clowder-system

[clowder-system]

There's probably a much longer post I could make on this topic (and knowing me, I will use bits and pieces of that hypothetical longer post in many other smaller posts just like this one), but given how hostile much of the world is to systems, I find arguing over disorders and trauma to be just a waste of time. And I don't mean that in the "we all get treated like shit regardless of our differences" way that people usually go to, I mean that for a lot of us, we've probably gotten some maladaptive habits and/or trauma specifically because of the subconscious and dare I say systemic pluralmisia of the world around us, regardless of other factors that may have also contributed, and so it is useless to try to draw hard lines about origin or disorder status when so many of us develop trauma or symptoms just for [how we're treated for] being plural

Changing your mind gets treated as a horrible thing you chose to do to inconvenience the people around you. Speaking in a way you don't often do gets you mocked or even punished by authority figures. We are made into serial killers and so get taught to suppress anything in ourselves that might look like what we see on the big screen. There are countless examples I could give, but I don't really need to, because just about every system out there has a story about being rejected or punished for being plural (or showing even the slightest sign of plurality) in one form of another

I don't think we can have any meaningful conversations about trauma or disorders or anything like that without acknowledging that a lot of us will end up with common ground in trauma or maladaptive habits/symptoms specifically because we are plural and plurality is generally seen as A Bad Thing To Be. Whether we like it or not, we are similar not just in the phenomenon of plurality, but in the experience of being victims of pluralmisia, whether direct or indirect.

[clowder-system]

Remember, if you're a system you must not say the phrase "we haven't split in a while." Fate itself will hear you and make you split because Fuck You, that's why.

[clowder-system]

Living as a system with DID, over and over I come across situations that make me think: I am so glad I know about my plurality, because this problem would not have been solved, wouldn't have been helped at all, if I didn't know that I am plural.

Usual treatments for self-hate didn't work. These were, and still are, often persecutors who need(ed) to be directly addressed and shown kindness.

Usual treatments for obsessions and compulsions didn't work. These (particular ones) were born out of fear of my amnesia that I am now working to accept and accommodate.

Usual treatments for anything hit(s) roadblocks when you can't remember anything, can't understand the motivations behind the actions you do remember, and so many around you are treating your memory loss and lack of understanding as you being purposely difficult.

And as I tackle these problems on my own, I think of how medical professionals do not receive adequate education on dissociation. All the people with dissociative disorders who have been misdiagnosed. The way it takes people with DID almost a decade on average to get just a diagnosis, not to mention treatment. I am lucky in some regards that I learned about my system earlier in life than many, and still, I have to sit with a past of blaming and hating myself because I didn't understand why I was struggling so much, why I couldn't live up to people's expectations, why I was different. Plural activism is near and dear to my heart because its success means that fewer people will be suffering like I did.

This is also why people who twist the narrative of activism into "wanting to traumatize kids" or "but what about fakers" infuriate me so much – these are excuses to not care about people with DID while at the same time claiming to "protect" us and "fight against ableism". If you cared about children, you would try to make sure traumatized kids can get resources and support they need if they end up with a disorder like mine, or you'd work to prevent kids from ending up with this trauma in the first place. If you cared about people with DID, you would forgo disparaging fakers in place of welcoming all those who fear that their pain "isn't that bad" so they "must be exaggerating", or those who never see themselves in system spaces because they're "too weird" so they "must be making it up". If you cared about us at all, you wouldn't spend all your time spitting hate and misinformation against us, trying to tear apart any progress we make in awareness – not even true acceptance, just trying to tell people that we exist in words that they can swallow, that we are not just a trope used in horror movies or a cool metaphor in their favorite web novel – and trying to reach other systems out there, to let them know that there is an answer to why they feel stuck and nothing is helping (and that there are ways out of the well they've resigned themselves to).

Fuck fake allyship.

I want people to know: systems exist. Plurality is a real thing. We come in all shapes and sizes. Our plurality can get tangled up in other conditions, or it might get mistaken for something completely different, which can result in common advice or a suggested treatment just not working out, because sometimes something that works for others (those who aren't plural) or other situations doesn't work for systems. This is not a personal flaw. You are not a bad person for being different. You deserve kindness, too.

[clowder-system]

"Dissociation" as a term is kind of in a weird position compared to a lot of other medical terms that slowly enter public knowledge, because people expect it to be misused like OCD and delusions and so on; they assume people are using it for situations where it doesn't apply, that they are "watering down" an important concept. But the thing with dissociation is no, all these people who are using the term "dissociation" lightly are also using it correctly.

