#evoli.txt

[the-indigo-symphony]

"you make being plural your entire personality" incorrect! I make being plural the entirety of my personalities. Can't forget the very basics of what it means to be plural smh smh

[the-indigo-symphony]

Btw the fakeclaimers and exclusionists won't tell you this but it can be a very important step of healing to just. Not care all that much when you get new system members. You don't have to be all gung-ho about it – I myself get a little bothered because I stress about getting newcomers profiles before they switch out to who knows where – but also don't, like, beat yourself up for it. Yeah, your system got someone new. Maybe a lot of someones. It's fine. This isn't a moral failure. You haven't started any apocalypses. And on that note, you don't have to avoid that cool thing you think you might be into because you're worried about getting introjects from it, or whatever. Shit happens, systems grow, and we all march on anyway.

I suspect this sort of attitude comes from the idea (whether subconscious or not) that having sysmates is bad, and thus having more sysmates = even worse. This is not true. You are not a bad person or system just because you got some new members. You are not necessarily "unhealthy" or "sick" just for getting someone new, or because you're a large system (and even if it did mean that, "unhealthy" does not mean "immoral" or "should hate themselves"). Sometimes there can be problems involved with gaining new sysmates! This is true! But what isn't true is the underlying sentiment that being "very" plural is bad, or that a system growing in member count is this horrible, awful thing. Throw out your internalized pluralphobia. I repeat: throw out your internalized pluralphobia. It's completely and totally fine to gain new system members, and it's completely and totally fine to be a large system. This attitude does nothing but reinforce the idea that being plural – or at the very least, having perfectly natural and normal plural experiences – are inherently wrong and must be avoided at all costs (and when they can't be, they must be complained about so everyone knows they're bad; that it's bad to be plural and have plural experiences).

Also, on a related note – these kinds of sentiments can very easily cause those new system members to feel like they're the problem. Please, if you're the type to get frustrated or annoyed when you get new members for whatever reason, let them know it's not their fault. Don't make them feel like a chore or a mistake or anything else negative. Don't leave those thoughts to fester. Don't cause a rift in your system just because you wanted to join in with the common system joke of hating to get new sysmates. Again, you don't have to suddenly stop being frustrated with the problems that increasing in member count may cause, but do not take that frustration out on your new members, and do not make them feel like a problem. Give them some room to figure themselves out, and show them support as they learn and grow into themselves. Have a talk with them, if you can. It's not their fault that their entrance into your system interrupted your tempo. You can find a new balance together.

(And, btw, that bit about causing others to feel like they're a problem also goes for the implications of your words towards large systems. It feels very estranging and uncomfortable to see so many folks complaining about getting new headmates and implying that it would be wrong of them to not do everything in their power to make sure they don't get any new introjects when we're a polyfragmented system who grows at the drop of a hat. I'm sure We're not the only large system who feels this way, either. Your jokes aren't made in a vacuum; other systems can see them.)

I am making an executive decision here to welcome each and every one of my new selves. I am annoyed to all hell and back with our amnesia and executive function problems keeping us from getting caught up on member profiles, but that's not the fault of anyone who moves in, and I'm not going to wallow in anguish over how our system operates and its tendency to throw new selves at us at the drop of a hat. I'm not going to beat myselves up when there's no good reason to. That's just doing my DID's work for it.

Gaining new system members isn't a crime. You can be neutral or even positive about it. Please don't make your new system members feel unwelcome, and please don't let internalized pluralphobia snowball into a pattern of self-hate. It's fine to be a system, it's fine to gain new system members, and it's fine to find these things not just "fine", but an enjoyable and positive part of life.

[the-indigo-symphony]

A common way to fakeclaim systems is to claim their plurality is "just psychosis" but like. Psychotic experiences and plural experiences can overlap enough that it really doesn't matter sometimes. Changes in identity due to switches and changes in identity due to delusions are not always all that different. Feeling like the world isn't real due to psychosis is not always all that different from feeling like the world isn't real due to a dissociative disorder. Sometimes people interpret their psychosis through a plural lens and it works fine for them. Treatments for voice hearing if you have psychosis can look very similar to treatments for voice hearing if you have a dissociative disorder. Some speculate psychosis is even based in dissociation, just like most plurality appears to be. Whether a person is experiencing psychosis or plurality is really not as big of a deal as some people make it out to be, and anyway, there's plenty of overlap between the two.

I'm much more interested in what we have in common and how we can help each other out than in trying to set up strict boundaries between our communities and pretending everyone and every experience can be neatly sorted into one or the other. Judging others in this way is not only incredibly unproductive, it completely ignores and erases the overlap and shared experiences we have. Being similar to psychotic folk is not a bad thing. Having similar experiences to psychotic folk is not a bad thing. I refuse to be insulted by the accusation that my experiences are too similar to that of a community that has been nothing but kind to me.

