I was explaining to a singlet friend of mine how it can be possible to not know who's fronting and it got VERY long but I thought I'd post the ramble here!
TL;Dr: being a system involves experiencing a lot of selves whilst you think you're still just one, so it's kind of hard to tell who's who and sometimes you feel blurry and like you have no defining features like a name, gender, favourite colour or sense of how you look! And sometimes systemwide and individual dissociation makes that even more complicated.
Long rambly personal version from a message to a friend:
"Honestly it's understandable that you don't understand how it might feel to not know who's fronting! I'll try to explain as best I can because I can't sleep lol.
So the way being a system is explained to singlets is being multiple people in one body, so naturally you'd imagine multiple fully formed identities who are as sure of themselves as a singlet would be. Seeing as a singlet has never had to be like "hmm, am I still the same person I was yesterday?" There's a certain sense of sureness that comes along with identity, and never having to question it. But, as a system, there's the aspect of being multiple people yes, but there's also the historic experience of being a system whilst not knowing what a system is, and especially if you're a trauma based system there's probably a lot of dissociation and amnesia that's not specific to just who's fronting. So for example, we've spent a lot of our life having really inconsistent gender feelings, and chalked that up to being genderfluid. Now we know it's because we're a system, we use gender feelings to know who's fronting. But we weren't always aware of being a system so there was a long time we were just kind of vibing like that.
I'd say it's a very common system experience to sometimes have really clearly defined states of yes, absolutely, this is Chris fronting, I am sure of my name and gender feelings and how I have felt in the past when I've been fronting. But sometimes, we won't have any specific feelings or memories. In cases like how we've been currently, we might be so dissociated and blurry that we can hardly remember meeting new people or one day to the next, and it makes it really hard to figure out how many people are fronting, if we've switched at all, etc.
Also, if one person is fronting, but they're experiencing a heavy amount of depersonalisation or derealization, they might have the same feeling of a lack of identity that a singlet might get if they were feeling the same depersonalisation!
Sorry that this got long but I think it's a really interesting idea that once you realise a "self" is not always as simple as one person in one body, is raises questions of what even is a distinct self? Is it made up of current feelings about who you are, and what you remember about the past? For systems, that might get very inconsistent. And also, there's something called being "monoconcious". So, many systems ARENT monoconcious which means each headmate has their own conciousness, and might be able to remember their time in the inner world/headspace, and feel like they're waking up when they switch to the front. But some systems, like us are monoconcious, which means we all share the same conciousness. Switching to the front can feel much more like "becoming" a headmate rather than being someone who's switching in, because there's an almost constant linear awareness and shared memory whilst it's happening. So especially if memories are shared between headmates, it can be hard to distinguish if that's your memory or someone else's, your feelings or someone else's, and you might have defining features that help you figure out you are you, a specific headmate. But those defining features, like gender feelings, favourite colour, or a sense of how you look, will vary in how aware you are of them. Especially if you think about how a lot of did systems say what their system status achieved for much of their life was hiding past trauma from them, it makes sense that they have a blurry and messily-defined existence instead of a clean cut, definitely knowing who's fronting one— otherwise they'd probably notice they were multiple people a lot faster haha
I'm sorry this got so so long!!!"
Disclaimer: I might not have defined monoconcious properly, this is all based on my personal understanding and me trying to explain stuff to a singlet pal who's a great ally!
