The Plural Association Grassroots Nonprofit @thepluralassociation - Tumblr Blog

Just a little promotional piece today to bring awareness to an upcoming event regarding the plural community. We are going to be presenting again (we did once before) and are really excited about it and wanted to share with y'all. We are going to be giving a presentation on webcomics, give tips on how to get started, and hopefully inspire some of you to start telling your own stories, because we need more voices in our community, and nobody can tell your story like you! In addition to us there are going to be many other presenters (3 days worth!) talking about all sorts of things. There will be plenty to watch and discuss. Like I said in the comic, this is the 5th annual Plural Positivity World Conference, so there are plenty of videos to go over already while we get ready for the next one. Youtube.com/Pluralevents is the official channel, where you can find many videos from past presentations. Tickets for this year's conference are available on PowertothePlurals.com/PPWC . We will be in the live chat during our presentation so feel free to say hi. We are so excited and hope to see some of you there!

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Panel 1: Jak is looking at a calendar, specifically the month of May. Kyra is standing behind him as he says, "Yay! Only a few more weeks!" She asks, "A few weeks? Until what?" and he responds "The Plural Positivity World Conference!" She says "That's the online event where systems come together to discuss a variety of topics, no?" and he responds "That's right, it's the 5th annual one so it's gonna be great!"

Panel 2: Jak and Kyra are in talking poses. Jak goes first by saying "I'm both excited and nervous for our. presentation about How to start your own system based webcomics. Being on camera is always scary, but I'm glad I did." Kyra says "I'm excited to be in live chat during and after our presentation chatting with viewers and answering questions. I love that the P.P.W.C is set up so the audience can interact with the presenters, it really builds community."

Panel 3: Atom has now joined in, Jak and Kyra watch as he says "I'm looking forward to watching all the presentations, the event is 3 days long so there will be so much to watch, learn, and discuss. Systems from all walks of life getting together to share their experiences really shows us that we are never as alone as we feel; I think a lot of people can really benefit from a sense of community."

Panel 4: Jak is waving them both forward as they walk, he says "Well it doesn't start until MAY 19th so we have some time. Let's get pumped by watching some past events by searching "Plural Events" on youtube, and then we'll reserve our tickets on Powertotheplurals.com/PPWC " Kyra says "Yay!" and Atom says "Let's do it!"

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thepluralassociation

Free tickets available! https://powertotheplurals.com/ppwc

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multiplicity-positivity

Re: your tags about TPA. What harmful beliefs do they have around DID/OSDD and recovery? We're still relatively new when it comes to them and we want to be aware.

*deep breath* hoo boy. so this answer comes from our personal opinion from what we understand about tpa. we’re not experts and we don’t know them personally. you’re welcome to look into their cause and come to your own conclusions. that being said:

it’s definitely debated a lot, and we might get a lot of backlash for saying this, but we believe the plural association does not have the best interests of the plural community at heart. in a search to find out what they actually do at all, it seems like the big things are setting up the plural positivity world conference (that we boosted back in july, it’s basically a rival conference to the isstd conference) and setting up the warmline which we had reblogged that post about. note that as of writing this, the warmline still is not up and functioning. we’re not sure if or when that will happen. a quick look at their website shows a lot of exciting buzzwords “empowering,” “resources,” “community,” etc… but it does appear that all links lead back to the subscription-based community you can join, the warmline, which has been in development for 4-5 years now, and a handful of blog posts written by the stronghold system (and one by the alexandrite system) many of which containing personal experiences framed as absolute truths.

one thing we know about tpa, is they have pulled individual statistics while purposely withholding context in order to make these numbers align with their views multiple times. you can read about one example of this in this discussion post by system speak where they debunked a few claims made by the stronghold system (the main system behind tpa) on the system speak podcast, particularly regarding integration and the theory of structural dissociation. this is where we first learned of tpa’s harmful, incorrect ideas about did/osdd and what recovery means for these individuals, and what our tag was referencing specifically.

you can check out another example in this tweet which was referenced in the post we had reblogged, where tpa claims 62% of their survey respondents indicated that they felt that did/osdd was not understood by crisis hotlines, when the actual statistic is 62% of 60% (since 40% of respondents had never used a hotline), totaling closer to 36% of respondents. we absolutely recommend checking out the full survey results here, so you can see the context for yourself.

overall, we weren’t impressed with their website. it asks for money on almost every page, without disclosing clearly and specifically how that money is used besides “empowering plurals.” community access is behind a subscription paywall, and the free resources and options they offer are opinionated and sparse. after spending time on their website, we believe tpa serves the functions of a blog and a paid service (like patreon, in a way). it doesn’t seem to function like many other nonprofits we know of, which actively do fieldwork with goals of improving the lives of others, yield real, tangible results, and don’t offer more paid services than free ones. it honestly just looks like a place you can go to donate to the stronghold system personally.