Zoning out is a form of dissociation. Daydreaming is a form of dissociation. Dissociation covers a lot of different things, from complex disorders to everyday behavior. People aren't "misusing a serious term" when they describe these experiences as dissociation, and they aren't hurting anyone who experiences more severe forms of dissociation by doing so. I'm not offended when people without DID describe their daydreams as dissociation, I'm happy that they can recognize there are healthy and everyday forms of dissociation, and so when they encounter dissociation in the context of trauma or a disorder, it hopefully won't be as scary to them.

This is a "yes and" situation, not a "no but" situation. Yes, zoning out is a form of dissociation! And this is how I experience "zoning out" as someone with a dissociative disorder! I'm glad you now have a better understanding of medical terminology and will hopefully be able to better understand any medical texts you come across in the future

If you're looking for people misusing "dissociation", I assure you there are still plenty of people who associate any mention of it with senseless violence. How about we tackle that first before deciding the word for a spectrum can only be used to describe the most extreme forms of it

[clowder-system]

i need to soapbox about DID more, because its kinda like being trans, you'd think that you'd notice if you had it but that's just cultural osmosis giving a skewed impression, statistically you probably wouldn't. statistically you need to do rigorous work to notice.

[clowder-system]

shoutout to system members who dont front as often. who feel underdeveloped, or like they havent had much of a life since they're out so little. and to ones who feel like theh have a vast amount of experience they never have time to share.

shoutout to ones who want to front more, and ones who are happy how things are.

it doesnt matter why or how you dont front as often - you're just as much a member of your system as anyone else there, and you deserve good things.

[clowder-system]

How to support your local DID system:

Give them money

Give them money

Give them money

Give them money

Give them money

Give them money

[clowder-system]

schizospec plurals, you all deserve the right and dignity to call yourself plural.

you belong, regardless.

and you deserve peace and love!

[clowder-system]

If you're someone who requires us to have specific theories of origin about our multiplicity in order to pass your DNI: do not pass go, do not collect $200, please just unfollow and/or block us.

Origin frameworks are useful for a lot of people! Absolutely nothing against people who find them helpful. But we don't use them, and we never have. Our struggles when we were kids were with ideas around personhood, not with system cosmology. We predate -genic terms, and we've never found them particularly applicable to us collectively. It's like asking us where our queer-ness comes from, if there's some sort of personal hidden hypothesis of nature or nurture behind our gender and sexuality developing into what it is today. While a potentially valid question to ask some, we just literally don't think about our experiences in that way.

So while I theoretically understand the people out there who only want other multiples of the exact same backgrounds and origin stories to interact with them, that whole system of thought is non-applicable to us. If your DNI is reliant on that type of thing, you're following the wrong blog.

And origin-specific DNIs are also just something I'm honestly not all that comfortable with in the ways I have often seen it presented! We've been publicly multiple since high school; the entire psych department at our college was in love with us for it, and were fascinated by how much our now-spouse could talk about multiplicity from his own research and his personal experience directly with us for over a decade, and other multiples he knew. That is an example of the type of experience I have with multiplicity and professionals in the psych field: not one of demanding one-size-fits-all answers from books years out of date and studies with pathetic sample sizes, but one that focuses on enthusiastic, delighted learning in an area of knowledge that was suspected to have been flawed or lacking. That hasn't changed now that my spouse works professionally in the field himself and has worked with other multiples, so many years later. But the way I see the "you need to have THIS backstory to interact" boundary presented is usually almost the absolute opposite energy, of the pretentious dismissal of others' lived experiences and assumptions about their relevancy and legitimacy... Of an almost Karen-esque level of entitlement to what is potentially deeply private and personal information about something... And I'm just not about that. I'm just not

[clowder-system]

Shoutout to persecutors whose end goal of recovery isn’t being a protector (or some other supporting role)

Shoutout to persecutors who don’t want to engage in what’s generally thought of as “recovery”

Shoutout to persecutors who prioritize change/personal growth/adaptation to what they’re dealing with now, not “recovery”

Shoutout to persecutors who want to be recognized for who they are now, not who they might be in the future

Shoutout to persecutors who need to continue to be persecutors in order to deal with their current environment, persecutors who aren’t “safe” yet

