Additionally, you are of no obligation to announce it to your audience like it was a sin, failure, or form of deception to your place in healing.

if alters arent individuals, no one in a system is an individual. not the "core", not the pseudo-core, not the host, not any of your protectors, not your persecutor, none of you. a "core" is still an alter. a host is still an alter. alters are a part of a whole, but theyre still individuals. they still are people who deserve to be treated as such.

you would only be a person/individual if your entire system fused together and became one. this is completely dehumanizing systems who choose to live with functional multiplicity and systems who arent yet in the place in their treatment to fully fuse, because you are stating none of their alters count as people/individuals.

this mindset isnt helpful for anyone and just further goes to stigmatize systems, not to mention makes alters in a system feel like shit about themselves if they cant/dont want to fully fuse. it can push systems whose best option is functional multiplicity into full fusion, in order to "be a full individual".

i dont care if you want to view your own system as just parts of a whole, or if you dont want to see them as individuals/people. but that is your own opinion for your own system. that is not the reality for all systems. i am a person, and so are the other alters in my system. stop pushing this mindset onto people with DID/OSDD-1.

Would you have any advice for someone in a state of final fusion who's engaging in parts work? It's already natural for me to think in parts because of my history, but it's also been destabilising me, as in my normal life I don't see the parts, I just see me. This is making me see the divisions, and thus I start feeling more internal stresses and fear and brain is getting all vigilant about it.

I'm not sure how to go ahead, because uncovering things feels right, and doing the work feels right, but brain picking up on the divisions doesn't feel good.

- J

Aye! Super late response cause Life TM, but I think I'd need to know what exactly about "the divisions" is distressing you / causing stress / causing fear within you and what exactly "the divisions" are.

If you mean the inconsistencies / conflicting views and values / cognitive dissonance that comes from holding differing parts together at the same time, then I think - for as stressful as that might feel - it might be worth sitting on the topics that have conflict and talking within yourselves and to your parts when you have some time to dedicate to it and to really iron out what things are important to each individual part, for what reasons are those important, and to see how both opposing views can both be true, both be right, and both co-exist. I'm strongly of the opinion that there are no real opposites in life and things that seem to conflict are only superficially* conflicting.

I've found a lot of comfort and peace knowing that all versions of me, all parts of me, no matter how different they are at a point in time, are very true, very real, and all correct in a certain time, space, and situation, because they are made for that. It requires me to be okay in not defining myself as a single set of words or as a simple static concept and it means getting used to having a fluid and ever changing sense of self and creating a stable sense of self on top of that, but like... its really freeing imo and I have zero real complaints over it.

Anyways, I'm kind of shooting in the dark so please feel free to send me more information and I can probably give more accurate / specific thoughts on the matter.

---

Largely I did want to say first and foremost two things.

1) this is me just writing off the top of my head a few things that come to mind so I'm not putting an extreme amount of thought and/or formality into this

and

2) recovery, fusion, DID and all that is always a very individualistic experience and recovery journey so while there are things I say here that can be helpful, this is based on how it worked for me and may not be the same for you (could even be entirely different!); its 100% best to just kind of follow your experiences where they take you ideally with a therapist to help

With that out of the way, I think when it comes to seeking final fusion - or as I prefer to call it "full integration / a state of being fully integrated / full fusion" since I really dislike the connotation of the word "final" - it's kind of best to not really SEEK it out too much.

By that I mean that I found that whenever I "tried to fuse and integrate because I want final fusion" I found that I actually made slower progress and arguably - at some points - reverse progress in the sense I became more dissociative and had more conflicts with parts. Maybe its the Buddhist in me, but I find that fusion is one of those things that is actually deceivingly simple and natural and as a result, actively chasing or seeking it out tends to make it more complicated as you start to have to deal with what you Think Fusion Is rather than just simply experiencing it.

I think the best way to kind of progress with integration and fusion is largely to just kind of throw out a lot of notions of late stage recovery other than a "that would be a nice result" and just focus on learning about yourselves, building relationships with yourselves, and developing hobbies and interests that parts can engage with together. The level of which parts are connected, integrated, and/or fused tends to just kind of come along the journey of building a very strong, very firm, and supportive relationship with your parts.

