The Room Analogy
I wanted to share an analogy we use when explaining our system to others. Keep in mind that not everyone sees their system like this!
Imagine your identity as a room. All your memories, personality traits, beliefs, etc, are held in that same room. You can imagine them as objects, for example seeing memories as video tapes, if you want. Your room/identity is also in charge of your body.
Singlets room: A singlet (aka a person who isn't a system) has everything of who they are and what they experienced in one room. Some of the things that used to be there may be gone or have changed over time, though.
Systems room: A systems room looks different. Their room has walls inside it, so it's divided into different, smaller rooms. The smaller rooms take turns in operating their one body, but switching between rooms isn't per se voluntary.
More about the walls: The walls between two rooms can be really thick, so they have no idea about eachother. The walls can also be thin, so they know about eachother, but don't know what's in there. Some walls have windows, so they kinda know what's in there, but they can't fully access it. Sometimes it's a one way glass window, so room A knows about room B, but room B doesn't know about room A.
As you can see, walls can have alot of variation. Walls can also change over time. Walls can become thicker or thinner. Walls can get windows or lose windows. Walls also can disappear and merge two (or more) rooms into one, or new walls can appear and thus create new rooms.
We came up with this ourselves, but we're probably not the first to come up with this. If you want to use this, feel free to change or add things to make it more fitting for yourself.
- ☁️, 🐇