Shoutout to persecutors who have no internal motivation to change their morality or ethics

Shoutout to persecutors who see nothing wrong with what they’re doing, but still have to change their behavior

Shoutout to persecutors who struggle to change their behavior

Shoutout to persecutors who prefer ways of coping and interacting with others that aren’t “therapist-approved”

Shoutout to persecutor-protectors and persecutors-turned-protectors who do their jobs in a way that isn’t soft and positive, or do their job in a “mean” way

We’re valuable as we are now, not just as we might be later or might’ve been earlier

[clowder-system]

It is so important as a plural system that you take time for yourself and remind yourself/ves you’re still people regardless of what others say. It matters if you’re having interpersonal issues with your system, it matters if you as an individual headmate are struggling even if you’re the only one. You matter as a person. Regardless of how much or how little you contribute to the rest of your collective. -vAmp

[clowder-system]

It’s never okay to lock a headmate away, never. They could be the worst person in the world, you still shouldn’t lock them away. There’s a difference between keeping headmates away from eachother and taking away someone’s privacy, free will and connections. You are abandoning that headmate, you are telling them that they are not worth helping, that they don’t deserve to get better. If talking it out doesn’t work for them there are other options, I’d recommend giving them their own space to speak their mind without threat of mistreatment for it, for starters. If someone really doesn’t want help don’t force it on them, just let them know it’s always an option and leave it at that. -Ange

[clowder-system]

Sometimes I wonder what life was like for plurals of the past. By that I mean – we know of the history of asylums and social outcasting of anyone who did not fit mental or behavioral norms of the past, yes (trends that have continued, although less common and in new forms, into the modern day), maybe even sometimes of those whose plurality was/is part of their culture (so important, and yet so rarely am I able to learn about them), but what of those who flew under the radar? Those who did not know of their own plurality, or perhaps knew, but kept it secret?

How many philosophers and scientists came up with their ideas by conversing with their headmates?

What of the authors who thought speaking directly to your characters on how their story goes was a universal writing experience?

Did any plural leaders who sought the guidance of their council assume that all the advice given to them was decided upon through an internal meeting of selves, just like how they made decisions?

Were there artists who couldn't find the words to explain their drawings were of their headmates? Storytellers who told tales from their exomemories? Record keepers, secretaries, and scribes who were so good at their jobs because they had practice from having to leave records for themselves?

When and where were the plurals like us?

I see hints of potential plurals of history, sometimes – typically in discussions of the self made by poets or philosophers. And there are a few cases that stand out as evidence that we have always been here. But plurality is so often a personal experience, with any observable behavior often brushed over, shunted away from others' knowledge, or just lost in records muddled by how difficult they are to find, that it's hard to make any theories or guesses about the plurals who might have been. Especially with how we're still barely known to most people; there would have been even fewer opportunities for these plurals of the past to find themselves and words for who they are.

It's... something I think about, when I'm looking at studies or learning about history.

Did plural gentleman living in England during the Victorian era get an unexplained thrill whenever they wrote of themselves in the third person for letters, per proper etiquette? Would they have any idea why referring to themselves in the third person felt right, the same way it can feel right for systems referring to themselves by their bodily name today?

Well. How should I know?

But I hope plurals of the past were able to have moments of plural joy, too.

[clowder-system]

"our system does [x] is this norm-" does it matter. no. continue existing as you do

[clowder-system]

Reminder that not all plural experiences will be "We're super differenciated and I have all these different people who I can easily communicate with!" or "We have a horrible experience full of three unreal parts who are all basically the same person", or anything, controversial but you don't even have to be plural to be plural lmao. i personally identify with the idea that my brain itself is split into multiple questionable portions that push ideas towards me. This is different from how I see regular plurals. Imagine that a regular plural has a bunch of different blobs bubbling inside their brain, for me it's more like the brain ITSELF is separated into different parts, of which I cannot actually identify properly. Plurality is a fascinating thing, remember that there will always be super different experiences <33

[clowder-system]

TL;DR of it is that if you say you have to be "bodily (gender)" to identify as xyz, you're being transphobic and intersexist. Stop seeing systems as acceptable targets for bigotry based on limited (and often bigoted) views of how gender is experienced. These things are obviously bigoted to say to a singlet trans person, that doesn't magically make them not bigoted to say to systems.

[clowder-system]

"this thing is rare and only affects 1% of the population" dude that's 80 million people can you shut up