this is what we believe after taking a closer look at tpa, who they are, and how they function. again, what we’ve expressed here is our opinion, and we’ve included hyperlinks throughout the post. we definitely encourage you to take a look for yourself and come to your own conclusion. we’re not trying to spread misinfo or sway you one way or the other - we’re just providing our thoughts.

there’s even more we could say here, but this post has gotten long enough. we are happy to continue this discussion with anyone else who chooses - the stronghold system has a big presence in the plural community, and we understand we may not have the complete picture as to who they are and how they run their business (tpa). i’m sorry this post got so long - i honestly do feel a bit betrayed by tpa after doing some research for this response and realizing that their site may actually just be a grift. again, please, please do your own reading and research (you can start with the links we’ve provided) and come to your own conclusions. we don’t have to agree here. we just want to look out for each other!

🐢 kip and 💫 parker

thepluralassociation

''The Plural Association was founded in February 2020 and is a grassroots, peer & volunteer-led Nonprofit.

The Stronghold System proudly volunteers for The Plural Association Nonprofit.''

Power to the Plurals:

The Power to the Plurals blog and YouTube channel were started in 2017 and hence most older resources on the Power to the Plurals website are created by The Stronghold System, but actually there are 6 different authors who have published on Power to the Plurals so far and 5 others who have translated articles into other languages!

The website consists of over 50 free articles and various resources, including the free allies of Plurals - 70-page magazine, the Plural spectrum tool, get to know your headmates list - translated in 5 different languages, 50 videos and much more. All articles, videos and resources on the Power to the Plurals website are free! (And yes we run Plural advertisement, including our own, on there.)

The Plural Warmline:

The Plural Warmline has not been in development for 4-5 years! The Plural Association nonprofit was founded in February 2020. Since that time, in regards to the warmline; we have defined our warmline plans, we have found volunteers, fundraised the software needed to accept calls, were granted 80.000 free text messages, created the website, had a licensed therapist with DID create a warmline training and trained our warmline volunteers.

We are proudly fully community funded and we need 6 months of operational costs to open and guarantee continuation of service, which includes a hired therapist to support our volunteers and to provide continued education. It's not legal (in the Netherlands) to hire someone without having 6 months of pay for them upfront and it seems like a bad business move to open The Plural Warmline before we can financially carry it long term, hence we fundraise donations, organize paid events, and advertise. (But we got a big advertisement grand, so donation money isn't going there!)

Empowerment & other nonprofit goals:

The Plural Association provides empowerment through live events, articles, videos, resources and education. A translation of our NINE legally documented goals and how we aim to achieve them, can be found here.

We have organized 7 public conference events since founding the nonprofit, including the annual Plural Positivity World Conference (since 2022 also in French and all 90+ sessions can be found for free forever, on the Plural Events Youtube channel) and the very first OSDD-specific live event, DID awareness day events, Plural Acceptance Week and Plural Pride events, and more, and given over 900 scholarships to those events.

We have also coordinated over 100 weekly moderated text chats and brought together Plurals for moderated virtual community meetups over 25 times.

Paid events:

We have never denied anyone who applied for a scholarship and for most events we have $0 tickets readily available, no applications needed at all. We believe that as a community, we can ensure everyone can get access and no one should have to be excluded, especially not on financial grounds.

For paid events we provide event tickets via a sliding scale, starting at $5 or $10 and refuse to organize events that costs hundreds of dollars to attend, like most, if not all other DID/OSDD/Plural conferences. (Also those run by other nonprofits, who most often have limited or no scholarships available.) And we offer scholarships for all these events, no one gets excluded or left behind, especially not based on financial status.

Our paid all-inclusive community:

Our private community is the cheapest paid community for Plurals out there (AFAIK) works with a sliding scale pricing system and it’s all inclusive; all our members get free access to all our paid and public events, our courses, moderated weekly group text chats and moderated monthly virtual meetups, the 25 different (support) groups and more. Each paid membership includes one or more scholarships.

Anyone Plural (no matter the label they use) can apply for a scholarship and we gladly welcome them to join. (Just email us at contact @ thepluralassociation.org ) We also offer a free trial btw.

Field outreach & offline work:

Our nonprofit was founded 2 weeks before the Covid-19 lockdowns started in the Netherlands. This has limited our options for offline work. We have joined 3 protests in the Netherlands, one for Transgender care, as voice hearing is a contraindication in the Netherlands for transcare and two others for better mental health care in the Netherlands at the Dutch parliament, where volunteers of the nonprofit talked with every politician that showed up, to explain DID, OSDD & Plurality to them, to talk about prevention and to demand better health care specifically for those with comorbid diagnosis and/or survivors of early childhood trauma.

Volunteer-led:

The Plural Association was founded in February 2020 and is a grassroots, peer and volunteer-led Nonprofit. It consists out of an international volunteer team, which meets weekly and collaborates on projects, events, community engagement, fundraising, volunteer management and much more.

