kiss your headmates goodnight

horny plural acceptance blog run by @wolf-paws and @thoughtform-gummy-worm

asks must be anonymous

asks should be fun stories, jokes, or advice requests - not vents or boasting

askers should read sys.guide first

asks should be short and self-contained

by request: no hypnokink, no system hopping or other magical thinking (genuine spirituality is ok), and go easy on the objectifying stuff (system roles, deliberate splitting, etc)

all nsfw posts are #plural nsft, kinks clearly tagged e.g. #ageplay #incest #cnc

i guess. im just wondering if this has happened to anyone else

hi anon.

this one's been in our inbox since september last year, coz we didn't really feel qualified to answer at the time, but we did think it deserved a good response.

we've been thinking and writing a bit about plural responsibility a fair bit lately, and the essay that's gonna come out of that is still a ways off, but i do think i have a perspective i can offer here now.

what i think it comes down to, inevitably, is what sort of thing you consider your system to be.

if you think of yourselves primarily as separate people, this is a question of getting along while sharing a body. maybe they misjudged your comforts and boundaries. maybe they feel unheard and are lashing out. you probably need to sit down and have a conversation about your boundaries and needs, or have someone external help mediate.

if you think of your system members as existing as parts of a larger psychology though, that response may be wrong. for some systems these experiences might be closer to intrusive thoughts, expressing a fear of the system through its members.

personally, when we experience panic spirals in one headmate about another's actions, it's rarely something that feels like one person against another, but instead an internal conflict between two desires or urges.

when a headmate experiences suicidal urges or negative thoughts about the system as a whole, it feels unhelpful for us to treat this like conflict between singlets. these might feel like actions taken by one of you against the others, but they would likely still be experienced in the mind of a singlet in similar conditions. thus it may not be the fault of any individual headmate as such.

My/Our Experience with plurality has been very fraught and i/we would like some advice on where to start if you have any.

A few years ago while dating a system we discovered many of our own parts. Gave names to pieces that previously felt entirely alien.

But our partner had a very strict definition of plurality, and while open initially started being explicitly distrustful of our experiences.

We couldn't switch in the same way as them, our inner world was alot more flexible, parts appeared and disappeared easily where theirs were far more longlasting and sturdy.

The entire experience made me suppress the feelings, ignore the voices, and now I've never really felt more alone.

But now when I call their names I don't get answers, I still feel the brushes of dissociation but...I feel like I've lost my family. Like a massive chunk of myself has been ripped away from me. I miss them dearly but I'm scared that they will never come back, I feel incredibly lost in the silence now.

I'm not sure what to do and would appreciate some advice if yall have any. Otherwise, have a pleasant day!

(Also, thanks for the chance to do it anonymously. Hopefully, someone else who's lost reads this and feels a bit better)

recovering from strict definitions of selfhood (in singlet-normativity) and strict definitions of plurality (in sysmedicalism) is a challenge many of us face while fighting towards selves-acceptance.

common too is a non-linear journey towards finding yourselves, especially when there's nowhere where you can feel accepted, or when you're not sure you can accept yourselves.

so a lot of the tips i've gotten for discovering if you're plural are very akin to the "look back at your past experiences" thing. but like... what if you can't really do that?

like, just for a bit of context, i'm homeschooled in a small town filled with mostly right wing christian conservatives, so already not good for me, the aroace person, who is also one of the only autistic people in my towns "age group" so to say.

i saw some of your tips being "have a plural friend help" or just "have a trusted friend help" but like... i don't have either. and ive shown some of the obvious and common symptoms for being plural, but honestly? the showing symptoms of it was likely almost exclusively due to a defense mechanism. now that i'm not in regular school, aka not being constantly bullied for things i can't change about myself, i can't really do it anymore. even if i try. which is weird considering i was subconsciously doing it just a few months ago, like i would wake up as "normal anon" and when i got to school i would suddenly just be "quiet and bullied anon", and then go back to "normal anon" as soon as i got back home.

and yeah, that's almost textbook definition plurality, except for the part where i can't do it anymore. do you have any ideas?

like is this just a weird defense mechanism i've done because of being bullied, or is it just me being plural and not realizing? or could it be both?

and if the answer is that i'm just plural, how would i even do the stuff like "having headmates" like everyone else? i've tried everything i can think of, which is honestly not much, only like 2 things, and neither worked.

and before you say anything about just being plural for a day, i've got an issue with that as well. it's like... i TRY to try it out, but like i just feel guilty about doing so. like as if im just pretending to make up an excuse for past experiences. and it just stops me from doing anything cause it genuinely feels horrible.

i've also been told "look at your past experiences with a different lens, like trying to see what could be different people fronting subconsciously" (not exact wording) but that also doesn't work because almost everything i've done is almost fully explainable with me not being plural. and those other parts that aren't explainable with me not being plural are explainable if you just look at it through the lens of "yeah that's probably just a defense mechanism"

and honestly i just don't know what to do.

like i showed very obvious signs before, just not anymore. like now i just don't show any sign at all, except for wanting to, according to some people. and for the being unable to try it out, i honestly can't think of anything to describe it. like the closest word i know of would be victim complex, and calling it that is just fundamentally wrong, because it's not even close to the definition of the word. it's like say an external sort of victim complex (i honestly have no better word) where i just feel bad about it for no reason at all.

please, if you read this entire thing, suggest something. anything really. anything that i haven't said i've tried might be helpful at this point.

we kept hesitating on responding to this one and we eventually realised it's because we have no plurality advice because it's not a plurality problem!

honestly anon, you gotta (for lack of better phrasing) get out of your own head and get out there! fight that guilty feeling! go make friends on the internet! plural or not!

i ffeel like you're already kind of keyed into this, but: moralise that shit less!

only you know how your system works - your responsibility is to mitigate material harm to yourselves, not to be presentable when nobody else is around. thoughtcrime isn't real! if you're enjoying something enjoy it, if you need to resolve something resolve it. don't prematurely police yourselves!