halcycol

[halcycol]

which reminds me actually. you know whats a pain in the ass? the way one can be so inconsistent and have basically everything fluctuate because of plurality. its not that big of a deal after you figure it out (at least hasnt been for us), but before discovering it? oh jesus christ it is basically hell.

like constantly feeling like youre lying or literally being made to lie because lying is safer than telling the truth. getting seen as a liar when youre telling the complete, honest truth. ive gotten better with it, but for a good while, lying was pretty much second nature. not in that i was good at it, but that i barely thought about doing it. if i was expected to lie about everything or else be treated like a liar anyway, and only seen as honest if i lied well enough, why would i ever be honest? why would i care about being a liar? discovering plurality made all this inconsistency start to make sense - it was just fluctuations based on the alter.

i think this is one of the reasons fakeclaiming bugs me so much. i was called a liar for so much as a kid when i was being honest, and thats the whole premise of fakeclaiming isnt it? taking random people and saying no, youre lying about your entire life experience, actually. do you see how this is a shitty thing to do (in general, but especially) to systems.

like, heres a fun anecdote: my father mocks me for my fear of fungi. why? because he thinks im lying about it. he thinks i, at the ripe old age of like 8 years old, decided to tell this like and kept up with it for the rest of my life. just Because. i dont remember exactly why, but considering he complains about me being inconsistent and having a "selective" memory and says i "make things up and then forget about them", im sure i can guess.

so!

[halcycol]

When ppl talk about alters being stuck in trauma time, they usually talk about those alters not knowing the body's friends, or recognizing where they live, or any number of physical reality changes. And we've definitely had that experience! But more often what "alters being stuck in trauma time" means for us is those alters know basic physical reality facts, but their emotional reality has not changed at all. So they might know our best friend, but they aren't connected to how that friend and I interact. They respond to everything like the trauma is still happening, so they expect any mistake to be met with punishment, they expect the ppl around them to suddenly hurt them without warning, they have no ability to use our modern coping methods, and they have no concept of anything being other than the abusive environment of our youth.

So yeah, our trauma-stuck alters typically know we live in a different house and our dad isn't coming home, and they know things like we graduated college and the names of our friends. What we struggle with a lot more is getting them to understand that this current time isn't just our childhood with new set dressings.

[halcycol]

shout out to plurals who’s frequent fronters change all the time.

shout out to alters who are afraid of not fronting all the time, either because theyre so use to it or they’re afraid they wont get to front again.

shout out to systems who wish they had a more consistent rotation of fronters and wish it wasn’t so come and go with system members.

shout out to alters who like fronting.

shout out to members who get frontstuck regularly.

and shout out to systems trying to find a middle ground between being front stuck and having completely inconsistent fronters.

[halcycol]

many autistic people need people use simpler words when talking to them

many autistic people need tasks broken into tiny steps to understand how do something

many autistic people need positive feedback in way that other think condescending

many autistic people childish and have childish interests

many autistic people have to always be supervised never alone because of risk of hurt self or get in dangerous situations

many autistic people have violent messy big meltdown, even in public

many autistic people struggle with speech always will maybe rest of life (non verbal, semi verbal, demi verbal etc.)

AND most of these autistic people higher support needs + level 2 & 3 autism, don’t forget or ignore us. can’t say “that not true just stereotypes” when it just symptom and sign of higher support needs higher level autism.

you want to raise awareness for lower support needs level 1 autism and yes good ok!!!! but not this way where throw HrSN level 2+3 autistic under bus.

- winnie

[halcycol]

some low support needs level 1 autistic will throw higher support needs level 2&3 or nonverbal nonspeaking autistic under bus if in their mind there even 0.01% chance they maybe perhaps get rights. or more accurately, get be oppressor class. n it shows

[halcycol]

one thing that I have had to tell multiple people now, because they are going through doubt about whether or not they are a system because their system has gone silent, dormant, or has changed:

New trauma or stress can change the structure of a system, be that whether by new alters forming, old alters going dormant, and/or alters roles being changed, among other things. That does not mean that you were/are faking it

[halcycol]

It's THIS simple:

[halcycol]

question 96: how do you sound internally, if you sound like anything at all? do you have distinct voices or all the same?

[halcycol]

tumblr editor does not like the candle emoji straight from the windows 10 onscreen keyboard. ok

[halcycol]

wonderful

i don't know if we will leave this up, because we aren't sure if it comes across how we would like. but the alter who wrote this, yellowfang, has wanted to create it for some time, so we opted to try.

we, once again, apologize for any art style inconsistencies. the comic artwork itself was worked on by several of us.