The Stronghold System, who founded the nonprofit, also proudly volunteers for The Plural Association Nonprofit and our legal papers state that the directors receive no remuneration for their work.

Legal protections:

There are more legal protections as a nonprofit under Dutch law and we have ensured to implement all of them to ensure the protection of the Plural community at large and avoid becoming part of the nonprofit industrial complex. You can read more about this on our website, images of our legal documentation are included on that page.

moon-and-firefly-syscourse

Why the tpa "warmline/hotline" is harmful- to everyone.

if you aren't yet aware- the "tpa", or "the plural association" is trying to gain funding to start a hotline by plural people for plural people. this, in short, is a bad, BAD idea.

very very first and foremost, they are NOT TRAINED. and while im sure many of their volunteers mean well and genuinely do want to help, well meaning can only go so far. they aren't trained like crisis professionals from say, 988 (the USA national suicide hotline) or the trevor project- (a crisis line for lgbtq+ people) who are trained on what to do in dangerous situations and KNOW what to say in order to de-escalate, not continue to ramp up the issue. this is not to say that volunteers cant be helpful in certain times, even if they arent trained, but there is a great risk with untrained volunteers that they'll accidentally escalate the situation and be seriously dangerous because they simply arent trained for those kinds of situations.

second- they are plainly twisting data to serve their goal and manipulating numbers to make their cause seem way more necessary than it is. in a wonderful post by @sysmedsaresexist (do let me know if you want me to untag you), theyve pointed out that their statistic that "62.58% of survey respondents indicated that they felt that DID/OSDD was not understood by crisis or hotline providers they have been provided with" was out of 60% of responders- meaning out of 60% of those 100% of participants, 62.58% said "no, did/osdd was not understood- which brings the total tally of those participants who said did/osdd was not understood to 37%. now that sounds a lot less impressive than 62%, doesnt it? thats purposeful. it makes their idea sound a lot more "noble", and while i would LOVE to have a hotline for people with DID/OSDD, i want a hotline with TRAINED VOLUNTEERS/PROFESSIONALS. without trained volunteers, there is a high risk for harm

link to SAS's post (go read!!)

yes, it's extremely frustrating that many suicide prevention lines dont know much about DID/OSDD, but making your own, untrained hotline is NOT the solution. many hotlines, though uneducated perhaps, can be very helpful for crisis- yes, even for people with DID/OSDD. dont just take your chances with untrained volunteers who may make the situation worse.

they claim that this hotline should be used before a full blown crisis- but unfortunately without trained volunteers and a proper system of training them, they might cause much more crisis's than they'll prevent.

if you are in crisis, please please please dont use their hotline- instead, here are some helpful numbers:

988: USA national suicide hotline

678-678: TrevorText- the text version of the trevor project. my personal favorite hotline, super super helpful and especially because it's for LGBTQ+ people.

866-488-7386: TrevorLifeline- the call line for the trevor project!

list of national suicide hotlines here

thanks for reading <3

thepluralassociation

''Our The Plural Warmline training consists of 40 hours minimum of supported self-guided and self-paced online training, listen-ins, role-plays and more.''

We train all our volunteers with warmline training, not hotline or crisisline training, because we aren't opening a crisisline. Our warmline training is mandatory and 40 hours long, like every other warmline training and it follows the same structure as other warmline training, was created by a licensed therapist with DID who has experience giving this kind of training, and also includes an additional training specifically about DID/OSDD/Plurality.

We are not opening a hotline, we are not opening a crisisline, we are opening a warmline. A warmline is an additional service people can reach out to before they reach a potential point of crisis. Crisislines or hotlines are (often local) and can refer to local crisis teams or hospitals; they also do sui risk assessments and if needed refer or send someone to your house.

We will not offer such a service, as we expect Plurals from all over the world to reach out to us, not just from a specific state or country. We also feel our volunteers, who are all peers, deserve a certain level of safety whilst volunteering, just as much as the community deserves to know what they can and can't expect from us.

Our amazing trained, peer-volunteers are there to listen to stories or worries from you or your headmate(s), to answer questions, to share about their own lived experiences - if asked. Or to help someone distract, to make someone feel less lonely with their Plurality, or support them in other ways. Which includes setting boundaries and providing someone with the phone number of a (local) crisisline. No where do we claim to be able to replace crisis or hotlines, we will provide an additional service that can coexist.

If you want to learn more about the difference between a warmline and a hotline, there is a great article by Nami. ''It's not a hotline, it's a 'warmline': It gives mental health help before a crisis heats up.''

If you are in the USA and looking for local and safe crisis services to reach out to, we recommend to visit https://donotcallthepolice.com

If you are looking for a generic warmline you can visit https://warmline.org

For more information about The Plural Association Nonprofit and The Plural Warmline, click here.

Screenshots below are from https://thepluralwarmline.org/volunteer

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