Ok people give you shit for meds in mental health spaces but what about for when the med genuinely helps you, in like everything motivation, organization, finally kicking that shitty brain fog to the curb and remembering more than one thing at once for once. I’m so happy, like genuinely happy. This is different from my mania or depression. I don’t feel passive or like a watcher of my life, which I have felt since last July. It’s been so hard since then, and then some relationships fell through and honestly good riddance, it was adding to the stress. Guess I’m just an anti-social system person, whatever. I am introverted. I’m just happier by myself and with a handful of friends and my necessary connections of work, lab, and grad program, and my med has finally got me out of that damned funk.
There’s a lot of positivity around plurality online... connection, community, being more than one, and yeah, that matters, alot. But people don’t really talk about the really difficult parts and I'm not talking about living with it but rather what it’s like interacting with other plural people. Because the expectations can get… very unrealistic.
(More under the cut)
Like getting upset at someone for “forgetting” something and treating it like an excuse. That one bothers me. Because for a lot of us, especially if you deal with dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, etc., that’s not an excuse, that’s literally how your brain is functioning.
Memory isn’t a recording. It’s not a file you just pull up intact. It’s a process. When something happens, your brain has to encode it first, bits of sensory info, emotional context, meaning, spread across different regions (like the hippocampus helping organize it, the amygdala tagging emotional relevance, the prefrontal cortex storing pieces long-term). Then it gets consolidated, which is already messy and influenced by stress, attention, sleep, all of that. And when you recall something, you’re not replaying it, you’re reconstructing it. Every single time. Pulling fragments back together based on what’s accessible right then. That’s why memory changes, gaps happen, details shift.
Now add trauma into that, especially chronic or childhood trauma. The brain prioritizes survival over clean encoding. Dissociation can interrupt the encoding process entirely or split it off, so certain experiences don’t get integrated the same way. Retrieval gets harder too... things can feel blocked, fragmented, or just… not there. It’s not avoidance, it’s not intentional, it’s literally how the system adapted to keep functioning.
And even outside of trauma, if you’re plural, different parts are active at different times, experiencing different things, holding different information. Memory isn’t always shared evenly. One part might have a conversation, encode it, store it, and another part genuinely doesn’t have access to it. Not because they’re “forgetting,” but because they were never there for it in the first place, or it wasn’t encoded in a way that’s accessible to them. So yeah, from the outside it looks like “you forgot,” but internally it can be more like “that was never mine to remember.”
So when people get angry about boundaries being crossed and frame it as someone not caring or making excuses, it feels off. Because yeah, boundaries matter. Accountability matters. But also, people are going to mess up, especially when they’re learning each other. That’s just reality. Most of the time it’s not intentional. And when you’re juggling multiple parts, different triggers, inconsistent memory access, and shifting awareness, it’s actually hard to track every single thing, your own system, let alone someone else’s.
Not everyone has everything mapped out. Not everyone uses tracking apps. And even if they do, that doesn’t mean that information is accessible in the moment it matters.
I just think there’s this pressure in plural spaces to be perfectly self-aware, perfectly consistent, and perfectly accountable at all times and to extend that same expectation to everyone else. And when someone inevitably falls short, they get treated like they’re careless or making excuses.
I don’t think that’s fair.
You can care about someone and still mess up. You can respect someone and still not remember something. You can be trying and still be inconsistent.
Accountability matters. But if there’s no room for how memory actually works, especially in plural systems, then the expectations aren’t grounded in reality.
We must accept we are changed. We can't go back. That person is not the same and we will never be the same. To morun the supposed innocent self, but rather know the truth. We don't share everything but all hold enough to pretent we aren't a "we" but rather a "me".
A lot of the time you can't tell what or who you are cuz the parts of 'you' can overlap and change all the time.
Sometimes the inside goes quiet and you wonder if this is the 'real' you.
At times you act in a why that reminds you of someone and you question who 'you' are. What you are. And if you are even valid as a being, with thoughts, feelings, and memories.
When sometimes you know, and other times you don't know. You feel blocked and on the tip of your tongue. If you listen hard enough, the thoughts, you realize are not 'your' own.
You are awake but then you awake again. Your perception changes. Your thoughts shift. You realize that you forgot before and if you were even awake to begin with.
Then you see the task ahead and learn to blend in as you figure out who 'you' are. You learn the thoughts aren't you sometimes. That your items aren't always 'yours'. That the colors seem off and the sky seems impeding. But you know why. You have no words but this innate understanding.
You understand that your number one goal is to continue. Pretend that 'your' thoughts, opinions, logic, morals, loves and hates are constant. In that it makes since when you learn something new to change your mind. And that the memories are based in actuality.
You wake up and understand that you must brush your teeth, wash your face. Use that bag, pack this way, drive to here. But it is a list of instructions instead of 'your' life.
Once you realize this, a word, a diagram, an explanation of this feeling. You now know an answer but it becomes even harder. Now you are aware. Now you analyze. You must hid. For some reason you must hide. You need help, but you need to hide.
The worst part is remembering. Remaining. Awaking to the gray and realizing that this life is yours and not yours at the same time...
A lot of the time it feels like we are bad cuz some of use get really uncomfortable and kinda mad that fictives/factive exist? Especially popular ones.
We are aware that this isnt something anyone can control, lest of all the new person/creature that just formed or has been here for a decade or more.
But it would be really nice to see some discourse on what it is like to have non introject alters/parts. For us, it has always been this way. Sure, many of us are inspired by media and many literary tropes growning up. But not 'true' introjects. So it is really hard for us to understand.
But that shouldn't make us uncomfortable? Maybe it does in the sense that it is a reminder thst even in fringe groups that once again we are still 'too unique' to fit in. This insecurity obviously leaks out and others sense it. Cuz let's be honest, it turns people away rather then sitting down and asking why someone feels this rejection or uncomfortableness so strongly. I guess you can say it is a trigger for us?