Sometimes someone's plurality is psychosis or is from psychosis and that makes them no less plural. Peace and joy to all psychotic systems everywhere, whether your psychosis is intertwined with your plurality or not. We are holding hands as we flip off the fakeclaimers and disableists.

[the-indigo-symphony]

Plural headcanon: Trixie from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is an egg carton (system who hasn't discovered their plurality yet) and the reason she almost always speaks about herself in third person is because it's more comfortable to her than using first-person pronouns like "I" or "me". She doesn't know why, though, so she just writes it off as part of her stage persona. (Speaking of, someone's gotta tell her that stage personas can't usually talk back to you in your head.)

[the-indigo-symphony]

I made that shitpost about our plurality being the entirety of my-our personality as a joke, but like, on a serious note, yes, being plural affects every aspect of my life and personality.

What are my hobbies? Depends on the alter, but most of us enjoy doing things together or discussing our plurality; playing video games involves talking to each other, watching YouTube videos involves talking to each other, cooking involves talking to each other, etcetera. Every hobby you could conceive of is accompanied by internal commentary and discussion, to say nothing of how talkative we can get when we learn something new about our plurality. Whether we choose to tell you about it or not is a separate matter. And again, what hobbies we engage in depend on who is fronting – not all of us play video games, not all of us watch YouTube videos, not all of us cook beyond the basics needed to not starve. (And some of us can't cook at all!)

What do I do for work? Well, a couple different things. We do joint retail and restaurant work – don't ask me how that works, I'm not the one who fronts for that job. Seriously, if anyone else switches in during a shift, Silver bats them out of front in an instant, haha. We also work in childcare – what? No, I barely remember the names and ages of the children we look after. Other headmates in my system have that covered. But we're all pretty good at writing and editing save for those who especially struggle with language, so I can tell you about this upcoming book series we've been brought on to help with! It's alright, but occasionally the plot holes had us ranting at each other... What? I just told you we talk to each other about everything, of course we're going to talk to each other about – you know what, forget it. We're trying to focus on school anyway. Do you want to hear about our extensive note-taking system? We devised it to account for our memory issues!

What's my favorite color? Orange! ... Or, well, that's what we've decided is our collective answer. It actually depends on who in this system you're asking. Are you asking us collectively, or –

Hey! Don't get mad at me! You're the one who asked!

... and on and on and on. Yes, being plural affects the entirety of my life. It turns out that something that affects your memory, identity, and life decisions (both major and minor) is going to impact a lot and be very important to you! Who could have guessed? /(sarcasm) To anyone else out there who worries about "making plurality the entirety of your personality" – don't stress about it. It's only natural for something like this to crop up time and time again in your life, or to come up again and again in conversation. Plurality is something that can heavily affect someone's personality – you're not a bad person for showing that.

[the-indigo-symphony]

It's been long enough since I've seen any posts about it that I feel the need to remind people of this term's existence, considering how useful it's been to so many.

A pluriship, sometimes spelled (perhaps mistakenly so) as plurship, is a term for a relationship between system members – namely, a relationship that is affected or shaped by how those in it are part of the same system. Exactly how the relationship is shaped by this factor will vary – it's a vague term in that way, much the same way "queerplatonic" is vague and up to those within the relationship to define the specifics of it – but pretty much all would agree that pluriships have something that sets them apart when compared to relationships with those outside the system. Pluri- can also be used as a prefix for other types of relationship to be more specific, such as plurifamilial (a familial relationship that is uniquely affected by how those in it are part of the same system).

Pluriships can come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes a relationship is a pluriship due to sharing emotions and memories. Sometimes a relationship is a pluriship due to the complex vulnerability and trust between system members. It's really up to those within the relationship to decide what makes their pluriship a pluriship – assuming they care to define those parts of their relationship at all.

Relationships between system members can be complicated, and this term allows for acknowledgement of that as well as the unique relationships system members can have with each other precisely due to being system members. We use it – or at least the idea of it – for a good amount of our own internal relationships, and it used to be a much more common term to see around. With how the system community has grown and changed over the past few years, I figured a lot of systems newer to the scene might appreciate the tip that they're not alone in having system relationships that are unique in this way, and that there's an entire term out there to describe it.

I hope others find this useful!

[the-indigo-symphony]

System Ramble: reading, inner/internal voices, and our brain's continuous attempts to understand the world around us

[PT: System Ramble: reading, internal voices, and our brain's continuous attempts to understand the world around us / end PT]

I'll probably have to expand on this at some other point because it ties into how we feel our plurality is a fundamental part of how we process the world (and that deserves its own essay), but there's something interesting that happens when we read that has to do with our system.

