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two = 'more than one'

This is the first in a series of posts on our misconceptions about plurality. We let these hold us back from accepting ourselves and starting to do system work sooner, and hope sharing our experiences may help normalize the uncertainty of early system discovery.

Most of this post is written from the general consensus of the system's perspective, but a few statements are prefaced with emoji from a specific headmate's perspective that popped up during writing and editing.

Most of our day-to-day experience of plurality is experienced through Zari or Ethan's lenses, and about a third of the time we're co-fronting. In the early days of our system discovery we thought this meant we weren't plural, because we'd only really seen the stereotypical experience of "hard switches, full amnesia, many personalities" and that didn't align with our experiences.

It's often said that dissociative disorders hide themselves, because if you start exploring the system you'll inevitably uncover the traumas that caused the splits in the first place. I know that's absolutely been the case for us, we had extremely little recollection of our childhood and that's started to change the more system-aware we've become.

⚫️ I mean yeah, we've discovered two child alters, so clearly there's many damaged parts of us from that part of our life that need healing.

✨ We hadn't mentioned the other child alter, but yes, we do have a child alter that's younger than sky. She's pretty nonverbal and emotionally-driven so we don't speak about her too much.

As we've done research, we've discovered that it's actually extremely common to only have 2-3 headmates, and felt more secure. A note on language: academic literature will often say "1-2 alters" because they don't include the "host" or "main personality". We generally conceptualize ourselves as equals, and call ourselves headmates for this reason.

Further, dissociation and plurality can present in a wide variety of ways, such as fragments. We know folks who don't have fully distinct headmates, but do have fragments (or as one friend described them, lenses) and that's an entirely plural experience! This was just our journey to exploring what the literature says about how our system is structured.

✨ For a long time, we questioned if we were "plural enough" because we don't have really harsh switches or complete blackouts between us.

⚫️ Yeah, it's more like... sliding between perspectives? Sometimes I'm more present, sometimes Zari is, sometimes we're both here watching things happen together.

Co-fronting (or co-consciousness) is actually incredibly common. The amnesiac barriers between headmates can be partial rather than complete, and many systems have varying levels of memory sharing.

Learning about OSDD (Other Specified Dissociative Disorder) was really helpful, which explicitly includes systems with less distinct parts or distinct parts without amnesia. The line between DID and OSDD is actually pretty arbitrary - it's all part of the same spectrum of dissociative experiences.

If you're questioning whether you're "really" plural because you only have 2-3 headmates or because you don't match the stereotypical presentation - please know that your experience is valid. The clinical research backs this up, community wisdom supports it, and most importantly, your lived experience matters.


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