Starfall Haven

I wanted to use what ‘reach’ I may have here to share the Carolina Wildlife Center’s urgent plea for donations. If they are unable to raise $75,000 to cover ongoing and future care of their wildlife patients, the center will have to close July 20th, 2026. The services provided by CWC to the community are incredibly valuable, and without them, many wild animals will suffer without the care they need.

Original post

Hi, fellow "my parents are going to decide that my existence is a form of psychosis and try to force me into treatment that I don't want" situationers. We made the mistake of telling them anyway. It went almost as badly as we expected. Here's my advice:

Sometimes the Closet is Safer.

You don't have to tell people. It doesn't matter if they're family, friends, partners, or whoever else. They don't have to know. They especially don't have to know if telling them would put you at risk of abuse, homelessness, incarceration, etc. If telling someone would hurt you, then don't tell them.

Depending on where you live and who you know, there can be a lot of pressure to be 100% honest with people about who you are and how you experience life. This pressure can get more intense when it comes to being open with friends, family, and other close people.

It doesn't help that some social circles seem to believe that you must tell everyone about all of your identity labels with 100% accuracy immediately upon discovering them- if you're around those circles often, then it might seem impossible or even immoral to hide something about yourself from friends or family. (If you are in these circles, then it might also be worth considering what you think is important to keep private; you get to decide that for yourselves. Your friends don't decide what they "deserve" to know about you. You do.)

The truth is that sometimes, the risks of sharing information just aren't worth it for someone's situation. It's okay not to tell someone about your plurality, and carefully choosing which people you tell is often sensible.

This doesn't mean that you can't get your needs met, and it doesn't mean that you should deny anything that gets noticed. It just means that you don't have to explain it as plurality. There are a thousand ways to explain any given observation, and at least some of those explanations are going to be acceptable to a lot of people because a lot of common plural experiences still happen to singlets.

"Sometimes this is easy, and sometimes this is hard" doesn't need to be explained as two system members having different skillsets. Lots of people have some variability in how well they can use a skill. Ask any artist about their good and bad art days. Think about spoon theory's existence. People's skills fluctuate all the time, though they may fluctuate a bit less sharply on average.

"My memory is bad" doesn't need a diagnosis or label to answer someone's questions about why you forgot an appointment. A bad memory is reason enough. A lot of people have bad memories. Bonus: the older you get, the better this answer becomes.

(Some people can be a bit rude if you don't also say that you're at least trying to support your own memory with a calendar or other reminder system, but a mildly annoyed person is a lot easier to deal with than one who thinks that you need to be fixed.)

Honestly, you don't even have to give people an explanation in all cases. Tell someone what you need from them, and the fact that you need it can sometimes be explanation enough. "I need XYZ supports. Can we make that happen?"

TL;DR:

You don't have to tell anyone that you're plural. There is almost always another way to explain what's happening or get someone to change their behavior around you.

Example Situations:

Some questions and problems come up more than others. We've got a few answers on speed dial for these situations, so we're listing a few here as example scripts.

This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.

I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this