#mod plural

The idea of having other people in my head for me to disappoint is...not fun. Having a group of people who resent me, or constantly judge our actions, that we can literally never escape from sounds like a circle of hell.

We don't feel distinct, like a parlament of different voices with their own personalities. We feel amorphous. A Greek chorus. We sometimes bicker with each other. Or, it feels more natural to feel like I'm discussing something with myself.

I sometimes wonder if there's anything too this at all. If I'm just stealing glory from more interesting people. Or that I'm just that fucking lonely that I wish there were other people in my head. But I've already been through that merry-go-round twice now, first with the ADHD and then with the gender, so we/I know by now that's really not how it works.

I don't really know where I was going with this. I feel scared. We feel scared. We don't want to be alone. We want to feel safe inside myself. I don't want more people I need to please. I don't want to leave someone behind to scream in the dark. Learning to love myself has been hard. As fucking bizarre as it sounds, we love ourselves so much and we don't want to hurt each other.

Typing this out has been helpful. I hope this hasn't been too much. Thank you for reading all this.

plurality is a daunting thing to explore at times. im glad typing it out has been helpful!

denial is common, so is somewhat-undefined alters, and so is being scared about it. sometimes youre more of an amorphous blob than a broken plate, and thats okay! sometimes thatll change with time, and thats also okay. all plurality is different!

and if its any comfort, we're 8 years into knowing about our plurality and dont deal with denial or fear nearly as often anymore. it does get better, and less scary, and easier.

-a system that fights constantly

negotiating with alters can be tricky, especially if there's a lot of fighting goin on that could potentially prevent discussion.

we hardly fight nowadays, but its something that ends up happening in a lot of systems at some point. here's a bit of general advice:

firstly, don't "timeout" alters. giving alters the silent treatment was a big mistake in the past. if youre avoiding an alter who causes trouble, make sure theyve got alters to talk to and support them! even if you dont wanna be the one to do it. people, including alters, dont grow and change in a vacuum.

with the one big "dont" out of the way: try to figure out why each alter is lashing out. if youre able to discuss with your alters, great! if not, there are other ways to figure it out like trying to recognize patterns! either way, youll need to try new things to see what works for each alter.

for example: one of our alters started picking fights when kept out of front by our gatekeeper. the few times they had fronted had gone poorly and harmed us, which is why we stopped letting them front (bad solution!) and it turns out their anger was linked to their self-consciousness about feeling one-dimensional. because our alters gain a better sense of self when fronting, theyd not had a real taste of that freedom yet, and had trouble feeling anything BUT self-loathing and anger.

a lot of their impulsive stuff came from being left to think to themselves for too long, and letting the anger fester. so we negotiated that they were allowed to front if they wanted to + had a reasonably safe activity in mind before switching in. this way, they can front safely without putting us in danger from impulsive behavior that happens while not preoccupied in front.

giving them more time to front, find hobbies, and find themselves helped them feel less upset all the time, and to lash out less. it also has helped us stay safer when we do front, since we figured out what was leading to their harmful/impulsive behavior in the first place.

hey! this is totally normal. every system (regardless of how it happened!) works different, and that includes stuff like this!

sometimes theres a constant cofront situation going on, and if multiple people are controlling the body all the time itd make sense you wouldnt lose as much between people if theyre experiencing it too!

i understand being worried about making things up. its a fear we still get sometimes too ^_^; pluralitys kinda weird in general, definitely doesnt help with the "making things up" worries.

now, although possession and amnesia are pretty hot, do you have any advice on how i can easily communicate to others (who know nothing about DID, or even have biases towards such) that i now have entirely different opinions than before, and often no knowledge of the way i had prior acted ? a sort of soft-launch of the idea of plurality to normies ?

what youre going through definitely sounds like plural experiences to me! and even if amnesia and possession and that fuzziness of the mind can definitely be hot, its still somethin we gotta deal with even when its not so hot sometimes.

so, i definitely recommend waiting on telling them about it being specific to plurality. but i think a great way to explain or excuse the sudden changes is along the lines of... youre changing and growing, youve been doing a lot of thinking, and youre letting yourself be more fluid in your daily life! i think soft launching it as a part of you, just as your plural experience is, is a good way to test the waters without being dishonest.

how to get plural when you feel very obviously not plural

zero evidence, hm...?

id say that interest may be a sign or suggestion of sorts. i think you can get plural. i think you might already be, even!

a lot of what helped us get plural was trying to notice difference in behavior... why did i act that way when i usually do this? what other things feel inexplicably different this time?

we used to have an alter like this too! she did have her own voice, but she did play music that took up a lot of our brains processing power. she had a lot of our speech disability symptoms both inner and outerworld, so she didnt use her own voice very often. she really liked playing cartoon slip sound effects at us.

n hey spongebobs awesome. maybe not helpful, but at least its spongebob, right?