#pluralclutch rambles

[clutching-our-plurals]

Shout out to all the kids who always picked shape-shifting as their hypothetical power growing up and assumed it was for gender affirmation but now realize it was also a plurality thing.

[clutching-our-plurals]

I just saw something really interesting about system members who have different physical disabilities to the host body.

Seems... normal, to me, with a bit of thought, I suppose. I think it would be very odd for an able bodied person to have a disabled alter, but it makes sense for disabled folks to.

I admit I did find it a bit of a strange thought upon first seeing it, because we're kinda the opposite? Even though our body is cripple³ none of us, internally, are disabled. We all walk and move normally as things are, hell, some of us have wings and one of us shapeshifts. It makes sense, because our disabilities are progressive and we didn't really struggle with them in childhood and early adolescence when we would've formed, and we haven't really had anyone split in a long time to my knowledge? So I feel like that tracks given the circumstances.

I'm curious though, for my fellow disabled plurals, do your headmates share the body's disabilit(y)/(ies)? Do they have any disabilities the body doesn't have? What're your experiences with this?

[clutching-our-plurals]

I just saw a post answering the ask "what are some things to keep in mind when becoming a system?" And then I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole looking at the blog that answered that post.

I wanna hear some outside opinions on this, it's sharing time boys. How do people feel about willow/Tulpa blogs?

Me? I think encouraging people to essentially role-play a mental disorder is a bad idea. I suppose in the format of a long held religious practice, something like this would not bother me, but these people likely aren't stewards of a culture handed down through generations. It's much more probable that they saw an idea on the internet and jumped into it. It seems misguided to call that culture.

All in all, It seems like a very unhealthy practice to... ultimately, lie to yourself about what's going on in your head. The equivalent of any plural treating themselves as a singlet.

I feel like it also works off of this sort of misconstrued idea that systems form because one thing breaks into many, which Isn't... entirely right? Given what we know about the brain and development.

Systems don't become systems, not like one object breaking into pieces of the same object. It's more like the formation of stars. You have all the ingredients floating around in early childhood, and under the correct conditions as you move into early adolescence, those ingredients should form one star. Under different conditions, more chaotic ones, this space dust may form many stars, instead of one. That's WHY systems only form in this early stage of development, because the "one star" isn't developed yet. You're still just space dust.

It's not really splitting or breaking something already made or whole, it's forming something new. There never was a whole. If you are plural, you have never really had one total identity state, only the sort of ingredients to make one. Even if you reach final fusion, you won't have the same neural makeup as a singlet. To some degree, you'll always be you, all of you. This time, you'll just be all of you together. Likewise, one star (for the sake of this analogy) will not split into two once it is formed. It is just one star for as long as it is a star. This theory of formation makes a lot more sense than theories where there is originally a whole that fractures, the latter idea is much less consistent with current leading theories on the formation of memory, personality, and childhood development.

[clutching-our-plurals]

Okay, very genuine questions here, for my systems who post a lot of information about their parts!

We are still newer to more interactive system spaces, and I see many systems who post a lot of personal information about their alters.

Stuff like names, ages, all that stuff. Even who is fronting at any and every given time that they post, whether with emojis or tags for whoever is fronting, or even signing off with their names. Or long intro posts about who all everyone is. It seems fairly common to me. We don't really do that. We don't often share names or ages, rarely even "system roles." Especially online, even in designated spaces.

So, I'm genuinely curious, for my systems that do post a lot of personal information about their parts:

What is the appeal of posting such personal things?

A more specific one for those who use emojis or name sign-offs in post, equally genuine and respectfully curious:

What is the appeal of letting people know who's fronting all the time?

Like, no shade, at all. I just really am very curious and I want to understand why someone might do that. Like, from a very genuine place of not understanding and wanting to understand just to... understand!

Oh, and a question to my fellow systems who do NOT share their information like this:

Why do you personally prefer not to share more information about your parts?

Our answer to that last question 👇

We don't always know who's fronting, we don't entirely know who all is in our head. So, that's one of the reasons we don't post much about this. We also have a very cautious frontmaster-

(it's what I've taken to calling her, but the term for what she is, it's kinda been coined as gatekeeper? But I think that sounds a little mean.)

And she doesn't really approve of us sharing information about our parts with just anyone. Not even people in our lives that we, or I, really love and trust and want to know. So, that's another reason.

We also don't have much of a headspace anymore, and still struggle with intersystem communication.

[clutching-our-plurals]

Hey fellow plurals, are you up to sharing some experiences?

We're curious! How did you first become aware of your system?

If that's too vague, what first caused you to suspect something was up? And what was the last straw where you were like "oh we can't just ignore this"? If you had a moment like that.

[clutching-our-plurals]

Hi, this isn’t intended as a hate ask, but I’m genuinely finding it hard to figure out what your stance on endos is. Your entire blog seems to be based around the word plural, which is frequently used by endos. But in your introduction post you tag something along the lines of “I don’t support endos”.

Basically… are you trying to reclaim plural from endos? And what do you mean by “plurality is a spectrum”?

I have a very long winded post that well and truly details my stance on endos, you can prolly find that pretty easily if you look up the tag "endo" on my page, or if you scroll down a little ways. Actually, I'll go ahead and find it, and link it HERE. (And a pretty unenthused bonus response here because... kids.)

The summary, though, is that I have a moral compass and moral rules that decide how I approach the whole thing.

1. I'm anti-harassment. If someone isn't doing something posing imminent harm? Leave them alone. I don't go looking for fights or issues. I will correct false information if I see it (because that can pose imminent harm), I will end a fight if someone else starts it.

2. I'm currently working towards my bachelor's in Psychology with a concentration in neuroscience. I don't support fake-claiming people, that shit is stupid. If you can't diagnose someone online (you can't) then you can't tell if they're lying either.

My formal stance, though? I do not believe the formation of systems without trauma is possible. The formation of endogenic systems is not supported by the majority of the scarce research we do have on disorders causing plurality. If that research changes, I'll be the first on board supporting the new consensus, but for now? No.

As for plurality being a spectrum, I'm talking about ALL CDDs. PDID, OSDD-1b, OSDD-1a, and DID. These disorders have varying symptoms, severities, and their biggest differences are in presentation of alters, whether they be fully formed or very blurry fuzzy barriers that are not quite fully different people.

Also, to my knowledge, plurality is hardly an endogenic term. The majority of traumagenic systems I know, follow, or am aware of, use it on and off. The word plural kind of goes hand in hand with a lot of the leading theories supporting traumagenic systems and discrediting endogenic ones right now.

So, to be plural is to well... be plural. It's in our name for the pun, and we use it very literally, to mean a group of alters/multiple people in one brain.

I hope this helped clarify. :) 👍

[clutching-our-plurals]

POV you're plural and you forget you're piloting someone else's meat suit and then you get jumpscared by a reflective surface:

[clutching-our-plurals]

Being plural but specifically that thing where you're saying something in response to someone, and then respond again about two seconds later with a wildly different statement and then realizing you're co-con.

(not very demure guys, not very covert)