[halcycol]

apparently tumblr post editor cannot handle emoji in tag right now. ough

[halcycol]

Plurality is so weird because half the time I don't even realize and just go "huh weird, suddenly I'm feeling a huge disconnect between current me and me from 2 days ago and my whole gender and identity have became something else and I feel a strong need to change what name I'm called and how I present myself almost like I became I whole new person within such a short time span. I wonder why that is. I must just be really fluid or was simply wrong about what I am the entire time before or something," and then five days later I go "huh weird, I have gone back to my previous state after this odd and peculiar phase so to speak and now I feel a strong disconnect from the me from five days ago like I just temporarily became a whole new person within such a short time span. I wonder why that is. Must have been just a phase, now I feel stupid for feeling that way so strongly then just changing my mind back," and despite having lived as a(n aware) plural system/collective/little kitty cat clowder for nearly a year now it still does not ever cross my mind that perhaps, maybe, just maybe, that was literally just a whole ass new guy that I split (as I do. Because I'm plural. Because that's what it does. Very often, mind you. Because I know that I'm plural and what being plural does) up until it's like, well after the fact. Despite it being so incredibly embarrassingly blatantly obvious the entire time. Anyway you won't ever guess what just happened

[halcycol]

I know that being a system means you're rather different from other parts inside, but that doesn't mean you can't share the same traits or habits:

Some systems don't have distinctive handwritings that can be distinguished from one to another

Some systems don't have a jarring difference when it comes to using clothes or style of fashion

Some systems don't have a separate accent from one another, they all speak the same, and use similar words

Some systems don't have varying amounts of skills or proficiency, they all have it evenly the same throughout, not lesser nor better than others

Some systems don't have their specific disorder affecting just one alter, it affects everyone collectively too

Some systems don't have opposing opinions or ideas from each other, they all share similar life views and perception

Systems being different is true to an extent, but since multiple alters share one brain, it's common to find overlapping qualities among them as well.

What other kinds of traits do you all similarly have, or could be indistinguishable among systems? Join in and share them here!

- j

[halcycol]

When the system can switch on command but not on purpose

[halcycol]

I love you spiritual systems that are also psychological

I love you walk-ins of any kind

I love you soulbonds and charabonds that get upset how they're displayed and treated by their source (ot waste writing term you use) fandom

I love you spiribonds (+ other walk-ins) who struggle to take care of a human body

I love you intrabonds

I love you exobonds

I love you walk-ins who have relationships with non-spirutual headmates

I love you walk-ins who get told your relationships aren't real because you're with a non-spiritual headmate (more directed to our system's walk-ins, but this goes for any out there)

I love you mixed origin systems with spiritual headmates

I love you mixed origins who have been told "you're either a spiritual system or you're not/you can't be both" (or have had thoughts of someone saying these things)

I love you systems/headmates that have spiritual practices and those who don't

I love you walk-ins who wish to see more people like you and get upset when you don't

I love you bondsystems

I love you cosmagenics

I love you gateway systems

I love you metaphysical systems

I love you psychgenic systems

I love you soulbased systems

I love you seelegenic systems

I love you all

[halcycol]

ive had this in my brain for so long and i kept forgetting to do it

[halcycol]

btw 'syscourse' and plural infighting isn't accomplishing anything. back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the only communities and resources for plurals that were widely available were for and by non-traumagenic systems. the only people who were advocating for normalizing and accepting plurality on a large scale were non-traumagenic systems. if you did research into plurality 10 - 15 years ago, most of the results that came up would have been experiences written by spiritual and natural plurals.

many people at the time were expressing their dislike of forcing every single plural to identify as if they had trauma- many found this insulting to themselves, and rightfully so! no one should be forced to identify in a way they don't agree with just to rightfully be a part of a community they already occupy. this obsession with "you can only be plural if you have trauma" has only come about extremely recently. i found out about plurality through the otherkin community. i was actually told about DID by someone in the spiritual plurality community. people don't seem to understand that most non-traumagenic systems have respect for traumagenic systems and don't gatekeep their spaces to prevent us from entering.

older plural spaces on the web like healthymultiplicity accepted all plurals. the goal of the community was to show that you can live as plural and not have it be a tragedy or something to "fix". if anything, folks with dissociative disorders owe a LOT to non-traumagenic systems for pushing to normalize plurality without implying that we HAVE to integrate our headmates and try to stop being plural. a huge part of the early online plural community was there to push that plurals can and do live happy lives and shouldn't view their plurality as a bad thing

it's not going to make singlet society see us in a better light. it's not going to get people to understand plurality better. it's not going to get us better mental health resources. it's not going to improve the quality of care for dissociative and traumagenic systems. all you're doing is bullying someone else that you don't understand simply because you don't agree with them.

you're not going to recover from your trauma or understand your own plurality better by denying the existence of other types of plurality. you're not "making the community safer" by gatekeeping. telling other people how their brains work is policing their identities. whether or not you want to accept it, if you forcefully kick endos out of plural spaces, you are the cop you claim to hate.

fighting with people on your own team will never net you a victory. to every other dissociative and traumagenic system: endos are on your side. you are wearing the same jersey. you are made of the same flesh and blood. enough. come together to share your similarities instead of fighting over differences. celebrate the diversity that plurality offers. don't take someone else's identity personally. someone can share the space with you without having to match exactly how you identify. diversity is what makes a community thrive.