Have you ever seen those posts that talk about "the little voice in your head" that you get whenever you read something? A lot of people are able to hear the words they read being "spoken" in their head as they read them. A lot describe the voice reading "out loud" in their brain as either being their own voice or some detached voice without anything more to it, but for us...

... it's closer to one of us reading out loud to the rest of us.

As we write this post, for example, we can identify the headmate in front who's taken on the role of the "voice" reading each word. There's no simpler way to describe it – he's the one reading out each word to the rest of us, and we can hear his own inflections and other verbal quirks as he reads. We've recently begun trying to consciously pass the role of this "inner voice" around, and we can definitely hear a change depending on who's reading, even if it's the exact same text. Eddie has a deeper voice, and reads much slower, giving the impression of a grandpa reading a book by the fire. Danny, by comparison, has a higher voice, reads quicker, and is often audibly annoyed when he has to reread something. It's a very interesting thing to experiment with.

Based on these experiments, acting as this "inner voice" is sort of like a very flexible system role for us, one we naturally fall into or out of most of the time, but can occasionally choose (which is, funnily enough, very similar to how our switches function). This phenomenon happens automatically with most texts we read, and may be part of the reason we have so many introjects; our brain may be simply creating the most fitting "voice" for what we read as it sees the need, which is frequently either the author, or a character in the text. But regardless of the reason, it's a very helpful tool for figuring out who's in front or discovering new headmates, as we have a strong sense for whoever it is that's reading at any given time, and find it especially easy to visualize a headmate whenever they're taking on this role.

On rare occasions where this doesn't happen, we often have trouble absorbing the information we read. It just doesn't stick in the same way one (or more) of us reading to the others does. Which is definitely a con; if it weren't so automatic for us and thus rarely a problem (especially now that we've identified what's going on), we'd definitely be counting it as one of the ways our DID disables us. It's not too different from how it becomes difficult to impossible to absorb information when we're too dissociated, after all. (But then, that raises a question: is the reason we can't absorb text when too dissociated because the dissociation is keeping us from fulfilling this role? Food for thought.)

This isn't the only way in which we utilize our plurality in order to process and absorb information; we also have various system members we call "captioners" whose job it is to make it easier to understand what we hear or see by creating visuals based on this sensory input. We haven't tried having these two roles active at the same time – mainly because I think it would just overload our brain with too much to keep track of and any attempts would fizzle out – but it's an interesting idea for something to experiment with in the future. The parallels are interesting, anyway, especially with how they seem to indicate that our plurality is fundamental to how we process the world and what kinds of choices our brain made when creating us. Perhaps it's all part of our brain's attempt to cope with its own dissociative disorder by creating work-arounds for the problems dissociation can cause, but... I feel like there's more to it than that. The question is where to look for answers (and if the answers are something we should be unpacking just yet).

That brings me back to the beginning. It's interesting to see how our plurality functions almost like a neurotype in some ways – I don't know if I'd call it that, but I can see some parallels in how others talk about them with how plurality functions in our brain. One day, I hope to write a collection of all the different ways our plurality affects us like this, as a sort of guide to our own processing and understanding of the world through a plural lens. For now, though, it's just interesting to think about how I'm now reading this post "out loud" to my headmates as I write it, and how my internal voice differs from those who have read it before me.

... Also, I'm just now realizing this system (no pun intended) works better when the fronter writing a text is also the headmate reading the text. Huh. That fits, somehow.

So, to recap: we get the most out of reading when we use our plurality to host what is essentially system storytime, our internal voices differ a lot more than we first thought they did, and it's interesting that our brain keeps making selves and roles just for helping us understand the world around us. Thanks for reading our ramble.

[the-indigo-symphony]

The Plural Association's conference for Plural Pride Day is coming up (July 20th)! This means that the Plural Association is hosting a virtual conference about plurality on July 20th to celebrate Plural Pride Day, with some community meetups and a presentation by Dr. Anna Rosenhauer – a plural doctor – about plural pride. Just as I did for the Plural Positivity World Conference, I have gone digging for the links to sign up for it, so that you all do not have to look for them yourself if you're interested.

Here is the link to their events page!

Here is the link to their airmeet page about this event specifically!

Here is the link to sign up for the event!

Here is the link to scholarships/vouchers for the event if you need one!

And since I got some questions about it last time, this is how signing up works:

You select a price for the ticket (add the scholarship here if you're using it)

Then you continue to the next page and fill out the information needed (note that if you go back to apply the ticket now, it will erase what you've filled out, so make sure you applied that scholarship before you write out anything!)

Once you're finished, you'll get an email with your ticket

By scrolling down the email, you'll see a link to enter the event. Right now, that link just takes you to the main page for the event, and asks if you want to set a reminder on your schedule for it.

When the event starts, just use that link to go to the page and welcome yourself into the event!

I hope this helps anyone interested in this event! And I hope all attendees have a fun time!