "trying again" and exploring themselves as parts, which is an AMAZING win and step for our system. Those parts struggle a lot more than parts of the main system and have much less positive experiences than even some of the "most traumatized" parts in the main system, so even the most ANP part we consider to need a lot of trauma sensitive support.
Lin, who has worked with these parts the longest, has his Method of Doing Things with Heavily Traumatized Children in our system and a lot of that starts with letting those traumatized parts explore the world a their own pace and get used to being Not Triggered AND present and after thinking about it we decided the best way to let those parts explore themselves, explore their world, explore themselves in relation to other versions of themselves, would be to allow that whole side system to do EVERYTHING our side did, but in their own way.
And so we are doing what we jokingly call DID NG+ or DID Season 2, where we are letting all those parts - whenever prominent or present - express and engage in the world as themselves, independent of the collective but not without the collective there. (See FAQ 3 below)
And so our system is fully fused, frequently operates as a fused whole still about 85-90% of our day, AND has a bunch of parts showing up and posting on this blog as independent selves / parts because online spaces is their first place to explore and adjust to existing once again.
Our main system / overall collective honestly doesn't have too much to say on this blog much anymore because plurality and DID just isn't that interesting, relevant, or something we really experience too much anymore; however some of our parts are going to be exploring the DID experience somewhat again and a lot of those parts have a more genuine and personal interest in the topic as it is relevant to them.
Thus, for the most part, we are kind of passing the torch of DID related topics and discussion to those parts. Feathers and the collective and all those parts that have run this blog are 100% here, but its very likely the amount of DID/plurality related posts we make as a collective will likely be SWAMPED out by the more-motivated to talk about DID stuff side system. (See FAQ 4)
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FAQs beneath the cut.