I think a lot of people think of final fusion as this phenomenon where parts disappear and a new person is formed - and while that might be the way it is for some people - for me its a lot more like slowly becoming co-con with another part so much to the point you don't have to explicitly internally talk to be on the same page and experience things together.

In that sense, I think focusing too much on what parts are doing what and where they are in the stage of fusion can really kind of "backtrack" the fusion (Which! Is not bad! Sometimes fusions don't work the best and don't work well for the situation and its better to say 'yeah no this isn't working' and backtrack. I 100% support undoing fusions if they don't work and we've done is SEVERAL times on the way to where we are now; undoing a fusion also doesn't mean final fusion is impossible; it just means those two as they are are likely not the best combo).

It's honestly really just as simple as just kind of learning to love, care, support, share, and enjoy life with your parts and the more universal that support, love, and care is throughout the system, the more integrated and possibly fused you'll find yourselves becoming.

It really wasn't this sudden night or day phenomenon for me as much as it was a realization that I really didn't cling or see myself much as any specific part and that most of the time, the days I did identify as primarily a specific part (let alone ONLY as a specific part) became the odd days whereas me just being "me and all the parts around idk" became the norm.

It's really kind of funny how our system operates because Aya and I are the only parts that - even when a fused whole - still tend to present distinctly as themselves randomly at times.

I find it interesting the parts that tend to present as themselves regardless of if we are a fused whole atm tend tk be the most Autistic parts and I wonder if there is a connection there.

I I think it probably has something to do with unmasking or something similar maybe

Because its actually mostly Aya, followed by me then Chunn that appear like this and the three of us are the three "most autistic" parts

Maybe other parts of our brain sometimes shutdown due to autism and it just leaves the rest of us as predominant parts thus kind of making certain ones of us pop out more or something. Its just, interesting things.

Cause we are in slight autistic like... burn out rn I think and our brain just decided to mega amplify my part which is... interesting to say the least. Im STILL Feathers the whole, but its more accurate to say Im Lin rn since my part is just that extremely prominent rn

The way our parts present when we are operating as a fused whole is always a kind of interesting and complicated thing we don't usually care to think too much about until a certain switch in our brain flips and I'm over here like "wow I'm mostly Lin/Chunn" and like 95% of the times that happens is when we hit some level of burn out. It's not exactly dissociative really but something kind of like a large like... brain resource shift of some sort?

Aya is a whole different thing on her own since she never stops presenting as herself no matter how fused and whole our system is so who knows what the heck is going on over there, its another one of those things we never really question or care to think too much about cause it doesn't serve us much benefit to find out, we have no issue with it, and we honestly actually kind of like it.

Chunn and I however? Sometimes our whole fused identity becomes so predominantly held by the two of us. Its probably a relationship between masking, burn out, and just.... like our parts being the parts most experienced and associated with autistic overload / burnout / shutdown and so when we are out of autism spoons I think our brain goes "ah okay turn everything but these two off" or something like that.

And by "thinking" I mean "probably will be but I still don't currently feel like having it on my 'list of things I'm trying / doing actively'"

But like the past two or so weeks I've been really putting on "the hat" of one of my characters to gain a better perspective on some issues and complexities that I am currently working through and I've been doing so in basically the exact ways I do with my various parts as a fused system and it's been pretty helpful so I think I might just have some fun exploring the pliability of how plurality work with me now and just shape myself a new part hmm

Book Tour: Full Fusion

Today I am participating a a book tour by Full Fusion by Natalie Damschroder! There’s also a giveaway down below for the entire set of the Full Fusion series!

About The Book: Title: FULL FUSION (The Fusion Series Volume 1) Author: NJ Damschroder Pub. Date: June 4, 2014 Publisher: Dragonsoul YA Pages: 322 Formats: Paperback, eBook Find it: Amazon, B&N, iBooks, TBD, Goodreads

Eighteen-year-old Roxie…